Rivers Crossing

By D Keith and Tui Brookes

River Brookes is a young medical school student from New Zealand studying in the US. During a break in her last year of medical school she decides to explore the southwest US. She finds herself lost in the deserts of southwest Texas and falls afoul of Mexican drug cartels. She is rescued by a wealthy local rancher and his family and finds herself embroiled in a clandestine border war. The Martingale family, longtime ranchers and landowners and their friends and employees become the unofficial enforcement force for a top secret state department operation, working to stymie the drug cartels and their operations along the US border with Mexico. Keith Martingale, the Patriarch of the Martingale family, is determined to keep his ranch and his family on the land that they have owned for more than 100 years. This determination leads him into the world of international intrigue and business. In the midst of the violence and intrigue, River finds what she has never had, a family, love and acceptance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SailAway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370934959

Book preview

Consulting the crisp new pages of the Lonely Planet: Texas which she had carefully packed before leaving Boston, River tried in vain to work out where she was. As usual, her total lack of any sense of direction had scuppered her exuberance and enthusiasm, leaving her horribly lost. It was a familiar feeling. She had a very tenuous grasp on where she was in time and space at the best of times and this was unfamiliar and unforgiving country. What’s more, the dodgy rental car she’d picked up earlier in the week was getting uncomfortably hot. The air conditioning unit had given up several miles back and she was starting to get a bad feeling about the day’s adventure.

Glancing down at her iPhone, she sighed as she confirmed once again the lack of Wi-Fi signal. Despite her intuition, she decided to continue along the dirt road a little further before giving up completely and heading back to the hotel which she guessed was still a good 6-hour drive away. At least driving with the windows down there was some movement of air through the open window, but it hardly provided respite from the relentless desert heat.

Her heart stopped momentarily as the car coughed and sputtered into life and then stalled. But on the second attempt, Bessie (the name with which she had christened the only heap of junk at the rental shop that she could afford on her student budget), sprang back to life and was off.

Despite her growing unease, she couldn’t help but be blown away by the surrounding landscape. It seemed like a different world compared with the sterile, air-conditioned corridors of Massachusetts General Hospital that had been her home for the last three months. She had been there on an intern elective placement, after completing almost all of her medical training at Christchurch medical school, in the land of the long white cloud. No white clouds here, long or otherwise, the sky was a deep azure blue as fair as the eye could see. Almost all her classmates had chosen to do the clichéd European tour. In fact, if she saw one more picture of a class mate pretending to support the leaning tower of Pisa with a single finger, she did not think she could be held responsible for her actions.

Europe just didn't hold the same fascination for River as it seemed to hold for her classmates. By the time she had turned 10 years old she had traversed the globe no less than four times with her family on the sabbaticals that her Dad had arranged as part of his research collaboration with Harvard. America, though, had always fascinated her. As long as she could remember she had been fascinated by the idea of the Wild West, and she had promised herself that as soon as she could manage it, she would go on her very own Wild West adventure. She suspected that part of the allure of the country was because it was the birth place of her beloved appaloosa pony, her best friend through her teenage years and early twenties. She had been obsessively horse mad as long as anyone could remember.

River smiled as she recalled the happy weekends spent barrel racing Cricket at various gymkhanas in the region. Man alive, could that pony wriggle its way around a barrel in no time flat! She still joked with her dad about his genius in getting her Cricket for her twelfth birthday, coincidently, just as her hormones had started kicking in. She remembered how, one morning as she lay on her bed tears streaming down cheeks, her father had found her and asked what was wrong. Oh, Daddy, she had sobbed, throwing herself into his arms, all I can do is read about ponies and dream about ponies! I want my own so badly it hurts!

They had both pleaded with River’s Mum about it. Her Dad had carefully and thoroughly presented the case. Her Mum, who was possibly the most risk averse person River had ever known, just as thoroughly refused to entertain the idea. River had been heartbroken. Then on a Saturday morning two weeks before her 12th birthday her Dad had arranged for the two of them to go on a hike together. But they didn't hike that morning, instead her father had driven her to see a pony that had just been advertised for sale at a local farm.

