Black Flag Rising: A James Jackson Thriller Read online

“So, what happened to them?” Brunell asked.

  “We didn’t hear much more, after that group killed each other in jail while awaiting trial. They had some death-cult blood pact with each other. The last one alive smuggled a fork back to his cell and stuck it in his own chest and bled himself out. These were some of crazy sumbitches. No one else in jail would dare go near ‘em. They would rather die than be in the same cell,” George said. “These bastards didn’t care if they lived or died, and they were certainly not going to allow each other to talk to the gringos up here. So they all killed each other in one day. Willingly, it seemed. One after another.

  “There was no motive and no one to re-arrest, so we just let it go. Couldn't really go over the border to check things out back then, anyway. We figured a few more dead gangster cartel members was good enough. Never saw the like, though. I remember, they said they had a goal that had something to do with taking back the United States as their rightful homeland, claiming that their God had promised it to them and that we stole it,” George said.

  “Those symbols looked like these?” Brunell asked.

  “Yep, I’ll never forget them. Still wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them from time to time. I thought Satan’s Hellcats were nuts; these bastards made them look like Tiddlywinks. They were scary serious. This was their religion, man,” George said.

  “No wonder our mule is shitting bricks right now,” Jackson said.

  “No doubt. If these cats are in on this mule dude, he’s as good as dead. They don’t come to play,” George opined.

  “We have got to figure out a way to talk to him before they do. He must know more than he’s saying. If he had all this stuff, he has to. He’s just too freaked to say anything. He has a family he’s protecting,” Jackson said.

  “There’s no way that’s happening. That entire place is rigged, top to bottom. We get him in the box, and it’s over. He’ll be dead before he gets back to his cell,” Brunell said.

  They sat in silence for a couple of minutes as Brunell flipped through the images, all of them staring and soaking everything in. The ticking clock and the TV, the only sounds.

  After several minutes, George rapped his knuckels on the table. “Well, boys. The way I see it, there’s only one solution.”

  “What’s that, George?” Adam asked.

  “We gotta bust him out.”

  Both Jackson and Brunell looked at him like he had three eyeballs.

  “There’s no way that will ever happen. Not in a million years. That place is tighter than a tick. There are cameras and guards everywhere. Everything is on lockdown. You couldn't override the system if you wanted to. Not to mention the snitches. Even if we did get him out, they’d be on us in minutes. Some major bad guys do not want this dude talking,” Brunell said.

  “Not a good plan, George,” said Jackson.

  “We don’t have a choice. We can let him take a shiv in there and let the entire Valley become a glass parking lot, or we can get to him first. He’s not going to talk to us as long as he’s in there, and he may not even if we get him out. But right now, it’s the only shot we have,” George said. “And just for your information, I haven’t forgotten most of my unconventional interrogation techniques after all this time. Stuff they would never let you nancy boys get away with today. If he’s got something, I’ll get it out of him. That is, unless someone has something better.”

  Brunell and Jackson looked at each other, but had nothing. They couldn’t really ask around to see if anyone read Arabic or understood death-cult gang symbols. Getting on the web anywhere was a no-go. They were at a standstill.

  “Tell you what, boys,” George said. “Everyone needs to go back home and catch a little shuteye. Let’s meet back here at 0600. I’ll get some McMuffins and coffee. You two look worse than a pile of lizard shit on a stone wall. No one is going to be worth anything unless we get some sleep.”

  “George is right. Let’s take Doug’s van back. It’s 12:45. He’ll be closing up. Meet back here at six and don’t let anyone follow you. Park over in the neighborhood behind the Motor Court and cut through down the canal. Use standard evasion tactics if anything looks weird, Brunell. I’ll walk around the Court like I’m out for a stroll and cut over and in. Leave the door unlocked, George,” Jackson said.

  Jackson pulled the drive out of George’s laptop and put it in his pocket. “I don’t feel comfortable pulling everything off of the drive and leaving it on this laptop. Who knows who might be able to hack it? I don’t trust it. His neighbor sounds like a cyber idiot anyway. I’m taking the drive and hiding it for now.”

  Parking the van in back of La Hacienda, they entered the rear door as the cook and dishwasher were leaving for the night. They walked through the kitchen and found Doug doing the books on the bar top. “Damn, you guys back already? I was looking forward to driving that Bimmer home, Jackson.”

  He rubbed his tired face. “Yeah. Sorry about that, Doug. But I’ll probably need to borrow it again, if you don’t mind?” Jackson said.

  “You can swap me anytime you want, Jackson. Joy would love to tool around in that sporty little rig.”

  “I’m sure, Doug.” They exchanged keys.

  “Take the battery out of your phone in the morning, and leave it in your car when you leave the house. We may have gotten away with things tonight, but this is getting too hot,” Jackson said to Brunell.

  He stuck his head out the front door before exiting and saw the turd Taurus parked about half a strip center down. It looked like the two guys inside were both asleep with their heads back and mouths hanging open.

  “They must not pay those morons very well,” he whispered to Adam as they slinked out into the lot.

