Chapter 16

I'd had about a week or so now to think out various plans for sneaking my way onto the Watters estate and then violently rehabilitating everyone I could lay my eyes upon. The problem was that, none of the plans were very clear about how to make a successful egress afterwards. As a famous Himalayan mountain climber once said, 'getting up to the top of the mountain is optional – getting safely down from the mountain is mandatory!'

First, I could just assault the estate grounds, which had lots of armed guards, vicious dogs and security cameras nearly everywhere. Quick and easy – 'hey diddle-diddle, straight up the middle'. That meant a wild shoot-out going in and probably out. Not a good idea! Not to mention this would soon involve lots of incoming members of law enforcement, very few of which would be even slightly friendly to me. I wasn't sure anymore that I could keep my identity anonymous anymore and engaging in a wild-west sort of shootout was certainly no way to go about keeping what little remained of private life.

Secondly, I could infiltrate via the tunnels, except now I didn't have either the Foole or DeeDee to open up the abandoned dry cleaners door once again for me. Breaking in on my own would just trigger the alarm, and a firefight downstairs with extremely little to no room for maneuver. This sounded nearly as bad as the first plan!

Now alone in the taxi cab I debated calling again on DeeDee for this one last favor but I reasoned against it. He'd made his feelings rather clear yesterday that while he'd enjoyed this adventure, he'd also had quite enough ... for now. To intrude again now, so soon again, might engender some lingering hard feelings later. If I somehow managed to survive this fiasco I might later need his professional assistance again ... but hopefully much later.

I did know of three other entrances into the tunnel system ... in theory. There was one inside the Golden Grotto nightclub, but there were always gunsels hanging out there the last time I'd looked in that direction. Then there was the semi-forgotten exit in the basement of the condo building, but I'd probably have to shoot my way in there also, past the Watters goons in the security office of this semi-legitimate business. Not a good option either.

Alternatively, somewhere inside the produce distribution center there was the far western exit of the tunnel system. Unfortunately, that produce warehouse was likely crawling with angry mobsters like a boiling ant mound that had just been kicked. Also I'd have no idea where to look for the tunnel inside that rather large trucking facility, not to mention that the fifty or so normal employees there might wonder what I was up to.

None of the three options sounded good, but I needed to make a decision now and I took a deep breath and chose the produce warehouse, or rather an address about two blocks away from it for the cabbie to drop me off at. A location I'd scouted several times already that was quiet, but not completely remote. I gave the cabbie a trio of twenties in addition to the thirty dollar fare as a bonus to help him forget my face, but I didn't dare be quite overt enough to say "Forget you ever saw me!". Still I think he got the idea and he wrote in a quite separate log notice to mention instead that he took my fare to the airport instead. Close enough.

If Pete had been with me, he'd have probably thought I had gone completely insane, but as the taxi departed I just smiled and kept my chin held up and tried to look and act confident. I just kept whispering to myself as I walked in the darkness towards the warehouse that I 'had a very cunning plan'. I did vaguely sort of have one ... but it could have used an additional prayer to St. Baldrick for any and all of the good luck the saint could spare for me!

My primary assumption that the produce distribution facility would be the safest place to make a covert entry relied on just two simple assumed facts. First all of the excitement there would now hopefully be over and secondly that with the 'mundanes', the normal day shift workers now arriving, that most of the horde of armed gunmen would now be somewhere else. With nothing left there to guard, and the barn door open and the chicken coop already raided, the guards should now be gone! In theory.

With the nose of the sun just now appearing over the Atlantic, I didn't have any time to waste time being overly clever. Yeah, it was probably pretty stupid to make my incursion onto the property via the exact same ditch yet once again, but it was already getting brighter than I had hoped for. If I wasted even another five minutes creating an alternate entry point, I'd have little or no darkness or shadow left to lurk in at all!

Being predictable has definite disadvantages. In this case, the bad guys had already pretty clearly figured out how someone, or several someone's, had snuck onto the grounds earlier that night – and now taken appropriate counter-measures to secure this open point of access, and rather cleverly too!