River fell in love at first sight. She didn't see the deep scars down both of Crickets front legs, the result of a horrific accident after the previous owner (drunk and out of control) had jumped her over a barbed wire fence instead of the wooden gate next to it. She didn't hear Mrs. MacDonald explain that the reason the pony was being sold for next to nothing was that it was now terrified of jumping, and too severely marked to ever be any good as a show pony. All River knew was that every dream that she had ever had in her short life was coming true. They had handed over the $50 on the spot (tack included) and returned home. They had managed to keep up the deception for almost a month, sneaking away to the farm together at every opportunity. But finally, as all deceptions tend to be, theirs was discovered. Rivers mum had been incandescent with rage and hadn’t spoken to either of them for quite some time. But finally begrudgingly, she had accepted the situation. Though she had vowed that she would not have a single thing to do with the pony or the hobby, and had stuck to her word.

Luckily for River her Dad had compensated for her Mum’s lack of interest, supporting her and getting her involved in eventing and pony club, and, over time, a marvellous thing happened. Pony and rider fell madly and deeply in love. Love, being the wonderful force that it is triumphed and over time the mutual trust between pony and rider grew. River had never accepted that Cricket wouldn’t jump again and they learned together, first over logs on the ground then over progressively higher jumps, until she was ‘New Zealand’s Young Rider of the Year’ and they were both one-day eventing champions, scars and all.

Every weekend had been spent getting up at 5am and getting ready for a show, and every evening had been spent mucking out the stable or exercising with the other horses at the MacDonald’s farm. Those were happy days, in fact such happy days, that she had managed to get to medical school without ever having had a boyfriend. Boys had paled in comparison to the excitement of eventing. Apparently there was method in her Dads madness after all!

Once she had started at Otago Medical School, it had been all work and no play. Come to think of it, that had been instigated by her father, too. She had wanted to stay at home and do a science degree, following in his footsteps, but unbeknownst to her, he had enrolled her in the pre-med program. After acing all of her first-year papers, a letter had arrived in the post; pleased to confirm that River had been selected for the Otago Medical School training program.

She was the first candidate ever to have made it into the medical training program from her small home town and everyone had been so thrilled for her. She simply couldn’t bear to disappoint those she loved by admitting that she fainted at the sight of blood and that the thought of speaking to a complete stranger about anything filled her with an icy cold dread. She had become somewhat of a local celebrity for a while, with newspaper articles and invitations to talk at her local high school. Her family was so proud of her. Her grandmother, who had gone deaf working in a cotton mill to help support her family during the war, hadn’t stopped crying tears of joy for a full week when she learned the news. The program started a mere two weeks after she had received her golden ticket and with no time to really consider whether it was what she really wanted to do with her life, she had packed her bags and left. With the weight of the expectations of her entire town and generations and generations of her ancestors on her shoulders, she had hugged her beloved pony good bye and left to be a doctor.

She had worked hard. Very hard. She simply couldn’t bear to let everybody down. So she had steeled herself and met each challenge head on.

Her dyslexia made the massive volumes of rote learning that was expected of them extremely difficult. But she would not let anybody down, and had spent every free moment writing sentences from Robbins Pathological Sciences over and over again, sometimes a hundred times or more until they finally stuck in her stubborn brain. It had paid off. She had graduated top in her class in several subjects, including psychiatry and general surgery, but it was surgery that she really loved. So, when it had been time to organize her elective, and a place at the prestigious Boston University had opened up, she had leapt at the chance. Three months and two research papers, half a dozen case reports, and three departmental audits later and she was free to explore the country that had always held such a fascination for her. In the next few months she would need to start thinking about applying for residencies, but until then she was free.

Suddenly the dirt road she had been bumping along came to a washed out arroyo filled with large boulders. There was no way Bessie was going any further. Ahead of her was desert as far as the eye could see. Great! She thought, Good job River. Great start to your American adventure. With no other options left she popped Bessie into reverse and prepared to turn back toward the hotel still hours away. As her foot pressed down on the accelerator, Bessie responded by sputtering a few times, uttering a rather underwhelming belch, and then producing a much more dramatic cloud of acrid black smoke that began to billow out from under Bessie’s seriously dented hood.

