Death's Valley

by Roy A. Teel, Jr.

  The world was moving in slow motion for Harry. He could see the warm light of the house and Peggy smiling and the two young girls calling to their master. Peggy had stepped forward, and one of the girls was on her robe. She drew back and backhanded the young girl on her left, yelling at her to obey her master’s orders and not to be under her feet.

  Harry kept running. The second shot hit him in the right rear thigh, but the body armor worked. He was still standing and running. He saw the girls getting up as Peggy smiled once again and waited for his arrival. “Enough,” the shooter whispered and pulled the trigger. The bullet passed through Harry’s skull and right into Peggy’s as she waited at the door.

  There was a momentary lapse for both of them. Harry’s eyes caught Peggy’s as he fell to the ground near Peggy and the two girls. Peggy’s head jerked back at the strike of the bullet. A fine spray of blood sprung from the back of her skull. She dropped to her knees as if greeting Harry then fell face first onto the ground on top of his body.

  The two young girls began screaming and ran into the house. The shooter sat on his perch watching the house for at least ten minutes as the first police car showed up on scene. The shooter packed up his rifle and climbed down from the tree and moved through the darkness and disappeared.

  The Eagle received the call from the men that they were incoming with both heavy cargo and a surprise. The Eagle had made his way to Mark El Compo’s home in the hills of Bel-Air. He knew that if there was an answer to what was happening El Campo had it. The problem was that Patrick and Lance had made a mess of things. Mark knew that someone was on to him. It was now a race against time for the Eagle to grab El Compo before he got away into the night, perhaps never to be found again.

  Don Bartell was out making routine probation checks. Tonight was about low risk offenders. He liked these types of checks because he had never had to pull his service weapon on this group. Don was no stranger to the mean side of probation and parole. He had had his fair share of run-ins with the really, really bad guys, and he had the wounds to prove it. He had just finished up with a pedophile that was on house arrest as part of his probation and was happy to find him at home where he was supposed to be.

  For the people he had on pretrial release and on GPS trackers without those types of restrictions, home visits were hit and miss, though he always ran GPS tracking on them before he left the office. He could not call to tell them he was coming, but it was his job, and he enjoyed doing it. He arrived at Garrison Cantrell’s home at just after eight p.m. He parked in front of the small bungalow and pulled his GPS tracker and plugged in Cantrell’s information. The unit showed that Cantrell was in the house.

  He walked up to the front door and rang the bell and waited, but there was no answer. He knocked on the door again, and this time he announced himself, “Mr. Cantrell, this is Officer Bartell with the Los Angeles Department of Probation. I’ve stopped by for a visit.” There was no response. He looked back down at the handheld GPS tracker and the red blip of Cantrell’s ankle bracelet blinked clearly. He panned out on the unit to see the full layout of the house’s interior, and according to his unit, the GPS tracker was only ten feet from the front door. He pounded on the door and called out to Cantrell.

  Being a probation officer, and given the fact that Cantrell was under his supervision, the terms of his release allowed forced entry into Cantrell’s home. He called out again and said, “Mr. Cantrell, if you don’t open the door, I have a right to enter. I have a key to your premises.” There was no response. Don put the key into the deadbolt on the house and turned it, but the deadbolt wasn’t locked. He tried the door knob, and it was locked. He put the key into the cylinder and unlocked the door and pulled his service revolver as he slowly opened the door. He walked into the small foyer of the house, and there were lights on, and he could hear what sounded like a radio in the distance. There was a doorway directly to his right, and there was light coming from the room and its open door. He walked into the light, but he wasn’t prepared for what he found.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You really should be more polite

  to the wife of the Iron Eagle.”

