by Jim Magwood
“Unfortunately, the terrorists have made it known they will take action against anyone who helps the families try to rebuild, and the family members have not been able to get help from any international aid groups yet. We have, though, started a program of fund raising through the Freedom Authority so that peace loving religious people everywhere can help the family.”
Reverend Campbell jumped back in. “Trenton, the People Helping People group has begun collecting gifts to support the family, also. I agree with Mr. al-Sistani that people that believe in religious freedom everywhere should show these terrorists that we can’t be bullied and threatened by giving generously to our fund. They can send gifts of any size directly to me and I’ll see that the gifts are put into the hands of these people that have been treated so wrongly.”
“Thank you, Reverend Campbell and Mr. al-Sistani, for spending this time with us, and for keeping us up-dated following this callous attack. Folks in the audience, if you can send a gift to help these peace-loving people begin to rebuild, the addresses for the funds opened by Reverend Campbell and Mr. al-Sistani are being shown on the screen right now. Please be generous with your gifts and let the families know we love them and…”
CHAPTER 18
“Reverend Sanders, I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. I’ve been trying to do a little study on President King, as I told you on the phone, and one of the items I’m curious about is his more personal relations and activities. For instance, he apparently decided to not attend one of the normal big churches downtown that most of the others used, and I wonder what he saw at your place that brought him here?”
“I’m happy to give you the time, Mr. Baxter. I don’t know that I can tell you a lot, but I’ll try to help you. And, please, just call me Steve. I’m just kind of a simple preacher, and we don’t have a lot of formality around this place.”
“Sure, I can do that, and I’m just Henry, okay?”
“Good. So, where can I start for you, Henry?”
“Well, again, maybe the question of why the president bypassed the regular churches downtown and chose yours?
You’re even located way up here in the north part of the city, quite a way for him to go on a Sunday drive. What do you do special here that would draw him?”
“I think the answer is pretty simple, really. He just said he comes from a small-church background and felt he wanted to continue that when he got here. We don’t really do anything special here. We’re just a little church trying to reach out and help people. I don’t even know yet who directed him here or how he found us.”
“When did you start here?”
“We started about six years ago, and at first were in a school assembly room just down the street. We got the opportunity last year to get this property—one of our people was retiring and decided he didn’t need it, so pretty much donated the whole thing. The congregation got together and raised the money to build, so we built this admin building first, with a small chapel we used for the services. We’ve definitely run out of room now, so we have the modules you saw out back for all the classes and use the chapel strictly for the services now. We’re building behind here—you can see through the window there—and expect that by next year, that will be our worship center and we’ll be able to move the classes back into here and maybe use the modules in some other way.”
“And what kind of church would you describe yourself as? What group do you belong to?”
“Well, we’d be described as just a community church; non-denominational, Bible-believing, Spirit-filled, fun-loving and wanting to help people. We really don’t have any agenda except to help people build better lives and get closer to the Lord.”
“Uh, well, yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. What can you tell me about the president? Why do you think he came here?”
“I can’t tell you much except for what I said before. He apparently wanted to attend a smaller, maybe less formalized type of church. We have lots of good music and, hey, you really want to come by some time and join in one of our pot-luck dinners. Probably the best cooks in town here.” Steve chuckled as he saw Baxter react with a bit of wonder as to who this preacher guy really was. Steve was an easygoing person and went out of his way to make people feel comfortable, either in or out of the church. He could tell Baxter wasn’t very well acquainted with church life and just wanted to set him at ease.
“Potlucks, huh? Okay. Yeah, that sounds good.” Then, after a slight pause, “So, does the president come to the pot-lucks?”
“Well, he hasn’t had the time to get to one yet, but he keeps saying he’s going to try out the food part of our thing pretty soon. We’ll get him here yet.”
Baxter wasn’t used to having people talk in such a familiar manner about the president and was getting a little flus-tered about how to proceed with his interview. Was this place starting to feel a little weird?
“Uh, Steve…uh, Pastor,” he just didn’t feel comfortable on a first name basis, “let me shift gears a bit, okay? I know the president’s got to be concerned with all the problems in the world, and maybe especially these vigilante things going on.
They’re in the news almost every day now. Has he said anything to you about them?”
“Henry, you’re the reporter writing all the major stories about them, right?”
“Uh, yes, I’ve done a few of them. Is that a problem?”
“No, not at all. I’ve read probably all of them and I think you do a good job. I was just wondering what you thought about them—these events?”
Henry was a little taken aback by the questioning being turned around on him, but answered honestly, “I really don’t know any more. When they first started, I figured these people doing the stuff had the right idea. We, the people, have pretty much let everything get out of hand around us and our authorities aren’t able to get a handle on things any more, so I figured let them have at it. They’re apparently concentrating on just the bad guys that most of us know about anyway. Now, though, I don’t know. I’m probably still on their side—in fact, pretty certain I still am—but, with all the apparent citizen action starting up, I wonder if maybe it’s gotten out of hand and should be reigned in. But, uh, anyway, do you know what the president thinks about it all?”
