by Noah Rea
I told him I needed it. “Besides, am I the only driver you know with a gun in the cab?”
“No, but I have to tell you so I stay out of trouble.”
“Just don’t tell anyone,” I asked.
He saluted as if to say “Yes, sir!”
We found a motel where we paid cash. It was a fun three days. With Deb’s rhythm ending, even more fun. We decided to stay with that method for now. I didn’t want her to change what she had done for so long and make a decision in a hurry that she might regret later. The next Sunday we went to Mass and thanked the Lord to be alive in America.
She started putting on the bikini again that afternoon, but she didn’t quite get in all on.
Jim called later on Sunday to give us an update. It was sure nice to be able to talk to him whenever we wanted and as long as we wanted.
“The Secret Service had admitted taking delivery of the helicopter when it was brand new,” Jim said, “but had leased it to someone. They wouldn’t tell us who. We reminded them that we’re the FBI.” We counseled the SS, but they wouldn’t talk. We told them we needed to know, and they should be working with us.
Monday morning we got a call from Jim.
“Now the people who made the helicopter are denying delivery to the Secret Service, which the Secret Service agrees with. So the cover-up is getting more serious and involves more people.”
I told Jim I didn’t think he knew how helpless those things made me feel. Talk about not being able to do anything. My government might be after me, and the FBI can’t get answers. If the FBI can’t get answers, what’s the chance Sam Adams or Bentley Raines has of getting anything resolved? I wasn’t feeling well. The stress was really wearing on me. I’d thought when we left Otis’s, we’d get some relief for a while. We did, but it didn’t last long.
We talked to Jim about the guns Otis gave us and asked him what he thought we should do. He told us he needed to think about it but the first thing that came to mind was to put them in a gun safe in the truck.
”No one can make you open it without probable cause. It should work as long as you’re not in the middle of some trouble. The police may not like you having it, but if you say it’s for cash, computers, and valuables, they won’t be able to say much.”
He paused. “Be sure there’s no way they can put a drug dog or anything else on you. If they can get the safe open and find those guns, you will really be in trouble. Once they start poking around with your life, there is no telling how much they’ll find out.”
We asked Jim about the missing guns at the shootout.
He laughed. “The FBI’s official position was to be angry. But what can they do unless bullets are used in a crime that matches the guns left at the scene? Do you know how many bullets the FBI recovered at the scene?”
We had no idea and couldn’t even guess.
“They found 1026. That’s amazing that nine attackers with one rifle each and Otis using a 9 mm handgun and fifteen shot clips could fire that many shots in six minutes. Otis gave them an audio tape he said was off his cell phone. I believe it sets a world record for swapping clips out of a handgun.” He laughed again. “And the way that 9mm tore up a couple of the guys and locked up the helicopter was the best shooting we have ever seen. The other odd question is, how did Otis fire .308 bullets out of a 9mm pistol? Maybe even a .50 caliber. Some things are hard to reconcile.”
“The FBI crime scene investigators had asked Otis if he had any surveillance tapes, and he asked them if they were kidding, but didn’t really answer. From the audio tape we found the gun battle lasted about six minutes total. The helicopter fight lasted just over two minutes, and the SUV fight just over three,” Jim said.
“Some in the FBI think some weapons were removed from the scene and are angry about evidence tampering. But since they assumed the missing guns belonged to the attackers and therefore were unregistered, the FBI didn’t know what to look for except the caliber. What really frosted them were all the .308 brass cases lying around since the dead guys were shooting 5.56 mm. Very skeptical those FBI crime scene guys.”
“Who were the attackers?” I asked
“We don’t know yet. Some of them are ex-Delta and some ex-Seal. They were good, but anyone can be ambushed, plus they came in too sure of themselves. They expected to see a few unarmed people there, not a platoon that was heavily armed and well protected. Those counters with two thicknesses of subflooring easily stopped all their bullets.”
“The AZDPS is getting very excited about Otis not cooperating. We know they’re leaning on Otis to find the missing stuff. They asked Otis how anyone could shoot 132 rounds of .308 ammo through a 9 mm handgun,” Jim said.
He admitted it was quite a puzzle.
Joking, I asked if I should call AZDPS and tell them they were wasting their time.
Jim said it would be a waste of my time. He said what really makes them angry is Otis telling them they worked for him, and he would tell them on a “need to know basis.”
“The local sheriff got in on it and told the AZDPS just before they left in a huff that they wouldn’t be able to hold Otis on more than jaywalking.”
“Once they were gone, the sheriff turned to Otis and said, When you stole my girl and married Tilly, I figured I’d have a chance to get even with you. But I wouldn’t let those guys have you! They both had a good laugh.”
It made me a little nervous. I looked at Deb and she bugged her eyes out as if to say it was a little crazy to her too. Later I asked Otis about it.
