Six Days to Zeus: Moral Wounds of War

By Samuel Hill

Sometimes, the worst combat injuries are to the soul.

Mustafa needed to die...and Chief needs to learn how to live. After a thirty-year career in covert ops, Chief comes home to confront his greatest challenge: the high-stakes battle of Ft. Living Room and accepting not only his severe physical disabilities, but a diagnosis of PTSD. Mean

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arc Angel Six
• Release date: Apr 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985957013

Book preview

Prologue

We train our soldiers to go to War. We don't train them to come home. There has been a lot of media coverage about PTSD. Civilians have a difficult time putting the letters in the correct order and struggle with the concept. Soldiers shun the term, avoid doctors and counselors, and refuse the diagnosis.

 As if branded onto their foreheads, the label says they are outcasts, damaged, untrustworthy, and broken. On my own path of healing and understanding I learned that there are multiple components to PTSD. The limbic system within the human body has everything to do with PTSD. Brain centers like the amygdala, the hippocampus, and other parts of the brain are primal and hard wired to keep us safe. Neurochemicals from physical and emotional triggers make the body dump hormones into the blood system and induce Fight or Flight. Hard wired warning systems, the most powerful being the olfactory system, keep us alive in dangerous situations, especially on the battlefield. But what happens when the triggers tell us we're in danger, when we really are not and we're at Ft. Living Room? 

There is something even more sinister, something besides PTSD, that's leading our Veterans to commit suicide. I call it the moral wounds of war. The things we did down range in the heat of wargasm, the moment that changed our lives that we have to find a way to swallow and keep it down, forever.

Accurate numbers are hard to find. In reality, the numbers don't really matter all that much. But for the sake of argument, we've lost just over 7,000 soldiers in combat since we went to war after September 11, 2001. In that same time frame, over 160,000 Veterans committed suicide. And the trend is getting worse. The data shows us that it takes between five and seven years for a Veteran to finally break through the I'm good phase and get help.  And it's usually the wives, family, or significant others who ask for help. Or give a Veteran an ultimatum so they will take action.

I could go on a rant about all the moving parts, the Big Pharma that's behind the pill protocol. The zombie result when we go to the VA and ask for help only to get hit with a pill protocol of twenty different scripts. And then more pills for the side effects of the first set of pills. But I'll spare you the details here and hope you read this book and the rest of the series. 

Chapter 1

Mustafa Needed to Die

Skeleton

Oftentimes you wake up and you're the oldest guy in the room and no one knows your history — Life lesson no. 38

Special Agent Timothy Johnson took the call and quickly wished he hadn’t. According to FBI protocol, he wasn’t allowed to hang up. So he just let the lunatic on the other end of the line ramble on with his incoherent, paranoid nonsense about a plot to blow up L.A. while he thought about his golf game. Was tonight going to be a full moon or something? This was the third nut job today that he had to deal with. And SA Johnson just wasn’t paid enough to do this.  

  Uh huh, he said into the phone. Probably should have used a 60 or 56 wedge, or maybe a pitching wedge, for that long bunker shot last week.

What was this guy saying about AMA? The American Medical Association? Yeah, he’d get right on that.

Huh, that sounds interesting. Chlorine, you say? Yeah, right. This guy, this Chief guy, claiming to be retired spec ops, was obviously off his meds. Or needed more. There was no question he was escalating. And now, he was demanding to speak to his supervisor. Finally, a way out of this call. Absolutely, sir, let me put you on a quick hold and I’ll get my boss for you. On the other end of the line, Chief was fuming. The on-hold music, some stupid instrumental version of Stairway to Heaven, just increased his ire. He had a hard enough time hearing as it was. But the incessant violin noise just pissed him off on top of being put on hold. If he could only reach through the phone line and choke this son-of-a-bitch! 

  Ten minutes later, Chief hung up. He had given the FBI a chance. He followed the rules and reported Mustafa and the plan to blow up L.A. He reported it again to the ATF. He sent a copy of that report to the CIA, the Pentagon, the DIA, NSA, and every other three letter agency he could remember. Chief didn't have the distribution list from his SCIF. Nor did he have the ARFCOS (Armed Forces Courier Service) addresses anymore to be able to send a hard copy to all the agencies he thought might have a need to know. For the first time in a decade, he wished he still had his hard drives connected to AUTODIN, the automatic digital information network tied to DSSCS, the secure communications system known as the Defense Special Security Communication System. There were automatic routing indicators that, when assigned to his report, would send this highly classified and urgent information around the world to the appropriate intelligence information networks. And within minutes, depending on the urgency required and the precedence indicator Chief put on the message, the information would be disseminated to every office within the U.S. government who was cleared and had a need to know.

