Chapter 15.
Local TV news in the Twin Cities soon forgot about the mall bombing and the victims, like it never happened. And the FBI halted their investigation that never really started. Police said they lost track of the suspects, which we knew was a total lie.
From what we read, the local mosque members hated the extremists as much as anyone else did, most of their members were normal law abiding citizens.
The mall bombing was our first grand failure. Mental images of the bloody scene in Saint Paul haunted us for months afterward, and we still weren't 100% sure if we actually screwed it up. David said he felt the feds used our spider snafu as an excuse to halt a locally unpopular investigation. We positively identified all three men in the apartment and obtained recordings of them talking about it with insider information. We created alerts for the three perps; if they ever came within 300 miles of El Paso we'd nab them and use them as Buzzard Chow. Our OD would get text alerts if any of them had cell phones on in New Mexico or western Texas:
Perp 1: Saad Hadi (the leader and source of money, the guy that killed our spiders, he worked for a commercial HVAC company and placed the bombs on the skylight frame).
Perp 2: Hassan Bilal (designed the attack, purchased the remote control triggers, assembled the explosive devices).
Perp 3: Jabbar Asghar (triggered the explosions by radio from the van, he detected the radio signals coming from the spiders).
Five days after St. Paul another person from the mall food court died in the hospital, a 60 year old woman that had her legs and arms crushed by falling steel. She was seated at a small round table taking a bite from a corndog when part of the steel skylight frame fell. She didn't jump up and run like the younger people because she didn't realize anything was going on. Since the explosive charges were outside they weren't very loud down in the food court, especially with all the ambient sounds.
According the hospital staff the patient said she was sitting at a table eating a corndog and fries and heard some crashes and saw people in the dining area running around, then without warning an enormous piece of steel skylight frame landed on the table in front of her, after it fell 78 feet. She never saw it coming.
Suddenly the table was crushed as she was taking a bite of her Corndog on a Stick, the next thing she saw was the cups of catsup and mustard on the table were suddenly gone and now there was a chunk of steel and broken glass and the entire scene was surreal but she heard no sound and everything happened in slow motion. She said she sat there in disbelief, chewing her bite of corndog and then she started to feel dizzy and looked down and saw her arms and legs were gone but she wasn't bleeding, then she fainted and had no more memories until she woke up four hours after surgery.
The surgeon closed off the wounds and completed the amputation of both arms and legs but her blood loss was so severe even with transfusions it was a tremendous shock that she couldn't recover from. She died in the ICU from a delayed hemolytic reaction five days after surgery. The good part was she woke up and was able to talk to her relatives for three days but slipped back into coma and died.
The ambulance crew was awarded for bravery by the city for risking their lives to remove her from the scene (due to the risk of further collapse of the skylight still above them) and transporting her to the trauma center as fast as possible. They strapped four tourniquets on her limbs and raced her to the ER with disregard for all their standard procedures except starting two large bore IVs and flooding her with fluids on the way. They said it was the hand of God that kept her alive long enough to begin to receive the first units of unmatched whole blood.
Two weeks after St. Paul our `Cousin Mark' was served with divorce papers at his office near Austin. That weekend he packed his belongings and moved out of the rental house and took his name off the utilities, notified the landlord, surrendered his key, but Sandra still had her key. We didn't know they rented that house. Six weeks later she graduated from college and moved in with her girlfriend from school.
Mark stayed in constant email contact and told us his employer (Serti-Sani Inc) had a district that covered the lower third of NM and western end (armpit) of Texas with cleaning/sanitation supplies for retail and QSR (fast food). We invited him to stay with us until he found an apartment here he said, thanks, he'd think about it.
He thought about it and eventually moved to El Paso and into our 2nd bedroom and piled all his boxes in our basement. Before and after his move had we discussions about privacy, we also talked about sex noise and friends visiting. He was amazed by our kitchen and the partially built mini golf course in the back yard.
He said he'd be gone almost half of each month because of his new larger territory. He'd be on the road for about ten days straight then focus on the area around El Paso and Las Cruces (most locals just called it Cruces (KREW-sis).
Mark arrived in January after the holidays in a ten foot U-Haul truck. We helped him carry boxes to the basement and started building his pyramid of U-haul boxes. Mark said he sold or pitched over half of what he owned before loading the U-haul truck.
