Chapter 18

I spoke with Ramón at breakfast, explaining what I wanted to do with the remaining money from selling the Kozlov properties. He stared at me, stunned, when I told him my plan. I wanted to build houses or manufactured homes on the rocky property for our workers, rather than have everyone live in trailers or mobile homes. We would use the mobile homes for older couples whose children had moved out or for newly married couples with no children. Eventually, we’d use them for seasonal workers during harvest. I’d build two, three, and four-bedroom houses for the families of employees with children. I left it to him to poll everyone and see if they wanted individual yards, or community spaces where the kids could play.

I knew that some of the families preferred living together in a large nuclear family. Four of those families had grouped mobile homes and manufactured homes together at the N.C. farm, forming a square with a large patio area between them that they had covered. I wanted those families to move into the remaining large homes. The thirteen farms I’d purchased had twelve homes, although a couple of the larger homes had smaller granny flats, and a couple had bunkhouses for farmhands. In our case, extended family or seasonal workers could live in those.

Subtracting my house, the shot-up gang house next door, and the two houses my brothers had moved into, I had eight large homes left. Carlos and Ramón would each need one for their families, and the four big nuclear families would each get one of the bigger houses. That left two houses.

In addition, I needed to have the contractor check out the house next door to see how much it would cost to repair. If it was too much, I might just raze the house. I had no idea what the Hanley property offered, and would need to look at it today or tomorrow.

With Ramón’s agreement on everything, I needed to call Carl and see if he thought Kroger would be interested in year-round organic tomatoes. It was 8:00, almost lunchtime to those of us who get up before the rooster. For Carl, it should be late enough that he would be up. Reaching for my cell phone, I realized that I left it turned off all day yesterday. When I turned it on, it rang.

“Speaking of the Devil,” I laughed, seeing Carl’s name on the caller ID.

“Jim!” Carl exclaimed. “Is everything okay?” he asked, sounding concerned.

“Fine, I just forgot to turn my cell phone on yesterday,” I replied.

“No, I’m talking about the shootout up there yesterday. I came out to see how you planned to lay out the crops and couldn’t get within two miles of your place. Evidently, the feds busted a big drug smuggling ring near you. It was all over the news last night. With as much property as you own, it had to be next to one of them,” he explained.

“Oh, it was. The feds used our house as their command post all day. The last one just left a couple of hours ago. I actually own the house they attacked, right next door to us, just over half a mile away. I didn’t know they had the roads closed, or even that it was on the news. Yesterday was a zoo here,” I answered.

“I’m glad everyone is okay,” he said, sounding relieved.

“The only injuries that I’m aware of were to the bad guys. Hey, I’ve been talking with Ramón about planting most of our tomatoes in greenhouses, and growing them year-round,” I said to change the subject. “Think Kroger would be interested in that?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? They’d love it, but do you know how expensive it’s going to be to build the greenhouses and provide the heat and light you’ll need in the winter?” he asked.

“I’m going to install more windmills, so the heat and light will be much cheaper. As for the greenhouses, I made another big profit selling a group of properties near where my folks lived in Virginia. I pocketed almost as much as what I cleared on the deal you set up for me, and can afford cash for the greenhouses. Imagine no debt to pay off for the greenhouses, and almost free heat and light. I’m willing to bet the tomatoes in the off-season won’t be much more expensive than what we harvest during the summer. That should bring in a few new customers to your stores.”

“Oh, man, my boss may come down personally and kiss you,” he laughed.

“If your boss is a guy, tell him to take it out on his wife. If it’s a woman, she’ll need to get permission from my spousal equivalents, first,” I laughed, realizing as I said it that Carl didn’t know about any of my harem.

“Do what?” Carl gasped. “First, I didn’t even know you were dating again, much less seriously. Second, unless I heard wrong, you said equivalents, as in more than one,” he prodded.

“Bring the wife and kids, and plan to stay for dinner. It’s a long story, and you can meet all nine members of my harem,” I suggested.

“Nine, yeah, right. I’ll bring all four of my wives, too,” he said, obviously thinking I was pulling his leg.

“If you’ve got four wives, bring them. I’m serious about the nine women,” I replied.

“This I gotta see. I’ll get my family loaded into the car and we’ll be there in about an hour,” he said. We said our goodbyes and hung up.

