Un-Connected (19 page)

“Two were alive when the EMTs got here.  One
had so many holes in him that he bled out and died with them bandaging him up. 
One lived long enough to get to the hospital but he died in the emergency room
before they could get him to surgery.  The rest were dead at the scene.  The
police have all the surrounding medical examiners busy checking in bodies.”

The next morning Deb and I ate a good
breakfast. We went to the hospital to find Otis and Jack awake and in pain but in
good spirits. Jack didn’t have as much pain, and they were talking. Will was
asleep, swollen and running a fever. He was still in ICU. It was normal, they
said, for someone to swell and get a fever and look worse for a few days.  Except
for all the swelling he looked pretty normal for someone who’d been shot up. They
said his heart was doing great, and he didn’t have much infection considering
how many holes were in him. We hung out there the whole day and the next.

The morning after that Jack and Otis were
both in even better spirits. Otis was doing better than expected, and Jack was
doing as expected. They felt it possible Otis might keep his leg after all.

Otis called Deb and me to his bed. “Quit
hanging around here like lost puppies. Go pick out your land. We’ll be home in
no time and figure out what to do with life. In the meantime, the truck stop will
be totally shut down.  Not even the restaurant will be open for the family.  So
there is nothing you can do there. You two need to get on with your lives. Tilly
will take care of me, and Will’s wife will take care of him. Jack’s mom, dad, sister,
and all the brothers and cousins will take care of Jack, so he’ll be fine.”

It sounded better than it looked, but I did
believe they’d be OK eventually. And what could we do, anyway?

“Otis, how are your legs?”

He moved toes on both feet a little.

“That is great.” I exclaimed.  “That looks
very promising doesn’t it?” I asked.

“That is what I think.  The doctors won’t say
it is promising but I still think it is.”

“I hate to leave you like this.” I said.

“You want to set here by the bed and hold my
hand?” He asked.

We laughed.  “We want you to get well is
all.”

“I know.  Tilly will be taking me home soon
and I will get well as soon as I get home where I can sleep.”

“Okay, I won’t hold your hand but I do wish
you well and hate to leave.  But we will go.”

We got lots of hugs for different family
members and a number of them headed out as well.

We drove by the truck stop, and there were
several cars there from different law enforcement agencies. Crime scene tape was
all over the place. We stopped and stood by the cars. They eventually saw us,
and an AZDPS officer came out to see what we wanted.

“We’re family friends of Otis and Tilly. With
grenades and all being used, this is pretty over-the-line stuff.”

 He agreed.

I tried to introduce myself and get him to
tell me what he knew so far. “The papers will have a lot of information, so you
should be able to tell me quite a bit that would be out soon, anyway.”

 He knew who I was and that Otis had been
using Deb’s truck.

The cars used in the attack had been stolen
the night before. They were stolen pretty much from the same area less than
fifty miles away. Since there was no airport close or bus station, someone had
probably driven them there and let them out. The grenades were new. They’d been
delivered to the military less than ninety days ago. They knew that because
there were two more on the dead guys. The rifles had been issued to the
military. The dead men as well as the one living were part of a militia from out
of state. Only one had prior military experience. Several had records of one
kind or another.

“Were they pretty much rednecks who belonged
to a militia?” I asked.

He nodded
yes
.

“What do people usually do in a militia?”

“It varies, of course. But generally, they’re
a loosely organized group that for the most part burns a lot of ammo on the
weekends. Some are linked to unsolved murders, and some others are very tame. A
few openly have policemen as members, and they run gun ranges. Some of them in
the South had KKK members and in a few cases were run by them. There were
always neo-Nazi types around too. The militia these guys came from is not one
of the nicer ones.”

I scratched my head. “So, whoever hired these
guys had a win either way because if these guys hurt Otis and crew badly, then
they sent a message. If these guys died, the message was still delivered, and
they weren’t out a lot of money.”

“Yes, it also meant whoever sent them was
adaptable and knew how to hurt someone without getting dirty themselves. And
they supplied them with guns and grenades that not just anyone can get.”

“What do you mean?”

“The grenades hadn’t been reported as stolen,
so the people who hired them supplied the grenades for sure and probably the
rifles. They’d have to be connected politically to get this stuff without
stealing it. In other words, they were lost as an inventory issue but not a
theft, so no military person got busted for letting a theft happen.  There is
lot we don’t know yet.”

“So,” I said. “Someone with clearance just walked
into a warehouse and walked out with them.”

He nodded. “We were pretty sure there’d be no
fingerprints on the guns or ammo or anything in addition to the ones from the
guys at the crime scene. But we checked anyway, and the lab confirmed as much.
Probably nobody with that kind of clearance would be so careless.”

“Is the guy you have in custody talking?”

“Yes, he lawyered up, and his lawyer
encouraged him to make a deal with us. He was looking at the death penalty for
sure with all the charges here, and the deal gets him life.  He’ll be out in
about twenty years if he didn’t kill anyone. We have his gun to check
ballistics and if anyone dies with bullets from his gun, he won’t be getting
out ever.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone is dying.  The
grenades did some serious leg damage but they ducked behind the cabinets so
they didn’t get much upper body damage.  It looks like they will all live.” I
said.

“Well you’re right about another thing too. It
will be in the news. We won’t waste this. We’ll be sending a message to all the
militia out there to clearly define legal and illegal. Some of the militia are
getting a little fuzzy and don’t know the law, but these guys did. These guys
didn’t intend to be nice. Any patrolman who would have stopped these guys would
have gotten killed. They wouldn’t have allowed a search with grenades in their
car.”

