The Blockade Read online

  He knew the drill.

  The transaction was only half finished.

  The driver was looking for a place to pull over so they could count their money before completing the drop.

  In the back seat the man who’d retrieved the can was cutting it open with a pair of sheet metal shears.

  “Hijo de puta!” he said as he angrily removed the soggy bunch of bills from the can.

  They’d told Johnny before to make sure he drained the can before he put money in it. Nobody liked to carry cash smelling of stale beer. It was unprofessional.

  As the driver pulled to the curb and stopped the man counted the soggy bills. Then he passed them to the front passenger for a recount.

  To the Mexican cartel, the count was everything. This crew was responsible for turning in the correct amount to their bosses, and a shortage of a single bill meant somebody might die.

  Therefore it was critical they weren’t ripped off themselves.

  Occasionally a desperate dealer might try to short them, but Johnny knew better. For these were people a street level dealer didn’t mess with.

  Not unless he was tired of living.

  Johnny lit his third cigarette as the passenger finished his count. It was all there.

  He nodded to the driver, who pulled away from the curb and whipped a U-turn.

  Just under a minute later they drove by Johnny again, who made a point to examine his shoelaces as they passed.

  Slowing at the vacant lot but not stopping, the back window came down and an arm came out, tossing a black backpack into the weeds at roughly the same spot where the can was retrieved.

  The Escalade continued up the street as Johnny stood and started his walk back to the lot to retrieve the backpack and return to his own car.

  And then a funny thing happened.

  A couple of blocks up the street another set of headlights suddenly came on and someone started the ignition of a parked car.

  It headed toward the Escalade and stopped in the middle of the street fifty feet in front of it.

  All four doors of the sedan opened.

  Four men stepped out and four fully automatic weapons opened fire.

  The three men in the Escalade were well armed themselves, but never had a chance. They were caught completely off guard. Police would say later that not a single one of them even had their gun out.

  As for Johnny, he was as surprised as the victims. This was the last thing he expected, and he hit the ground hard, his face in the dirt, as soon as the shooting started.

  After the final shot he heard four car doors slam just before the sedan burned rubber and got the hell out of Dodge.

  As they sped past Johnny he tried his best to glue himself to the ground and become one with the weeds. They likely weren’t after him, but who could be sure?

  It was only after the sound of the racing car was totally gone that he found the nerve to get up.

  Doors were opening and porch lights were coming on up and down the street.

  Dogs were barking and people were very cautiously starting to emerge from their houses.

  Johnny, not exactly known for his ability to think clearly even in the calmest of circumstances, had an epiphany.

  This might be his one and only chance for a big score.

  He knew that calls were being made, at that very moment, to the Lubbock Police Department. The 911 switchboard at Fire Station One would be jammed.

  But this was east Lubbock. By anyone’s standards, the shady part of town. There likely wouldn’t be any patrol cars within a couple of miles. And he’d hear their sirens as they drew close and know exactly how much time he had left.

  It was now or never.

  He grabbed the dropped backpack on his way to the Escalade and peered inside one of the shot-out windows.

  The carnage was terrible. Blood and brain matter and pieces of skulls all over the place.

  All three men were dead, each riddled with several rounds of AK-47 bullets.

  He quickly looked for the wad of money he knew was in the vehicle somewhere.

  He didn’t see it anywhere. It was probably in somebody’s pocket, and he had no desire to get covered in blood searching for it.

  He did see something else which piqued his interest, though.

  In the back seat, next to a man whose face had exploded and whose own mother wouldn’t recognize, were two other backpacks: one blue and one green.

  They were headed for two other drops.

  Screw the money. Johnny had his bonanza.

  He grabbed both backpacks and flew toward his junker, hoping against hope it would start this time and not leave him stranded with the “po-po” fast approaching.

  It did.

  But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. They’d be watching for any car fleeing the area, so he couldn’t make it obvious.

  He hit the gas and drove down East Colgate for two blocks before turning south.

  Then he slowed down, actually going below the speed limit and driving like a little old lady on her way to church on a Sunday morning.

  First one Chevy Tahoe, dressed in the black and white paint scheme of the Lubbock PD, flew past him.

  Then a second and a third.

  Not one of them paid him the slightest bit of attention.

  -4-

  The event made national news for several reasons.

  First of all, because it was the first triple murder in the city in forty years.

  Second, because it was the first time a Mexican drug cartel had carried out a hit on American soil anywhere east of El Paso.

  Third, because no one else in the country could believe that eighteen witnesses were duly sworn and interviewed, yet not a single one of them saw a thing.

  Not one.

  Of course, it was easy to cast doubt when one was on the outside looking in.

  Those on the inside looking out understood completely.

  For those witnesses, the neighbors who lived on the street and who called the police after the shooting, didn’t have the luxury of moving elsewhere.

  If they claimed to have seen a face or a vehicle, they’d have been asked to go a step further.