  Steve, Jim, and Charlie were finishing their beers when a call came over Jim’s radio that there had been a homicide in Tarzana. Charlie looked over at Steve and Jim and said, “I have five bucks that says that homicide is none other than Harry Chilton.” The two men looked on, and Jim said, “How the fuck would you guess that?” Charlie held a finger to his lips as the chatter went back and forth on the radio. An address was barked out, and Charlie smiled and said, “Because that’s Harry’s home address.” Jim looked at Charlie and said, “Now, how the fuck do you know that? I know that you and Harry aren’t friends.” “No, sir, we are not, but I fucked his wife Peggy twice a week for the last ten years. She liked my big black cock in her tight white pussy…and other places!”

  Jim frowned and looked at Steve and said, “Are you buying this?” Steve shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know Charlie very well, so I have no reason to think he would lie.” Jim let out a loud laugh and said, “If there’s one thing I know about this racist mother fucker is he doesn’t know how to tell the truth.”

  Charlie finished off his beer and slammed the bottle down on the table and said, “Oh, go fuck yourself, ginger boy…I fucked Barbara, too!” Jim shot up out of his chair and leaned in to belt Charlie in the mouth when Charlie broke out laughing. He put his hands up in self defense and said, “I’m kidding, you fuckin’ mackerel snapper. I would never stick my dick in an Irish chick.”

  Jim sat back down, and Charlie looked at him sheepishly and said, “Besides, the woman scares the living shit out of me.” Jim said, “She should, you dumb ass nigger. Barbara would chew you up and spit you out, and I do mean that literally.” That got Steve laughing, and he said through tears of laughter, “Are we going to Chilton’s crime scene, or are we going to sit here?” Jim piped up and said, “Why bother? The guy’s dead…check another off the list.”

  Jim was chuckling when they heard about an explosion off Topanga Canyon Boulevard on Hodler Drive. Jim looked at the men and said, “That’s an address that I know. I had two of my deputies there today. That’s Captain Brian Boyd’s home, and I also know that Boyd is alive and well. My men told me he was getting his family out of the house for dinner.”

  Steve looked on and said, “The Iron Eagle?” Jim nodded, and Charlie just looked on and asked, “Who the fuck’s next on the killer’s hit list?” Jim pulled out his tablet and said, “Ricardo Pina.” Charlie laughed and said, “If Pina’s on the list, then so must be Vince Espeno.” Jim nodded. “How the fuck do you know that? Did you get a copy of the list?”

  Charlie shook his head, laughing. “They have a house in the hills overlooking Sherman Oaks.” Jim asked, “Are they out of your division?” “Naw…those fags are out of West Valley. I had the misfortune of crossing paths with them about a year ago when I was in civilian clothing. I picked up a call and a publicity nightmare for LAPD. Pina, or penis as I call him, is the head of PR for the LAPD, and Espeno is the deputy chief of police. Those spic ass fuckers took me for some poor old nigger off the streets. They blindsided me by telling the media that I was a witness in a police brutality case and would testify that the cops were in the right. The fuckers did it on national television not knowing I was a cop, and when that story broke, they bashed the shit out of me in the media, making up shit, said I misrepresented myself to them, and that I lied about a bunch of shit. Those two fuckers almost got me thrown off the force. I was under investigation by internal affairs, and I would have gotten railroaded off the force if it hadn’t been for Garrison Cantrell and the Alverez killing. That took the limelight off me, and my lawyers got the case dismissed.

  “Garrison got kicked off the force, and to be honest, for a white boy, Garrison Cantrell was a good cop. The fucker was an honest cop. I will never figure out how they were ab
le to railroad him the way they did. Then to blame him for Mary Schultz’s murder. Fuck, man…there was a line of people who wanted to see that bitch dead, including the chick she was fuckin.’” Jim and Steve both looked at Charlie and asked, “Salazar and Schultz were lovers?” “Oh, fuck yea, man. I have it on good authority that they were into some pretty twisted shit…they were two fucked up chicks. Schultz was a kike, man…a fuckin Jew girl munchin’ on spic pussy…sick shit, man, sick mother fuckin’ shit.”

  Jim put the beer he was drinking down and asked, “How do you know where Pina and Espeno live?” Charlie laughed, finishing off his beer, “I was going to send a couple of my home boys up and have them kick the shit out of them after the whole mess was done, but I decided to let it slide.”

