by Dan Arnold
“I don’t believe in coincidence.” I reminded him.
He shrugged.
“Does FBI Special Agent Doug Booker know about this?”
“Not in any detail. The Director and I think Doug should stay focused on eliminating the threat posed by the RAGs.”
“I thought Mansfield was in charge of the RAGs investigation.”
“He’s been re-assigned. Mansfield has turned the ball over to Doug. He is now the man in charge.”
This was more information than I had been prepared for. It was not easy to process.
“Do you really believe these local jihadists are capable of doing something like you’ve described?
He nodded.
“They are fully capable and they intend to do it soon. We believe they need a little more training, but they have the will and determination, right now.”
“This is horrible. I don’t want to believe it could happen here.”
“It is what it is.”
“Please, God, not this” I prayed.
Forty
“I can’t do it, John.” Gary said. “I told Watkins I would be seriously interested in joining a group that was committed to seeing changes made in America. I told him I wasn’t interested in the RAGs, because it seemed to me it is mostly just a bunch of immature belly-achers and posers. Young wannabe Nazis, covered in tattoos. I told him, that sort of thing, just didn’t interest me.
He said he knew what I meant and agreed the image of the group was pretty pathetic. He told me there’s actually a group within the group, real men who share my point of view. He told me these men are dedicated to action, not just demonstration, but violent action.
I told him I could join a group like that.”
“How did he respond?”
“A couple of days later he told me they had checked me out. They have some pretty good sources. They knew my step father had been in the KKK. They knew I had been in the fire department. There are some pretty racist people in the department, just like any other group of people in the south, so I guess it wasn’t a problem. They knew I worked part time as a private detective. They even knew I worked for you, specifically.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, he seemed to think it was interesting. You are sort of famous around here. He asked what I did for you. I told him I just did surveillance of people suspected of cheating on their spouses.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“He said there’s an initiation or a bona fide that’s required from anyone who wants to join up.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. I knew what was coming.
“What is it?”
“Watkins said I would have to kill one of the ‘mud people’. … So, that’s the end of it. I’m out of this thing, John.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“No, I said I figured I could do it. He went on to tell me, I would have to prove I had done it.”
“How? There might be some way we could fake it.”
“I don’t see how. I asked him if he had done it himself, and he kind of puffed up, real proud like, and told me he had killed a ‘wet back’, and showed the body to some of the members of the group.”
“That, my friend, was a murder confession.”
“I know, but there’s more. He pulled out the pocket knife he carries and showed it to me. He told me it was the same knife he had used to ‘stick that Mexican pig’. He was real proud of the fact he had killed the man with his own knife.”
I took a deep breath.
“I need to talk this over with Doug and Tony. Don’t do or say anything else about this, until Doug or I get back to you.”
“There isn’t anything I can do. I just want out.”
“I understand, Gary, but they’re not going to let you just walk away. You know too much.”
“You’ve got to help me, man.”
“Calm down. They don’t expect you to just go out and kill someone today. I’ll get with Doug, and we’ll figure out what to do. You’ll hear from one of us, shortly. In the meantime, just go on about your job, as usual. Act like you don’t have a care in the world, and believe God will make a way.”
“That’s easy for you to say…”
I called Doug and arranged to have him meet me at Tony’s office.
“It shouldn’t be a problem. All he needs is a dead body,” Doug observed.
“No. We’ll go ahead and arrest Watkins on the homicide charge. Gary can testify against him and you federal boys can arrange to get Gary into the witness protection program.” Tony said it, like there was no other option.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. He knew what he was doing when he went into this thing, and he’s just going to have to see it through to the end.” Doug replied.
“He’s scared to death. How do you propose to pass him off as a stone cold killer?” I asked.
“Forget it, there’s no way I’m going to sit back and let a private citizen be jerked around like this.” Tony stated.
Doug looked at me.
“Will you explain to the Lieutenant here, that he doesn’t get to dictate anything to us? This is a matter of national security and I’m running this show, not him.”
Tony stood up from behind his desk and pointed his finger at Doug.
“You listen to me, hot shot. If you have something to say to me, you look me in the eye and say it. You treat me like I’m a child, and you’re the one who’ll get spanked.”
“Take it easy, Tony. It isn’t anything personal. The feds just love to pull that ‘matter of national security’ line, like you or I would pull a gun.” I advised.
“I don’t care about their agenda, and neither should you. Gary is a friend. You can’t let these guys use him, like a worm on a hook.” Tony glared at me.
I looked Tony in the eye.
“I know, buddy. I advised Gary not to do this. I told him straight up that once he started into this mess, he couldn’t back out. All we can do is support him and help in any and every way we can. But Doug is right, the feds are running this. If you try to ‘kick against the pricks’… It won’t do any good, and it will only hurt you.”