Mark had called us in the truck on I-10 to say he was on his way across Texas and would be here tomorrow. We then called a security contractor to install an electric combination door lock on the third bedroom (Tac-room) where we kept our work gear and supplies. After we unloaded the truck he drove it back to Austin and paid U-Haul $980 for mileage charges and $240 for the rental, but that was still cheaper than hiring a moving company. He mostly carried a huge pile of boxes, his bed, and desk.
Two days after Mark left to drive the empty truck back to Austin he returned on a regional jet while we were at work. I went upstairs to meet him at the gate and drove him home. That evening we walked him inside the 3rd bedroom and showed him where we stored our superhero gear and explained he could not go in the room under any circumstances. He never asked about the Hello Kitty girl's scooter and helmet set box on the shelf in the closet.
"Why am I in here now?" He asked while we stood in the small bedroom looking at nothing of obvious importance except two black pieces of plastic luggage, a desk, a file cabinet, and three chairs, a computer, a small table, and a shelving unit with books and rifle cleaning stuff. The windows were covered with pieces of cardboard that were painted black and held in place with thumb tacks.
David told him, "Because of the stuff we keep in here it is defined by law as a secure military facility. We are required to keep those cases in a locked and secured room and we're required to report all breaches of security to the Pentagon."
"Wow, that serious?" Mark asked.
"Yep, that serious. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or sound threatening but you need to understand this is not a joke, we're totally not kidding. You must not under any circumstances enter this room." I told him while the three of us stood in the middle of the room looking around at perfectly normal household stuff.
Mark sort of looked at everything and David told him, "We wanted you to see there's nothing special or fancy or out of the ordinary in here; you're in here to remove the mystery and curiosity. You've been in here once and saw it's not worth trying to come back in here again."
"Got it, cousin!" He declared and we left the room and stood in the hallway as I closed the door and heard the battery powered latch lock the door shut.
Then we sat down in the living room and gave him a more complete explanation of the sort of things we did for work, he thought it sounded cool and called us Batman and Robin. David was emphatic that it should never be discussed with anyone for any reason.
During our chat Mark called it our Tactical Gear Room and David shortened it to Tac-room and the name stuck. We also liked it because it sounded manly. We showed him the paging unit on the table in the living room and said it alerted us any time day or night, except when we were at work or on training assignments.
When he asked about the stuff inside the black cases David told him they held military gear and we were not allowed to talk about it or we could end up in prison for the rest of our lives.
We said he would eventually see us get alerted and drive away wearing our superhero suits but we could not discuss them either; the best advice we could offer would be to ignore it and never mention it to anyone, it's a family secret now.
I told him he might want to make up some story in his mind now about what we did for a living. Sooner or later he would have local friends that he told he lived with his cousins and what we did for a living. Decide that now so you're ready because everyone asked stuff like that. He agreed to come up with some bullshit story about us and practice telling it in the bathroom mirror. We chuckled but felt comfortable that he would obey our rules.
"Unfortunately, since you live here you're also at some risk if someone decided to put us out of business permanently."
Mark sat there with a worried look on his face that eventually turned back into a smile as he considered his situation.
Eventually the topic of conversation turned to money and how much we got paid, I told him we were paid the same as an Army Colonel with four years of service, an O6 over four years. Then I told him that with both of us working and earning the same, combined we made about $184 grand a year before taxes but we had the chance to make cash bonuses all year long, some of those could be much bigger than our annual incomes combined. Mark said his best year in sales in Austin was $165k in a year but with a much larger territory out here he should do better after he got settled into a place of his own. Then he said he was going to lease a car tomorrow since his car in Austin belonged to the company.
Eventually our jobs became old news and Mark made up stories to tell if anyone asked about us. He was also putting some effort into looking for his own place to live and growing sales in his territory. He said he liked the new product line and hoped to never set foot inside a dairy farm again!
We sort of got into home routines that included Mark, since he was gone 12 days a month it took time to learn his habits and favorite foods. When he was home we treated him like the third brother and included him in our plans. We did our best to keep life at home very non-sexual around him.
We learned Mark loved fish and sushi, we loved beef and pork and chicken and lots of veggies and huge salads. And we cooked diner type food but it was always made from organics.
