Baroota- the Hunting Ground, page 18
part #1 of The Director Series
Nick looked at Nõn and explained what he was thinking. He didn’t want to go to LAX, he could be home, at his home, in a few hours.
“I live in a remote area, free from traffic and people, no one would expect us to be there. We could stay there indefinitely.” He explained that he hadn’t left home on the best of terms with his wife, but at the last moment, just before they’d left on the mission, she’d sent him a text message telling him, “Good luck and see you soon.”
“I’m not going to LAX, Nõn. You can go on, I’m going home.”
For Nõn, the decision was easy. She purchased a smartphone from a kiosk in the airport, and once it was activated, she called Carrie. She explained they’d changed plans at the last minute, just to be safe. She would call her tonight when they’d settled in and explain. There was nothing to worry about, it was just a minor change in their itinerary. Carrie thanked her for the update and told her to be safe. She and Nick then each purchased a seat on flight #5970. Nick was noticeably relieved. This was the happiest she’d seen him since they’d met in what now seemed like several years ago. They’d lived a lifetime in the past two weeks.
While they waited for the flight, they stopped to eat at the 3rd Bar Oyster and Eating House in terminal B. Nick noticed they served wine and asked Nõn if she’d like a glass of wine. Nõn explained she rarely drank anything alcoholic; since being drugged as a child, she’d been particularly careful about anything that impaired her physically or mentally.
Nick shrugged. “OK, I’m having a glass. If you’d like, I can recommend a good one.”
Nõn said no at first, but when Nick’s wine arrived, she changed her mind and asked the waiter to bring her a glass as well. The waiter asked her for identification, and for a moment she stopped, with a blank stare at Nick.
“Show him your identification, I think it’s in your back pocket,” Nick said with an eyebrow raised.
Laughing, Nõn retrieved the driver’s license and handed it to the waiter. After the waiter left to pour her wine, Nõn started to laugh.
“This is all happening so fast, I forgot we had driver’s licenses! It has been a while since I was carded for anything. I just don’t buy alcohol, so when he asked me for identification, I just forgot!”
They talked easily for the first time since they’d met, talking about what to do next and how to proceed.
The wine arrived, and Nick raised his glass. “A toast!”
Nõn raised her glass in return. “To Camp Baroota, may we never cross its dark gate again, ever! Toast!”
Once they arrived in the Colorado Springs Airport, Nick went to the baggage claim area to rent a car. A quick 20 minutes later, Nick and Nõn were headed south to Nick’s mountain home. Once they arrived at the dirt road that led to the house, Nick stopped. The house was still two miles away, but he could see the porch lights were on, and he could hear music.
Surprised, Nõn asked, “You live here? Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously, but the front porch lights are on and I hear music. Who has a party when their husband dies? Let’s park the car and walk in; this doesn’t feel right.”
Nõn disagreed. “Nick, don’t be ridiculous, there has to be a good explanation for the lights and music.”
Nick ignored her and parked the car. Getting out, he started to walk; quietly, he spoke to Nõn.
“You’ll need to stay close, there are serious predators here. Mountain lions and bears are common.”
Laughing, Nõn said, “Be serious, mountain lions and bears?”
“I’m very serious. You need to stay close and be quiet, sound carries for miles here. We’re two miles from the house, and I can hear someone laughing. That means if we aren’t quiet, they’ll hear us as well. Whisper from now on.”
Nõn realized Nick was right, and also his attitude had changed; he’d been lighthearted moments ago, now he was dark and angry. Angry Nick was back in a heartbeat.
“When we get to the fork in the road, we’ll be going left. There’s a trail we call ‘the fire road’; it’s rough and barely passable, but no one will be on it. It’ll take us to the house by the most direct route.”
As they approached the fork in the road, the moon just started to peek out over the tops of the mountains behind the house. It bathed the valley in an eerie soft white. Animals jumped out in the bush ahead of them, startled by the two people walking in the moonlit night.
More laughter erupted from the house ahead of them, and there were at least three voices Nick could make out talking animatedly from the well lit porch. Finally, about 50 yards from the house, Nick stopped, hidden in the trees. Nõn came up behind him and looked at the people drinking and laughing on the porch.
