Fuller
Part 15
Grimm looked down at the compound in the rural dead end of the Mexican State of Sonora. The general area was only serviced by a rough gravel road that by US standards was fit for ATV and motocross enthusiasts. Using a combination of 21st century toys and gadgets the ‘smart’ people back in their operations headquarters had determined that there wasn’t anyone within 10 miles of where they were except them and the people they were watching. And that lack of people that could stumble upon them or notify the compound of their presence allowed Grimm and the team to focus on the mission and expend less resources looking over their shoulders.
He snuck a quick peek at his small GPS figuring and then rechecking the altitude of their primary over watch position. During the operation 2 men with precision rifles would be keeping an eye on things from above and one of the men would be watching thru his high powered scope where Grimm was now laying. The anticipation of the coming festivities brought a smile to his face. If someone had actually seen the smile they might have noticed that the smile reached his eyes and might even convey a real sense of joy or happiness. Grimm was lying on his stomach next to the new guy they called Tex and watching the activity in and around the training camp below. The intelligence people had gotten this one right on the money the first time and Grimm could feel the growing excitement. For him growing excitement meant he was hyper focused on the operation and making sure in his head that the plan was solid and avoided as many potential problems as possible. He had learned early in his military career that plans seldom went exactly as hoped for and he would adapt on the fly just like he always did. The reason Grimm was such a force to be reckoned with was that he was extremely flexible once action started.
The intelligence reports had been correct and the compound was a training facility for the El Paso/Juarez Cartel. It specialized in training drug, weapons and money sniffing dogs just like they did in the US and around the world. By learning what the dogs were capable of and learning methods of fooling their incredible noses the Cartel was that much closer to closing the technology gap. Well if you consider using animals to do work that no human or machine could do technology. The staggeringly large amount of resources expended by the US on Border protection and anti-smuggling efforts cost the Cartels 10s of millions of dollars every year in the form of lost profit from seizures and arrests and abandoned loads. If the Cartels transporters could fool the well trained dogs here then they could conceivably fool the dogs that the various Law Enforcement Agencies in the US employed against them. That success would mean that the Cartels could more successfully get their extremely profitable products over the Border into the US and in turn sneak their profits back south and into the hands of the Cartels.
But unlike the precautions that were afforded to the canines in the various US Law Enforcement Agencies only a small crew of guards saw that the valuable animals didn’t fall into competitor’s hands or were harmed in any way. They had a small contingent of what appeared to be trainers who were assisted by a handful of handlers. The small staff seemed to be well taken care of and had access to luxuries like cable TV, good food and some alcohol in the form of beer during the week. Satellite images had shown women being driven into the compound every Friday night and a drunken party taking place. Archived satellite data allowed the experts to determine that the women were part of the Cartels prostitution operation. The 9 men that guarded the facility seemed more interested in staying in the shade and away from the dogs. Those guards understood that the dogs were more valuable to the cartel than they were. 2 of the well armed guards were on duty around the clock and worked in 4 shifts that were 6 hours long. The rest of the time they did what they wanted and seemed to be on call at all times. It looked like on the weekends when the woman or girls they couldn’t tell from the images were delivered that they were also allowed to drink and enjoy the company of the sex workers.
Mariposa, the Madame they had taken with them from the Juarez brothel had told the interrogators about the place. Last year she had been shipped to a city called Hermosillo in Sonora and worked in a brothel there during the week. But every Friday she had been loaded into a truck with other women and driven 4 hours to the camp. She explained to the interrogators that she felt the reason she had been moved to Hermosillo was specifically for the camp’s use. That seemingly minor piece of information had turned possibly important when she mentioned that they trained dogs there. And while they might have assumed at first they were training fighting or guard dogs the mention of the smaller breeds known for their keen smell changed everything for them. As they researched the operation it became obvious that this was no run-of-the-mill doggy fight club training outpost. The information turned out to be very useful and had made people in Grimm’s organization very happy. Since all the Mexican Cartels were known to be difficult to infiltrate by outsiders using this as a work around seemed to be the best way to acquire the information and intelligence that the various groups needed to avert further troubles along the Border in the El Paso area. The more they understood about each and every aspect of the Cartel organization the better things would work out in taking the organization down permanently.