Of course a house with three young men living in it could easily become rowdy and we had our moments of fun since we were family. Mark pinched my tits a few times so I grabbed his too but we couldn't pinch David's because they were flat. I never let Mark see that I usually got hard after anyone pinched mine.
He told us about all the little towns he saw for the first time across southern New Mexico and said he really liked that state, the geography of the state varied a lot and he started to believe it was the most beautiful state in the US, we agreed.
Mark also loved horseplay at home and we often only wore shorts. The living room often resembled a college dorm. When he was home for meals I did most of the cooking, David designed the meals and did the grocery list on Excel, and Mark did most of the clean-up, but we all helped with dishes.
The only problem we had was laundry. When he got back in town we'd end up with a mountain of stinky clothes on the basement floor. We thought about adding another pair of larger machines but decided instead to get commercial grade machines so that's what we did.
And not too long after Mark moved in we purchased all the stuff needed to assemble the home theater in the basement.
We already had a used sofa downstairs, so we re-stacked his boxes along the wall and mounted a glass bead pull-down screen that was ten feet wide and six feet top to bottom, then mounted the 3D projector under the joists. We bought a nice 5.1 surround system and mounted the speakers to the floor joists too. We added one arm chair that would sit beside the gear, which was a small Samsung 3D Bluray player with a USB input for thumb drives. We got an Optoma 3D projector, about 3,500 lumens. And we used an Onkyo 5.1 surround amplifier and small Bose speakers, except the subwoofer was a no-name black box that sat on the floor.
The projector was mounted above the sofa. The center channel speaker was hung from the ceiling above the middle of the screen.
Our basement was ugly, it was wide open all the way across and was not finished at all. We had an area rug on the floor in front of the sofa. Our theater sat under the living room. Under the kitchen was the laundry area and near that was basically a bathroom without walls. It had a sink, toilet, and an ugly old steel shower stall. At the other end we built wooden shelves for our camping gear and added more shelving for some of Mark's boxes from his home in Austin.
Our basement had one escape window that went out into the side yard (under our bedroom window), the other windows were small and let in sun so we never used the projector during the day. We had one more area that had a used weight bench and free weights; we planned on adding a nice treadmill and stationary bike some day. We also decided to add more space for hanging clothes on hangars near the dryer, and add a large folding table, more lights in the laundry area, and a simple table radio too.
Six days after Mark spent his first night in our house we got an alert that one of the bombers from St. Paul showed up on the cell network on I-25 between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. He was located in a residential neighborhood on the far north-east side of town. As soon as that alerted we got into our Batsuits, grabbed our cases and raced north on I-25. Albuquerque was a four hour drive north from El Paso on I-25 at the posted speed limit. In this case we drove 99mph most of the way.
It's important to keep in mind Jabbar didn't know us and we'd only seen photos of him taken by our spiders which were very wide angle.
Knowing how much Saudi's loved their native food we decided to find the nearest Middle Eastern restaurant and watch for him from their parking lot. On the drive north our OD researched places to park. We'd be camped out in the truck until we grabbed him. The OD also located suitable places to leave his corpse for the vultures.
We were about 90 miles north of the state line on I-25 north of the town of `T or C' when a cop appeared behind us in a marked squad car with lights on his roof. He was able to keep up with us going 99mph. We let him follow us for a while hoping he would see our stickers and run our plate, but he stayed on our tail and blasted his horn so after a few minutes we started to slow down and notified our OD what was going on just in case.
We stopped well off the shoulder so he had plenty of room to safely walk to the side of our truck. When we stopped we saw he was on his radio, probably calling for back-up since it might turn into a felony stop. He probably interpreted us ignoring him for a bit as resisting arrest.
He walked up beside our truck with his hand on his pistol and knocked on the window. David opened it about two inches and let the officer speak, he asked for our papers, which I already had out. We handed him our federal agent ID cards, registration, and insurance card. While he was gone I activated the comms gear in our case and we put on our glasses.
He went back to his vehicle and talked into the microphone again and was busy for a few minutes then came back and told us he was going to charge us with felony fleeing and impound our truck. David sighed and told him:
"Officer, I am required to notify you we are federal agents on an emergency mission, you are not authorized to detain or search us. Failure to release us immediately is violation with severe penalties, we are authorized by the Pentagon to defend ourselves if you attempt to detain or search us."
