A Pootie Game - Revived

[gryhnd51]

'everything here is under my control."

But Connie was wrong about that.

Out in the parking lot, Jack felt that that he was completely prepared for the onslaught of wicked Martyanne Hobbs, the Trenton Tramp. Both he and Connie had gone over this scene so many times during the past few days, and their plan was the perfect trap.

As Marty walked out of the diner with a swagger, Jack prepared himself for the quick end-game of grabbing her and putting her under arrest, and finally ending her tyranny.

Jack stepped quickly from the back of the old VW, ready for anything, when from the right side of the diner there appeared flashing lights and a loud noise like a giant swarm of bees. "no way" he thought..."this can't be happening"

The giant Bell helicopter landed just a few feet from where Marty was standing. Another big whirr of the blades meant that she was out of their grasp once again!

[Barnabas]

Natalya Mishkin slid into the co-pilots seat, and the helicopter was off the ground before she even had her belt secured. She watched FBI agent Jack Bauerliss shrink from view, standing frozen in disbelief in the nearly empty side of the parking lot normally reserved for semi-trucks. That had been fortuitous. She glanced at the man piloting the aircraft, Comrade Leonid Lipovsky, and she yearned to speak to him in Russian. But she knew the Navy helicopter was equipped with a black box and that everything they said had the very real potential of being heard by others. The moment she had boarded the helicopter she had ceased to be Martyanne Hobbs, but she also wasn't Natalya Mishkin... not here. She correctly assumed that they were headed back to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where Comrade Lipovsky was known as Lieutenant Leonard Parker and she was Midshipman Rhonda Lowe from Kearney, Nebraska. She knew what Lt. Parker was thinking. It was the same thing she was thinking. How was he going to explain the unscheduled stop of a U.S. Naval helicopter at a truck-stop parking lot? As to explaining her presence on the aircraft, well... the two would not speak. The black box would not be breached with her voice, and she would make sure that no trace of her had ever been onboard.

[ddph]

Disembarking from the helicopter in Annapolis, Natalya gave her co-conspirator a hug. "Thanks for saving my butt!"

[universalmom]

Talking with his mouth directly next to her ear, Lipovsky said, "Nitchivo, draga!"** Horrified to hear him speaking Russian, and acting quickly to cover it up, she stepped back, saluted him smartly and said, "Yes, Lieutenant Parker." As she walked away, Natalya mentally shook her head and thought, "Unbelievable! He thinks he's Maverick from Top Gun, and he's going to get us killed!" And yet, she thought, if he weren't such a cowboy, he would never have put a Navy helicopter down in that godforsaken hole of a town and gotten her out of there alive.

** "Don't mention it, sweetheart!"

[Barnabas]

Ethan Hunt couldn't have pulled it off any better in a Mission: Impossible movie. Natalya, aka Rhonda or Martyanne or... she had so many names, and she wondered how she kept them all straight, had - by the time they'd landed in Annapolis - donned the silicone rubber mask of Lt. Donna Hodge, Parker's copilot. The hair and the mask had been perfect, and the uniform she'd slipped into just in time fit well too. She'd even garnered a salute or two from the ground crew as she departed the aircraft. But she had to wonder. What had Lt. Parker done with the real Lt. Hodge?

[imported_nanrich]

Even as the thought flitted through her mind, she dismissed it. Such details were for others. Right now, she needed to figure out how to finish her current mission. That idiot Vince had interrupted her before she could copy the entire file. For sure, the documents were being moved out of the diner even now. And Connie and Jack were proving to be impressive adversaries.

[Barnabas]

Staring at the document, Connie and Jack didn't quite know what to make of it. The heading read "Сверхсекретный. Для ваших глаз только." The rest of the page, which had been found on the truck-stop's office floor, was written in the same language. "Is that Greek?" asked Jack.
"Maybe." replied Connie. "Or Russian. But what would Martyanne be doing with this?"

