“Who gets the money in the jar?” Steve asked.
“Those three extortionists in the pool. Just what they need, another fucking pony.”
“Daddy, one more please.” The girls chimed.
“You three terrorists have dog ears or something? Jeez, gimme’ a break already.” He added another dollar to the jug.
“You started the jug, James. Can’t blame them for holding you to it.” Jane linked her arm with his.
“Its like they all have radar, or sonar, or ESP. It’s weird, I’m tellin’ ya, they are weird.” Jimmy grabbed up little Hope who jumped into his lap in her wet suit, reached for what appeared to be his martini with an olive and took a sip.
“Ummm.” Steve started to say something, but Kate cut in.
“Sparkling water with an olive for camouflage, right Hope?” Kate leaned in.
“Yep, tickles my nose.” Hope polished it off, then ate the olive, handing the toothpick to her dad.
“OK, smarty, go get daddy another, please. Get your sister to help you so it doesn’t spill.” Hope kissed Jimmy’s cheek, and slid off his lap to fetch a sister and a fresh drink.
“Ask your good sister to help you, not the other one!” Jimmy called after her. Four-year-old Hope turned, hand on her hip, and rolled her eyes at her dad.
“Did you teach her that move, that hand on cocked hip and eye roll thing?” Jimmy asked his wife. Everyone laughed at the performance.
“Seriously Jimmy, this place makes the Cartwright Ponderosa look like a row house. And that house overlooking the lake. Who lives there? What gives?” Kate asked.
‘Oh, that little place, that’s mom’s house. As for this spread, well, nursey here took one look at my fine as..rear end, and decided it was love at first sight, so I sweetened the pot. I was an unemployed, butt-shot soon to be ex-Marine. I gave her the last two dollars I had, and told her to buy us a lottery ticket. If we won, I promised to take her away from all of this to a life of wedded bliss and riches.”
“You won the lottery? Oh my God.” Kate exclaimed.
“Yep, not just a lottery, Kate. THE lottery. The mega, power, ultra whatever national one.” Jimmy explained.
“How much…no! I don’t want to know.” Kate stopped herself. “It would just change my perception of you as a sleaze-ball investigative reporter. I like that Jimmy. Family guy Jimmy is a good one too. Idle filthy rich Jimmy, not so much. Do you donate to charities?”
“I donate to four charities. They’re called Hannah, Hope, Mallory, and Jane.”
“That’s not true, James. You created and fund the Gunnery Sergeant William Maynard Wounded Warrior Foundation, the Hope Against Heroin Foundation in Atlanta, and the Hand-Up Foundation for the Rural Poor.“ Jane spoke up. “Anonymously, I might add.”
“So, what are you doing to occupy your time since the Red Tide campaign?” Steve asked. “You can only swear so much, and buy so many ponies.”
“I decided to slay my last remaining dragon.” Jimmy looked at Kate. He reached over to an end table, and produced an Atlanta Beacon Journal, handing it across the table. Kate and Steve read the front page headline together:
Dateline, Atlanta, Georgia.
Sitting State Representative James “Rocky” Rockenfeld resigned today amidst allegations of theft in office and bigamy, and is currently under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Sources say an original Marriage License was delivered anonymously in a sealed envelope, along with bank statements and video surveillance of bribes and corruption in office. The documents prove Representative Rockenfeld was married previously, and had abandoned his wife and two children amid a scandal surrounding money missing from a church congregation in rural Georgia. Authorities believe…
End
Acknowledgments
I dedicate my first book to my father, my lovely bride, beautiful daughters, and mostly angelic grandsons, who thought Papa could only draw pictures. I would especially like to thank my daughter Mandy for her assistance in proofing and editing, and my niece Gina for her unbelievable technical expertise. My friend Dan O’Keeffe provided the inspiration to tell a good story, and my lifelong friend Terry Monnie provided the example to finish what I started.
Almost fifty years ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Coast Guard Academy in New London for of all things, football. I chose a different road. I can only imagine what might have unfolded had I traveled that path.
Semper Paratus.
New authors can only continue their passion to tell a good story because readers like you are willing to take a chance. Thank you for taking a chance on me. If you enjoyed this novel, please take a moment to rate your experience.
Read an excerpt from the new W. Dale Justice book coming in the Spring of 2017, as the Bayboro Team are once again called to duty.
Crossroads
The Bayboro team that successfully destroyed The Red Tide algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico is reunited to fight a far deadlier plague sweeping the country: carfentanil laced heroin, 10,000 times more potent than morphine. Untold numbers die each day from overdoses from the opiate, laced with an elephant tranquilizer, only to be resurrected from the grave by rapid injection of Narcan.