“No, I really don’t. He hasn’t said anything to me about it, and I don’t feel it’s my place to ask. I would think, though, that he’s likely pretty concerned. I personally feel these things shouldn’t be going on. Law enforcement should be left to the authorities. But I can certainly understand why someone would want to take action when they see things going on without control.
“Like you said, though, I’m really concerned with the private citizens taking action like they seem to be doing. I believe we’ve already got reports of people getting hurt by the private actions—innocent people that just got in the way between citizens and apparent criminals. As much as we might want to
‘take back our streets’, as one of our people said, it’s pretty difficult seeing innocent people getting hurt in that effort.”
“So, yeah…uh…getting back to the president, you’ve actually met him, have you?”
“Yes, we’ve talked a couple of times and I think he’s a real nice guy. Seems to put his pants on the same way you and I do. And his wife’s a lovely lady.”
Sanders could tell he had shocked Henry again, but just chuckled silently. Then he continued, “He does seem to be a real person, though. He listens, has good questions, has obviously thought things out well beforehand, and appears to me to really have the best interests of the country as his main goal. I know he’s swamped with work, but he seems willing to take whatever time’s necessary to have a conversation. We’ve had a couple of good times together in the last year or so.”
Baxter and Sanders conversed for another hour and, while Sanders didn’t have much he could share with him, Baxter started feeling comfortable. Baxter found himself thinking more about the vigilante events than he had before, and real
ized it was because of some of the more probing questions Sanders asked. He seemed to have a way of getting things on the table in a way that made them more readable.
As Baxter was leaving, he asked Sanders again what he felt should be done about the vigilante actions and was surprised when the Pastor answered, “Henry, I don’t want to sound simplistic with this answer, but the Bible says a couple of things about situations like this. One of them is to simply trust God in everything. I can talk with you more about that another day if you’d like. The other is to not try to do things God says are His to do. In this case, He says that He will take care of avenging His people and that we shouldn’t try to do that. Often, if we step into things that He reserves for Himself, we just end up making bad situations even more difficult for ourselves.
“I know these things that are going on seem to be begging us to get involved and maybe copy this group on our own, but it might be that doing that will make things worse. Right now, we have admittedly what looks like a lot of criminals running around freely. But, do we really want a lot of citizens running around turning themselves into the same kind of people as the bad guys?”
When the men parted, Henry had a lot more questions running through his mind than when he had first started talking with the pastor.
CHAPTER 19
About twenty men were scurrying around the trucks and carrying packages to the waiting planes. The day was very hot and the humidity was to the drenching point, but nobody dared complain or slow down. Señor Escobedo was watching from the veranda on the front of the warehouse and no one wanted him to take personal notice of them. Workers had been noticed before and never seen again. Although Escobedo lavished many good things on his workers, he was also known for having a streak in him that could only be described as evil, and when he was angered, the evil was both ugly and deadly.
One worker who had dropped a package while taking it out of the delivery truck had been given a sky diving lesson when the plane had later taken off. His body had never been found. Another man that had dropped a package had been chastised for it, but then forgiven. However, when he arrived home that night, he found his house burned to the ground and his wife and children gone. No trace of them was ever found.
The workers were usually paid well and were able to enjoy the fruits of their labors when the work was completed, however Señor Escobedo was not a man you wanted to have personally notice you.
Escobedo raised his hand and pointed at one of the supervisors. No one hesitated in their work, but the supervisor quickly ran across the loading area and bowed his head in front of Escobedo, his heart pounding with fear. “Bring me a package. Any one.” Now able to take a breath, the supervisor raced back across to a truck, opened one of the bales and carefully removed a package, then raced back to Escobedo. Bow-ing his head again, he carefully handed it to Escobedo, who took it without a word, stuck it with a small penknife and tasted the tiny speck of powder on the point of the knife. The supervisor was holding his breath and didn’t breathe again until Escobedo said, “Okay,” and tossed the package back to him. Then, Escobedo simply turned and walked into the warehouse. Although it wasn’t noticeable that anyone had been watching, an audible sigh of relief swept through the group of workers.
Alberto Escobedo had been raised in the home of well-to-do parents, both of them professionals. His father was a surgi-cal doctor who had his own clinic/hospital and his mother was head of pediatrics in a major hospital. They were well placed in the city’s upper-class society and Alberto had always had whatever he desired. He had grown up in São Paulo, Brazil, had received an advanced education at the University of São Paulo, had lived a respectable life and was looked at as being one of the new generation who would likely lead his country to bigger and better things.
Following his graduation, however, it was as if a switch had been thrown. He raided almost $250,000 from his parent’s savings accounts by breaking into their bank with his computer, bought a small plane, and with the help of three university friends, started a drug business.