My next phone call was to Connor Phelps, my local contractor. He was excited to hear from me. They had already finished the only two small outside jobs they’d gotten since starting to work for me. He assured me he’d be here within the hour. Since I had an hour to kill, and felt drawn to visit the Hanley house, I took a drive. Several minutes later, I drove up the long driveway to the Hanley house.

It was another beautiful antebellum plantation home. Although smaller than mine, it was still gorgeous. Thinking about it, I guess that each of the old plantation style homes nearby were smaller than mine was. In the distance, I could see a herd of what appeared to be a hundred or so Angus cattle. I doubted that they would qualify as organically raised, although there was lots of pasture available. I hurried over and made sure they had access to water and that the pasture had enough forage. I also called Ramón to let him know that we had a new herd of beef.

Despite the beautiful exterior appearance of the house, once I walked through the front door, I was hit with an uneasy feeling. Standing in the entryway, I looked around. While the decor in my home was classically elegant, such as polished marble floors, the decor inside this house was gaudy and pretentious.

Curio shelving, filled with expensive-looking knick-knacks, covered the walls. Marble pedestals lined both sides of the hallway, topped with what appeared to be antique Oriental vases or pottery. I couldn’t believe that the Marshals didn’t take it all. This stuff had to be worth a fortune. Then again, maybe that was why Walt felt seven million was a fair price, even if he paid for it with confiscated cash.

Still, it wasn’t the pretentiousness making me uneasy. I knew the sordid things that had happened here, having suffered through Stella’s recitation to the doctor. Knowing what had happened, and that it had happened here made me nauseous, but not edgy. The feeling I had now was similar to what I felt yesterday morning. That feeling was what made me keep searching for the source of the scream.

Listening carefully, all I heard was my own rapid breathing and my own pulse in my ears. With my right hand, I drew my Glock. With my left, I dialed Jan on my cell phone. “Hi, baby,” she answered eagerly.

“Listen carefully,” I whispered. “Send backup to the Hanley house. I just got here, and something is making me nervous. Do not call me back; I’m turning off my cell phone, Okay?”

“Got it, send help, don’t call. Be careful, Jim,” she replied.

“I will,” I whispered, hung up, and turned my phone off. The last thing I needed was for it to ring at an inopportune moment and give me away.

I didn’t know my way around the house, but enough light shone through the windows that I could see through most of the ground floor of the house from the entryway. The formal living room and dining room were to the left, the parlor and stairway were to the right. Stepping on the back of my left shoe, I slid my foot out of it, and did the same to my right shoe. Walking in my socks was a lot quieter than walking in running shoes. Those tended to squeak on marble floors at inconvenient times, although I wasn’t getting a feeling of danger yet.

Speaking of squeaks, I heard one that sounded like a door opening slowly. Fortunately for me, opening it slowly drew the squeak out long enough for me to place it. The noise was coming from the kitchen, beyond the dining room, and that was where the new feeling of danger was now coming from.

I tiptoed stealthily through the living room and dining room, hearing two men holding a whispered argument. “I’m telling you, they can’t have found all the videos or they would have busted us, too,” one man hissed.

“Maybe the videos didn’t show our faces. I think we should find his stash and get the hell out of the country,” the second man hissed in return.

“I think you should both put your hands up. U.S. Deputy Marshal,” I announced. They wore ski masks so I couldn’t tell much about them except height, weight, skin color, and eye color.

The man on the left complied, putting his hands on his head. I noted the lack of a visible weapon. The man on the right spun and started to raise his gun in my direction. Three rounds from my Glock caught him in the center of his chest. I had hoped he was wearing a vest so the shots would knock him down without killing him; no such luck.

The second man puked at the sight of so much blood pooling beside his friend’s lifeless corpse.

“It’s just you and me here. You have two minutes to show me where the stash of videos is, as well as the valuables you wanted, or you’ll end up like your friend,” I growled threateningly.

“They’re upstairs,” he answered anxiously between bouts of coughing up vomit, obviously terrified that he was next in line for the same treatment.

I patted him down thoroughly to make sure he didn’t have a weapon, grabbed a nearby kitchen towel to pick up and pocket the gun his friend had dropped, and then encouraged my prisoner towards the stairs, prodding him with the barrel of my gun. He had just finished showing me the last of the hiding places he knew about beneath the floorboards of the study when two of the agents who were watching our place burst in with their guns drawn.

