Chapter 14.
David cautiously opened the door to the little third floor room and saw someone asleep on the bed. He entered and softly patted her shoulder and said (as best he could with a filter in his mouth), "McKenzie, we're here to take you home, get your shoes on." She obediently stood and pulled on her shoes but looked very scared. While she pulled on her shoes David was busy typing something into his forearm keypad. I told McKenzie we only had access for a few minutes we needed to get as far away as possible. David said, "My name is David and that guy is Ryan. We're going to take you home but you need to do exactly what we say, you need to be as quiet as possible, c'mon let's get outta here!" He gestured her to follow behind him. I told her to stay between us and if she wanted she could hold onto his belt, which I think she did until we started to run.
We went down the stairs to the second floor hallway. On the way I signaled all three spiders to come to us quickly (two were only ten feet away). We went down the stairs to the first floor, around the office area and out the front door. As we walked around the office area I felt two spiders climb my leg. The front door was still wide open, we stepped down onto the sidewalk and approached the tall concrete wall and the wide steel door.
We silently stepped out the perimeter wall door and turned towards the street, David told her to take off her gas mask and hand it to him, which she did. Then we took ours off too and stuffed them in our pockets. We silently tiptoed around the perimeter wall and across their parking area and headed up the road. David whispered he just landed the third spider.
With the case tightly in my grip once we cleared the compound area and started to jog up the street, I paused to use my arm panel to tell the quadcopter to self-destruct before we got too far away. There was a chance the quad copter battery might start a fire on the roof when it destroyed itself. It was very dark outside but enough light reflected off the clouds for McKenzie to see the ground. We ran along the edge of the graded dirt road holding hands as we jogged along, one of us held her hand the entire time, McKenzie never spoke she just did her best to keep up on our uphill slog.
We slowed down after about a mile but stayed near the edge of the road so we could dive into the weeds if we saw headlights. She said she ran every day and was doing fine but she was thirsty and scared. While we ran up the hill I picked the spiders off my shoulder and without looking I collapsed them and stuffed them back into our belt packs.
I remembered learning how to activate and collapse spiders at the school in southern Nevada. We had to become proficient at those tasks while blindfolded, hung upside down, underwater, while driving, running, and when drunk. I just wish we'd taken some apart to learn how they worked because they were amazing technology, and our most used weapon.
Within fifty minutes we'd covered over three miles uphill. By then the gas would be worn off and the people in the compound would know they'd been robbed and the ten million dollar girl was gone. Finally, we saw headlights approach from behind so we climbed down beside the river and laid flat on the wet ground while the trucks slowly drove by shining lights on both sides of the road. We decided to stay there for a while. The scene reminded me of Crocodile Dundee when they encountered the drunks shooting kangaroos in the outback, except these guys were hunting us.
I whispered to David that I'd end up destroying the gas spiders soon, their self-destruct function took six percent of their battery power, it's always the last command sent, it pretty much melted the insides, the optics, destroyed the legs and micro-motors. They had a `terminal command' function where you could tell them to do something down to 7% then self destruct regardless.
David looked at the maps we copied in Yuma for the next farms and saw there were three more up ahead on the other side of the road. We got up but stayed beside the river and worked our way further uphill towards the next farm. One hour later we found the structure and approached cautiously.
McKenzie said it felt like we were running the wrong way, going up higher into the hills, I told her that was exactly what we were doing, because they'd concentrate their resources looking in the wrong places.
It's hard to identify trees at night, even with IR glasses but our best guess was this farm grew coffee beans. Coffee wasn't in harvest season now so we went inside the barn and climbed up onto what looked like a hay loft that actually had bales of stray or hay.
David had to remind McKenzie to whisper softly. I released one of the used spiders (from David's belt) to survey the surrounding area and return with a report. This conserved batteries by not sending video and allowing it to act autonomously. Twenty minutes later it returned with 9% battery power left after I downloaded its report.
"According to one spider we're on a coffee bean farm. There are no humans or large animals nearby, there are no motorized vehicles nearby and no overhead electrical lines. The foot paths are overgrown, it saw no footprints so we'd probably be safe here for a day or two, and rain is likely."
We got up and moved to a corner of the hayloft behind an actual stack of straw bales and tried to get comfortable.
