Chapter 16, Alternate.
Our vacation to Singapore was wonderful but it came at a cost. We paid several costs, but spare us your pity please.
The week we spent in a distant time zone was upsetting in many ways, you can probably figure them out, easy to convert, difficult to convert back.
The week we spent in another land very different from western Texas was also difficult. We saw lots of our fellow humans working very hard to live lives of quiet desperation. It was almost depressing to see how hard they worked to keep the Singapore thing afloat, like a giant Disneyland. They were lots of very good people but Singapore was an anomaly. It went against nature in every way possible. I could go on, but it hit us at a spiritual level and just didn't feel right. The entire city state is like a Hollywood set where it all looks real out front but on the back streets away from tourist eyeballs it's a different story.
By the time we left we felt a sense of guilt. The people in Singapore were so nice and so busy making a living we felt guilty for not doing more for what we received. A man's labor may earn him $12 an hour but his labor also crossed over into a personal realm. It would be like slaves mining coal underground, but one slave chopped more coal then his peers so he could be the best. We ran into many of those people, they went the extra mile because that's the sort of people they were. Experiencing so much generosity made us feel guilty for going there in the first place.
Singapore was a wonderful green place full of wonderful people, and God bless them all, but we don't ever want to go back. We left feeling bad for being able to afford it. We spent the remainder of our vacation days at home scrubbing and improving our home and repairing our miniature golf course.
We also spent a considerable amount of time looking into if we would be safer from the Sinaloa Cartel if we moved further from the border. Our current home was only twelve miles from Mexico. If the cartel ever decided to get even I don't think the distance would be a deterrent when all it took was a simple Unabomber type device left at our front door. David had an idea that if we had acreage we might be able to protect ourselves if we intended to do more jobs like that and pissed off more very wealthy and well armed groups. But if we stayed in El Paso because the office was here and so was the airport, if we decided to build a new place who would we go to that could design an urban safe house that didn't look like a fortress?
We both agreed that acreage would be safer but not just acreage. He jokingly suggested we buy a cattle ranch near the Amarillo Airport. Then we'd be further from Mexico. But that constant feeling of being stuck on an island would still be an issue. Amarillo was just as much of an island as El Paso.
Amarillo had half the population of El Paso but that's not including Juarez which had almost twice as many people as El Paso. Combined in the entire El Paso metro area with Juarez was nearly three million souls and covered an enormous amount of desert land. If we were smart we'd just give in and move to Omaha, but winters up there would kill me. After so many years living in the desert I needed it to stay above 70 degrees or I felt physically uncomfortable.
I also noticed during our daily meditation times that both of us had a base level of anger that wasn't there before we went to Sinaloa. When I whispered that to my husband one night in bed he said he felt it too and thought it was affecting everyone on earth but wasn't sure what caused it.
Our first day back to work was Tuesday June 1st. We were alerted in the first hour of the first day, just 55 minutes after I put our alert receiver back into On-Duty mode.
Before the alert we got an email that our request for a new spider design had been enthusiastically approved by the DOD and it was being developed immediately. Each team would soon receive one new spider to take the place of an existing spider in our case (we carried three on our belts and two in the case, eight total per team). The new spider would be used for cutting wires. It located the desired wire or cable, gripped the body with its legs and cut the cable with a small but very intense blast, like a miniature shaped explosive. David said that would increase the types of vehicles, machines, and electrical devices it could shut down remotely. For the first generation the software would be the same as the swarming spiders but it was designed to disrupt electrical circuits. They considered making the shaped charge the self destruct mechanism so every spider could do it but that was under discussion due to the noise it made and increased risk of injury.
An alternative use would be using it as a killing device to anchor itself over a spinal cord and detonate its shaped charge to sever the spine. Although not as fast it could also attack a skull or bone too.
It could cut a fuse, an integrated circuit, a fiber optic line, a pipe or tube, or a coaxial cable. The problem initially would be the need for instructions, which cable to cut in a bundle of cables, like metropolitan fiber optic lines in underground utility tunnels. These new spiders would not be able to cut cables inside steel conduit.
