by L. J. Martin
He looks more than a little disturbed. "All financial information, her account numbers? How do I know—"
"Mr. Remington, we have an understanding and an agreement totally based on trust. If you can't trust me with everything, and I mean everything, then we should part, wishing each other well—"
"Sorry, sorry. I'm just not used to doing business this way."
"This, sir, is an unusual circumstance and may require unusual methods to accomplish, which is why you contacted me in the first instance. My methods are all out of the box. So, is it yes or no?"
This time he doesn't hesitate. "Drop by the office at ten and I'll have it for you, along with a check for fifty thousand."
"Cash, no check. Messenger it over. I'm going to sleep in. I'll have a cell phone delivered to your office, which I'd appreciate your keeping at hand at all times as it will be our primary means of communication. My number will be programed into it…but please don't call me unless you have pertinent information to convey. Wish me luck," I say, down my drink, and rise to leave.
I'm a little surprised to see him tear up and backhand a tear from his eye. But he stands and extends a hand, clears his throat, and with a more than merely sincere tone asks, "Please, find my daughter and bring her safely home."
"If I can't, no one can." I wave over my shoulder, and head for my room.
5
I've only had some slight experience with those being called eco-terrorists.
While doing a bodyguard job, watching after a young country singer who was beginning to hit it big—Tammy Houston—I snatched the wrist of a hippy girl who'd just thrown paint on Tammy's fur coat. The hell of it was the coat was faux fur, and not that expensive. That didn't keep me from turning the young lady over my knee, right outside the Gaucho restaurant on 2nd Street in downtown Seattle, and tanning her butt until she bawled like a baby.
Tammy fired me on the spot and I spent the night in the hoosegow…not for the spanking, but for breaking the jaw of one long-hair and the arm of another who decided to come to the property destroying hippy girl's rescue. I take umbrage when someone is stupid enough to pull a two-inch blade penknife on me, and I broke his arm to cure him of stupidity, and the jaw of the other as he called me a son-of-a-bitch and a cocksucker. Son-of-a-bitch I don't mind so much, as I'm sure they are not really casting aspersions on my mom.
It doesn't pay to beat up on rich-kid-liberals in Seattle. No good deed goes unpunished. I paid a five thousand dollar fine and did four weeks of community service in a Seattle soup kitchen serving goulash to guys who drove up in BMW's. Truthfully, not all of them drove up in anything, as many actually needed a hot meal. Having never begged, I'm not positive, but suspect it's much easier to work for a living.
I even made a few new friends while on the job, including a priest, Father Sean O'Donnel, who runs the joint. I traded some carpentry work—hanging doors—for a basement room while I paid my penance. I could have afforded a nearby hotel room, but one adds to life's experiences as one can…and I did.
As it turned out the judge did me a favor with the community service as I recognized a guy for whom I was dishing up some slop; a guy who'd skipped a hundred grand bail in Las Vegas. I called the bondsman, got a contract, put the guy facedown on the sidewalk after his next bummed bowl of soup and collected a twenty grand recovery fee for hauling him into the same lockup I'd recently left.
God works in mysterious ways.
And, come to think of it, Tammy still owes me for that week's work. I'm not holding my breath.
The long-hairs' medical bills cost me fourteen thousand, so, after my three grand premium to a local bondsman, a few expenses, and the medical bills, I came out a grand ahead.
Pax has emailed me another report on ARA, this time with background info on its leaders.
Arnold Rostov seems to be the man in charge, and he's no slouch when it comes to paramilitary background, having come out of a short tour with the Army Rangers, followed by a short visit to their graystone hotel at Fort Levenworth…four years for assaulting an officer. He also did a tour with Blackwater in Iraq. He's been clean since, almost ten years, but his subordinates are even more colorful. I've gotta believe that his worry about the world's animals is a total scam, as it seems he's dispatched his share, particularly the two legged variety.
