Chapter 107

I spent the night in the RV at Texas Steel and an hour on VCATS with the girls. JJ and RJ even sat for a while and talked to me, filling me in on their school day.

I was at Matador at 0600; I wanted to see how things were being handled with nearly a full house. There were two hundred and thirty from France and thirty more from the Apple 1 and Baker 2 temporary jails.

I watched the kitchen prepare meals and put them on carts where they were delivered to each cell. A plastic fork and spoon was on each food tray, double counted. They would be counted again when the food trays were collected. Missing plastic would cause a cell search and that individual would be moved to the front of the list to see the tribunal.

The operation was not too bad but there were still things to be worked out. The guards and kitchen would get another chance this afternoon - they would only get two meals a day.

The tribunal started the first case at 0900. The two traffickers were brought in cuffs. The prosecutor presented the evidence, the girls’ complete statements were read describing their ordeal from the kidnapping until they were rescued. Then the video statement was played. In the video they identified pictures of the two as the men that kidnapped, raped and sold them to others.

Next came the pictures of the girls’ injuries and then the medical report from the doctor who treated them was entered into evidence.

They were asked if they pleaded guilty or not guilty. The chief judge recessed the court for fifteen minutes while the tribunal came to a verdict.

When the court was called back to order, the chief judge read the findings of the tribunal - guilty on all accounts. The penalty was read - death by hanging tomorrow at 0600. The whole trial had taken two hours.

After the men were led away we had a review of the process, along with a couple suggestions to smooth out a spot or two.

Lunch and a VCATS was in order. After that the trial of the Bull was carried out; guilty and the same penalty - death by hanging. The third trial of the day ended the same way and would eliminate one drug trafficker.

The Doc with all his equipment for the infirmary arrived at Brownsville at 1500. With all the Suburbans and Humvees, it still took three trips to get it all to Matador.

The Doc with four men and I worked until 21:00 to get it all set up in place and checked out. The traffickers from Puerto Vallarta would be here tonight. The Doc was going to try out the equipment on them tomorrow while I asked questions, after we watched the 0600 hangings. The Doc was going to pronounce them dead.

The Doc and I spent the night in the RV at the Texas Steel site. But first, while in the command RV, I did a VCATS with Louis Boucher.

“All the prisoners arrived safe and sound. The tribunal held its first trials today with high priority prisoners from the Mexican expedition. There were some rough spots that were worked out with the second trial. The first executions are tomorrow.”

‘‘Monday the first trials of your terrorists will begin with the leaders. I haven’t reviewed the evidence that you sent on them, in fact I am not going to. That is the tribunal’s responsibility and the appeals judge. I am assuming your police did a first rate job of putting the evidence together in a usable order?” I said.

‘‘Trials today, execution tomorrow is pretty fast - are you sure you want to move at that pace?’’ Louis asked.

‘‘Absolutely! They are the worst of the worse; they are not getting weeks or months of food, heat and AC just because I want to be nice to killers,’’ I said.

‘‘If you want that kind of delay with the terrorists that’s fine but remember the Pact agreements; in this case - France pays seven hundred and seventy dollars for each one per week. JBG is going to bill you weekly as per the agreement.”

‘‘The agreement was the real bad guys were to be tried and executed and the rest kept in jail for whatever, but it is not going to be for lifetime unless you are willing to pay that long,’’ I said.

‘‘I’m sure the politicians will get tired of paying plus lose interest and just tell someone to make things go away anyway they can,’’ Louis said.

At 0545 the Doc and I watched as the guards struggled to get the four prisoners onto the gallows. At 0600 the trip was pulled and the four were swinging.

We had four men who had volunteered to be executioners. They each wore a black hood in case there were any drones we had missed when the sky was scanned. Drones had not been a problem since we had started shooting them down and no one had come forward to collect the remains.