Red Horizon

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “I shall enjoy helping you with the cleaning on this one, Muerto,” Johnny said as he took Cala’s hand. They went upstairs.

  “Speak with your cousin, Felicia. Then, we will work out a plan.”

  Nick watched the tearful but excited conversation. He cringed at the news she and the two others in El-Amin’s control had gone through female genital mutilation. Thinking about Jean being only a couple years younger than El-Amin’s youngest slave fired the rage he had been holding in check. Felicia handed him the iPhone. Nick stayed watchful with El-Amin.

  “Claude said you would handle his…his disappearance. Is that true?”

  “Yes. You go upstairs and help my friends with your house companions. I will discuss things with Claude. Do not worry about this butcher. Is there anything special you would like me to do with him?”

  Felicia shuddered. “Claude said I could leave this monster to you. That is what I will do. I do not wish to think about him anymore.”

  “As you wish. Go on and assure your friends.” Nick waited until she was out of earshot. “I’m here, Claude.”

  “Can you help El-Amin turn over everything to Felicia? Clint has been creating an account in a local Bank of America right on Union Street. I’ve already texted you the details. Clint said if you’ll bring the property statements with you, he and Jafar will transfer the title to Felicia with all the papers needed for identity and everything. My wife and I will book a flight to go there immediately to help. I can’t thank you enough for this, Nick.”

  “No worries, my friend. I am happy to do it, and so are my cleaning assistants. Guess what? They have a nice cellar here. It will be perfect for discussing property and bank accounts with Haris. Would you like a video moment?”

  “No Nick. I leave the creature’s ending in your capable hands. I am sure he will pay for his sins.”

  “Yes… he will. Talk at you in a while.”

  * * *

  Haris El-Amin awoke groggily, his knees aching from kneeling on the cement floor of what he recognized as his basement. He felt the cold house stanchion at his back. Duct tape was wound around his chest and under his arms. Another winding around his shoulders and chest held him securely, coupled with windings around his forehead. He couldn’t move his legs at all. Haris assumed rightly they were secured to the stanchion too. Some material crackled under him. The two men from earlier walked in front of him with big smiles.

  “Hello there, Haris. In reality, I am Dr. Muerto, and this is my assistant, Dr. Kabong. We specialize in a treatment called intestinal cleaning. It’s rather old school but effective. Here’s a demonstration.” The man showed Haris a scalpel while the other man pinched his nostrils, forced a rubber ball in his mouth, and put a strip of duct tape over his mouth. A mirror from his basement was positioned so he could see what was happening. Haris screamed.

  * * *

  “Gee, Dr. Kabong, he’s screaming already and I haven’t even started.”

  “I imagine the little girl he had mutilated screamed too, Dr. Muerto.”

  Nick took a deep breath and slapped Haris into silence. “Right you are. Okay, Haris, here’s how this works. The demonstration comes first. When you get a taste of that we’ll uncover your mouth. You have one minute to begin telling us all your bank account passwords. Dr. Kabong already has your laptop open on the table with your three bank accounts windowed on the desktop. We also need to know where you keep your house papers. Felicia showed us where your safe is. We’ll need to know the combination for that too. Okay, here’s your demo, shit-head. After it’s over you’d best not be bashful about telling us what we want to know.”

  Nick sliced El-Amin from breastbone to groin, just deep enough so the intestines began to bulge. Johnny poured bleach over the wound. They watched the effect on Haris with clinical interest. “It’s a good thing we did so many duct tape winds, Johnny. Otherwise, I think Haris might have bucked right out of them.”

  “He seems to be enjoying this as much as I had hoped.”

  “Indeed. Did Cala mind escorting the girls to dinner?”

  “No,” Johnny answered, glancing at his watch before neutralizing the bleach with warm water and salve. “She will keep them away for a couple of hours. Gus will make sure they stay safe. We should then arrive at the Allegheny Park at about exactly the right time. Is the cutoff you’re familiar with safe enough for us to dig for a while without being observed?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m sorry about having the digging become part of this. It’s a hell of a lot easier throwing them out of the helicopter.”

  “I don’t mind. Cala’s not too crazy about dark woods. I was thinking maybe we should leave her at a town until we finish.” Johnny readied his iPad for recording.