10 days before when they had done the job at the brothel in Juarez and after their detainees had been flown off into the Mexican night Grimm was surprised that his boss had called him to congratulate him and his team for the outstanding job they had done. He was very surprised to be told that the prisoners they had captured would be turned over to a secret temporary interrogation center located on a private island near the country of Belize in Central America. Even working outside the military the adage that said that people should be treated like mushrooms held true in the organization. Grimm and his people were often kept in the dark and feed bullshit.
The story his direct superior told him was that a US investor with the dream of leaving the US and living the tropical island lifestyle had bought the remote and undeveloped Caye. His plan was to build a semi-intimate island resort that catered to the solidly middle class on the 400 acre Caye. There he planned to spend the rest of his years drinking umbrella drinks and trying to get lucky with the lonely female tourists that appreciated a man with some character, some money and some gravitas. Complications at the island’s building site with labor and materials, the lack of additional capital after the mortgage crisis and other financial set-backs in his life shut the project down and had left it half completed. Finally lingering trouble with the IRS in the United States insured that if the resort was ever completed that he wouldn’t be a part of the ownership team in any way shape or form. The island’s developer was forced to surrender his dreams and he and the IRS worked something out. In exchange for signing over the rights to the island and its half completed resort to the US Government he was able to avoid jail time. He wasn’t happy with his change in circumstances but was ecstatic to avoid prison time which had been a very real possibility for him. He came to the brutal realization that it was better to be broke and have his retirement ruined than to spend time even in what they called a country club prison. A Federal Penitentiary was still a prison and all that entailed.
At the island the prisoners would have their initial and main interrogations done there by a top flight team that had decades of experience and had proven themselves again and again with subjects captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern vacation spots. The small secluded island off the Northeastern coast of Central America measured less than 400 acres and insured a great deal of privacy. The main interrogation area had features that had proven to significantly increase the probability that the subjects would succumb under the intense psychological pressure that would encourage them to open up. This carefully researched and meticulously crafted environment helped encourage the subjects being interrogated to respond to the methods the center used. It helped speed up the process of getting them to divulge information that the teams needed to turn the Border Crisis around and bring it to a decisive end. But even in the perfect environment and using the most successful methods the subjects were terrified at what might happen to their families and friends if the Cartel knew what they were doing. That threat of violence made the job on the remote island much more challenging.
The Cartels were notorious for their psychopathic brutality and the lack of humanity that allowed them to use, torture or kill anyone that they believed was a threat to their international multi-billion dollar business. The Cartels simply didn’t tolerate anyone or anything that undermined their business in any way. They had bribed, threatened, tortured and killed Mexicans at every level of their society from politicians and judges to policeman and guys that picks up the trash. Many Mexicans regarded the Cartel members with ice cold fear. And that ice cold fear meant that the interrogations were as complicated and difficult as the ones involving the Islamic Fundamentalists who thought that their actions would insure their entry to paradise. But in the last decade the interrogators had learned a few things about getting information from people that were highly motivated to thwart their efforts. The main advantage that they had now was that the guidelines were significantly more flexible than they had been under those circumstances. Like Junior on ‘Swamp People’ says, “This here’s no joke”. For the detainees on the island pain with the very real threat of violence and death were options this time around since there wasn’t anyone looking over the interrogators shoulder.
The integration center understood that getting the information that they needed was going to be difficult and take time. And time was one thing they were in short supply of. Finding the instigators and stopping the Border Crisis was now one of the most important priorities in the U.S. intelligence community as well as the FBI and Homeland Security. The longer it went on the more violent it would become. After all the Cartels were waging a war against the most powerful nation in the world. In the grand scheme of things a continuing Border Crisis made the US look weak. And everyone knows looking weak just gives some people the impression that they can hurt you.
