Un-Connected

by Noah Rea

  While Otis, Will and Jack were being loaded in the ambulances, I called Tilly. We picked her up and drove to the hospital. We signed papers for surgery, and they were taken away from emergency. We followed to the waiting room as close as we could be to where we saw them last. Sarah had made some calls and before long, the waiting room was full. A couple of guys went out for food, drinks and coffee and brought back four huge bagsful. James, Sarah and Aaron stayed at the truckstop to keep an eye on things there.

  The other EMTs worked on the men not moving. Most of them were already dead but there were a couple still alive.

  Deb, Tilly, and I prayed and asked God to please save the lives and limbs of those we loved and in mercy give the family peace. We all said amen.

  After a couple of agonizingly long hours, a doctor appeared wanting to talk to Tilly.

  They had all been to surgery. Jack’s legs would be OK, but he would have to have physical therapy, and it would take some time. He had a little shrapnel in his body, but they thought they got it all. Otis was patched together, and they weren’t sure he’d walk again. They may have to go back and take off one leg below the knee. They got quite a bit of shrapnel out of him, and they think they got it all out of him as well. They stopped all the bleeding in his lower body, they thought, and they were watching him closely.

  Will actually had been awake earlier, wanting to know what had happened. He apparently didn’t remember anything after he’d gotten shot. We think he finished shooting near unconscious. His lung was collapsed, but they got all the bullets out except some fragments they couldn’t get easily. He was in ICU and sleeping. They thought he’d be OK, but he was the worst of the three. All three had lost a lot of blood. One of the kids got their blood types and set up blood donations. The family gave the hospital all the blood they needed for those three surgeries and then some.

  The guy we captured wasn’t talking to a policeman who was guarding him and had him cuffed to a patrol car. The AZDPS and FBI are all over the truck stop, and the nieces and nephews were keeping an eye on things there.

  “The police first, and now the AZDPS and the FBI have the crook who gave up. So far, he hasn’t talked.” Aaron called to tell us.

  “Will’s wife wants some time with the guy who gave up. She said he’d be glad to talk after she tore a few holes in him with her bare hands,” Tilly said. “Sam, you and I were both right. I don’t want my family going through this.”

  Then Tilly started to cry again. “I’m so afraid. Otis thinks he’ll live forever, but I know different, and I don’t want to be a widow. He scares me. I hope we can talk some sense into him. We need to close that truck stop down or something. We were very lucky today that none of us got killed or hurt worse.”

  She looked me in the eye. “I’m glad you were here. Otis knew you would be right in the thick of it if you could be. He believes in you. I don’t know how much more of this stress I can take. It is so hard not knowing who we are fighting. Or when they will show up. Or what kind of weapons they will have.”

  “I hope there won’t be a next time, but if there is, you can count on me,” I said. “We have to be smart about this stuff, though. The truck stop isn’t worth someone dying over.”

  “No it isn’t.” Tilly said.

  Everyone agreed with that.

  Deb put her arms around Tilly and they cried together. Deb told her she felt the same way about me.

  “They are too much alike,” Tilly said.

  So we hung out at the hospital all day and until well after dark and then went to a motel exhausted. We tried to get Tilly to go with us, but one of the nephews was driving her home. I told them they were crazy to drive that far, but Tilly said she needed a good night’s sleep, and she would sleep better at home in her own bed. Plus the nephew would spend the night with her to be sure she was safe. It was good enough for everyone.

  I called Aaron to see if any of the bad guys had made it.

  “Two were alive when the EMTs got here. One had so many holes in him that he bled out and died with them bandaging him up. One lived long enough to get to the hospital but he died in the emergency room before they could get him to surgery. The rest were dead at the scene. The police have all the surrounding medical examiners busy checking in bodies.”

  The next morning Deb and I ate a good breakfast. We went to the hospital to find Otis and Jack awake and in pain but in good spirits. Jack didn’t have as much pain, and they were talking. Will was asleep, swollen and running a fever. He was still in ICU. It was normal, they said, for someone to swell and get a fever and look worse for a few days. Except for all the swelling he looked pretty normal for someone who’d been shot up. They said his heart was doing great, and he didn’t have much infection considering how many holes were in him. We hung out there the whole day and the next.

  The morning after that Jack and Otis were both in even better spirits. Otis was doing better than expected, and Jack was doing as expected. They felt it possible Otis might keep his leg after all.

  Otis called Deb and me to his bed. “Quit hanging around here like lost puppies. Go pick out your land. We’ll be home in no time and figure out what to do with life. In the meantime, the truck stop will be totally shut down. Not even the restaurant will be open for the family. So there is nothing you can do there. You two need to get on with your lives. Tilly will take care of me, and Will’s wife will take care of him. Jack’s mom, dad, sister, and all the brothers and cousins will take care of Jack, so he’ll be fine.”

  It sounded better than it looked, but I did believe they’d be OK eventually. And what could we do, anyway?

  “Otis, how are your legs?”

  He moved toes on both feet a little.

