January 15, 2015: Q&A

Yesterday’s Q&A session with Marta, that’s the Mexican woman we brought back from the farm to the north of the Hansons’, was quite enlightening but not because she said all that much.

We were pulling the sled along the trail that had been trampled down between the Hanson place and the farm to the north.  As we came over a small rise, we almost literally bumped into the Gunter girls’ boyfriends.  At first, they looked frightened – like a little kid caught by an angry parent – then they noticed Marta on the car-hood sled behind us.  I could see recognition in their eyes and then … an even deeper fear.

I knew there was a connection.  My next job was to figure it out.

“Where you boys headed,” I asked.

Their mouths moved, like the lips of a fish out of water, but no sound came out.

“Cat got your tongue?” I was grinning and evil grin.

I could see they were thinking about running.

“Where you going to run to?” I asked.

More fish-mouthing.  The looks on their faces were priceless, like, “How could this guy know we were planning to run.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, boys,” I assured them.  “I’m pretty sure you’re going to be familiar with this next part yourselves.”

Those poor boys didn’t know what to think at that point.

“Get down on your knees and cross your ankles one over the other,” I ordered, “put your hands behind your head and inter-lace your fingers.”

They knew the drill.  It was obvious they’d been through this before.

“Sam, Joseph, zip-tie their wrists and ankles,” I said.

Sam was nearly out of zip-ties so I gave him a couple of my own.

Once the boys were secured and lying on their sides in the snow, I turned my attention to Marta.

“Tell me, Marta,” I began, “how do you know these boys.”

She was as mute as a stone statue but her eyes showed something – fear maybe … perhaps concern.  I was beginning to get a sneaking suspicion.

I looked at Marta and then at the boys.  I squatted down and got close to each of their faces.  Despite Marta’s battered appearance, I was pretty sure there was a family resemblance.

“Looks like we have a little family reunion on our hands,” I said to Sam and Joseph.  “I think these are Marta’s boys.  The ages are about right and there’s a definite family resemblance.”

Sam and Joseph looked from Marta to the boys and back again.

“I think you’re right,” Sam said, a glint in his eyes.  He was getting it … playing along.

“Well, let’s see if we can get people to talking at this little reunion,” I smirked.  “Who wants to tell us how the three of you ended up here in our neck of the woods?  I’m guessing none of you grew up nearby.”

Not a word.

I gave some consideration to my next move.  The pawns were in play but perhaps the queen was the way to go.  A mother’s love … and desire to protect her young.  That might very well be the strongest thing we had going for us.  Then again, what boy could stand to see his mother … hurt.  I didn’t particularly relish hurting women or kids but the rules of the game had changed – the ‘new normal’ and all – and these three had decided to play.

I decided to start with the older boy.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I began, “I’m going to ask a question.  The three of you will have ten seconds to answer the question – truthfully.  If you don’t answer, or if I think you’re lying, Chico, here, is going to lose a finger or a toe.”

Angry glares from the Mexicans.

“David, you can’t do that,” Joseph intervened.

“You want to?” I asked.

Joseph turned as white as a ghost, “Certainly not!”

“I guess it’s me or Sam, then,” I replied.

The younger boy spoke up, “You don’t know who you’re messing with!”

“Shut up!” Marta lashed out at him.

I squatted down and put my face closer to the younger boy’s, “You’re right, son, I don’t know who you are.  Do you want to tell me?”

His eyes were watery with fear.  I wasn’t sure if he was afraid of me or something … someone else.

“OK, Q&A time,” I said.  “Question one: Why are you here?”

None of them jumped up to give me an answer.  They were tied up, of course, so none of them could jump up but you know what I mean.

“Ten … nine … eight,” I started counting while I looked at my watch.

“Mom!”  The older boy was getting nervous.

“Seven … six … five,” I kept the count going.

“We came with the Gunters!” the older boy screamed.

“I know that,” I said flatly.  “That doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

“Four … three … two,” I pulled my Benchmade from my pocket and flicked open the blade.

“Wait!” the younger boy was starting to cry.

“One,” I finished my countdown.

From behind his back, I grabbed the older boy’s left pinky finger.  I ran the blade of my knife around the base of the finger as the boy screamed.  I could hear Joseph dry-heaving.

“Is she watching, Sam?” I asked.

“She’s shutting her eyes,” he replied.

