“What are you doing?” Ashley shook her head. “Are you crazy?”
“Like a fox, honey,” Jack said, lighting up a cigar. “I always wanted a dining room set from Paradise Furniture but I couldn’t afford it on my meager federal agent pay.”
“Suppose you tell me why you ripped off a dining room set,” Ashley narrowed her eyes.
“Suppose you pull the SUV around and start loading this thing before someone else comes along,” Jack puffed his cigar.
Ashley’s jaw dropped at Jack’s audacity. She gritted her teeth as a blast of sweet cigar smoke hit her face, making her cough.
“If you think I’m going to load that thing, you’ve got to be out of your mind,” Ashley growled.
Ten minutes later Ashley crammed the table into the back of the SUV as Jack sat in the last chair, still puffing his cigar. Ashley shot him a scowl as beads of sweat poured from her brow.
“Okay, I’ll go ahead and load this one,” Jack said, casually standing up from the chair, tossing his cigar and hefting the chair to the passenger side of the vehicle. Ashley thought about reaching for her gun. There were no witnesses around.
Another ten minutes and they pulled into the Half-way Inn parking lot where Deputy Edwards was waiting in the classic. Ashley backed the vehicle up to the door of their room.
“Boy, am I relieved,” the deputy declared. “I was afraid that, well, maybe you had …”
“Wrecked another one,” Jack finished the officer’s line. “Not on your life, son. I’m an excellent driver. Of course, Ashley was driving so I can’t be responsible for the acts of a woman driver.”
Ashley snarled at Jack as he threw open the back hatch to the SUV. “Now, Deputy Edwards, if you would be so kind as to help unload our furniture, you can have your vehicle back.”
The deputy scratched his head as he looked at the five-piece dining set crammed into the hatch of his SUV. However, he began unloading the furniture with-out protest. The set was in the room in less than five minutes. The deputy stopped as they traded keys.
“Should I ask?” the deputy wondered aloud.
“No,” Jack replied. “And don’t tell either.”
The deputy drove off, leaving Jack and Ashley in the room, looking at the dining room set.
“Well, I’m sure going to ask,” Jessica said, leaning against the door stoop.
“Police business, baby,” Jack shot back.
“My motel, baby,” Jessica retorted. “I don’t allow any outside furniture here.”
Jack looked at Jessica and then back at Ashley. “Okay. Come in and shut the door.”
Jessica did as she was told. Both she and Ashley looked at Jack, equally confused as to why there was a dining room set taking up half the space in the room.
The woman jumped as Jack picked up one of the chairs and slammed it against the table.
“What are you doing?” Jessica yelled as she backed toward the door, not knowing what to make of Jack’s sudden violent behavior.
Jack continued breaking up the furniture, slamming piece after piece against the table, pulverizing the once-pricy ensemble.
“This,” Jack stopped breaking the furniture long enough to take out a long bag from one of the shattered legs.
Ashley took the bag from Jack and held it up to the light. “Is this …?” she began.
“Methamphetamine,” Jack confirmed.
Jessica’s eyes got wide as she looked at the large bag in Ashley’s hand. “From?”
“Paradise Ranch,” Jack revealed, cautioning her that what she was being told could not leave the room under penalty of law. “The whole thing is a front for trafficking meth.”
Ashley slammed the bag back into Jack’s chest and set her jaw. “You’d think that was need to know information.”
“Jessica, honey,” Jack looked at the motel owner who still had a stunned look on her face. “Maybe you ought to head back to the office. There’s about to be a lot of yelling.”
Jessica turned without a word and left. “And not a word to nobody!” Jack shouted after her.
Ashley’s eyes pierced through Jack as he continued picking bags from the broken furniture. He intentionally avoided her gaze.
“I wanted an objective mind, darlin’,” Jack finally spoke up. “I wanted you to see all of this fresh, without having any preconceived notions.”
Ashley bit her lip as Jack shot a quick glance in her direction before again averting his eyes.
