by Tom Hansen
Agent Jones looked over at the skinny Mexican man, Pancho, who had been minding his own business but listening intently and couldn’t help himself. “Let me guess, you must be Willy Bank’s bodyguard,” he said sarcastically as he eyed the Mexican man up and down.
“No sir, but I did save his life. He be a good man. Sheriff Bonty, now he be a bad man. Real bad man. We need to find Willy cuz he might be in trouble.” Jones looked at Tecka and both were beginning to think that Willy Banks, who had broken into the FBI auto impound lot and stolen a metal box from Brett Berry’s truck, may be a good guy after all. They decided the conversation needed to become serious again.
“Does your brother own a Nash Rambler?” Jones asked Otis.
“Dang tootin’! Nice wheels it is, too.”
“It’s parked down the road behind some bushes.”
“What?! Where?!” exclaimed Otis.
“Willy’s around here somewhere and we need to find him.” Jones led the seven men towards the entrance. As they opened the door, a Colt 9mm submachine gun was pointed directly at the bridge of Agent Jones’ nose.
* * * * *
“Wait! Whoa! Hold on!” Agent Jones exclaimed as he raised his hands high over his head. “I’m FBI and you don’t want to do this!”
The guard moved the muzzle of the machine gun back and forth, catching aim at the whole crowd of stunned visitors. “Come in and lay down on the floor face first and put your hands behind your backs. Do it! Now!” The seven men came inside the DNR office and followed orders to a tee. Seated in a chair two feet behind the guard, wrapped in duct tape with only small slits for his eyes and nose, was a furious Willy Banks.
Knowing he had just one chance, Willy made the best of it. He lurched forward and the top of his head hit the guard squarely in the back of the legs, buckling the man’s knees. Unable to stop his momentum, Willy then smashed his nose on the dirty linoleum floor. Now, he was still bound by the gray tape, but in a most awkward, silly-looking position with his hind end in the air fastened tightly to the seat of the upside-down chair. Meanwhile, the guard let loose the gun to catch his own fall and immediately Agent Jones scrambled and snatched it.
Jones aimed the weapon at the stunned guard who quickly raised his hands above his head. “Please sir, I was only doing what I was ordered. I promise.”
Jones gave the gun to Agent Tecka, then with both hands, grabbed the guard by his neck and lifted him off the ground. Tecka reached into his suit pocket with one hand, walked over to the guard and cuffed him. Jones pushed him to the wall. “Who ordered you?”
The guard said nothing. Tecka lifted the submachine gun and placed the nose of the muzzle directly on the frightened man’s temple.
“Listen,” stated Jones as he gripped his fingers tighter on the guard’s neck. “I’ve got six witnesses,” he paused and looked over at Willy who was moaning and groaning face down on the floor. “Make that seven, assuming this fella is on our side, and considering you wrapped him up like a roach trapped on flypaper, I’d bet my last dollar he is on our side. Anyway, all these witnesses will confirm that you accidently shot yourself with this here machine gun leaving an awfully bloody mess. So, one last chance. Who ordered you?”
The guard didn’t hesitate. “Governor Daughtry.”
CHAPTER 69
Saturday, March 13, 1982
2:30 p.m.
O tis pulled out his pocket knife and began cutting through Willy’s duct tape. He heard loud groans and thought his brother was in severe pain. After ripping a few shreds of tape off the middle of his back, Otis figured out he should probably cut a hole near Willy’s mouth so he could breathe.
As soon as the hole was slit, Willy yelled, “Dang nab it, Otis, sit this dang chair back upright so all the blood in my body doesn’t come squirting out my eyeballs!” Otis realized why Willy had been groaning.
Soon Willy was free, as too were his new DNR clothes. While Willy was complaining that the knife was scratching him, Otis told him, “I ain’t no tape surgeon, bro, so just be happy I be cutting you out of this mess.”
Willy stood up, naked once again, but lost his balance and slipped back on the chair. He had been through the mill the past twenty-four hours and needed a rest, but there wasn’t time for that. He stood back up and lumbered over to the storage closet where he found one last size XL t-shirt and shorts belonging to the DNR softball team.