Once they secured my prisoner, I called Walt. The FBI agent who had just arrived had been at this house yesterday during the raid. The tunnel entrance the two men just used to gain entry to the house hadn’t been discovered or searched yesterday.

I called the house and warned them that I’d be here for a while. They promised to entertain Carl’s family, and to have Ramón review my idea with both Connor Phelps and Carl.

Within an hour, four helicopters landed, each bringing agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF, or Marshals Service. The tunnel was thoroughly investigated. It ran west to the boathouse, in exactly the opposite direction as the tunnel where the Hanley women had been abused. Inside the boathouse was a pontoon fishing boat, all decked out with enough fishing poles and gear to supply ten people. The surprise, though, was the hidden compartments beneath the boat and inside the pontoons filled with waterproofed bundles of cocaine.

The DEA agent recognized the boat from their surveillance photos as one that had frequently fished along the creek’s bank near the house we raided yesterday. That meant there was probably another undiscovered way to get the drugs from the boat into the tunnels there.

The FBI agents took the new, smaller stash of videos to review while the DEA took control of the drugs. I opened the stash of valuables that the two intruders had come for and found a million dollars in bundled hundred-dollar bills, and a cloth bag with a double fistful of diamonds. I intended to return later and check the house thoroughly for more hidden compartments.

For now, I left the other agents cataloging and removing the contraband and installing security equipment like what they had installed in the house next door to me. It would let us know if anyone else tried to get back into the house or the boathouse or use either of the two tunnels. Four more agents would be left to watch this property for a week.

After greeting my guests when I finally got home, the girls all hugged me. Chloe went last, inhaled deeply with her nose in my hair as she hugged me, and then proceeded to drag me to the bedroom and ravish me. At least I remembered to take the pillowcases filled with loot to the bedroom, and didn’t leave them where someone might see what was inside so I’d have to explain.

When Chloe was sated, I was finally allowed to go back to my guests. “I’m sure Jan explained to them,” Chloe chuckled when I commented about leaving my guests. Opening the safe to put away the cash and diamonds, I was stunned to see that Walt had left everything. His handwritten note explained that his Christmas list included supplying the southeast sector with type IV armor and shields and a lot more. He would send me the list once he got lists from the sector chief. He would have the local offices of the DEA, FBI, ATF, and DHS send their lists. I made a mental note to call Dwight to see how to report the income on my taxes.

They had shared the American-made weapons and ammo we took from the tunnel with the FBI, ATF, and the DEA to help reduce their costs for arms and ammo. They left me all ten cases of the Russian AKs and the ammo for them. They even left me a dozen blocks of C-4, detonator caps, and det cord to use in the rocky area where we were installing windmills. Ramón already had those locked up securely. The RPGs and grenades went to the military, and they left me four sets of night vision goggles, keeping the rest.

Taped to the inside of the safe’s door was a manila envelope with birth certificates and social security cards for the three Hanley women, as well as brand new permanent visas for the Russian twins and copies of their completed applications for citizenship. There were even passports for the three Hanley women, the Russian twins, and my four spousal equivalents. Shit, someone had been busy last night. DHS being here yesterday turned out to be a good thing.

There was a document appointing me as conservator for Stella until she was deemed more stable and ready to be on her own. Another one appointed me as guardian of her younger daughter Nicole and the Russian twins, Lidiya and Lilia Gergiev. I was stunned by each document, as well as the fact that there had been a judge here yesterday, and I hadn’t even been aware of it.

When I was finally able to calm down a bit, I returned to my guests. Carl just laughed at me as he shook his head. “Only you could come up with a racket like this,” he laughed, motioning to the women around the table. “I didn’t know you were a U.S. Deputy Marshal,” he added.

“I’m just a volunteer, helping out when I can,” I gave my patented reply.

“I’ll say, the girls said that you led the raid yesterday,” he gushed.

“I only led the team that rescued the girls and secured the tunnel. Someone else led the main raid on the house. The Jacksonville Station Chief and the local heads of the FBI, DEA, ATF, and DHS all coordinated things and oversaw everything,” I explained. “Besides, I really don’t want it getting out that I was involved in the raid. There are still a few people unaccounted for, and I don’t want anyone here endangered,” I explained, as much for the benefit of the girls as for the guests.