Chapter 116: Sam Dewey

Friday, June 11, 1971

With an average cruising speed of over 250 miles per hour, the King Air 100 made the trip to the private airstrip near New Orleans in about ninety minutes. It was convenient that they already had the coordinates programed in for us.

Once airborne, Anna and I talked about what I was going to do. She had told the FBI agent that the Dewey investigation was a part of a covert CIA/FBI operation, and asked him to keep the prisoners from calling anyone for as long as he could. So we didn’t know for sure how long we had before one of them would be able to call Dewey and warn him. Once they did though, we’d lose our element of surprise.

When I told Anna that she would have to stay on the plane with the CIA pilot, she got a little mad with me. But I insisted, as it would distract me more if she were to come along. “Anna, I need to focus on what I’m doing,” I told her. “If you go in with me, I’ll have to divide my attention.”

Finally, she recognized the validity of my argument.

“Okay, Michael. I know you can take care of yourself. Just promise me that you won’t take any unnecessary risks, okay?” Anna asked.

I assured her that I would only do what was necessary to find out who Dewey’s contacts were in Haiti, and then hightail it out of there. Anna explained that the FBI had already started planning a raid on the property tonight, so I wouldn’t have much time. She went on to explain that her dad was also putting a CIA extraction team in place just for me, and they would be standing by, as close as possible, in the event that I needed them. She then covered some more details of what I might expect to find, before finally going to sit next to the pilot to use the radio, leaving me in silence to think about what I was going to do.

At the appropriate time, the CIA pilot radioed the password we had gleaned from the other pilot, and suddenly, a private airstrip in front of us lit up. I studied the lay of the land and saw only the single hanger, a couple of small outbuildings, and a large old home less than a hundred yards from the runway.

“Tell the General it’s looking like eighteen to twenty,” I told Anna, referring to the number of people I could sense below us.

An airplane, landing in hostile territory, is at its most vulnerable as it lands. So the next five minutes were tense, as the three of us anxiously waited. I was locked onto the two signatures coming out of the hanger, and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t sense any alarm in them. As the pilot taxied us towards the hanger, the two men, both carrying assault rifles, approached the plane casually. Apparently, they suspected nothing wrong. I dropped them where they stood as the King Air rolled to a stop.

“Does he have a gun?” asked the pilot of Anna.

“Uh, no,” I replied for her.

“Here,” he said, offering me a pistol. “Have you ever used one of these?”

“Thank you, but I’ll pass,” I told him. I left it to Anna to explain why to him.

“Please, whatever you do, don’t leave the plane until it’s safe. I’ll keep you connected the whole time,” I told Anna as she opened the cabin door and I prepared to step down out of the plane

Anna didn’t say anything as she kissed me softly.

“Please, Michael. Be careful,” she thought worriedly.

There was room for two planes inside the hanger. A Cessna 150 sat there now, all alone. I decided that must be where they usually parked the King Air. There was a worn looking Cessna 310 sitting sort of skewed on the tarmac in front of the hanger.

The house sat at a right angle to the runway, and they both appeared to be built on what looked to me to be an island in the middle of the marsh. The house faced the south, looking out over the undisturbed grasses and scrub brush towards the bayou in the distance. The driveway circled a fountain in front of the old Victorian style home, before disappearing towards the east under the shadowy canopy of the magnolia trees that lined the drive. Elsewhere, to the north and west, the area around the home was sparsely populated by stately old southern oak trees draped with Spanish moss.

A shudder suddenly ran through me. “There is evil about this place tonight,” I thought. Then I laughed to myself. I must have watched one too many old horror movies.

The light-colored path of crushed and bleached shells was easy to navigate due to the lights from the runway behind me and the lights from the home itself. I noted several expensive cars in the circle drive.

Still wearing my tux from the banquet earlier this evening, sans the bow tie now, I walked up the short path to the house. “Damn. This is straight out of an Ian Fleming novel,” I thought to myself. “I feel like frickin’ James Bond in this tuxedo!”

I heard a little giggle in the back of my head, so I knew Anna was listening.

The two security men at the hanger still lay on the tarmac where I had dropped them. The Old One had taught me how to put people to sleep, but I had not practiced it much, and they were probably not the best folks to perfect my craft with. There were two more security guys standing beside the fountain in the center of the circle drive, between me and the house, and I waited long enough for them to put the fountain between them and the house, then dropped them before they could raise the alarm.

I also liked the little trick I had learned about firing pins. So far, all the weapons I had encountered had them. And the results seemed to be worth the minimal effort it took for me to disable them.

Kneeling beside the two guards that I had just dropped, I roughly shoved one of them from off the top of the other. I wouldn’t want the bottom guy to smother.