They all sat down in a small conference room with folding chairs and a card table. Poker was no doubt a favorite activity for DNR workers when they weren’t freeing herons that were trapped in some careless fisherman’s monofilament line. Agent Jones slammed the guard into a chair, but the guard had to bend forward because his arms were cuffed behind his back. Jones stood and hovered directly over the frightened young man.
“Before we start,” Agent Jones said as he looked over at Willy. “Willy Banks, you’ve got some explaining to do. How is it that a sheriff’s deputy would break into an FBI auto impound lot, steal something from a truck and then resist arrest to a federal officer?”
Willy didn’t respond. Instead, he looked around at the crowd gathered before him. He assumed his buddy Johnny Murphree drove his brother Otis and Lance down here trying to find him, but he didn’t know who the older gentleman wearing the Penn State sweatshirt could be. Then he looked at Pancho and did a double take. “You’re the man who saved my life out on the Kissimmee, ain’t you?” Pancho nodded. Willy carefully stood back up, walked over to the Mexican man and gave him an awkward hug. Sort of looked like a whale cuddling with a minnow.
He broke the embrace and looked at Lew who had a lot of questions, but was waiting for the appropriate time to ask them. Berry wasn’t sure where he stood in the pecking order here.
“And who are you?” asked Willy.
“Lew Berry, sir. I’m Coach Brett Berry’s dad. And it was me who drove everyone here.”
“Coach’s dad? Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for you, Willy. I think you can give me more information about Brett’s death and Sheryl’s disappearance.”
“Yes, Mr. Berry, I think I can now give everyone here some very important information.” Willy glanced over at the two FBI agents, then pointed to the back door. “I need to show you something and the sooner the better. But first, I want this man to answer a question.” Willy leaned over the card table and peered into the nervous guard’s eyes. “What exactly is that room in Daughtry’s house used for?”
With eight pairs of angry, restless eyeballs staring at him, the guard had no choice but to cooperate. “I don’t know, sir. The governor ordered me never to enter the room. He called it a matter of national security. I was curious, yes, especially when he was talking about United States security, not just Florida’s.”
“What’s in this room you’re talking about?” inquired Agent Jones.
“Follow me,” replied Willy. “I’ll show you. But we must all move quickly. If I’m guessing right, there’s something disastrous in the works. I’ll explain everything after you see. Take the guard with us, I might have some more questions for him.” Otis and Lance decided to do the honors, and they yanked and shoved the guard from the backdoor of the DNR office all the way to Daughtry’s house.
CHAPTER 70
Saturday, March 13, 1982
4:00 p.m.
“T his is incredible,” declared Agent Jones as he looked around the secret room in Daughtry’s house. Willy showed him the video feeds and remote controllers and how they operated. Then he pulled out a video tape for all to see. The room was completely silent as the jet taxied down to the runway and the words Jam Disengaged ORD flashed across the screen.
As the plane rose above the Sears Tower and turned south, Willy said, “I don’t understand what ORD is? I believe it’s a code for Orlando, but the plane is obviously in Chicago.”
Agent Tecka replied, “ORD is the airport code for O’Hare, which is in Chicago.” All eyes were focused on the television.
A few mo
ments later, the words Jam Disengaged TPA appeared. Agent Jones interrupted the eerie silence. “Damn. Someone must be controlling the radar functions in Chicago and Tampa. Daughtry, you suppose?” The question was rhetorical. No one bothered to answer.
“Hold on,” exclaimed Willy. “It gets worse.” They all watched closely as Willy fast forwarded the video feed. Even the guard was stunned as the warning Jam Engaged TPA appeared and the plane veered southwest towards Lake Okeechobee, turbulently bouncing directly in the path of a vicious storm.
Suddenly there was a flash of light and the video feed abruptly ended. “Oh my God!” was groaned in unison from the stupefied viewers. Lew Berry walked out of the room quickly and vomited in the kitchen. He didn’t make it to the sink. Agent Jones glanced at Agent Tecka and both ran to Lew, holding him upright as his knees began to buckle underneath.
