Chapter 15: What Diego Remembered

His name was Diego Norte when he was in Florida. At the moment Diego was in a secret clinic after having a gunshot wound sewn shut. An 8mm bullet from a caseless-cartridge machine gun had imbedded itself in Diego's derriere sideways- -obviously after the misshapen slug had punched through something hard and bounced of another hard object. It was barely recognizable. The old 20th Century forensics would not have been able to positively match bullets from those 8mm folding machine guns to specific guns because of the polygonal rifling and the lack of ejected cartridge cases. Getting smacked by a spent bullet still hurt--and it had to be removed or infection would eventually kill.

The man Diego talked to didn't have a name, didn't speak Spanish, and had Diego been skilled at placing accents would have place the speaker's home in Quebec, Canada. Not that geography mattered. Diego's own accent was as phony as his name.

"I want your statement. Take it from the point where your team took control of the Baker Family General Store. What did you notice about the store?"

"It was a typical retro faux small town general store, nothing remarkable for Florida," Diego said. "A boy, his momma, the family dog, and three naked slaves serving customers. One of our targets visited the store and got a kilo of fish, a dozen eggs, three liters of 2% milk, three loaves of bread and 200 grams of maple sugar candy. We were watching through the hidden store cameras as the merchandise was bagged and the slave called Kandi left the store. The RFID tags matched what we saw on the monitor. Kandi was naked except for a slave choker; there was no way that any messages were passed. We heard and saw everything."

"They could have passed a coded signal and you wouldn't have seen it," the Man said. "Tell me about the woman and the boy."

"The boy cried when we stripped him naked and taped him to the chair. The woman glared at us but offered no resistance even when we took turns raping her," Diego related. "The dog was just a happy mutt. He just watched and wagged his tail."

"You weren't told to rape the woman," the Man said.

"Juan wanted to do the boy," Diego said, "but we ran out of time. What difference did it make, man? We killed everybody. As soon as the store closed its doors, we killed everybody. There were six of us and three slaves, a boy, his momma and the dog. It worked out right--we each got to kill somebody. There wasn't time to have fun, so I used a knife on the male slave. Didn't even bother learning his name. Our chief did the dog. He didn't like the way the dog kept staring at us with those big yellow eyes."

"Yes, the others mentioned yellow eyes," the Man said. "Big bushy tail and pointed ears and a brown coat. I don't like loose ends. Why didn't any of you get pictures of the dog? There was no report of a dog in the pre-strike reconnaissance."

"It was just a stray mutt," Diego insisted. "Probably one of the neighbors. Anyway, we rigged the place to burn as you ordered and at midnight we left to raid the spy nest. It didn't take long for the entry team to knock down the door and kill everybody inside. We accounted for all eight people. You have the video?"

"No, unfortunately your chief had the raid camera," the Man said. "You had to leave him behind. Diego, you were the exploitation element. You got all the records?"