Chief was blocked out of most of the intelligence circles now. His sub-compartment, the unit he’d damn near died for, had gotten shuffled into a different acronym under a different command structure. ISA no longer existed. And the food chain now included more than a dozen levels. Not just POTUS and SecDef as it was when he was active. Chief had been retired too long for anyone to remember him. The Joint Terrorism Task Force at Quantico referred him to Johnson, the weenie at Homeland Security intake in St. Louis. What was formerly part of the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, was now called the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency, a unit Chief worked with in the past. But that highly professional office was now absorbed by Homeland Security, and Chief was blown off at every level. 

Fuck 'em. Chief thought. Every single conversation with those civilian weenies was condescending. Every conversation turned into an interrogation about who Chief was, not about Mustafa or the actionable intelligence he was providing. If Chief waited around for someone within the government to do something, Mustafa would get his wish and it would be just like 9/11, maybe worse. 20/20 hindsight was not something Chief wanted to deal with. He didn't want to be in the I told you so chair, eating his soul, wondering if he'd just done a little bit more, then maybe only a million people would be dead instead of multiple millions of people. 

Instead, he was doing it the hard way. The slow way. From the outside. Chief was forced to accept once again that he was now living with the mere mortals, coming in the front door like the rest of the herd and being lost in the noise. Chief was rapidly losing patience while he was forced to call people he didn't know or trust, while trying to sort out the new internal structure and reorganization of offices he was no longer a part of. Everything had been disrupted and re-organized after the 9/11 tower hits. And for Chief, a guy who once was an integral cog in the machine, things were frustrating as hell. 

This was up to the FBI to sort out. Not up to Chief. They didn't have to know who Chief was. It wasn't important. The only thing that was important was that they spin up the appropriate people and conduct a stop op. Mustafa needed to be stopped. And he already had a huge head start on the world. From what he could discern from the tea leaves of sketchy information, there were already tributaries of this mission in motion. The operation had already begun. Fuel trucks were already leased. Fuel was either supplied or stolen and drivers were already behind the wheel of the massive double tanker trucks. They were headed to Death Valley, an appropriate if not foreboding location to assemble the trucks for the final convoy to L.A. It was just a shame that none of the government agencies with responsibilities to prevent such an attack would take Chief seriously. This was how the bad guys always seemed to win. Just like the Saudis who conducted the 9/11 mission. They used the noise, they used America's own laws and America's own system against itself. The very same system that was intended to protect America was highly effective in taking it down.

Sixteen tanker trucks filled with gasoline, seven to ten more with propane, intended as a booster to the exploding gasoline, were all headed to a rally point in the Mojave Desert. The place was so desolate, so rough and rudimentary, that very few people even paid any attention. The only thing anyone ever paid attention to in this area were the surrounding ridges and mountains covered with solar and wind generation towers. There was a massive amount of flashing red lights at night intended to prevent aircraft from flying into the windmill towers. The tankers could lay in wait for days, pretty much unnoticed by passing traffic without anyone really knowing or caring what they were doing out there in the desert. Mustafa could head to L.A. at will to dump all of the fuel, the propane, and chlorine tablets into the drainage system. It would take specific satellite overhead imagery, targeting that one grid square that Chief reported, for anyone to really connect the dots. But they would also need the rest of the story for things to make any sense, not just overhead photos. And Mustafa was convinced, unless there was a dedicated leak, that no one in Homeland Security would ever even peek at what he was doing. The footprint of this operation was very small, but the impact could be startling. Someone had to be in the grid square, connect the dots and give a shit to stop him. He was going to blow up the entire city of Los Angeles and kill millions of infidels, Inshalla! America would pay for what they did. Mashallah. 