“They broke up two weeks before I asked her out. He was just talking. Besides, he married money, and he is quite happy with himself. We’ve been great friends for more than fifty years and there’s no way he’d let them haul me off. If he thought they might, he would have told them he was taking me to his jail. He would have driven me home and told me to stay out of trouble,” Otis said.
“Next time you get a good chance to seriously talk to Otis,” Jim said, “please mention the FBI is not overly happy about some missing avionics. They especially want to see the black box, so they can find out where that bird has been. Apparently, a couple of those devices were the latest technology and would be worth about half a mill to a user and to someone in China— probably millions. So please tell Otis they need to be careful. Someone may come looking for that stuff.”
I called Otis later and relayed the message.
“We’ll be very careful, and you do the same,” he said. “I know what we have and who we might be dealing with. Look, one of my great nephews just got back from Afghanistan, and he was using the best the military had. He said what he was using was similar to this but older. He’s playing with the stuff now.”
Then he wanted to know how we were doing. Deb who was always eavesdropping said, “We couldn’t be happier.”
That made my day.
He told us we were family, and he wanted us to come back often.
“Fifty cents a gallon off next time to be sure you come back.”
We joked about the .308 cases found and how they were shot out of 9mm handguns. We laughed, and joked about what they would have done if they had found a .50 caliber case. He had pulled the case out of the gun.
“We reload most of those cases especially the .50 caliber. The brass itself is pretty valuable that size.”
It had been great to talk to Otis. He had made me laugh and had lifted my spirits. But it was a short reprieve because I had some really big problems. And I was worried they might get worse.
Chapter 10
The Helicopter, the SUV, and a New Proposition
Jim called to tell me the FBI found Ben Raines’s fingerprints at the truck stop outside Phoenix.
“The FBI is going all out to find this man who killed his wife. They’ll be putting his picture out all over the place. They wanted to find out how he was involved in the shootings. They suspect he cased the truck stop for the attackers. Or maybe he was a scout for them. Anyway he was now connected with the black
SUV people and probably involved with them.”
I nearly threw up when I heard this. I had been running for my life from the black SUV killers and the police. Now I would be hiding from the FBI. I asked Jim what he would do, and what I should do.
“You need to be out of sight for a while,” Jim said.
“But how can I? If I go to Otis’s, someone there would certainly remember seeing me before the shooting. I have no place to go where I have friends to help me settle in. Being on the road and having a hundred new people every day see me at truck stops and rest stops and on the highway would increase the probability someone would recognize the man from Virginia.”
“I’ll help!” Jim said. “I have to go now but stay out of sight, and I will get back to you shortly.”
I thanked Jim and told him I would be very glad for him to call back later. I needed time to think.
Jim called back immediately. “I had forgotten to tell you, but the men in black did not have dog tags on them, and no one is admitting to hiring them. The FBI knows who they were but haven’t been able to tell who they worked for. The military had lost track of them. Neither the helicopter nor the SUV was owned by anyone they knew of. They were hitting dead ends everywhere.”
Jim reiterated by telling me he would think of something, but in the meantime, he told me to just stay out of trouble and preferably out of sight.
I could hardly breathe. Then my sweet wife asked me what was wrong, and the fear came over me that maybe I had been rash to get married and drag Deb into my nightmare. I told her all the things Jim had told me.
Her face went pale, and she was silent for a minute. “We are in this together, and we’ll get through it,” Deb said, her voice trembling. “We need to hide. If you went to jail, I don’t think I could live without you. I would die of a broken heart. And it could be worse than that.”
I hugged her, and we cried together. And I told her I felt the same way.
Then we prayed. “As an understatement I am at the end of my rope,” I told God. “I am in over my head. I am drowning in deep water, and I am unable to help myself.”
And I was angry with myself for ruining Deb’s life. The best that I could pray right then was, “God, please save us!”
We sat in silence for a while, not knowing what to do next.
Then my phone rang. It was Otis. He told me he had a proposition for me and wanted to know if I would come back to his truck stop.
“Otis, I’m married.”
“What? Deb screeched. Who is that? What’s going on?” She grabbed the phone, put it on speaker, and handed it back to me. “Who is this?” Deb asked.
Otis laughed. He told us he had us on a speakerphone too, and the proposition was for both of us. We couldn’t talk about it over the phone, though. He wanted both of us to come back to the truck stop.
“Is that why Sam said he was married?” She asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Several voices on Otis’s end yelled “Yes!”
I told Otis that Deb had calmed down, and she and I would discuss it. She was already nodding “yes”.
“We need to be out of sight. They have found Ben Raines’s fingerprints at the truck stop and will be putting out pictures of him and looking more seriously, especially at the truck stop.”
“We will be closed until you get here, and no one will be here but family. If anyone comes poking around, we will call you but otherwise it will be okay.”
“Those are good reasons to not come back, but most of those are offset by equally good potential. Many of those people will never be back here again. And I believe you will like our offer,” Otis said.
Deb and I agreed. “We haven’t changed our minds about coming. It’s just that we had concerns. We’ll be there as soon as we can get there.” I didn’t tell him about the new paint and how the truck would look different.