"Are you threatening me?" he shouted with his pistol now drawn but not aimed at us. The he ordered us to slowly get out of our vehicle and keep our hands visible and step to the rear of the truck and lie down on the pavement and do not move suddenly or he would shoot.
While I got out of the truck I told him we were required to warn him again that detaining or searching us would result in his execution within the next hour. The cop just laughed and told us threatening a police officer in the line of duty would be added to the list of charges against us. He slowly backed up to his car and stood by the open driver's door with his pistol aimed at David.
With hands in the air we slowly climbed out the truck and left the doors open and did as he said. The OD already alerted the Air Force MP rapid response team at Holloman Air force Base, about 85 miles away.
We got down on the ground and soon heard a distant siren approach, then more sirens as three police cars approached. They blocked I-25 about a quarter mile behind us and within ten minutes we were surrounded by four armed policemen (2-state, 2-local). The cop that stopped us was a county sheriff deputy and looked to be about 40 years old and he looked to be emotionally upset and was breathing rapidly and sweating a lot. We thought this might be his first felony stop and he was either scared or in alcohol withdrawal.
We had two cops with shotguns aimed at us as we got on the pavement face down with our arms out, not moving. But we had our glasses on and were in contact with El Paso and he kept updating us and advised it to not answer any of their questions or try to justify our driving. We'd now lost about 15 minutes on our mission to Albuquerque.
About ten minutes after we got on the ground we heard and felt the unmistakable sound of distant military helicopters and whispered to each other that people were about to die here, which was tragic.
David urged the arresting officer again to call his boss and tell him what was going on before it was too late. Then to my surprise David told the cop those helicopters were coming to kill him, and the cop laughed, kicked stones at us and told David to shut up.
They approached low over the desert from the southeast. Slowly the thumping of two Hueys could actually be felt. By the time we could clearly see them above the desert to our east the arresting cop had searched our truck and brought out our two cases and set them on the hood of his car and opened both of them which earned him an irrevocable immediate execution. I warned him not to open them but he did it anyway (presumably expecting to find baggies full of cocaine or heroin inside) then commented about the strange looking crap inside them and asked why we had street clothes inside the business suit case. While the Hueys circled around to decide where to land he asked us who the hell we were, but David told him we already handed him our ID cards. The cop got a call on his cell, it was his boss the county sheriff that told him to keep us at gun point that a jail van and tow truck were on the way, should be here within 15 minutes. But the deputy never mentioned the two Air Force helicopters landing near us on the highway about 120 feet in front of our truck.
David urged the deputy to call his family and say good bye because he'd be dead in a few minutes but the cop yelled at him again to shut up, threatening a police officer was another charge that would be added. Then I pleaded with him to let us go and he told us to tell it to the judge tomorrow morning.
He had two of the other cops stay at a distance in front of our truck for back-up so they never saw inside the case, just the cop that stopped us and the city cop that responded after he called for back-up. They stood by his car examining the odd looking contents of our case. When he asked what the stuff was David told him they were experimental coffee making equipment. I think he actually believed that was true. David whispered that it was too bad he didn't have a pocket Geiger counter with him because it would be screaming right now. I gave the names of the officers that violated the pelican case to our OD which would be relayed to the MP squads in the choppers so they knew which people to shoot and which ones to release.
By then the Hueys had just set down, the two cops were about to remove the stuff from the pelican case. When the rotor wash from their props blew up a big dust cloud they stopped and watched both choppers open their doors, both of them said USAF on the side and were painted flat black.
Out jumped about a dozen Air Force MPs with automatic rifles, body armor, helmets, with comms and face shields. They almost looked like they were in riot gear, they ran towards us and aimed their weapons and ordered the two officers to put down their weapons, which came as a complete surprise. They ordered them to also remove their belts and asked if they had body armor on, both said yes, it was required by department policy. It looked like they expected the choppers carried more back-up law enforcement. When three men came up close with rifles aimed at them the look on their faces suddenly changed and they demanded to know what was going on and they shouted at the two to shut up. David told him, "We warned you four times."
