Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1) (19 page)

Michael awoke while it was still dark following Jimmy’s rescue from the auto body shop. He slipped out the door and drove around Clearwater until he found what he was looking for right on Route 19—a large RV lot with a long term storage area.  He turned down a side street, checked the yard through the fence as he didn’t want to end up as a chew toy for the business end of a Rottweiler.

Using a page from the Recon playbook, Michael opened the pick-up bed cover and retrieved a furniture pad mover’s normally used to guard fine furniture from damage, closed the lid and unceremoniously tossed the pad over the barbed wire that t
opped the lot’s security fence. He mounted the bumper, carefully stepped atop the fiberglass bed cover and vaulted over the fence—garnering not as much as a scrape and even managed to land on his feet.  He looked around to ensure he wasn’t observed and then ran at a crouch to the RV he had spotted from the street. Michael quickly withdrew a screwdriver from his back pocket and removed the license plate. 

He arrived back at his RV Park just as the night was transitioning into dawn. He installed the new plate and tossed the old one in the bed of his pick-up for later disposal. While doing so, he noticed lights on in the kitchen of the RV, he smelled the unmistakable aroma of bacon frying and his stomach rumbled as if on command.  Michael entered the cabin and found Char busily engaged in flipping pancakes and frying bacon.

“Hungry?” He asked without looking up.

“Yeah, is there any coffee?” Char pointed to his left where a Black & Decker
SpaceMaker Coffeepot was mounted under the overhead cupboard.

“Shit, these guys think of everything,” said Michael while reaching for the pot.

Char decided to let Jimmy sleep in as he figured he needed the rest—he imagined being kidnapped and water boarded would tend to wear on someone. They had stayed up late drinking whiskey and smoking some cigars Char had found in the RV. Based on the quality of the box he found—Arturo Fuente Opus Xs—whoever owned the RV had expensive tastes.  Char had some hard questions to ask and he was sure Jimmy would be ready to tell. The sooner they could move forward on this, the sooner they could split the gold and be done with it—Char figured he would rent a little casita on the beach in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, find himself a nice Senorita and see if he ever got bored banging a twenty-year old.

Michael poured himself a cup of black coffee—he had grown used to drinking it with cream and sugar as it provided extra energy that he found necessary when it might be the only thing to get him to lunch
—such were the rigors of urban combat, but he was trying to wean himself off that habit.

“Hey, does this thing have a TV?” Char smiled and pointed to a rectangular panel mounted on the ceiling between the driver and passenger cabin chairs.  On the front of the panel was a square button about two inches across. Char pointed his spatula at the button and told Michael to push it.  Michael did as instructed, the front of the panel popped open and a
thirty-seven inch flat screen television slowly descended into place. The remote slid out from a compartment in the housing.  Michael switched it on and took a seat at the dinette, switching channels until he found the local news—Channel Seven out of Tampa.  He would have passed right by the channel but stopped when he recognized the outside of the warehouse where they had rescued Jimmy.  The banner line at the bottom of the screen read;  Bodies recovered from the site of a gruesome double homicide. A picture of the Jimmy’s former attorney flashed on the screen followed by a picture of Jimmy in orange prison jumpsuit.

“We better wake him up,” said Michael.

They all sat in the kitchen/dining area of the motor coach and watched the drama play out on the news. The reporter interviewed a detective named Ryerson, who gave the standard cop verbiage that they are conducting an investigation that may result in seeking arrest warrants for several people, including the fugitive and others they believe were involved in the death of the victims.

“Victims my ass,” said Jimmy. Mike checked the other channels to see if there was any additional information to be learned about the investigation—there wasn’t. 

The Sheriff’s Department detective, Ryerson was being especially closed mouthed, even for a cop.

They watched the news until the report was finished and was followed by a weather alert for
the Tampa Bay area due to a large low pressure system forming in the gulf.

They ate in silence. The news that there might soon be arrest warrants issued for them caused Char and Michael to lose their appetite, but Jimmy finished what they didn’t.

He ate six pancakes and half pound of bacon, washing it down with several cups of coffee explaining—“We might as well eat while we can. There is a lot of work to do and no one knows when we’ll get another chance.”

This was the first time Jimmy even alluded to anything having to do with the hidden store of gold coins. Char looked at him with a deeply serious look on his face.

“Where did you hide the gold, Jimmy?” Char asked.

