Chapter 9: Leaving Town for Good

FSJ was a major crossroads for drugs. Unlike what was on TV, the reality was, most drugs coming into or going out of North America went through Alaska. Why smuggle things through an extremely heavily guarded southern boarder when you can go through a relatively unguarded north. Not only that, there are millions of uninhabited islands where secret bases can be established. There was Canadian pot and hash heading off continent. At the time, Canada was a world powerhouse in the pot and hash trade. The harder drugs headed south from Alaska. Alaska was easy to smuggle things into and out of, both from the ocean side and the Canadian border. Drugs all stopped in FSJ, so it could be routed to or from different places.

Drugs mostly went out of, or into the continent from Alaska, via Whitehorse, then FSJ. I contacted my Filipino friends one last time. I knew it was a risk. At one time they did work for the Mennonites. My advantage was, they were greedy little bitches and I promised them a $2 million payday. That was as much as they got out of the Mennonites the entire time they worked together.

This was the first job I did where people were killed. The Menno Mob didn’t think I knew where their main facility was. They also only had minimum security. Weapons were easy to get. The RCMP station in town had way more weapons than they were supposed to have and they were not as secure as they were supposed to be. They had 20 FN C1A1s alone. Those were the assault weapons that the Canadian military used at the time and not a police weapon. It fired a 7.62mm full metal jacket and was great for destroying brick walls. Then there was the C8 Carbines, MP5A3 SMGs, Winchester Model 70 sniper rifles and Smith and Weston 5946 pistols. The funny thing was, I don’t remember seeing shotguns down there.

The police armoury was in the basement of the police station and could be accessed from an outside door. At night, only one civilian manned the building, staying upstairs where the prisoners and alarm systems were. The RCMP wanted to fuck with me and the Mennonites threatened my girls, they had this coming.

I kidnapped one of the police that should have lost his job but didn’t. Once sufficiently drugged, he gladly told us who the armoury officer was. It used to be Tetley, and he was transferred when the blackmail material was released, so I didn’t know who the armoury officer was anymore. The captured cop informed us the new armoury officer was one of the cops that was crooked, but we didn’t have enough blackmail material on him, so he got off scot free. The armoury officer needed to be taught a lesson, so I drugged his 20 year old daughter and had her bring me his keys. She was no better than he was. When I was done with her l sold her in Mexico. I figured she could do donkey shows for penance.

I didn’t take any chances. I knew one of the women that worked the front desk, day shift of the cop shop, so I drugged her too. From her, we got the name of the person that worked the night that we were going to clean out the armoury. I didn’t know the guy. Thankfully she knew where he lived, and pointed out his car. We waited for him to go to work and kidnapped him in broad daylight. We put a bag over his head and threw him in the van. It wasn’t even a rented van. It belonged to one of the Filipinos. You would have thought they would be more careful. Between not knowing if they could be trusted and their poor decisions they were a huge risk.

We drugged up the evening guard and since he was pliable from the drugs that we had given him, it didn’t take long to convince him how he got to work on his own. I was a little concerned: what if he got found out, lets the prisoners go, or does something else we couldn’t predict?. In case a police cruiser came by or our drugged up and pliable night watchman let the prisoners out, we kept lookouts with hand radios. We had one guy watching the front door and one on the back.

We had to wait an hour after shift change for the cops to all leave for patrol. The cop shop was locked up and the night watchman was the only one in the building, aside from anybody locked up. I drove up in a rented cargo van with a couple Filipinos and headed down to the armoury, 20 minutes later the entire armoury including weapons, armour, ammunition, most of the restraints and a few other odds and ends including a battering ram and smoke grenades were loaded in the van.

I drove the van south, to a secluded road by the airport, where we offload everything into a few cars and one pickup. One of the Filipinos drove the truck to a camp ground near Grand Prairie and torched it. When we took the cop’s daughter we had planted evidence that she was involved in a street gang from Edmonton. By the time we were done it looked like the weapons were heading for the Edmonton black market.