I whispered to David they were really stupid if they thought these airmen were here to assist in our arrest. One of the MPs walked up to the cops and thumped on their armored vests and looked at the lead officer and told him their gear was fine (meaning their ammo would easily penetrate their vests, which would be happening in just a few minutes).
The MP with officer insignia on his helmet took charge. Three of them put plastic handcuffs on the two police and gently shut our cases and carried them to the back seat of our truck. They escorted the two local cops at gunpoint down into a deep drainage ditch along the highway and had them sit on the ground. Other MPs spoke to the state troopers standing well ahead of our truck as back-up and instructed them to get in their cars and leave immediately. Another one took the confiscated police belts and pistols and tossed them inside the first police car.
Four MPs held the two local cops at gunpoint down in the ditch and were arguing with them, which turned into a shouting match but we were so close to the first cop car all we could hear was his engine racing and the loud whine of the two helicopters that still had their rotors slowly turning, pilots still at the controls. They obviously didn't plan on being here very long.
One of the crew that was talking to the cops in the ditch walked up the hill to us and removed our handcuffs and helped us to our feet then told us we were free to go. We thanked them for rescuing us but with his rifle at his side aimed at the sky I could see he had a lot of stuff going on. Another MP walked over from the first police car with our cards in his hand and gave them to David. One of them drove the two police cars further off the pavement and shut off the motors.
We stood by our truck inspecting our two cases, and I put our cards away, then we got in the truck and shut the doors.
I saw in the rear view mirror as they stood up the two police officers down in the ditch and two MPs backed-up and opened fire, fully automatic and shot them in the center of their body about twenty rounds each. I also saw blood and flesh spray out of their backs so they used armor piercing rounds, which was why they checked what gear they had on under their shirts. At least their demise came fast, hopefully Jabbar would receive the same respect in the next couple days.
Firing that many rounds into the police officers in fully automatic meant they started to collapse before they were done shooting. If we'd been in the city those rounds could have ricocheted and injured innocent bystanders.
We slowly drove forward but had to steer around the helicopters because they landed on the highway pavement. Once we got clear of the Hueys we slowly gained speed. I saw the MPs get back in their helicopters and take off.
A thick cloud of black smoke rose into the sky, it appeared the MPs tossed incendiary grenades inside both police cars.
About that time the tow truck and jail van arrived to take us into custody but there were no officers at the scene to explain what happened. All they saw was two air force choppers fly off and their two comrades dead in the weeds down in a drainage ditch near the highway.
I notified our OD that the incident was over, we were continuing on our mission to Albuquerque.
As David sped back up to 99mph we discussed all the mistakes they made and how the local police chief and county sheriff would probably be fired within a few days once they found out they had signed for but never delivered the training. We never heard who called whom to explain the dead cops and why but I was sure it was not a fun conversation. Several people's incompetence led to the death of two cops, which was tragic.
We've seen his happen in the past and it usually ended the same way. Two police officers dead, two fired -- then charged criminally, was what the news would report the day after the incident. We drove the rest of the way to Albuquerque without any problems but we lost close to one hour. If we lost contact with Jabbar the police captain and sheriff in those towns would be responsible for that too.
On the drive north we discussed the cost and time to get twelve military cops into a chopper and flown to us, why couldn't we have used the spiders for that situation? So while David drove and dictated we wrote an email to the Nevada DOD facility and suggested they create a built-in routine. David pictured it like this: for rapid self defense they create software routines where you unboxed the spider, inserted a pellet (sleep or poison), activated the voice command mode, and aimed the front spidercam at one person. The spider could kick one leg when the target person was acquired. Set the spider down and it moved to the target and climbed up his clothes to near the shoulders and released half the gas then climbed down and waited for more orders. If we could have done that we wouldn't have needed the Air Force MPs and all that expense, although they got a good training exercise.
As we got into the heavier traffic in the city we slowed to the speed limit and watched for our exit, Alameda Boulevard on the north side. We thanked our OD for his help since his work shift was almost over. David said we should take him to lunch.
We both kept a close eye on the traffic and for our sign, he commented that Albuquerque was a rather large city considering New Mexico was not a highly populated state. It was hard to picture this area was once just Indians and Spaniards, this was nearly the northern extent of their territory that was centered in Mexico City.