It was clear. Mustafa needed to be dead. And Chief was the only guy he knew who could do it quickly and efficiently. He was the only one who knew Mustafa. Now he was the only one, other than the perpetrators and planners, who knew about the plan. It would take far too long for the government bureaucracy to spin up and take the actionable intelligence provided by Chief and respond in a timely and efficient manner. They were still tripping over themselves, arguing about who Chief really was and if he was reliable, instead of looking into reality. All it would take was one look at the satellite images, identifying the tanker trucks in the precise grid square Chief told them about and sending out an intervention team. This was not rocket science. But a lot of years had passed since the towers were hit. And nearly everyone involved was either too young or had no real experience of that day. Their motivations were different now. They had never lived it. And Chief knew that there was a huge difference between knowing something and feeling it in the heart. Anyone could learn the information, read the book and mentally know what happened that terrible day. But once it hit the heart, that information was entirely different. Chief knew that from all the places he'd been and all the things he'd seen and all the information that hit his heart. Yet it was still difficult communicating that fact to anyone in Homeland Security. 

Chief was caught in a moral conflict. He spent an enormous amount of time over the past ten years getting off all the narcotics, getting better, healing, reducing his stress and fighting the demons that perpetually came out of the closet to try to ruin his life. He sought peace every day. He fought adrenaline and sought balance. Mustafa had just come back into his life and shit on the carpet. Mustafa was a man with a singular mission and focused intent that would lead to a massive tragedy. And Chief needed to do something to stop it. 

At first, it was about identifying the voice calling from his daughter’s phone. And then, it was about getting past the voice and the triggers it caused. But now, he really didn't want a damn thing to do with Mustafa. He didn't want to know about the operation either. Chief didn't want anyone to get hurt, but he didn't want revenge against the U.S. government either as Mustafa so eloquently conjured it. Chief needed time to think. He just wanted to hand it off to someone else, someone whose job it was to be responsible and stop terrorist hits on U.S. soil. But there wasn't time. If things were going the way Mustafa made them sound, Chief was looking at a one week window of time. Maybe two. Things were happening too fast. Fall was coming, the Santa Ana winds — the winds that would mix with Mustafa's sinister plan and exponentially add to the carnage were coming soon. Sustained winds of up to forty mph were routine from October to March. And whatever dates Mustafa chose, there was evidence that the fire he was planning would become a major problem if ignited in certain areas around the San Gabriel National Monument and the Angeles National Forests. 

After seven years of drought, the vegetation was tinder dry, the terrain inhospitable to humans, and the thought of fire was unspeakably frightening. People from other parts of the country couldn't imagine the impact. Even Chief, coming from the East Coast, couldn't wrap his own brain around a wild fire and what those words actually meant until he personally experienced how quickly everything burned. A prime example of knowing the information about wildfires and feeling it in his heart as he stood in the middle of the ash, Chief’s mind was boggled at how dry things were from the drought and how fast the winds took the flames, radiated the heat, and disintegrated vast acreage of one hundred-and-thirty-foot tall pines in the Sierra Foothills where he lived. The temperatures from the fires created their own weather, and the wind spread the fire with a vengeance that was incomprehensible to those who never experienced it. Fire tornadoes danced through the hills like a blow torch, turning huge pine trees into Roman candles and thousands of acres of canyons and mountain rock into pulverized ash from the heat, leaving behind a sanitized landscape to be washed downstream by seasonal rains and snow melt. It would take decades for nature to recover from the hellish months of fire. The rains would devastate the environment with mud and rock slides, plugging waterways and valleys at lower elevations. The impact of the fire on humanity would go on for decades. But the added chemical warfare and explosion that Mustafa was planning was mind warping. 

The fires were completely indiscriminate and devastating, torching everything in sight and taking human life without any regard for race, religion, or gender. Nature didn't care. Fire didn't care. And Chief had lived through both the fires and the massive, often misunderstood secondary hazard: smoke. It never crossed his mind, when he lived on the East Coast, how hazardous the firefighting job was, nor how many chemicals people kept under their kitchen and bathroom sink. Add in the amount of plastics and hazardous chemicals used in appliances and flooring, paint and cleaning supplies, and it became clear just how hazardous the smoke was. Smoke carried a hazardous waste dump within. 

Habb! The voice came through the air like a hammer, making the hair on Chief’s neck stand on end.

Obviously you changed your mind and came to your senses! Mustafa held out his arms in welcome as Chief struggled to exit his car in the cold desert night. The seven hour drive showed just how disabled Chief was now and he cursed under his breath both from the pain of extracting himself from the car and the mere sight of Mustafa again.

