A Shadow of Death in The Woods (30 page)

Chapter 52

Casa del Drugs

Bart got up a few minutes before sunrise. He always got up just before sunrise to sit in his garden to receive the power. It charged him up for the whole day. It was the best time of day.

Bart didn’t always have the power. He lived on a ranch in New Mexico when he was a boy. He had no parents and somehow he ended up on the ranch. The ranch hands used to abuse him. He was too small to fight back. He had no power. It was the worst time of his life. There were three of them. They took turns on him. They laughed and humiliated him during the day and raped him at night. Bart’s rage built day by day. There was no one to help him. He had to help himself.

He planned for months, thinking it all through. He was twelve and could think and plan but he wasn’t big enough to handle three grown men. He had to be careful. He also had to get away afterwards.

One day painters came to the ranch and worked for a few days. Bart stole one of their coveralls, plastic drop cloths and disposable gloves. It was perfect for his plan. He got a knife and honed it razor sharp. He taped the plastic to the coveralls so they would be waterproof or, in this case, blood proof.

When everything was ready, he waited for the guys to get drunk on the weekend. Then at night when everyone was asleep or passed out, Bart dressed in the coveralls and gloves. He put plastic bags over his shoes and taped them to the coveralls. He sneaked into where they were sleeping and one by one cut their throats. He had helped butcher cattle so he had a good idea how to cut a throat so the animal would quickly bleed to death. His only regret was that the bastards would die without suffering or at least not suffering long. He had to do it that way though. It was the only way he could kill all three at one time. And it had to be all at one time. If he killed one and hung around, he wouldn’t be given the chance to kill the other two. So it had to be done all in one night.

He knew that killing all three in one night would raise a ruckus. It would freak people out but it was the only way. It would hit the papers, TV and radio.

He took off the coveralls, gloves and plastic bags and put them in a garbage bag, which he took with him. He knew where the keys were to the pickup truck. He stole the truck and by the time people discovered what had happened, he was long gone. He went to Texas and had been there ever since except a few excursions on business. He had changed the license plates with stolen plates several times on his run. He was never caught.

It wasn’t easy surviving at that age but he did it. He had almost no schooling but he was a fast learner. He knew how to read and he learned fast on the streets. He learned there was a lot of crime and many ways of making money but the real money was in drugs.

The only problem was that you never saw an old drug dealer; some looked old but they weren’t. Drug dealers didn’t live long. Some were stupid and got killed. Some sampled their product too much and died from it. Bart learned that sampling drugs was a one-way deal. You could not control it and it destroyed your life. You either died from the drugs or someone decided you were an easy target and they killed you. Either way you were dead.

Bart planned to live a long life. He was focused on getting power and keeping power. He never sampled drugs and he maintained control. Drugs to him were just a business. A way to make money, lots of money. Money paved the way for power. He was after the power. When he was a kid, he had no power. Now he was going to have plenty of power.

He first used his money to build his estate in the mountains. People thought he was crazy. That didn’t bother Bart because he had a plan. He selected the site because of the land’s orientation to the sunrise and its isolation. There was no water or electricity available on the site. Bart installed a large water reservoir and a motor-generator set with a large fuel storage tank to generate his own electricity. There was no cell phone service and this was a big obstacle to his business but he was able to get satellite phone, TV and Internet service so he had everything he needed. He had tankers come with water and fuel periodically and he had a tanker pump out the sewage storage tank occasionally.

Then came the pièce de résistance. On the land sloping away from the house on the east side, he constructed a special garden, which fanned out toward the rising sun. At the point end of the fan he had a quasi gazebo built with a throne-like chair for him to sit in. When he sat in the chair at sunrise, the suns rays would be funneled by the garden into his body. He was able to gather strength from the sun each morning. The sun was the source of power.

The best part though was his boys. He was putting boys in his garden to help focus the sun’s power more effectively. His plan called for thirty-three boys buried in a strict pattern. He had thirty installed already. In fact, he had just recently added one. The boy had been brought to him from Ohio. He needed three more and then his garden would be completed. It would be the best garden in the world.

Bart had a special room in the basement of his house where he prepared the boys for the garden. He had to take them through a special process to get them ready for their big role in the garden.

Bart had no friends. He had a contingent of guards around the clock but they were employees. They had strict instructions to never go in the garden under the pain of death unless they had special permission from him, which usually happened only when it was time to open another grave. Some of the guards didn’t like to go near the garden anyway. They thought it was spooky to use their words. They were fools.