When we arrived we did not know who owned the house where Jabbar stayed, or how they were connected. Our tracking data from his cell gave us a street address but that could be inaccurate so we activated the cameras (and microphone) on his cell to monitor/record inside the house.
Once we confirmed the street address we got city tax records and learned the names of the regular residents. It appeared the house was owned and not a rental.
The home owner was also a Saudi immigrant to the US and had a good credit score and no record of police contact, the guy owned a small factory in the city that made Halal foods for restaurants. They also sold imported Halal meats to restaurants, and did some catering services too. At home there was a wife and two small children.
We did not know how the two men knew each other and found no simple linkages. But we had no reason to believe this visit was terror related, maybe they were relatives, or came from the same town in Saudi Arabia. We also did not know why our target suddenly drove here from Saint Paul. Our OD did searches online but couldn't find the link between them. We suspected they were childhood friends or relatives. The OD said he was going to search in immigration records too.
Due to the layout of the neighborhood (too many houses too close together, no common areas except the streets and sidewalks) we couldn't use a spider so we relied on their cell phones to eavesdrop on the residence. The adults spoke mostly Arabic but the kids spoke English so they sometimes were translators for us. The mother would shout something at the kids in the living room and they answered in English. Most of the time we had no idea what was being said and when we tried using the Pentagon live translation service the server was down for repair.
We closely watched his cell activity trusting that he wouldn't leave home without it.
We spent two days in our truck in a nearby parking lot monitoring as much as we could. We soon found his patterns and were able to begin to predict some of his travels (which always turned into a game for us). We kept a written log on a clipboard we brought for doing surveillance like this. The Halal restaurant and the gas station he frequented were three blocks away and sat side by side on the main road so we parked in a space between the two buildings so each of them thought we were there with the other business. We put the sun shades on the windshield and two more in side windows so we had pretty good privacy but being stuck in a truck for days was dreadful.
We slid the seats all the way back and made ourselves at home in his truck while we watched his cell on the laptop and ran the motor every other hour for fifteen minutes to keep the battery from running down.
After we located the nearby mosque and stores they frequented we decided to nab him at this gas station since his vehicle was a gas guzzler and he went there often to top off his tank, buy a hot coffee, and sometimes a few doughnuts. The people that owned the gas station all looked Middle Eastern too. We used their bathroom and bought water and snacks from them but I think we parked in a spot that wasn't seen by their cameras.
Most people had no expectation of being kidnapped while pumping gas so that was always a moment people let their guard down.
On our third day living in the truck and taking turns napping across the back seats we decided to nab him that afternoon. Jabbar drove here every day and went inside, paid cash, and came out with a coffee. We saw on our tablet screen when he left home so we took down our window covers and pulled our seats far forward to make room in back for a wrestling match. We also heard him make calls to Minnesota and talk to other men in Arabic, possibly friends from the apartment. Neither of us understood a word of Arabic.
We watched him drive up to pump #7 so we drove up to the other side and opened both truck doors on the pump side and quickly put about ten gallons in our tank before he came out with a coffee and a smile as he walked back to his car. We did not know who owned his car but we guessed it was borrowed or a rental.
David held the fuel nozzle while I stood by the pump. After it reached ten gallons he pulled it out and handed it to me, I hung it up on the pump, he put the filler cap back on and closed the fuel door.
Jabbar walked out of the store with his a white cup and set his coffee on the roof of his vehicle and lifted the nozzle and started it running. I looked all around us but nobody was nearby and our vehicles blocked anyone from seeing what we were about to do, except we'd certainly show up on their camera system. Eventually someone would notice his car sitting at the pump for an hour or so and call to have it towed.
That's when David silently stepped behind him and grabbed Jabbar tightly around the neck and lifted his feet off the ground and carried him to our wide open back door and shoved him in the back seat of our truck. David pounced on top of Jabbar while I lifted their feet and shut the back door and climbed in the driver's seat and sped off for the interstate highway, which was only two blocks away.
I wondered briefly when David had him by the neck why he didn't kill him then.
In the back seat there was yelling and a minor struggle, the truck bounced and rocked a bit. I had a knife (and pepper spray) handy but didn't want to spray in the truck because all of us would get some. So let's say David was highly motivated to neutralize Jabbar quickly the way we learned in Seal school.
