I’m also thinking about what TC said about needing a private investigator. After today, I will no longer be on SIL’s payroll and besides that, I think Barry and Bill have been messing with me. My only problem would be if Barry finds I am looking into the murder of Trever Byers on Bald Head Island. Barry can be about as mean as a rattlesnake when backed into a corner. I have a funny feeling SIL is more involved in the murder than they want me to know, but right now I am beginning to feel like I really need to find out what happened on Bald Head Island and who is behind the murder. Of course, I’m really not sure I can take on another business. I’m already spread thin.
Not far up the road, I decide to find a place to eat since I skipped lunch today. One of my favorite restaurants on the south end of the beach is Angelo’s. They have great steaks and a wonderful Italian buffet. I am ready for a medium rib-eye with pasta on the side. I am not disappointed.
As I leave Angelo’s, the sky turns dark and it begins to rain. I can see lightning in the direction I am going and I know that traffic will soon begin to slow down.
When the sun is out and the temperatures are high, you can drive up and down Highway 17 and not realize there are 300,000 tourists in town because the majority of them are on the beach; however, when it rains, they are all out on 17 looking for something to do, somewhere to go or somewhere to eat. I opt to get off on Highway 544 and go up to 31 and take it into Little River which will eliminate a whole lot of curious tourists who are about to leave the beach.
As I get on 31 and proceed north, the sky becomes darker, the rain heavier and the lightning more spectacular. My mind and my demons start to wander back to a time many years ago when I was in Colombia chasing the drug cartel and training the Colombian Army.
I had received information from air surveillance that they had spotted what looked like a cocaine refining plant out in the middle of nowhere near our training camp. At the plant, they process the cocaine before distribution. My contact stated they spotted tents, three deuce and a half trucks and about ten cartel soldiers with weapons. The information came from a drone plane operation. My people did not believe the cartel spotted the plane and that the cartel soldiers and the cocaine should still be there.
If we had an agreement with Colombia, we could have gone in and dropped a few bombs on the site and that would have been the end of the refining plant, but we don’t have an agreement and since no U.S. troops were allowed in the country, except as training personnel, we had to do it another way. We had to go into the field, find them, and then eliminate the refining plant.
I checked the local weather forecast and found that we were supposed to have thunderstorms with heavy rain and lightning from about 2100 hours until 0200 hours. This did not sound like a very nice night to go hiking in the jungle. However, I also figured the cartel would think the same way and they would not be as ready as they normally would. Any type of an edge is always a plus and maybe the difference between life and death in an operation like this. I had been teaching the Colombian troops this and now it was time to see if the teacher could not only talk the talk but also walk the walk.
I had put together a plan of attack by about 1500 hours. We would leave the base training camp around 2000 hours and we should be at the location between 2300 hours and 2400 hours. Besides myself, I was taking along Sgt. Mark Yale, a good old boy from the Jackson, Ohio, area. We would be the only U.S. troops on the mission.
I also recruited 15 Colombian soldiers I thought could follow orders and they also understood and spoke a little bit of English. We had English classes each day before training began and all of the soldiers had to pass a speaking and written exam before they graduated. By graduating, they qualified to receive more pay from the government so all of them trained and studied very hard.
We armed each of the Colombian soldiers with a fully loaded M-16 and ten extra magazines. Mark, who was acting as my radioman, had an M-16 and a grenade launcher. I had an M-16, my .45 pistol and four hand grenades on my ammo belt. We also had two mules with four 5-gallon gas cans per mule. Once we found the plant, we planned to burn it to the ground.
We were a motley-looking crew as we left base camp around 1950 hours and moved out into the jungle for a five-mile hike to meet an enemy who knows that if they lose the cocaine and live, death will be the penalty for living. They would fight to the end to keep us from getting their cocaine.
We were not very far away from our base camp when it began to drizzle. Everyone knew it was going to rain so ponchos were the dress code. We also knew to try to keep our weapons and ammo as dry as possible. I asked Mark to do a como check with headquarters in Panama. If things really got hairy and we needed help, they would provide air cover and rescue. The only problem was that it would take them a while to get there so actually the brass just wanted us to keep them advised of the mission. We were pretty much on our own.
I had been on missions before with an occasional jackass or two, but never with two mules. The mules brought up the rear and we planned to leave them with one soldier about one half-mile from the objective. Once we secured the objective, the soldier would bring the mules for the final job of burning the area. The burning part sent a message to the drug cartel. We would not only find you, we would destroy you and the cocaine. We hoped to end up with several captives so we could maybe get some good information on the drug cartel. This usually did not happen. The cartel had strict rules about capture. You would die for the cocaine or they would kill your family.
The closer we got to our objective, the darker the sky became, the harder it rained, and the lightning seemed to be striking all around us. The mules did not mind the rain, but they did not like the thunder and lightning. We decided to drop them off about a mile away instead of a half-mile. It would be too dangerous in case they started acting up and making noise. We left two soldiers with the mules instead of one. I guess if I were one of those mules with four 5-gallon cans of gasoline strapped to my back with lightning bouncing all around, I would be a little upset also.