His two lieutenants are both ex-cons. Terrel Hutchins did a nickel in Huntsville for bankrobbery; Margaret McFadden, an older broad who once ran with the Black Panthers, did two years in California's Chowchilla Women's Prison for possession after pleading down from intent-to-sell.
Most of the underlings have done county time for destruction of property, possession, vandalism, and concealed carry…but none over a year. And most of them for ARA related activity.
John Sainz—nickname "Saint"—is probably there for what he thinks is a moral reason, as he flunked out of veterinary school in Davis, California. Pauly Rook, likewise morally affronted by perceived cruelty to animals, was Boston born, Harvard educated, and a doper. Norvin Zimmerman, nickname "Sixpack," is most likely there for the money as he's a ex-Navy shore patrolman, discharged for abusing a female prisoner. Likewise, a tall, skinny guy who looks almost albino, Craig Pasternak, nickname "Pasty" is only muscle; and Charley Many Dogs, nickname "Mutt" who's an ex-cop from Billings, Montana and was fired for taking kickbacks from prostitutes. The latter three are reputed to be armed guards for the group, but all of them have been known to carry at one time or another.
An interesting bunch, and there are another forty or so members at a Maxville, Montana compound who have, so far, gone unnamed.
I almost wish I'd flown directly to Montana, but there are a few things I need from my ministorage in Vegas, and since the ARA seems a hippy culture, I might as well drive my van up to the Big Sky country. If I painted it with flowers I'd be sure to fit right in.
A couple of jobs ago, I had to head for Williston, North Dakota and the Bakken oilfields. As Williston has the most expensive entry apartment cost in the country, due to the oil boom, I said to hell with it and invested in a Ford 250 and a camper, which to me is the lap of luxury…but my Dodge van is pretty comfortable with a cot, a Porta-Potty and, far more important to my profession, hideout compartments for a variety of weaponry. It also has magnetic stripes and various magnetic signs so I can change my calling whenever. I can be a plumber, a pizza delivery truck, or even a SWAT van with the addition of a few signs and a few lights. I also have a number of license plates hidden therein. And she's powered with a polished and relieved Hemi and can dust most pursuit vehicles, particularly since I keep a bag full of tetrapods under the front seat which will blow the tires of most anything following other than a Humvee battleground equipped.
I also have replaced my Harley Sportster, destroyed not long ago, with an Iron 883 model which I had a buddy trick out with black paint, flames, and even more chrome. I'm tempted to drive it to beautiful Montana as it's early summer, and a beautiful trip, but I can't take all I fear I'll need on the bike. Weapons I'll need as some of these boys may be packing heavy. I could add bags to the bike, but she's so pretty I hate to screw up her lines. Even then long-arms couldn't make the trip.
My buddy Pax is waiting for me at the curb at 7:30 p.m., as agreed, and has reservations at my favorite Vegas Italian joint, Piero's, where we will consume some animals—much, I'm sure, to the chagrin of those I plan to visit after a long drive up Highway 15 to Montana.
6
Pax Weatherwax is my closest friend, my sometimes partner, my most trusted adviser, and the provider of most of what makes me look smart to the rest of the world—which is no easy task. My buddy Paxton Weatherwax was a fellow Desert Storm Marine who kept my ugly mug from pushing up daisies, and did so numerous times. I did repay the favor at least once. The last time he kept me from going cold, he lost an inch and a half out of his left thigh thanks to an AK47. Still, even with a platform shoe, I'd take him as a back-up before ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the supposedly tough guy
s I've come across. For all his attributes as a tough S.O.B., he's even smarter than he is tough. He's turned his disability pay into a business as an Internet service provider with offices in four cities. He's kept me invisible to those who'd like to do me harm, including the U.S. Government, routed my dough and messages through a half dozen cities in as many countries, and dug up information needed in my dubious endeavors and the subjects of my attentions. Information to rival the NSA.