  “Sure, Johnny. That would be fine.” Nick leaned over and pulled off the duct tape from Haris’s mouth. “Are you ready to speak? Remember you only have one minute to speak. Otherwise you get a second demo. Ready?”

  Nick pulled the rubber ball out. It was off to the races. When they acquired all the information requested, Nick went upstairs to the safe while Johnny transferred funds to Felicia’s new Bank of America account. Nick found thirty-nine thousand dollars in the safe and all the house documents. He made copies of the house documents on the house printer and made a printing of the safe combination. By the time he finished, Johnny was receiving confirmation on the new account transfer.

  “Haris had over two million dollars. It’s all been transferred and the accounts closed,” Johnny told him. “How did you make out?”

  “Thirty-nine grand and I have the papers. We’re good to go.”

  Nick stuck the final eternity syringe into El-Amin’s neck while Johnny readied the body-bag Haris had been kneeling over. They cut the bindings and lowered him into the bag. There was very little cleanup needed. Gus had taken one of El-Amin’s vehicles to escort Cala and the others. When Gus returned with his charges, Nick had already finished off Eliah Kader and loaded El-Amin beside him with Johnny’s help. When everyone was together in the living room, Nick explained everything about the financial side.

  “When Claude comes to visit, he’ll have the property in your name, Felicia. If there’s any kind of a glitch we’ve missed addressing, Claude will straighten it out when he visits. I’ve already sent copies of the papers to our IT specialist. He’ll get them ready before Claude leaves. Will you be okay here?”

  “Now that the beast is gone, we will be fine.” Felicia took Nick’s hand in both hers. “Thank you. I know I can never repay you. It is good Claude has friends like you. He was very lost for a long time.”

  Nick patted her hand. “I’ve programmed the phone Gus bought for you. It has my number, Claude’s, and John Harding’s. If ever Haris’s friends or business people stop here looking for him, remember what I told you to do.”

  “Yes. Be polite. Tell them Haris left without telling us where he was going. Take down their names if they wish to leave them with us, and pepper spray them if they try to force their way in.”

  “Use the stun-gun I gave you as a follow up. Stun them until they stop moving. Then call me and the police.”

  “And tell the police they tried to force their way in,” Felicia finished. “We will do it. I’m glad Claude and his wife are visiting for a time. This will take some getting used to. It…it has been many years since I have been allowed my own thoughts. I hope to return to Paris and see my surviving family. The identities Haris had made for us are very good as are the passports. When he went overseas, he never left us alone. If he had to go away on business, he had a man come and stay at the house with us. We were always afraid. We are cowards.”

  “Don’t think about that at all. I have experience with men like El-Amin. They are brutal nightmares to common people. It takes monsters to handle monsters, Felicia. Think no more of this time of captivity. You and your friends are now part of our extended family. We can and will be here within hours if you need us.”

  “You are not a monster.”

&n
bsp; Nick smiled slowly. “Yes, Felicia… I am.”

  * * *

  “The young one still fears somehow El-Amin will return,” Cala said from the backseat. “Perhaps we should have allowed her to see his body.”

  “She’s already seen enough for now,” Nick replied. “Living at her age with a slaver like El-Amin, it will be all Felicia can do to bring her around to civilization. It may never happen. Johnny and I probably should have cleaned him a while longer. I have an idea I should have thought of with the first Kader I killed secretly. We’re going to stop at a butcher shop on the way to the woods when we drop Cala off for a while.”

  “It is too much inconvenience, Muerto. I’ll be okay in the woods.”

  “We have to backtrack to get on the freeway again anyhow. We’ll hit the butcher shop, drop you at a nice coffee shop, and go tuck Kader and El-Amin in for their long dirt nap.”

  “What’s with the butcher shop?”

  “We’re going to get pork pieces, hopefully something the butcher normally throws out. Uh oh,” Nick said, seeing the twisted look forming on Gus’s face. “Too much?”

  “That’s gross,” Gus said. “What the hell will you tell the butcher you’re going to use them for?”

  “I’ll tell him I’m burying devout Islamic monsters in the woods and they need a shroud.”