David looked at the alert and saw it was optional, this case was not fully within our normal scope of practice. It did not appear to involve terrorism, just domestic organized crime. He got on the computer in the Tac Room to download the entire text of the alert.
This case was centered on Tulsa, Oklahoma (we've worked there in the past). There were ten missing children, and no suspects or motives confirmed. There were no ransom demands, and very little information. Tulsa City and State Police had very little information. Only two witnesses but neither saw much, they had less to go on that the original Unabomber case that went on for almost a decade.
In this case a Caucasian child was abducted in public by an unseen person driving a white van. They had a partial license plate and a vague description. Oklahoma State Police had a profile but it was equally vague and they were desperate for help, which was why we were called, based on our quick success in Dallas.
All the children kidnapped were boys between the ages of 9-14, and similar in size (75-100lbs). They attended different schools in different areas. In each case the child failed to come home from school and was simply missing, as if they just vanished. One boy a block away saw one kid pulled into a van that drove off, but the incident was at a distance so no sound was heard, no license plate seen and only a partial ID on the type of vehicle was made. We were asked to arrive in Tulsa with our case and suits but we'd travel in street clothes. We would take a commercial flight and be put up in a hotel near the airport, all paid by their state police, David texted our boss that we'd accept the case.
That afternoon we flew to Dallas then to Tulsa on a smaller regional jet. We brought our gear and a regular suitcase with three days of clothes and our bathroom stuff and some cash. When we took these trips where the length of the stay was unknown we also packed something to wear while sitting in the Laundromat while all our real clothes spun around in the machines.
We were met in Tulsa at the airport by a uniformed state cop. She was very nice and said she was on the team doing the investigation. She drove us to the airport hotel, we sat on the beds and talked.
Her name was Shirley Johnson, she was a detective but met us in uniform to make her easier to spot, and she said she always worked in street clothes. David unpacked our suitcase while she opened her briefcase and read us her notes, she had additional information they kept out of the media. She told us the local media was reporting it as a series of unexplained missing children.
The vehicle in question was a white Nissan commercial van, a 2006 model with no markings except for something small on the doors like a state business license number. They obtained records from Texas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma on paroled offenders and people with a record of abduction and child murders, but of those 62 offenders 60 of them had alibis. Two were still being located. They expected to contact them within the next 24 hours and had a team working on them.
She said that when they mapped and analyzed the abductions they occurred in a clockwise pattern that rotated around downtown Tulsa, every 96 hours, almost to the hour. The next one was predicted to occur on the west side tomorrow around 4pm. Their crime analysis guy suggested a child from the Skyline Ridge neighborhood and the Skyline Middle School on West Edison Street at North Tacoma Avenue.
She explained that after recent demonstrations the city council voted to reduce police funding so they're not staffed enough for a stakeout, since all they respond do now was primary 911 calls. The look on her face changed after she said that. She explained 60% of 911 calls for help were no longer seen by police but unarmed city crisis team workers instead. I saw a look of despair on her face as she explained the cuts in funding.
David asked who was on the case and who would be watching that area tomorrow, Shirley said, "Two volunteer deputies would be following two of their seven busses."
"We'd like to follow one, do you have the bus route maps with you?"
"Yes." She fumbled around in her case and pulled out a bus route map for Skyline Middle School and handed it to David, I leaned over and looked at it. We both looked at the routes. I pointed out the highway and said that was good cover noise. We held the list of known abductions, time and date of disappearance beside the metro area map to compare and look for alternate patterns.
David rotated the map then asked her what it looked like if you drove west on Edison Street. She said it was wooded but thinned out as you got into reservation lands and grazing land. David looked at me and smiled. "We'll take this route, the one that went west on Edison and serves the neighborhoods along the highway.
We agreed on a time, 3pm in the school parking lot. David said we'd need a rental car, she said she'd drive us to a rental agency near the airport. On the way to Avis I asked if they asked the FBI for help, Shirley said they declined since it wasn't in their jurisdiction.