I sent that spider by the coffee trees and activated its self-destruct function. It would smoke a tiny bit but it basically turned black and then resembled a small stone.
David took off his glasses and explained our plan to McKenzie. She told us about the kidnapping, she was hooded, gagged, tied up, and taken to Mexico inside a delivery truck, across the border with other people sneaking back into Mexico. She had no idea where they were but it took two days on a highway to get here and she was threatened with being shot if she broke the rules, other than that she was left alone in the room with the TV and two meals a day and supervised trips to the bathroom every four hours, but they never actually hurt her, she said she expected to be raped eventually. After a few moments she said she's had nothing but tacos for the past three days and craved a burger and fries. I chuckled at her comment but David stayed all serious. Tears dripped from her eyes as she told her story. It was obvious this would be a life changing event for her.
I told her we were hired to rescue her, we didn't know her history or anything about her family or her situation and we didn't want to. Our goal was to get all of us to Arizona safely and quickly. I stressed to her she needed to do exactly what we said and be as quiet as possible, and stay as close to us as she could and those were the best ways to contribute to her safe return two or three days from now.
She said she thought our suits looked futuristic, then she asked if we were gay, David pointed at me and said I was his husband, she said that was cool with her, she wanted to be married some day and maybe have a baby, but she needed to finish college first, then she got all teary eyed and laid back and quietly wept. We all laid back and tried to sleep. While everyone was quiet she mumbled she was a pre-law at UCLA, but was from Reno, Nevada.
David asked why she thought we were gay and she said because of how we worked together and how we moved un unison in the dark like one person, she said it's obvious we worked like one person. David said nothing about her observation.
"Let's try to get some sleep, it's going to be another long and muddy day again tomorrow," he mumbled to us. I rolled on my side and used the case like a pillow.
I whispered to David that I felt we should investigate adding shoulder straps to the case. After that he quietly updated the Pentagon about our situation, he asked for them to try to get the old man with the truck back here tomorrow after sunset.
They told us our ride on the Gulf would be ready for us tomorrow evening, same spot the helicopter landed, as planned. We advised them McKenzie was fine, she was with us and in good shape if they wanted to update the family. We found out later that her mom called the Pentagon every hour for updates.
Zzzz
I woke up with the sunlight the next morning, I think we all got about five hours of sleep. The barn and the farm stayed quiet all night. I programmed another used spider to watch from the roof of the barn and alert us for people or motion. We took turns going downstairs to relieve ourselves in the dirt, we also got company in the form of a barn owl that flew in with a mouse and perched on the timbers and watched us then started to eat. David handed McKenzie a pack of toilet paper for her trip to the girl's room. He kept several of them in his suit pocket, they were the same ones formerly included in military ration kits.
From our location we heard very little road traffic and nobody on foot searching for the missing blonde girl. We spoke a few times with the Pentagon then asked about the guy that drove us up here, could he drive up here to run us back down to the beach. They said they were trying to contact him.
Three hours later they radioed back and said our ride was arranged but our extraction wasn't until tonight, we shouldn't get to the beach too early because we'd be easy to see in broad daylight. I asked if we could be picked up just after the street lights came on in town and he said he'd let me know soon.
We were hungry but had no food. We heard thunder in the distance it was likely to rain soon which would be our only source of water other than maybe hiking to the river. The barn was about 150 feet from the road and forty feet beyond that was the river.
We spent the entire day in the hay loft, it started to rain at midday and we took turns drinking water that trickled off the barn roof, it was better than no water. That afternoon he re-confirmed our ride and suggested where to hide on the beach, they said we could use our targeting lasers on our weapons to signal the raft. I asked the Pentagon guy to have the old man in the truck to run his turn signal all the time after he drove past the cartel compound so we knew it was him, because everyone up here was a wrinkled old man driving an old Chevrolet truck. I told them to tell the driver we'd be three miles east of where he dropped us off.
We spent eleven long hours in the hayloft trying to stay quiet but the time just crawled. I don't think she had any idea we were talking back and forth over Whispernet even though we were only a few feet apart, laid out on a bed of straw. It was nice to listen to the thunderstorms move across the area, and I'm surprised there wasn't more of an effort put into searching for the missing girl. David commented they were probably already researching who to kidnap next, then he said he wondered which desk in the office was the Kidnap Desk. We all chuckled. Como se dice 'kidnap' en Espanol? David said he wasn't sure but he thought the verb was: Secuestrar. Maybe the sign on the desk would say: Escritorio de Secuestro.