If the two gunsels now on posted duty outside of the fence, hidden in the cover of the overgrown lot had done their job properly and maintained light and sound discipline, they might have seen me sneaking up first and could have caught me nearly entirely out in the open heading towards the drainage ditch. I'd have been more or less a sitting duck. Instead, I caught the flash of a cigarette lighter from the corner of my eye that warned me to get my face and ass down an instant before I would have appear appeared out of my own protecting cover to make the last dash across to the ditch.

I guess the bad guys assumed that like a bad penn, y I'd turn up here yet again sometime, a la the thief that always returns to the scene of the crime. Well I guess in this instance, that assumption was true. Here I was ... again! This should have been my first clue that this plan was fucked right from the very beginning, but I just couldn't think of a better one. Besides, if all of Watters more trustworthy goons were all going to line themselves up against me in pairs, then I could gun them all down all the faster!

A clever operator would have just crawled back out of the area eating dirt and moving slower than a snail, but my clit was already beginning to tingle with the challenge of eliminating more stupid gunmen from Watters' payroll. Leaving everything but my HushPuppy behind, I began to obversely crawl in a slow but non-lineal fashion around and behind my quarry. I just couldn't rush up to them and start shooting ... after all, there was a remote chance that these were just some camping kids enjoying their stolen or borrowed smokes. That was a very remote option ... and after a few minutes of slinking and losing shadows and darkness by the moment, I did manage to get to a vantage about twenty yards behind them and verified that these were bonafide shooters ... and fair prey.

"What's up guys?" I chirped loudly and full of girlish glee as I stood behind them.

They both nearly jumped out of their socks and were a bit late swinging their rifles around towards me. A rifle is anyway a very poor up-close and personal defense weapon, especially when your opponent is standing almost right next to you. They just blinked and grunted softly as two deliberately aimed quiet 9mm rounds made their observation duties for the rest of the morning entirely unnecessary. I checked each of them to make sure that they were both dead, providing a little bit of extra insurance cutting their jugulars just to make certain.

These ex-shooters had some good gear, but I couldn't waste much more early morning gloom giving them the complete strip-down treatment. I vaguely coveted the rifle, a fairly generic M40 series based upon the venerable but reliable Remington 700 hunting rifle, but I just didn't see myself being able to carry it along with everything else I needed to port this morning. In fact, the more I thought about, it seemed foolish to be carrying bags of money and clothes into what was certain to become eventually become a running gunfight. I'd left my bags earlier at my previous place of cover, but now this reminded me that I needed to quickly find a good place to stash them both, along with most of the contents of my gun bag that I'd now had second thoughts about lugging along. I'd need speed and quiet movement now, and hauling around tons of extra guns and rattling weapon clips just didn't make any sense.

My attire for today was alright, wearing black jeans with a black top and even my new black linen jacket over it. The H&K MP-5 was just sort-of concealable inside the jacket, but it certainly made a bulge in a way that my twin holsters for the Lady Cougars didn't. Inside my jacket and jeans pockets I moved every extra clip of ammo that I could. For now I'd be fine but this created some obvious bulges that could be a problem if I tried to go incognito for any reason. Everything else except for a small sack with a few extra tricks needed to go into a temporary hole covered up by some rocks, and I soon found a decent spot far enough away from the dead shooters that I thought anything other than a minute search of the area would stay hidden. Losing anything stashed here, including the 'pocket money', wouldn't be critical to me anyway. Everything inside had been wiped down and/or handled with gloves, such as the ones I was wearing now and hopefully there had been no evidence transfer.

The night was now gone and it was immediately a matter of just how much shadow and early morning glare I could quickly use to complete my entry into the warehouse. A fast check with the sniper's binoculars showed another greater concern, a not-so roaming guard who had more or less grown roots at a spot inside the fence right in-between the two largest gaps under the fence where the rain gully had washed out the most dirt. This guard had a rifle slung across his shoulder and a side-arm fixed at the ready in hand, but kept at rest.