Yes. I have. Yes. I did. Chief lied, trying to ignore the shitty grin of satisfaction on Mustafa’s face that caused Chief to divert from staring at the football callus on his forehead. Chief wanted to get closer. He wanted to look this bastard right in the eyeballs and kill him on sight. But he knew that would be difficult with the two security people around him. They were a joke really, just some hajis with little to no experience compared to those Chief knew who took personal security seriously and did it as a profession. Their body language told him they were amateurs. Their demeanor, through Chief’s professional military lens, told him they were in it for the money, or the prestige. Maybe they’d take a bullet for Mustafa. Maybe not. Chief had to get it right in order to stop Mustafa and take him out. The security people only had to get lucky once to take Chief out. And then Mustafa would succeed in his mission to kill millions of people. So he imagined sticking a knife into Mustafa’s neck, maybe even directly in the front of his throat, looking deeply into Mustafa’s eyes, watching closely at the surprise, the horror and the sudden realization that he was dying. And that triggered memories of Goose, twisting the screwdriver into Chief’s stomach, causing him to fight that negative cascade of memories again that always paralyzed his emotions. 

Chief was really starting to hate Mustafa. Everything about him brought a flood of venom and anger to Chief’s brain. And that was clouding his judgement. Besides, attacking Mustafa at this point would also ensure Chief's own demise. His security people were inept, but they were there. Mustafa used them as more of a status symbol than any real protection detail. It made him look important, like some sort of celebrity being followed by two big guys with beards, wearing suits that were too tight, escorting him wherever he went. But they could get lucky and kill Chief too. 

But what really checked Chief’s impulses was the thought of his daughter growing up knowing her daddy was a murderer. That thought alone arrested his ego and motivation, bringing about the self-discipline Chief needed to withstand the onslaught of adrenaline that was dumping into his bloodstream. He didn’t really have a comprehensive and effective plan yet. So, whatever was going to happen, he had to do it the right way, for the right reasons. There would be hatred towards Chief from those who supported Mustafa. Especially the security people, who would then have a reason to go after Chief and his family. There would be revenge. For their own family and personal honor, they’d be duty bound to exact revenge. And Chief knew that his own family would never be safe again. Not if he just went off half-cocked, gunning for this madman without consideration of the ripple effect and  the consequences of his killing Mustafa without thinking it through.

Terrorists were famous for waiting months — years even — and then hitting targets when people least expected it. They'd wait until everyone forgot, when no one remembered what happened that day. And then ten years later, bingo. Retaliation. Oftentimes, the terrorist had to spell it out in the media, claim responsibility, and rant on about some blathering bullshit that made no sense to anyone but them. If they didn’t publicly claim responsibility, no one would connect the dots. The USS Cole was a prime example. The U.S. warship was hit while docked in the Gulf of Aden, just outside the mouth of the Red Sea, at a refueling station. It was hit by a boat bomb, similar to the bomb in Beirut that killed two hundred and twenty Marines, eighteen U.S. Navy personnel and three Army soldiers and the replica bomb that blew up Khobar towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia killing nineteen Air Force personnel, wounding over five hundred civilians of all nationalities. While each of those bombings took place in different areas of the world, each was reportedly conducted in retaliation for U.S. military action. In the case of the U.S.S. Cole during October of 2000, the retaliation was reportedly for U.S. cruise missiles launched a full ten years earlier against terrorist training centers in the Sudan by an American president and administration that was replaced twice over. The attack was massive, leaving a forty-foot hole in a naval vessel built to sustain torpedo hits. Seventeen American sailors were dead and over thirty more sailors were seriously injured by the attack. But no one in the American public, nor the media, connected the dots. The U.S. government just used the incident to further their agenda to go to war. And the gerbil wheel of insanity continued. 

* * *

Whatever Mustafa was up to didn't have anything to do with current times. The steam he carried in his belly and the vengeance in his soul had been brewing for decades. And now, he was going to burn L.A. to the ground. He was going to murder a lot of people, in his mind, infidels who deserved to die. Allah would greet him in paradise and smile. He would make sure that his justification was posted on the Internet. He would make sure his response was tied to specific infractions perpetrated by the United States that he’d been writing about for months. And the world would know Mustafa’s name. They would never forget the unspeakable carnage America had perpetrated upon his loved ones. Maybe it was several decades since his trauma, but he would connect the dots for those who forgot and make sure they would never forget again. Mustafa would be just as famous as Usoma Bin Laden. Or Kahlid Sheik Mohommed. The world would forever remember the Chosen One! 