When David had shoved him in the back seat Jabbar landed face down then David dove on top and pounded the back and side of his skull with his fists while Jabbar struggled, but being on top and being in great shape David had the advantage and Jabbar pretended to be knocked out. Neither of us believed he was unconscious at that point.
I drove as fast as I could to the highway overpass on Alameda Boulevard and got on the southbound lanes heading towards the Albuquerque airport which was far south of town. That trip was one of the few times I actually pushed the gas pedal all the way down. I ran two traffic lights when the intersections were clear.
Just south of the I-40/I-25 interchange we got a cop car behind us for several miles but it backed off and stopped following us, which was what was supposed to happen.
It was about a ten mile drive in heavy traffic before I saw a sign for the airport exit, but we took the exit before that: Gibson Boulevard then turned right onto Pennsylvania Street which eventually crossed the desert to the mountains. Our OD picked this area because east of the airport was mostly desert land and had a nice paved road that eventually turned into a graded road across the desert towards a scenic local mountain valley that people liked to hike in. On a week day it should be vacant.
During the drive south Jabbar asked why was he being kidnapped but David stayed on top of him and told him to shut up. We drove past the airport and turned south and kept driving southeast towards the mountains. Out in that desert were a huge number of old WW2 military facilities and current day military research places. I drove slightly above the speed limit out there since traffic was very light and the pavement was unpredictable.
Eventually, the pavement ended so we slowed to 30mph and followed the signs to Lurance Canyon and stopped at one of the hiking trail signs, the small parking area was empty. It was about 10:45am and the sky was clear and cloudless, the truck said it was 71 degrees outside, which was cool for the desert.
I got out of the truck then opened the back door and reached in to help David climb out since he was on his knees on Jabbar's legs and butt. After he was out we reached in and grabbed Jabbar by his ankles and dragged him out of the back seat and stood him beside the truck but he wasn't restrained in any way. He leaned back against the truck and we stood very close to him, so he really couldn't run without a fight and he'd already been beaten hard by David. I'm sure he was in plenty of pain. I had a can of pepper spray in my hand that Jabbar could see. No matter how badass you might be pepper spray still burned badly.
David put one hand firmly against his chest and calmly questioned him about the mall bombing and of course Jabbar denied ever being in Minnesota. Then I showed him the close-up photos (on my cell) of him taken by the spiders in the apartment seconds before they destroyed it and told him we had recordings of them discussing the bombing and laughing about the people they killed.
His face was somewhat bloody from all the cuts David made on the back of his scalp, Jabbar said, "You're not the cops, why do you want me?"
"You found our spider in that apartment. What did you do with it?"
Jabbar took in a deep breath and shouted: "Fuck you American PIGS!" He screamed and his saliva sprayed across our faces. Then David clenched the front of his shirt and pushed it up hard into his chin, I could tell he wanted to bust his face.
"I'm going to ask you one last time, what did you do with our spider drone?" David spoke through tightly clenched teeth.
"Fuck you pig man!" he shouted back. "I'll kill you too!" Then he hockered back and spit at David's face but David turned his head in time, but it landed in his hair. David reached up to wipe it from his hair.
During their little angry moment I quietly slipped my hand into my pocket and grabbed my Zombie knife (two sided blade) and slowly pulled it behind me, pressed the button and locked the blade open (I guessed David heard the blade lock in place). As David wiped the spit onto his pant leg I moved in closer and whispered to him `Grab it!' and handed him the knife with the blade out and locked. This was a defensive move we practiced in Seal school and David was pretty damn good at it but it left the victim with as much as twenty five seconds before lights out. Typically the heart stopped within 60 seconds. Most people stood there paralyzed with fear seeing that much blood spray from their body.
I stepped back and David moved a little more to his left. He acted like he was about to sneeze into his elbow. He told Jabbar "I'm gonna sneeze!" he raised his arm to cover his mouth (since they were very close to being toe to toe) and kept the knife hidden from view. With one lightning fast downward stroke he deeply slash the entire right side of his neck then immediately stepped back several feet, I moved back too. Jabbar seemed to not feel much at first. He reached up when blood gushed from his neck. At first he had a look of disbelief that a lazy American infidel had the bravery to actually harm him but he also immediately realized his wound was fatal. We both stepped further away again and David gestured that he was free to go, we were done. Jabbar raised his hand in front of his face to look at the blood running down his arm then looked at us but remained silent.