Neither of them said a word as they heard Jay’s unmistakable voice saying, “Then he said to me, ‘I guess that makes you the gay one!’”
JoAnn replied, “That sounds just like him, cocky, arrogant asshole! You don’t know how hard it’s been to stay here with him these past few months. Watching him train and shoot, trying to convince himself he actually could contribute. Jesus, it was hard not to laugh in his face knowing what it really was he was training for. I wish I could have seen his face when he realized what the real mission was.”
There was Jay, sitting on Nick’s front porch, telling Jessica and JoAnn the events of the last two weeks. This wasn’t what Nick had expected, not once had it entered his mind that he’d been set up by his wife. That this entire time she knew exactly where he was headed and what he was heading into. Jay, JoAnn and Jessica all drinking wine and laughing on his front porch. Laughing as Jay told them about the team and how each one died, and how finally he (Jay) had killed Nick and Nõn and fed them into the chipper. The two women exchanged high-fives and laughed louder.
Jessica said, “We’re rich! With the money we made from the hunt and the life insurance policy, we’ll be rich.”
All at once, they cried out, “We’re rich!”
Nick was too stunned to speak. He couldn’t move.
Nõn touched his arm. “Let’s go, Nick. You’ve seen enough, let’s go.”
“Fuck that! I can kill him right now, gut his ass like he wanted to do to us.”
The trio carried on laughing and drinking. Thinking back, Nick remembered Jay’s comment in the bar. “He said, ‘You’re the odd man out,’” Nick said to Nõn as they stood in the trees. “I knew then it meant more than he admitted to. I could feel it.” He continued, “She texted ‘see you in two weeks.’ That wasn’t for me. I see that now, it was a mistake; she meant to send that to Jay.”
Nõn pulled again on his arm. “Let’s go, Nick. There’s no point in staying here and listening. Please, let’s go. I have a bad feeling about this. We need to go, now!”
Nõn coaxed Nick to turn away from the scene, and slowly they made their way back down the fire road. The laughing continued as the trio celebrated their deaths and the pending payout of the insurance money.
Walking finally on the dirt road, Nõn coaxed Nick to walk faster; the more distance they put between them and the party, the better she felt. The need to get away from hearing the laughter and talking was intense. Once they reached the car, Nick stopped and looked back at what had been his home. He was numb from the reality of what he had to face, she’d set him up! He could hear them laughing occasionally, and then in the distance he heard a strange buzz. It sounded like a small aircraft flying high above the valley. He looked but saw nothing, no flashing lights to indicate a plane traveling overhead. The sky was clear, and the moon provided more than enough light to search the skies for the aircraft. He could hear it, but he couldn’t see it.
Two hundred miles away, in a shipping container painted with desert sand camouflage, a remote operator was piloting an RQ-1 Predator. The UAV had acquired its target using the FLIR sensor. The operator was awaiting orders from the director.
“Zeus to Sparrow 434, what’s your status?”
“Sparrow 434, I have target in sight. Confirmed three HVI on site.”
“Zeus copies target in sight. Lock on target.”
“Sparrow 434 copies, target locked, master armed.”
“Zeus copies, prosecute target.”
“Sparrow 434 copies, prosecute target, weapons away in 3, 2, 1. Rifle. Time on target, 15 seconds.”
“Zeus copies.”
“Sparrow 434 confirms target splashed.”
“Zeus copies target splashed.”
The director hung up the phone and smiled. He loved the precision of the UAV strikes. Signature strikes had been a closely guarded secret in the war on terror, but the strikes had made his life so much easier. The area was rural, and the fire investigators inexperienced. No one would suspect a thing. A horrible accident had occurred, the house had a fifteen hundred gallon propane tank. Evidence would show the tank’s regulator had malfunctioned and the house blew up.
Twenty-five thousand feet below, Nick searched the night sky for the plane. He had no idea it was a drone, preparing to tie up the final loose end in the Camp Baroota nightmare. The director had many such camps functioning worldwide. He wasn’t going to let the sloppy work of one man undo all he’d worked so hard and carefully to build.
Jessica and JoAnn had just slowly eased carefully into soapy hot water in the three man Jacuzzi tub in the master suite of the mountain home. Jay would join them in a moment; he had one more phone call to make. The girls weren’t waiting for him to get the party started as they started to kiss and caress each other under the steaming, hot soapy water. It would be the last kiss they shared.
