Chapter 14. Grabbing Darnel

Monday September 8, 2008

Near Chatsworth in Northern Los Angeles County

The Oakland Raiders 2008 regular season kicked off with a Monday Night Football game at Denver, it was the second game of a Monday Night doubleheader to sell twice the commercials at prime-time prices, making 31 billionaires richer. (Only the Green Bay Packers are not owned by a billionaire, they are owned by stockholders who get nothing in the deal and must purchase their own ceremonial cheeseheads.) Sunset was at 7:08 that night, so it was dark in LA at the end of the first quarter of the broadcast. With his Raiders down 7 to 0, for Darnel watching on the big screen in his little house this game was edge-of-the-seat viewing.

Sheri wanted to be in on the grab, but she was 17 and had no tactical training, so the best I could offer her was a seat in the control van for the Red Cloud drone that was launched higher up on the hill near the Darnel’s house. It was a long drive and she would not even see AJ, so she made a face and elected to study in her room instead. AJ, her parents and I were all pleased with this choice, it showed her priorities were right.

It was also better that she never see Darnel’s face, as she could not lie well.

It was possible that while they were together on Sunday at my place, AJ had slipped her some pictures “to help her relax” during her studies.

I had a better choice for the featured female role in this grab. Ana Rodriguez was a member of 49 (second generation from the Colony) who was physically small but very capable. She was 27 after serving 8 years in the US Marines, most recently as a helicopter door gunner. The reason she was not with the Yucatan operation had to do with a knee injury (kickboxing) that was not fully recovered at the start of the training period. Also, she had none of the specialized training (mortar, engineer or tracked vehicle crew) that we needed. But now it was 6 weeks later and she was in great shape so she jumped to volunteer when I picked her for a critical role. She was going in with a small knife, but she also had a dart gun and a needle if Darnel got close. Given the interest the Sharks had in Darnel, I wanted to make this grab with a minimum number of people having direct contact. Ana was the only non-indian who might make contact with the target.

I had eight of the Patron’s troops on motorcycles, deployed in a broad net around the target, watching for prowling squad cars. At any time there might be one or two squads on the streets. AJ was in touch with all of the troops from a command van a half mile away, he was also up on the police radios and was tracking cell phone calls from the area. The troops all showed green lights, the nearest cop was miles away, dealing with a fire (backyard BBQ gone wrong). Patrols were light, perhaps some of the cops were Raider fans too.

Darnel never did see how bad his Raiders got beat by Denver. Ana cut the cable from his neighbor’s yard at the end of the first quarter, right in the middle of some Mike Ditka wisdom. As soon as she cut the cable Darnel shot out of the house to check what was wrong, this was not the first time it happened. Usually when he lost signal it was some critter pulling a wire loose.

This time he saw a small female person standing at the lot-line, in a Bronco jersey and cap, smiling while holding the severed cable wire in one hand and a small knife in the other.

Not many people will charge a person holding a knife, even a small one. Irene said the person had to be small enough to incite Darnel to rash action. We had that in Ana. In the grip of his Rabid Raider Madness, Darnel did not disappoint.

Darnel saw red and his vision narrowed to focus on his target. In the dark, as he flew past the corner of the house he did not see me level a long over-under shotgun. Martin suggested that Darnel might be in comfortable and voluminous clothing, negating the use of a dart gun or the entertaining effect of a Taser. So I needed to target his head but not kill him just yet.

The Patron had an old guy who had served as a special missions armorer in Chile, he had experience in such things. He sent his specs to one of the guys in 49 who did hand loads - making bullets. The homemade non-lethal rounds did the job. It would do us no good to kill the guy before we talked to him. The shells were under-loaded with gunpowder (quieter) and fired nylon bags holding very fine sand. A truck on the street was rigged using a radio for a series of backfires when I pulled the trigger, covering the muffled cough of the gun.

My gun was sighted for the range (4 to 10 yards) and I had practiced. I had my silenced Glock as a backup, kneecapping the bastard was plan B and would be fun besides. But afterward it would be messy. Darnel would not get in knife range of Ana.

