CURRENT ISSUE 5/13/03 Front Page Weekly Features Advice from Strangers To-Do List Ain't That America? Alaric the Visigoth Moth's Diary Musing With Mitch News from Travistan Movie Corner Riding Shotgun With Adventure Info Archives Crap Shop Who's at Fault? Contact Us! Aye, mateys! Get you some Daily Probe booty!	Riding Shotgun   With Adventure   by Ron Langston   Chapter 57: Sweet Mother of Baklava! "Embedded" doesn't sound so bad -- it has 'bed' in it, after all, and there's not a one of us currently hunkered down in this sandy ditch who wouldn't rather be atop a nice Sealy Posturepedic, remote or sweetheart in hand, than clutching a dusty carbine in the dirt 10,000 miles from home. But for a field crypto-entomologist with the CIA, words are often not what they seem. We awaited the signal, being as quiet as 23 men can be after five mostly sleepless nights on our bellies in the desert. "Get the Bug Man over here," the Captain barked in a whisper -- odd, how he could do that, make men jump at barely audible decibels. As I crawled over to him, I considered attempting yet again to explain to this career soldier that honeybees are not, strictly speaking, bugs, but canned it. "Cap'n?" "There's your bogy," he hissed, "north-northeast at 11 o'clock." Sure enough, a sturdy young Apis mellifera flew past, pollen sacs loaded from a hard day's work. My respect for the Captain climbed a notch - maybe this Georgia farm boy with a gun did know a trick or two. But this was no time to form an admiration society. The trail had led from 9/11 to shadowy "Islamic Aid" societies to the international honey trade to this ditch in the desert, with detours through Swiss banks and semi-legitimate honey vendors on four continents. The path also took an unexpected -- and, we prayed, undetected -- side trip through the international spook community, where it found the one man who knew how to deal with insects, money, commodity agricultural products and death: me. And the trail would end tonight, with this bee. At my quick signal, 22 men sprang near-silently into action. Laser-sighted locators fixed GPS signals on the bee, which now appeared as a steady red glow on the targeting screen. The troops -- volunteers, to a man -- fanned out. I spotted Pfc. Simms unfolding some insect netting. "Put that away, son, you won't need it," I said, as kindly as I could muster. "But what about survivors?" he asked earnestly. The red dot came to rest; the hive had been located. I pushed the targeting button. "There won't be any survivors, Billy. This is the sweet, sticky end for those bees. They'll never know what hit them." Next week -- Chapter 58: What's This Crap on My Salad? (Transcribed by Joseph Moore)
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