Life Struggles (Life Stories Book 1) (16 page)

“I'm naked and pawing my pussy”

I got it. “I'm naked too and stroking my cock”

“I want to suck your dick”

“I want to kick your puppy”

Cheryl called me “What? You want to kick my puppy?” She was laughing so hard I was afraid she was going to pee herself.

“That's not what I wrote,” I replied indignantly.

Cheryl actually had trouble breathing she was laughing so hard. I didn't know what the joke was. Eventually she calmed down enough to get out “Auto-correct” and went back to uncontrollable mirth. Finally, she just hung up.

Oh. Auto-correct. “I want to kick your puppy.” Right. I went to sleep.

Cheryl was shaking my shoulder telling me to get up. She certainly was being rough about it. And her voice was a whole lot deeper. When I opened my eyes I was looking at an FBI badge.

“Get up and get dressed. You're coming with us.” Gosh, not even a good-morning.

“How did you get in here?” I was miffed, they can't just break in, and I told them so.

“We can because we did. We're the FBI. Now get up or we'll haul your naked ass through the lobby.” Some people are really grumpy when they wake up.

I got dressed and tried to brush my teeth. “Later.”

OK, they win. I went with them through the lobby out to a waiting car and off to task force headquarters.

I was unceremoniously dumped in the head guy's office. Maybe he'd let me sleep on his couch? Probably not.

“Ethan, we had everything but the last item. It's hidden in plain sight. Where?” Like I should know.

“Sir, I don't know. I mean, it almost has to be purpose-built. I haven't read any for sale signs lately for antigen-collecting laboratories holding seventy donors.”

“Cut the comedy routine. Purpose-built. You're probably right. Where?”

This guy was simply not going to cut me any slack.

“Let's narrow it down to largely empty spaces within maybe fifty or so miles of a decent-sized city. It doesn't have to be New York. Fuck, Smyrna, Tennessee, is almost big enough. Oh, and locks and walls and guards will draw attention. So, it should appear to be unguarded and at least seem accessible.”

The head guy turned to someone manipulating a map on the wall. The display was huge and had a thousand red boxes drawn on it. The head guy barked some parameters at him and the thousand became maybe two hundred.

“Up the city size to 100,000.” Easy for him to say.

Suddenly there were about twenty boxes. All but one was in Alaska. And that one was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Knoxville, Tennessee.

“Get people to Alaska now. Nineteen out of twenty gives us a good chance of finding it.” That was the head guy.

“Shouldn't we check out Tennessee also?” That was from the operations officer.

“Yeah, put somebody on it.” That again was the head guy.

The ops officer made a quick call. “Jeff, it's Hank. I'm sending you a packet, need you to get on it real quick. Seriously, drop everything else.” He turned to the head guy. “Jeff's the SAIC in Knoxville, he'll get to work on the Tennessee location.”

As the meeting broke up I asked the ops officer – Hank – for Jeff's contact information. I was headed to Knoxville. It was a five percent chance, but maybe not. Hiding stuff in Alaska is easy; getting stuff in and out without raising suspicion – such as a bunch of kidnapped young men - might be more difficult than far eastern Tennessee.

Hank called Jeff. “I'm sending our pool reporter to go with you. Ethan McQuill is his name. He'll call you.”

Jeff Cronin was the Special Agent in Charge – SAIC – of the Knoxville FBI office. I flew out of St Louis as soon as I could and landed in Knoxville just before noon. Picked up a rental micro-mobile and headed into town.

Special Agent Cronin was not pleased to see me. He told me to sit in a waiting room until he got back late in the afternoon. I asked him how to spell his name again so when my article on muzzling the press hit the stands he'd know it was him.

Cronin sighed and sat down. “Look, McQuill, we're going into dangerous ground here. We need to try and find a needle in a haystack, and amateurs tagging along won't help matters. Surely you can understand that.”

“It's McQuade, and of course you're right.” I figured if I agreed with him, he might listen. “Have you heard of the Capelleti gang in New Orleans being blown up?” Cronin nodded yes. “That was me. On my own. Armed with cellphones and a huge set of balls.”