"I bet down in town the cartel had road blocks and checked every vehicle leaving town along the coast for the missing girl." David said quietly.
We had a long conversation about destroying their fortress to try to slow them down, possibly give the Mexican Army a chance to move in and take over the cartel's region, and destroy all their records. David said it would not bother his conscience to destroy the place.
"I think when the rescue boat is close to the beach we should lob a dial-a-yield at them." I said to David.
"Aren't these the same people that did the cruise ship bomb too?" He asked.
"Yes, I wonder if any of them suspect both events were foiled by the same two gay men." He asked.
"I think that's why the TV news said the CIA stopped the cruise ship event, because that's an organization and not an individual the cartels could target for revenge."
"Could you imagine if they ID'd us, trying to spend the rest of our lives hiding from the cartels?" I asked.
"One more reason to quit and move after we're paid." David whispered so McKenzie didn't hear us discuss her rescue as if she was a business transaction.
"Should we warn her about her personal safety after she returns to California? Maybe she shouldn't just go back to UCLA."
"Let's not scare her any more than she probably is now."He offered, we both looked at her, she was on her back and looked deeply asleep on the straw."
"Is there anything else we need to do between now and our extraction?" I asked.
"Let me see, according to my brain we used three spiders to gas them and two for intel gathering, did we use one intel spider for gas?"
"No. We've used five and destroyed one, another of the gas spiders is outside watching right now, it's down to 18% and holding. That will be the next one to go bye-bye." I summarized for him then added, "And that leaves us with one new one and two more in the case."
David said we should deploy another used spider at the beach, send it up a tree or a sign post and set it to self destruct at 7% power left so it can watch for movement, same as the spider on guard duty outside the barn right now.
I kind of rolled on my back and closed my eyes again wishing I would wake up at 6pm. It took a while but eventually I dozed off again, not sure if David did or not and McKenzie slept most of the day which was a good idea. David looked at her so easily asleep and whispered to me, 'Must be nice.' I smiled back and pictured him laid out on the straw naked instead of in our shiny black suits. We both took off our glasses and put them in the case to charge. Putting them in the case signaled the Pentagon we were offline.
While we did that I whispered to David that McKenzie had a nice looking body, even though she was fully dressed in jeans and a nice t-shirt. It was obvious she didn't have a bra on and we were looking at her upper body and agreed she was probably a B-cup. Her ears were pierced but other than her cross she had no jewelry on.
While she slept and she moved around her t-shirt hiked up exposing her nice round belly button to us and the owl.
By 5:45pm we could tell night was approaching by the change in the sound of the insects and birds near the barn, we talked with the Pentagon sit-room and asked them to wake-up the truck driver, it would be dark soon.
When it was dark I triggered the self-destruct routine in the 2nd guard spider, then we climbed down from the loft and made our way down the rows of coffee trees to the road, David bent way over and silently crossed the unpaved road and laid down in the weeds on the river side of the road to watch for a truck with the turn signal on. We used Whispernet to talk across the roadway, McKenzie stayed close beside me on the damp ground. Because of how the road curved he was the only one that could see far enough down the street. We hid in a ditch along the road that only had an inch of rain water but David was flat on his stomach in the mud and weeds. But he was pretty much bite-proof (below the neck) in his suit. He even smeared some mud on his cheeks while we watched for our ride.
"Headlights!" he whispered. I told him to make sure it was the right guy first then we'd get up and climb in back and lay down flat again. Last time he had plenty of weeds and corn stalks and stuff in back to cover ourselves before we drove across town. I quietly explained to McKenzie what we did in the truck to hide because we had to get across town and all the way to a beach. David told her it took about an hour to get there. She nodded yes but never spoke.
The truck arrived and David walked over and spoke to the driver, then he whispered this was our limo. We stood up in our muddy-wet clothing and marched through the weeds to the street, I pushed up on McKenzie's legs to help her over the side, then I covered her with straw, weeds, and an old car tire as he turned the truck around and slowly drove back downhill towards town. David covered me beside McKenzie then he covered himself. By the time we were fully hidden we were past the compound.
