by Mark Donahue
His first decision was to unload the gold from the truck. This was based on the fact that he had absolutely no idea what the hell he would do with seventeen tons of gold if he simply took it back to Phoenix. He couldn’t just sell it on a street corner. He needed time to think. He needed a plan and he had no plan. Hell, he didn’t even have an idea.
Putting the Ford into gear, he made his way further into the rock-hard desert looking for something. Turning on his headlights he made his way around rocks and cacti and washed out riverbeds to an area over a mile from the road. Moving behind a distinctive pile of rocks that hid the truck from view, Lester cut the engine and the lights and sat in the dark and quiet.
For fifteen minutes, Lester sat motionless behind the wheel of the Ford. As darkness quickly overtook the desert, he took an apple and canteen of water from his knapsack and moved from the cab of the truck to its roof.
Surrounded on two sides by rock outcroppings forged over the millennia by rushing springtime rains and hidden on a third side by tall cacti, the roof of the Ford became Lester’s dining room, complete with a floor show of shooting stars across a blue-black sky. It also became his bed for the night and the place where he made the plans for the rest of his life.
At daybreak Lester awoke in a start and wondered if it had all been a dream. He climbed off the top of the truck and once again checked the contents under the tarp. With reality confirmed, Lester began to execute the first part of his plan.
He left the Ford and initiated a thorough search of the area. He checked for landmarks that he would be able to find again. He moved a hundred yards in a circular route around the Ford to determine where he could off-load the gold in an area that would not be found by the occasional fool who would wander into the Arizona desert.
While he knew he could probably stack the gold in the open and no one would find it in the overwhelming emptiness, he could not bring himself to take such a chance. After an hour of looking for someplace that could temporarily hide the gold, Lester decided to hide it in relatively plain sight. On the high ground above where he parked the truck, he found an area of soft sand nearly thirty feet by thirty feet. He found he could move the sand away by hand and sink the heavy bars into six inch holes he had dug with a flat-edged piece of stone.
For over eight hours, Lester worked to near exhaustion as he moved over 1700 twenty-pound gold bars from the Ford to their sandy burial spot by tossing them off the back of the truck into the shallow holes he had dug. He then covered the entire area with loose rocks that littered the landscape. After he was done, he was concerned that he had hidden his treasure too well. What if he couldn’t find it again?
He moved back to the truck and looked for something to write out a map but found nothing. As the late afternoon sun began to bake the desert yet again, Lester realized how everything in the area looked exactly the same and how easy it would be to lose the gold forever if he were unable to somehow mark the spot and create a map of some kind.
Loosening his shirt in the increasing heat, Lester fingered a large safety pin that held the top half of his shirt closed. Taking the pin off, he opened it and decided he had found a writing utensil after all. Taking off his shirt, he spent the next hour scraping a map onto his pasty white stomach and chest. Drawing the road down his left rib cage and putting an X where the turn off into the desert was above his belt line. Drawing the creek bed north of his navel and showing two round areas representing the rock outcroppings as blood began to appear as a result of the dull pin being dragged over his skin. Lester had to stop from time to time to wipe it away and take a rest from the pain. But as time went on, he found himself digging deeper with the pin to make sure he could find his way back. As each etching was made in his skin, it also etched into his brain. He would not forget this spot. Not ever.
Taking one bar of the gold, he put it under his seat and started up the Ford. Making his way back to the dirt road, he followed the nearby creek bed and noted on the odometer that it was 1.1 miles. Scratching the information into his left arm, Lester turned right onto the road and slowly made his way another thirteen miles back toward Route 60 and his new life in Phoenix.
Several times he looked in his rearview mirror toward the Jasper and wondered what had happened with the Germans and the Frenchman the previous evening. He felt a bit guilty he had left Eric to fend for himself but shook off the urge to turn around. He was needed in Phoenix.
Less than an hour later, and within a few blocks of his lean-to/sometimes bedroom at the back of the bus station, Lester decided to abandon the Ford. If he was seen by anyone, including cops, in that truck, they would assume he had stolen it, and then he would also have to explain a twenty-pound piece of gold under his seat.
Pulling onto a dead end street, Lester drove to the middle and he left the Ford to those who would surely find it within hours. Making it as convenient as possible, he left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. He laughed to himself when he realized it was likely one of his associates would probably find the truck and sell it for a hundred dollars.
Wrapping the bar in his knapsack, Lester looked at the Ford for the last time and walked the six blocks to the area behind the bus station. As night fell, he ran into some close friends, some familiar faces with no names, and still others he had never even spoken to. He wondered why they all looked the same. He figured they did not yet know that their lives were about to change as much as his.
Chapter 42
Jasper Mine—2014
After a second long and fruitless day of searching for gold in the enormous mine, Jon had a suggestion. “We need some light before we start messing around back near that damn pit.” Taking on any chore to delay working directly near the pit was okay with Tom, so he gladly volunteered to go into town to buy some lights and batteries and beer.
None of the group really wanted to go back and look into the gaping, wind-blown black hole to hell, but they realized their search for gold could not be considered a serious one if they ignored the most likely spot where someone would hide a treasure.