Timely access to that information was vital to Grimm and his team as well as the other teams doing the same or similar jobs they were. After the detainees had given all the relevant information they had and the interrogators were satisfied they would be moved further along the line to their final destination. For some that might mean a new life free of cartel influence, or confinement till the crisis was brought under control. For the most ruthless and dangerous of them they would likely end up floating in the Caribbean Sea in International Waters.
All this was important because less than 24 hours after their arrival the manager of the brothel had opened up and had given the integrators a name of the man that he reported to. The information had checked out and was being analyzed. As an insurance policy the brothel manager had compiled files on every Cartel member he had ever had contact with or had heard about. His hope was that the information stored on a secure internet site might discourage him from being tortured or killed in the event of a problem. A smart man doesn’t live in that life without doing what he can to insure that he lives long enough to retire comfortably at a fairly young age. And as far as the manager knew nobody had full retired from the Cartel life in decades. The way to get out of the Cartel he belonged to usually meant violent death. You worked and hoped for the best knowing that you weren’t likely to ever see retirement. A dispute, a discrepancy, a rumor that you talked to Law Enforcement/Military or a power shift marked you for brutal torture and death. If you were lucky your death was quick and clean but good deaths in the Cartel were the exception and not the rule. Many men, woman and children had been brutally tortured before their eventual murder for seemingly small transgression.
Those files were quickly retrieved from their internet safety deposit box and analyzed for relevant leads in the case. Bits and pieces from that treasure trove were passed to Grimm for his next assignment after the canine facility. And that next assignment was the kidnapping of a mid-level Cartel member who called himself ‘Sergeant’. Like many cartel members at one time he wore the uniform of his Country’s Army. A few of the various analysts had speculated that the Sergeant might also be known as the infamous ‘Rojo’ that they were very interested in. Their analysis was based on the fact that the Mexican Army had different color rank insignia for all classes of troops and according to them red was the color of a Sergeant.
Grimm remembered being excited as he read thru the file synopsis for the “Sergeant”. He was looking forward to getting back to work. Kidnapping dog trainers and destroying animals wasn’t really anything he had any interest in. But the disruption to the Cartels business might force them to make some ill-advised moves. They had bits and pieces of information about the ‘Sergeant’ that was less than a year old. For a professional like the ‘Sergeant’ or a man like Grimm’s a year was an eternity but it just might give them a few threads they could pull to get a bead on their quarry Many Cartel members altered their habits on a regular basis to stay ahead of International Law Enforcement and their rivals who killed people without a seconds hesitation. But with a few breaks and the resources that the team had access to a misstep or two might just be all they needed to tighten the noose.
Grimm had spent enough time in the US Armed Forces that he had learned to deal with the various mental issues that could affect men and woman that had served their Country in combat. Of all the things that he had done and seen done interrogations remained the one thing that still gave him emotional issues. Four years earlier an emerging crisis had forced him to interrogate a Taliban asshole that had critical information in the area near Tora Bora in Afghanistan. It wasn’t his decision to make and he was simply following orders however misguided they were. While he talked to a specialist over a Sat phone he was forced to use a rusty hammer that was missing a claw to break a man’s fingers one at a time till he gave up the information that they needed. He respected the commitment to the mission but felt that the torture didn’t fit his warrior philosophy.
The information they got led to the death of a bomb maker and his assistants in Islamabad three days later. But dreams of the screams from that night still occasionally disrupted his normally restful sleep. They were by far the worst dreams of his time in the service and after he has one he would wake up in a pool of his own sweat. After that he let his superior know that he wouldn’t ever do it again orders or not. He’d intimidate, bully, cajole, threaten, menace and even kick someone in the ass or point a gun at their head and threaten to shot them but he wouldn’t actually interrogate them if it involved any form of torture. His boss knew that and accepted that even Grimm had things he wouldn’t do for his Country.
