by Weston Ochse
Chapter Twelve
Surprise, Arizona
DAKOTA JIMMISON, AKA Dak, aka Narco, was a former MARSOC Gunnery Sergeant with more awards than any three marines, including a Silver Star for rescuing a reporter and her crew who’d gotten too close to the action during the Battle of Fallujah. He was an expert in almost any weapon, could pick off a haji from over a thousand meters with a Barrett .50, and was one of the first people you’d ask to join you in a fight. But Dak had demons just like everyone who’d ever seen a buddy killed or a kid lying lonely and dead along the side of a Third World road. During combat, he was a tactically focused military machine, but whenever there was a lull, he’d invariably find himself seeking solace from the bottom of a bottle. Which was why Narco was currently wearing an orange jumpsuit with the letters ADOJ on the front and back, picking up trash along Highway 60, which ran between the cities of Surprise and Sun Lakes West. These two places had two things in common. One, the average age was seventy-three years old; two, there were more golf carts than there were cars.
Eighteen hours ago, Starling and the others didn’t know what they were going to do to spring Narco. Since the TST was a bunch of good guys, they couldn’t go around shooting deputy sheriffs, nor could they substantially break the law—their previous two Grand Theft Autos not included. But the combined brainpower of a former Special Forces team sergeant, a former US Army Ranger, a former human intelligence specialist gun porn addict, and a psychic hairdresser with a heart of gold had devised a plot that if briefed to a room full of colonels would have had the lot of them digging foxholes in the middle of Death Valley. Still, they had to work with what they had, and with a computer, a big Yellow Pages, the local newspaper, and the compelling need to get to Afghanistan as fast as they could, they put together something that could work while causing the least amount of harm.
The camels had been the most difficult part of the plan.
The Garcia Brothers Circus had been performing three shows daily in several fields near the Happy Trails Adult RV and Resort on the western edge of Surprise. Not only did they have carnival rides and a midway, but they had a big top whose highlight was an act with a dozen camels ridden by midgets juggling burning batons. Starling hadn’t understood the draw, but it was evidently a popular act. Or at least it had been. The circus had all but shut down months ago. For whatever reason, the circus hadn’t moved on to the next venue. The rides were silent and still as a cemetery stones, more tumbleweeds tore down the midway than customers, and the big top was permanently closed. Which was why the advertisement in the paper that twelve camels were for sale had been the germination of their very psychotic plan.
Now Starling sat in the front of a moving van in the parking lot of a big box store, tremendous thumps and brays from the back so loud he was worried someone would call the police on him. In this part of the country, moving vans were frequently used to transport immigrants who hadn’t gone through the proper legal channels, so people looked at the vans differently. In Arizona, a moving van wasn’t merely a moving van. That his moving van held six recently-purchased camels would definitely be a surprise to whichever officer decided he wanted to check and see what Starling was transporting.
Starling prayed that he didn’t garner any more attention than was necessary.
He checked his watch. They had less than five minutes before OPERATION NARCO CAMEL went into effect.
Dak had called the night before and cryptically let Charlene know where he’d be picking up trash. He was on a twelve-man crew dressed in dashing orange jumpsuits and guarded by three deputy sheriffs. They weren’t cuffed or chained. The only thing that kept them from walking off were the steely eyes of the deputies and the knowledge that if they ran, life would be much worse for them when they were caught. As for Dak, he wouldn’t be caught. And if Starling was right, they’d be able to find a general officer somewhere in Afghanistan who would sign off on a memo stating that Dak’s presence in the combat zone had been of the utmost importance, top secret mission, blah blah blah. Starling was confident that Dak would figure out what to say. And if he didn’t... well, at least he’d have an all-expenses paid vacation in a well-lighted facility where the only alcohol you could drink was raisin hooch brewed by desperate men in the comfort of their two-man cells.