Sixty percent of the nation’s population and gross national product occur within a 600-mile radius of Cincinnati, Ohio, where I-75 stretches from Miami, Florida to Detroit, Michigan and the cities along the Great Lakes, I-71 leads to Columbus and Cleveland in the north, and to Louisville on to St. Louis heading south west. The Ohio River connects Pittsburg in the north, to New Orleans in the Gulf
It is here, in the Queen City where these corridors all meet at a single bridge over the Ohio River. This is the test market from which a plague will be released upon a nation. This is the Crossroads.
"And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,
The winds and the birds shall deliver,
To the Queen of the West,
In her garlands dressed,
On the banks of the Beautiful River."
1854, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Prologue
As reported in the Washington Post, August 29, 2016
By Katie Mettler
‘This is unprecedented’: 174 heroin overdoses in 6 days in Cincinnati
The original numbers were startling enough — 30 heroin overdoses across Cincinnati in a single weekend. Then they just kept climbing.
Seventy-eight more overdoses and at least three deaths were reported during a 48-hour period Tuesday and Wednesday. And at the end of last week, after a six-day stretch of emergency-room visits that exhausted first responders and their medical supplies, the overdose tally soared to a number health officials are calling “unprecedented”: 174. On average, Cincinnati has four overdose reports per day, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, and usually no more than 20 or 25 in a given week.
But pure heroin is what’s responsible for the normal average. And that’s not what’s on the streets now, they say. The culprit responsible for the staggering number was probably heroin cut with the latest opioid boost meant to deliver consumers a stronger, extended high — carfentanil. That’s a tranquilizer for, among other large animals, elephants. And it’s 10,000 times as strong as morphine.
For now, law enforcement officials have been unable to track down the source of the toxic cocktail, but they think the spate of record overdoses could be caused by a single heroin batch laced with carfentanil.
Chapter One
Ohio River Twenty Miles East of Cincinnati
“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The evening chill and bright starlight made the night brighter. Approaching midnight, the tug plowed through the swift river current heading east, pushing fou
r barges laden with coal up stream. Destination, Pittsburg. Winter was just around the corner, and Midwestern power plants were replenishing their stock.
The September night air was crisp, a healthy breeze over the water. Tonight, James was distracted. His shift was over hours ago, and normally he would be sound asleep in his bunk. Not tonight. They were late. He glanced up at the cockpit window. The crewman at the helm was fixed on the navigation buoys, occasionally shining the remote spotlight on the river ahead to capture their position in the channel, especially as bends in the river approached. The pilot’s attention was not on James holding the railing a story below and behind him in the dark of night.
GPS was a wonderful thing, but staying in the channel was paramount, and the channel was constantly shifting. The river was full of all kind of surprises, including submerged cars and trucks from bygone days, stoves, refrigerators, and sunken barge and steamboat relics accumulated over two centuries, not to mention three-foot diameter trees dislodged from the sandy shores by rising river levels following storms, to become water logged and sinking to the bottom.
Before the lock and dam system was built in the 1950’s and 60’s to maintain water deep enough for inter-coastal navigation and shipping, many of these forgotten treasures would be occasionally revealed in the dry season. A person could walk across the mighty Ohio during the Fall. James grandfather spoke of making the crossing to Kentucky on foot as a young man. Today, pool stage at this point on the river was twenty-six feet in the channel, considerably less closer to shore.
James toed the two bright orange plastic bags at his feet. Each were the size of a gym bag, and had additional floatation strapped tightly around their circumference. He looked astern at the frothy trail of water churned by the powerful propellers, then beyond. The noise from the huge diesel engines powering the tug against the current almost drowned out every other sound. He looked again. There it was, entering the river from the mouth of a creek after the tug had passed, flashing the signal three times with a small hand held directional lantern. Wait ten seconds, then repeat.
James flashed his small handheld three times, then bent and hefted the first orange bag to the railing, dropping it over the side. He repeated the procedure with the second bag, then watched as each bag began transmitting a blinking red strobe light as the bags bobbed in the vessels wake. From a distance of a hundred yards, the red strobe was invisible, and soon lost from sight. No way it could be spotted from shore or another passing tug. Still James waited and watched. If the Zodiac missed the drop, or the bags somehow sank, or got tangled in driftwood, the duration of his time on this Earth would most certainly be cut violently short.
Since 9/11, inter-coastal shipping was monitored by Homeland Security. Gone were the days a tug crew could pull up against a stretch of riverbank, hop into a skiff, and go to the nearest town to party. Smuggling had been a breeze in those good old days. It was amazing what you could hide under a thin screen of coal or rock salt on one of the barges. Today, every tug and barge were thoroughly searched with explosive and drug sniffing dogs once loaded. Crew were screened, searched, and background checked, and must produce registered ID’s. Once a tug set sail, they stopped at no ports or riverbanks, cruising 24/7 until they reached their destination. No one coming on, no one getting off. At their destination, they were boarded while still a hundred yards off shore, searched again, and the crew checked again. Navigation beacons aboard each tug alerted authorities immediately if any unplanned stops occurred.