Tulsa was a lopsided town, most of the population was on the east side, and David suggested that was due to the proximity of Indian reservations. There were a bunch of large reservations in Oklahoma. A lot of Indians were collected by the US Army in the 1800s and relocated to reservations in Oklahoma, so the state had a large population of tribal communities.
We left the hotel and drove to the car rental agency for a plain white Nissan four door. We exchanged phone numbers and she took our photo to send to other detectives on the team tonight so they knew who we were. "What's the name of your organization?" Shirley asked David ready to type that into her cell, I think he was partially kidding when he told her we worked for the Pentagon or she could call it the DOD. Then he said, "We're an office in the Pentagon but we're stationed in El Paso."
She stopped and looked at us as if she was puzzled why we got called, "Are we on the same page with this?" She asked as if she thought we might suddenly think we were in the wrong place.
I laughed and told her not to let the names confuse her, we were crime fighting superheroes. I patted our case and told her we were very well armed and ready to defeat any bad guys and had very special training. Suddenly, Shirley opened wide her mouth and said, "Ahhhh," as she looked at our case. "That's one of those secret cases we read about, right?" I said yes it was, any cop that examined the contents will find himself dead in a day or two, guaranteed. She held up her hand and gestured she wanted nothing to do with it, then changed the subject.
While we chatted David left the room with his phone in hand, presumed he was calling for more equipment, like a cellular fishnet device.
Shirley and I discussed the case for a while longer, she showed me a spreadsheet with the abductions listed with different sorting routines which were how they discovered the pattern changes. "Tell me your gut feeling on this, I'll keep it private," I asked her.
Shirley smiled, chuckled, and said she'd gotten in lot of hot water before answering that question. I told her we were totally non-political and from over a thousand miles away. She stared in my eyes briefly then said she thought it's someone from the reservation that's taking them and holding them alive for sale later on, they might end up overseas in a slave auction, that's her gut belief.
I told her if that was true I'd not anticipate people being arrested for this crime, we'd had a hard time being nice to people that stole children. She laughed and said my comment would remain secret too. We shook hands and stood up as David came back in the room in the last seconds of his phone call. "The Fishnet will be delivered tonight to the airport."
Shirley looked at me and I smiled back at her.
We walked her to her patrol car and David asked if she had kids in school, she said yes she had two kids, one in third grade and another in seventh grade but not on this side of town. I shook her hand again and told her we'd see her promptly at 3pm tomorrow in the school parking lot, I reminded her to make sure her people knew about us to avoid problems. She said not to worry, it was already done, that's why she took our picture. David politely warned her not to post our picture online, she should delete it after we leave.
That night we slept in separate beds and were ready to work after lunch. During the day we drove around the area and west out of town into the reservations west and northwest of Tulsa.
I picked up the fishnet device last night at the Tulsa Airport, it was a similar box as the one we used in downtown Dallas to catch their serial shooter. We set it up on the back seat of the car and ran the power cord to the lighter jack on the center console, with three antennas held on the roof with magnets. After lunch of pulled pork sandwiches and root beer we drove back to the hotel and talked about this afternoon and decided to get into our suits in case of a shootout.
"Why would someone kidnap that many kids in rapid succession?" I asked.
"Either you're a killing sicko and they don't last long or you're building up an inventory for export."
"Where would they end up?" I asked.
"I'd guess they'd end up somewhere that paid top dollar for a healthy white child."
"Like where?"
"Hmmm, it's been a while since I saw the list but I think it had Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Iran, and maybe UAE or Libya. I'm not sure if Belarus is still on that list."
"What are they used for?"
"Honestly? I hate talking about it."
I sat there waiting for him to finish then he added, "Rape, entertainment murder, and maybe organ transplants. There's new stuff too that involves harvesting their blood and semen."
"So what we're looking at here is a business transaction, he'd likely be taking good care of them to maintain freshness, right?"
"Yes, it's likely we'll find evidence of a prison like setting, kids in cells, fed and watered and waiting for transport to the coast, then overseas by ship to the buyer. It's possible they've operated other places around the USA until it got too hot then they moved to the next spot on the map."
"So they don't want Hispanic, Asian, or Black kids?"