“I’m sorry, Lew, we simply forgot,” said Jones compassionately. “Your wife was on that flight. We are so very sorry.” They helped Lew to a chair and brought him a glass of water. The others in the room had no idea that Coach Berry’s mother had died in that crash.
“You need to see this,” Willy quietly said to the FBI agents as they were comforting Lew. Pancho nodded to Jones and Tecka, and he sat down with Lew so the agents could follow Willy back into the video room.
“I may have accidently killed a man,” said Willy somberly. He showed the replay of the car crossing the median, then changing course abruptly before flipping over. “In front of the televisions are some sort of remotes. They control whatever machine or vehicle is being fed by the video. I didn’t know that and I caused this accident.”
“That’s exactly how my son’s truck crashed, wasn’t it?” Lew Berry had reentered the room and was watching from the door. “But you said it wasn’t Sheryl in the truck, so who could it have been that Daughtry wanted to kill?”
Now the group was listening intensely as the FBI agents hesitantly gave out information that was classified. “We believe the person in Coach Berry’s truck was a man who was already dead, and now the whole thing looks to be a set up. Daughtry wanted to make it look like a simple accident and that Sheryl Berry was killed. Brett died trying to save her in the culvert. We believe she was kidnapped.”
“It’s not Daughtry, Agent Jones,” interrupted Willy. “A rancher named Roy Jackson and the sheriff of Seminole Bend are in cahoots and have been doing atrocious acts for quite some time. I thought it was drug running, but now I think that was a decoy for something even bigger.”
“He’s right,” added Johnny Murphree. “Willy was close to finding something out, so Sheriff Bonty had him fired.”
“I know this probably has nothing to do with what’s happening here, but it’s been bothering me and I need to know,” Lew piped in. “I was on my way back to Seminole Bend after leaving the FBI headquarters to find a picture. You see, a few days ago me and a new friend named Phil Bennett broke into my son’s house to check out his belongings. We heard someone scrambling upstairs after we came in through the patio door that we just smashed in, but whoever it was jumped out the second floor hallway window and ran to the golf course. He was carrying what looked like a shoe box or something. Anyway, we found several framed pictures all over the place. But in a nightstand in the master bedroom was a Polaroid picture of Sheryl who was on a beach and very pregnant at the time. Something about that picture was bugging me, so I went back the next day. When I got there, the house had been broken into and the master bedroom was in shambles. There was no jewelry box in the house, so I’m assuming that’s what the thief took, but that jewelry box could have been taken by the unknown jumper the day before. Don’t really know. Anyway, here’s the strange thing. The Polaroid picture of Sheryl on the beach was missing from the nightstand. I can’t figure why an intruder would want a cheap personal picture.”
“Why didn’t you report the break-ins, Lew?” asked Johnny Murphree. “We should be investigating those kind of things and you should know that.”
“After my little chat with Sheriff Bonty do you really think I trusted the sheriff’s department with an investigation? Come on, you got to be kidding me! And besides that, I had broken in myself and didn’t want to be explaining why I did.”
“So what’s bugging you about the photo, Lew?” asked Willy.
“I don’t know really. Your brother’s girlfriend, Abby, showed me some other pictures of Brett coaching the team, you know, just to be nice. She said some guy named Danny Martin had taken them, but she didn’t know him. Said he was some huge cowboy dude. Anyway, there was a picture of Brett in the package with some players after beating Sebring.”
“So what’s the problem? Did Abby identify all the players?”
“Yes, but it’s not the players that’s confusing me. It’s something else in the picture, and I think it’s related to that Polaroid in Brett’s drawer. I’ve got the picture Abby gave me in my car. I’d like to take another look at it.”
Just then the video feed from the first television began to roll. It was streaming a live shot of the same man Willy saw earlier wearing the dark blue NTSB windbreaker. He was now leaving the building and Agent Jones leaned forward, his eyes opening wide. Jones got a close look at the man’s face. “Well I’ll be damned! It’s Bob Cummings.”