Mark and I continued with the thirteen remaining Colombian soldiers toward our objective. When we get within the one half-mile area, I call up Lucky, one of the soldiers who is familiar with the area, and tell him to go on ahead and give us a detailed account of what the camp looks like and what kind of security is in place.
The Colombians were very good in the jungle at night because they grew up in the jungle. Lucky returned (we called him Lucky because he had been shot twice on our hikes and he kept coming back for more) in about twenty minutes and told us that the camp was going full bore. There were two guards on duty and the camp had claymores around the perimeter.
The fact that the camp was working at night is good news and bad news. The good news is that we would be able to see the glow of lights long before we got there and the bad news was that they were in a hurry and did not plan to be there very long. We saddled up and headed out with Lucky leading the way. Before long we started to see a soft glow ahead of us and the closer we got, the brighter the glow became. We could hear the sound of a generator.
We stopped about two hundred and fifty yards away from the camp and Mark and I went on alone. I wanted to see how they had their claymores set up and to check out the actual lay of the land. It did not take long for me to find out.
Mark and I received training in jungle warfare and we both taught jungle warfare to the Colombian Army so we were not new to the idea of sneaking through the jungle at night and engaging the enemy. However, the ante goes up when you knew that you just may come face to face with a Claymore mine.
The Army described the M18A1 Claymore as a directional anti-personnel mine. The Claymore was shape charged and fired shrapnel in the form of 700 steel balls about the size of “birdshot” out to about one hundred meters across a 60-degree arc in front of the device. It would definitely get your attention. The M57 firing device, or clacker as we called it, fires the Claymore. More than one Claymore could be “daisy chained” together so that one
firing device could activate all Claymores in the chain. Another method of firing was by using trip wires but not as successfully. The cartel wasn’t quite good enough to get the trip wires set up properly and they usually failed.
We had two items in our favor and one against us. The two in our favor were the sound of the rain and thunder, along with the sound of the generator, which of course was much louder close to the camp. The thing against us was the lightning. An electrical charge detonates the Claymore. A lightning strike could set off every Claymore around the camp. This would not be good. Mark and I will not be happy campers. We will probably be dead campers.
I decided that the best plan for the entire patrol but the worst plan for Mark and I would be to find all of the Claymores and turn each one of them around, facing into the camp. If it worked, the cartel will end up killing or wounding themselves with no danger to us or our patrol. If it didn’t work, well, then we would go to plan B, and since there was no plan B, we would worry about that later.
I instructed Lucky that if we did not contact him within fifteen minutes after he heard the Claymores go off, to pack up and proceed back to base camp.
Lucky just smiled and said, “No problem, but you like bad cat, you always find way back home.”
I just smiled and left with Mark.
As the lightning danced around us, Mark and I found the first Claymore. We detected no trip wires and there was a “daisy chain” attached. I turned the Claymore around by just flipping the mine and then Mark followed the chain left and I headed right. We would meet at the end of the chain, hopefully, and then get the hell out of Dodge!
The water running off my brow was not all raindrops; it was good old-fashioned nervous sweat. We were both about as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. However, this is our job and we trained hard to do the task and then get nervous. I told Mark there should be sixteen Claymores around the camp. That was the normal amount deployed by the Cartel, four in each direction. I figured it would take a good forty-five minutes for us to do our thing and we were right on schedule. As I finished my eighth Claymore, I heard a soft bird whistle, which was Mark’s signal that he was close. We met up in about five minutes on the far side of the camp and compared notes. Mark says he had turned eight and I confirmed that I had turned eight. So far, so good.
We had been very fortunate up to this point and now it was time to leave. We moved quietly and quickly away from the camp. When I estimated we were about one hundred yards away we found two good-sized trees to get behind. I motioned for Mark to fire a round from his grenade launcher into the camp and I fired a whole magazine from my M-16. There was no response for about a minute and then AK-47 rounds began to whistle above our heads, as we became intimate tree huggers. Next, there was a huge explosion that sounded like a small bomb exploded. It was the sound of sixteen claymores all firing at the same time.
Then there was stillness and the light from the camp began to fade. The only sounds came from the lingering rain pelting down on the jungle canopy, an occasional lightning strike along with the sound of distant thunder. The silence was deafening. We waited for a few more minutes but the silence remained, no yells, no commands, no moaning from wounded soldiers.
I told Mark to get on the radio, call Lucky, and have him bring up the patrol and the mules. We now had to clean up and get out of there before someone starts checking on the camp. A large cartel force could show up at any time to find out why they had lost radio contact with the camp. Time was of the essence.
Lucky shows up in about fifteen minutes with the patrol and mules. Mark and I led the patrol into the camp very cautiously. The lights had vanished so we needed to use our flashlights to see what had happened. I warned everyone to be careful; you never knew if a wounded cartel soldier was waiting to ambush you.