  “That is great.” I exclaimed. “That looks very promising doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “That is what I think. The doctors won’t say it is promising but I still think it is.”

  “I hate to leave you like this.” I said.

  “You want to set here by the bed and hold my hand?” He asked.

  We laughed. “We want you to get well is all.”

  “I know. Tilly will be taking me home soon and I will get well as soon as I get home where I can sleep.”

  “Okay, I won’t hold your hand but I do wish you well and hate to leave. But we will go.”

  We got lots of hugs for different family members and a number of them headed out as well.

  We drove by the truck stop, and there were several cars there from different law enforcement agencies. Crime scene tape was all over the place. We stopped and stood by the cars. They eventually saw us, and an AZDPS officer came out to see what we wanted.

  “We’re family friends of Otis and Tilly. With grenades and all being used, this is pretty over-the-line stuff.”

  He agreed.

  I tried to introduce myself and get him to tell me what he knew so far. “The papers will have a lot of information, so you should be able to tell me quite a bit that would be out soon, anyway.”

  He knew who I was and that Otis had been using Deb’s truck.

  The cars used in the attack had been stolen the night before. They were stolen pretty much from the same area less than fifty miles away. Since there was no airport close or bus station, someone had probably driven them there and let them out. The grenades were new. They’d been delivered to the military less than ninety days ago. They knew that because there were two more on the dead guys. The rifles had been issued to the military. The dead men as well as the one living were part of a militia from out of state. Only one had prior military experience. Several had records of one kind or another.

  “Were they pretty much rednecks who belonged to a militia?” I asked.

  He nodded yes.

  “What do people usually do in a militia?”

  “It varies, of course. But generally, they’re a loosely organized group that for the most part burns a lot of ammo on the weekends. Some are linked to unsolved murders, and some others are very tame. A few o
penly have policemen as members, and they run gun ranges. Some of them in the South had KKK members and in a few cases were run by them. There were always neo-Nazi types around too. The militia these guys came from is not one of the nicer ones.”

  I scratched my head. “So, whoever hired these guys had a win either way because if these guys hurt Otis and crew badly, then they sent a message. If these guys died, the message was still delivered, and they weren’t out a lot of money.”

  “Yes, it also meant whoever sent them was adaptable and knew how to hurt someone without getting dirty themselves. And they supplied them with guns and grenades that not just anyone can get.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The grenades hadn’t been reported as stolen, so the people who hired them supplied the grenades for sure and probably the rifles. They’d have to be connected politically to get this stuff without stealing it. In other words, they were lost as an inventory issue but not a theft, so no military person got busted for letting a theft happen. There is lot we don’t know yet.”

  “So,” I said. “Someone with clearance just walked into a warehouse and walked out with them.”

  He nodded. “We were pretty sure there’d be no fingerprints on the guns or ammo or anything in addition to the ones from the guys at the crime scene. But we checked anyway, and the lab confirmed as much. Probably nobody with that kind of clearance would be so careless.”

  “Is the guy you have in custody talking?”

  “Yes, he lawyered up, and his lawyer encouraged him to make a deal with us. He was looking at the death penalty for sure with all the charges here, and the deal gets him life. He’ll be out in about twenty years if he didn’t kill anyone. We have his gun to check ballistics and if anyone dies with bullets from his gun, he won’t be getting out ever.”

  “It doesn’t look like anyone is dying. The grenades did some serious leg damage but they ducked behind the cabinets so they didn’t get much upper body damage. It looks like they will all live.” I said.

  “Well you’re right about another thing too. It will be in the news. We won’t waste this. We’ll be sending a message to all the militia out there to clearly define legal and illegal. Some of the militia are getting a little fuzzy and don’t know the law, but these guys did. These guys didn’t intend to be nice. Any patrolman who would have stopped these guys would have gotten killed. They wouldn’t have allowed a search with grenades in their car.”

  I looked at Deb. “We knew that, didn’t we?”

  He shrugged. “I was surprised they would take that much of a gamble. They probably were told it would be such fun and no risk. Whoever hired them lost some credibility with that militia I’d bet. And whoever hired them knew the probable danger might be high. They were the ones that hired the prior hit, we’re sure. They weren’t quite truthful with these guys.”

  “They probably told them how much fun it would be to use actual grenades. Like you will be chunking these in a door and you may not even have to shoot your gun!”

  “No doubt,” The officer said. “It had to be something close to that. These guys didn’t expect to die here we are sure. Their friends back home will likely want to take it out on whoever hired them.”

  Deb and I were amazed, and when we left there, I called Jim to see what he knew. He knew most of what I’d been told and knew some things I didn’t. Two more guys from the same out-of-state-militia had been found dead early that morning. They were out in the woods.

  “People heard full auto shooting and a gun battle,” Jim said. “It didn’t last long, but it was loud. The police brought dogs out who found them. It took about thirty minutes, and it was just after sunrise. We’re guessing there had been a meeting between the militia, who had already heard about their guys getting killed and were very unhappy about it. The end to their members ‘easy job’ didn’t sit well and they were looking for an explanation from whoever hired them. The meeting didn’t go well. The militia guys probably intended to hurt whoever hired them. So it was a really serious fight though it probably didn’t last long.”