“Pick up a video camera while you’re at it, and some nylon rope,” Ben said.
While Tom was on his shopping spree, Ben and Jon sat on the floor in the middle of the cave and talked while Sam and Pax meandered around the cavern waiting for Tom to return.
“Ben, what’s your ancestry?”
“Apache.”
“Ever live on a reservation?”
“No, my folks moved to California right after I was born. They were migrant workers when I was growing up.”
“They still living?”
“Both died in their forties, pretty much worked themselves to death, I guess. I was twelve when mom died, and dad sent me to a school for boys in San Francisco. I figured it took every penny he ever earned and saved all those years.”
“Sounds like you hit the parental lotto.”
“Yeah, I never realized what they’d done until I was older in college.”
“Where did you go?”
“Stanford.”
“I went to Princeton after I was turned down by Stanford. Where’d you end up working?”
“Always wanted to fly so I enlisted in the Air Force, and after fighter pilot training was stationed in DC flying big shots from the Capital all over the world in big jets. Pretty nice gig. Then Vietnam broke out, and I was transferred to Saigon and ordered to bomb kids and a bunch of defenseless civilians, and I couldn’t take it. So they washed me out as a conscientious objector.”
“That took some guts.”
“If you can’t sleep at night, you’re not much use to anybody for anything.”
“What did you do then?”
“Got into real estate for a while, did pretty well, and then decided to work on tribal affairs for twenty years, which led to the gaming business.”
“Casinos?”
“I negot
iated all the casino deals with the State of Arizona and federal government. I owed my people and so did the government. Plus the pay was pretty good.”
The men also talked about Jon’s background including his estranged parents, Princeton, and Wall Street. Jon talked about how he considered his a wasted life. They talked about all the things Jon had been thinking about for almost nine years. Ben was a good listener, not judgmental and not condescending. He nodded in agreement when Jon said he had been a jerk and maybe just a bit dishonest at times in his life.
“What you were does not have to be who you are or will be,” Ben said. “You have free will. You can become anything you want.”
“That’s the point, I’m so messed up I don’t know what or who I am anymore.”
“We’ve all been that way at some point in our lives. You just have to decide what and who you want to be, set a compass in that direction, and do the best you can to stay on course.”
As the men talked, Jon opened up to Ben as he had never opened up to anyone before, even Tom. Ben had a combination of toughness, brains, serenity, and kindness that made Jon realize he didn’t need to bullshit Ben. Ben understood things. Not just the desert or how to find gold, but about people and life. Stuff that mattered, at least now mattered to Jon. They probably would not have mattered ten years earlier, but they mattered now.
Lying on the cool floor of the cave and hearing the wind blowing over them the two men, one old and one lost, took a small step of moving from friends to something more. Something that had to do with trust and understanding. While Jon had never had such a relationship before, he knew it was a good thing.
After another hour of small talk and catnaps, they heard Tom ride up on the Honda, enter the Jasper, and cut the ignition. Silhouetted against the sunlit opening of the cave two hundred feet behind Tom, they could only make out his huge body as he slowly made his way to where Jon and Ben were sitting.
“What took you so long, big boy, did you stop and...”
“I ran into the missing links in that white pickup. I think I may have killed one of them,” Tom whispered hoarsely.
“What? Who were they, Tom?” Ben asked.
“Based on all the body ink, I’d say they were Neo-Nazis or some wannabes. One guy said he had friends who didn’t like us looking in the Jasper.”
Tom’s dazed look, bloody hands, nearly ripped-off shirt, plus assorted cuts and abrasions on his face indicated that the three men were deadly serious in their objection to Jasper visitors.
As Sam and Pax joined Tom, Jon, and Ben, Sam asked softly, “What happened, Tom?”
----------------------
Tom, slowly and almost whispering, recounted the previous hours. After he drove the Honda back to the trading post, he got in his van and went to a local strip mall and made his purchases. He said he didn’t notice anyone following him until he’d returned to Elsa’s and loaded the ATV ready to return to the Jasper. That’s when he saw a white pickup truck with blacked-out windows that looked like the one he and Jon had seen on their first trip to the Jasper.
When he started back into the desert, the pickup also left the parking lot but didn’t appear to follow him. But about halfway to the Jasper, Tom again saw the white pickup, this time sitting about twenty feet off the rutted path Tom was using as his road in the desert. Obviously, the pickup had taken the dirt road that paralleled Tom’s path and had cut across the desert from the road to intercept him. Remembering the pick-from the parking lot only minutes before, Tom at first slowed and then turned to his left fifty yards before he passed the truck. At first the truck didn’t move, but within a few seconds Tom saw it suddenly lurch forward in a cloud of dust and begin to move in Tom’s direction at high speed. Knowing he would not be able to outrun the truck, Tom came to a stop, dismounted the Honda, and waited.
The pickup slowed and eventually stopped, its engine idling only thirty feet from Tom. Cursing himself for not bringing the shotgun with him, Tom figured that whoever was in the truck didn’t know if he was armed or not. To emphasize that fact, Tom went to the rear of the Honda and turned his back on the pickup and made it appear as if he was putting something in his belt, which he then covered with his shirttail. Tom hoped that the fresh banana, now creating a bulge under his shirt, would give the men in the pickup some pause.