Panicking, River leaped out the car and ran for several meters before turning back just in time to see the flames jumping from around the hood. Within seconds Bessie was ablaze and all of her carefully packed kit, including water bottles, pup tent, iPhone, and Swiss Army knife were gone. Falling to her knees in the burning sand she started to giggle hysterically as she realized that the only thing she had grabbed before fleeing was the lonely planet guide and the drug company sponsored pen she had attached to its cover, ironically advertising a new fluid rehydration system. Abruptly her giggling turned to sobs and tears began to fall in earnest as her predicament, and the very real danger of her imminent demise, began to sink in.

Sitting in the dusty road, watching the car slowly burn down until it was nothing more than a black charred hunk of junk metal, River shivered. Surprisingly, it was now quite dark. The desert, bright, interesting and enticing by day, was now a dark, threatening oppressive presence surrounding her. Shivering, she was surprised at how cool the air had become. Wearing nothing but the thin blouse, shorts and sneakers, she wrapped her arms about herself and began to take stock of the situation.

This is bad. she thought. I am miles from the paved road I left hours ago. Just then, the lonely howl of a coyote in the distance broke and with a start she stood and looked around. Panic gripped her.

Oh God! I have done some stupid things but this has to be the most idiotic. No one knows where I am or where I was going! Her heart pounding, she turned to look back down the road, trying to see something in the darkness that would give her some hope. All she could see was blackness.

Think. River, Think!

You can get out of this. You are smart, resourceful, and brave. All you need to do is THINK!

Talking out loud to herself, she began to walk back along the road. Into the darkness she plodded. Soon she could no longer see the hulk of the burned out car behind her. Fortunately, the moon was almost full and in the clear desert air it was bright enough to see a few meters ahead.

Chapter Two - I GET SMASHED

Miles away a pickup stood on one of the few high spots in the flat desert. Standing on the tailboard, a tall lean figure peered through a pair of binoculars and watched the thin plume of smoke in the distance.

That he thought, is a problem.

There should not be anything burning in that part of the ranch. That much smoke meant a big fire. That usually meant trouble in the form of smugglers or illegal immigrants on their way from Mexico toward Fort Stockton and the railroad lines that would take them deeper into the US. Stepping off the tailboard of the truck and moving to the open driver’s door, he reached behind the seat and pulled the ever ready AR15 rifle from its scabbard and placed it muzzle down to the floorboard on the seat beside him.

Putting the truck into gear, he picked up the radio microphone and spoke hurriedly.

Bob, this is Keith. Can you read me?

Gotcha Boss, what’s up?

Smoke down near the old springs. Lots of smoke. I’m headed down there now. Get Charley and Toad and head that direction. Come ready for trouble.

Will do Boss, but you be careful. We saw sign of a lot of smuggling down that way a few weeks of ago. Don’t get yourself ambushed.

I won’t, but you hurry your ass up. If these are smugglers, I want to send a message back to their bosses this time; one they won’t forget.

On our way Boss.

Keith tossed the microphone onto the seat and concentrated on navigating along the rough ranch road. He was still at least 10 miles from where he thought the fire was and that meant at least an hour on these roads. He looked at the sun and guessed that he had about 15 minutes of good light and then the desert night would be on him.

As he drove he thought about how life had changed in the last few years. When he was a boy, the biggest danger on this ranch was the occasional rattlesnake. The Mexicans coming across the border were hard workers and his grand dad and dad had welcomed them. Some of the families that came across in his granddad’s time still lived and worked on the ranch. Good people. Solid. Dependable. Loyal.

The ranch. It had been in their family since Texas gained its independence from Mexico. Better than ten thousand acres, it spanned a huge expanse of desert and bordered on the Rio Grande on the south. His family had made several fortunes in cattle, sheep, oil and gas and other mineral rights. He smiled as he thought of his mom and dad, sending him away to Austin to the University of Texas and then to California to get his Masters. They thought he would leave all this to become a successful investor or banker. Not him. He had accepted a commission in the Army and pulled several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then he came home. This desert was in his blood. He came back as soon as he could, taking over the management of the ranch.