Tony slammed his hand down on his desk.
Doug spoke up.
“Look, Tony, I understand how you feel. I’ve already promised John, and now I’m promising you - I will personally do anything I can to protect Gary in this thing. OK?”.
Tony sat down again.
“Well how exactly do you propose to do that?” he asked.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered this kind of thing. Our undercover operatives get put into all sorts of compromising situations. This one is actually pretty simple. Gary isn’t being asked to commit a murder in front of witnesses. We’ve seen that plenty of times. In this case, all he has to do is present a dead body and claim he killed the person.”
“How is he supposed to pull it off?”
“We’ll locate a suitable dead body, even if we have to have one flown in, and then we’ll arrange for Gary to show it to whoever needs to see it.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“… Piece of cake.” Doug replied.
I knew it had to be much more difficult and complex than Doug had indicated. Gary needed the dead body of a person of color. The body had to be fresh and killed in a manner that would appear to be Gary’s handiwork. It couldn’t be a death that would cause attention from family or friends. The person’s death or disappearance couldn’t be widely reported, because someone would figure out Gary couldn’t have had anything to do with it. The FBI had to find the right body and arrange for Gary to take delivery of it. This would probably involve violating several laws related to the handling of the remains. We had to create a story of how and why Gary had killed the victim, and it had to be good enough to be believable. We had to figure out some way to plant a fake story in the local news that would appear to support Gary’s story.
It only took three more d
ays, for it all to come together.
Forty-One
“They’re flying the body in from New Orleans. The guy was killed about two hours ago, in a shootout with the local P.D. down there. It was a drug bust, gone bad. The guy was not a stranger to the NOPD and he has no known relatives. The story will barely get a mention in the local press down there, and no description of the victim will be given.
He’s a black male, about 28 years old. He died of a single gunshot wound to the head. The FBI was on the scene, because they were preparing to intercept a cargo coming into the Port of New Orleans, when the shooting took place right in front of the local agents.”
Doug reported.
“We’ll set the chopper down in a remote area, where Gary can prepare a shallow grave. Then, he’ll call Watkins and tell him he has something to show him.” He continued.
I had all sorts of reservations.
“What will his story be? Who was the guy supposed to be, and how did Gary supposedly kill him?” I asked.
“We’ll have Gary say he saw the guy hitchhiking, near Kilgore. He picked him up and took him to the grave site and shot him in the head.”
“No, it won’t work, Doug. There won’t be any evidence of the killing at the scene. He’ll have to say he killed him somewhere else and is burying him far from that location.” I pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter where he says he did it. It’s dark and will be even darker where we’ll dump the body. We’ll plant a story in the local paper and on the TV news, about a missing young black man. We’ll say he was last seen somewhere close to wherever Gary is supposed to have killed him.” Doug said.
“This has far too many things that can go wrong with it. We need to buy some time. Gary needs some time to prepare and wrap his head around this. A helicopter flying into the same place where the body will be buried might attract too much attention. Gary can meet the chopper wherever they want to land it, offload the body, and haul it to wherever he wants to put the shallow grave. He can call Watkins from the scene, and arrange to show him the body, first thing in the morning. That will give us some time to get set up.” I said.
“Set up for what?” Doug asked.
“We need to get some of your agents into position where they can provide onsite backup for Gary. Don’t’ you want to have pictures of Watkins at the scene?” I asked. “That would be hard to do in the dark, without him noticing.”
“Yeah, and he might even bring somebody else with him to view the body.” Doug observed.
“He might, at that.”
Doug picked up his telephone.
An hour later, we were gearing up to go out to the place Gary had indicated he would dig the grave.
“Game cameras, you’ve got to be kidding?” Doug asked.
“No, we’ve used them before. They can be quite effective. The problem is getting them placed and hidden from human eyes.”
“That wouldn’t be easy to do in the dark. No, Gary has picked a place that’s low and kind of torn up, from logging. According to GPS and the satellite imagery, it should be easy to get on higher ground above the grave site. We’ll be able to use state of the art lenses and get great images from two or three hundred yards away.”
He was right. His team’s cameras probably would produce better pictures and the photographers might be able to move around unobserved to get better angles.
Doug was watching me think it through.
“Don’t worry, John; my guys have done this a lot. They’ve taken pictures at everything from sporting events to mob funerals. Nobody will see them.”
As the sun came up, Doug and I were positioned about a quarter of a mile above the grave site, on the edge of the woods, beside the fifty or so acres of land that had recently been clear cut. Below us, scattered here and there, were piles of brush, limbs and whole discarded trees, ready to be burned. Gary had chosen the spot, because no one would notice a freshly dug grave on land which had so recently been torn up by heavy equipment.