As a result, loading and unloading contraband occurred at night, while tugs and barges were underway. All it took was one crewman willing to participate to snatch a bag from a speedboat that pulled alongside. James would collect a nice chunk of cash when he returned to New Orleans from Pittsburg with a fresh load of coal for Louisiana power plants. A couple more runs, and James would retire from riverboat crewing. Maybe head down to the Caribbean for a few years.
Three hundred yards astern, James caught sight of the Zodiac turning back towards the creek mouth, as the stern wake from her outboards briefly created white water. No sound of the outboard could be heard over the rumble of the diesel engines, nor could the fast inflatable be seen if they kept their speed down, and avoided a bow or stern wake.
James removed the latex gloves which prevented scent attaching to his skin, and tossed them into the river. Below deck, he would wash his hands in gasoline, then soap before hitting his bunk for the night. Those damn dogs could smell three-day old drug residue the size of a grain of dust on your hands or shirt. He could always spot a fellow smuggler in a crowd on the waterfront. They always smelled like gasoline.
James had one more task to perform before his mission was complete. He removed a remote control device from his pocket, flipped it on, and waited. Ten minutes passed, when the tug’s powerful searchlight was again activated to locate the next channel buoy, a quarter mile ahead bobbing in the current. James waited until the barges had passed the buoy, and it was just twenty yards starboard of his position before he hit the red button. The light on the remote turned green. He switched the device off, and dropped it into the river to join the menagerie of debris on the river bottom.
The black Zodiac slowed noticeably as it approached the mouth of Big Indian Creek, the engine barely a whisper. A single streetlight illuminated the century old steel girder bridge spanning the creek mouth, and the two cannons mounted into stone revetments as the bridge gateway. This was Point Pleasant, a sleepy little river town on the Ohio, founded in 1813 twenty miles east of Cincinnati. Population 130. And, it was the birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and U.S President, the sole reason for the two canons on a two lane highway bridge across a creek.
The restored frame cottage, Grant’s birthplace, still stood, and received visitors passing by on Route 52 between Cincinnati and Huntington, West Virginia. Rt. 232 intersected with Route 52 at the bridge, and led seven miles north to the little town of Felicity, drug capital of Clermont County. Felicity has a population of 818 souls, a median household income barely $20,000, with 35% living below the poverty line. As a result, folks made money in untraditional ways.
A small, quarter acre State Park provided a lookout point over the Ohio River and the mouth of Big Indian Creek, if you could call it that. The rest area sported a parking lot for 8 cars, three picnic tables, one pedestal grill, an outdoor fountain to retrieve well water, and an open air smelly concrete block pit restroom cleaned at least every couple years.
The creek was quite deep this close to the river, and navigable to pleasure boats inland at least a mile. Farmland and pastures lined the creek, with the occasional house or barn every quarter mile.
The sound from the Zodiac’s outboard motor was muffled by steep forty foot banks and passing big rig trucks on the bridge. No light from the single streetlight over the bridge reached the water. Two men dressed in black crewed the boat, one to steer the outboard, the other to ride shotgun. Literally, a pistol grip Mossberg 12 gauge lay across the knees of the man in the bow.
Big Indian Creek was a perfect drop point. Almost.
“Halt! Cut your engine and get your hands in the air!” the voice magnified by a bullhorn. Suddenly, the creek was flooded with light from the banks, as rows of highway repair floodlights switched on from both sides of the creek. A bright spotlight mounted on the bow of the Clermont County Sheriff’s river rescue boat froze the Zodiac occupants, as the swift boat screamed towards them from up stream. Another boat that had been hidden along the Kentucky shore charged the half mile across the river to close off the mouth of the creek as soon as the Zodiac had entered the stream. The stone bridge pedestrian walk was filled by a half dozen SWAT officers with assault rifles, as were both riverbanks.
The shotgun armed smuggler reached behind him, and threw an orange bag into the water, then raised his hands. The bag promptly bobbed and lazily floated towards the closing police boat, where it was easily plucked from the water by a deputy.
“Smart mov
e, asshole. Next time, try taking the floatation off.” The deputy in the rescue boat shook his head, and laughed. “Why don’t you jump in and try to swim for it. My associates need the target practice.”
Chapter Two
Over the Rhine Neighborhood
“He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Deshaun moved catlike down the alley, pausing at the corner of McMicken Street. It was early September, but the temperatures these past days felt more like July. The daytime heat was absorbed into the concrete and asphalt, then radiated back into the air. It was half past midnight, and still almost 80 degrees.
This area of Over the Rhine had yet to be gentrified, and probably wouldn’t be for a long time to come. The Civil War era brick buildings held the heat like a furnace. That’s not what caused him to break out in a cold sweat this night. It was the black SUV with tricked out rims rolling slowly down McMicken Street. The tinted windows were down revealing a driver and three passengers, two in front, two in back.
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