But things were different now. The people coming across the border were no longer easy going, hardworking peasants. Now they were hardened, well-trained criminals, moving drugs, currency, guns and even people back and forth across the border. They weren’t afraid to stand and fight and they were not to be trifled with. Several ranchers had been killed in recent months during confrontations with the smugglers. Some of the old families had given up, moved off their land and left it to the cartels.

Not me! he said out loud.

The radio crackled. Boss, we are on our way. I have Charley and Toad. We can be there in about an hour.

Picking up the microphone, he answered. Roger. I will be there a little before that.

She was cold, very cold. She knew basic desert survival, which meant she knew she was in big trouble. It was already freezing cold and her brand new Merino wool layers and tent were long gone. She was thirsty. She needed to find shelter, hunker down as best she could and hope she survived the night. The problem was visibility. The full moon had long since set. She could see maybe a meter or two in front of her but that was it. Walking, although keeping her warm, was using up precious water.

She had been drawing arrows in the sand at regular intervals for her rescuers, but that had been an exercise in trying to stay positive and optimistic more than anything else. At every 1000 paces or so she had torn out a page of the Lonely Planet, written her name, the approximate time of the day as far as she could tell, the direction she had been walking,her parents address and phone number and: Mum, Dad I love you, I am sorry. She carefully folded them into small origami water lilies and secured each one with a rock.

Every muscle in her body ached. Her eyes were burning from the combination of tears and dehydration, and her tongue felt like cardboard. Unable to help herself, she fell to her knees, her body refusing to continue on sheer will power alone. Attempting to cry out in frustration she was dismayed when nothing but a raspy gasp escaped. With a sudden clarity of thought, she knew she was going to die.

Dead girl walking, or collapsing at least. Ha, ha. she thought, then Oh for goodness sake River, you are about to die and you’re trying to be funny. Honestly, what is wrong with you!?

So this is how she dies. What a waste, you stupid, stupid, girl. she thought.

Stupid girl indeed! She knew the feeling well. She had spent much of her childhood being told she was stupid and just not very clever by teacher after teacher. Slowly but surely retreating into herself for protection from a world in which written words were the enemy and English a foreign language to her. Hehe. English as a second language when English is your only language. She thought, Oh dear, I am losing my mind."

Her mind was indeed as lost as the rest of her. It wandered all over scenes from her past, fading in and out of consciousness. She could see the look of triumphant relief on her Mothers face when they had finally discovered that she wasn’t thick, simply dyslexic. Then, the scene changed abruptly and she was sitting at her desk at Knox College, studying for her first year medical school exams, writing the same mnemonic over and over and over a hundred times trying to ram it into her brain so that it would stick. Now what was that mnemonic..........what was it........?

Causes of pancreatitis.

I GET SMASHED.

I: Idiopathic, G: Gallstones, E: Ethanol, T: Trauma, S: Steroids,

M: Mumps/Malignancy, A: Autoimmune, S: Scorpion stings/Snake bites. ...

Hahaha, how they had giggled at that one. Not a single poisonous snake or scorpion living on New Zealand’s fair isles, yet there it was on the list. Ridiculous!

I get smashed. I get smashed. I get smashed . . . over and over, line after line on the pages, beating her brain into submission. I get smashed.

And she had done so. Not often, but often enough to fit in with the rest of the boozy class.

I get smashed.

Oh, how smashed she had been the night of the fresher’s hop! She had blacked out just after falling into bed with the Knox college rector. She remembered her hand on what she could only assume to be his cock. It felt like a rather thick piece of chalk under her palm. It had been perhaps three inches long and a finger width thick. How surprised she had been! She had assumed for a very long time that the text books she had seen depicting pictures of male genitalia must have been written by men and with a hefty dose of poetic license thrown into the mix, if that first encounter was representative. River had felt eternally grateful that they had both blacked out long before that particular ‘applied anatomy tutorial’ had progressed any further.

I.

Get.

Smashed.

With one last Herculean effort she threw the Lonely Planet guide as far as she was able into the thick, inky, blackness of night, and curled up in the fetal position in the sandy dirt.

She could feel herself close to losing consciousness and felt only relief. Sorry., she thought, I am so sorry.

Suddenly she became acutely aware of a very fundamental bodily function that needed addressing. She needed to pee, badly.