His personal assistant was the closest person to him but they weren’t friends. Bart had never had a friend. In fact, he wasn’t exactly sure what a friend was. He used people to get things done but he had no feelings for them. His personal assistant lived in the big house with him. He took care of everything Bart didn’t feel like doing.

He had a great chef who also lived in the big house. His guards lived in the guest house. One thing that Bart had to have was strict control over his employees. Bart did this by involving the employees in crimes and then blackmailed them into not reporting him to the police. The few cases who seemed to be of significant risk, he had killed in such a manner that it sent a message to the other employees. You didn’t leave here alive. You could have a job and live as long as you did your work and kept your mouth shut. Otherwise you died.

Bart was doing a land-office business in drugs. America was a huge market for recreational drugs. Americans couldn’t get enough. One of his biggest products was marijuana. A big fear was that the drug would be legalized. That would wreck part of his lucrative business. He made a ton of money on marijuana. Several states had legalized weed for medicinal purposes. That was a bad omen for his illegal business.

There was a river of money flowing through his hands. His biggest problem was laundering the money and making it legitimate. That was a real problem. The government was trying to make it difficult for people like Bart. Bastards. Bart had a banker in town who helped with this task and who was taking a good cut of the money. Bastard. Bart had to put up with it. It was sort of okay because there was so much money flowing. The banker was a business expense.

The weather was perfect. The sun was ready to start coming over the mountain. Bart needed to get in position and be ready for the sun. He would sit in his special chair with his legs spread out toward the sun, making a small funnel. The large garden funnel would direct the rays into the funnel formed by his legs. The power would surge up into his groin. It was the best feeling he ever had. It was glorious power. At that moment he knew he was powerful. He could control his life and the life of the people around him. Nothing could stop him. He would have enough power to last until the next morning. He would sit there for an hour. After that the sun was too high in the sky to be effective. During these moments his staff was instructed to be nowhere near him and they were to make no noise. It was a sacred time. Bart’s life was good. As soon as he got the next three boys, his life would be perfect.

Chapter 53

The Introductions

We flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico in the company plane. There were four of us on the plane with a load of guns, ammo, tazers, Tyvek suits and other miscellaneous gear. With just four passengers, theoretically we could have made it to Albuquerque without a fuel stop but between my weight and the weight of our guns, ammo and gear we made one fuel stop. Besides you want more than theory when flying. You never want to ask, “How is the fuel?” and hear someone say, “Damn!”

We were met at Albuquerque International Sunport by two SUVs. We threw our gear in the SUVs and got in. We were driven to a house in an isolated area. It was a one story, modest stucco house of Spanish architecture.

It always amazes me how different the architecture is between areas in the U.S. The people are very different too. The notion that we are a melting pot and that we are just one big happy family is propaganda put out by our government to maintain control. The melting pot idea is a myth. We are not and never have been a melting pot or one big happy family.

In fact, one of the biggest if not the biggest civil war in the history of the world was fought on the North American continent over whether we would be one family or not. The unionists won that conflict and we became one big group held together with rifles and m
inié
balls. There are deep divides within the U.S. There are still bitter feelings in the South over the total economic destruction during the Civil War. People who are reduced from the equivalent of billionaires to paupers in four short years, don’t react kindly to it. A whole social and economic way of life was wiped out with nothing to replace it. That pain is handed down through the generations. Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending slavery; I am just pointing out that the North underappreciated the trauma in the South. Trauma like that dies out very slowly. Too bad Lincoln was killed. Lincoln wanted to “let them up easy,” his way of saying we need to help the South, not penalize them. They had been penalized enough by the war.

There are areas in the U.S. where English is not spoken, for example Spanish in the southwest, French in Louisiana and Maine. In some states English is a foreign language, as in Hawaii and Alaska. Alaska publishes voting instructions in six languages plus English and California publishes documents in eight languages besides English. Doesn’t sound like a melting pot.

We went inside and gathered in the living room. We brought in chairs from the dining room so that everyone would have a seat. There were eight of us. We were going to be introduced.

Bob was no longer Bob. He was now Captain. As Captain he did the introductions. I deduced from this that he knew everyone and apparently quite well. My impression was that they had worked together before but no one talked about it. Whether that was in a civilian capacity, a military capacity or both I did not know and was not about to ask. In this situation you were told what you needed to know. If you felt that you needed to know more, you could ask but you needed to make sure that you really did need to know. It wasn’t a time for curiosity. The cat wasn’t the only one killed by curiosity.

If I had to guess, some of the guys, maybe all, met in the military. I knew for sure that Bob, Mike and Paul served together. It was clear that all of the men had been trained in the military. It was also clear that they had worked together before.