Grimm carefully slid back over the hill and out of sight from below and made his way to the small camp just behind the next bend in the ground. They had been watching the compound in the searing heat for 2 days and had video and copious notes on how it operated. According to the sat images the next day Friday would mean a visit from the man they assumed was in charge of the camp and maybe other camps or operations as well.
The man they assumed was the leader of the camp had been nicknamed Scar for the very noticeable a ragged scar that stretched from temple to temple. They hadn’t seen him in the 2 days they had been watching the camp but the satellite images they had been sent indicated that he would make an appearance tonight. Grimm and his men hoped that taking the leader as well as the rest the team minus the security detail might mean that they could gave the interrogation team other useful subjects to work on. Grimm didn’t know how big the interrogation facility in the Caribbean was but he intended to do his best to fill it its capacity.
Grimm’s team was supplemented on this assignment by another of the other teams that was working the Border Crisis in the El Paso/Juarez corridor and the surrounding areas. Grimm had been assigned the task of leading the combined teams and he looked up at the men assembled in front of him. Grimm was a natural leader and men and woman just naturally followed him and strived to make him happy. It was time to re-brief the men so they could get mentally ready for the task ahead of them and re-check their equipment. Grimm was confident that they would do their job without any problems. These men had been around the block so if a problem did arise they would know what to do. “Our original plan is the on-track. We wait till Scar enters the camp and the party starts up. At 0300 we knock the guards out and take over moving from back to front. If we get lucky the wind will be in our face and the dogs we will be quiet. But just in case make sure everybody gets doused with the scent killer. After the camp is secured we wake up the driver who will be drunk in the main house and get the ladies back in the truck and moving away from the camp. The two men that are assigned to act as decoy guards will tell them that the “Boss” is on his way and if they are caught it would be very bad. Nobody wants to ever see a Cartel Boss let alone have to explain why they did something wrong so they’ll light out like their pants are on fire. We tell them to keep it quiet and make sure we have all targets drugged and bound. The final count is the site manager, 9 guards, 3 trainers, 2 handlers and 4 technical guys and 1cook. That’s 20 targets plus Scar that we need to drug and move so stay sharp and if a problem creeps up let me know as soon as you can. The driver and the girls get out and nobody else. Any questions? Good. Double check your equipment and get some rest. We’ll be moving by 0100.”
The men understood the pep talk was over and the men that had been assigned watch made their way to their positions while the rest the men headed off to check their equipment and get some rest. It was going to be a busy night so a nap was always a good idea.
Over the last 10 days men and equipment had rotated in and out of the mine and Fuller declared that the site wasn’t done but it was ready to take in refugees if circumstances dictated it. To celebrate the achievement Fuller had arranged a party in the mine that had been turned into a large NBC shelter. The guest list for the Grand opening was Mongo and 3 other men that had worked on the shelter. Fuller had a history with the four men from the work detail and he trusted them implicitly. The other guests were the Fields minus their children and the Smiths with theirs. The Fields children were still too young to understand the necessity of not telling anyone about the secret space so they would spend the night with their grandmother.
The crisis along the Border had tapered off in intensity and Fuller’s people from Texas had all returned home. Fuller and his security team had designed a website that was restricted access for his clients that helped assure that they were updated constantly about what was going on with the Crisis and could reach him or one of his senior people 24 hours a day. Every single one of them had a security assessment done for them and their families to analyze where they were vulnerable. After the assessment was done the results were discussed and they were briefed about adding additional security precautions to their everyday lives to reduce the change that they became of victim of the violence that centered on the El Paso and Juarez border areas. It now seemed that the notoriously dangerous city of Juarez had imported their problems to the El Paso area and if it wasn’t for the proliferation of Texans permitted to legally carry concealed handguns the problem would have even been worse. Crime in El Paso had abruptly risen and that reduced the quality of life for all the area’s residents.