"If its trade, yes, just Caucasian. If they wanted Black kids they could get them easily in Africa which is a lot closer too. Someone's paying extra for a juicy American boy."
It was 2:50 when cars started to arrive, some were parents hauling their kids home, but a few had single guys in the driver's seat. Like Shirley all of them were black skinned. We got out and stood by the car and two cars parked near ours, everyone stood in a group and we introduced ourselves. So far all the Oklahoma cops we'd met were black skinned.
We shook hands and introduced ourselves, we discussed routes and explained why we wanted the Edison Street area, and they all agreed to follow other routes. One guy handed us a police walkie talkie so we could stay in touch without fumbling for phones. He said it was locked on the right channel, just push the button and talk into the front, but don't yell.
A loud bell sounded while we were talking near the busses and we heard kids run out and board the school busses. Ten minutes later everyone got in their cars, we found our bus had a number 11 on the side and back, that was our target. The drivers were unaware of our mission but all 911 operators knew and local police also knew, but not reservation cops. It then flashed in my mind that one map Shirley never made was an abduction map on top of a bus route map, probably because there were lots of schools in the Tulsa metro.
Just before they left we saw the driver in #11 bus turn and look at us. One of the cops held up his badge to show him then he pointed at us and then back at him, he nodded yes and started the engine. One by one they drove to Edison Street and drove off in different directions. Eleven turned left heading west on Edison. We followed but stayed back since the bus was easy to see from a distance.
There was a large residential area between the highway and Edison Street where most of his stops were, it was a long and boring ride watching kids exit the bus. Most of them walked straight home but when we got to the corner of Easton Place and 44th Avenue West two boys crossed the street and headed into the weeds and trees that grew along the highway, so we parked and watched them.
"Where they going?" I asked David.
"My guess? Probably to have a cigarette before going home."
"Wouldn't they stink like smoke when they got home?"
"Not if their parents smoked in the house too."
"Huh. Smoking in 7th grade, that's sad."
"Yep." Was all he had to say.
Because of the layout of the neighborhood there was no reason to move the car, the kids would have to walk out by the street regardless. David and I slid down on the seats to be less visible. He used the walkie talkie to notify the team what we're doing and our location.
I commented to David that this subdivision looked like all the houses were built to the latest tornado codes, nobody had trees in the front yard. There was almost nothing outside that could become a flying projectile. No wood fences, just chain link fencing.
We sat there for 90 minutes and were about to quit for the day when one of the two appeared on a bicycle from one of the houses that had back yards that bordered the highway. We watched him ride down the sidewalk to another house a block behind us and run inside. A half hour later the other boy appeared on foot and walked down the sidewalk and went to the mailboxes to grab the mail for his home, he lived next door to the one that rode off on the bicycle.
A delivery van drove down the street making stops on the other side, it was marked with a small company logo but we couldn't see it. The driver got out carrying boxes for different homes. At the end of Easton Place he turned around and made deliveries on our side of the street. I told David we should lie down if he drove past us.
He made one stop near the community mail boxes too but a Fedex truck rolled up and stopped in front of us blocking our view of the white van guy and the kid getting the mail.
"Fuck!" I mumbled, David bent over to see if he could see anything like a shadow under the Fedex truck. When it left the white van and the kid were gone, but there was only one way out of the neighborhood, so we drove out to Edison turned left heading west towards the Res.
Way ahead of us on Edison we could barely see the van heading west out of town. We tried to stay about a mile back and followed it west until we were a few miles outside the city limits, the ground was still mostly flat with lots of tree covered properties and different residential areas but stuff got spread out more and more. Edison Road curved south and crossed over the highway. He pulled off the road on the south side of the overpass to watch the van as if drove onto a business property, it looked like a construction company that had acreage and lots of trees. I called the rest of the team what happened but asked them to not approach the area, it was fully under control. I confirmed we did not witness an actual abduction because of the Fedex truck.
