by Anne Hagan
I tried again. Nothing. We looked at each other. “I’m not liking this!” I blurted out.
Tim blew out a breath. “Maybe their radio is out. We’ll figure it out. Regardless, here we go!”
We exited the forested area we’d been staged in and drove out onto the berm of the paved road. From our direction, there was no one around. Tim shut off the van and we waited. It would be a couple of more minutes before the semi approached the farm from the opposite direction and turned onto the compound. We didn’t want to beat it there and we didn’t want the driver of it or the unknowns watching from the Amish farm to spot us.
I hailed Ron and asked for a report.
“Unit one, target ETA is 2 minutes. Waving off. Over.”
“Roger Unit 4.”
“Out.”
The truck was less than 2 miles from the farm and Ron was leaving the area. He didn’t want to arouse suspicion from down below him on the farm before we moved in. I worried about the two Columbus area agents already there pulling surveillance duty. Why aren’t they answering?!
Seconds ticked by, then Mel’s deputies reported they had stopped a mile from the farm with the two search and seizure team vehicles still behind them. We needed to give the truck time to get turned and them through the property and into the loading bay. I was relying on my ground team to give me the go ahead but they appeared to be MIA.
I tried to hail the ground team one more time. Still no response. I looked at Mel. Tell your men to roll, no lights, no sirens. I relayed the move order to my team.
Tim fired the vans engine again and we crept forward. We crested a small hill in time to see two cruisers block the entry/exit to the Amish farm as a black van rolled down the farms dirt driveway toward them.
I turned my attention away as two tactical vehicle loads of Customs Agents entered the Chappell Dairy Farm across the roadway from the cruisers. Tim gave the van some gas and we were soon falling in behind them.
Most of the farm buildings were set back off the road but it would only be seconds until we were in sight of the main dairy operation. The building we needed to get to was set a little further back. I’m not normally a praying woman, but I sent up a silent prayer this night for the safety of us all.
Mel’s radio screamed to life. “Sheriff, we have a situation.”
No shit!
“Identify,” was her immediate response.
“Unit 16, Sheriff. This vehicle we’re blocking is full of ATF Agents that are in a big hurry to get on the Chappell farm, over.”
“Mother fucking son of a bitch!” I vented. Tim and I looked at each other.
“What the hell?” he asked.
I raised my hands in an ‘I don’t know’ gesture.
“What should I tell my deputy Rossi?”
“Tell them to stand down. Fuckin’ ‘A’. Hopefully they move real slow out of the way. This is MY bust!”
Unit 16 reported again, “Sheriff, they’re demanding that the units that entered the farm stand down.”
“Like hell!” I yelled. “Tim keep driving!”
“Yes ma’am!”
“And again, what should I tell my deputy?”
“Tell him to let them know that they’re presence here is impeding a federal investigation!”
“Roger boss!” I could hear the smile in Mel’s voice when she replied to me and again when she relayed the message to her team.
Vehicles one and two in our little line pulled in at the large barnlike structure and blocked the semi from being able to leave the loading bay. Tim pulled the van up alongside the man door. The team quickly formed up and began to storm the building when shots rang out from the field beyond. I felt an intense, searing heat in my left leg and then nothing but pain.
“I’m hit!” I screamed as I collapsed onto the ground. I tried to crawl to a position of cover. Tim and John quickly diverted some of the team still outside the building into position to lay down suppressive fire.
“Sheriff!” Tim yelled. “Get Rossi back in the van. She’s hurt!”
The ATF van rolled up. Over a megaphone or some sort of PA system, I could hear someone shouting, “Cease fire, cease fire!”
Mel appeared at my side. “Help me up and get me in that building now!” I demanded.
“Dana, you’re bleeding,” she said to me and then called out, “someone call for an ambulance!”
The ATF agents had dismounted and they were approaching the building.
I gritted my teeth. “NOW MEL!”
She looked at me for a fraction of a second and then she hauled me up and practically carried me to the door.
My head spun as we stepped out of the darkness of the night and into a brightly lit world of controlled bedlam. The six Customs Agents that had made it inside were holding about eight men who had been preparing to unload the truck at bay with their rifles. The hands and the truck driver had been caught completely off guard.
Some of the ATF agents from the van pushed in behind us, rifles at the ready. One stepped forward and looked at those of us closest to him. “Who thinks they’re in charge here?” he demanded.
I looked him in the eye. “I am in charge here. Special Agent Rossi, U.S. Customs and Border Protection. And you are?”
“ATF, Special Agent. We’ve been tracking this shipment for a long time. This is my bust.”
I felt woozy in more ways than one. “We’ll just see about that ‘ATF!”
The door burst open again. The two Columbus agents that had been assigned to surveillance were shoved in first by two men dressed in camouflage that I didn’t know. Several guns turned their direction. They were followed by Tim and John and then a few other men wearing all black jackets. One approached, identified himself as from the Secret Service and asked who was in charge.