I hit Darnel with both sandbag rounds from the long shotgun, giving him a headache that, in time, he wished was fatal. I was careful, one sandbag hit below the ear, and it immediately confused him, he heard the truck backfire from one side but something him him on the other side. His circuits got confused. My second shot hit behind the ear. He dropped on the spot, his brain checked out in mid-stride, which made it entertaining.

When I fired the nearest cops were 8 minutes away in this sparse hilly suburb where sound did not travel well. Half a dozen coyotes (the four-legged variety - all tagged) were closer but they all made tracks away.

(LA makes a lot of rats and hungry coyotes will eat the urban bunnies.)

The backfire/shotgun blasts were not reported, no cell phones went hot and no police followup was made. The neighbors in this area had a “live and let die” attitude about the local wildlife as long as no two-legged varieties were hurt.

We knew roughly how much Darnel weighted, so I gave him an appropriate shot of curare, then my guys taped him up tight, put him on a gurney, and they were in the back of the van in under 90 seconds.

Kwit, Brisk and Corum drove him to my safe house in the city, the same address where I had entertained Gracie so delightfully. Darnel got checked into the less-comfortable accommodations on the lowest level, 30 feet below the street. It was built like a bomb shelter, because when it was built that seemed like a good idea to Toad. He never trusted them Soviets to stay down. By nature it was soundproof.

When Darnel was secured to the gurney and on his way to Hell on Earth, Ana and two soldiers kept watch as I went into the house to grab up his computers and cell phones. (I got 2 laptops and 2 cell phones - I scanned but nothing else showed up, he had a wireless network with a camera feeding his laptop so anything else would have registered.)

The house was simple and cheap construction, there was no basement and no obvious space for hidden rooms. In place of a closet shown on the plans he had a workroom with a table saw and other construction equipment, that gave us something to talk about.

Once I had the stuff I locked up Darnel’s house and drove Ana to her favorite burrito place where we talked about her love life. She was very picky.

Ana had one guy she really liked, Duane was a “Venice Beach” muscled body she liked crawling around on her body, slobbering on the good spots, but she admitted that the guy was 30, on the juice with an economic future that was trending for a steep dive in 5 years and serious medical issues in 10. He was appealing, not to her head or her heart, but something lower. “I know, he has an early use-by date, but it is hard to move on from a body like his. He has mostly been light on the steroids, so his make-me-happy equipment works okay, with extra endurance. But his joints are all in bad shape, worse than a professional ball player. This I know from experience.” (She dated a Ram cornerback last year.)

There was another guy who liked her, an scion egghead named Edward something the Third. They met at the university library where he would soon graduate and was admitted to a Master’s program in sociology and teaching. He had modest needs and a trust fund that gave him enough to get by on, but it would not support 2. He was a year or two younger than Ana, and she knew the guy had a better future, he fit into a high school or junior college faculty where the work was steady - if he could stand the student body. He also majored in endurance pussy licking, in fact he had a bigger tongue than anybody she dated, which she admitted was nice bonus. But she could not commit to the guy. “He is all book-learning, no sense of the world. Plus he gets nervous around ethnic groups so living near mi familia is a hard sell.”

“So he needs your help,” I said. She admitted that dependency was a plus factor. Plus he was scared of her (she was a marine) and would never cheat. She felt she had to make a choice soon, except she also wanted to spend at least half a year in the Colony, and neither guy was up for the wilds of Peru.

She had recently heard a rumor that the Colony was flooded with young Oriental females selected for sex, so the man/woman ratio for her age bracket did not look good for her finding a guy there. Could I tell her if that was true or not?

I admitted it was true, it was my fault because I had saved a number of young women from a short, violent life as sex slaves. She made a sour face. Good karma, but a personal disadvantage.

“Would you prefer I dump them into the brothels they were headed for, to work for the Patron on their backs? Giving their bodies to men who don’t believe in the ritual of an annual bath?” I asked.

“Goodness no, not when you put it that way. Plus, I admit that I have become used to indoor plumbing and regular hits of Orange Julius. I guess I will have to pick somebody here in LA.”

“My advice is to hang out in better university libraries, the business section, or maybe engineering or science fiction. Actually, joining a science fiction or gaming club at a university gets you close contact without expectations related to your hot body. Dress down and ask somebody to teach you the lingo, it gives you a better reading.”