We were on the south side of the West 65th Avenue overpass watching a possible target. I looked at my phone at 5:58pm and the sun was low in the western sky. In the mean time we deployed the cell catcher and accessed the DOD database on the mapping system for hi-res scans of the property in question, at the corner of 65th Avenue and 11th Street.
I explained our location to the others on the team and asked if anyone knew of a residence nearby that would let us park in the driveway because we were too obvious parked up here with three antennas on the roof. Shirley called back and told us to drive to the last house on 64th Way, it was someone she knew from church and we could park there, she'd call right now. Slowly we pulled off the shoulder and drove down to 8th Street then down to the end of 64th and parked outside the last house on the right side, so we'd be much closer to the construction company, which also had a mobile home on the property and several acres. That property also had river on two sides so they were blocked if they decided to flee on foot unless someone wanted to take a swim.
Outside, the house lights came on and the front door opened. An elderly obese black woman wandered outside and talked to David through the window, he said we were investigating a missing child, could we park here for a few hours? She lady, full of smiles said that was fine, we were welcome to come inside, use the bathroom and have some coffee if we wanted. David thanked her and shook her hand and said we met Shirley yesterday, she was a nice lady. She said Shirley ran the choir in their church too.
While they chatted I located information from the DOD about the business owner and the property owner, I got one hit, one of the suspects, someone with a history of time in prison, and was on parole was listed as living in the mobile home. We updated the crew on the walkie talkie. Shirley said she was twenty minutes away.
About thirty minutes later Shirley arrived and parked beside us, but she was also busy on her computer looking up stuff. The lady from the house walked back outside with a tray in her hands, this time she had four sandwiches with mustard, mayo, lettuce, onion, and two thick slices of pan fried Oscar Mayer Baloney on white Wonder bread! I grabbed one, David got the other and we both smiled as she walked away, he yelled `thank you!' The other two sandwiches sat on the dashboard, but not for very long.
By the time the sun went down we'd seen no sign of the white van leaving the property. We couldn't see the property itself but we could see both driveways perfectly fine and every car that went by, so far no white van drove by.
"Are we too far to run a spider over there?" David asked and I told him it was close to too far. My best guess was we're about 1000 feet away, maybe 1600 feet from the river.
We had enough evidence to justify exploring the property but decided to get closer since it was dark outside. We decided to start now, he turned on our case and stepped out of the car and changed into our suits right there on her driveway. Shirley was shocked that we stripped to our undies in front of her and got into our Batsuits and that it took both of us to get changed. She got out of her squad car and asked what was going on, so while I zippered up the back of David's suit we explained we had advanced technology to explore the property but had to move closer to deploy it to see inside the buildings remotely, they might have a dog that would bark too much to go inside ourselves. She said she wanted to go with us, so we warned about snakes and mud but she didn't care, she was a mother of two kids that were also vulnerable.
After 10 minutes we were ready, Shirley was surprised to see us carrying machine guns, we grabbed the Pelican case and headed on foot towards the property, we walked down the street while there were no cars coming then crossed over to the other side, past a small clearing then to the first driveway that went back into the property. We walked into a stand of trees closer to the mobile home and assisted Shirley to silently join us in the woods.
So far there was no sign of barking dogs or any other sound except crickets and cars on the roads. David whispered that he thought he heard a scream but I didn't. We silently moved to the center of the trees and sat on a fallen tree, which would put us only 100 feet from the mobile home and the business building. I pulled out three spiders and activated one of them while David downloaded satellite radar scans of the property from the DOD. That's when we noticed it was actually three buildings but we had no idea what the third one was, it sat across the driveway from the mobile home. The satellite scan of the property showed the 3rd building was roughly 24x24, a steel sided building with one window and one door. The work building was the same size but had a wide open garage door and had several work trucks parked around it.
All the buildings were dark except the mobile home. The white Nissan van was parked by the 3rd building, which was the closest of the three to us, maybe only fifty feet away from our hiding spot.
One at a time we programmed the spiders and released them to ascertain the status of each building: general floor plan, occupants, utilities, plumbing, active electronics, animals, and any visible threats. With our glasses on we worked in the dark so Shirley wouldn't see much detail.