“You’re the yin to my yang,” Jack continued in a sincere voice. “Sometimes I tend to jump to conclusions but I know you always have a level head and will keep me straight. I value your opinion.”
Ashley looked at Jack, wondering if he was merely giving her a spiel or if he was on the level.
“She was DEA, wasn’t she?” Ashley asked about the murder victim.
“Yep,” Jack confirmed. “They suspected there was a major meth trafficking operation going on out of here but getting someone on the inside would be next to impossible.”
“Until Earl contacted them,” Ashley noted.
“Yep,” Jack said. “He was able to give the information to get her in, knowing they would be less suspicious of a woman. She was an experienced undercover agent.”
“So we’re looking for a cop killer,” Ashley surmised.
“She probably learned too much and got found out,” Jack said, tossing another bag on the bed. “I’ll bet you twenty bucks she figured out that they were using a legitimate trucking firm to transport their drugs all around the country. They couldn’t let her go, knowing she had that kind of information.”
“So Elijah did it?” Ashley asked.
“I doubt it,” Jack shook his head. “He’s the type of person who has someone else do his dirty work.”
“You’re saying that Paradise Ranch is all a big fraud?” Ashley wondered.
“Not a fraud, a front,” Jack clarified. “Most of the residents there are legitimate I think. He created the illusion and that made for a perfect cover. Plus, given the volatility of cultist compounds like Paradise, he knew police couldn’t just come barging in. And, for what it’s worth, I could tell two seconds after meeting him that Elijah was no David Koresh. It wasn’t in his eyes.”
“What wasn’t in his eyes?” Ashley asked.
“The crazy,” Jack replied.
Ashley plopped down on the bed next to the drugs and looked up at Jack. “What now?”
“We go by the note,” Jack replied, taking a seat by Ashley on the bed. “We go to the coordinates he gave us tomorrow night and see what happens and then the next night we try to pull a daring rescue.”
“Try?” Ashley asked with a worried look.
“The longer we’re around, the more dangerous it’s going to be,” Jack admitted. “But, we can’t just leave him out there to die. If his note was legit, it’s only a matter of time until they find out. Plus, he has it all in his head. He knows where all the shipments are going, I’ll bet. That means he can feed us all the dealers who are doing business, helping distribute the meth. He can help take a lot of drugs off the street just with what’s in his head, not to mention help solve the murder of a DEA agent and bring down one of the nation’s biggest drug trafficking rings.”
Ashley laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “What do we do until then?”
“I’m going to make some calls and set things up,” Jack said. “In the meantime, we better get some sleep. I’m guessing the next couple of nights are going to be long.”
BEGINNING OF THE END
Jack scanned the pitch blackness of the desert with a pair of night vision binoculars, looking for any sign of movement coming from the southern sky. It was almost zero hour, according to Earl’s note. The agents were set up in a prime viewing area, their patrol car hidden be-hind a ridge, covered in scrub brush. They arrived a couple of hours early to make preparations for their stakeout in the middle of nowhere. A couple of trucks had pulled in about fifteen minutes before and were
sitting a half-mile away from them, their lights off.
“Hear that?” Jack asked. Ashley strained her ears and could hear the distant beating of rotors. A light in the sky soon appeared, answered by the flash of head-lights from one of the trucks.
“It’s about to go down,” Jack whispered as the pair lay prone on the ground.
“So all we’re going to do is watch?” Ashley asked.
“Anything else and we endanger Earl’s life,” Jack said, still peering through the night vision glasses. “Be-sides, our back up won’t be in place until tomorrow. Right now it’d be just me and you, babe, and that leaves us outgunned.”
The helicopter was drawn in by the beacon of the headlights, its spotlight bathing the forms below as it made its landing, temporarily obscuring their view from the dust the rotors kicked up.
“Can you see anything?” Ashley asked as Jack continued watching through the binoculars.
“Just forms,” Jack admitted, their distance too far away to make out through the grainy greenish image who was down at the landing site.