I will not be found dead with wet pants! She thought. She somehow managed to crouch into a squatting position, wriggled her shorts and panties down to her knees, and waited for the relief. As the warm, wet liquid began to flow into the desert sand she was reminded of something she had once read about monks drinking their own urine as a meditation enhancer. Warm, wet liquid.

Without thinking, operating on autopilot, she cupped a hand below her legs and caught the liquid in her palm, bringing it to her mouth and drinking again and again until she was done. Her body’s need for rehydration totally over-riding her repulsion at what she was doing.

Moments later and she could move her lips once more, her tongue no longer a stiff, foreign object. She felt elated. River 1. Death 0. she thought with a giggle.

As she began to come to her senses, she thought she could hear the trickle of running water off in the distance. Not all the time, but every now and again. Was she hallucinating? She didn’t much care if she was any more. She stumbled off in the direction of a towering wall of rock to her left. As she got closer, she began to imagine that she could hear lowered voices also, though the language sounded unfamiliar. Definitely hallucinating. She thought, as she stumbled on blindly in the direction of the mirage.

Chapter Three - Smoke Signals in the Desert

Concentrating on the ruts that passed for a road, Keith looked up, trying to catch one more glimpse of the fading smoke before the sun left the sky completely. He noted that it was beginning to fade, indicating that the fire was out.

Interesting. he thought. Not a campfire.

His thoughts once again turned to the ranch. He enjoyed the outdoor life on the ranch. But more and more his time was taken up with his other business interests and concerns. After college he had done a stint in the US military as a civil affairs officer. His tours overseas during the Gulf war had brought him into contact with several members of the Saudi royal family among other powerful and influential people in the Middle East. Those contacts had blossomed into a very rewarding series of business deals that now had him at the helm of a worldwide empire that made the income from the ranching operation seem like a pittance. What it did was allow him to maintain that operation, which was rapidly becoming unprofitable.

He frowned as he thought about that. He had vowed to keep the ranch operating. Meeting that vow had forced him to enter into some business relationships that were less than reputable, to put it lightly. He wasn’t involved in anything overtly illegal, but in the world of international finance and commerce, sometimes one had to cut corners. He didn’t like it, but it was how the world operated and he needed to be able to operate.

His travels and business interests had also opened up to him a world that the son of a rancher in West Texas could never have known. He had seen things, done things and enjoyed things that, quite frankly, were usually to be found only in the pages of some of the raunchiest pornography to be had. These experiences had awakened in him things that he never knew were in his makeup. One more reason to stay deep in the desert of West Texas, away from most people.

He maneuvered the truck along, dodging rocks and ruts as best he could until he picked up the road to the old springs. This was a somewhat better road since tourists still wanted to visit the ruins of the old adobe structure, which was by now not much more than a pile of slowly eroding mud bricks. It was full of cactus and rattlesnakes and was a frequent stopover for the smugglers because there was often a small trickle of water still available from the spring at the base of the cliff.

Looking ahead into the dark, he saw movement and immediately shut down the truck, dowsed the lights, and grabbed the rifle. Bailing out of the truck, he headed off into the desert. Better to not get caught close to the truck if these were smugglers coming up the road. Using every bit of outdoor skill he possessed, he moved along parallel to the road. He moved slowly and silently, watching the road in the dim moonless night until he saw the lone figure walking along the in the dark. Trying to see if there were more figures following, he watched as the figure stumbled and fell, tried to rise and then slumped down onto the desert sand.

Then he heard them. Other voices wafting through the cold desert night air.

Aquí se fue? (Where did she go?)

Ella está en el camino por delante (She is in the road up ahead)

Keith frowned. Smugglers, and they evidently knew someone was out here. He moved slowly toward the new voices until he could just barely make out the eight shapes in the dim moonlight as they worked their way slowly up the road from the direction the other person had come. They were moving carefully. He could tell they were armed and heavily loaded with backpacks. His senses went on high alert. These were very dangerous men. More than likely they were returning to Mexico. The backpacks probably held cash, lots of cash. That meant that they would defend themselves at all cost.