He wore a civilian security guard uniform but even at a distance this didn't fool me. He was a Watters gunsel.

With no cover of darkness left to speak of, any approach to within HushPuppy range would have been suicidal. At best I'd now make it about half-way across the field before being spotted and I'm pretty sure the bastard had 'shoot first, ask questions later' for his marching orders today. That would put him out of accurate 9mm one-shot kill range, especially with the significantly weakened powder loads.

That just left me with Plan B. Always try and have a Plan B!

The nice thing about big empty city lots in industrial areas is that they're sure to be used for dumping grounds, and it didn't take me long at all to crawl around searching the piles of junk to find exactly what I was looking for – an empty 2-liter plastic soda bottle. In fact, I had a choice of several. With the addition of some duct tape (always an essential part of any good tool kit) I carefully mounted the mouth of the bottle into the end of the M40 rifle barrel and taped it down tight. This wouldn't make a perfect silencer, or rather noise suppressor, but for one shot only it would keep the report of the rifle down to a minimal level. It was the best semi-silent long range option that I could hope for.

Since I couldn't get to within effective range of the guard out near the ditch without leveling my own cover and being seen, I'd just have to peg him from right here. With the base of the soda bottle slightly disrupting bullet ballistics, I needed a safe high percentage shot like the center of his chest and I think I was only off target by about 3 inches at most, enough to bring him straight down to the ground but not entirely dead. I needed to run and correct that little problem!

The suppressed sound of the rifle didn't actually sound all that suppressed to my ears. As I fired it the plastic base of the bottle pretty much exploded outwards in all directions, but it did apparently accomplish its job, since I didn't see or hear any reinforcements charging around the corners of the building. Crawling up under the fence wiring, I could hear the wounded guard calling out for help, but not particularly loudly. My shot had missed his heart but had blown out his right lung enough that his other lung and chest cavity were filling up rapidly with blood, and rather faster than he could cough it out.

Crawling, let alone standing or running away, weren't options for him anymore. He had dropped his sidearm and his hand radio too, but I didn't want to risk one last heroic call out for help so I finished him with a HushPuppy while on my hands and knees crawling up toward him. The shot was quite nicely placed, entering the underside of his jaw, up through the roof of his mouth, and then through his brain, exiting out the very top of his skull. Not a bad shot actually! Hundreds of hours at a gunnery range practicing any firing position you think you might need in an emergency helps turn crisis situations into calm but purposeful practices of prior 'muscle memory'.

Sweating in training can prevent bleeding during operations later. Usually, or mostly anyway.

I had to exit out under the fence one last time to reclaim my bag of tricks and shove it up underneath, then crawling underneath myself for hopefully the very last time. I'd smeared my jacket with a good bit of dirt in the process but it just couldn't be helped. At this point it wouldn't help anymore with the camouflage effect anyway. The night was over and dawn was very much advancing on us.

This faux security guard did have something I might find useful, being that he was carrying an MP-5 himself and I stopped to check if his extra magazines were of the same caliber as mine. They were! MP-5's come in most ammo ranges but in my experience mostly 9mm - an inadequate round for combat self-preservation in my opinion. The one I'd found earlier and was toting now chambered for 10mm, that's about .40 caliber, which is very respectable – and an acknowledged excellent compromise choice amongst most gun aficionados between 9mm and my beloved .45 ACP. I already loved my Lady Cougars which were also 10mm, and if you're going into a dangerous situation it's best to only have to carry just one type of ammo! That principle is based upon the old 19th century principle of 'cowboy carrying', where it was conventional common wisdom to carry an identical common round for both your rifle and six-shooter. That was smart planning then ... and still is now.

The two guards I'd killed earlier in the morning had been found and removed, but that was fine. This one could just go under that same pile of broken pallets and perhaps go without being noticed for an hour or two as well!

With my HushPuppy in my right hand and the strap to my stringed bag behind me in my left, I slunk down and around the corner to the front of the building and saw a sight that warmed the cockles of my blood tainted and doomed heart. There were no obvious guards out in front to be seen, and a morning shift employee was just now getting out of her car and wearing a big white produce sanitation coat that I thought would be a near perfect size to fit me over my overstuffed black linen jacket!