Nick watched as the house exploded in a huge fireball. The entire valley below was suddenly bathed in a bright orange light. The ground shook beneath his feet. He and Nõn jumped into the car and sped away. They said nothing for several minutes, each hoping their car wouldn’t be the next target.
Finally, several miles away, Nick turned to her and said, “Do you know who was our beneficiary if we both died?”
Nõn shook her head, she had no idea.
Nick smiled huge. “My kids! My kids get the money now, there’s no way she had time to change the will so quickly. She’s been too busy getting her party on to change that. Ain’t karma a bitch? The kids will get twice what she would have!”
In the Tamerisk Restaurant in the sleepy town of Green River, Utah, Nick sat and looked out the window, watching the river slowly flow past. He and Nõn had arrived in the town 7 hours after barely escaping the director’s closing of what he thought was the final loop in the bungled hunt at Camp Baroota. They hadn’t spoken much during the drive. Most of the past two and a half weeks had been spent trying to get to this point, alive and back in the U.S.; neither had given much thought to what they would do once they were back. Since they were officially dead, declared so in the faked crash staged by Jay and Pat, they couldn’t safely return to their previous lives. Nõn had worked hard to earn a reputation as a tough but fair freelance reporter. Nick had no real life to return to and had built his life around the mountain home that was now ash. Sitting in the booth, they tried to process the events of the past 17 days. Their entire lives, identities and careers had been closed, sealed, and found moot in a few short moments. There was no way back. None.
Finally, after the waitress had returned with their orders, Nick cleared his throat and spoke.
“As I see it, we have one option only, or at least I have only one option. In my short interview with the technician back at Camp Baroota, he told me the director has many camps located worldwide in remote locations like the Darien Gap. In other words, Baroota wasn’t an anomaly. Baroota is just one of the director’s deadly infrastructure of camps. As I see it, we’re probably the only people in the world in a position to stop the director from continuing these hunts. I say we go after him, and bring down his twisted world. It’ll take time, and a lot of work, but really what else can we do? Hide and hope no one sees us?”
Nõn replied, “What can we do? We are not trained in tactics, we have no money, and no resources. The man just blew up a house on American soil with what looked like to me to be a drone strike. Who has that kind of power? And how do you propose we defeat someone in that kind of a position?”
“Exactly, Nõn! You already realize who the director isn’t. He isn’t the guy at the local gas station, or the county librarian. He shows us where to look by analyzing what he’s done. Not everyone has access to what the director has shown us. Remember back on the road to Camp Baroota, I explained to you how to look at this with new eyes? Analyze what does each piece of information mean? Where does it lead? We defeated this bastard and his entire team at Baroota, you and I are the only survivors. We are as much on his blindside as you were when you decapitated the demon. Did you feel so incompetent then? We build a case file just like in police work, process of elimination until all that’s left is the director and us. Are you with me?”
Nõn thought silently, This wolf has no choice but to hunt, it is what he was made to do, and I have no choice except to follow. Nõn breathed deeply and sighed. “OK, where do we start?”
Six months later, an anonymous text came in simultaneously to Nick’s childrens’ phones. The message was simple, something he’d told them repeatedly from the time they were small children.
“Success is a habit, so is survival.”
Zach Fortier was a police officer for over thirty years specializing in K-9, SWAT, gangs, domestic violence, and sex crimes as an investigator.
He has written five books about his life in police work. CurbChek won the bronze medal for True Crime in the 2013 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards. Street Creds and Curbchek Reload won a gold and silver medal respectively for True Crime in the 2014 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards.
His other works are Hero To Zero, which details the incredibly talented cops that he worked with that ended up going down in flames, some ended up in prison and one on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Landed on Black
described the toxic culture of the police department and streets, ultimately leading to the realization that Zach has been afflicted with PTSD. I am Raymond Washington is the only authorized biography of the original founder of the Crips and has been awarded bronze medals in 2015 by both IPPY and Readers Favorite International book awards.
If you are looking for gritty, true crime stories, be sure to check out all of Zach Fortier’s novels. Zach currently lives in the mountains of Colorado, with his wife Christina.
Zach Fortier, Baroota- the Hunting Ground
