Chapter 6

College was a bust from our point of view! Sure, there were things we didn’t know that we could learn, but most of the lecturers were deadly dull, and it was nearly impossible to stay awake during the class sessions. I suspected that part of the problem was that none of the professors wanted to teach freshman courses, so the low seniority lecturers were forced to take on the new students.

That was OK, I suppose, for most students, but Nancy and I were too impatient to put up with that nonsense. We continued to attend classes for the first semester simply because we had already paid for them, but it was obvious that we needed a different kind of teaching mode. That’s when we “discovered” on-line universities. We dropped out of Craig University at the end of the first semester and switched to the web for our education. After some searching, we found what we were looking for and registered with them.

This was great from several points of view. We could keep working, which was what we loved to do, and we could pick our time for study. At last, no more dull and dreary lectures! Both of us found that we learned more by reading than by listening, so seeing the text of the lecture was exactly what we needed. We found a school that ran a course for people who were interested in becoming policemen, and that fit very well into what we wanted to know. Even though we would not be directly involved in enforcing the law, it was a great help to know what the law had to say about various subjects. Our schedule became one of working in the evening until very early morning. Going home and sleeping until noon. Getting on line and studying until time for our next job. Things like eating and food shopping and other necessary things were worked into the schedule as necessary. It sounds like hell, but for two hyper-active people like us, it was perfect.

Our former customers were overjoyed that we were returning to work, and we were soon turning down jobs again just because there were not enough hours in the day to do everything. We concentrated on the escort side of bodyguarding, as this seemed to be what the majority of our customers wanted. Very rarely, we would take a job where just Nancy or just I was wanted for an assignment, but mostly we stuck to jobs where it was more appropriate for the two of us to go on the gig.

We had more muggers to fight off as soon as another “designer drug” hit the streets. Absolutely, I think Congress was crazy to decriminalize drug use, sale, and production. Certainly, it quickly killed the high priced market for drugs, and the drug cartels withered on the vine, but too many people were crazy enough to try anything that was offered, and there was no FDA-like clearing house to insure that a new recreational drug was safe. A particular drug disappeared from the streets when it killed too many of its customers, but a new drug was ready to be offered as soon as that happened.

I guess that the worst of the drug problem would cure itself when most of the users were dead. They certainly were headed that way at an accelerating rate, and I, for one, could hardly wait for the last one to die off. It was a perfect example of Darwinism in action, except that it was taking too long for my tastes. Oh, well, it was keeping Nancy and me employed at the kind of job we loved!

Our clients were getting more and more adventurous as we proved that we could protect them from anything that had come along, so far. I guess that we were in for a rude awakening when the other shoe finally fell. Nancy and I were escorting four teens to a gambling establishment down in Connecticut. I don’t know why their parents thought that just the six of us would be safe on the trip, and I don’t know why I was dumb enough to take the job. Maybe it was because I already knew two of the kids from high school—they had been sophomores when I had been a senior, and we had shared a self-defense class.

I had borrowed an SUV from Dad to take us there and back. The idea was that we would spend a couple of hours driving to the casino, the kids would amuse themselves for two hours, then we would drive back. Naturally, only the first part of the trip went according to plan. We got to the casino about 8:00 PM and the kids hit the slot machines like there was no tomorrow. They were fooling around having a good time wasting money when, suddenly, one of them hit the trifecta! Suddenly, there was money all over the place! The machine kept dumping silver dollars, and I don’t know how many came out. I say that because other customers picked some up off the floor and ran with them. When it was over, Jerry Bronson had won over $1,000 dollars.

The management was helpful and supplied two money bags for him to carry all of those coins. They even offered to exchange them for larger bills or even a check for the total, but Jerry was drunk with the joy of winning, and he didn’t want to give up a single one of his trophies. Jerry quit gambling at that point, but the other kids wanted a chance to match him. Sara Findly did win $378, so she had her money bag, too. The other two kids wanted to keep plugging away until they won big, but we had already been at it for three hours, and it was past time for us to be heading home.

All of this time, Jerry and Sara were busy telling everybody that they could corner how much money they had won, so we were marked as carrying around $1,400 when we left the casino. It took physical threats to get the two non-winners to leave with us, but they were finally convinced. I don’t know what Nancy said to the girl, but I threatened the boy with having my baton descend on his balls if he didn’t leave right then.

By the time we left, I was sure that there was not a person in the casino who did not know how much money we had with us, and I’ll bet that the rumor mill had tripled or more the quantity that we actually had. Anyway, I drove, but I had Nancy keep a sharp lookout for anyone who seemed to be following us. Meanwhile, the kids were all higher than a kite from the thrill of winning that much money and from some suspicious cigarettes that Jerry was flashing around.

We’d been on the road about 40 minutes when a car came barreling up on our tail and swung around to cut us off. Hell, I had no choice but to run off the road onto the shoulder to keep from killing us all in a collision. The kids were bounced around, but none of them were hurt, though they were all complaining about my lousy driving.

The car stopped in front of us and four men piled out. They were all carrying pistols, and I assume that they were high, too, because they started shooting as soon as their feet hit the ground. The windshield was blasted out in a few moments. None of us was hit, but everybody was scared shitless. This time, I had no trouble with the kids obeying orders when I ordered them onto the floor. Fortunately, none of the kids were carrying guns because Nancy and I were supposed to protect them.

Nancy stripped off her dress to get to her fighting uniform of black Lycra. Each of us drew our Glocks and prepared to defend ourselves. I told Nancy to make the hijackers stay back while I went out the rear door. My idea was to try to catch them in a crossfire, and I had to get outside to do that. Nancy started firing her 9mm, and that was enough to make the crooks stay back.

I slithered out the rear door and ducked into the adjacent woods. It was so dark that I had a hell of a time making my way toward the thugs, but I finally got close enough that I was sure of making hits. They were easy to spot because of the muzzle flashes, and I knew the same would be true for me as soon as I started shooting.

Therefore, I hunkered down as close to the ground as I could get while still being able to get off aimed shots. The damned fools had never made any effort to shoot out the headlights of the SUV, so they were illuminated to some extent. Oh, Man, I wished I had that machine pistol with me from the ambush of the baseball bus over a year ago. I still had it, but it was safely locked up in our apartment where it was doing me no good. Never again would I travel far without it!