Without thinking, Keith found himself again in Afghanistan, far back in the remote mountains. Civil Affairs simply meant that his job was to take his unit, find a target and either eliminate it or bring it back. Usually it was a Taliban leader or a tribal chieftain who was collaborating with the Taliban. He had spent weeks working with just the 8 other men in his team, surrounded by suspected enemy forces. He was good at his job. His team was the best in the business. And it was just like what he was facing now.

Sitting deep in the shadows of the huge cactus, Keith watched carefully as the smugglers approached the prone figure lying motionless in the road.

¿Está muerta? (Is she dead?)

No ella todavía está respirando (No. She is still breathing)

Just then Keith heard the faintest of sounds behind him. He knew instinctively that it was the men he was expecting. Soon, three men joined him quietly.

He looked at them. These were men he trusted. They had all been members of his team overseas and he had faced much worse with them than what they faced tonight. In hushed whispers he filled them in and gave orders. Silently the other men moved off into the night to take their positions.

Keith watched as the smugglers moved to the woman lying unmoving on the rutted road. He sat patiently, waiting. One of the smugglers exclaimed excitedly.

Hey! Look at the blonde bitch. What a treat! We party tonight, my friends!

The other men laughed, one of them rudely rubbing his crotch. They all moved in closer to get a better look at the female figure sprawled face down in the dust. They continued to discuss her in Spanish as they dropped their backpacks.

Nunca me he follado a una puta rubia antes. (I have never fucked a blonde whore before!)

One of the men punched the still body with the toe of his boot.

Apuesto a que tiene un apretado coño (I bet you have a tight pussy)

The other men laughed again.

Laying his rifle down, the obvious leader of the smugglers knelt beside the unconscious woman and rolled her over onto her back. One of the other men shone a small flashlight on her, moving the light up and down her body so the others could see. The other men laughed coarsely. It was obvious what they had in mind for her, out here in the dark in the desert.

The man reached out his hand and squeezed her full breast.

¡Mierda! Ella tiene grandes tetas! (Shit! She has big tits!)

Vamos a ver ellos. Rip esa camisa abierta! (Let’s see them! Rip that shirt open!)"

The man kneeling, nodded his head, and reached to his belt for a knife. The blade glinted in the moonlight as he leaned in to slit River’s shirt so that they could all get a better view of her breasts.

With their attention firmly fixed on the woman in the road, Keith knew that the time was right. Shifting slightly, he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and took careful aim on the smuggler bent over the woman. Breathe. Hold. Squeeze. The silenced rifle coughed once. Almost immediately three other barely audible reports could be heard. In the still night air, the solid thump of bullet hitting flesh could be heard and four smugglers folded to the ground.

The remaining four smugglers stood for a second in mute surprise. Unable to ascertain from where the bullets had come, they looked around frantically. Making an instant decision, Keith’s rifle spoke once more, immediately followed by three more reports and the remaining smugglers joined their comrades on the ground.

Holding his position for a several seconds, Keith watched the bodies on the ground, making sure that they were indeed incapacitated, if not dead. Seeing no movement, he slowly stood and looked again. Just like the old days, he thought. A clean, quick operation. He smiled in the darkness. Yes. It felt good.

Chapter Four - Out of the Flames and into the Fire

Keith whistled a soft signal and out of the darkness came his men. Like ghosts they appeared out of the shadows and moved forward. Cautiously they approached the scene. On the road lay 8 quite dead smugglers, each with a single wound to the head. Their bodies surrounded the still unconscious body of the young woman on the road.

Charley, go get the ranch truck. Toad, check out the girl. Bob, help me check these guys. See if they have any identification. Get their weapons and get those backpacks. Put them all in my truck. When Charley gets here with the truck, dispose of the bodies. Take them down to the river near where the smugglers usually cross and leave them there. I want them to be found. I want all of their compadres to know what is in store if they come this way again.