It was a marvel to me that the American society was willing to train men to be killers with no thought as to what it would mean in the future. In the military honors are bestowed upon a man who is an excellent killer, say a sniper, trained with taxpayer’s money. (It may be interesting to note that one of the deadliest WWII snipers was a Russian woman.) The military is very careful to make sure the killers have proper education in killing. Some men become very proficient at it. Then at the termination of their service time, they are sent back to civilian life with no guidance or transitional training.

I find that curious because I don’t think that the transition is necessarily an easy one. Some men never really make the transition. Some are addicted to the adrenaline rush from killing and don’t want to be civilians. For them it is a one-way street. You can train them to be killers but you can’t untrain them. Untrain isn’t even a word. In a sense they remain killers for the rest of their lives. They may not be active killers but they are still killers. Some may become or remain active.

I was fairly sure I was looking at some who preferred to remain active in killing and who craved the adrenaline rush associated with risky operations, the kind of operation we were facing.

There was an African-American who Captain introduced as Mr. Blackman. Say what? I couldn’t tell if it was Black Man as in a black man or Blackman. I wasn’t about to ask. I assumed it was Mr. Blackman.

There was no hint of prejudices in the group. These men trusted each other with their lives. Religion, skin color and other irrelevant tags were dangerous things to have and this group would have no part of it. You had to have complete acceptance and trust of the other team members or someone could die. Mr. Blackman was a sniper.

His sidekick was called Eyes. Eyes was Mr. Blackman’s spotter. They apparently had worked together as a team in the army and still liked working together.

A third man was shorter than Mike and stood out because of this feature. However, he was like Mike in that he was another bulldozer-looking man. He was Latino and spoke fluent English and Spanish, a skill that might be very handy in this job because some or all the people in the compound might be Spanish speaking. At least the top guy would know English but the guards may know only Spanish. The third man was called Shooter because that is what he did best. He was very fast and very accurate, skills that would be handy in this operation.

The fourth man was called Box Man. He was a yegg or safecracker. He would open the safe that our target almost certainly would have. Box Man was unremarkable physically except maybe that he didn’t look as tough as the rest. He looked more intellectual but that could be misleading. He was a rather short, slight man and wore glasses. He would know his game or he wouldn’t be there.

Mike, I learned, was no longer Mike. He was Sarge. He was a sergeant in the army and it was convenient to use the appellation Sarge. Captain didn’t say much about him because everyone knew him.

Paul was introduced as Lieutenant. It was noted that Paul was fluent in Spanish. Funny, I hadn’t known this.

I was the last and was introduced as Louie. I was a lieutenant in the army and to distinguish me from Lieutenant I would be called Louie. I knew some Spanish but I was far from fluent.

We sat around facing each other. There was water to drink and some snacks but no alcohol of any kind. These were professionals and they didn’t drink alcohol on the job. It would jeopardize their lives and the lives of others on the team. The snacks tended to be nonfat to keep the guys sharp. Lots of celery and carrot crunching. It got noisy from time to time.

Captain said, “Most of you guys know each other. Louie is new. If anyone has an issue with someone on the team, this is the time to bring it up. We need to go into this job clearheaded and with complete trust of each other. We can’t afford any negative feelings toward one another or with the plan.”

After saying that he went silent, waiting to see if anyone one spoke up. Everyone was quiet for a while. Finally, Mr. Blackman spoke up. He said, “Captain, we have already discussed the new guy Louie. We always had a rule: no new guys. I understand this is special because it is his kid we are going after. I just want to make sure everyone understands he comes in after we secure the place.

“And I have one more concern and that is we want to make sure that he remains under control. If he goes crazy in there or loses his nerve, I will shoot him dead. I want that understood and I don’t mean any hard feelings by it.”

I spoke up, “No hard feelings on my part. I understand completely. But remember if you shoot me dead, you are going to have to carry me out because you don’t want to leave any evidence behind.” This made Mr. Blackman laugh. I could see that my response helped to relax him.

Bob said, “Those are good concerns and I am sure you all feel the same. I have discussed this with you before and I will repeat: I have reason to trust Louie with my life. I have seen him in action. Also Louie has agreed to these conditions.

“The only condition that Louie, Sarge, Lieutenant and I have not agreed with is that we don’t want to split any of the money we may find except that we will take enough to cover our expenses. The reason for this is that we are here solely to find the boy.”

Everyone nodded their heads. From the relaxed body language it seemed that everyone was okay with the arrangements. I think that they were okay with it before this exchange or they wouldn’t be in the house. However, it cleared the air. This way they knew that I knew the rules. If I deviated from the plan, I wouldn’t live. That was the message for me. Life is tenuous.