[Barnabas]

Sergei Sokolov was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona; his countenance was grim. It was a girl named Hodge in flat-bed Dodge who slowed down to take a look at him. Expecting Natalya Mishkin, the driver didn't appear to be her... but then he hadn't seen her in over two years, and maybe she was wearing one of her near perfect disguises. Her (Natalya's) codename today was “Walrus,” and if the driver wasn't Natalya then she shouldn't know the right answer to Sergei's question. “Who are you?” he asked as he climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.

“Would you believe me if I told you I'm the eggman?” answered Donna Hodge.

“No,” answered Sokolov. “I am the eggman.” Never a patient man, nor one with a sense of humor, he repeated his question, “Who are you?” and he allowed the butt of his Makarov 9mm to show a little.

“Okay okay,” answered Hodge. “I am the walrus.” She popped the top of a Corona and handed the ice-cold beer to Sergei. He drank greedily from the bottle as CIA operative Donna Hodge pulled away from the curb. Seconds later, up ahead in the distance, Sergei saw a shimmering light. His head grew heavy and his sight grew dim, he had to stop for the... Sergei slumped over in his seat and Sergei was no more. Hodge would dump his body in the desert somewhere out past the Hotel California on Highway 99.

Twenty-five minutes later, and a couple of miles off the nearest road, Donna rolled Sergei's body out of the truck. She checked his pockets. “Hmmm, that's odd. A picture of Chairman Mao... well, Sergei, I guess you weren't gonna make it with anyone anyhow.” She had the documents that were intended for Sergei, the ones Connie Kohl had forwarded to her. The elusive Natalya Mishkin was to have given them to him, and Natalya was now long gone after the debacle with the documents. “Highly confidential – for your eyes only” the heading had read. What followed was Naval submarine codes, all written in Russian, but American codes. And there had been instructions to meet this man, “the Eggman” here in Arizona. The codes, Donna was certain, had been changed, but what if? What if they hadn't been changed? What if Natalya had gotten to the Eggman, Sergei Sokolov, with the codes?

Donna returned to the truck; the radio was playing an Eagles tune... Glenn Frey was singing “and I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight with a million stars all around.” “I don't think so,” Donna murmured to herself. “Tonight Sergei is gonna sleep in the desert all by himself.” She took a roundabout path getting back to Highway 99, returned to Winslow, dumped the truck, and caught a flight to Phoenix. From there she would would catch a direct flight to Baltimore. 6:00 AM would come early, and she had a flight scheduled as Lt. Donna Hodge... in the co-pilot's seat with her Captain, Leonid Lipovsky, aka Leonard Parker, who wasn't nearly as sympathetic to his homeland as the Russian intelligence agencies would like. - The End?

[Barnabas]

Anyone want to start another story? I'll make two promises 1.) I'll stick to the "one line rule"... and 2.) I'll only 'reply' once every 6th entry or so. I don't want anybody to feel like they can't contribute. If anyone wants to get 'er started up again... put an opening line out there.

[puzzleme]

Oh, geez... I guess I was the first one to break the "one line rule"... wasn't paying close enough attention to the rules. I'll try to do better this time so... here goes...

[puzzleme]

As the slow-moving freight train rumbled past the back gate, one of the trainmen tossed an orange out the yellow caboose window and called out, "Here ya go, kid, tell your grandpappy Zeke says 'hey!'"

[puzzleme]

Hmmm... not sure what happened to my last attempt to post apologies to all so here it is again. I figured that I needed to start a new thread for the next Pootie Game and did so under the heading: A Pootie Game Revived #2: The Kid. See you all there - and thanks for your patience.

[wvwoman]

i don't think one line was a rule--at least that's not how you explained it, barnabas--for some reason, i just thought that was the protocol!
i don't mind more than one line at all. a paragraph does tend to move it along faster and give it some cohesiveness--nothing wrong with that. (personally, one line was about all i could ever come up with!)
it all works, right?

[Barnabas]

My concern was that when I felt I was trying to breathe some fresh life into the story by adding a paragraph or two, and also for the reasons you stated, WV, what actually seemed to happen was that the story (which was never anything more than a game) became a little more suffocated. It became something exclusive rather than inclusive. A few people expressed their feelings that they felt intimidated. And that's the last thing I wanted. I'm hoping puzzleme's fresh start will take off; it certainly looks like a fun opening line.