Kneeling next to Toad he watched as the former combat medic expertly examined the young woman. Toad. Everyone called him Toad and no one really new why. He was an enigma. Built squat and heavy bodied, he was immensely strong. His hands were huge with thick fingers and massive wrists. Even Keith didn’t know much about his earlier life. He knew that Toad joined the military right after high school and had volunteered for medic training. He also knew that Toad had almost foolhardy courage. He had seen him go forward through murderous gunfire to bring back a wounded comrade. He had seen him lift a wrecked Humvee off of a man trapped after an IED explosion. He had also seen those big thick hands at work on a child sliced open by razor wire. Hands that looked like they could barely close in their immensity, but which could make the most delicate medical procedure look easy and done with the gentlest of touch. After they came home from Afghanistan the last time, he had found Toad sitting in his office, head down and tears streaming down his face.

Toad explained that the Major had told him that he was being mustered out involuntarily. Reduction in force, he said. Toad didn’t want to be mustered out. He wanted to stay in the Army. It was the only home he had. He had nowhere else to go.

Keith had assured him that things would work out. He kept in touch. Toad had wandered about Europe for a while and then used the last of his pay to fly back home. With nowhere else to go, he showed up at the ranch. He asked Keith for a job. At that time, Keith was just home himself. As he sat with Toad on the porch of the ranch house and they talked about old times, a sudden thought had come to Keith. He began to talk to Toad about the team and where they were. Toad knew where most of them had landed after the military. Keith grew more and more excited. Soon they were making plans.

Over the next several days Toad was busy making phone calls. He had found all but one of their former teammates. Charley, he said, was in New York City, his home town, driving a cab. Bob was in Louisiana with his wife. They were trying to make a go of a small business but weren’t having much luck. Sam was down on his luck and hanging out with friends in San Antonio. Jeff was flying helicopters for an offshore drilling company. Don was in LA working as a cop. Andrew was back overseas, working as a private contractor for the State Department, guarding embassy employees in Baghdad. Only Stu was not to be found.

Keith’s overseas contracts and contacts were just beginning to flourish. Things were getting busy and he had already seen the need for people he trusted in sensitive positions. So he began contacting them all. The offer – come to work for me.

Toad, Bob and Charley accepted straight away. They formed the nucleus of his core team. Bob, since he was married, had no interest in travel or overseas assignments. After meeting with Jana, she agreed that his temperament, his business background and his solid, even judgement were just what was needed in a ranch manager.

Charley, the former weapons specialist, took over as ranch mechanic. He took care of the trucks and other rolling stock as well as seeing to the not-inconsiderable armory held at the ranch.

Toad, of course, was Toad. He followed Keith around like a puppy. He idolized Jana. He would do whatever job was asked of him. He became the de facto ranch doctor. With the closest medical facility at least 125 miles distant and accessible only by rough road, being able to take care of day-to-day medical requirements was important. Toad had found his home again.

Jeff didn’t join the business staff until later. As Keith’s businesses grew, it became more and more difficult to meet the travel demands and stay on the ranch full time. Keith refused to move anywhere else and so began Aguas Cristilinos air lines. That was the unofficial name given to the small fleet of aircraft owned by the company and managed by Jeff. The pride and joy was a nearly new 777, capable of intercontinental flight. The fleet included several twin engine aircraft and a sleek Bell helicopter. All of the aircraft were painted jet black and identified with the logo of the company in gold. When Keith flew onboard any of the planes, only Jeff was at the controls.

Don joined a few months after Jeff. His parting with the LA Police Department wasn’t amicable. Keith immediately offered him the position of Security Chief for his entire operation. Don gladly accepted and quietly and quickly left LA and moved to Dallas where he and Keith set up an office for the company security operations.

Sam, like Toad, had known no other life than the military. He had no skills or training other than what the Army had provided. He had no family to speak of and no other attachments. Keith put him to work on the ranch. It soon became apparent that he was not meant for ranch work. Searching for a reasonable spot in a multinational corporation for such an individual might seem like an easy chore. Not so. Sam just didn’t fit in anywhere. After a time, unwilling to toss Sam aside, Keith took a gamble and started a small private security firm. He pushed Sam into getting the necessary certificates and security clearances and then put him in charge. Sam was a natural. The business took off and now this small part of the empire was providing private security for some of the most influential and famous people around the world. Sam had moved to San Antonio and ran the business from there but stayed in close touch with the rest of the team.

Andrew was yet to join them. He was still contracting to the state department, making good money and having a