Chapter 22

Monday

Martine, the FBI agent helping watch both my house and the gang house woke me in the middle of the night. “We have company next door. Someone is trying to open the boathouse door,” she whispered.

I woke the girls around me and asked them to wake the dog handlers and have them gear up and guard the house. I didn’t want the dogs in the tunnel if there might be shooting. Besides, our sensors should let us know where the intruders were as well as the dogs could.

I dressed and put my armor on before stuffing my Glock in the cross-draw holster and grabbing three extra magazines for the Glock. By the time I pulled my MP5/10 with extra magazines, Sonja, the agent from the ATF warned us that there were seven intruders two hundred yards into the tunnel between the boathouse and the gang house.

The microphones were picking up conversation indicating that they were hoping the arms and explosives were still there. Nothing had been said publicly or in the paper about an arms cache, just the drugs. None of the prisoners we captured in the raid saw anything but drugs being removed from the house because we had taken the weapons down the tunnel before the raid.

Even if the weapons were gone, another shipment was expected just before dawn, and they wanted to be there to intercept it. Sonja had called for reinforcements but didn’t expect them to be here until long after the intruders reached the cellar of the gang house.

She had called for two of the agents watching the Hanley property to come in from the north to prevent anyone from escaping back out through the boathouse. While Martine drove, I finished dressing, even managing to insert my earpiece so I could hear Sonja’s running commentary. Larissa, the Brazilian beauty who was the DEA agent here, and Sylvia, were likewise finishing getting dressed as we approached the gang house.

“Please be advised,” Sonja warned us as we pulled into the driveway of the gang house, “six handlers sans dogs are five minutes behind you. The other five will remain here, guarding the house.”

The nine of us were waiting in the tunnels, crouched behind shields, well before the intruders got close enough to notice us. Sonja had patched the tunnel microphones in so we could listen to them. Sylvia stiffened when the leader commented that it should be an easy mission, even if the females guarding the house got involved.

They were less than a hundred yards from us before they realized we were there. “Federal agents! Drop your weapons,” Sylvia shouted.

“We are looking for any excuse to squeeze the trigger,” she added when they froze but didn’t drop their weapons. “We have armor and cover, you don’t. There are armed agents guarding the exit behind you, too,” she warned further.

“You in the back, don’t be stupid. The guys in front of you are only going to provide you cover until they get shot and fall down,” I shouted to warn the idiot who was slowly trying to bring his hunting rifle to bear on us.

They were whispering quietly enough that our microphones couldn’t pick it up, so we were prepared for them to try something. “Fine, we surrender,” the leader announced, laying down what looked like a TEC-9. The others followed suit.

While the rest of us guarded the other men, we had the leader come forward and lie face down. Leon dealt with securing him with the wrist and ankle shackles, and then searching him. Leon came away with two pistols and a knife before locking the leader into the cell the girls had originally occupied.

Surprisingly, they didn’t try anything while we shackled the rest of the men. Martine pointed out to us that the men were all white skinheads with gang tattoos identifying them as members of the Whyte Knyghts, a well-funded, rapidly growing white supremacist group that was making inroads into other white supremacist groups.

[Author’s note--the name Whyte Knyghts is fictitious as far as I am aware]

After an hour of interrogation, Sylvia, Martine, and Larissa were frustrated, getting nothing but silence in answer to their questioning.

Winking at Sylvia to let her know I wasn’t serious, I asked loud enough for everyone in the cell to hear me. “Look, they’re not going to talk. The U.S. Attorney General has classified the Whyte Knyghts as a terrorist group so they’re going to go to Gitmo for a couple months before disappearing into an East European prison we don’t officially have anymore.

“With the recent budget cuts, they might even fall out of the plane before it gets to Gitmo. Let me save the government some money. I’ll take each of them into the other cell to interrogate them. If they don’t talk, you’ll hear them shoot at me with their hidden backup gun before I return fire. We drag the bodies out and wait for the coroner. You might even get a commendation for saving the government so much money,” I said.

“You can’t do that, we have rights,” the leader shouted.

“You invaded my property and you were armed. I, as the property owner, am worried about the safety of my family. When you display a gun on my property, I have every right to shoot you in defense of myself and my family,” I replied.

“Let me run home and get some interrogation tools. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said.

I was back in fifteen minutes with everything I needed. Juwanna would take me to task in the morning, but I was in a hurry tonight. One of her bottles of cream now had enough red food coloring added to it that it looked like blood. Unfortunately, I had spilled a little in the sink while I was mixing it. Then I poured it back into the bottle, grabbed a few more things, and hurried back. I hoped to finish my “interrogations” in time to clean up my mess before Juwanna found it, but I doubted it.

“Let me start with the big man,” I told Sylvia once I was ready. I could tell that he was nervous as we led him out of the cell, but he still maintained his facade of bravery.