Pax is able to put a Trojan Horse program into almost any computer if he can discover their IP address, and thus trace the computer's activities, including every key stroke. He uses programs like Spokeo.com to dig up info and those of interest, finds pictures posted on social sites and uses their EXIF tags to get GPS locations of where they were taken, tracks cell phones to determine their location, and even taps into several "life style" companies to snatch their info. He also uses a couple of guys in India and Malta who receive my email, and that of other Weatherwax Internet Services clients, and buries it so deeply I presume even the NSA has trouble tracking and deciphering it. He's a very smart dude.
And he's more than just a buddy. I'd get between him and a hungry lion, should it come to that.
As I climb in his CJ7, he throws a folder in my lap. He drives, and I read and view aerials of the ARA compound just west of a little Montana burg called Maxville. The town is split by a scenic drive, Highway 1, with half on one side in the Flint Range and half on the other in the John Long Mountains—the road being a dividing line. The camp is up a fairly narrow lodgepole pine covered ravine in the John Longs, about three miles from the village, backing up to a section owned by a mining company. Beyond that is some very wild country and a million acres of national forest. There are six buildings total, the use of which Pax has been unable to identify as Google Earth displays no building elevations in these remote areas. I find it interesting, and a little suspicious, that a group involved in illegal activities would have only one entrance and exit road.
Of even more interest is additional background material he's unearthed, much of which is on eco-terrorism in general, and more on the Hutchins, McFadden and Sainz in particular.
I quickly learn that prior to 9/11 the FBI considered eco-terrorism the country's greatest threat. A group called the Animal Liberation Front was the primary culprit, followed closely by Earth Liberation. The two groups were estimated by the FBI to have committed more than 1,100 crimes, causing more than one hundred million bucks in damage. Michigan State University's mink research farm alone lost millions due to the actions of the groups.
I like animals. I haven't had a dog since before I went into the Marine Corps, when I didn't replace a chocolate lab I'd had since before high school. I'll have another dog someday, if I live long enough, and I'll treat it as if it were part of the family because I think a dog, or a horse, becomes just that.
Still, I understand the food chain, and will never put an animal above a human if it comes to making a choice. It's a matter of who's on top, animal or man. Not that I wouldn't have sacrificed some worthless humans if I had to choose between them and Buster, my old lab. But I consider those a-holes sub-human.
Among the many crimes committed, or suspected to have been committed by ARA, are raids on mink farms, on bobcat and lynx farms, and on drug facilities where animals are used for experimentation. The latter is a sick business, but would you trade a sister or brother, son or daughter, whose life depended upon a new drug, for the life of a monkey?
Now if they were testing cosmetics or some such nonsensical substance, and killing animals, I might be sympathetic. But not if the testing were to formulate a drug that might save a million human lives.
Life is full of choices, and sometimes you have to choose your own species over another.
ARA, it seems, carries their destructive activities a step farther than other groups. It not only releases animals, but releases the valuables from vaults and safes of the places they raid. One wonders what the real motivation of the group might be. More than one ARA member has been convicted of possession with intent to sell, and I have to wonder if a little cannabis, or even some methamphetamine is not part of the scheme of things around ARA'ville?
I haven't had a mountain outing for a long time, so I'm looking forward to a stroll in the woods, where a guy can carry a long arm and look just like a hundred other guys who stroll the woods.
After supper I visit my ministorage on Tropicana in Vegas. Seeing my Harley there changes my mind and I load her up in the back of the van. Who knows…mountain country, great weather, and she might be able to go where the van can't.
It's a little over nine hundred miles from Vegas to Maxville and, loafing along, I make it to Pocatello, Idaho on the first leg. It's an easy run to western Montana on the second leg and I get to the very small community of Maxville in time for lunch at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall—the only bar in town—if you can call it a town, as it's really a lot of homes on acreage, spread out up a couple of canyons, with the only bar just off the highway. The joint is a great country bar, with a pool table, three poker and keno machines, and an elk head and two deer heads gracing the wall. By the four pickup trucks and one old Subaru lined up outside you can pretty well determine the clientele. There's only a half-dozen guys in the place, and a lady behind the bar.