His first inroad into the business had been to visit the offices of four different drug dealers under the pretense of setting up dealerships with them. During the visits, he killed the men in their offices along with any employees that had been around and simply took over their businesses. His next action had been to burn the homes of the four men to the ground in the middle of the night without letting anyone get out of the fires alive. That he did to simply show that he meant business.
Then, to ensure he had the power and control he required, he killed the three friends who had helped him get started and began hiring strangers who would simply do anything for the right amount of money. He began buying into drug producing areas located in Brazil, Columbia, or Mexico and invested large sums of cash to make the areas more productive. He established flight routes for his planes with mid-route fueling stations that covered more than a dozen separate paths from Brazil and Columbia through Mexico and over the border into the United States. He rapidly became one of the largest, and certainly one of the most feared, drug czars operating in the Western Hemisphere.
He very carefully researched the ways and means of getting drugs out of his production areas and into other countries, especially the United States and Canada and across the ocean into Europe. He recruited tourists to carry small amounts of materials, but usually just to divert attention. They couldn’t carry enough to make them worthwhile except as suspects to keep border guards busy. He tried using some government couriers with their secure pouches, but knew that they also couldn’t carry enough to make them worthwhile. At one point, he even researched the possibility of using mini-submarines.
They could carry upwards of ten to fifteen tons of products, but he decided to not pursue that avenue because of the huge cost of the subs themselves, the necessity of training and supporting the crews, and the tremendous cost of the product if a sub was lost. There were many other means of transport, but most of them were simply too complex and/or too suspect.
Good for single border runs at isolated times, but not for regular runs with major loads. It just kept coming back to planes, but with a small change from how other producers ran their businesses.
All his competitors used executive-type jets and mid-size cargo planes as the workhorses of their operations, but when one was downed or captured, they were quickly out of a large part of their business. Big planes were big expenses, and the loss of big loads created much larger expenses. Escobedo decided to change the shipment process from big to little—little, junker planes that were completely disposable and carrying smaller loads, but lots of them. If a little junker got caught, so what? It was only a few dollars, and there were literally hundreds of them in and around the agricultural fields and rusting at abandoned air strips all over the country. And if a pilot went down? So what? There were many unemployed workers willing to learn to fly well enough to crash the borders for a big handful of dollars. If a pilot got back and flew again, good. If he was never seen again, good. If a load went down or was confiscated, there was never enough in the load to make more than a small dent in Escobedo’s pockets, and likely ten or twenty other loads did manage to get through. They more than made up for the losses of the few that didn’t. With the refueling stations he set up, the small planes could fly the same distances as the competition, just slower and with smaller loads.
They could also stay lower to the ground and avoid most of the radar and surveillance flights of the drug agents.
The planes usually flew only a few miles across the border into the U.S. on constantly changing routes and into very inaccessible areas, and just past the normal range of the border guards. Drug enforcement agents simply couldn’t cover all the paths and delivery sites for the number of flights and so missed the largest number of them. While the planes had regular radios that could be reached from Escobedo’s plants, the pilots carried fairly short range hand-held radios. They kept them off for the duration of the flights, then turned them on
in the last minutes of their flight and redirected the pickup vehicles if the pilots noticed any suspicious activity at the planned drop sites. Moving the drop twenty or so miles to another site, then only having a fairly small load to transfer, made it almost impossible for any drug agents to keep up with the drops. And there were simply too many small planes making the trips for agents to cut down more than a handful.
In addition, it didn’t take the agents long to recognize that the effort, and the risk versus return ratio of chasing a lot of little planes with little loads, wasn’t worth it. Keeping after the large planes with large loads paid off in big ways. Logic said don’t hassle with the little runs; stay after the big ones. Because of his tactics, Escobedo didn’t lose many planes, and the number of loads that got through more than made up for the few that didn’t.
Once the smaller loads were transferred to the delivery vehicles, Escobedo had decided they again made up for their smaller size by the ways in which they could then be handled.
Why use an easily spotted tractor-trailer unit or large delivery-type trucks when a regular van or even a car could carry the load into the cities? Why have to deliver to middlemen in huge loads (worth multi-millions if the load disappeared) when you could deliver directly to the street vendors? Escobedo doctored the product himself—cut it down to usable levels with various fillers—and so the product that reached the smaller dealers was immediately ready for distribution and always the same consistency. The smaller vendors who could handle simple vanloads of drugs didn’t go to war with each other over turf rights, and they usually didn’t keep trying to increase their size. They just grabbed their delivery and started pushing it into the streets. And, like the planes, if a smaller vendor got caught, there wasn’t much loss, and there were always more vendors and dealers wanting into the action. Dealing directly with the smaller vendors and dealers made more work for Escobedo, but it also kept the dealers tied closer to him. The number of dealers continually running through Escobedo’s stable with small loads more than made up for trying to run larger loads to bigger vendors.