The previous week one of the leading internet homepages reported that the Texas Department of Public Safety reported that applications for their Concealed Handgun Licensing Program were twice what it had been the previous year. The Department of Public Safety spokesman in Austin confirmed that the Border Crisis had been responsible for the staggering increase in interest in that program. The Texas Department of Public Safety also released guidelines to involve citizens of the State help Law Enforcement with the problem by reporting suspicious activity to the Texas Fusion Center. Many of the new program’s guidelines were loosely based on various actions taken after the 9-11 tragedy by New York City’s leaders. Parts of the program shared with the public included committing to install and monitor more cameras in the El Paso area as well as increasing officer hiring for all communities and Counties near El Paso. The program committed additional resources from the Texas Department of Public Safety including reassigning 30 Texas Rangers to the area in an effort to increase the areas safety. Those additional measures supplement the commitment from the US Government in the form of assigning more agents and other resources to the Border Patrol and Homeland Security in the areas most affected by the Crisis. The website reported that sources had implied to them that Homeland Security was committing another 3 Predator B UAVs to the Texas and New Mexico region to aid in controlling the flow of illegal’s and drugs into the Country. One of the computer modeling scenarios that Homeland Security had run had pointed out the fact that a serious disruption in the flow of income to the Cartel in that region was an effective way to insure that management was replaced. New management might see that the situation had gotten out of control and replace members that supported the collision course that threatened to destroy them. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security were unwilling to comment about the Crisis other than to say they were committed to getting it under control and bringing those responsible to Justice.
The report also mentioned that gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico and the other affected states had seen a rush of both first time handgun buyers as well as additional interest from those that already owned a firearm. Ammo was hard to come by in both States and even Law Enforcement officers were forced to order their ammunition from a source outside the States.
Tim and Becky Fields hadn’t been in the shelter in almost 2 weeks and both were looking forward to getting to see what progress had been made and get an idea of the supplies and other resources were there. Mongo would be grilling up his Huli Huli Chicken, Cole and Rita Smith were bringing the sides and the Fields were in charge of the dessert. Becky had told Tim that she was making two different desserts to make sure everybody’s sweet tooth was completely satisfied.
Finally the day of the shelter’s Grand Opening was upon them. In true Fuller fashion he had arranged a big reveal like they did on all the reality TV shows. Tim had seen everything from when they ripped someone’s house down to the studs and re-did it in 3 days to when they turned a plain looking woman into a made over hottie complete with a new haircut and color to compliment her new wardrobe and excellent accessories. Tim & Becky Fields standing beside the Smiths and their boys were led to the edge of the cave.
An oversized canvas painter’s tarp covered the entrance and after a 5 second count down the tarp was dropped. The main entrance had been cleared of everything and it was plain to see even from just the entrance that changes to the cavernous space were startling.
Tim considered Cole Smith a master of the understatement and he quickly summed up his feeling about the transformation of the cave from the mouth of the cave. And contrary to Cole’s normal speech pattern the words seemed rushed as they floated out of his mouth. “Holy Shit! This place looks stronger than a brick outhouse.”
Rita smacked her husband’s shoulder. “Coleman Smith, watch your language there are ladies present.”
Cole came out of his brief trance. “Please excuse my language ladies. I was taken back a moment there.”
Becky smirked and turned toward Cole who was standing 5 feet from her at the cave’s entrance. “Cole I think I speak for all of us when I say we appreciate you using the word outhouse instead of shithouse. And Rita you have to admit that even the front door is impressive.”
Rita smiled at Becky her partner in crime. “Impressive is one word to use. That door is almost bigger than massive.”
With that statement the two couples and the Smith’s boys stood in awe of what they were seeing.
The first thing they noticed is the huge door made of layers of concrete and steel that sat against the inner wall that must have been 3 feet thick. Judging from the hinges imbedded in the floor and bolted to the wall the door weighted tons. Lots of tons since the opening to their shelter were big enough to drive a semi thru. The surface of the heavy, heavy duty door that faced the outside of the shelter looked much like the cliff wall and from a few feet it would have been difficult to tell the door from the rock that surrounded it.