by Doug Ball
Within 20 minutes, after all was in place, the forward observer who was high above the scene let Frank know the target was in sight. Everyone snuggled into their positions and started lining up shots as the whole group came into sight. The marksman’s shot at the man on the left front was the trigger for the ambush. Two other men dropped, as the others took cover. Frank had instructed his men to shoot over their heads after the first shots. Doing so caused the remainder to hunker down and then slowly start working their way back south. In less than two minutes, two of Frank’s men were holding the wounded one down, gagging, and starting first aid. The other three moved to a position where, when One’s men took out a couple, they would be in position to finish the job. The word for all the good guys was, ‘never shoot at someone in all dull black clothing. They are friendly.’
18
Ten minutes after the first shots, a second round of shots began just south of where Frank and his men were set up. A man in dull black stood up, took careful aim and, as a man in camo came around a series of boulders, pulled the trigger dropping the man in camo in the sand where he kicked and jerked until a man in black came up and wrapped him up.
Frank was a bit unhappy they didn’t get in on the final kill, but he was happy none of his men were hurt. A man in black stood up south of his position, made the okay sign with his fingers, and walked away leaving a dead man in the dirt.
As they began to move he saw three men in black carrying a man in camo to the south. “Mission accomplished,” he said aloud. “Night vision is a wonderful thing.”
Naco
Tan looked south as they passed the turn off to the border crossing at Naco. All he could see was in his mind; the rubble, the smell of burning, the bodies lying in grotesque positions, and the first responders trying to do their job amidst that monument to terror. He had to force his mind’s eye to close so he could kill the shivers running up and down his spine.
“You okay, boss?” Matarese asked. Her face showed considerable concern.
“Yes. I was just picturing the crossing after the blast. It was not a pretty sight to bring up. I hate violence and yet it draws me to it. I have a feeling this whole mess we have right now will take maximum effort out of everyone involved, good and bad guys. I’ve watched seasoned men, men used to seeing the aftermath of horror, lose their breakfast and lunch after seeing the results one of these little shootouts. I cannot imagine what else can happen that will involve you and others like you that have never seen scenes like these.”
“I have. My first ride along was a two car, head on accident. Six people splattered all over the inside of two cars that were compacted into a pile of scrap metal shorter by a third than the combined length of the two vehicles. One of them was a former boyfriend. I dumped him because he was a drunk and reckless. Had I not, I could have been in that car.”
“Wow! I haven’t seen one that bad. How did you cope?”
“I just looked up to God and said, ‘Thank you.’ Somehow that did it for me.”
“He helps me a lot, too.” Tan looked at her under a brand new light. ‘Here is a good cop in the making,’ he thought.
Seeing a familiar vehicle alongside the road, he said, “Stop. Go back to that truck.” It was Frank’s.
They waited.
His phone surprised him when it rang. “Yes Governor.”
“I have sent you more men. They want to know where you are.”
Tan gave him the mile marker number and asked for four to come join him and the rest to head for Nogales and report in to Sara.
“Three are in Bisbee right now. I’ll send them.”
“Three is good. Thank you, bossman. We might make a team yet.”
“I’m beginning to hope so. Any idea when there might be a breakthrough on all this?”
“Yeah.” Tan hung up, smiling ear to ear.
“We got three helpers coming from Bisbee. Should be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” Tan said to Gravit.
Deputy Gravit liked that idea, too. She had never seen a lamb’s tail shake.
Tucson
“What? What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you, Colonel, that our men killed the mules and then were ambushed. Three went down before my man got word to me. He was the last man standing. I have heard nothing from him since. I fear they are all dead or wounded.”
“What can they tell if captured?”
“The last man was the only one with direct connection to me. I am the only one with knowledge of you and all I know is what you look like and this phone number. It’s going to cost us more from now on to get shooters.”
“I will pay, do not worry. Carry out the last item first thing tomorrow.”
“I will do that, but I want half the money on my way to Phoenix tonight. I’m broke after paying the new guys.”
“Meet me at Denny’s at 2000.”
“Will do.” Brad Dickens shut off his phone and pulled the battery from the back. No one was going to locate him through the phone. He used his personal phone to call his driver for the morning exercise and then headed for the Denny’s. There was no trust of the colonel left in his mind, because the colonel showed no sign of pain from the loss of his men.
Tucson PD
By midnight, Tucson PD had two missing person reports. Both were from wives of vets whose cars had been found at their favorite bar, but they had not come home. Both wives swore their husbands could not be with another woman.
Tucson PD logged the calls and forgot them.
Phoenix
The tall man climbed to the third floor balcony and set up camp. He had nothing to do until the sun came up.
Parker Canyon Lake
Three men in civvies drove down to the boat ramp where they removed a man from the back of a truck. Another truck followed, taking its man to a tree where a six inch thick limb stood out like a pull-up bar. The first man was dumped in the water. The second was stood up in the bed of the truck. A rope was fashioned into a lasso with a loose slip knot. The other end of the rope was tossed over the limb. The bitter end of the rope was tied to the cargo cleat in the back of the truck. The man was walked to the tail gate and shoved off.
