A Story 

told by old Joe

Smiley’s Group

“This is one of those stories you’re goin to wonder if it’s true or if it’s all made up. If’s it’s all made up then somebody has a pretty creative mind. And it all sounds so regular at first then everything gets so …well almost unbelievable. But then again things like this must happen about the way this thing played out.

Well let’s see the first thing anybody would have to know bout this incident is that it all started many years ago. The old army base here has been in operation in one form or another since 1940 something. It’s and old Army-Air field base is exactly what it is. But to have that kind of air stripe, the biggest in the united states,  nothing much we civilians ever hear bout. Okay, so everything was real quite and peaceful in our small town except the usual crimes in any city but never heard anything ‘bout anything happening at the base.

I guess it all started at Smiley’s no one ever knew he ran a spy ring out of a pizza joint. Yes, a spy ring. Just ordinary people coming and going getting their pizzas never really noticed anything. Never really saw anyone except maybe some guy at the counter. Old Smiley was always in the back on the phone. Most people like me didn’t pay much attention to the place. For Gods sake it was a pizza joint. Old Smiley was in the back office always on the phone. I just reckon he was ordering stuff for the shop. You know they have a lot of other things besides pizza. They have some pretty good chicken wings, and cobb salad. I, myself don’t care for the pizza like the young kids do. When the wife wants to order out we usually got the chicken wings or cobb salad. Well that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m bout to tell ya.

So Smiley’s is really a cover for an international spy ring. They use to deliver pizza to the boys on the base. Over the last 20 years or so we all knew the base was a training facility for the army guys. They even had a Ranger battalion training out of there. No one knew they had Special Ops people floating out of there. And even if we had known we wouldn’t thought it was any big deal. We hear or read about ‘em sometimes in the news. We know they exist. But no body here and even some to this day can’t believe Smiley is anything but an old retired army man making a few bucks tossing pizza. I really can’t recall seeing Smiley ever out of that chair of his… always sat in back there in his office. But when I saw the pictures of him in the paper he was over 6 feet and didn’t look so old to me either.