Turning back to face the truck, Tom saw it slowly move toward him and could vaguely make out at least three people in the front seat. Not liking the drama unfolding in front of him, and knowing that if they were armed they could certainly cut him down from where they sat, Tom decided to take an aggressive approach and find out who was behind the tinted glass.
Walking toward the truck, Tom was surprised to see the window on the driver’s side come down and a smiling face greet him.
“Hey man, what’s goin’ on?” a bald, tanned, thirtysomething man asked. The slender man had several tattoos including a large gothic lettered number 88 on his left arm. A Marlboro hung loosely from his lips. Tom noticed that Marlboro Man also wore several gold chains, one of which partially hid a vivid red tattoo of a serpent that wrapped around his neck, its fangs and darting tongue resting beneath the man’s left ear.
The other two men who sat in the front seat, also bald with tattoos and gold chains, stayed quiet, but Tom could see them lean forward and peer at him through their mirrored metal-framed sunglasses.
“Fact is, I’m a little lost,” Tom said. “Wondering if maybe you boys could help me?”
“Sure, we love helpin’ folks.” Marlboro Man said. “By the way, I’m Ronnie.”
“Hey, Ronnie, I’m Tom. I’m trying to get back to the Vega Mine. We had a little party up there last night, and I went out to get more beer and stuff and damn if I didn’t get lost.”
“Really? At the Vega last night?”
“Yeah, I think that was the name…but hell you seen one mine you seen em’ all, I guess.”
“Fact is, you were at the Jasper last night not the Vega.”
“Is that right? Well, like I said you seen…”
“Went for more beer, huh?”
“That’s what I said. I hit the store to restock before we head up into the hills.”
“That’s cool. Kinda hot for campin’ though, usually the winter’s better.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right, first time for us out here though and we figured it would cool down the higher we go.”
Shutting off the pickup’s engine, Ronnie got out of the truck and walked over to the Honda. “Nice ride you got there, Hoss, guess you could go just about anywhere on that thing.”
“Yeah and speaking of that I better get back to my friends; they’re waiting on me.”
Standing next to the Honda, Ronnie suddenly reached down and plucked the keys from the ignition. “You know, you lose these, and it’s a long walk back to anywhere.” “You’re sure right about that. That’s why I have an extra set right here,” Tom said as he dangled the spare keys that Ben had insisted he put in his pocket.
Still smiling, Ronnie flipped the keys he had picked up onto the Honda’s seat and started walking toward Tom. As he did, Tom could hear the other two men leave the pickup and move to his right. “Well it looks like you’re well prepared for your little camping trip. Got lots of food, beer, extra keys, rope, even a VCR and lights. You gonna produce some kind of X-rated video up there in those hills?”
Since Ronnie and his friends knew what Tom had purchased, he knew they had been following him from store to store over the last two hours.
“Damn, you got me. I’m a porn producer, and we’re filming a Triple X movie up at the Jasper and we’re waiting for three beautiful porn stars from LA tonight to show up so we can start filming tomorrow. You guys will keep that quiet, won’t you?”
“No shit?” one of the bald guys that had just left the truck said, his young man libido now palpable. “Hey, that’s cool
, maybe we could come up and watch and…”
“Shut up, you dumb shit.” Ronnie shouted to his aroused companion, his smile suddenly replaced by a mouth full of yellow gritted teeth. “Who the fuck you think you talkin’ to city boy, some shit kicker who don’t know what’s up? I know what’s up. You and them friends of yours are fuckin’ around in the Jasper lookin’ for shit.”
“You make it clear we can now stop our search.”
“You’re a real smartass, ain’t you? You think since you’re such a big bastard you can push folks around like you did back at Elsa’s last week? That was old men you were foolin’ with. You don’t want to be fuckin’ with us like that.”
Tom weighed his options. From what he could see, Ronnie was not armed and was well dressed, which meant his two friends who were not all that well dressed were brought along to help convince Tom to get out of the mining business. Or they simply might shoot him on the spot and save themselves some trouble. Looking at the two not-so-well-dressed but sexually adventurous men on his right, Tom turned to them with a question, “You know we’re gonna need one more actor up there…which one of you guys has the biggest…”
Before either could answer the question or shoot him, Tom decided to take his chance. He bolted to his right and drove his right shoulder into the stomach of the man nearest him and dragged down the second man with his right arm.
Too late, the taller of the two tried to pull a pistol from a holster in the small of his back and instead had 250 pounds of lunging Tom pin his arm between the ground and his body. The one receiving the shoulder in the stomach was also armed with both a knife and gun, but the oxygen that had left his lungs had also left his brain, and as a result he was too stunned and gasping for breath to reach for either.
Moving far quicker than a man his size should have any right to do, Tom wasted no more time with the two bald guys on the ground. Unleashing a sincere right hand, he smashed the short one into unconsciousness with a single punch. The second one needed two shots, the first that broke at least two ribs and a second to the left temple that created an ominous indentation above the eyebrow.