The only real issue was how to best talk her into both giving me her coat (and ID badge) but since I'd had no sleep in a couple of nights once again, I wasn't feeling the slightest bit witty or clever. Also I couldn't at all risk the chance of her screaming, so I did the next most reasonable thing ... other than shooting her in cold blood. I walked right up to her and promptly cold-cocked her across the temple with the butt of my pistol, flattening her senseless to the ground with the first blow.

I did feel bad about slightly cracking her skull, not to mention tying and gagging her up in the back seat of her own car, but to help settle a little bit of my guilt I left her with a parting gift for the loan of her coat and identity to the amount of about $5000 dollars. This bundle of fifty Ben Franklins was all I had left on me, except for some loose ones and fives. Everything that I had left, still stuffed in my jeans for ready pocket money.

The cash wasn't going to do me any good for the rest of my trip anyway ... and I'd probably have even less use for it after reaching my final destination. The odds of me spending my fortune sunning on some Caribbean beach were looking increasingly like slim to none. Besides, I hadn't tied her all that securely, so I figured she'd be out for an hour or so and could work her hands free in maybe another hour or so after that. That was more than enough time for me to get to where I was going. Maybe even the bonus cash would keep her mouth quiet about what had happened, although I couldn't count on it.

Actually the unfortunate lady I'd waylaid was an excellent to near perfect match for the current heavily armed me. She was just slightly stouter, giving her white coat a more casual drape over my various hidden guns and haphazardly stuffed ammo magazines. Our hair colors were much alike, and after I'd rolled mine up into a severe bun on top it quite matched her photo, especially once I had her thin glasses perched also on the tip of my nose.

The ID card was a fairly simple RFID electronic card with a computer printed low-rez image upon the plain white plastic, and a guard could take a good long squint at the distorted off-color image of Esmeralda Rodriquez and not finding much if anything at variance with my face. Being heavily tanned and having what is politely called 'Mediterranean features' wasn't at all a disadvantage, and in a pinch (which this was) I could adequately pass for Hispanic, or in her case probably Cuban heritage. I still remembered some of my high school Spanish, but mostly just the ruder and more impolite phrases ... probably exactly what I'd need for a place like this anyway!

The other nice thing about this large oversized white lab-style coat was that it did have big internal pockets inside, and my MP-5 this time was much more concealable underneath, hidden but ready for quick use!

There was still a lone gunsel with a side-arm just inside the main entrance, being another faux-security guard who was obviously a re-assigned Watters crime family soldier new to the facility. He did his job, but in a perfunctory manner, stopping me, checked my badge and then asked my name and compared the two, and the image to a list of names on a clipboard. He squinted and waved me in.

Clearly he didn't know me ... or anyone else here for that matter and was just matching ID's to the master employee list. Heck he didn't even ask what was in my bag of tricks! Under normal circumstances, I doubted that security here had even been anything other than trivial, but the events of earlier this morning had probably changed this for good, not that anything particularly dodgy had ever regularly occurred here before ... or probably would again in the near future.

Now that I was safely inside, the next immediate problem seemed to be where to go start looking for the entrance to the underground tunnel. My best guess would be start searching somewhere near the management offices, but a secure door or room inside one of the large produce storage areas was a distinct possibility as well. For the moment perhaps, the fastest thing might just be to start my search at the #5 loading dock bay doorway and look for recent scratches on the cement floor.

While underground last night the moving dollies and rolling carts had been rather heavily loaded and sounded loud and squeaky, as they'd likely used every bit of moving equipment they had on-hand to get the job done fast. Undoubtedly one or more of these rolling bits of hardware had had a bad wheel or two ... most of the normal moving ones I'd seen over the years elsewhere did. Also I thought I should look for trails of dust near the tunnel entrance. The underground tunnels were old and not really traveled all that heavily and the rolling wheels probably carried along a good bit of old debris.