As absurd as it was, OPERATION NARCO CAMEL had in its roots another operation Starling had planned and led three years ago. And like NARCO CAMEL, it began with deception. Only instead of camels bought from a dying circus, they’d had the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, who were rotating through Afghanistan on a USO tour. Traditionally, Afghan army officers weren’t allowed to be part of USO ceremonies because it was a time for US service men and women to let their hair down and get a little wild. In this case, through the mediation of an air force two star who owed the TST a favor, the entire staff of Afghan National Army battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Sharif was invited to attend as VIPs. Lieutenant Colonel Sharif didn’t attend such things, which was both the reason Starling had been so enraged, and the reason it became easier to get at him.
Afghanistan had a secret they didn’t want anyone in the West to know. Yet much of the West knew and did nothing about it. The practice of bacha bazi, also known as bacchá, literally means ‘playing with boys.’ The ancient Pashtu custom of selling pre-pubescent boys to wealthy and high-powered Afghan men was widespread across Afghanistan, as was their use.
Starling had been stunned when he’d first heard about it. When he’d asked their terp what he knew of it, he’d merely shrugged and said, “It is custom. Everyone does it. Girls are dirty but the boys are clean.” Then he’d given Starling a leer that had caused McQueen to manhandle him before he had a chance to wring the terp’s neck.
But the terp was right.
It was said that every Afghan man of power had a chai boy, or a dancing boy as they were sometimes called. When Starling had escorted a VIP to a meeting and seen a boy as young as eight years old serving tea to an older high-ranking official, his guts churned, knowing that the boy could be forced to do anything at any given time. Starling had wanted to kill every one of them, or at the very least beat them within an inch of their lives, which was very unlike Starling. He’d always been a reasonable man and conscientious leader. He’d always adhered to MDMP, the seven step military decision making process drilled into soldiers from their first leadership course. MDMP was the rule. Every mission, every sortie outside of Camp Eggers, which was their home base, was the result of MDMP, concentrating on mission analysis and developing courses of action. Except when he saw shy boys, what he’d come to call them—then all reasoning left him. It got to the point where he was unable to accompany his VIPs into meetings and had to send a member of his team in his stead.
And none was worse than Lieutenant Colonel Amanullah Sharif. He’d been a high-ranking police officer from Uruzgan Province before he’d been appointed to the Afghan National Army. In his home province, they referred to shy boys as bacha bereesh—boys without beards. Sharif had brought his own bacha bereesh when he’d become assigned to Kabul and the very sight of the poor child set a plot into motion from which Starling would never return.
So it was with somber righteousness that Starling, dressed completely in black, including a black balaclava to hide his face, slipped over the wall of Sharif’s personal compound in the Farza District of Kabul, and into Sharif’s home. As a US Army Ranger, Starling was part of one of the world’s elite fighting forces. He’d been trained in multiple ways to kill and disable, and had tried virtually every one. One thing they’d never been trained in was the use of the French garrote. Once inside, Starling could hear the laughter from the guard force as they gathered around cell phones and watched the broadcast feed provided by Sharif’s senior men of the USO show and the cheerleaders. It was nothing for Starling to make it to Sharif’s room, open the door, confront the evil, and remove it from the planet. Then Starling took the small, broken figure of the boy who’d been sexually abused for years
and gave it to a woman he knew in the Afghan Hands Program. He didn’t have to say anything. Once she saw the young boy, she knew what needed to be done.
No one except McQueen knew what he’d done.
The killing had been truly righteous… but it was still murder and was a line that once crossed could never be un-crossed. No matter how much it had needed to be done, no matter how correct he’d been in saving the child, Starling was in a country whose customs allowed for such a thing. He was also a member of a military whose very own commanders had a strict order not lift a finger to help the shy boys, because evidently killing Taliban was more important than the destruction of a child’s soul.
Starling breathed for a full moment, hungover from the memory that had come unbidden, shaken free from the mental niche in which he’d had it jammed. Then he saw the daylight and the parking lot and the colors from the big box home makeover store. A camel brayed from the back. A Mustang drove by. America. He sighed, embracing the current reality of OPERATION NARCO CAMEL.