Crack!

With two quick movements, I snapped the older boy’s pinky at the joint between the finger and the hand and sliced through the tendons – just like cutting off a hog knuckle.

The kid screamed for a second or two and then passed out.

The younger boy was vomiting.  Good thing he was laying on his side so he didn’t aspirate any of the vomit.

Holding the finger by its base, I walked over to Marta and ran the tip of it over her face.

“Your boy can live without his pinky,” I said.  “How far are we going to take this?”

Her tough exterior was cracking.  I could see she was holding back sobs.

“Time for finger number two,” I said.  “This one will be easier on him.  He’s passed out.”

I walked back in the older boy’s direction.

“Please, stop,” it was barely more than a whisper.

I stopped and turned around.

“You ready to talk?” I asked.

“Si … yes, I will tell you what you want to know,” Marta had seen the light.  “They will kill me but perhaps they will spare my sons.”

“Well, Marta,” I started, “as you can see, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to protect my family … or a couple girls and a baby that I don’t even know.”

I looked her in the eyes.

“Yes, you are very scary,” Marta said, “but el Patron is ….”  Her voice trailed off.

“Let’s start there,” I suggested.  “Who is el Patron and why are you here in my neighborhood?”

“We are … were here to set up a base of operations for this area,” Marta was matter-of-fact.

“What kind of operations?” I probed.  “Don’t make me drag it out of you.”

Marta opened up after that.  She explained that she had been a part of a gang before the crash.  They had been drug dealers, for the most part, with a little bit of grand theft and intimidation thrown in here and there.  After the crash, el Patron – AKA Fernando Hernandez – had an epiphany.  His drugs were pretty much worthless but he could provide security to those who were willing to pay his “taxes”.  For those unwilling to pay his taxes, security suddenly became a major issue.

She and the others had recently moved into the abandoned farm house – a couple weeks after the Gunters showed up.

Her sons, Ricky and Daniel, had been friends with the Gunter girls before the crash.  Daniel had met Janelle, the younger Gunter girl, at a youth retreat put on by my parents’ church.  The two had grown close – maybe not quite boyfriend/girlfriend but close, nonetheless.  Ricky, the older of the two boys and the more opportunistic, had befriended Jamie Gunter shortly thereafter.

The Gunters, with their supply of food, had quickly become targets for Hernandez’s gang.  Ricky and Daniel had been tasked with infiltrating the Gunter family and finding out what quantity and type of supplies they had.

When the Gunters bugged out, Ricky and Daniel bugged out with them telling Jake that their mother had been killed and that they had nowhere else to go.

Now, the really scary part … Marta and her counterparts had military-grade coms equipment that they utilized to keep in touch with Hernandez.  We’d missed it in our search of the house because it was kept in the root cellar.  We didn’t even look for a cellar.

Amateur mistake.  Not like me at all.  Usually, I’m thorough to the point of anal retentive about those kinds of things.  The combination of a murdered baby and two young women must have thrown me off my game.

The coms equipment had come from the local National Guard unit – sort of confirming some of my fears about the members of the guard units going rogue.

Bad … very bad.

National Guard

Enrique Hernandez flexed the muscles in his forearm.  He loved to watch his panther tattoo move when he flexed.  The flexing panther gave him a feeling of power and stealth.  In reality, Enrique was neither particularly powerful nor stealthy.  His walk was more of a shamble.  His portly frame moved with the all the grace of a washing machine falling down a set of stairs.  A panther he was not.

Nevertheless, Enrique fancied himself as something of a stud.  Strangely, very few around him would argue the point.  Enrique’s power came not from his physical strength but rather from his family.  Purely by the chance of birth, Enrique had been born into a Mexican family prominent in the Midwestern drug trade.  Enrique’s father, Fernando, literally ruled the drug trade in his region.  He was the king of his domain and those who dared to question his position or authority usually ended up dying horrible deaths.

The crash had changed the drug trade in ways that even Fernando had not imagined.  As wise and worldly as Fernando was, he didn’t recognize the signs of the government’s collapse and the devaluation of the dollar until almost too late.  Virtually overnight Fernando’s empire of cash turned into an empire of crash.  Most of Fernando’s customers still had cash but cash had no value.  Fernando was sitting on a vast empire that required electrical power, over-the-road transportation, modern communications and an ability to turn his customers’ cash into more product.