Mel spoke for all of us when she said, “What we have here is a cluster fuck!”
Chapter 31 – Denouement
Dana
“I’m sorry to be so much trouble.” I looked up at Mel as she assisted me from a wheelchair into the passenger seat of her sister’s car.
“Dana, you’re no trouble. You were shot, for Pete’s sake! Thank heaven it wasn’t worse than it is!”
“Well, what it is, is pretty bad...”
“I didn’t mean...”
She looked at me with such a look of sorrow as she went on the defensive that I took pity on her and decided not to take my frustration out on her, especially on our first real date. “I’m just glad to get out of rehab torture for a bit.”
“How long until you’re out of the hospital for more than an outing?” She started the car.
“Soon, I think. The bones are set and they’ve started healing. There’s just a lot of nerve damage that’s keeping me from having full capabilities with my left leg, right now.” I stopped talking because I wasn’t sure how to broach the real topic at hand; us.
“Where will you go when you’re released from the hospital?”
So much for not really wanting to go there right now.
“Well, probably back to Cleveland to stay while my rehab continues. Then, I’ll have to be medically evaluated to continue in my normal duty assignment.”
“And, if you can’t? Do your normal assignment, I mean?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
Mel grew quiet and I got lost in my own thoughts as she drove me wherever it was that she was taking me. “It’s a surprise,” she’d said.
My mind wandered back to that night on the Chappell farm. What a mixed up nightmare that had turned into. I was bleeding and woozy after being shot but Tim came to my aide as three agencies attempted to claim the bust and go through the cargo. A decision was made by people echelons above all of us on the ground to offload the truck and see what we had before determining jurisdiction over the whole shooting match.
The first couple of crates yielded a treasure trove of knock off, high end cell phones. They weren’t at all what I was expecting to see come off the truck but I would
take it. I became smug in my victory and refused to leave the site until Tim stepped up and ordered me to go and be treated.
He and Mel were waiting for me at the hospital when I came out of recovery after surgery to remove bone fragments from the bullet I took. Over the next couple of hours, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, the rest of the story unfolded.
The next crate off the truck, much to the surprise of all the law enforcement officers on site but the ATF agents, apparently, contained two racks of high end automatic rifles. Delores and her brother, it turns out, were the primary traders in the Gangster Demons very lucrative arms dealing business. The arms that night came via Detroit in the Demon owned truck and were to be distributed from the Chappell farming operation per usual, in a true stroke of criminal genius, in modified milk tanker trucks. Who would ever suspect a milk tanker to be hauling anything but milk?
ATF had been tipped about illegal arms trade firearms passing through Detroit and had been working on nailing the whole distribution ring for months. They had been the ones watching the dairy farm from the Amish farm when we had first attempted to set up surveillance.
The Secret Service, meanwhile, was a latecomer to the whole Gangster Demons – Relic – Chappell party. Mel’s tip to them about counterfeit money and her investigative work had walked them right into a case that might not have come for months or years to come given the quality of the counterfeit money that was being passed. The three men Agent Webb had taken into federal custody gave up information on the money distribution system via Demon owned transport. The truck driver the night of the big bust had another part of his load and a briefcase full of counterfeit twenties headed for Knoxville. He’d never even taken the briefcase out of the cab.
Secret Service Agents had been the ones to find and collar the two men we had out in the field doing surveillance the night of the bust. Though I’d never be able to prove it, the bullet I took, likely came from one of their operatives. If someone in the FBI van hadn’t shouted out a cease fire and alerted the men in the field that something wasn’t quite what they thought it was... I shuddered at the thought of the lives that might have been lost that night.
“What’s wrong? You’re shaking,” Mel asked.
“Just thinking about the night of the bust... how bad it really could have been with all of those agents. If the farm crew had been armed...”
“But, they weren’t. They were just farm hands out to pick up some extra dough.”
“I know. Like you said that night, what a cluster fuck! All three agencies are going to be battling for jurisdiction over this case for years. Meanwhile, Illinois wants Delores Chappell extradited on murder charges for ordering the prison hit and there’s a nationwide manhunt going on to find Vincent and charge him with murder as well.”
“I hate to break it to you Dana, but the local DA is also reopening the investigation into Sheriff Carter’s death.”
“He’s going to have to get in line!”
“I imagine so.”
“Well, you were right about one thing which, given her recent history, was a surprise.”
“What’s that?”
“Relic...er... Delores going easily. She didn’t even put up a fight. When they stormed her house that night as we were hitting that barn, she barely let out a whimper.”
“Maybe she realized the jig was up?” Mel’s response was more a question than a statement.
“Maybe. Actually, I’m thinking she’s so tied into all the gang business, and with all the low level guys singing like canaries, that she’s keeping her mouth shut and will be doing that for forever and a day. With three agencies bearing down on her...” I looked at Mel and shrugged.