He started up his Penske moving van just as the U-Haul rental truck in front of him pulled away. He gave it ten seconds, then pulled onto the road. They headed northwest on Highway 60. The highway had two northbound lanes and two southbound lanes separated by a median. A mile ahead twelve inmates wearing orange jumpsuits were picking up trash on the right side of the highway. They were being watched by three deputies. One sat in his car at the intersection of Highway 60 and Pantera Road so he could view all the inmates in front of him. Another sat in his SUV at the intersection of Highway 60 and Mountain Avenue so he could keep the inmates in his rearview mirror. The distance between the two vehicles was about a hundred and fifty meters. A deputy on foot holding a shotgun stood on the side of the road, in the middle of the two vehicles, chatting to one of the inmates and watching the others. The temperature outside was one hundred and three without a lick of humidity.
The camels were demonstrating their unhappiness behind him. One kicked the side of the truck so hard that it wobbled on four wheels. Very soon they’d get the fresh air they desired.
When McQueen’s U-Haul reached the corner of Mountain Avenue, he tried to take a right turn from the left lane, cutting off the car in that lane, which laid on its horn. By now McQueen would have the instant attention of the deputy in the SUV. McQueen stopped the truck, which now blocked both lanes of traffic. The plan was for McQueen to knife his front tire and pretend it popped itself.
Traffic slowed, then accordioned to a stop, putting Starling’s Penske van about even with the deputy on foot.
Horns honked.
Several people shouted out their windows.
Nothing was moving.
McQueen came around the front of his truck with both hands on his head in the universal Why is this happening to me? sign. The deputy in the SUV got out and asked McQueen something, who in turn shrugged, and pointed to the other side of his truck where the front tire was quickly deflating.
Starling glanced to the right. Every inmate, along with the deputy, was looking forward.
Starling killed the engine and threw the keys behind the seat. He got out and moved to the back of the truck. An old school beige and rusting Lincoln had pulled within three feet of the back of the truck. A chunky kid in a Cardinal’s cap sat behind the wheel. Starling met the kid’s gaze for a second, then turned to the truck and yanked out the metal ramp. Because there wasn’t enough room between the front of the car and the back of the truck, he let it slam down on the hood, smashing flat the hood emblem.
The kid’s eyes widened and he shouted obscenities Starling didn’t need a lip reader to understand from the cool confines of what had probably been his grandfather’s car.
Starling ignored him, climbed onto the ramp, then jerked open the door. The interior smelled of crackers, oily hair, and camel shit, which was how camels generally smelled, except their confinement in the close quarters of the van had intensified the odor until it was almost overwhelming. Certainly, had Starling had time, he could bottle it and sell it to a Third World dictator as a biological weapon.
Each camel had a white sheet thrown over its back and tied in place by a rope girdle. On each side of the sheet was an enlarged photo of Sheriff Joe Arpaio wearing a cowboy hat and pointing out at something. Above the picture were the words JOE WANTS YOU TO. Below the picture of Sheriff Joe on this particular camel were the words GET DEPORTED. The other camels had similar sheets. Everything was identical except for the text surrounding each picture.
Each camel also had an old school boom box affixed to the back of its neck using bungee cords.
By now, the kid was out of the car, calling Starling every name in the book. But he fell silent as Starling pressed play on the CD player and ushered the first camel down the ramp and onto the kid’s car. Flight of the Valkyries began to play at a nuisance level of noise from the camel’s speaker as it stepped into stopped traffic.
Starling didn’t take time to watch whether it was going to have the desired effect.
Instead, he turned on the CD players for and ushered out camels wearing sheets advertising GET DOWN ON ALL FOURS, FREE HIS WILLY, SMOKE A BOWL, SUCK HIS COCK, and KILL ALL MEXICANS. They’d laughed uproariously as they’d made the sheets in Charlene’s apartment last night. But now came the serious moment. Starling took a second to watch as KILL ALL MEXICANS trundled happily down the ramp and onto the kid’s front hood.