I was so focused on scanning that I missed it at first, but I finally noticed that my power was increasing. A quick check with Vickie showed she and the others were doing as the Old Ones had instructed them.

“Thanks!” I told her. My powers surged when I said that.

The four guards that I sensed sleeping in the small bunkhouse next to the big house were next. I didn’t bother to check on them, I just tapped them as I walked on towards the main house.

“That’s eight down and maybe a dozen more to go,” I thought to Anna so she would know what’s going on. “It looks like Mr. Dewey is entertaining this evening,” I told her as I read off the numbers on all the license plates for Anna.

I made one more mental sweep of the grounds around the house, then mounted the two steps to the wide veranda that wrapped around the old Victorian style home. It seemed to me that every light in the place was on, bathing the veranda in a warm glow. As I searched for a doorbell, I began to realize something wasn’t right. Men and women have very different emotional signatures, and I was picking up about a dozen signatures in the house. However, not a single one of them appeared to me to be male. I lifted the brass knocker mounted on the door and banged it twice. I could hear it echo though the old home.

“Oh, well,” I thought. “Maybe I can find what we need before he gets here.”

A large black woman in a starched apron opened the door. She looked right past me as if looking for someone else before finally turning her appraising eye towards me. I scanned and saw she was looking for the security guys.

“And just what are you doing here at this hour of the night, boy?” she asked curtly.

“And just what has happened to good old fashioned southern hospitality?” I wondered. “And I certainly don’t remember being called ‘boy’ this much in my last life!”

However, I tried to remain in character as I said, “I was on my way home from the school dance and I ran out of gas, Ma’am,” telling her what Anna and I had worked out for my cover on the plane. We knew I’d need to explain why a teenage boy was knocking on their door at eleven o’clock at night in a tuxedo. I just hoped that they didn’t realize that school was out for the summer. “I was hoping to use your phone to call my folks.”

“Who is it, Gladys?” sang a voice from inside.

“It’s some kid. He says his car ran out of gas and wants to use the phone,” Gladys told the unseen voice.

“Well, invite him in. If he’s old enough to drive, and he’s good looking, maybe he’ll want to stay and play,” she said as she giggled.

“Come on in, boy. And don’t touch anything,” Gladys said formally. Then in a very low voice she added, “If I was you, I’d make my call and get out of here fast.”

“Gee. Thanks, lady,” I replied in my best teenager fashion, as I scanned her again. She was worried, but resigned to whatever was going on. While she didn’t think about it enough for me to read all of it, I could tell that something was going on that was seriously out of the norm. Gladys didn’t know for sure what it was, but she felt it all the same. And she was afraid.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” said the voice from across the ornate room.

I scanned, and became immediately confused. First, I confirmed that her name was Wendy. Second, I confirmed that she was drunk, not stoned. Third, I confirmed she was pissed that Sam had sent her away when his guests had arrived, and not let her stay and play with his guests, as he usually did. And last, I confirmed that Sam was indeed home. He was in the ‘playroom’. Yet, I still couldn’t sense a male emotional signature. “Wonder what’s up with that?” I thought.

As she weaved her way towards me, I decided to practice my sleep technique on her, mainly because I wasn’t sure that paralyzing a drunk was a good idea. Wendy began to say how handsome I looked as she placed her arm teasingly around my neck, but I put her under before she could complete her thought. Quickly grabbing her now dead weight, I began asking, “Lady? Hey Lady? What’s wrong?” in my best teenaged imitation.

Gladys moved quickly to take the unconscious girl from my arms.

“Don’t worry about her; I’ll see her to bed. It looks like she has had too much to drink,” Gladys said. “You’d best make your phone call and get outta here before there’s trouble.”

Trying to continue my charade until I could figure out what was going on, I walked to the phone and lifted the receiver. Picking seven numbers at random, I began to twist the old rotary dial. Meanwhile, Gladys began to escort the drunken woman up the stairs.

The random number I dialed actually answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Michael,” the voice said.

“Mom?” I was surprised. One of the limits to my abilities is that I cannot sense emotions over the phone. So I had no clue who I was talking to, or how they knew my name. “It didn’t sound like you. This is Michael, and I’ve run out of gas.”

“Good evening, Michael. I work for the General, and he has had all the calls from this phone routed through our switchboard for the evening. The good doctor has been keeping him apprised by radio of what was going on, and she just warned him that you were making a call. Now tell me you’re sorry and tell me you’re out past the old Jenkins’ place on 126.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I took Anna home and was taking a shortcut and ran out of gas. I’m out past the old Jenkins’ place on 126,” I ad-libbed. “Thank god I had left you connected,” I thought to Anna.

“The General says to tell you that Dewey got home a little after five, and hasn’t left since. He also said to tell you that everything you requested is in place. Now, whine a little and say, ‘aw, mom’,” the voice instructed.