This gave me a lot of things to look for, and it was best that I kept my head down. After all, someone might really mistake me for Esmeralda, and want to talk to her! Actually, that soon became the least of my concerns as I soon noticed from the corner of my eyes that workers nearby actually came to a dead stop when they saw me and quickly changing direction to directly avoid me. Poor Esmeralda was apparently the office perra (bitch) and a mid-level supervisor that was more than a little disliked by the rank and file.

So much for any plan of walking up to one of the minimum wage pismires porting produce and and demanding, "Pendejo, donde se túnel?"! Maybe I could try, but they'd just probably call me a punta under their breath or worse, 'Besa mi culo, puto'. Then I'd have to shoot a few of them. Best not to have to.

One poor sod of a worker did shuffle up to me and mumble something unintelligible while looking down at my feet and he quickly handed me a clipboard which probably contained bad news the real Esmeralda probably won't have enjoyed getting. I snatched it away from and turned sharply away from him growling, 'No me jodas!', followed up with an even louder, 'Yo mataria tu!' after I'd appeared to have read the unhappy delivery figures.

The poor worker didn't just back away from me; he flat out turned and ran!

Now that really got everyone jumping and scampering away from me as far as they could get! When a crazed Cuban lady screams that she's going to kill someone ... she usually means it!

Now that I definitely had some elbow room to operate, I stashed my bag of tricks under a convenient desk and began searching around the loading docks, pacing with apparent annoyance with my face hidden as much as possible behind the clipboard. No one wanted to fuck with me now and after a minute or two of pacing I thought I could see some fresh scratches in the concrete that more or less seemed to lead from the refrigerated parts of the warehouse and into an area with some private reserve storage. As I followed the faint trail, some fresh scrapes and scratches started to become more noticeable here and there were even some very fresh dusty skid marks from wheels that all seemed to lead straight towards an unmarked equipment maintenance door in-between a pair of mundane restrooms, inside a controlled access storage area, which my card pass allowed me instant access to. X marked the right spot, alright, but I was going to have a definite problem with this next door.

The regular deadbolt lock on the door I thought I could manage. I'm not great with a pair of lockpicks, but being around the Foole and DeeDee had given me some confidence that was probably unwarranted! The big sturdy padlock slightly higher on the door was a bit more of a problem. I could maybe pick that one too, but it would take more time!

Since I needed some time and bit more private operating space, I grabbed a nearby four-wheel rolling cart and stacked a couple of cases of strawberries from nearest the door unto it, all the while screaming at near the top of my lungs in coarse street Spanish about how I'd castrate the maricón babosos who'd stored these at the wrong location and temperature!

Everyone around me scattered, except for one brave soul who yelled back 'Vete a la verga ruca!' Or pretty much a 'fuck you too, bitch' ... but he didn't stick around so that we could discuss the matter any further. Now I was pretty much alone in this part of the storage warehouse!

Returning quickly with the cart to recover my stashed bag, I covered it with another crate of strawberries and after a quick rummage in a few trash cans found what I'd been looking for, and then returned to the locked door to enjoy my temporary privacy.

Now probably no one would have blinked much if I'd pulled out one of my Lady Cougars to shoot out both locks, but in reality padlocks of this high quality can survive being shot a few times and still remain secured. Remember the old 1980's MasterLock TV commercials? Same sort of deal.

Now I won't go into too much detail, but using a common tin 12 oz soda can and a sharp knife, you can quickly cut out a certain metal design shape, fold it a few times and then wrap it strategically around the loop of the shackle and force it down into the padlock body so that it gently releases and pries open the locking bar. It takes time and practice ... but it does work! I'd learned this trick back in high school one early fall day when I'd forgotten the combination to my gym locker. Probably the single useful most useful information I'd ever learned in school!