It was clear Mustafa wasn't the same kid Chief met so many years ago. He wasn't pure of soul like he'd been. Chief's initial interaction with Mustafa still haunted him. The kid was innocent back then. He taught Chief to pray the Muslim prayers, taking particular interest in the most mundane, technical details of how he washed his hands before prayer, how he laid the prayer mat on the ground, focusing on the compass embedded into the fabric so he was directly facing Mecca and Medina from anywhere in the world. Chief thought it was cute. Mustafa was OCD about the smallest details, as if Allah would be offended by the smallest infraction. But the more Chief learned, the more he realized just how fanatical Islam could be. He couldn't imagine God himself would give a damn if Chief was off by a few degrees, the vector angle of which would put him in a different grid square than Mecca if anyone really cared to check. To Chief, it was about the act. It was about the self discipline it took and the commitment to pray five times a day. The consequences were astounding to him. He watched men turn from hardened, uncaring criminals to men who found solace, obtained by getting inside their own head and talking to Allah and living a lifestyle of peace and harmony. What confused him was the others. Those who watched, inspected, taught and then felt it necessary to whip the bottoms of the feet of young men who were learning, kids making mistakes and trying really hard to be good Muslims. Allah seemed to be taken out of the conversation completely, only to be replaced by Imams with bad attitudes and egos that demanded these young men dance to their music and drink the Kool Aid they were making.

Now it was clear. Mustafa was a product of such an environment. He was OCD about the minutia from the fear instilled by the beatings at the madrassa. He carried the scars on his feet and on his back. And his incessant pestering to ensure Chief didn’t make the same mistakes wasn’t about Allah being disappointed. Back then, Mustafa didn’t want Chief to endure the beatings and whippings that he’d endured. It saddened Chief that such potential had been bastardized. There was no argument now. Mustafa was on a satanic mission that was all dressed up to look like Allah approved of mass murder. And Chief had to stop him. He just didn't know how to do that yet. He wanted to just pull out a gun and shoot him right in that football callus on his forehead. Seen as a sign of piety, this was nothing more than a charade. His callus was a fake facade that U.S. intel called Muslim bling, intended to make people believe he was a holy man, and it offended Chief beyond words. 

As he stood again in close proximity to the man who was planning a terrorist attack on America, Chief continued to wrestle with his emotions as his mind returned to thoughts about feeding the venom in his own stomach by cutting Mustafa's throat. He reasoned that the act would be quiet, most likely un-expected, and highly efficient. Up close and personal meant that Chief would have no questions left in his mind about Mustafa being dead or not. Watching that man’s eyes dilate, watching him turn to a corpse, was something Chief didn't want to admit relishing. He forced the images of Goose from his mind and told himself that the incident that day in the desert was nothing like this. That was a gesture of love and kindness, of empathy and loyalty. Killing Mustafa was an act of valor. Of honor and duty. Mustafa needed to die so others could live.

And then it hit him. If Chief was going to do this and not be incarcerated for the rest of his life, he had to do it in a way that left him with plausible deniability. Mustafa was building a horrifically powerful bomb. One that would bring devastation by wildfire and chemical exposure to the entire population of L.A. Chief knew how to build bombs too. So, what if? The seed was planted. And Chief needed to fertilize it, water it, and let the seed grow for a bit, even though he didn't have a lot of time to waste. 