  They’d have been asked to describe the vehicle; to provide a license plate if they’d seen one. To sign a legal affidavit.

  And if they were stupid enough to identify a suspect, they’d become a witness to a crime perpetrated by men who weren’t afraid to come into the streets of an American city and unleash bloody hell upon it.

  Everyone knew it was the Mexicans.

  They knew from the moment the gunfire started.

  For the weapons were fully automatic, and even in gun-friendly Texas, such weapons are illegal.

  Only the Mexican cartel would be brazen enough to come to west Texas and to use such weapons.

  No one else would dare.

  For several days it was a circus in and around downtown Lubbock as the television networks brought their satellite trucks and parked them in front of City Hall.

  The FBI and the DEA opened an investigation but found not much they could go on.

  They concluded the shooting had nothing to do with Lubbock, but rather a turf war between different cartels.

  Either one was encroaching on another’s territory and stealing its business, or one was expanding their operation and trying to shove the other out of the way.

  In any event, not much happened on the case and it was eventually placed on “back burner” status.

  Scratch that. Two things did happen.

  Absolutely no mention was made, in either local or national media reports, about the missing backpacks.

  The cartel who owned the Escalade and the men inside of it knew they’d been ripped off.

  That was one thing.

  The second was that Johnny was the last scheduled contact.

  That made him a primary suspect.

  Not with the local police or the FBI. That wouldn’t have been so bad.

  No, he was the pri
me suspect with the cartel.

  And the cartel doesn’t play.

  Between the three backpacks Johnny scored three kilos of heroin, five kilos of crystal meth, and an impressive assortment of opioids in various pill forms.

  At first he thought he’d hit the mother lode.

  He was happier than a kid at Christmas. Happier than a pig in… mud.

  That didn’t last long.

  He inventoried his haul and started to break it down into sellable form: one gram portions in postage-stamp-sized zip-lock baggies.

  He thought he’d lay low for a couple of days, and then put the word out on the streets he was open for business.

  With several more varieties of “party favors” to sell.

  Then a friend called with disturbing news.

  “Hey, dude! How come you’re all of a sudden the most popular guy in town?”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “Yo, check it out, dude. They be burnin’ up my phone. Everybody in town is looking for you. I’ve had ten different calls from ten different people, all wanting to know if I’ve seen you. And all saying they need to talk to you.”

  Now, remember that Johnny wasn’t the shiniest bullet in the magazine.

  But he still had a few brain cells still working after all the years of drug use.

  He figured there were only two reasons why everyone in town was suddenly looking for him.

  Either word had already gotten around he had a mountain of dope to sell, or the cartel had put a contract out on him.

  The thing was, though, that he couldn’t figure out how.

  No one knew about his connection, or how he bought his drugs.

  Not even his girlfriend.

  Therefore, in his drug-addled mind, he couldn’t possibly be connected to the shooting on East Colgate Street.

  For the cartel, though, it was as easy as adding two to two and coming up with four.

  Their delivery team had three deliveries to make that night.

  The first delivery was to Johnny on East Colgate. They never made it to the second drop. The guy at the second drop was off the hook, as was the guy at the third.

  To the cartel, one of three things happened.

  Maybe the Lubbock cops took the dope. But they quickly ruled that out.

  A crooked cop would have left the dope and taken the cash instead. The cash was cleaner and safer and wouldn’t have to be moved.

  The money, every last dollar, was accounted for, the amount broadcast to the world in a news conference.

  No, the cops were honest.

  Maybe the cartel which shot up the Escalade took the dope.

  Nope. They were already swimming in narcotics of their own. They didn’t need any more. Especially when the backpacks were covered with blood that could conclusively tie them to the crime scene.

  That left two options: either Johnny took the dope or saw who did.

  And neither bode well for him.

  Johnny went to Plan B, which was to go to ground.

  He hid out in the basement of an abandoned house in west Lubbock with his girlfriend Tina.

  They were still there a few months later when Saris 7 struck the earth and the snow began to fall.

  -5-

  The snow was falling again in San Antonio, more than ten years after Johnny and Tina first went to ground.

  Hannah Snyder stood at the window of Mayor Al Petrie’s hospital room watching the flakes drift down.

  “You know, there was a time in my life when I thought the snow was pretty.

  “Even just recently, when you took sick and needed to be transported here, I was looking forward to getting out in it. To walk in the snow and feel it crunch beneath my feet. To catch a snowflake on my tongue like I used to do when I was a little girl.

  “I thought it would be fun.

  “How in the world could I have been so stupid?”

  She turned and looked at Al, standing beside her.

  He wasn’t sure whether she was really looking for a response, but he gave her one.

  “Silly me,” he said. “I thought you wanted to come to save my life. To help out a friend. To do a good deed.

  “Now I find out you didn’t want to help at all. You just wanted to play in the snow.