  Brunell drove off in the other direction with his lights off as Jackson jumped in the BMW and drove cautiously through the neighborhood, checking his mirror the whole way. When he got home, he realized he didn’t want the drive anywhere inside, so he walked around back and grabbed a Fry’s grocery bag out of the trash and wrapped it tightly. He stuck it into a hole inside an old Saguaro cactus in the backyard. A bird had pecked a hole into the five-armed giant about six and a half feet up. It made an excellent hiding place. He figured no one would ever think of looking in there.

  After stripping off his clothes, he fell into the bed, and struggled to fall asleep.

  “This is the first time that I haven't been half in the bag this time of night. I’m not sure I can even remember how to go to sleep on my own,” he thought to himself.

  He tossed and turned for nearly an hour before finally drifting off into a fitful sleep.

  A soft noise out by the kitchen woke him an hour later. He looked at the Oris under the covers, thankful for the brightly irradiated markers. It was 3:17 a.m.

  “Probably some feral desert cat out back,” he thought and tried to re-position his head on the pillow.

  Then, he heard it again. It was definitely inside the trailer.

  He lay perfectly still and heard it again. It sounded like someone quietly opening and closing drawers.

  He felt around under the bed, and his hand bumped into his .45 Springfield XD(M). He wrapped his hand around the grip and pulled it up under the covers. He used to carry it everywhere, but since his drinking days, he didn't want it in the car, so he’d stashed it under the bed. He reached over to the nightstand and grabbed his 600 lumen aircraft aluminum flashlight. The thing would blind you if you looked directly into it.

  He quietly pulled the covers back and slipped out of bed. He crab-crawled over to the bedroom door and slowly looked around the corner. There was someone big going through his kitchen cabinets with a small penlight.

  He pulled himself around the corner, just above the floor, and slowly stood up in a crouch, holding the .45 in his right hand and the flashlight in the left. He quietly crab-crouched up to the corner of the kitchen and stood up full.

  “Looking for something?” he said loudly, clicking on the flashlight as he stuck the Spri
ngfield forward into the guy’s back.

  The dude almost jumped out of his skin as he dropped the penlight and threw himself over the counter and fell down on the other side. He cursed something in broken Slav-English as he rubbed his knee.

  “You won’t find anything in here, chump! I'm poor,” Jackson said as he pointed the gun and flashlight over the edge into his partially-covered face. The dude made a lunge and crashed out the door, with Jackson giving chase as he fled down the lot lines, running zigzag through the neighboring trailers.

  Jackson didn’t shoot, for fear the rounds would slice through the walls of the thin metal trailer structures. Plus, he would have to drag him back inside, so as not to end up in jail for shooting a fleeing assailant. He stood and watched as the intruder ran off into the darkness. He whirled around and went back inside, turning on all the lights and checking for anyone else. That guy had some serious evasion moves. Not a rookie, that one.

  There was no doubt about who it was: one of the repo goons from the lot. He’d noticed the tats on the back of his neck when he’d hit him with the beacon. It appeared the Slavs had graduated from hooking up deadbeat gangbang rigs in the middle of the night.

  He sighed and sat down in his living room chair and set the gun and light down. This certainly added a new twist to the problem.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” he thought.

  He resigned himself to the fact that sleep was now out of the question and walked over to make some Costco’s Best. He figured he’d wait until they all got back together to tell them about it. Let them get some sleep.

  Anyway, the Russkie was long gone by now.

  As he sat and drank his coffee, he started thinking about the video system back at the lot and the weird encounter with his boss when the cops were there. He had originally pulled the intel on the drive up on his office desktop. They could have been watching him through the cameras.

  The owner had said he was looking for him through the cameras when he had taken Brunell out into the desert. What would stop him from watching him when he had looked at the drive?

  He rubbed his head and tried to piece things together.

  He would have to cautiously ask Paul some things, if and when he ever went back. Right now, they had to figure out how to get to the mule. That was another story entirely.

  12

  0600 hours came around, and they all rendezvoused back at George’s place. Jackson had left his phone in the trailer. This time of day, that was the normal thing to do. He told them about the goon, and they all decided that things were getting too hot to let the drive be out in the open.

  They agreed to leave the drive in the cactus, as that was probably the least likely place anyone would look.

  Next, they discussed each other’s safety.

  “Hopefully, they still don’t know about George. As long we stay offline and don’t bring our phones here, this place should be clean,” Jackson said.

  “Jackson, you should probably stay here at night for a while. Now that they’ve hit you, they may not be afraid to come back. I have a couch that’s a pretty good sleeper. If we get any, that is,” George said.

  Jackson agreed that he would park at home like always, then sneak over after dark.

  They decided Brunell would look suspicious if he was not in the office during the day and at home with his wife at night, so he would stay there.

  “Guys, I have been thinking about this,” George said. “You said he has a wife and kids up in North Phoenix. That is his main concern. We need to go get them and take them out of harm’s way. I can take them out to Fountain Hills and have them stay with Lindsay. I hate to bring her into all this, but they would never think of going out there. It makes sense. There is nothing connecting me or her to this.”

  “I hate to admit it, but that could work. And it may get him to cooperate with us if he knows we are taking care of them,” Jackson said.