With another loud series of bellows and un-vague threats of specific bodily harm, I scattered any workers who'd thought about returning to see what I was up to, and then broke out my small set of lockpicks. Deadbolts can be tricky if you don't have the right equipment, but DeeDee had gifted me a set of picks that he said would open 85% of the most common locks and the one on this door was dead-common and mundane. I knew exactly what tool I needed and I had the door unlocked in about two minutes of fussing and sweating. Not bad for me, but DeeDee could have done it in less than a minute, and the Foole could have finagled it in mere seconds, but I was now left to my own devices.

With a loud generalized 'Chinga usted', or 'fuck you all', I opened the service door and rolled in my strawberry covered cart. My HushPuppy was just loosely covered with berries and I did have near instant need of it as there was one guard at the other end of the fairly small room, right where a sloping smooth ramp descended underground. He was exactly where I wanted to be and I didn't feel the least bit in the mood to explain my presence. He had a gun, holstered at the moment as I'd quite quietly opened the door and caused him some considerable surprise, but this was quite enough to make him a legitimate casualty of war.

One round in the center of his forehead was plenty and after briefly checking him over I decided that he didn't require any further insurance.

Now on to stage two of my infiltration! I stopped for a moment to make sure that the dead guard didn't have a buddy on watch down at the bottom of the ramp, but for as far as I could casually see the coast was clear heading down to the tunnel level. Before heading onwards I rested and shut my eyes for just a minute while I chewed a few of the riper strawberries and thought.

I probably wouldn't need the produce coat now but it might have my hair strands on it or even possible DNA transfer, so I'd take it with me for awhile. I stuffed it into my bag. I also didn't think anyone had gotten a really clear look at my face as I'd kept it mostly covered with the clipboard. In any case with my hair in a bun and the glasses I did look pretty much at a respectable distance just like the woman I'd impersonated. There were probably some security video cameras covering where I'd been, but since I'd kept my face carefully down I doubted that any of them could have gotten a clear picture of my face. Since I'd of course worn thin flesh-tone gloves the entire time I didn't have to worry about fingerprints either. As long as I didn't leave a half-eaten strawberry (I checked to make sure I hadn't) I should be fine. I even put the uneaten green leaf tops into my pockets, just in case. No DNA evidence from me here!

That left in theory no significant trace evidence behind me and nothing but bad guys with guns in front of me. Absolutely capital and perfect! And everything is quite correct, and all is right — too-loo-ral, loo-ral-lay! As the old song would say!

In the darkness below I was once again a damsel in black, trying to look like just another Watters gunsel or merc, and I left my MP-5 more or less hanging off from my shoulder. From now on, I hoped to be able to blend in with the other guards and Watters family soldiers and hopefully I wouldn't have to shoot everyone I encountered.

At this juncture, my safest play was to bluff anyone I passed and pretend to be another soldier on parade, just patrolling about or heading for a meeting at the main estate. Might not work, but down here in the underground anyone I'd likely meet would assume that I belonged here. They wouldn't know me, but they'd not likely directly challenge me either. Watters had pulled in a lot of his available local talent for last night's little moving party and I could reasonably be expected to be just another of the throng, returning from one of the innumerable search parties that had almost certainly been sent out the moment the news of the 'disappearance' of the truck loaded with Watters private art collection was noticed.

Just maybe I could I could brazen this one out after all!

As the Grateful Dead song goes, 'When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door.'." I'd been counting chickens once again before they'd even hatched and before I could even make down the ramp into the underground, the inside door to the warehouse suddenly opened on me without warning, and it was really only due to dumb luck that I had been standing next to the side of it the time and now was behind the open door, nearly flush against the wall but hidden and unnoticed.

My luck held for a moment as the intruder seemed to be one of the few remaining Watters guards left and he had been apparently become concerned as to why the padlock was off the secure door and what had happened to the entry guard inside? He found the dead guard still at the top of the ramp going down into the tunnels and took a brief look all around but didn't see me behind the still open doorway. In the gloom I'd risked peeking an eye out around the side of the door to watch him and his quick spinning scan of the room had missed spotting me. Now the passage down to the tunnels held his complete attention and he now took a step or two down the ramp to better look and listen down into the tunnels below.