David whispered it was surrounded by vehicles, they had lights on inside and out, and it looked very busy. David said had the precise coordinates for the third floor Rapunzel room in his wrist command unit. He stored the location while McKenzie pulled on her shoes.
It took about twenty minutes to drive to town and another twenty five minutes to cross the town of Los Mochis because of all the donkey carts and pedestrians walking across the street. We made it to the coast highway then fifteen minutes north to the beach area where locals kept fishing boats and nets. We were supposed to be picked up there in a motorized rubber raft. On the highway we were almost as safe as being back in the states, he used comms to update the Pentagon about our progress even though they could track the case.
The Pentagon guy said the raft was already deployed and asked if we had something to shine over the water like a flashlight. David replied that we had targeting lasers on our machine guns. Then suddenly it occurred to me to have McKenzie take off her necklace and toss it which she reluctantly did, I saw it fly into the air as we sped west. There was no way of knowing who else knew about it aside from her family.
Fifteen minutes later we arrived, the truck slowed and stopped in the weeds beside the road. We stayed down until there was a break in the traffic then we climbed out. David was first to get up and pull the straw, weeds, corn stalks, and tires off me and McKenzie. He quietly mumbled `Go go go, let's boogie!' We needed to get away from the truck before the next group of vehicles drove by.
David knocked on the side of the truck and the guy chugged off up the highway. We carefully looked both ways then ran across the highway and the parking area on the beach side of the road. Staying in the weeds and bushes we ran from the highway and down onto the beach where we could sit and not be seen from the road.
I released the lowest energy spider to climb a nearby sign post to watch for movement, even out on the water. It would blink a red dot on my glasses if it saw movement or body heat. Then David programmed it to self destruct at 7% battery because I forgot. Several loud vehicles drove by on the highway, most of them were semi trucks hauling cargo down the coast.
Our rep at the Pentagon said our ride should arrive in about eighteen minutes, the boat was seven miles from the beach. We silently sat on the rocks and weeds and listened and watched, about eighty feet from the gentle waves lapping the rocky beach. We asked the Pentagon to ask the raft to flash a light towards shore but we saw nothing. David said it was probably foggy out there which could complicate our escape but would also provide some cover, he felt there was a slight risk of shore patrols from the cartel people since escape by sea was the third most obvious route, but we never saw any movement on the water except tiny waves on the beach. They would certainly watch the bus station and northbound roads for her, which was why we headed east.
We kept talking to the Pentagon and when the raft was one mile out we reported fog had appeared over the beach. The Pentagon rep advised us we were on the Isla Santa Maria about fourteen miles west of Los Mochis. David asked me for the case and faced it away from McKenzie, opened it grabbed a shoulder fired weapon, same type we fired at the life boat on San Diego Bay, the dial-a-yield device (it was a big larger than three cans of pop, end to end). I tried to distract her but she was very curious what David was doing, I told her he was programming the location of the compound into the weapon. She said we'd never knock it down those walls were foot thick concrete and over twelve feet tall with razor wire on top.
He turned on the electronics and carefully used his keypad to program the coordinates of the cartel compound then removed the device from the tube and adjusted the dial just under half-way. In San Diego we turned it all the way down and vaporized a sphere of about 300 feet in diameter. With the yield set at 42% it would create an plasma sphere about 700 feet across, he set the altitude to 400 feet above the roof, so it would dig a nice crater, sort of like a memorial hole in the ground. At that setting even the concrete walls would vanish along with their concrete foundations, and their septic tanks and water wells too. The locals would probably call it a meteor strike, but they'd never be able to build on that spot again because the soil would be gone too. David told me that ten years from now that site would be a nice, perfectly round fishing pond, maybe even a tourist attraction.
Something we rarely did, due to the distance he got out another propellant section and screwed it on the end of the device then collapsed the fins and inserted it into the launching tube until it clicked in place.
With only minutes until our transport was due to land he stood up, and aimed up and to the east then fired. The way it was programmed it really didn't matter what direction it was pointed but we didn't want it to run out of fuel.