Mel looked thoughtful.
“What has the wheels turning in your head now?”
“It’s just, well, I’ve known Delores all my life. I’ve been a cop for years. I can usually spot a criminal right away... I don’t know!” She shook her head. “How does someone like her, from a place like this,” she waved her left arm out her open window to the countryside surrounding her little hometown of Morelville, “get mixed up with a street gang?”
“Look, she may not be talking but Jonathan Joseph is and he’s had plenty to say because he’s trying to save his own ass. He’s given Gene and anyone else that will listen to him the scoop on her.”
“Really? I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Mel, it’s still a federal investigation. There are some things I can’t tell you but, I can give you a little bit of background, if you like.”
She nodded for me to continue.
“Okay. Well, first of all, Delores was born almost completely deaf. As a teenager, she was sent to a Chicago hospital for surgery to insert experimental implants in both of her ears. It was a very expensive procedure that her family got done for her for free by agreeing to let the procedure be attempted on a young adult with significant hearing lose. They were too poor to travel with her.”
“After the surgery, Delores had to stay in Chicago for a while for testing and for speech therapy so she actually stayed with distant family in the area. The branch of the family there, to which Joseph is related, he tells us, had problems with the Mafia during prohibition and beyond. They eventually fought back by becoming involved with the Gangster Demons. Most of that branch of the family, unknown to the branch of the family Delores left back in Ohio, was gang connected. That’s apparently where her involvement started. Why, or how, we don’t know...yet.”
“Wow. And she came back to Ohio to spread the joy...” Mel just shook her head.
I continued, “Which leads me to wonder how, if the family was too poor to travel with her or to pay for her follow up care here, they came to have such a farming empire?”
“Good question! Guess that’s one for all you feds to figure out.” She looked at me and grinned that same grin I remembered from the first day I met her.
I laughed. “So, where are we going, anyway?”
“Actually, we’re here.”
She pulled the car into a lot past a teenager waving an orange traffic flag. There were rows of cars ahead of us. She drove toward the front of the lot and parked near an entrance gate. My view of the goings on was blocked by a crowd of people waiting to enter.
“I present to you, the Morelville Mushroom Festival!” She smiled and her eyes beamed her mirth.
I laughed so hard, tears formed in my eyes.
Mel parked, retrieved the wheelchair from the trunk and then maneuvered me out of the car. We bypassed the main gate and entered through a side gate reserved for the handicapped. I hated that but I resolved to make the best of it. My resolve, however, would be short lived.
Busy Bees
The Morelville Mysteries – Book 2
Anne Hagan
To AR, Janet, Lisa and Sarah for your support
PUBLISHED BY:
Jug Run Press, USA
Copyright © 2015
https://annehaganauthor.com/
All rights reserved: No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without prior written consent of the author or the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1 – Prologue
Dana
Saturday, May 24th, 2014
My doctor is giving me a day pass for good behavior. I took a bullet to the left leg on my last assignment as a Special Agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service that shattered bone and severely damaged nerves. After two surgeries to remove the bullet and some bone fragments and to piece together my femur with rods and screws, I’m healing but not nearly
fast enough for my liking. My leg has little capability to bear weight and feeling any sensation at all in it is hit or miss. Doctor Welle, my surgeon, tells me the feeling will come back in due time.
I’ve started the rehab work but I hate it... absolutely hate it. I feel so useless and incapable when I can’t do an exercise. But, I also hate being confined to a hospital bed for most of the day. Rehabbing well is my permanent ticket out of the hospital and back to my life. Today, I’m told, is a little reward for the work I’ve been able to put in so far. It sure doesn’t hurt that the outing is with the county Sheriff and that the medical staff knows I’ll be in capable hands!
Mel said she was going to take me on a date somewhere special. I don’t care where we go as long as I get to spend time with her and the location doesn’t involve hospital food!
###
“I’m sorry to be so much trouble.” I looked up at Mel as she assisted me from a wheelchair into the passenger seat of her sister’s car.
“Dana, you’re no trouble. You were shot, for Pete’s sake! Thank heaven it wasn’t worse than it is!”
“Well, what it is, is pretty bad...”
“I didn’t mean...”
She looked at me with such a look of sorrow as she went on the defensive that I took pity on her and decided not to take my frustration out on her, especially on our first real date. “I’m just glad to get out of rehab torture for a bit.”
“How long until you’re out of the hospital for more than an outing?” She started the car.
“Soon, I think. The bones are set and they’ve started healing. There’s just a lot of nerve damage that’s keeping me from having full capabilities with my left leg, right now.” I stopped talking because she actually already knew all of that. I just wasn’t sure how to broach the real topic at hand; us.
“Where will you go when you’re released from the hospital?”