“Understood.” He said and was gone.
Deb and I picked up the truck, and it looked good. We wouldn’t have known it was hers. Even the lettering on the side of the cab was new. We paid them and left.
Deb was driving, and she told me she would be driving for a while because she was going to keep me out of trouble. She pulled into a parking lot and made a few phone calls. In about half an hour, she had a load to Phoenix.
“This load doesn’t pay what I normally could get, but the pickup is close, and the drop is where we want to go.” She entered a new address into her GPS, wrote in her log, and away we went.
We agreed that I would wear some kind of hat all the time. I would keep my head down and not let anyone see my face. And better, I would be out of sight as much as possible. Deb would get meals to go and we would eat in the truck.
I settled in to consider all the things whirling around in my head. This was good for Deb to drive because I needed time to think. One amusing thing came to mind.
I asked Deb if she remembered the conversation about getting a second truck. She did. Then I asked her if she remembered me asking about buying into this truck and if she remembered she changed the subject. She smiled and said she remembered. I told her she should have taken me up on the deal and let me pay for half because now I’m half owner and didn’t pay anything.
She laughed for the first time in a while. “You will pay all right. I intend to be high maintenance for a long, long time. Besides, the reason I changed the subject is that I was beginning to think you wouldn’t have to pay anything. I thought at the time you might be part owner and didn’t want to tell you right then. I was afraid I had come to love you before you loved me.”
So we were feeling a little better, but there was a heavy cloud over our heads. I was having digestive problems, which was very unlike me. I used to be able to eat anything that was dead and as much as I wanted and never get sick. That wasn’t true now.
In the evening we decided to be nice to the truck stop people and use the same shower to save them hot-water money. It was just for their benefit of course. She made a hot shower even better.
We picked up the load, and before we got more than a few miles down the road, a motor home pulled in behind us and a black SUV behind that. Deb was white knuckling the steering wheel, and I was in the bunk with a gun.
About an hour down the road, the motor home pulled into a rest area and the black SUV followed them. Deb began to relax a little and I took a nap. I was exhausted.
We delivered the load, and pulled into Otis’s place late one morning. There was a big sign out by the road which said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. The front door to the store was locked with a big chain and pad lock. That was obvious from the street as well.
Otis wasn’t there, but the nephew running the restaurant was on the phone as soon as he saw us. Will came out of the shop. He waved at us, and after looking the truck over, gave us thumbs up. Deb pulled into “our” parking space, and I stood where she could see me in her rearview mirror.
We commented on the spot where the helicopter had been and headed inside. We decided we were hungry and asked the nephew if we should go ahead and eat. We didn’t know the schedule.
“That’ll work great. How are you feeling? Ha-ha!” he said as he looked Deb over.
Little did he know I was not well at all. But I wasn’t about to lie down and die just yet either.
We ordered and sat there holding hands across the table. I told her I was really sorry our life was such a mess.
“I am better off being in a mess with you than being alone in a truck. As long as I can touch you when I want to, I’ll be fine. I don’t want you dead or in jail unless I get mad at you. And then I’ll kill you myself.”
After she said that, I started thinking we hadn’t had any serious arguments. We disagreed on several things, but we didn’t really argue. Our relationship and our friendship were very comfortable.
“What are you thinking about? Why so quiet all of a sudden?”
I told her, which made her smile.
Our food arrived and then Otis arrived.
We asked about the schedule.
“We need to have a family meeting, and since you’re family we couldn’t start without you.”
We asked about the helicopter and the SUV.
“Now that is a story. It’ll take some time to tell it all, but I’ll start and then finish later if we get interrupted.”
We got interrupted a lot. Every time someone else came in, we had to get up and hug them. They would tell us their name and they would say it was OK if we didn’t remember yet.
Anyway, putting the story together a piece at a time, Otis had claimed the helicopter and SUV were his. The state law enforcement hadn’t agreed, but he’d stood his ground. A day or so after we’d left, Otis, Tilly, and Will took down all the crime-scene tape and burned it in trash barrels.
So the tape was gone, and soon all evidence of it was too. Then the family moved the helicopter and SUV to a barn. A few days later a semi with a flatbed trailer showed up and another truck with an enormous forklift.
The people drove all around the building and then came inside. “Where are the helicopter and SUV?” one asked.
Otis was real nice but made it clear it was none of their business.
The guy driving the semi made a phone call and was told to stay there.
“A sheriff is on the way,” the man said.
Otis gave the drivers a free meal, which was all they were going to get for the trip. They weren’t happy. They could already see it shaping up that way and didn’t like it much.
A couple of state police officers showed up about an hour later. “Where are the helicopter and SUV?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“We were told to take them to an impound lot.”
“They’re mine, and you can’t take them anywhere.”
One of the troopers got in Otis’s face. “Where are they?”
Otis stood his ground, and they were nose to nose. “Where is your warrant? Where is your title?”
The troopers’ faces were red.