With a puff of smoke and a flash it bolted towards the east, cleared the trees and disappeared into the night sky. It would be too far to hear but we'd probably see a flash in the clouds. After it cleared the trees I advised the Pentagon to tell the Navy people to ignore the flash. When it flew up into the sky it looked and sounded like a model rocket. David said it would take a couple minutes to travel that far. He told McKenzie it would fly up to about 1,500 feet above the ground and use GPS to reach the target and detonate above her room in a million degree plasma ball. Everything within the ball would be reduced to dust in less than half a second. She just said, "Wow."
We sat down on the sand again and kept our eyes on the water as far out as we could see. David opened the case, collapsed the firing tube and packed it away then sat down in the weeds with us. Our guy in the Pentagon asked us to flash lasers out to sea, so I pulled mine off my chest again and tapped the trigger and slowly panned it side to side out at sea, sort of like painting the horizon. We had no idea exactly what direction they were coming from.
As I stuck my weapon back on my chest David leaned towards us and asked, "You feel that?" then we saw a single flash like lightning in the clouds. I guess he felt the ground shudder when the weapon went off. Moments later we saw flashes of red laser light in the fog over the water, David said "Pizza's here!" McKenzie mumbled pizza sounded great right now, she was very hungry.
We all stood up and walked across the beach towards the water then we heard the sound of a small outboard motor. It appeared like a ghost from the fog, a small black rubber raft with one guy on board, we waded out into the water but never spoke, like who else would be on the beach waiting for him but us. David picked up McKenzie and set her in the raft, then I set the case in the raft and climbed over the other side. David climbed in over the bow and we turned around and motored back out to sea. The sea was flat calm and the air was warm and felt heavy with humidity. We saw hints of distant lightning all around us. McKenzie said she was amazed by everything that was done to rescue her.
I told the Pentagon we were on a black rubber raft about the size of a child's bed heading west on the Gulf of California. The guy running the motor was in a US Navy uniform, blue and blue like they wore inside submarines. He had some kind of navigation device on his wrist. He held up his arm every few minutes to check our heading. He kept glancing at McKenzie but her back faced him.
About ten minutes into our cruise she turned around and asked the young man how safe we were out here and he said this was dangerous, lots of stuff could go wrong and sometimes did. I saw her swallow deeply, so I took advantage of the situation and asked her, "How do you think the people that kidnapped you will respond to your disappearance?"
She looked at me and sat motionless for a bit then she said she'd need to think about it. I advised her she might want to be mindful of her surroundings and what information she put on social media or into her cell for the next several years. The cartel could read her Facebook page just as easily as her mother. She turned back to look at the sailor because they were about the same age. He held up his arm to check our heading and distance then made a slight adjustment. I guessed it was a simple GPS compass display that pointed at the submarine and showed miles to go. The sailor kid asked her if she knew how to swim and McKenzie said yes.
It was really weird heading out to sea at night in heavy fog, just the raft and the water and ocean smell. We all sat there watching straight ahead hoping to see something marked US appear, there were no stars visible just darkness and after what felt like an hour he started to slow and suddenly out of nowhere appeared a large black conning tower, not a nuclear sub like I thought we'd see. It had the number 555 in large white digits, I smelled diesel exhaust and heard voices on the deck.
This looked like an older sub, he motored alongside and three sailors unrolled a large mesh net that hung over the side to climb on board, McKenzie went first, then David. I handed him the case and climbed up the mesh net. That net felt wet and slimy in my shaky hands. Never in my life did I ever think I'd be climbing onto a submarine by flashlight behind a hot twenty year old blonde girl.
The sailor in the raft motored towards the back of the sub to pull it up on the deck, remove the motor, deflate it, roll it up, and slide them down the same hatch they used to take torpedoes on board. We were assisted up the conning tower then down inside the sub. It took three sailors to stow the raft back inside the sub.
We never met the captain but shook hands with the XO and were escorted to the crew's mess for food and water, their on-board medic checked us out and I heard them call dive mode, secure all hatches.
The sub continued north to Rocky Point where we would be off loaded, we'd be there in twelve hours, we were allowed to stretch out and nap on bunks just outside the mess area. One of the crew with a shotgun in-hand stayed with us the entire time since they didn't know us. It seemed dumb because we had more than enough firepower to turn their sub into a pile of dust. Not to mention machine guns strapped to our chests! David whispered to me that we probably should not talk to the crew except if it pertained to our transport.
They gave us blankets to stay warm while we tried to nap.