Mustafa did his homework. He picked a mom and pop trucking company that was hungry, willing to look the other way on specific laws and rules that they considered government intrusion. J&K Trucking Distributors were behind on their bills. They were a local distributor in California with a caravan of trucks — double tankers, specifically — that threaded through the streets of big and small cities throughout California providing gas stations with fuel. The drivers were professional, reliable, and delivered gasoline in different grades to all the small stations throughout L.A. and other cities. The trick was finding drivers who would comply with Mustafa's plan. And somehow, through his network of Imams and mosques throughout America, the stranger in Mustafa’s entourage charged with finding the drivers found sixteen drivers willing to commit suicide and pull off an attack against America. The drivers weren't gonna make it out alive. They knew that. But they all deeply believed in jihad. They were willing to sacrifice their lives for Allah by striking the great Satan when and where America least expected it. Mustafa had enough money to get the J&K trucking company owners to look the other way. Of course, they had no idea they were going to lose sixteen trucks in their fleet. Nor did they have a clue Mustafa was going to blow up the city of Los Angeles. They just knew Mustafa was willing to put up $500,000 in cash to lease the fleet for one week. They assumed he was doing something illegal. Or at least something that Mustafa didn’t want the government or maybe the IRS to know about. After all, there were daily explosions and fires all over Mexico where desperate people were digging up fuel lines trying to syphon off gasoline and transport it in plastic jugs packed to the ceiling of their cars, just to sell it elsewhere and make a buck. Maybe Mustafa was transporting gasoline to some of those poor people. Whatever he was doing, the money he was going to pay them would go a long way to relieving some of their debt and taking the pressure off the business. 

The K part of J&K didn't have any idea what was going on. She was a staunch Christian, believed in paying taxes and wanted nothing to do with anything illegal. She wouldn’t even consider anything that left the impression of impropriety. And the J part knew she’d never go for the plan. So, J just didn’t tell K what was going on. Besides, K was preoccupied with a mammogram and a lump in her chest. So the J part of the duo kept things quiet. He just needed to do whatever it took to make the pain go away, to keep them solvent and to brighten up their future when things looked so grim. 

Americans think money solves everything, Mustafa thought. There was a reason Islam was the way to live. And all the tenets of Islam, the Hadith, the Sharia aspects of business and culture were the answer to most of America's self-inflicted problems of capitalism. That both disgusted Mustafa and intrigued him. Now, after all of his training and life experiences, after all this time, he was going to use America's own laws and greed against them. Allah be praised, the most merciful, the most beneficent, America would finally pay for their transgressions. 

* * *

It was time to call Javier. A former adversary, Javier now owed Chief. Big time. And he didn't take that lightly. Chief never really intended to use his favor as leverage. But circumstances dictated his actions now. So Chief called Javier because he had connections, equipment, and people who would help without asking any questions. Molded and programmed at an early age as drug smugglers and distributors for the cartels in Mexico, almost everyone associated with Javier was dependable. They were all felons, too. Most of them had done time with Javier and knew his reputation. They didn't talk. They didn't ask questions. They just did whatever they were told to do. Simple as that. They respected Javier and each one of them owed their life to him. There was a discipline that came with being in prison and from living the lifestyle of a gang member. Cartels reinforced that discipline with death. And at this specific moment, that was precisely what Chief needed the men to have. Discipline.

Being felons was a bond that kept them together, but also a label that made them dependent on each other. They associated mostly with other felons and illegals and lived a lifestyle off the radar. Chief marveled at how Javier could get anything he wanted, anything he needed, paid for it in cash at sub-market prices and oftentimes bartered with indifference and lack of concern for actual market price. They all knew how to live on nothing. But they also knew that prices were subject to worth. Worth was a matter of perspective. And some things were worth more than others. Like anonymity. And now more than ever, Chief needed anonymity.

Javier! It's Chief. We need to talk, he said into a burner phone. The message went to voicemail. And then Chief pulled out the SIM card and bent it in half before melting it on the cigarette lighter in his car. He could have just thrown it out the window. Most likely, no one would ever find it. But Chief learned a long time ago that anything worth doing, was worth overdoing. And melting the SIM card made him sleep better knowing that even if someone did find it, nothing would be recovered. He paid attention to the smallest details throughout his military career. It kept him alive. It made him invisible in most cases. Chief was on a mission that was just as classified and just as dangerous as any other mission he'd ever been on in the military. But this time, if he failed to stay a ghost, his family could be targeted. Mustafa already proved he could find his daughter. The bastard called him from her personal cell phone. So it was a pretty safe bet that if Mustafa died, someone would come to finish the job. 

Chief had to do more homework. He needed to identify the key players and take them all out at the same time if possible, including the security detail. There were a lot of moving parts so far, but as with most things in life, Chief had to do five meters to get to the goal. 