He screamed.
His feet hit the ground before the rope came tight. The scrambling he did to get his feet under him was a sight to behold.
“Man, you dance right pretty.”
“How you gonna dance with no ground under you?”
“Tell us who sent you and where we can find him.”
The man stood, shaking, but not talking. He reached for the noose.
The truck moved forward and tightened the rope enough that the man had to stand on tiptoes.
“Next time no ground.”
“Answer the man’s question. I don’t wanna see ya hung, dude.”
The man stood, head cocked to one side and both hands holding on as the rope burned his ear. The wound in his side burned and started bleeding again.
The truck eased forward lifting him off the ground just inches.
The man danced and swung, trying desperately to hold himself up and not choke.
“That’s some jig dude.”
They left him there until his face turned red, which wasn’t long. The truck backed up.
He stood.
The man in the water started to get up, but the broken leg wouldn’t let him.
A man behind him pushed him under and held him there until bubbles came up. Then he was pulled up gasping.
“See any fish?”
“Want another drink?”
The man shook his head ‘No.’
Tan walked up to him, “Boy, you’re gonna wish you were waterboarded after we get you to talk the rate you’re going. I hate to see a man die by drowning. But, they say it’s painless.” Tan nodded.
The man behind him pushed him under and sat on him. The swimmer tried to bite, but try was all he could do.
Tan pulled him up. As soon as his face came above water and the man open
ed his mouth to breathe, they shoved him under again.
The man gulped a lot of water. Tan pulled him right back up.
Like a fat carp outta water the man was held there gasping and spitting until the contents of his stomach came up from his gagging. They shoved him under again.
The other man was dangling from the tree calm and quiet. His heart was still beating and his lungs were starving for air. His brain was thirty seconds away from shut down when they dropped him to the ground. One of the men did a couple of chest compressions to get him breathing again.
“We need to watch it. We almost killed him that time. We need info, not dead bodies.”
They waited for the man to regain full consciousness.
The man in the water was shoved under again.
Tan signaled to haul him up. They picked him up and threw him belly down in the bed of the truck, gasping. “Boy, you better tell me what I want to know soon or you will end up fish food for sure. Who? Where? How do you communicate?”
Gasp, garble, gulp came back.
They waited. “At least he tried to talk,” one of the men was an optimist.
Tan said, “Let’s switch the two. This one hangs and the other drowns.”
After the switch and the half inch braided rope was once again around a throat, that man was hauled up without anyone saying a word. The man fainted. They dropped him to the ground.
The other man was sitting in water up to his chin. One man had a hold on his feet. As the man came around and understood where he was, the man at his feet began to drag him down the ramp slowly. The swimmer found that his hands were now tied behind him allowing him to use his hands to push up on the bottom of the lake and gulp air every time he surfaced. Within moments the panic set in. He was going to drown because he couldn’t push up hard enough to reach the surface every time. The man at his feet quit pulling. Soon the swimmer found he couldn’t get up for air one bounce out of four. “I’ll talk,” he gasped as he made it to the surface one more time.
Two men grabbed his arm pits and pulled him up the ramp to where he started.
“Now talk.”
The man clammed up and would not talk.
The slide down the ramp began again. “This is your last chance. You drown or you talk. No other options.”
“I’ll die either way.”
“We will protect you if you talk now.”
“Okay. You win.”
“We always do.”
The hanger was out for the count again. It took more compressions to bring him back and Tan wasn’t happy with them killing someone this way.
His personal phone rang. “Yes, Governor.”
“Anything new.”
“No, sir. I told you I would inform you as soon, as soon, the very second, we had a break. Please let me do my job without the interruptions.” His teeth were chattering from the breeze across his wet clothes. He looked around. All the others showed signs of being cold. “I need to get back to my men. It’s cold at 5000 feet.”
“Okay. You call me the very second you get something.”
He put his phone away and turned to the blue faced man on the ground. His eyes locked on the swingers. “Boy, you better tell me what we need to know or there will not be a wake up next time.”
The two men at his side picked up the young man and stood him on his good leg. “You better do it, man. He means it. I saw him hang one of your friends after the ambush just because he had you.”
The man’s eyes got bigger. “He hung him?”
“Yup. He’s still swinging down there in the wash.”
“What do you want to know?”
All they got was an ID on the last man shot down. He had been their contact and paymaster. He had called around 2 PM and asked if they wanted to earn some real money killing drug runners. They all agreed that was a good idea. The only name they could give was ‘Rog.’ The man they ID’d was named Rog. They met him in a bar in Tucson where vets hang out. A place called The Jungle. The owner was a vet.
They loaded the cars and trucks, turned the heat up high on all four of them, and went to the jail at Benson.
Deputy Gravit didn’t drive as fast and wild as she had. Tears ran down her cheeks for most of the trip, but everybody else in Tan’s car kept their feelings to themselves.