It was about 7:45am according to my wrist panel when we arrived at Rocky Point, the XO told us to climb out the same way we got in and we were escorted back to the bridge and up the ladders and outside then down the outside and onto the deck. The same sailor had the same boat and motor ready and we climbed back down the rope ladder into the raft. David went first, then I handed him the case and our weapons, then McKenzie climbed down, then I went last. He shuttled us to a pier near a public beach and we climbed out and he turned around and sped back towards the submarine, never to be seen again.
Before we left the sub we begged a spare blanket to wrap around our weapons since we'd be in civilian territory the rest of the way to Yuma and didn't want to attract extra attention, beyond our shiny black body suits and Caucasian flesh. They gave McKenzie a navy baseball cap to help hide her long blonde hair too.
It felt nice to be back on dry land but we still had a couple hundred miles to go. We asked where the bus station was and walked ten blocks with our heads on swivels the entire way. The US border was about sixty miles north, we bought three tickets and boarded the bus that left at 11am, we sat together on the longest seat all the way in back by the bathroom door, we kept McKenzie between us because our job wasn't done until we delivered her (alive) inside the Border Patrol building in Yuma, Arizona. We kept our weapons on our laps under the wool blanket just in case trouble suddenly appeared on the bus. It was obvious McKenzie felt very uncomfortable sandwiched between two guys with machine guns, in the back seat of a bus running down a highway in Mexico. It was another one of those life altering events for her too.
We had two choices to get to Yuma, two bus routes. The first choice was to take the one that went to the Mexican border town of Sonoyta, then west down the border highway, Mexico Route-2 all the way to Yuma. The other option would be to cross the border at Sonoyta into Lukeville and then beg for government transport across Arizona to Yuma.
Our concern was the longer we stayed inside Mexico the great the danger. But the longer bus ride to Yuma was the fastest way to get her back. The trip down Mex Route-2 was across the desert, there would be no scheduled stops and very little chance for problems until we got to the other border town across from Yuma.
One hour later we arrived in the tiny border town of Sonoyta and stayed in our seat and watched everyone else get off then new passengers got on board, all of them were older Hispanic people, obviously not soldiers. McKenzie sat between us with her head on David's shoulder and her eyes closed, her cap pulled down. David kept an eye out the window and I closely watched people boarding the bus, with my machine gun under the blanket aimed down the aisle. I also watched the driver out the window as he punched the tickets of everyone that got on board. Ten minutes later he shut the cargo hatches and got back inside, closed the door and we took off west on Mex Route-2. Next stop was Yuma in two hours. Twenty four people got on board, all were older couples.
I used the case to tell the Pentagon we were still on the bus, now heading west on Route-2 towards Yuma, the border fence was 500 feet to the right of the bus, we'd be in Yuma at the Border Patrol office in about 150 minutes, they could start getting the reward money ready.
We got off the bus at 5:50pm along with twenty four other souls in downtown San Luis and walked (with our heads on swivels) a few blocks to the border, then across the three lanes of traffic, up the sidewalk, and inside the pedestrian entrance, with our weapons wrapped in a gray navy blanket clearly marked in large black letters: USN. The part I liked about this facility was the front door was twenty feet inside the border so we were already safely out of Mexico when we opened the door and stepped into air conditioning, but the ride wasn't over for us until the car came to a stop inside that same conference room.
They stood near the door just inside the waiting area while I stood in line and eventually stepped up to the desk and showed my DOD ID card and explained who we were, that we needed to talk to the facility supervisor immediately. At first the guy at the desk laughed then after staring into my eyes he grabbed his phone and called for back-up (which was not a good sign).
A few minutes later several armed men dressed like soldiers approached us and had us set down our gear, so we set it on the floor at our feet, we advised them to call their supervisor immediately, but the idiot that ran the squad wanted to prove his manliness first and told us to step away from our stuff, which we did by a few feet. Then I repeated my order (louder) to call their supervisor which he finally did. Everyone standing in the pedestrian line turned to look at us when I hollered my demand (third time) that they call their supervisor immediately.