While I activated the spiders and uploaded data we whispered a little, David told Shirley she wouldn't be able to see but we'd tell her everything we saw. Shirley said she'd never seen anything like this before.
"You guys really are superheroes." She added.
"That remains to be seen, this is very likely a false alarm." David replied at a whisper.
The larger structure was a pole construction barn full of equipment for construction, power tools, and things relating to builders. It said the building was a standard pole barn, it had 117vac but nothing out of the ordinary, and no humans or animals inside or outside. We had that spider check all nearby vehicles. The next spider got inside the mobile home and found two brown skinned men. A TV was on, and they were seated at a table eating. That spider saw no other people or animals inside or outside. No heat signatures or electronics under the structure.
The third spider had to enter the third building via a vent stack pipe on the roof. It entered the building via a toilet in a bathroom. It found three rooms, one was a large bathroom with a shower. There was a large open area with a concrete slab floor, it detected heat under the floor if there was a basement but found no access. I sent the other two spiders to enter the third building, both went inside via the sewer line vent through the roof, one went down below the floor into a lower level like a basement and exited the plumbing via a large utility sink.
Using IR imaging it found multiple heat signatures that were not moving, but it wasn't sure if they were animals or humans. The other two finished a detailed scan of the ground level and found no heat signatures or complex electronics, just a large bathroom and kitchen area and a small office and one large open room like a workshop. The second spider went back into the sewer line through the toilet and found a route to the lower floor and climbed the basement wall to image the entire basement room where all the heat sources were seen.
Inside the office the 3rd spider located a locked panel on the floor, it resembled a steel door flat on the floor. That spider could not fit under the door, it was tightly sealed so it went into the bathroom and headed downstairs through the sewer line.
With three spiders in the basement now they were able to identify six or more humans on the floor with chains on their ankles, the lights were off and none of them seemed to be aware they were being imaged and mapped. I re-directed the third spider go back to the roof to serve as a remote camera to watch the mobile home.
Soon a map of the basement popped up on our glasses, I explained what I saw to Shirley. I told her this might be her missing kids, she got emotional and wanted to call for backup. David tried to calm her and explain we had plenty of weapons with us to handle this situation, they were guaranteed to lose in a shootout. But Shirley really wanted to call for help. He told her again to chill out, if these were the missing kids they'd be freed in a few minutes.
Due to the temperatures in the basement our spider images were poor but it looked like 6-9 kids asleep on floor mats, chained in place in the dark and nothing else in the room that would pose a threat. So he called one of the basement spiders to return. I got out gas pellets and was ready to load it. David programmed it to go to the mobile home and re-scan the entire structure and report. I placed two gas pellets in its back end and let it run down my arm to the ground.
There would be a few minutes wait for the gas equipped spider to re-inspect every room in the mobile home then get into position near the two men and report back with a green dot on our glasses. It would show red if it found changes.
As game time approached we had one in the basement watching the kids and another on the roof while the last one searched the entire mobile home. It went from room to room crawling around on the ceilings like an actual spider.
Two minutes later I got a report that the mobile home still had two heat signatures and then sent video of the two guys at the dining table smoking and talking. I moved the spider under the table where it held onto a bolt that held a leg to the frame, then I released the first gas pellet. I told Shirley I'd be asking her to call her dispatcher soon, in about 1-2 minutes this situation would be over.
"What's going on?" She whispered.
"We're gonna arrest these mother fuckers, that's why. We have zero tolerance for kid abuse. These bastards are extremely anti-social, there's no place for them on this planet."
She stayed on her knees in the mud beside us watching us watch our glasses but in the distance it was nothing but normal nature sounds, a few cars in the distance, crickets, and birds, some frogs by the river croaking.
"Five, four, three, two, one." I counted down, then watching the mobile home spider I gave Shirley the play by play. "One down." A few seconds later, "Oh, perp number two is up trying to rescue his buddy. Oops, make that two down." The spider saw the second man stand up and walk around the table then collapse to the floor, then it saw no movement. "Note the time please I asked her," she said it was 6:26pm.