By July of 2014 virtually none of that existed.

Never one to panic, Fernando calmly reevaluated his position.  He recognized that the drug trade, previously his primary business, was now merely a sideline, if that.  What people needed now – like they needed his crack before the crash – was shelter, water, food, power – if he could supply it – and safety.

Fernando commanded an army.  That army communicated via cell phones, however, and the cellular networks were dead.  That army frequently took much of their payment in drugs, previously, but now there were things higher on their priority list.  The army was still a resource, Fernando reflected, but it needed a new communication network and a new source of compensation.

The answer, Fernando decided, was quite literally sitting in a highly unlikely place.  Enrique, Fernando’s oldest son, was sitting in the headquarters of the 189th Truck Company at that very moment.  The 189th was Enrique’s National Guard unit.  Enrique was the company clerk.

Early in Enrique’s life, Fernando realized that his first-born son was not cut out to be his successor.  A firm believer in the principle that life gives no one a free pass, Fernando gave his son a choice.  He could go to college and learn to run some back-office aspect of his father’s business or he could join the military.  Enrique chose the military with dreams of elite units and clandestine operations.  The U.S. Army, in a flash of brilliance, recognized that Enrique didn’t quite have the constitution for active-duty special operations and instead slated him in an administrative MOS in the National Guard.

This frustrated Enrique to no end.  He was convinced that his exceptional talents were being squandered.  The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.  While most people would simply have put in their time and ended their service, Enrique grew bitter and began to look for ways to get back at Uncle Sam.  As company clerk he soon discovered that he was in a position to skim supplies sent to his unit.  It was an opportunity too good to pass up.

About a year after Enrique assumed his role as company clerk for the 189th, he put his skimming scheme into practice.  As supplies were sent to his unit, Enrique scanned the bills of lading into his computer and digitally altered them, reducing item counts.

He had suggested the scanning as a cost-saving method after his third monthly drill.  Ironically, he had been awarded an Army Achievement Medal for this cost-saving initiative.  Typically, the inventory lists that accompanied the bills of lading were routed to the NCO in charge of each of the different areas receiving supplies.  While routing them digitally, rather than making photo copies, in reality saved very little actual expense, it was the thought that counted in Enrique’s company commander’s mind.  So, Enrique was rewarded with an AAM for his “creative thinking with an eye toward cost savings”.

As Enrique learned how the supply chain worked, once supplies were delivered to his unit, he devised a plan to skim supplies off of any delivery that contained items useful to his father’s enterprise.  Although Enrique’s unit was not an infantry unit, they occasionally received orders of ammunition, small arms repair parts and MRE’s for field exercises, weapons qualification and maintenance purposes.

The 189th was also associated with two National Guard firefighting units that regularly received medical supplies.  These were quite beneficial whenever one of Fernando’s men was in need of medical attention but wanted to avoid local medical facilities for one reason or another.

This was Enrique’s way of getting back at Uncle Sam.  Over the course of his five-year term as the 189th’s company clerk, Enrique estimated that he had re-routed in excess of a quarter million dollars in supplies.

Now, as Fernando considered his post-crash options, his less-than-stellar son suddenly became a linchpin in his strategy.  With the resources of the three National Guard units under his control, Fernando was certain that he could re-establish his empire – not based on drugs, but rather based on daily essentials such as shelter, water, food and security.

As rioting and looting escalated and fewer Guard troops reported for duty each day, Fernando shared his plan with his son.  Enrique grinned from ear-to-ear as he listened.  Never before had he felt so needed by his father – so useful.  As this plan developed, Enrique realized that he might truly have the opportunity to succeed his father as the heir to the Hernandez Empire.

There were a few wrinkles in the plan.

First, while it had been relatively easy for Enrique to reroute supplies before they had been secured by each of the NCO’s in charge of the individual units of the company, once those supplies were secured they were very difficult to access … at least under normal circumstances.  As fewer and fewer troops showed up for duty each day, Enrique realized that he could make himself more and more valuable to the company commander simply by showing up for duty.

As the weeks following the crash wore on, Enrique essentially became the company’s XO – Executive Officer.  The lieutenant who had previously been the XO had gone AWOL in early July.  The First Sergeant didn’t show up after the first of August.  The company commander was so busy filing reports that he turned all of the dwindling day-to-day operations over to Enrique even though he was only an E4.