  Johnny and Cala enjoyed the exchange, but Gus shook his head with unconcealed disgust. He suddenly straightened. “Damn, Muerto… you’re going to take pictures, aren’t you? That’s just disturbing.”

  “Nope. Mutilating and preying on a twelve year old girl from the time she was nine is disturbing. El-Amin’s burial rites will be a little justice. I’ll send Felicia a digital file to show the girl if she still has nightmares about Haris coming back to haunt them. I’ll send whomever takes over the Kader family, if they have anyone left, the final resting place of their deceased leader. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, right?”

  Gus took a deep breath. “I concede your point. What will you tell the butcher?”

  “I’ll tell him I’ve got a dog that eats burnt barbeque and loves it. I’ll say I can’t afford to barbeque the spoiled brat real meat as a treat, and he likes pork guts barbequed in cooked pork blood.”

  “Yuck,” Gus replied. “I’m telling Deke on you.”

  “Where’d you think I got the story from?”

  * * *

  Having driven off road on a fire trail, Nick remembered from a past contract, located near the Allegheny National Forest, the Unholy Trio proceeded to the burial site with backpackers’ headlamps. The weather, drizzling in a light steady mist, created perfect conditions for the burials. The ground was soft but not so wet it couldn’t be excavated. It didn’t take the trio long to create graves deep enough not to expunge their contents at an inopportune time. They posed each of the deceased at the bottom of their grave with hands folded over their chests. Nick poured the contents of the two large plastic bags over the dead men up to their hands. He then added a pig’s head to each grave on the shoulder of each corpse. Johnny moved in with digital camera and flash, taking stills of each grave from different angles until satisfied he had more than a few keepers in the bunch.

  Johnny viewed each one with professional expertise, having learned many trade basics while on location with Director Lynn when she filmed the ‘Hollywood Bounty Hunters’. “These are incredible, Muerto. I’m glad the butcher actually had a couple heads. They project nightmare into the scene.”

  “Good job. Let’s get them covered.” Nick and Gus worked the shovels filling in the graves easily while Johnny packed their body bags for disposal in another place. Nick moved rocks, leaves, and branch debris over the filled in graves until the site looked as natural as it could.

  Nick moved away in the darkness, checking the scene with reduced light. “The rain will blend a lot of it quickly. That’s it. You two head single file back to the SUV. I’ll brush our trail sign.”

  “Who the hell do you think might do a ground check all the way out here, Muerto?”

  “I don’t think, Payaso. I do the job and pay attention to the details. Quit yappin’ and get moving. I’d like to hit a real nice place somewhere before Illinois to stop for the night with a nice Bushmill’s Irish nightcap… or morning cap.”

  “Get moving, Payaso,” Johnny ordered. “Now, all I can think of is a hot shower and a nightcap.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Gus replied as he led off in the direction of their SUV, “but I’m starving. I need food.”

  “Your wish shall be granted, Payaso.” Nick used a thick branch with still green leaves on it to brush debris over their many foot prints around the graves, stirring the moist dirt.

  His job along the trail proved more difficult because of footprint depth while carting the bodies, especially Nick’s own. He had led with a gloved hand on each of the body-bags while Gus and Johnny packed the shovels and other ends of the bags. He used the heavier leafed branch to poke and prod until most indications left would only be discoverable by a professional tracker. Seated finally, Nick leaned comfortably in his seat.

  “Maybe we should have said something over the bodies,” Nick said. “You know… rot in hell or something.”

  “It would have just been redundant, Muerto,” Gus said. “Man, I’m glad you thought to buy the Bush in town when we dropped Cala off. I’ll bet everything’s closed. Maybe we should eat there if anything’s still open. We don’t look too bad. The pine scent Fabreeze is working in the SUV. It should work on us.”

  “Good input, Payaso,” Nick said. “I don’t know why but I have a real hankerin’ for pork chops.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Loose Ends

  “Check these out, Cheese.” Lynn showed me her iPad with pictures in our general lounge area while Clint and Jafar worked on the paperwork for Claude to take with him on his visit to see his cousin in our computer room.