“OK, what do you want to do?” Cronin seemed resigned to having me in his back pocket. I put him at ease.

“I'm going to figure out how they're keeping the lights on without alerting the electric company.” He nodded and told me to go ahead.

I got a list of all large-capacity generator dealers in a triangle running from Knoxville to Chattanooga to Murfreesboro. Nine of them total. Then I got on the phone.

My story was that I was writing an article on successful generator dealerships around the country and wanted to include them in the article. Free publicity does wonders for loosening tongues. Seven talked, one turned out to be out of business, and one never answered the phone.

One just west of Knoxville had a great story to tell. They'd had a single sale of five large commercial generators a bit over a year ago. Total was almost half a million dollars. Each had a capacity of about one hundred ninety kilowatts. The math was easy. That's almost one megawatt of power, or enough to run two hundred homes. He said it was for a campground, and they delivered them to some place in Gatlinburg. He added that they were diesel powered.

A quick call to Bookie at the paper gave me nothing. As in “There's nothing in the area of Gatlinburg that can use that much power except the ski resort, and that's probably more than they need.” I called the ski resort and finally found somebody in marketing.

My story: I'm writing an article about lesser-known ski resorts and wanted a rundown if they could give me one. Sure. They had ten trails including two black diamond ones. I guess black diamond trails are special, but living in Louisiana doesn't give me much chance to snow ski. Such as none.

We talked about lifts and gift shop and all sort of shit. I asked about how they power the whole thing. Seems they use the local electric utility and for backup have a one hundred thirty KW generator they put in four years ago that's only had to be used twice.

Somebody in the Gatlinburg area had a hell of a lot of stand-by power. Or a large primary power source to disguise the electricity usage.

I checked with the KOA Website – Kampgrounds of America – and found five local commercial camping locations, three within the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Four of them had existed for ten years. One inside the park had started building two years ago and was not yet open to the public.

I searched the internet for fuel consumption rates for the generators. About seven gallons per hour if running at fifty percent. So, figure ten gallons per hour each. Fifty gallons an hour or twelve hundred gallons a day if they were using all of them. Even if they were only using some of them, they were going to be a huge customer for some diesel supplier.

It was getting late, so this was my last search. The only diesel supplier in the area that could likely supply that much fuel was in Morristown. I headed there and got a hotel, reserved it for two nights. A bit over a hundred dollars a night, but I was feeling rich. I had my book advance after all.

I found the diesel distributor that night while cruising for a place to eat. I settled for a drive-through hamburger and fries and a large coke. I called the house to check in on Alex, and Marcus answered.

He gave me an earful. “That nursing student came by to check on Alex and Monica was here. The shit hit the fan when she saw how Alex looked at the woman. Monica's gone and I'm afraid she isn't coming back for a while. That was yesterday and Alex is doing some moping. We went over to Luke's and swam for a bit, that didn't do shit for him. I had some weed so we smoked that, and he mellowed out a little.”

“Ah, Marcus, he smoked weed with you?” I suspected Alex used marijuana, but suspecting is one thing. Having it thrown in my face is another.

“Oh, shit. I wasn't supposed to say that. I'm sorry.” Marcus was contrite and I told him not to worry about it.

Marcus continued. “Anyway, Alex told me you let him drink as much beer as he wanted. I told him you're not here and I was going to monitor his beer drinking. He didn't object too much, so I figure you do the same thing.”

I assured him he was correct. “Alex can drink beer at the house in moderation, and can't drive if he's had even one beer. I'm surprised he misses Monica so much. I know he has a crush on Veronica.”

“He doesn't miss Monica,” Marcus told me. “He misses the sex.”

Well, that made sense. I showered, got in bed and went to sleep. I dreamed about kicking Cheryl's puppy.

Chapter Eighteen

I got the hotel's “free breakfast” which still left me hungry. Someone once famously said there is no free lunch. He should have added breakfast to that list.

I headed straight to the diesel supplier. Said I was planning to open a cross-docking operation somewhere in the area along Interstate Forty and the trucks would need a lot of diesel. The clerk called out the general manager.