I turned to Shirley and told her to `call the troops, this event is over, and the kids are rescued!' She called for backup on her walkie talkie, we got up and walked towards the nearest building. The white van was parked alone outside.
The outside door was strong steel and was locked. We didn't want to risk any injuries so we stood by the door and waited for the fire department, they got keys that opened any door (called an axe).
"Have the spider scan the area below the hatch, tell me what's down there." David typed on his keypad and I saw that spider move along the wall and locate the corner of the room, there was a wood staircase with no railing it went to the underside of a heavy floor hatchway.
Police were first to arrive, I was watching for a fire truck. I Asked Shirley to call and ask if a fire truck was en-route, she said yes it was 60 seconds away. She told dispatch to advise the fire dept to carry axes and paramedic boxes on arrival and report immediately to Detective Johnson. We saw lights flashing on the nearby buildings and trees when they arrived, then four fire fighters walked up, we signaled them and explained what we were seeing. That was when I signaled all spiders to return to me.
With about five powerful swings the door opened and I directed them inside, turn to the right, into the office, then chop the padlock off the flat steel plate on the floor. They lifted the heavy door and with flashlights in hand they went down the stairs and heard the voices of the ten missing children, some cried, one screamed briefly in fear when he saw axes.
All of them had chains around their ankles that ran to a central steel loop on the floor. The room stunk of piss and shit. Shirley asked about the two men and I told her I'd go handle them.
"What time is it now?"
"6:29pm."
"Not yet, still too much gas."
I walked to the mobile home and after several strong pulls broke open the front door, but I could still smell the gas so I stopped the police from entering. They shone flashlights through the open door and saw two men on the floor, but I convinced them they'd end up on the floor too if they went inside.
After some loud arguments with the police I got one of the filter masks out of our case and went inside but closed the door to keep them outside. Inside I grabbed a knife off the kitchen table, put it in the hand of one of the guys and shoved it into the heart of the other guy and made sure it was still in his hand when I let the cops in. Now it looked like a murder scene with no explanation why both of them were unconscious in a pile on the floor.
Within ten minutes all of the boys were unchained and being loaded into ambulances. State police finally entered the mobile home and found the murder scene and took one into custody, the other went to the morgue.
Within an hour all ten boys were at local hospitals and the place was crawling with police, media, and fire department people. They searched the entire property and decided to radar scan for buried bodies tomorrow.
With our spiders recalled and packed we walked back to our car and drove back to our hotel and watched the news coverage of Oklahoma's crime of the century. Police said they found evidence of others involved in the crimes and arrest warrants had been issued for two more men from Osage, Oklahoma.
The next morning at the airport we were waiting for our flight back to Dallas, on the TV in the terminal the kidnapping was the major story, an international kidnapping ring was busted, and already they had information about the destination of the transport chain that ended in Yemen. David asked if we wanted to fly to Yemen, just in case. I said no, I didn't wish to go to any state that killed gays.
We got home at 10pm, last flight to El Paso. That evening we got a call from Shirley with a rather emotional thank-you. Shirley said she had started to meet the parents of the boys and said she could not tell them how the case was solved but it was two gentlemen from far away that loved kids and hated bad guys. They were actual super heroes! She also asked about how the two men eating dinner turned into a murder scene and I told her that's how it looked when I entered the mobile home.
Our boss was happy and Oklahoma was happy. We submitted our report and drove to Chico's Tacos for two orders of their rolled/fried tacos drowned in tomato sauce. We didn't talk much during lunch. We both glanced at each other and smiled a lot. The crunch of deep fried tortillas was the big sound at our table, that and the slurp when our drinks ran out.
Sitting at the table he had sauce on his chin, and told me we should talk to the Captain to see if he had any suggestions for increasing our safety at home, including moving. Maybe we weren't the first to endanger ourselves in the line of duty, maybe they had plans for such circumstances.
David finished first, he sat there and watched me eat, then winked at me. I knew from experience that meant he was very happy and horny too. That look usually forewarned a hard fucking in my future. As a courtesy I'd quietly give myself a deep enema after dinner, make sure I was clean inside and out.
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