David asked him again what he did with the tiny drone but Jabbar remained silent. We saw his lips were moving like he was silently praying.
After about fifteen seconds of blood spurting out the side of his neck his eyes rolled up and he dropped to his knees then fell forward, his face smashed into the dirt road. We watched his legs twitch as the life force escaped and his corpse lay lifeless on the dirt road in a growing puddle of blood. But the party wasn't over because Jabbar was about to start a new career as the food service manager for a growing swarm of large black vultures already circling overhead. A group of them flying together was called a Kettle of Vultures I remembered from a Trivia card game.
When I looked around us I saw crows in trees and on cactus all around us as if they knew it was meal time. After another minute of leaning against the truck watching the him bleed we saw the pumping stop so we picked him up by his ankles and wrists and carried his body into the desert 100 feet from the dirt road and dumped him in a small clearing. Our parting gift to nature was to slice all his clothes and turn him face up to make eating easier for our big black feathered friends in the sky. I commented to him that one of the critters might bite his wiener off and David looked at him and said `Eww! It don't look too clean.'
Back by the road we kicked dirt over the blood puddle then inspected each other for splatters but we were both spotless, that was our neatest bloodletting ever. There was some on the side of the truck but we could clean that at home.
The Kettle of Buzzards circling above us had grown to over a dozen. A lot of birds, insects, and coyotes would eat well this week.
Ninety minutes after we got on the highway we passed the spot where we were stopped by that local cop for driving 99mph in a 75mph zone. We talked to the OD about the police thing and got updates that the sheriff had already resigned but the town chief cop was out of town on vacation.
There were two big black spots in the weeds beside the pavement where their cars burned.
Thirty minutes later we stopped for green chili cheeseburgers at Sparky's Burgers, BBQ & Espresso in Hatch New Mexico then drove the rest of the way home. We didn't drive as fast south as we did heading north.
One welcome sign on the drive home was recognizing the Franklin Mountains in the hazy distance. We were approaching from the north. They looked totally different from that direction. All El Pasoans recognized the Franklins from the south end. They had several distinct peaks that people used as landmarks to identify them from a distance. At night, the pattern of red lights on broadcast towers was how most people identified them from 40 miles away.
When we got home I washed the side of the truck to remove the dried blood spots. I got out the hose and a bucket of soapy water and a big sponge and had it removed in a couple minutes.
Cousin Mark was home on the sofa in his gym shorts watching ESPN and reading a QSR trade magazine and asked where we went. David winked but never answered, then Mark remembered sometimes we couldn't answer questions like that. I asked what QSR meant and he said it was fast food industry slang for the fast food business, they called it Quick Serve instead of fast food. QSR simply meant Fast Food Restaurant.
Mark lived in our second bedroom for three months, we gave him as much privacy as possible but sometimes our home was like a college dorm.
I saw him naked a few times, I had no idea how many times he saw us naked or hard. I'm sure he heard us fuck a few times, but like he said he wasn't interested in gay stuff.
His body was shaped very similar to David's but he didn't have the huge flat round tits like David and he wasn't eight inches long either. He told us once he met a lady at a restaurant bar near the VA hospital and we told him he could bring her over if he called us ahead of time so we made sure the place was very clean and dusted. David reminded him he was welcome to use the movie and gym equipment in the basement too, then he told him it might be a nice place to fuck even if we were home. Mark laughed at the thought. David told him that's why there was a padded rug on the basement floor by the sofa. That made him laugh loudly.
When we saw Mark cross the hallway to his room he had a full bush but both of us were hairless which made him stare too.
We also had a couple of parties while Mark lived with us. We invited Mike and Trina Bonham down from Alamogordo for a backyard barbecue and two night camp-out after David thought he had the smoker figured out. He actually read the instructions cover to cover!
We invited them to pitch a tent in our back yard while we used our smoker to make one huge meal. They met Mark and the five of us had a great time that weekend. We cooked all the other meals in our new kitchen and everyone wanted to help.