The sound of the helicopter’s rotors slowed as the engine powered down. Jack could make out several men meeting outside the chopper, shaking hands. Meanwhile, several other men were busy carrying cargo from the helicopter and placing it on the back of the trucks.
“What is it?” Ashley asked, not able to see what was going on with her eyes by the light from the rising moon.
“Big barrels,” Jack replied, handing Ashley the night vision so she could see. “That’s how they’ve been get-ting the components for their meth making business to Paradise without being detected. The chemicals they use are closely monitored by the federal government. Any large purchases of them raise a red flag. And, from what we’re hearing, they’ve got one of the biggest operations in the country so they require A LOT of chemicals. This isn’t some little garage lab. It’s big and it’s somewhere on the Paradise compound.”
“They’ve been flying them in across the border,” Ashley said as she looked through the binoculars. “And, I’ll bet you that’s their connection with the Mexican cartel.”
“No doubt,” Jack agreed. “This will just help to strengthen the case against the cartel. We’re killing two birds with one stone.”
The pair lay silently watching the transfer of materials for several minutes before the sound of the helicopter’s engine fired up again.
“Fifteen minutes,” Jack glanced at the glowing dial on his watch. “That’s a pretty quick pit stop. The trucks look loaded down.”
Ashley handed the binoculars back to Jack and rubbed her eyes, momentarily blind from watching the hazy images for so long.
“You notice something?” Ashley asked as she placed her glasses back on her nose and waited for her vision to adjust. “This is all happening on Paradise’s side of the hill.”
“Convenient, isn’t it?” Jack agreed. “Everything that happens on this side stays on this side. That’s how they’ve operated undetected for so long. Mistrust and paranoia have been key to their operation.”
Jack was momentarily drowned out by the roar of the rotors as the helicopter took off. Jack pushed Ash-ley’s head down as the spotlight of the chopper swung their way, threatening to expose their hiding place.
The chopper then did a 180 and headed south from where it came. The two trucks; however, stayed put.
“What are they doing?” Ashley said as Jack peered through the binoculars.
“Just standing there,” Jack replied. “Like they’re waiting on something.”
That something became obvious seconds later when the sky lit up like dawn. The helicopter exploded in mid-air, becoming a fireball and raining flaming wreck-age down into the desert floor. Ashley felt the concussion of the blast in her chest.
“It blew up!” Jack exclaimed, almost loud enough to be heard below, the bright glow of the fire shutting down his night vision glasses.
They watched as the final pieces of the helicopter hit the ground, kindling hundreds of small fires on what dry tinder was on the ground. Meanwhile, the men who had been standing outside the trucks got in their vehicles and pulled away, heading in the direction of Paradise Ranch.
“They had to hear that in New Hope,” Ashley declared of the huge explosion. “I don’t care if we are miles away from anything. Noise carries.”
“Yeah. But who’s going to come looking?” Jack asked as he stood up from his perch. “You know the sheriff and his men never come over the hill. And, I’ll bet you the Air Force does testing over the desert and that means a lot of sonic booms. Ain’t nobody coming out here to investigate a big bang in the night.”
Ashley stood up beside him and looked at the burning wreckage that was about five miles down range from them.
“Shouldn’t we do something, Jack?” Ashley asked with concern.
“Well, since I didn’t bring any marshmallows to roast, there isn’t much we can do,” Jack quipped as he dusted himself off. “I’ll put in my report. There was a big explosion.”
Jack walked back to where they had hidden the car and began pulling the brush off of it. Ashley joined in, still surprised by Jack’s calmness after they had witnessed the mid-air explosion. Ashley could still feel her heart pounding in her chest.
“You know what this means, don’t you darlin’?” Jack asked, sporting a smirk as he threw the last of the brush on the ground.
“What?” Ashley bit.
“Paco and his family can come home now,” Jack answered. “The Castillo case just got closed … permanently.”