The GM was all ears. He asked me what kind of facility I was talking about, and I said one that would service the routes from Dallas to Raleigh and Detroit to Atlanta. The routes crossed in Knoxville, so the primary cross-docking operation would be near there. There would be smaller operations in Memphis and Cincinnati.

We expected about twelve trucks a day, each with a tank between seventy and one hundred gallons. Figure eight hundred to a thousand gallons a day. Can they supply that? Of course they can.

He showed me around the yard to see their tankers. I pretended I knew what I was doing. They had tankers with capacities from two thousand to eight thousand gallons. Eight hundred to a thousand gallons a day would be easy for them.

I told him that the optimal location would be in Knoxville itself, but that wasn't going to happen. Too much traffic and the land was too expensive. So, it would be east or west of Knoxville, or possibly just south. He assured me that he could serve all three locations. He talked about prices and delivery schedules and in-ground tanks. He wanted to know how big the in-ground tank was going to be. I had no idea.

“In-ground tanks aren't my area, vendors are my specialty. What size would you recommend?” I hoped I wasn't coming across too stupid. Fortunately, the guy had dollar signs dancing in front of his eyes and wasn't trying to guess my IQ.

“I'd say not bigger than ten thousand gallons. That way you'll empty the tank in a week to ten days. You don't want diesel fuel sitting around too long, you know.” I didn't know, but nodded my head. Did the fuel get bored and try to run away? I kept my thoughts to myself.

I thanked him, took a brochure, his business card and an invitation to come back real soon. I gave him my current burner cellphone number and explained I'd left my business cards in the hotel. I promised him I would come back, then turned to leave. As if it was an afterthought I asked him about any of his larger customers I could call as references.

He gave me three local references, none of which was a campground in the National Park. And, none of them used more than a couple hundred gallons a day. I asked him if he had any customers who used the amount I was talking about with whom I could speak.

“There's one, but my agreement with them says I can't tell you who they are.” He looked at the ground as though he was ashamed of himself. I assured him it was OK.

“We've got a truck leaving for them real soon, and I'll have the driver ask them if I can use them as a reference. I'd love to tell you who they are, but I can't. I hope you understand.” He was begging for my understanding, and I reassured him that his loyalty to his customer was very impressive and a point in his favor. He brightened considerably.

Next stop was a gas station to fill up. I waited outside the yard and within forty minutes a two thousand gallon tanker departed. I figured they would use one of the smaller trucks to navigate the narrower roads in the park, and hoped this was the one.

I followed it out of town and onto US Route 441. We passed through a couple of small towns I'd never heard of, then Pigeon Forge and finally Gatlinburg. From there our tiny convoy went on roads I couldn't find on any map, branching off from one to another. I turned on my GPS and instead of “Recalculating” it said “You've got to be kidding.” Actually, that was a joke. It showed I might be on a road or a trail or a something.

You may be wondering how I was able to tail the truck without him knowing. That's easy. He wasn't looking for a tail. How many times do you go about your normal business and not look to see if someone is following you? Right. That's what he was doing.

About twenty miles into the park the truck came to a road branching off to the right. There was a small sign pointing toward the road and reading “Tennvol Campgrounds.” That was the new one that wasn't yet open. I followed the truck up the narrow road and soon learned that it wasn't actually a road, it was a driveway. There was no exit until it dead-ended at a clearing in the woods. A fence divided the clearing from some buildings I could see perhaps half a mile away.

There was a guard at the gate. This wasn't a high school kid directing traffic or welcoming people to the campground. The guy was in a starched khaki uniform and had epaulets on his shoulders. He spoke to the driver, had him get out, and inspected around and under the vehicle. Pretty unusual for a friendly greeter. In fact,
very
unusual for a friendly greeter.

The gate closed after the truck had gone through. I pulled up to the fellow in uniform and got a better look. White, just under six feet tall, dark suntan, dark hair, dark glasses and muscles straining at the seams of his uniform. This guy was a serious security guard.

“Can I help you?” It sounded like a fucked-up English accent to me, but then what do I know?

“Yeah, looking for a campground for my family for next month.” Seemed like a believable story to me.