No one in the camp was alive. The first thing we did was count bodies. The drone plane had spotted fifteen warm bodies and we found fifteen dead bodies. Five were cocaine workers and ten were guards. Along with the gasoline cans, we brought cameras and finger printing kits. We numbered each body, took pictures, and fingerprinted each one. That information would help headquarters determine to which cartel clan this group belonged. We removed all the bodies from the camp area. I would send a special patrol later to bring back the remains. The odds were good that when they returned the bodies would be gone.
We poured the gasoline around and set the camp on fire. If the cartel did not know something was wrong before, they would surely figure it out very soon. The fire would not do as much damage as normal because of the rain, but the cartel leaders would get the message. The cartel lost fifteen workers and soldiers. They can replace them, but more than that, they had lost millions in cocaine, which went directly to the bottom line. That would get their attention.
We arrived back at base camp just before sunrise. It was still raining and we were wet, tired, and ready for bed. I did not get much sleep and Mark had the same problem. It took a long time for both of us to get the memory of that night out of our systems. For one of us, it took a lot longer.
My escapades were written up in the Special Forces Monthly Review, giving of course an unknown location, but not as a heroic mission completed without any injuries or fatalities to our troops, but as one they did not recommend for anyone else to copy.
In private, Mark and I were congratulated on the success of our mission by headquarters but told never ever do anything so stupid again. Trust me, I never did. I returned to the States soon after that mission, one reason being there had been several death threats on my life. There was a reward worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring my head, dead or alive, back to the cartel.
Chapter 35: Mickke D & TC
A flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and all of a sudden I am back in the real world. I awake from my daydream in a clammy sweat, just in time to make the turn from 31 onto 9 heading into Little River. It is still raining and I do not remember driving from Surfside to the turn off onto 9. It was as if my eyes were watching the road but my mind was back in Colombia and it was a scary feeling. I was not in control.
I have not thought about that night in Colombia for many, many years. I hope the dreams do not return along with the sleepless nights and the feelings of depression and remorse. I was trained to put death and killing behind me and move on. However, we all handle death, especially when caused by our own hands, in our own separate ways. There were times when I did not handle it well.
I try changing the subject in my mind, to forget about that night in the jungle. I change the agenda to thinking about several questions which I need answered. First, why has Barry not told me about the connection between Trever Byers and TC? Second, I do not think TC is telling me the entire truth about his visit to Bald Head Island. Third, what is the deal with Lorrie and Maggie? They are just too good to be true. First thing in the morning, I will ask Jimmy to have the FBI check out the twins and their mother.
As TC comes back through the house and into the pool area, he notices the twins are packing up.
“Do you girls have a hot date tonight?” he asks.
Maggie answers, “Not really, we are going to meet Freddy for dinner and clubbing. Your new friend is cute, is he married?”
“I have no idea Maggie but I’ll find out for you.”
The way he knows it is Maggie is because the twins always wear necklaces, Maggie’s has an “M” at the bottom and Lorrie’s has an “L.” He wonders how many times the girls exchange necklaces and then mess with some person’s mind.
He is well aware that Cindy and the twins are too good to be just a chance meeting in a grocery store. He has not just fallen off the turnip truck. He did an Internet check on Cindy and the twins. It showed they moved here from Virginia Beach not Columbus, Georgia, as they told him. Cindy’s record was clean but the twins have gotten into quite a bit of trouble along the way but nothing serious. So what, Cindy is good in bed and the twins are nice window dressing around the
neighborhood. Besides that, he has introduced the twins to Freddy and now he is a very happy camper. Oh, to be young again.
He has been very careful about what he says around Cindy and the girls. He is not so sure about Freddy. He would just bet that the twins have some very persuasive powers. The good thing is that Freddy really does not know that much and he knows nothing about the map he sent to Trever Byers.
Little does TC know that this will be the last time he will see the twins and Cindy. The next morning when he calls Cindy, he gets no answer and when he tries her cell phone, it is no longer in service. He drives over to their apartment but it is empty. Cindy and the twins have packed up and left town in a big hurry.
More bad news: He hears on TV that a man died on the beach last night. The police say it was a murder. The man was Freddy. The police have the suspects in jail after a phone tip from an unidentified female. The suspects were in bad shape. Freddy must have put up a hell of a fight. He wonders if the twins could be involved in any way.
Now he has another dilemma. Does he tell the police about the relationship between Freddy and the twins or will they figure it out on their own?
The twins met Freddy the previous night at Senor Frogs for dinner at Broadway at the Beach. There are some great clubs there so you can have dinner and walk to the clubs. Things started going downhill at the second club the twins and Freddy visited.
Freddy is a great looking guy with a great accent and therefore some guys get very jealous of him. In addition, what makes it worse is that he has two beautiful girls with him. He is a very easygoing person but he knows that some guys, particularly after they have had a few too many, think they are much bigger and badder than they really are. Just because of that fact, he has learned not to drink more than one beer per hour, always have a good full meal ahead of time and do a lot of dancing to wear off the alcohol.
Murder on the Front Nine Page 14