  “I’m good with that. Let me see if I can track down a location on the inside. I can try a work around in the database and try to find out who and where the wife and kids are. Then we should send George up there to convince them to come with us. That may be easier said than done, but he would seem less threatening to them than either of us,” Brunell suggested.

  “Since we need to stay totally off the grid, I’ll get us some burner phones at Walmart. We have to be able to communicate.”

  They decided Jackson should go back to work even though he was blown, to maintain some semblance of normalcy. They may have know he had the drive, but they didn’t know where it was, if there was more than one copy, or even if he was doing anything with it.

  They also thought Brunell should go about his duties as normally as possible, so as not to raise eyebrows around The Unit. There were still some good people in there, but they had no idea who was dirty and who was on the take.

  They all agreed to get together back at George’s that evening at six, using the usual routine.

  Jackson went home and did his morning thing. He saw his phone blinking and checked it. A text from Sam.

  J has B-ball 2night. P has Soccer. Which do you want?

  Crap.

  Jackson thought about what he could say to her without alerting her that anything was wrong. He decided to ignore the message for now.

  He got dressed and took off for the lot, following his usual routine.

  He pulled in and saw that Paul had already opened everything. Good. It would give him the freedom to run the errands that he needed to.

  He walked in and saw Paul sitting at his desk with a pile a Kleenex and a big glass of water. He looked like hell.

  “Paul, my man! I’ve seen better-looking dead men. You gonna make it?”

  Paul just grunted and picked up a tissue and blew his nose.

  “I feel horrible. I don’t know what I picked up. Feels like the plague.”

  “That really sucks, Paul. Forgive me if I stay over here. I can’t afford to get sick right now.”

  “From the sound of things, neither can I. Got my ass royally chewed by the Chechen when you disappeared. I can't afford to lose this gig. Got two kids in college.”

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry, but something important came up,” Jackson paused. “Did you say Chechen? I thought those dudes were Yugoslavs or something.”

  “What's the difference? They are all Godless Commies as far as I’m concerned. And they don't like to lose money. They told me I better be here, rain or shine. No excuses.”

  That answered that question.

  Jackson didn't say anything, but he knew all too well the difference. Chechens were among the most bloodthirsty killers on the planet. They were mostly Caucasian Muslims and the bane of Russia. They would as soon kill their mama for Allah as say hello. He’d had run a few through the system back in the day.

  It was Chechens who’d blown up the Boston Marathon. It was Chechens who’d gassed a movie theater in Moscow and killed three hundred. It was Chechens who’d taken over the elementary school in Moscow and killed hundreds of little kids. It was Chechens who had helped ISIS become the force they were in the Middle East today. You didn't mess with these maniacs, unless you wanted a giant dose of dead.

  The only reason they hadn't taken over everything in Russia and the Baltics was that Putin would not put up with their shit. He refused to mess around with them. The Russians had ways of dealing with these freaks that the PC hand-wringing crowd in the US government and military would never dream of.

  Starting from the days when they would kill the Jihadis back in Afghanistan and then cut off their testicles, stuff them in their mouths, wrap them in a pig carcass and send them home. That took care of all their seventy-two virgins bullshit. Their families would be disowned by their villages and religious leaders, and they would be treated worse than lepers.

  No self-respecting jihadi wanted to tangle with Putin.

  Ever.

  The idiots in DC had given many of them refugee status for ‘religious persecution
’, and they were starting to make serious trouble around the country. Some of those guys may look like self-reliant model citizens, but Jackson didn't trust them as far as he could throw them.

  “I get it, Paul. Damn, I am really sorry you have to be here.”

  “Me too, Jackson. Me too.”

  He picked up a Kleenex and blew hard.

  Jackson decided it best if he walked outside and got some air. No way could he afford to pick up some funky disease. And the less Paul knew, the better. He didn't trust the phone or the cams in there any more either. Who knows? Maybe Paul was even in on this thing. No way of knowing.

  He walked around the lot trying to formulate things; it was all minute by minute and coming fast. Thankfully, it was a perfect seventy-five degrees out, so he could hang outside all day if needed. Plus, the fresh air and sun felt good.

  13

  Brunell walked into the office at the Unit feeling paranoid. He was looking around to see if anyone was watching him strangely. He walked into his office and sat down to a pile of messages. He moved them over and booted up his computer. He had fifty-six new messages, none of which needed immediate attention.

  He ignored them and pulled up the department database.

  Last month, he’d had a tech intern from Grand Canyon University who had shown him a way to bypass the system, in the event of a server hack.

  These kids knew so much about the internet that it was mind-boggling. There was an entire internet underneath the regular one, and only some people knew about it. Ryan, the intern, called it the Dark Web - a place where the wild west still existed and everything was open to those who knew how to move around. And the regular world would crap themselves if they knew what really happened there.

  He had told Brunell that security at the State Patrol was outdated, and it was only a matter of time before something catastrophic happened. With budget constraints for intelligence tied to the Feds, it could be a long time before anything changed.

  He opened the bottom drawer and pulled it all the way out. He had taped a false administrator override on the bottom of the drawer above it, all the way in the back. No one would ever know it was there unless he told them.