Jimmy said nothing immediately, but seemed to want to impart a pregnant pause into the conversation to heighten the sense of anticipation. He reached into the pocket of the shirt he had borrowed from Char, shook out a cigarette and lit it with
a butane lighter.

He blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling and then said, “Well, I suppose it’s about time that I tell you what happened to the gold.”   

Jimmy started talking and didn’t stop until twenty minutes had passed. He had been thrown clear of the yacht as it was washed ashore by the rogue wave. Returning to the boat, he found Char unconscious, but breathing and Tommy shot dead by the bastard, Handley, who was nowhere to be found. Had he been, Jimmy would have choked him to death or smashed his head on the rocks for killing his little brother. Jimmy had searched for him around the shore—It was raining and the cold rain pelted, which seemed to wake him from the murderous rage that engulfed him after finding Tommy’s body with gunshot wounds in his back. 

He knew that his time was limited—although Fort Desoto was isolated, someone would eventually see that a yacht had been beached by the rogue wave. He heard the low whine of emergency sirens in the far distance, probably somewhere on St. Pete Beach. The boat had landed on the shore outside the main fortifications of Fort
DeSoto—which consisted of a huge sand berm covering the concrete fortifications that contained the magazine store for the weapons and targeting system for the Rifled Mortars that were the fort’s primary weaponry.

The actual fortifications consisted of little more than a series of long rectangular cement bunkers—the soldiers had been housed and fed elsewhere in buildings that were lost to tropical storms decades ago.

The sand atop the concrete bunkers served as an additional layer of defense that would protect the explosive ordnance and allowed the mortars to remain out of sight while also allow them to lop explosive rounds on the enemy from a concealed location.

On top of the berms were four huge metal airshafts topped with conical lids to allow ventilation while protecting the shaft from wind swept debris.  Originally, the airshafts needed to be functional, both to vent fumes form the ammunitions stored below and to allow ventilation of the fort’s interior. They had long ceased to be serviceable and were no longer necessary.

The plans for the ongoing refurbishment of the fort called for the airshafts to be filled in with sand and then topped with concrete in order to prevent some toddler from crawling into them and becoming trapped. But, Jimmy didn’t know that when he frantically sought a place to store eight heavy bags filled with gold coin.

He ran up the man-made sand dune and examined the interior of the airshaft.  Finding it filled with sand about three feet below the opening.  He carried the bags two at a time to the top of the twenty foot sand dune and laid them at the bottom of the airshaft’s cylindrical base. 

Once he had moved all eight bags, he carefully placed them inside the shaft and began using his hands to gather sand and feed it into the opening. This was taking too long and he desperately searched for an alternative, quickly finding a trash can lid that he employed as a shovel.

Satisfied he had buried the gold sufficiently to escape detection at least until he could return, Jimmy went back to the boat, carried his brother’s body to a spot overlooking the beach and buried him with the same trash can lid.  Once that was done, he attempted to escape Mullet Key and was caught walking across the causeway into St. Pete Beach by the Pinellas County Sherriff’s Department. 

“I became a friend of the Fort DeSoto Associations just so I could get their newsletter. The first issue I got detailed the refurbishment including how they poured cement into the airshafts,” said Char.

“So, the gold is still there, buried under what, two feet of cement?” asked Michael.

“Not sure, a foot, maybe two, but it might as well be a hundred, replied Jimmy. What are we going to do, rent jack hammers, haul them up to the top of the sand dune and go to work?”

Michael stood up, walked to the coffee pot, poured himself a refill, took a sip and looked at his father.

“There is something an old Gunner told me once when I was going through advanced recon training—there is no problem that can’t be solved by the proper use of high explosives.” They all laughed, but Michael was deadly serious. “No shit, we get some explosives; C4, dynamite, hell even black powder, we blow the cement off the top of the airshaft, grab the gold and be gone in a few ticks.” 

“How are you proposing we do that
?” asked Char.

“Simple—we wait until after the park closes,
slip inside and do it.”

“Easier said, than done.
When the park gate closes, it can let you out, but not in. It has those spikes that will blow out your tires if you try to enter.”

“Leave that to me,” said Michael as he downed the rest of his coffee.

Michael entered the Snake Eater Bar & Grill on MacDill Drive and was momentarily blind in the dimly lit interior. After he stood in the doorway for a moment, allowing his irises to take in as much ambient light as possible—he was gradually able to make out the bar’s dark interior features.