Phoenix
As the sun slowly climbed in the east over the Superstition Mountains the governor entered his car and drove through the relatively quiet streets on this Saturday morning. He stopped at Dutch Brothers Coffee for a morning brew. Being careful not to spill the coffee, he wandered through the downtown and into his parking space.
Retrieving his briefcase from the back seat reminded him of the file he had stashed under the front seat a few days before which contained much of the information for his upcoming speech before a joint session of the legislature. “Might as well take it up now.” As he bent over again something whipped past his head and slammed into the rear seat. Wondering what it was, he stood and looked around. The second shot took him and he went down to the pavement after bouncing off the door jam.
19
Across the street, Brad Dickens climbed down from the third story balcony with all his equipment stuffed quickly into a pack and the Remington over his shoulder. The satisfaction on his face gave away the satisfaction of a job well done. The man had dropped like a dead leaf and had not moved since the shot. The roughest part of the whole episode was getting the suppressor off the end of the barrel.
He drove home singing dirty marching ditties he remembered from his days in uniform.
Patagonia
The phone rang. Tan didn’t recognize the number. The last person he had talked to was his wife and this wasn’t her. “Brown.”
“Tan, get back to Phoenix. The governor’s been shot.”
He sat up in bed, “How bad?”
“Bad, real bad.”
“On my way. Who is this?”
“Jim Hilliard, Josie’s husband. We met at the wedding. Josie couldn’t make the call.”
“On my way. Comfort your wife.”
It took him a good five minutes to exit the room. Most of the time was spent finding a shoe he had kicked under the desk in his rush. As he exited the Inn, his car pulled up in front and Gravit got out. Her normally well-groomed look took on a very disheveled style and her clothes were wrinkled. “You want me to drive?” she asked.
“No.”
The car was rolling before the door finished closing as Tan made a U-turn. A left turn and then a right followed before he buckled his seat belt. “Where we going, boss?”
“Phoenix, the governor’s been shot.” He looked down to see the speedometer passing 80.
“Don’t get us killed.”
“You wanna get out?”
“Nope. I’m your assistant, remember?”
“How’d you know I was gonna need the car?”
“Heard your phone buzz and figured it was a call to action. So, I acted. Worst case, I miss a couple minutes sleep.”
Tan’s eyes never left the road as she reached in her purse and began combing her hair. “You mind if I turn on the visor light so I can see where the paint goes?”
“Not at all.”
By the time they turned at Sonoita, the siren and lights were going full blast and Gravit was properly painted.
Tucson
As Brad entered the greater Tucson area on I-10 he saw a single cop going north with lights flashing and siren blasting through the early morning and fade into the north. “Someone has found the body.”
He returned the rental to the agency at the airport and went home in the Corvette.
As he entered his house, the cat met him at the door with a gentle ‘rrrroooooooouuuuwww.’
“It went very well thank you.” He turned on the flatscreen on the wall just in time to see two bedraggled men in camo being loaded onto gurneys and taken into a hospital. He turned up the sound. It didn’t take long for him to determine that something had gone wrong
with the ambush and his men were still alive.
“Damn.” He wondered if he should contact the Colonel. “Nah, he’ll get me when he wants me. From the info they are putting out on the air, he’ll know there are troops in jail.”
He called his man in the field and got no answer after a dozen rings. “Oh, oh. This don’t look good.”
The cat went out. Brad grabbed his bugout kit, tossed the sea bag full of survival gear over his shoulder, and, after rigging the house with telltales, headed for the Jeep Commander in the garage. The Corvette was in its garage on the far side of the gated community and would stay there.
The next stop was the grocery store and then it would be off to his bugout spot.
Picacho Peak
Deputy Gravit sat calmly as the car dodged semis and other cars in its race to Phoenix. Tan’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel and his face was locked into a mask of concentration as they passed Picacho Peak. His phone rang. He yelled, “Hello,” in order to be heard over the siren.
“Tan, what are you doing?” It was Joan.
“The boss has been shot. I’m headed for Phoenix.”
“I just called to tell you I love you. I woke up and something wasn’t feeling right. Are you okay.”
“Yes. I love you, too. Let me call you back when I get someplace quieter.”
Joan’s voice took on a concerned tone, “Okay. But, you make sure you stay okay. I don’t have good vibes here.”
“Love ya.” He hit end.
As they rolled into Phoenix Tan hit the mike button, “GSI-1, dispatch. Where is the Governor?”
“GSI-1 – he is currently at Saint Joseph. Between third and fourth avenues on Thomas.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Governor’s office
“Come on, Babe. Let’s go home or the hospital. Working in a frenzy is crazy.”
“I will finish the book for the governor like he wanted. I am not a medical person, nor will I be comfortable at home. Even with you there, my love, I would worry about this assignment until I’d turn around and come back anyhow. You can go home if you’d like, but I am staying till it’s done.”