We could see Gary’s truck where it was parked on the far side of the lot, at the edge of the logging road. Gary had spent the last couple of hours trying to sleep in his truck, after he finished covering the body with a tarp and a thin coat of dirt.
What we couldn’t see, were the other agents and snipers hidden in and around the acreage, ready to leap to Gary’s defense, if or when Doug gave the signal on his radio.
My eyes were grainy from lack of sleep. We had arrived at the location a little after two o’clock in the morning. It had taken the better part of two hours to position the photographers and snipers. I knew there were half a dozen men hidden in and around the fifty acres of clear cut, but I couldn’t spot a single one of them, anywhere.
I continued to slowly scan the entire woodlot with my high powered binoculars, still seeing nothing.
Gary had called Watkins at just after midnight and arranged to have him meet him at six thirty. He had given him detailed directions on how to find the woodlot.
At six twenty, Doug put his hand to his ear for a second.
“We have two vehicles approaching on the logging road, a truck and an SUV.” He said
Doug keyed his mic and gave the final instructions.
Even at this hour in the morning, it was about eighty degrees. The air was damp with the morning dew and I figured the humidity was at about eighty percent. Maybe that was why I was sweating. The thick dust and sand were sticking to my clothes. The air was heavy with the smell of cut timber and crushed vegetation.
I saw the occasional flash of a vehicle through the trees, before I heard the vehicles approaching, then they came out of the forest and stopped behind Gary’s truck, briefly obscuring our view, as the dust quickly settled.
Two men got out of the pick-up. I recognized Watkins from the photos provided by the FBI. Two more men got out of the SUV.
I had no idea who any of the three strangers were, but they looked rough and ready for anything.
Gary stepped out of his truck and greeted Watkins. From our position uphill from where Gary and the men were, we couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the binoculars brought every detail into sharp focus.
We had considered putting a wire on Gary to monitor and record the conversation, but abandoned the idea, in favor of Gary’s safety. It was a good thing we hadn’t put a wire on him; because two of the men grabbed him and a third man searched him thoroughly. He found the .40 caliber handgun the FBI had provided Gary, and tucked it behind his back.
Watkins had watched the search without any obvious concern.
The two men holding Gary shoved him against the tailgate of his truck, and then all four men fanned out in front of him, two of the men produced hand guns, holding them down at their sides.
I looked at Doug.
He shook his head slightly.
I put the binoculars back on the group below us. They were having a conversation.
I watched Gary closely. I could see he was scared. He appeared to be telling the story we had briefly rehearsed. It all came down to this. Could he convince them?
A moment later, one of the men made a gesture toward the woodlot.
Gary led the four of them over to where he had dug the grave, at the edge of one of the big piles of forest debris.
From where we were, the pile of debris nearly blocked our view. All we could see were the heads of the men as they watched Gary bend over and pull the tarp away from the body.
Another conversation ensued.
The other men disappeared from view for a moment as they examined the body more closely.
When they stood back up, the man who had Gary’s handgun, pulled it out and dropped the clip, pocketing it. He ejected the shell in the chamber and bent over to pick it up. He handed that bullet to Gary, then he thumbed the slide closed and dry fired the gun. He put the clip back in and handed the pistol back to Gary.
Gary looked up the hill, directly at where we were hidden. He took off his cap and smoothed his hair down, jerk
ing the cap back on. It was the all clear sign.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
All five men engaged in another brief conversation. It looked as though Watkins was introducing Gary to the other men. They were shaking hands all around.
Shortly, Watkins and the others walked back to their vehicles and climbed inside.
As they drove away, Gary was busy burying the body.
Forty-Two
“I’ve never been so afraid in my life. At first, I thought they were on to me and they were just going to kill me. I swear, my knees were actually knocking.”
Gary was talking fast, the adrenaline rushing through his blood stream.
“They started by asking me if I was a cop, then they wanted to know why I wanted to join their group. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know what I was saying. I tried to remember the story, but I felt like I was just babbling. It’s a wonder I didn’t wet myself.”
“What do you think caused them to change their minds?” SAIC Doug Booker asked.
“It was the body. When they saw that man’s body; it was what really convinced them. They saw me, the body and the gun. They put two and two together and it was enough! One of them complimented me on the shot placement! Another guy said he thought I had picked a good place to dispose of the body.”
Doug slapped Gary on the back.
“This was the desired outcome, Gary. So, I expect we have some excellent photos, but it will speed things along if you can remember their names.” Doug prompted.
“Right, right, let’s see… The guy on the right of Watkins was named Tommy Turner, the guy next to him on his left was Bill Brown, and the other, older guy was named… Scott something, it started with an… Gosh, I can’t remember his name.”
Gary was actually trembling, just enough that I could see the tremor in his hands. This was evidence of the adrenaline leaving his blood stream.