  I set aside the laptop with final touches on our Pilot Hill compound plans. The feasibility of what we planned for a landing zone with room for vertical jet takeoff would need input from engineers Denny had tapped for the project working for the Air Force. I grinned at the two sets of grave pictures, recognizing the pictures we had seen of Eliah Kader and Haris El-Amin. “Oh my, the pigs’ heads are a nice touch. I bet Claude liked these.”

  “Oh yeah, he did. Since we can close the books on all our loose ends here in the states, I’ll feel better about going down to LA to direct the ‘Hollywood Bounty Hunters’ in their season opener. Everything’s ready to shoot the final takes.”

  “I liked your idea about keeping the bond skip secret until the drama and love scenes were filmed. When Chuck and Sal called to tip you about Nardo Sirapio returning to the states soon, I figured it would be a disaster trying to entrap him. He troops around Europe dancing the global warming jig with all the limousine liberal jet set, avoiding any place he can be extradited from.”

  “It’s a tough one,” Lynn admitted. “I directed the kids to do their continuing romance scenes, combined with some small sub-plotting in case we don’t get our hands on Nardo. He hasn’t been in the states for years. They live by a separate law structure. As long as they’re celebrities making movies, anything they do is okay. I’m surprised Nardo didn’t try to simply turn himself in, buy everyone off, and flit around with street cred. He should have paid more attention to the identity of the girl. The girl’s parents sure made that difficult.”

  “Yep. The family of the sixteen year old girl he roofied at a charity benefit for the ‘Climate Change’ con ruined all Nardo’s hit and flit plans. Her Dad’s a cop and a friend of Sal’s that was working security at the event. Red Dragon Security works contracts overseas. They’ve tried bagging Nardo when in the same place but missed him. Here in the states, they’re hesitant about kidnapping a celebrity like Nardo, even on a legitimate bond.”

  “We’re in the same position.” Lynn paused, thinking about the entire episode as she had le
arned of it. “Sal did tell me about Nardo drugging the girl, taking her to the hotel he was staying at, and then leaving her a day later without a trace. Her parents nearly tore apart the city looking for her, only to have her show at the homestead, bruised and raped. Sal said Nardo tried to tell the authorities through his lawyer that he wasn’t even there because he’d used an alias when signing in at hotels. He claimed to have left for Europe right after the benefit. The Dad screwed him on that move by collecting videos of him from security cameras both at the event leaving with his daughter and at the hotel. A rape kit was done. Nardo wasn’t as careful with his condom as he thought.”

  “Exactly. Sal wants to get him before the Dad does. He thought of ‘Hollywood Bounty Hunters’ immediately. Both Chuck and Sal loved the way we handled Michael Moronas, but he didn’t know if we could handle Nardo the same way. I told him we couldn’t. We could kill him and make him disappear but then we can’t use him on your television show. It’s better if we can convince Nardo to act in a scene of his own arrest and transfer.”

  “I was a little too flippant about the cop’s daughter. What’s the family names again?” Lynn took out her iPad. “I need to make notes and do some research. We’ll have to do this high profile with our FBI team, Sam and Janie. I’m thinking we’ll do a run through with the Russells explaining exactly what Nardo did, combined with our Bounty Hunters episode, translating it into a warning to other girls to be extra careful when in a strange environment.”

  “Their names are Carney and Phyllis Russell,” I told her. “The daughter’s name is Carmen. Chuck and Sal believe they have enough proof to go through any trial with a slam dunk conviction, but with Nardo’s money, who knows.”

  Lynn asked the important questions. “Where’s he at? Does Sal know where he’s headed?”

  “That’s where Chuck and Sal’s network really came through. Nardo’s traveling incognito by cruise ship from Lisbon to Bridgetown, Barbados. He arrives in Barbados tomorrow after a twelve day cruise. Slick has a couple favorite aliases Red Dragon is familiar with. Although Interpol refuses to arrest a celebrity or anyone with money, they keep track of the expats that can be blackmailed. Nardo has passports under two other names, James Baldwin and Clarence Fellow. Nardo paid a hefty price to make his way to Lisbon but he left a financial trail under the Clarence Fellow identity. Chuck knew the only way he could get into the states would be by private jet. This Clarence Fellow alias owns an out of the way ranch in Carson City, Nevada.”