  Jim paused a moment. “We’re hoping someone in that militia will leak information about who hired the hit, but we aren’t holding our breath. They probably will if they can figure out a way to do it without admitting it was their guys. Since we have one of them alive and more of them dead, we know it’s them, but they’re already denying they’re violent.”

  “Of course.” I said.

  “What they tell us is they are just a small group that’s running a gun range, and besides the guys that showed up at the truck stop were always in trouble with them for breaking range rules. They weren’t really part of our group though they did come to our range to shoot,” was their official story.

  “We have some shell casings from the site but don’t expect to find anything on them. But we’re checking. We don’t have anything else yet.”

  We discussed the security clearance it would take to drive out of a military base with grenades in your car.

  “I agree we’re looking at someone really high up,” Jim said. “They were saying essentially don’t mess with us.”

  “So what does it mean for us?”

  “Well, only God Himself is too high to bring to justice,” Jim said. “But the good news is no one is interested in Ben any longer. There is nothing like a few grenades out in the desert to change the conversation, even in Washington.”

  Jim sighed. “Any luck finding the black box?”

  “I’ll check on it. I’m sure they are about ready to get rid of it. But one thing that is interesting is that these last guys weren’t looking for the black box. They were sent to deliver a message and to get revenge for someone who wanted to save face. These people regularly want to cover up who they are. They seemed to have forgotten that a little bit here. They must have been so enraged or embarrassed they lost sight of the fact the black box could expose them more.”

  “We are lucky or protected here in the US because we don’t have the plague of grenades, land mines, and IEDs, improvised explosive devices that much of the rest of the world has to deal with.”

  “Why didn’t the FBI just get warrants and raid a bunch of Otis’ places?”

  Jim laughed. “The box isn’t that big, and with all the rocks and boulders to hide it under, it would be nearly impossible to find. That is especially if the current owner knows how important it is, and we’re sure the owner does.”

  I told him I’d work on getting him the black box but I had been assured that they would sell it to the FBI rather than the other potential buyer.

  We were headed to see Otis and the others anyway. We found all three awake. Otis was in good spirits and doing well, though in a lot of pain. They said his legs looked awful, but he had feeling in both feet, and the doctor finally said it was a very good sign. Tilly and the nurses couldn’t get him to take all his pain medication. He told them he should decide how much to take, and he stuck to that. He did take what they offered the night before and got a good night’s sleep.

  Jack was healing quickly, but he was younger. He was bandaged from his ankles to just below his rib cage. But he had been up. He had walked down the hall a short distance and back pushing his IV stand. He wasn’t taking much pain medicine either. He was very pale but in good spirits. He told us he would be taking the catheter out tomorrow.

  “No!” the closest nurse said and then shook her head.

  Jack was now the hero of the younger crowd from all over the place. All the younger ones and their friends wanted to hang out with Jack and hear the story over and over.

  I told Deb he would most likely have a girlfriend before long. She laughed and said she agreed. “There’s nothing like a man getting in trouble to get women coming to the rescue.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with your rendition, but we’ll see.”

  “That’s how I found you.”

  “Excuse me. I believe it was the other way around. I knew I was in trouble, and I was looking for help whe
n I found you!”

  She laughed. Evidently, she really enjoyed believing she had saved me. I finally had to admit that much.

  Will was awake and so swollen I wouldn’t have recognized him. He couldn’t talk with all the tubes they had in him, but he nodded hi to us when we walked in. He was pretty doped up.

  I patted him on the undamaged hand. “It’s good to see you.” I said and he nodded back a little.

  Deb kissed him on the forehead. I could tell he liked her better than me, and I told them both and Will smiled a little.

  We went back to Otis’s room and started to tell him what we had found out. All the family at the hospital came into the room to listen. We pretty much all agreed they were blessed to be alive. No one expected grenades. So the crooks, as Tilly called them, wanted Otis to be the one surprised this time.

  We talked about the future of the truck stop, and agreed not to open it in the same location again, meaning close to the street or in that building. Several thought they would rebuild farther off the road at the same parcel of land. We talked about just having a pay window open at night with thick glass protecting the cashier and no way for anyone to come inside.

  One of the younger ones made a suggestion. His name was Eddie and his nickname was “Evinrude” because he like to fish so much. Eddie was learning to do auto repair from Will. “Why don’t we turn the whole thing into a repair garage and parts house that closes at 6 p.m. or so. Then we could have the fuel desk, office, showers and restaurant in a new building in the back and put in more pumps. Open the restaurant from about 6 am to about 8 pm. Bring in a little fill dirt and set the new building up higher and put retaining walls all around it so no one could drive up to the door. Then put a door behind a door front and back so we could control outside air getting in, and with electric locks, it would be very hard for someone to get through two doors quickly. From 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. there would only be a pay window open.”