Javier knew very little about who Chief was, or about his classified past. But he was one of the very few people who knew how to get in touch with Chief. In response to Chief's voice mail, Javier would post a new fax number the next day on an advertisement that ran in the Bakersfield Californian newspaper every single day since he got out of Corcoran. With the population of Baker being fewer than 800 people, there was no real need for a local newspaper. Nothing ever happened out there besides vehicle breakdowns. At least nothing that ever hit the papers. But like most things in America, there was a choice. And the news choice was a toss up between the Bakersfield paper, or one from Vegas. Javier chose the Californian. And chances of anyone noticing the change to his advertisement was slim. No one used faxes anymore. But Chief would know. And that's all that mattered. 

Chief bought the newspaper the day he called Javier, then bought another one a day later. The fax number Chief called would ring at a bus stop pay phone in the small drive-by in Baker. Known as the gateway to Death Valley and literally out in the middle of nowhere, Baker became famous for the huge, neon-fluorescent thermometer that could be seen by travelers miles away in the mostly flat desert. Record temperatures were the superficial topic of conversation and banter between tourists, gas station and hotel owners. There really wasn't much else to talk about, since none of the locals really cared where they were from or where they were going. They just wanted them to spend money and leave. Most of the travelers were either going to or heading back from Vegas or L.A. Baker just happened to be on the path between Vegas and L.A. The town grew out of desperation. Travelers, exhausted by the desert heat, were plagued with over-heating radiators, flat tires, empty gas tanks, and the need for food and drink. The never  ending stream of people fed the town and its entrepreneurs into existence. There was nothing but desert in any direction for a long way. The seedy motels were the beginning, but the small town eventually became a thriving spot on the outskirts of the desert, sandwiched in between Ft. Irwin and the Mojave.  

Not many people were willing to take up residence in Death Valley. Life was inhospitable, to say the least. Which was precisely why Javier ended up there. He did his twenty-year stretch in the hardest place known to man, the California State Prison at Corcoran, on the outskirts of the small town of Sanger. Infamous for the number of prisoners shot and killed by guards, the insiders called the place pop-up heaven, military terminology for targets on the weapons range that popped-up and fell back down when hit with live projectiles. The targets, instead of being manually lifted, popped back up electronically after they were hit, making it much more convenient for shooters to practice marksmanship rather than constantly walking down range to patch holes, or hide in a trench to raise and lower targets. Inmates were seen as a convenience as well, popping up whenever guards needed target practice.

Within the first eight years of existence, the prison, built on the site of what once was Tulare Lake and home to the Yokuts people, had a $115 million-dollar-a-year budget and housed a mere 3,017 inmates with just over 1650 staff personnel. But it was a hard place, routinely operating at over 120% capacity. Corcoran was targeted as the most troubled of thirty-two prisons throughout California. Although only seven prisoners had been shot and killed by officers guarding the population, more than fifty were seriously injured. And those numbers stood head and shoulders over the rest of the prisons in the state. Insiders claimed the prison population was the worst of the worst. Pelican Bay ran a close second. But Corcoran was becoming famous for inmate deaths. And with that came a reputation that Corcoran was a no shit place to be. News leaked out of Gladiator Days within the prison where guards set up fights for money. There were no records kept of how many fights took place. But Javier was part of that population. And he learned from the age of nineteen to keep his mouth shut, to never see anything, and to just keep his head down. He was forty-three now. And after twenty years of living in that hell, he was well respected and inmates flocked to him when they were released. News traveled fast among the felon community. And within months of his own release, Javier was running his own business. He owed Chief. A lot.

Javier ran a repo service and business was good this time of year. With typical anonymity, Javier also snatched cars to cut up, re-process, and ship out of the country in some cases. The speed and efficiency was staggering. Twenty-six high end SUVs a month departed from ports in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and L.A. county, most heading to points south, some to the Middle East. The same equipment used to steal cars was used to snatch vehicles that the bank paid to have repossessed. Specialty towing vehicles with silenced hydraulics meant a driver in a silenced tow truck, or any modified pickup truck, could push a button and a giant hydraulic arm came out of the bed of the truck like a Transformer from the movies. The huge arms unfolded and within seconds, a repo man could lift the tires of the repo vehicle off the ground. Cradled between two large folding steel beams, the roller arms would pinch together and lift the vehicle off the ground while still cradling the tires in its grip. A hydraulic push bar with heavy canvas belt pushed against the front bumper and forced the vehicle into the cradle that lifted the tires, ensuring it stayed in place as the truck silently hauled the repo vehicle away into the night. A mile or less down the road, the driver could stop the rig, strap the vehicle