  “That hurts,” he teased. “It really does.”

  “Oh, shut up. I didn’t even know you until we left. All you were was a name: Al. We weren’t even friends yet. So your argument has no merit. As for the snow, why don’t you go downstairs with me and out into the parking lot? I can see people down there having a snowball fight. We can join in. I’ll knock your block off.”

  “Actually,” came a third voice from the doorway, “I’m pretty sure she came along to see me.”

  Hannah and Al both turned away from the window to see Air Force Captain David Wright.

  Hannah said, “Hi David.”

  Al turned back to the window just in time to see a doctor, four floors below, get walloped in the side of the head with a monster ball of snow.

  “No thanks,” he replied. “I don’t think you’d muster up an ounce of mercy for someone who’s just had surgery.”

  “Are you kidding? The best time to kick you is when you’re down. Mercy is for suckers and for people who don’t want to win.”

  She smiled and stuck her tongue out at him.

  “There’s another term for those people,” she continued. “Let’s see now, that was that word? Oh, yeah… losers!”

  Captain Wright joined them at the window.

  He saw nothing pretty at all in the fluffy white stuff starting to build once again on the window sill.

  He’d spent way too many years slogging through it and cursing it.

  He directed a question to Al.

  “Is she always this heartless?”

  “Well, I only met her recently. But I did ask Debbie and Brad the very same question.

  “Debbie said yes. That she’s meaner than sin and she gets her jollies by kicking dogs and spanking small children.

  “Brad said he couldn’t answer. That she’d come after him and beat him senseless. That he was terrified of her. And that I should be too.”

  Hannah feigned anger.

  “They better not have said those things! Why, I’ll find them and I’ll… I’ll…”

  “You’ll do what? Prove their point?”

  “No. I’ll tell them they’re wrong. That I’m as sweet as sugar. And they need to stop spreading such vicious rumors.”

  “You are pretty sweet,” Al conceded. “And if I haven’t thanked you for coming along to help, I’m sorry. I should have.”

  Hannah kissed him on the cheek and said, “You’re welcome. I’m glad I came along. I’m glad I finally met you. And I’m glad we became friends. Now, waddle your chubby little self outside so I can clobber you with a snowball.”

  It was true that Hannah and Al never laid eyes upon one another until the decision was made to transport him from Eden to San Antonio.

  And they had indeed become good friends in the days since.

  It was also true, though, that she had a second reason for going along on the journey.

  An ulterior motive, if you will.

  Hannah had felt guilty for a long time that she’d given Colonel Wilcox and Colonel Medley faulty information; and that by following up on that information they’d been arrested.

  Despite Captain Wright’s contention that they acted on their own; that she didn’t tell them to assault the bunker, she had an argument of her own…

  “Maybe not. But I certainly gave them a reason to.”

  Hannah’s degree of complicity was irrelevant, since as a civilian she was not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

  Nor was anything she’d done prosecutable under any civil statute.

  She was not legally responsible in any way.

  But she still felt complicit.

  And she still wanted to make amends by pleading on the colonels’ behalf.
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  Or more accurately, the colonel’s behalf.

  Colonel Wilcox was dead now, and presumably no longer cared whether a court martial found him guilty or not.

  Colonel Medley, still breathing and still sitting in the base brig, most certainly did care.

  That’s why Captain Wright was there, in Mayor Al’s hospital room: to pick her up.

  Hannah turned her attention to the captain, who’d already insisted she call him by his given name.

  “How long will it take to get out there, David?”

  “The roads were just cleared. Maybe twenty minutes. We should go.”

  -6-

  Standing at the window and joking around with her new friend Al, Hannah had been in a playful mood. She was still young enough to remember the joy she had, playing in the snow as a young girl.

  But that moment, now that they were in the staff car and headed to the far side of the sprawling base, was over.

  It was time to put on her war face.

  For by all accounts, she was headed into the belly of the beast.

  She’d been briefed at length about General Mannix by Captain Wright’s legal staff.

  He was no-nonsense. By the book was his default position, and anyone advocating a reason to stray from that position had best do their homework.

  He was also a narcissist, as were most generals in the military.

  He had an inherent belief he was always right. That his decisions were always accurate. And that anyone who opposed his decisions was wrong.

  And here’s where the bunker breach situation came into play: he believed his adversaries were not only wrong, but deserved to be punished.

  If not for violating an article of the UCMJ, then certainly for opposing the general and his position.

  Wright summed it up best by saying, “He’s a hard nut to crack because in his mind he never makes a mistake.”

  Some old school military officers might say such beliefs are what make a good general a good general. That such a man inspires self-confidence among his men, and that his men will follow orders better and faster when there’s no ambiguity involved.

  Others will argue such attitudes are dangerous. For such generals rarely listen to advisors or lower ranking officers who might be more knowledgeable of a given situation.