People were already out of their cars.
Some laughing.
Some taking cell phone pictures or videos—probably both—because this was definitely a social media moment.
Some, however, were clearly pissed.
A large Mexican man with a chin the size of a shovel blade started forward towards KILL ALL MEXICANS. When he saw a red haired white woman laughing at it, he confronted her and soon there was an all-out argument.
Whatever they were saying, Starling couldn’t tell. Six versions of Flight of the Valkyries blocked out all noise. So he simply climbed down from the back of the truck, turned right and walked across the median into the southbound lanes of the highway, where traffic had stopped to watch the incredible camel-inspired shenanigans taking place.
Starling didn’t know if the deputies were watching him. For all he knew, they were running after him. He felt the tickle of possible attention on the back of his head but ignored it. He kept up a moderate loping walk as he crested the curb on the other side of the road, walked around a gaggle of rubberneckers at the bus stop and over to the grocery store where his Uber ride waited for him.
He climbed in.
“You Dak Jimmison?” the man behind the wheel asked.
“That’s me.” Starling showed the driver the cell phone screen with Dak’s information but his own picture.
“What’s going on over there?” the driver asked.
“Something political,” Starling said, closing the door. “Someone was crazy enough to make fun of Sheriff Joe.”
The driver, who was clearly of Middle East descent, snorted. “And camels, too.”
“Yes. And camels, too.”
Chapter Thirteen
Casa Grande, Arizona
THREE HOURS LATER, they were having dinner at Mimi’s Café in Casa Grande, roughly halfway between Phoenix and Tucson.
“No one. I mean, no one, expected to see what you guys did today. I bet they still don’t know that they’ve been had.” Narco was one huge grin. He threw back his beer, got the attention of the waitress, and nodded for another.
Starling watched Narco celebrate his escape. He’d let the kid have a few more drinks, then shut it down. No reason to pee in his Wheaties after such a successful prison break. Especially since the improbable had happened. He had to believe that if there were such a thing as multiple timelines there were versions of the events where they were all caught and locked up in one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s famous prison tents. So the fact that they’d succeeded should definitely be celebrated.
While the deputies had be
en trying to contain the chaos created by the camels—people fighting, arguing, blocking the way as they pressed forward to take pictures—it had been no trouble for Narco to slip back fifty feet where Lore waited in the Tahoe. He grabbed onto the driver’s side mirror and hugged it as she took off. The deputy who was on foot saw the action too late and took off running, but he was no match for the SUV.
Lore took three turns then pulled the vehicle to the curb.
She got out, punched Narco in the shoulder, gave him a shining grin, and beckoned him to follow.
They ran between two homes then hit a parallel street, where they got into a Honda Civic waiting at the curb. The Civic had a Pizza Hut roof topper, the kind a deliveryman would use. With both Lore and Narco laying as flat as they could in the backseat, Charlene eased the car forward and quickly exited the area. A patrol car and a sheriff car passed her coming into the housing subdivision, but no one looked at them twice. She was a pizza delivery person. She was invisible.
Lore sat next to Starling in the restaurant booth. Narco and McQueen were wedged into the other side. The American-French fusion restaurant was virtually empty mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. Other than a few older ladies chatting over coffees and croissants, the four had the place to themselves.
“I can’t thank you guys enough for springing me,” Narco said for the tenth or twentieth time.
“It’s not like you were in solitary confinement,” Starling said.
“Wasn’t exactly Alcatraz,” McQueen added.
“Still… camels? How’d you come up with that?”
Lore pointed to Starling. “Was all the boss’s plan.”
Starling shrugged. “You’re the one who paid for it.”
Narco’s smile fell. His eyes narrowed. He took a quick drink then put the beer down on the table. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Charlene had your credit cards,” Starling said. “We weren’t exactly rolling in it. So you paid for everything.”