Two pool tables occupied the left side of the building’s interior—a small dance floor sat off to his left and a horseshoe shaped, lacquered oak bar complete with a brass rail, stood directly in front of him. Two large flat screen TVs were mounted behind the bar with another larger unit mounted in front of the dance floor.

The sound was muted, but it appeared from the maps and radar images being displayed that a serious weather advisory was being broadcast for the greater Tampa Bay area. A bright red banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen, indicating the potential for coastal flooding and the possible need for evacuation should the storm continue on its current path.

“Well, look at what the cat dragged in,” said a booming voice from behind the bar; a voice Michael hadn’t heard since Recon’s push into Baghdad. 

He was known to his intimates as Triple G, which once stood for Gunny Gordon Groves—formerly of Explosive Ordinance D
isposal; having since retired—with all of his body parts intact, no less. 

Groves was a bear of a man—with a bald head and a handlebar mustache that was always running afoul of Marine Corps regulations that dictated the mustache could not extend beyond the corners of the wearer’s mouth.  In fact, the regulation was so stringent most marines didn’t bother growing one. But Gunny always flaunted most regulations in general and this one in particular, by having the ends upturn and curled in a most audacious fashion. Few combat Senior NCOs or Officers called him out on it because when you needed Triple G, your shit was truly in the wind and no one dared piss him off.  

“I haven’t seen you since you detonated that daisy chain of old artillery shells we found buried in front of that industrial complex we were reconning for the division CP,” said Michael while reaching over the bar to embrace his old comrade.

“Yeah, that was a ball-buster,” said Groves with measured understatement.

He reached across the bar and embraced Michael, slammed him on the back a few times and then reached into the cooler in front of him and withdrew two frost-tinged Bud lights.  Triple G popped the tops with a catcher’s mitt sized hand and slid one bottle across the bar towards Michael.

“To fallen comrades,” said Groves as he clicked the neck of his beer bottle with the other.

“Fallen Comrades,” Michael repeated as he upended the bottle.

Gunny Grove’s last assignment was at U.S. Special Forces Command, headquartered at MacDill. He was left to developing doctrine involving the use of EOD teams in Special Opera
tions environments—he hated it. Groves was a thrill seeker who lived on adrenaline. He had signed up to disarm bombs, not write about it.  He tried to liven up his off duty world by sport parachuting and scuba diving, but the tedium of his work day life got to him and he put in his retirement packet, bought and refurbished a derelict bar near the base and now passed his time hosting wet t-shirt contests for his clientele that consisted mostly of off-duty SOCCOM guys and coeds from the nearby university intent on hooking up with a “real man.”  Triple G was still bored, but the fringe benefits were better.  

They shot the shit for two more beers—it was a Monday afternoon and the crowd was thin, but Groves figured Michael wanted something, so he decided to cut to the chase.

“So, Captain Blackfox, what brings you to this low rent section of town?” Groves asked with a wryly raised eyebrow.

“Looking for a particular substance that you have a lot of experience with” he said, quietly, although there was only one other person at the bar.

Groves raised an eyebrow “And what would that be?”

“Come on Gunny, don’t make me say it—ah Hell!  Rumor has it that you might be able to lay your hands on a small amount of C4.” 

The rumor was started after Gunny turned in slightly less than it was estimated that he used during the battle. No one dared confront him and during the war at the time, customs clearance was sketchy at best. 

In reality, Gunny had shipped a container back to Lejeune with about 10 pounds of the substance concealed in a footlocker packed in a CONNEX or shipping container. He stored it in a shed behind his house and used it mostly for blowing stumps on a piece of property he was preparing to build on, and he still had at least
nine pounds left.

“That depends, what do you want it for?” Michael explained as much as he could—leaving out tales of escaped cons, dead CIA interrogators and lawyers, but mentioning the gold.

Groves thought for a minute and then smiled.

“Shit, Mike, I can’t let you have it, it wouldn’t be right; you officers are as fucked up as a soup sandwich and you might hurt yourself, but perhaps we can work out a deal. When do you plan executing the operation?”

Mike pointed his chin towards the TV where the weather advisory was still being broadcast and said, “Right before that storm hits.”

Triple G nodded and smiled, “
Sounds like a plan.”