One of their squad moved towards our weapons and the case wrapped in a navy blanket but I advised him to talk to their supervisor before he touched anything, he slowly backed off but still kept his rifle aimed at us. Eventually a woman in a white and green dress uniform arrived and looked at our IDs and sent the squad away and apologized, she said a van was on the way to take us to their office, she unlocked and opened a nearby door and welcomed us back into the United States. Suddenly McKenzie became very happy and talkative. We stood on the other side of the building waiting for the van and McKenzie stood at the water cooler and drank almost a gallon of water.
It was a 45 minute ride across farmland, mile after mile of manicured flat farms north to Interstate-8 and east to the Border Patrol facility. I'd updated the Pentagon twice that we were inside Arizona driving to the Border Patrol building. I whispered to McKenzie this was where their winter produce was grown, when she saw on TV about Romaine lettuce recalls ... this was that place.
He parked and we got out of the van with our stuff, the driver swiped her badge to let us inside. It was sunny and hot outside when we got out of the van.
We walked down the hallway and into the conference room where the operation started four days ago and sat down in the back row of seats. Three minutes later the FBI woman that recruited us walked in and shook our hands, she offered a cordless phone and bottled water to McKenzie so she could call her mom.
David and I got up and walked to the front of the room with the FBI lady, she looked very happy to see us back, that our mission was very successful. She asked how far off it was, what she said would happen versus what actually took place to get her back from her captors. David said it was pretty close, and his opinion of the FBI had improved, he shook her hand again and asked for a receipt that we delivered McKenzie alive and talkative, the time and date we left and returned with the girl. I advised her that their drone self-destructed in the cartel compound which was coincidentally destroyed by a meteor yesterday. The FBI lady laughed and said she heard about the meteor on the evening news and knew it was related. She said the only thing omitted from the news report was the nature of the building it destroyed.
After McKenzie ended her tearful and dramatic call to her mother she joined us, hugged and thanked us, we declined her request to pose for a photo with her rescuers, then David started to speculate how we'd get home from here. We wished her luck and reminded her about what we discussed about her social media posts.
We learned that the Amtrak passed just north of here and there was a station north of town, we could catch an eastbound train tonight, about six hours from now, so we went into their crew bunk room and ate some snacks and lots of water and started talking about our notes we'd have to write once we got back to El Paso.
While we sat at the large table eating some emergency food rations (they kept on hand for people captured at the check point) David asked about the train. I told him, "This line is historic, remember the movie 3:10 to Yuma?" He nodded yes but failed to recall who was in it.
"Well that was the 3:10pm train on these very tracks that ran from San Antonio to Los Angeles, it stopped at 3:10pm in Tucson then on to Yuma where the station was a mile north of the Arizona Territorial Prison."
I still had the weird smells from the inside of that submarine in my nostrils that wouldn't go away. We got someone to agree to wake us up and we crashed in a small meeting room on some cushions and took a nap. Five hours later they woke us up and drove us to the Amtrak station, David purchased two tickets to El Paso and when the big Amtrak rolled to a squeaky stop we got seats in coach and sat there and tried to sleep again. I kept my feet on our case.
We quietly talked about McKenzie briefly, I told him I bet she was already on a flight to Reno. He asked if I'd fuck her and I said no, I still preferred him over most women.
zzzz
The next day late in the afternoon we arrived in downtown El Paso near the border and took a taxi back to Biggs Army Airfield and got into David's truck with our stuff and drove home, still wearing the same suits we'd worn for almost a week. I'm sure the people in the stinky submarine thought we smelled bad too.
At home we used the comm terminal in the kitchen to mark ourselves as home, but off-duty due to low equipment levels (need resupply ASAP). We took turns peeling suits off each other. Both of us were very ripe under the Kevlar and nylon web. We stunk so bad we used the basement shower and I scrubbed his back, legs and feet, then it was my turn. It felt so nice to lay out on our basement sofas, naked and clean and enjoy the quiet and cool comfort of our own basement. I kept glancing at his body on the other sofa, David looked very inviting with no clothes on.
After several minutes of quiet we went out back and got in the hot tub to soak in chlorinated pool water and try to unwind. About the time the sun set west of the mountains we went to bed in our nice dark and cold bedroom under the heavy blankets between the ultra soft sheets and spooned together with his nose pressed into the hair on the back of my head, I hugged a pillow and his arm to my front side and we slowly fell asleep, with no alarm clock set.
I woke up about four hours later to pee and ate another big spoon full of Cool Whip then went back to bed.
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