Chapter 26:
Plan Interrupted
Eugene and Sandy went to a restaurant across from the motel for some lunch while Hayfield ordered takeout from another restaurant and ate his lunch at poolside. No one was standing guard anymore.
Armstrong learned of a conference room not in use, and so that afternoon Armstrong, his two buddies, Pamela Piper, the O’Reilly’s, and Senator Moore went over Moore’s maps, and the maps and reports that he took from Phillips. They spent the first two hours going over everything to see what they had. Then they began throwing out ideas and options. “With this information,” Ray said, “getting across should be easy. All that’s left is picking the easiest way.” When Sandy and Eugene got back, they decided to see what their leadership had come up with. Eugene knocked on the door and Wrenn answered it. “Gene, my man, and Sandy.” “Come on in, folks,” Chad said. “What… you didn’t bring your buddy Haystacks with you?” mocked Terry Foote. Wrenn let out a laugh, and the others joined in. Pamela was on the phone with her brother, Henry, Mayor of Piper City, formerly Baker City, Oregon. “Okay, but Chad Armstrong wants to speak with you. Hold on.” Pamela gave the phone to Armstrong. “Okay, Henry, what’s your recommendation?” Everyone waited. There was a long pause while Chad heard Henry’s arguments, but Chad started shaking his head and the group was ready to hear some bad news. “No, Henry, I don’t think that’s a good idea. It may be secluded, but the thought of children being present isn’t good. Look, I’ve been studying the maps and I think the best way in is on Highland Avenue.” There was another pause, and then, “Hold on, Henry. Let me relay that to the group. Hey, Pamela, does this have a speaker phone?” “I think it does, but I’m not sure how to use it.” The phone was military and used by anyone connected to the government when they needed advanced encryptions. “It does,” Ev Moore said. “Let me show you.” “Okay, Henry, can you hear me?” “Loud and clear.” “Good. You’re on speakerphone. The whole group is listening in. Now, tell me again what you just said.” “I said I don’t think Highland is a good idea. It’s too open.” “Well, Henry, that’s why you’re in administration and I’m in the military. Where you see open spaces, I see hills. Ever read about Waterloo?” “No. Is that where Napoleon was captured?” “You know how?” Chad said, smiling. “No.” “Hills, my man. Even Napoleon didn’t see them. They’re subtle. The British lied down and the French couldn’t see them. Same thing. Plus, we’ll be there late at night. No traffic on the cross street, two guards my sharpies can see, but won’t be seen. They’ll be taken out, the lock on the gate broken, and we’ll go right through. Then about seven miles to the border. Can you meet us there? We may need your help getting through.” “I hate bloodshed. Can’t you bribe them to let you through?” “No. In the first place we’ve tried that before and it was a disaster. They just double-crossed us. In the second place, we’re all broke. I’m not sure what’s going on. I mean no one knows for sure why there is so much incentive to stop us, even after taking bribes. Senator Moore thinks the government may be bribing them to stop people from crossing as well, but he isn’t sure. It may be NOGOV.” “Okay, we’ll do it your way, Chad. What time can we expect you?” “12:15 A.M.” “We’ll have a couple militiamen at the border.”
“Everybody get that?” Dennis O’Reilly said. “All right then, let’s get that squad to the motel. I’ll go and see the Commandant now.”
“O’Reilly, what do you have for me?”
“Sir, I’ve found them.”
“Sit down, Dennis, and tell me everything.”
“Well, sir, it was your man, Nate Phillips, who gave us the break we were looking for. We know just where they are. We heard all their plans.”
“Great, Dennis. Now start from the beginning.”
“Well, it started with Horace Hayfield. He was caught trying to sneak across near the popular Oregon crossing. He was arrested and released by Phillips, who smelled real money. He knew Horace had a bunch, so he put on his act as the caring lawyer, sprung him, and then offered him a real—well, I should put real in quotes—chance to get out of the country, but it turned out Horace couldn’t get his money out.”
“I had DOJ freeze his accounts.”
“Right. Well, that wasn’t the end of it because he arranged to have Senator Moore released from the hospital and brought to Idaho to cross the border. But it turned out he had better contacts than he had money.”
“Wait! So Moore was never killed?”
“No. It was Phillips who put the word out that he was dead. The wounds were only superficial. He more or less fainted on the tarmac.”
Both laughed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Casimir said.
“Phillips spread the word he was dead, because he smelled money—a lot of it. Anyway, he now had Moore, but it turned out Moore didn’t have a lot of money. Phillips gave his spiel about how he could get him out of the country, and that’s when he learned Pamela was nearby. Phillips was convinced that she and her charges had plenty of money. There was just one problem: she had ex-blues with her. Not just Ray and Cassandra, like we figured, but Armstrong, Foote, and Wrenn.”
“I was wondering why we hadn’t heard from them for months. Okay, so what happened next?”
“Phillips had Moore contact Pamela from his encrypted phone. The plan was for them to come to the Lazy Tourist motel in Martinville, Idaho. Phillips would meet them, collect a hundred grand, give them a phony escape plan, and then have them arrested.”
“So we knew where they were—at this Lazy something motel. Why didn’t we send someone there ourselves and pick them up?”
“Well, sir, this area wasn’t under our control. It was neutral territory and we’d pretty much need local cooperation, or have the local authorities pick them up. Phillips said he could save us the bribe money it would take to do this, and he’d pick them up for us after fleecing them. I gave him the okay and told him to keep us posted as to what was going on.”
“That’s taking a chance, Dennis. What if he betrayed us and let them through?”
“First, sir, without his cooperation we’d have a hard time picking them up. Phillips said he had some of his men keep an eye on the motel just in case we sent some of our men there. In the second place, we let him fleece them first in return for his cooperation. And in the third place—”
“In the third place I’d string him up by his nuts.”
“Yes sir. Then the plan went awry. The Blues figured out the scam. They threatened Phillips. Armstrong, Foote, and Wrenn came storming in and threatened him and his secretary if they weren’t given maps and the truth about the border crossing. They left with quite a few documents: maps, civil patrols, and everything they needed to develop their own plans. Phillips told me everything after they left, including how Joanne, the secretary, told him about the false border fence.”
“Then what happened? Did you send people over to the motel to pick them up?”
“I’m coming to that sir. When we had Moore, one of our engineers, working with a programmer, modified his phone. We worked out an alert system. Whenever a transmission begins, we’re alerted; and when we turn on the decryption machine, the call is decrypted, and we can listen in on the conversation, just as if the call was made to us. The only thing we can’t do is transmit. It is just a listening device.”
“You haven’t answered my question yet.”
“We were discussing how to approach the situation when the alert system sounded, sir. Pamela Piper called her brother in Sick America, using Moore’s phone. My team listened in on the conversation. They revealed their plans to Henry. Now, we can do two things. We can plan our raid better, knowing where they’d all be, and we can step up security on their escape route, just in case they get away again. Either way, we’ll have them tonight.”