I looked at Deb. “We knew that, didn’t we?”

He shrugged. “I was surprised they would take
that much of a gamble. They probably were told it would be such fun and no
risk. Whoever hired them lost some credibility with that militia I’d bet. And
whoever hired them knew the probable danger might be high. They were the ones
that hired the prior hit, we’re sure. They weren’t quite truthful with these
guys.”

“They probably told them how much fun it
would be to use actual grenades.  Like you will be chunking these in a door and
you may not even have to shoot your gun!”

“No doubt,” The officer said.  “It had to be
something close to that.  These guys didn’t expect to die here we are sure. 
Their friends back home will likely want to take it out on whoever hired them.”

Deb and I were amazed, and when we left there,
I called Jim to see what he knew. He knew most of what I’d been told and knew
some things I didn’t. Two more guys from the same out-of-state-militia had been
found dead early that morning. They were out in the woods.

“People heard full auto shooting and a gun
battle,” Jim said. “It didn’t last long, but it was loud. The police brought
dogs out who found them. It took about thirty minutes, and it was just after
sunrise. We’re guessing there had been a meeting between the militia, who had
already heard about their guys getting killed and were very unhappy about it. 
The end to their members ‘easy job’ didn’t sit well and they were looking for
an explanation from whoever hired them. The meeting didn’t go well.  The
militia guys probably intended to hurt whoever hired them.  So it was a really
serious fight though it probably didn’t last long.”

Jim paused a moment. “We’re hoping someone in
that militia will leak information about who hired the hit, but we aren’t
holding our breath. They probably will if they can figure out a way to do it
without admitting it was their guys. Since we have one of them alive and more
of them dead, we know it’s them, but they’re already denying they’re violent.”

“Of course.” I said.

“What they tell us is they are just a small
group that’s running a gun range, and besides the guys that showed up at the
truck stop were always in trouble with them for breaking range rules. They
weren’t really part of our group though they did come to our range to shoot,” was
their official story.

“We have some shell casings from the site but
don’t expect to find anything on them. But we’re checking. We don’t have
anything else yet.”

We discussed the security clearance it would
take to drive out of a military base with grenades in your car.

“I agree we’re looking at someone really high
up,” Jim said. “They were saying essentially don’t mess with us.”

“So what does it mean for us?”

“Well, only God Himself is too high to bring
to justice,” Jim said. “But the good news is no one is interested in Ben any
longer. There is nothing like a few grenades out in the desert to change the
conversation, even in Washington.”

Jim sighed. “Any luck finding the black box?”

“I’ll check on it. I’m sure they are about
ready to get rid of it.  But one thing that is interesting is that these last
guys weren’t looking for the black box. They were sent to deliver a message and
to get revenge for someone who wanted to save face. These people regularly want
to cover up who they are. They seemed to have forgotten that a little bit here.
They must have been so enraged or embarrassed they lost sight of the fact the black
box could expose them more.”

“We are lucky or protected here in the US
because we don’t have the plague of grenades, land mines, and IEDs,
improvised
explosive devices
that much of the rest of the world has to deal with.”

“Why didn’t the FBI just get warrants and
raid a bunch of Otis’ places?”

Jim laughed. “The box isn’t that big, and
with all the rocks and boulders to hide it under, it would be nearly impossible
to find.  That is especially if the current owner knows how important it is, and
we’re sure the owner does.”

I told him I’d work on getting him the black
box but I had been assured that they would sell it to the FBI rather than the
other potential buyer.

We were headed to see Otis and the others
anyway. We found all three awake. Otis was in good spirits and doing well,
though in a lot of pain. They said his legs looked awful, but he had feeling in
both feet, and the doctor finally said it was a very good sign. Tilly and the
nurses couldn’t get him to take all his pain medication. He told them he should
decide how much to take, and he stuck to that. He did take what they offered
the night before and got a good night’s sleep.

Jack was healing quickly, but he was younger.
He was bandaged from his ankles to just below his rib cage. But he had been up.
He had walked down the hall a short distance and back pushing his IV stand. He
wasn’t taking much pain medicine either. He was very pale but in good spirits. He
told us he would be taking the catheter out tomorrow.

“No!” the closest nurse said and then shook
her head.

Jack was now the hero of the younger crowd
from all over the place. All the younger ones and their friends wanted to hang
out with Jack and hear the story over and over.

I told Deb he would most likely have a
girlfriend before long. She laughed and said she agreed. “There’s nothing like
a man getting in trouble to get women coming to the rescue.”

“I’m not sure I agree with your rendition,
but we’ll see.”

“That’s how I found you.”

“Excuse me. I believe it was the other way
around. I knew I was in trouble, and I was looking for help when I found you!”

She laughed. Evidently, she really enjoyed
believing she had saved me. I finally had to admit that much.

Will was awake and so swollen I wouldn’t have
recognized him. He couldn’t talk with all the tubes they had in him, but he
nodded hi to us when we walked in. He was pretty doped up.

I patted him on the undamaged hand. “It’s
good to see you.” I said and he nodded back a little.

Deb kissed him on the forehead. I could tell
he liked her better than me, and I told them both and Will smiled a little.

We went back to Otis’s room and started to
tell him what we had found out. All the family at the hospital came into the
room to listen. We pretty much all agreed they were blessed to be alive. No one
expected grenades. So the crooks, as Tilly called them, wanted Otis to be the
one surprised this time.