Mind Kill- Rise of the Marauder Read online

  MIND KILL

  RISE OF THE MARAUDER

  BY

  PETER CASILIO

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  Table of Contents Continued

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  MARAUDER’S NEXT MISSION

  Dedications

  Many years ago, I suddenly parked my tractor and stowed my chainsaw. With my favorite pistol on my hip, I sat in my great room chair typing away on a laptop writing Peter Mitchelli’s story. Although my wife and children were confused by my new obsession, they were amazingly supportive. Thank you, Barb, Peter and Kaitlin, I love you very much.

  I have fond rememberance for my parents Patsy and Rosemary, for their never-ending love for their children, and my grandmother Mary who did the work of four grandparents.

  Although they relentlessly joked that Peter Mitchelli was really the author of this book, my siblings Pat, Phil, Mary, Paul, and my friends that were generous with their encouragement. I can never forget my patient editor, Deb Hartwell. I thank you all.

  For those among us who suffer with mental illness, you’re not alone! May you and your family always fight to stay strong, please never give up, and like Peter Mitchelli, you will persevere.

  This book is written for all of you.

  CHAPTER 1

  Two soldiers anxiously monitored their radar screen watching over miles of deadly water. Surrounding their thirty-foot boat, the fog hovered above the black lake, attempting to hide its deadly mystery. Its navigation lights were barely visible as they reflected off the black water. The cabin’s grey metal skin and red hull sponson marked them as a target against the night sky.

  The radar screen cast an eerie glow across the soldier’s green uniforms, illuminating the hand grenades hanging high on their flack vests. The netting over their steel helmets secured plastic bottles of insect repellant and packs of cigarettes. Their heavy colt pistols secured in leather holsters forced their canvas belts below their hips. Their Vietnam era combat attire looked out of place inside the cabin of the modern SAFE Boat.

  The men were young, too young to have such responsibility thrust on their narrow shoulders. The Lieutenant raised his head from the radar screen, his eyes anxiously panning the cabin windows; desperately searching into the darkness for any traces of his missing men. Beyond the confines of the cabin lay the clues to the tragedy, pieces of the puzzle hidden in the vastness of the lake. As he looked out the rear windows, he caught a glimpse of the old Vietnamese fisherman on the floor, intently focused on mending his fishing net. Like the soldiers, he looked out of place in the modern boat.

  The soothing sound of water lapping against the hull accompanied by the hum from the radar bar rotating above the cabin was abruptly interrupted. A blip appeared on the radar screen.

  Sergeant Magio called out, “Lieutenant Stuart, bogie one mile, bearing one-two-five, speed fast, real fast--maybe forty, no fifty, miles per hour.”

  The Lieutenant looked out the windows at the black water in disbelief, “What nut would be out in this soup? He’s got to be one crazy son of bitch; he has some balls.”

  Lieutenant Stuart pressed two buttons on the dashboard, quickly starting the engines. He pegged the throttles forward, pushing them to the dashboard. The little engines screamed as they propelled the small boat across the water into harm’s way.

  “Sir we’re closing fast, five hundred yards, four-fifty.”

  Lieutenant Stuart pulled the throttles back slowly as he approached the target. The Saipan’s wooden hull was only inches above the surface of the water, its rudder unmanned, its motor quietly chugging along, making five miles an hour. The water gently parted as the small wooden boat pushed through the waves.

  “Sergeant, are you busting my oranges? How the hell could a Saipan make fifty miles an hour?”

  Lieutenant Stuart turned to his right while the Vietnamese fisherman stood next to him looking anxiously out at the small boat. The fisherman was barefoot, and his body was emaciated. His almond eyes peered out from underneath a woven reed hat. His scraggly Fu Manchu mustache wrapped around his thin lips and continued down to his bony chin.

  The SAFE Boat’s light bar illuminated the night sky as the sirens chirped quickly, “blip, blip, blip.” Lieutenant Stuart used the PA, ordering the boat to stop and to prepare to be boarded. The Saipan motor sputtered and then stopped.

  Sergeant Magio prepared to grab the lines from the Saipan as he signaled OK to the Lieutenant. Suddenly, the fisherman jerked his arms across his chest in a gesture to warn the Lieutenant danger was near. “Kematian, bahaya!” He yelled nervously in Vietnamese. Death, Danger!

  The gibberish was ignored by the annoyed young commander. “Relax old man,” he said. “The Army will handle this; mend your fishing net.” The Lieutenant moved to the cabin door as the fisherman grabbed his vest, yanking down on it quickly. The Lieutenant pushed him aside and walked out on to the deck. Fog surrounded the two boats as Sargent Magio managed the lines.

  “Lieutenant, it doesn’t make any sense! What’s a Saipan doing on Lake Erie?”

  Not wanting to admit he too was puzzled by the contrast between the two boats, the Lieutenant sharply replied, “Thinking is above your pay grade, Sergeant. Let me worry about it.”

  “Yes sir, but what’s got the coolly so fired up?” Magio grabbed his line.

  A woman appeared, stepping out from under the burlap-covered cabin. Her looks were striking; red hair, blue eyed, light skinned, and wearing a red string bikini that barely covered her large breasts.

  The Sergeant’s mouth opened as he dropped the lines holding the boats together. “Hello baby, I must be dreaming.”

  The fisherman’s screams were now incomprehensible gibberish, “BUNUH TERORIS NYA, BAHAYA BAHAYA!” He grabbed the Lieutenant, pushing him towards the helm. Lieutenant Stuart stared at the voluptuous redhead in disbelief; he ignored the fog, the Saipan, and the terrified screams of the fisherman. He was getting aroused. Staring at her perfect body, she walked aft, towards a tarp that was covering small neatly stacked wooden crates.

