Me, The Mentor: Chapter 11

We decid­ed to try to relax for the remain­der of the after­noon and get togeth­er once again for din­ner.  Willa said she would prob­a­bly spend part of the after­noon at the hotel pool; I was unsure how to spend the rest of the day, but I knew there was some­thing I need­ed to do once I got to my room.  Willa asked for the keys to the car, say­ing she would have to go find a swim­suit some­where since she had­n’t thought to bring one with her.  Hardly a won­der, con­sid­er­ing the speed with which we both had to pre­pare for the trip and the fact that nei­ther of us expect­ed to find time for some­thing like swimming.

As we entered the hotel lob­by, we part­ed, she going to the desk to inquire about some­place to pur­chase a swim­suit, and me to my room after pick­ing up a com­pli­men­ta­ry copy of the Del Rio News-Herald.  Might as well spend part of the day catch­ing up on local news and opin­ion after I had tak­en care of anoth­er piece of business.

I entered the room, cranked up the A/C, doffed my shoes, and threw myself onto the bed with the paper and my IPad.  Before begin­ning to read the paper, I checked to see if there were any emails.  Finding none, I ini­ti­at­ed a face time link to L.T.

“L.T., we’ve been work­ing on the plan for the oper­a­tion, and I think we final­ly have things worked out, but I’m going to need a cou­ple of items that I can’t secure here.  Can you get me two HK G36Cs with drums?” 

These are Heckler and Koch auto­mat­ic rifles, and the drums con­tain one hun­dred rounds of ammunition.

“Shouldn’t be a prob­lem.  I have a con­tact in San Antonio who can prob­a­bly get the items to you tomor­row morn­ing.  What’s your room number?”

“216.”

“I’ll have them deliv­ered direct­ly to you.  It would be help­ful if you could make this oper­a­tion look like it was­n’t some­thing that U.S. law enforce­ment was respon­si­ble for.”

“Any sug­ges­tions?”

“We’ve man­aged to get a mole into the Nonoava car­tel.  One of the things he’s told us is that when­ev­er that car­tel does an oper­a­tion, it always leaves a ‘call­ing card,’ a King of Spades play­ing card.  If you get a chance, drop­ping one at the scene might be a con­vinc­ing clue.”

“Nice touch.  I sup­pose I should­n’t have too much trou­ble buy­ing a pack of cards around here somewhere.”

“Don’t both­er.  I’ll have my man include a deck in the pack­age he deliv­ers tomor­row.  Anything else?”

“Yeah.  I’ll go over that in a minute.  Anything fur­ther on the Shaddoe’s timetable?”

“Nothing def­i­nite.  If some­thing turns up, I’ll be sure to con­tact you.  Just sug­gest you get on it as soon as you can.”

“I know.  We’re mov­ing as quick­ly as pos­si­ble with­out rais­ing sus­pi­cions.  But, sur­pris­ing­ly, every­thing around Shaddoe’s com­pound seems so tran­quil and nor­mal, it’s hard to real­ize what’s going on behind the scenes.”

“I guess that’s why he’s been able to stay in busi­ness; that and the fact that he’s bought off a lot of pro­tec­tion. Have you a plan to take out the whole orga­ni­za­tion, or are you going after them one by one?”

“That’s part of the plan we’ve worked out.  It depends on a lot of things going just right.  It would be haz­ardous to try to take them out one by one.  After the first one or two, the rest would prob­a­bly fig­ure out that the orga­ni­za­tion was being tar­get­ed and head out to the boonies, where we’d nev­er be able to find them. 

“I want you to send text mes­sages to each mem­ber of the cabal and inform them that they need to meet at Shaddoe’s place imme­di­ate­ly for an emer­gency meet­ing.  And send a text to Shaddoe, pur­port­ed­ly from one of the oth­ers, ask­ing for a meet­ing at his place and explain­ing that the oth­ers have also been noti­fied.  I’m sure you can get these texts out and make it look like the right peo­ple sent them.

“By the time they meet and try to fig­ure out who sent who a mes­sage, I’m count­ing on us being set up and ready to put the rest of the plan in motion.”

“Well,” mused L.T., “it sounds a bit com­pli­cat­ed, but if you can pull it off, it’ll cer­tain­ly make get­ting the whole crew a lot eas­i­er.  And yes, I can get the texts out so they’ll look like the real thing.  Does the day after tomor­row work?”

“It should, once we get the extra items here.  Set the meet­ing for nine o’clock.  It will be dark by then and pro­vide me enough time to get the plan implemented.”

“Will do.”

With that, we signed off, and I set­tled back to look over the News-Herald.

And quick­ly fell off into slumber.

I was awak­ened by knock­ing at the door and sleep­i­ly wan­dered over to see who was there.

“Were you sleep­ing?” was the ques­tion that came from Willa, stand­ing there in a stun­ning two-piece, hot pink bathing suit with small yel­low daisies sprin­kled in the mate­r­i­al.  The suit was hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time ade­quate­ly cov­er­ing all the crit­i­cal spots. One of the hotel tow­els was draped around her neck, and her shoul­der-length brown hair looked like it had just been washed.  Her skin was slight­ly red­dened, the result of her after­noon at the pool­side soak­ing up the Texas sun.

“Yeah.  Nice suit.”

“Thanks.  What’s the plan for today?”

“Come on in.  You still wet?”

“Nah.  Took a dip in the pool and sat around long enough after­ward to dry out.”

“I think I’ll run down the hall and get a cou­ple of soft drinks out­ta the machine.  I’d pre­fer a glass of wine, but I don’t think Best Western has a wine dis­penser anywhere.”

“Pop’s fine for me,” she said, slid­ing into one of the chairs that flanked the small round table that was part of the room décor.

I was back with­in a cou­ple of min­utes with two Pepsis and took the chair on the oppo­site side of the table.

“I’ve got L.T. putting togeth­er a pack­age that we’ll need.  It should be here tomor­row morn­ing, so I’ll have to hang around to be sure to get it.  We’ll use the day to go over the final plan and make any nec­es­sary last-minute adjust­ments.  Plan on get­ting the mis­sion under­way day after tomorrow.

“I guess all we need to do today is get ready to go out for dinner.”

“Okay,” she respond­ed as she rose, car­ry­ing her drink to the door.  “I’ll be ready in an hour.”

The view as she left was strik­ing, the daisies mov­ing in undu­lat­ing waves like there was a soft wind mov­ing them about.