I push through the door and only get a glance or two from the patrons. Taking a stool, one of only seven at the bar, at the far end away from the door I order a long neck Moose Drool beer. Four guys who look like construction types—then, I decide, loggers due to their plaid shirts, suspenders, and Carthartt knit caps and multi-pocketed pants—are at a table playing cribbage. Two older guys who look like ranchers—cowboy hats, wrangler jeans, and scuffed boots with riding heels a dead giveaway—are at the far end of the bar nearest the door, with four stools separating me from them.
None of them look like hippy eco-terrorists, in fact all of them look like they'd be more than happy to feed eco-terrorists or hippies to the grizzly bears who frequent the mountains. Maxville's about halfway between Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park, so there's no telling what critters wander the surrounding mountains.
They all, and the barmaid, seem happy enough to let me sip my beer in peace. She's a sight, with purple pedal pushers and a pink blouse, hair a little like she used a kitchen mixer on it rather than a comb, and one front tooth gone black. But she's nice enough, and gives me an extra toothy grin when I push a seventy-five cent tip into the trough behind the bar.
Just as I'm about to finish and head out to find a campground to hole up for the afternoon and finish reading Pax's voluminous background material, the front door swings aside. The bright light floods the room and I have to shade my eyes and squint, but soon see it's three bearded guys, one of them big enough to eat hay and crap in the road. The other two look fit enough—in fact I'd guess gym rats by the slope of their shoulders and the fact that knotted necks begin flaring out from the bottom of their ears.
The dynamics of a small public place are interesting. You can suddenly feel the added weight of the air in the joint at the same time it goes silent. The attitude of everyone formerly laughing has gone sour, even without comments.
The new guys trade glares with the four at the table as they cross the room, then take the three stools nearest me.
As they belly up to the bar, the two older cowboys down their drinks, and I hear one of them say, "Fuck this, it's starting to smell in here." He meets the stare of the three hairy-faced lads, and they don't back down a bit, but rather stare the cowboys all the way out of the place. Only then do they turn to the barmaid and order. And I come to the conclusion I've ordered hippy fare, as all of them order Moose Drool.
I can see that the barmaid, a pleasant enough girl with tiny boobs under the pink blouse, but wide hips under the purple pedal pushers—a little pear shaped—is doing her best to be congenial, and asks the three new guys, "How's things with the critter folks?"
The one in
the middle, who I'm beginning to guess is the Harvard boy I've read about in Pax's report, as he's so blond as to almost be white headed, answers, "Things are fine. You didn't see the Schwan's truck around today?"
"Nope," she answers with a smile. "Maybe he broke down. The store up in Phillipsburg is open till nine, if y'all need something, or back down in Drummond…I think they close at seven."
"We can wait till tomorrow," he says, then ignores her, and she starts down the bar my way, wiping it as she comes.
The biggest of the three, trunk about the size of a fifty-gallon drum, is on the stool closest to me. He glances over and eyes me up and down, then growls through his scraggly beard and mustache which is too thin to make much of an impression, "What the fuck are you eyeballing, white-eye?" and only then do I realize he's Indian.
I shrug and smile my most winsome grin. "Just taking in the sights. And my eyes aren't white, at least not the last time I looked." I'm grinning foolishly and it makes him a little bemused.
"You're big enough, but you ain't no threat, dickwad," he says, and turns back to his buddies.
The barmaid stops from her trip toward the backroom and steps back across from the Indian, and her tone is no longer pleasant. "Charley, you still haven't paid all you owe for busting up the furniture last time…so don't you be starting any trouble. This guy was just setting here minding his own busin—"
"And why don't you mind yours, pussy face?" he growls at her, and she turns red in the face, spins on her heel, and continues heading for the back room.
I'm eyeballing his profile, wondering if the long neck is heavy enough to smash his broad nose even flatter, but don't have time to do so, as I see in the mirror behind the bar, a chair coming down hard.
Looks like it's lumberjacks against the ARA.
Not that it's any surprise to me.