Jack was right. Castillo’s partners in crime from Paradise Ranch had included a surprise in the payment they had exchanged for supplies – the surprise being a hidden stash of C4 that had blown the chopper to bits at the push of a button. Elijah had made good on his pledge to severe ties with the Castillo cartel, once and for all.
“What now?” Ashley asked as they climbed into the car to head back to Halfway Inn.
“We wait for tomorrow night,” Jack replied. “Then we hope we still have the element of surprise.”
“And if we don’t?” Ashley asked.
“Just make sure your gun is loaded,” Jack shot back as he motored toward the highway with his headlights off.
The pair filled up the following day with preparations for their nocturnal rescue mission. Meanwhile, a small army of agents from the FBI and DEA had quiet-ly amassed north of Paradise, careful to avoid any con-tact with the public as they crossed the open desert and set up command a few miles away from the cultist compound. However, Jack and Ashley would be on their own rescuing Earl from Paradise since an entry attempt by a major armed force would very likely be met with violence. The cavalry would only come in if something went wrong and the pair weren’t out within a couple of hours. By that time, they both realized, it might be too late. Neither knew the exact location of the command post, only that it was a few miles away from Paradise.
The working plan was to have them radio once they got out of the compound with Earl. A contingent of agents would then meet them on the other side of the hill and whisk Earl to safety while Jack and Ashley remained in town. There were no plans to storm the com-pound unless things went south during the rescue mission. The presence of the large force was only for a worst-case scenario.
Authorities hoped that once Elijah was exposed as a fraud and drug trafficker, the people of Paradise would give him up. Once it was known that he had used them as his cover from the law, they would no longer see him as a messiah, thereby avoiding a standoff similar to Waco.
After discussing the plan for hours, planning for eve-ry possibility, Jack and Ashley set off for Paradise just before ten in the evening. Jack pulled over at the motel office where Jessica was standing outside. She had been uncharacteristically absent all day, perhaps set back by what she had seen the night before.
“Remember, it’s our secret,” Jack cautioned her.
“Who would I tell?” Jessica replied. She seemed dark and distant,
not the person Jack had gotten to know over the past few days.
“That’s my girl,” Jack winked as he and Ashley drove toward Paradise.
Jessica lingered outside on the front porch of the motel, watching as the pair disappeared into the darkness of the long highway. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it, nervously flicking her fingernails as she leaned against the front post. She looked across the way to see Deputy Ward’s unit patrol by, something that was nor-mal on a weekend night when the young officer would volunteer his time to help the newest deputy in patrol-ling the town. Ward swung through the parking lot and waved as he headed back toward New Hope. Jessica returned the wave.
Moments later she saw another sheriff’s vehicle. It was the sheriff himself! Jessica rubbed her eyes. What was the sheriff doing out? Everyone knew he was early to bed so he could rise at the crack of dawn. Jessica tossed her cigarette as she saw the sheriff drive past Halfway Inn. Where was he going?
Jessica stepped off the porch and watched as the sheriff disappeared into the darkness toward Paradise Ranch. He was going over the hill! He never went over the hill. Something was wrong. A minute later he was followed on his unusual voyage by Deputy Ward. What was going on?
Jessica sat down and put her head in her hands, thinking about what she had just seen. She knew deep down what was going on and she realized it was probably her fault. What was about to happen would be on her hands.
Not realizing they had company, Jack and Ashley pulled up to the gate at Paradise. As had become the custom, they were waved in by the guards.
“It’s like we got a membership card or something,” Jack quipped as they headed toward the middle of the compound. “Keep your eyes open, Ashley.”
Ashley shot Jack a worried glance. He only called her by name when things were getting serious.
They pulled up to the administrative office in the middle of Paradise. The streets were quiet with only a few lights glowing behind shuttered windows. There were several trucks parked outside the factory, apparently getting ready to be loaded. Otherwise, Paradise was a ghost town.
Paradise Ranch (Jack and Ashley detective series Book 2) Page 15