  Jim stood up and got behind Steve’s wheelchair and said, “Well, you might just get your wish after all. We need to get to their house NOW! We may be the only thing standing between those two and death.” Charlie stood up and said, “Oh come on, man…let me at least take satisfaction in those two getting what’s coming to them.” Jim laughed and said, “It’s not just about them getting what’s coming to them. It’s about getting this nut job cop killer. If we don’t, sooner or later that list is going to run out, and I can tell you that this killer has a taste for this now. He’s really, really good, and he will turn his sights on others in law enforcement, and that could just as easily be you or me.” The look on Charlie’s face said it all. The three men headed for the door and Ricardo and Vince’s home.

  The Eagle made his way up Mark El Compo’s half mile driveway. He had two bags on his shoulders, and he was moving through the darkness as best he could. El Compo’s home was built on the side of a cliff overlooking Los Angeles and Santa Monica. When the Eagle crested the top of the hill off the west-facing cliff, he could see all the way to the sea. There was a full moon reflecting off the water in the distance, and it would have been a beautiful view if he didn’t have work to do. He stowed the bags in some brush beneath the house.

  The house was literally built on stilts to take advantage of the view and the hillside. The Eagle heard music coming from the main level, and there were people out on a large patio off the front of the house. He pulled a pair of field glasses from his bag and looked up to see what appeared to be a very, very, formal party going on. Once he saw the number of guests on the double balcony to the home, he knew that there was no way that El Compo was going to bail on his own event. The Eagle pulled his tablet out of his case and typed in the address and Mark El Compo’s name into the NCIC. El Compo had an impressive rap sheet, but he had never been convicted of any of the things he had been charged with.

  The list of charges were all serious offenses. The sheet read like a who’s who in the bad ass world of pornography and pedophilia. The guy had been charged with seemingly everything: false imprisonment; drug, gun, and human trafficking; international slavery and sex trafficking, as well as prostitution. The Eagle read over the sheet then pulled a blueprint of the home from the assessor’s office and studied it carefully. He looked at Mark’s photograph. He was a good looking guy, six five, two twenty, black hair, and brown eyes.

  Mark’s driver’s license photo looked like an actor’s headshot. The Eagle burned the image of Mark into his mind then loaded up with one small bag of gear and headed up the side of the hill just below the lower deck. When he reached the lower level to the home, he pushed himself against a garage door and pressed the button on his remote sensors. They picked up heavy security. The door he was leaning against had no handle or locking mechanism that the Eagle could see.

  He placed a magnetic finder on the door but got no reading. The Eagle used a receiver in his pack to pick up a strong wireless signal that was heavily encrypted. “Digital door locks. Impressive,” the Eagle whispered to himself as he pulled out his tablet and began to run an encryption decoding program that sliced through the house’s electronic system. Within five minutes, the Eagle had full access to the house. He scanned for all common electronic lock configurations, and he heard the click of a release as his weight against the lower buildup door to the house pushed it open.

  The Eagle locked all signals and transferred the lock codes to a flash drive in his pocket. He took out his PDA and plugged the flash drive into it, and in seconds he had his very own key to the El Compo mansion. He took the small bag with him and moved into the buildup. It was pitch black, and he felt for his night vision glasses and put them on. He clicked the switch and could see that he was sitting on a steep hillside under the home. There were concrete pillars with huge steel girders running down into them. The Eagle moved to the top of the buildup and found a concrete walkway that led to another door. He pressed his amplifier against the steel door but heard nothing.

  The Eagle pressed a code, and the door lock released, and he pushed it open, and it flooded with light. He removed the night vision goggles and moved into what he realized was the laundry room. There were several industrial washing machines and dryers. There were laundry baskets full of linens. He looked in one that had clean linen in it and another that had soiled fowl smelling garments. The Eagle moved some with his gloved hand and saw feces and blood. He exited the room knowing he now had a point of reference that he could use with the blueprint in his mind; he knew where he was in the house.