Enrique now had access to all of the various secure areas and all of the vehicles in his own unit as well as the 181st and 317th Engineer Fire Fighting Teams’.  The heavy trucks were his.  The HMMWV’s were his.  The armory was his.  The medical supplies were his as were all of the food rations.  Enrique had access to fire trucks, ambulances, deuce-and-a-half’s and a handful of armored HMMWV’s, two of which were outfitted with .50 caliber machine guns.

The plan was in motion!

A second roadblock to the plan’s completion was the remaining troops who continued to report for duty.  Most of them reported simply to receive the MRE’s that were rationed out in lieu of pay.  For many, this was the only food keeping them and their families alive.  Their duties were primarily related to firefighting.  The city’s firefighters had been overmatched by the number of burning houses and buildings and were unable to keep up.  The National Guard troops assisted as much as possible.

Fernando saw two possible ways around the roadblock.  The first was to simply take control of the National Guard units by force.  While this was his natural inclination, he realized that the second option had some definite benefits.  If he could enlist the remaining National Guard troops in his plan, their skills could prove invaluable.  While his current “army” was good at distributing crack and meth and roughing up or killing people who didn’t pay, they lacked many other skills that would be necessary to rebuilding his empire.  The National Guard troops would have many of those skills but they would need convincing.

Fernando called in his top people the old-fashioned way – word of mouth.  Thirty-five of his most trusted people were invited to his ranch.  Although Fernando wasn’t totally prepared for what the crash did to his business, his ranch was still well-supplied.  He had surplus food stored.  He had an Artesian well.  Diesel generators provided necessary power.  To most of the individuals who showed up for the summit in early September, Fernando’s ranch was a relative paradise.  They ate and drank to their hearts’ content.

After a day of feasting and drinking, Fernando pulled the group together on his patio.  His son, Enrique, stood by his side.  His two younger sons, Armando and Eduardo sat in chairs nearby.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Fernando began ceremoniously, “I have gathered you here to discuss a grand plan – a plan to return our business to prosperity.”

The group of 35 murmured quietly as they looked at one another with curiosity.

“As you know,” Fernando continued, “the drug trade is all but worthless.  The economic crash caused by our government’s idiotic policies has ensured this.  They did more to damage our trade by their ineptitude than they ever did through law enforcement.  Many still desire our drugs but their money is of no use to us.”

A number of the members of the group were unsure what the word “ineptitude” meant but they nodded their heads in agreement.

“With every trial comes an opportunity,” Fernando fancied himself a bit of an orator and enjoyed taking common quotations and making them his own.  “We have the opportunity, now, to reinvent ourselves – to rise from the ashes of this crisis even more successful than before.”

“My son, Enrique,” Fernando gestured grandly with pride, “has been quite instrumental in my plan to revitalize our network.  His role at the National Guard unit has proven invaluable.”

Fernando continued to lay out his plan for the next twenty minutes – ensuring that Enrique received plenty of credit.  After all, Fernando reasoned, the day would come when he would pass on and Enrique would most likely have to run the business.  Any credibility that Fernando could provide Enrique today would be more than helpful in the future.

After Fernando completed his speech he paused, “Are there any questions?”

A woman named Marta raised her hand.

“Yes, Marta,” Fernando recognized her, “what is your question?”

“Patron,” Marta began.  Fernando preferred that his underlings address him in this manner.  “I understand that we can no longer profit from the sale of drugs.  How will we profit by providing food, shelter and safety?  Money is worth nothing now.  Is it not the same problem?”

“Right you are, Marta,” Fernando encouraged her.  “Each of you will be compensated for your work by receiving food, water, shelter – if necessary – and supplies for your family.  In the short term, we will utilize the resources from the National Guard units to ensure that we remain strong.  Our strength will allow us to provide protection from looters and thieves to those who contribute willingly to our cause.  We will do what is necessary to those who will not.”

“For the time-being,” Fernando continued, his voice increasing in volume and tempo, “my primary concern is for each of you and your families.  I want to ensure that you are cared for.  A time will come when, together, we will be able execute the remainder of our plan.  That is when we will see the true fruits of our labors.”

Fernando’s group of followers cheered.  Visions of wealth and ease in a not-too-distant future filled their minds.