The next night was a bloodbath. I had a crossbow, so I could take out the guards silently. The Filipinos had surrounded the place and waited for my signal. There was only 20 of us and around 30 of them. They only had hunting rifles. We had smoke grenades, military weapons and the element of surprise.

By the time the Mennonites realized something was wrong, I had already killed 5 of them with the crossbow. I signal the Filipinos before the alarm was sounded and they pounce on the place. The Filipinos were all in their personal vehicles, which were old piece of shit vehicles that when the serial numbers were removed and the vehicles burnt nobody would know who owned them.

There was a ranch house, main house, garage and trucks parked everywhere. The only advantage the Mennonites had was, we didn’t know where the money was, so we couldn’t just burn the houses down and let the Mennonites burn. I figure the garage was the most likely place, and so, that was where I had half the men concentrate. Some of the Mennonites were good shots, but they knew nothing about tactics. Neither did the Filipinos. Good shots do not make up for being out gunned by SMGs and assault rifles vs hunting rifles. It was still a good thing I came along, or the Filipinos wouldn’t have been able to finish the job.

FUCK ME, The garage was filled with pallets of drugs and two 1/8 pallets of money. To give you an idea, approximately one full pallet of $20 bills is $500 billion. I know it sounds like a lot, but if you think about it, 125 billion in drug money isn;t as much as you might think. The largest drug bust in US history was in Sylmar California. It was 6.9 billion worth of drugs plus cash. Only a small fraction of drugs coming into the continent came in through the south, so it would have been a comparatively small drug bust compared to what they could do in the north. The California bust was only cocaine. This was everything from raw poppies to pot. The only thing missing was the designer drugs that were made locally. The largest poppy bust of all time was considered to be priceless.

Most drug raids happen when there is one shipment. This is a bunch of shipments of various drugs, all at the same time, going in both directions. BC had some of the best pot and hash in the world. The crystallized pot grown in Prince George was stronger than crack. Then there was all the hard stuff being imported for distribution all over North America. This was BIG. The two biggest organizations in the northern drug trade were the Menno Mob and the Hells Angels. We were hitting the Mennonites on the day that it would hurt them the most. What really pleased me was knowing that their suppliers would take it out on them for losing it. This was going to severely hurt one of the biggest players in the North American drug trade.

At the time, I didn’t know what denomination the money was but the Filipinos were going to get a bonus. There was also a lot more drugs there than I was led to believe. There was roughly 400 lb of opium. That is enough to buy a small kingdom and pay for an army to take the next one. You name the drug it was there. I let the boys know to firebomb the other buildings. Most of the Mennonites were dead but I realized I had made a huge mistake. We attacked without cutting the phone lines. They had help on the way and we hadn’t loaded the money.

I got the boys loading the money, but they were more concerned about loading the drugs than the money. I loaded as fast as I could, but it was too late, reinforcements were there and another firefight erupted. Half the Filipino’s were dead. In their arrogance the Filipinos thought they knew better, and refused to listen to my orders. It was dark, but the fires consuming the buildings made us backlit. We couldn’t see them but they could see us. From what was happening I was guessing there were only ten of them but I wasn’t sure.

A quick scan told me it was likely 15 of us to 10 of them, but we were falling quickly, because my men wouldn’t listen. It didn’t take long for them to realize their mistake. In that time we had lost 6 more. The only good thing was we knew the police were not coming. We were too far out of town. It would take them 30 minutes to get there and by then we should have won or died. There was a risk of more Mennonites showing up. I grabbed a dead body and propped it up in the seat of a forklift. I then crawled in the cab beside it, but stayed on the floor. I used mirrors to see and drive out to help my men. At first the Mennonites fall for the dummy corps and were only aiming at it, leaving me safe to drive. Using the forklift as a shield, I got two of my men back to the garage, before the Mennonites realized their mistake. Before long we were all in the safety of the garage but they had killed one more of us. I figured we were outnumbered 8:10 and they likely had more on the way.