“Here are the ground rules,” I explained loud enough for all the intruders to hear. “I will ask you one question and wait five seconds. If you fail to answer the question to my satisfaction, I will be forced to defend myself when you pull a secondary weapon.”

With that, I pushed the big man out of the holding cell and into the cell where we had originally found the weapons. I didn’t even wait, firing one of the confiscated pistols at the wall, and then firing one shot from my Glock into the opposite wall.

The guy was shaking when I grabbed his arm. Since he wasn’t expecting the move, it was easy to raise his arm and hit him under the armpit, temporarily disabling him. While he was stunned, I did the other arm, too, and then the front of both legs. Stuffing a gag into his mouth, I had Leon help me drag his unmoving body out of the cell, making sure his people saw the red spot on his chest and the trail of red we left when we dragged him out. With my back to the other prisoners, I continued dribbling red cream until we were out of their sight.

“How the heck can he answer you when he’s gagged?” Sylvia asked angrily, although her grin belied her tone of voice.

“I didn’t know I had to give him a chance to answer. His Miranda rights give him the right to remain silent, they don’t say anything about allowing them to talk, so I just helped him remain silent,” I protested. I could see the others in the background trying to keep from laughing aloud.

The next two went about the same, although the third man spat, “Screw you!” at me when I asked him to tell me something worth keeping him alive for.

That gave me an idea. After Leon and I dragged him out, I held a whispered conversation with Leon and Sylvia. This time, Leon and I entered the holding cell together. “I’m tired of wasting bullets on you pukes. This is my friend Leon,” I introduced him to everyone. “Leon is one of those unique individuals who prefer men instead of women,” I told them. Since Leon had called his wife as soon as he knew he had a job, I knew better. I wanted them to think so, however. “He’s always commenting on wanting to enjoy a virgin white guy, so I thought I’d give him the opportunity,” I told them. As a group, they took a step back from us.

“See one you think is cute?” I asked Leon.

Pointing at one of the men, Leon chuckled evilly, “His face is ugly, but he has a cute rear end, and I won’t be looking at his face.”

“Keep that Nigger away from me,” the chosen man screamed hysterically. Spinning quickly, I looked behind me, and then turned to confront Leon. “Didn’t your agents make sure there weren’t any Niggers down here?” I asked.

Leon was shocked, but recovered quickly. “Yessuh, we made sure,” he answered.

“Him,” the man shouted, pointing as best he could at Leon while still cowering.

“You dummy. You don’t even know a gen-yoo-wine African American when you see one,” I chided the man. “Aside from that, how stupid is it to antagonize the man who is going to be shoving his fourteen inches into you in a few minutes?” I taunted.

“Have you ever raped a woman?” I asked the man. He nodded nervously. “I guarantee that you’re going to scream much louder than she did,” I laughed at him as I reached for him. Unlike the first three victims, he fought as hard as he could to keep us from dragging him away.

Sobbing, he actually broke and gave us useful information. When he finished, I left his gag off and made two quick strikes to his thighs to incapacitate them. The two blows brought screams of pain before I gagged him. We undid his pants and pulled his jeans down around his ankles and poured some of the fake blood into his plumber’s crack and the back of his tighty-whities. Then we dragged him, moaning, and squirming, out of the cell, making sure the remaining three prisoners could see.

“He’s still alive,” Sylvia commented disdainfully when he started struggling.

“Don’t worry, as much as he’s bleeding, he won’t be for long. I’m sure he’ll be dead from blood loss long before the ambulance gets here. Did we even call for one?”

Twelve agents had finally arrived in response to Sonja’s earlier call for help. They just stared at us and shook their heads as two of them dragged the man away to join the first three. I could tell that Sylvia had explained our interrogation technique to them.

The three remaining prisoners were huddled together in the back corner of the cell, jockeying for position to see who got to stand behind the other two. Leon pointed out his next victim, leering as he grabbed the front of his pants suggestively and we dragged the guy, kicking, and screaming, from the cell.

This guy looked to be in his early twenties and was shaking like a leaf. By the time I left him alone in the room with Leon, we knew everything except how old he had been when he lost his cherry. Thank god it was all recorded because he rambled so fast that no two people could have written it all down. Once we gagged him, I left the cell and stepped out into the hall. “Where’s the prisoner?” Sylvia asked.

“I’ll give them a couple more minutes of privacy, and then go see if the guy needs me to perform the Heimlich maneuver. He’s had something stuck in his throat for a couple minutes,” I chuckled.

We dragged the man’s limp body out of the cell a couple minutes later. “No blood to clean up,” I said. “He forgot to breathe, or maybe Leon forgot to let him breathe.”

By now, the two remaining prisoners were begging to talk, so Martine and Larissa interviewed them. I had to laugh when they started talking even faster when they saw Leon and me enter the cell.

“That was the darndest thing I ever saw,” the lead ATF guy commented. “Nobody has ever gotten one of the Whyte Knyghts to talk before, and you got four to blab,” he commented, laughing at our interrogation techniques.