  When he pressed the ‘enter’ key on his PDA, the lock released, and he moved out into a well lit hallway. There was a long steep stairwell in front of him and a door next to him. He pressed the enter key again, and the door unlocked. He slowly pushed it open and saw dozens of nude young Mexican women and girls, gagged and chained to steel bars on the floor of the room. He moved quietly amongst them, and their eyes were huge and full of fear as he slowly took a head count. He took out his PDA and typed a message and hit send.

  He moved to the end of the room and put his hand on one girl’s shoulder. She cringed, and he put his fingers to his lips, and in his deep natural voice said in Spanish, “You have nothing to fear from me. Keep silent.” The room was very, very hot. Down in the middle of the room was the source of the heat…a large domed fire pit that vented up into the ceiling. It had a raging fire burning in it, and there were multiple steel branding irons in the flames.

  The Eagle moved over to get a close look. There were five girls all chained face down and arms and legs spread eagle. The smell of charred flesh struck his nostrils, and he could see that the women had each been recently branded. Three had the initials, M.E.C., branded into their buttocks. Two other younger girls had brands that consisted of a circle and two cherries. The Eagle moved back up to the door where the young girl he spoke to sat, and he pressed his PDA and moved through the door and into a mirrored room with one-way glass all around it, and a center stage that was turning.

  The Eagle spoke under his breath, “The auction room.” The room was darker than the other, and he found his way to another door and pressed his PDA, and the door unlocked and led him out into a hallway. There were voices in the distance, echoing off the walls. “Listen…I want this auction finished up, and I want it done now. Do you understand me? I have a plane to catch, and I don’t want my guests to be none the wiser that I’m leaving.”

  A female voice responded. “I understand, Mr. El Compo, but the girls are not dressed. They’re not ready to present to your clientele.” “Are they clean?” “Yes, sir.” “Then I will go upstairs and announce that I’m going to do a special auction tonight. Instead of covering the merchandise in clothing and trinkets, I am leveling the auction field. Everyone will get to inspect the merchandise fully nude before bidding.” “Okay, sir, but there are five girls in holding. Three of them have just been branded. I branded two more virgins, but there are at least six that I still need to brand.”

  The Eagle heard Mark El Compo getting agitated. “Brand the bitches after the damn sale. The buyers don’t care. Shit. One of the complaints I have been getting is that they want to brand them themselve
s, and they don’t like that I scar their treasures. Just get them ready, and I will take care of the rest of this.” There was a moment of silence and then a “yes, sir.” The Eagle heard soft footsteps coming his direction and moved back to the holding room and down to the lower door.

  Patrick’s phone buzzed with an email from the Eagle. He read it, and a huge smile broke out across his face. He looked at Lance and said, “We need to pack our shit. The Eagle has instructions for us to blow a building in Bel-Air.” Lance looked on and said, “What does he need?” “He wants us to bring the van as there will be cargo…I’m betting human. And he wants me to bring enough C4 to level a…” He looked at the email again, and the dimensions the Eagle sent. “A shit load of C4, Cosmo, a fuckin’ shit load. Grab my bags. We have to go to the shop on the way out there.”

  Sara was tending to the girls that had been in the van. C4 called out to her, and she walked out into the foyer. “We just got orders from the Eagle. We have to do some demolition work. Can you handle this?” Sara looked on and picked up a phone on an end table near the foyer entrance, pressed the conference button, and in a matter of seconds she had Barbara, Gail, and Jade on the line. “Are you ladies free tonight?” All of the responses were yes. “I need your help at the main house ASAP. Meet me at the main entrance, and I will explain there.” She hung up the line and said, “We have this. Go do what the Eagle wants.” Lance and Patrick ran out of the building to the van. Sara said something to the girls in the room in Spanish and closed the door. She walked down to the second operating room where Lance and Patrick had placed Andre Espinoza. He had been tied down with leather straps, but he was alert. Sara walked in, and Espinoza started cursing at her and struggling against the restraints.