“Who’s Bob Cummings?” asked Willy.
“Head of the Miami office of the National Transportation Safety Board. He’s in charge of both the Miami and Lake Okeechobee airplane crashes. Why is he -” Agent Jones stopped abruptly. “Daughtry is targeting him! We need to warn him.”
“I think we’re okay,” responded Willy. “If this place is the control center, there’s no one here to operate the remotes. But I need to show you something else. Do you remember the box I took from Berry’s truck?”
“How could I forget?!”
“Well, I think it was the remote control receiver for the truck, but it also had a strange marking engraved on it. That same marking is engraved on a big dish-like thing outside of Dulie’s office at the DNR. I think that dish is how Dulie and Daughtry operate those videos and remote controllers. And it may be how they jam those radars, too, I don’t know.”
“What does this engraving look like?” asked Agent Jones.
“It’s hard to explain. I need to show you. The box is in my car. We need to get it and then compare it with the dish.”
“Okay. But first I need to call in our tech unit to examine this room. Tom, call Toby and get his team down to the DNR’s office right away. They can track all the wiring and stuff from there to here. And Tom, tell Toby this is very top secret. I don’t want the newspapers finding out and starting a scare before we know what we have, got it?”
“Got it. Let’s move boys!”
CHAPTER 71
Saturday, March 13, 1982
5:00 p.m.
T he men hiked swiftly back to the DNR office, then Willy jogged up the service road and drove his Nash Rambler down to the parking lot. Moments later he showed Jones and Tecka the etched markings on the metal box, then led them out back to the satellite dish where they confirmed the markings on the box and the dish were a perfect match. Tecka glanced at Jones and said, “It’s Arabic writing. I don’t know what it says, but it’s definitely Arabic.”
“I think maybe the supervisor, Sam Dulie, is from the Middle East somewhere,” said Willy. “I noticed right away that he had dark skin and eyes.”
“You don’t find Sam Dulie’s in Arab countries,” retorted Agent Tecka.
Agent Jones glanced at the metal box, and then to the writing on the satellite dish. It was obvious that something was bothering him. “What is it?” asked Johnny Murphree. Everyone shot a look at the FBI agent.
“This writing. I remember that I saw Arabic writing somewhere earlier today, but it didn’t hit me until just now.”
“Where did you see Arabic writing, Jack?” asked Agent Tecka. “You’ve been with me all day. I didn’t see anything.”
“Yes, Tom, I think
you did. Remember watching the playback of Willy accidently crashing that car by using the remote control? There was a billboard along the highway right at the beginning of the tape. I swear the writing was in Arabic.”
“If that’s the case, are you thinking the car was in an Arab country?”
Willy interrupted, “That would make sense. It was in the middle of the night here when I was fiddling around with that joystick. It would’ve been daylight over there in the Middle East, right?”
“Right,” replied Agent Jones. “When our specialists get here, we need to go examine that tape again.”
* * * * *
Waiting in the DNR’s conference room for the FBI techies to arrive, Willy revealed his story as completely, yet succinctly, as possible. He started with his investigation back in January at the Jackson ranch where he saw a small aircraft drop floating containers on the swamp, and how his partner, Sam McCormick, jumped in to retrieve one and hasn’t been seen since. He painted a grisly picture of his encounter with the alligator as he was trying to escape from the ranch, and how Pancho had saved his life. Willy then disclosed the strange circumstances surrounding the Calvin and Agnes Potts’ deaths, and his own encounter with Roy Jackson’s thugs in the BoldMart parking lot. Sheriff Bonty stated that Willy’s handling of the situation was ultimately the reason he fired him.
Willy explained that he hired Otis and Lance to try and find Pancho while he headed to Miami to speak to DNR supervisor, Sam Dulie. He wanted to know if Dulie had provided information to Roy Jackson about the boat Pancho had taken. If he had leaked that information, there would be a possible link that resulted in the Pott’s murders. He explained why he broke into the FBI auto impound lot to examine Brett Berry’s truck, and how he wound up finding Daughtry’s video room.