The intruders were secured long before the pre-dawn delivery arrived and Leon and I high fived each other, laughing at the reaction of the Whyte Knyghts. “My wife is gonna laugh herself silly when she hears about this,” Leon chuckled.

A pontoon boat arrived, one identical to the one we had previously found filled with drugs in the Hanley boathouse. The three men were pretending to be fishing, although we could tell that they were using night vision goggles to make sure the coast was clear.

Using what we learned from our interrogation of the Whyte Knyghts, I popped the door to the boathouse open and flicked a flashlight on and off three times. Seconds later, using a quiet electric trolling motor, the men motored the pontoon boat into the boathouse, and I secured the door.

As expected, they switched to the other pontoon boat, a third identical copy. Once aboard, they opened a hidden compartment we didn’t know about to make sure their payment was there. At that point, I squeezed my eyes shut and flicked on the lights in the boathouse. While the three men with night vision goggles were temporarily blinded, the ATF agents, who had been hiding, shouted for them to freeze. I dropped to the ground and pulled my goggles off.

Surprisingly, the men actually surrendered. Up to the point where I turned on the lights, not a word had been spoken. Once the three men started speaking, it quickly became apparent that they were Russian. When they refused to tell us anything, we took them down the tunnel. Fortunately, someone much smarter than me had brought two of our electric ATVs to the boathouse and we used them to take the men to the holding cells.

They were a bit nervous when they saw what looked like blood on the floor. Leon and I used the same technique on these three. The first two still refused to talk. Evidently, the third man had a bad experience in a Russian prison. Terrified thinking about what Leon would do to him, he started talking ... and talking ... and talking. By the time he finally finished, we had enough information to deal a major blow to their smuggling operation.

The Whyte Knyghts imported cocaine and handguns from South America, and pot from Mexico to sell in the states. They used the profit to import larger weapons and girls from Russia and other countries, both of which they sold in the states. The Whyte Knyghts kept the best weapons for their own paramilitary group. Cash, precious metals, and gemstones were the accepted currency, although electronic funds transfers were becoming more common.

We now knew approximately where the weapons and drugs came ashore. Rather than taking the chance of using one of the ports and being discovered, they used an ancient pirate tunnel purportedly used by pirates two centuries ago. The one man who talked knew they were near Bay St. Louis but didn’t know more than that.

The boat the smugglers had docked in the boathouse was loaded with a lot of hardware. To get to it, though, we had to use the sling in the boathouse to lift the boat out of the water so we could reach the sealed, watertight compartments in the pontoons and beneath the boat. Ten more cases of the AK-12 rifles were aboard. There were several smaller boxes containing sixty-round casket magazines, laser sights, target indicators, holo sights, and grenade launchers for the AK-12 rifles.

There were two cases of Russian AN-94 rifles, each complete with a GP-30 40 mm grenade launchers and Kobra sights. These were the rifles of choice for the Spetsnaz GRU troops.

In addition, there was ammunition for both rifles and grenades for the grenade launchers.

The previously undetected hidden compartment in the upper part of the pontoon boat that the Russians had opened held more gold bars, obviously payment that had been put in place before our raid against the gang house.

Learning that the military was arriving today to exchange weapons with me for the AK-12s, the ATF left everything with me, including another Christmas list of goodies the ATF hoped I had enough money to buy for them.

Breakfast was over by the time we got back to the house, but Juwanna and Mabel had our breakfast nearly finished when we got there. My harem had waited to eat with me. “Messy boy,” Juwanna accused me with a finger wag, although there was mirth in her eyes.

“I was in a bit of a hurry,” I explained.

“We know, Sonja has told us all about how you tricked those guys into talking,” Mabel laughed.

The agents who had arrived to help joined us for breakfast. Someone had obviously brought Juwanna more cream this morning, although what they got from the cows this morning shouldn’t have had time to separate completely yet. I decided not to ask since that would again bring up the mess I left.

Everyone was laughing about what Leon and I did to the prisoners. Despite his dark color, Leon was clearly blushing. The dogs all scrambled for the front door indicating that someone was arriving. Gratefully, they didn’t bark anymore, although there were a few quiet growls.

Carl had arrived, bringing Howard Harkness, the number two person in the Kroger produce buying chain of command in charge of the southeastern United States. He greeted me excitedly, but was a bit cautious about the dogs behind me. When Carl came in and walked nonchalantly through the dogs, Howard did, too, although each dog made sure to sniff him thoroughly.

Howard’s eyes widened again when he saw all the agents sitting at the table eating breakfast. I explained that we had just finished a takedown of two smuggling groups still trying to use the property next door.

Shoving the last two bites of my breakfast into my face, I took Howard and Carl into my study and showed them my latest proposed land use map for the property. I could see that Howard had something on his mind, so I asked him.