  Lieutenant Stuart tried to get her attention. “MA’AM! We need to see your… HEY, MISS!” God she’s beautiful.

  With one swift movement, the tarp fell to the deck, uncovering several Asian women crouched behind the small crates, a crate with five chickens cackling, and an open black nylon bag stuffed with a green rectangular bricks. The Lieutenant was familiar with the shape and color of the bricks: heroin, wrapped in green plastic to protect its powdery consistency from the humid lake air.

  The Vietnamese fisherman screamed hysterically and pointed towards the woman as she pulled a handgun from beneath the tarp. “Gung terburu-buru membunuhnya seblum akhir membunuhnya!”

  She held the pistol in one hand and a small black grenade in the other. She raised her pistol as she walked towards the Sergeant, his mouth hanging agape; overcome by her beauty he appeared frozen. Young Lieutenant Stuart tried to warn him but could not find his voice. His mouth opened, but his voice was strained, paralyzed wit
h silence. He grabbed his pistol but could not draw it from his holster. His mouth was dry, overcome by a metallic taste.

  Within four feet of Sergeant Magio, the redhead raised her pistol towards his chest. As if spellbound by her beauty, he showed no reaction. She casually fired the pistol, the bullet ripping through his chest, exploding out his back, spewing blood and flesh as it exited.

  The Vietnamese fisherman grabbed the bloody body as it fell, gently breaking its descent as it came to rest on the deck. Blood quickly pooled on the deck around the lifeless soldier. The fisherman looked at the Lieutenant. Lieutenant Stuart suddenly realized the fisherman was trying to warn him of the impending danger. Bahaya membunuhnya, Danger kill her! He knew this boat and its danger. Lieutenant Stuart’s guts turned icy cold and his stomach was overcome with nausea with immense guilt for allowing his crewman to get killed. His body crippled with pain, overwhelmed with shame, he could not move; his mind an inferno tortured by his reluctance to heed the Vietnamese fisherman’s warnings.

  The woman looked at Lieutenant Stuart. Her eyes pierced his mental inferno, increasing his anguish. His hand was inches from his pistol, but he was incapable of pulling it from its holster. The chickens cackled in the background, as if mocking him. Looking at Lieutenant Stuart she gestured a flirtatious kiss, followed by a seductive wink then she pointed her gun at the fisherman’s neck and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit him in the throat; the blast knocked his hat off his head. He grabbed his neck as blood instantly covered his fingers and fell on top of the Sergeant.

  A phone began to ring. Confused, Stuart looked in the cabin at a phone on the dashboard. The woman ignored the sound. Stuart turned his head back and watched as she dropped the black grenade at his feet. He could do nothing but anticipate his demise. The brilliant flash of light from the explosion blinded him, accompanied with a tremendous, deafening, immobilizing bang. The inferno of heat blasted the clothes from his body, searing his skin. Lieutenant Stuart’s world turned black...

  ***

  The phone continued to ring. Stuart tried to move. The phone, I have to answer the phone. He straightened his arms, thrusting his hands above his head and pushed his pillow away from his face and onto the floor. His bed sheets pulled from the corners of the mattress were wrapped tightly around his legs. His pajamas were twisted across his body as if he had been fighting for his life, struggling to survive. His body was rigid, and he allowed it to slowly relax, settling back into the mattress. His arms fell limp over the side of the bed. It was a dream…or was it? The phone continued to ring. He pulled his body, which was lying across the width of the bed, and moved diagonally towards the nightstand and the ringing phone. The red glow from the clock illuminated his path toward the ringing phone.3:00, the demonic hour. His right hand slowly reached for the phone and picked it up. Placing it by his head, he rolled onto his back.

  Stuart answered, “Hello, eh hum eh hum, Hello, Lieutenant Stuart.”

  A muffled voice responded. “Mr. Secretary, it’s Freed, Sir. Sorry to wake you but your orders were explicit to call you at once if we had pressing news. We lost another two agents, best assumption early morning, not confirmed yet, but highly probable they’re missing, just like the others.”

  Stuart struggled to wake up. “The boat, the lake, my God, not Magio!” He glanced at the opened narcotic pill bottles laying on their sides, their contents nervously scattered across and over the edge of the nightstand’s mahogany top to a large framed picture on the floor of seven young soldiers posed in front a dark green boat.

  “Excuse me, Sir--has a Magio been transferred to my office?”

  Stuart snatched his pistol before it fell from the edge of the mattress. As he clenched the gun, his free hand rubbed the gunpowder residue from his temple, smearing it across his forehead.

  “What! No, eh um, forget about it; just someone I knew.”

  Freed recognized he has awakened Stuart, “Sir, yes they were on the lake patrolling in their boat. Sir, I can contact your office in the morning.”

  “No, damn it; I’ll be ok. I’ll contact you within the hour from my office.”

  “Yes, Sir. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Son, you were correct in calling.” He placed his phone on the nightstand; beside it sat a photo of a little girl wearing a life preserver seated behind wheel of a large boat. Rubbing his face, he slowly moved his legs to the edge of the bed, placing his feet on the cold wooden floor. Old age had caught up to the young Patrol Boat River commander. The Lieutenant was older, in his early sixties, his shoulders much broader than in his youth, and, like his mind, fatigued from immense responsibility as Secretary of Homeland Security.

  ***

  The nation’s concealed nightmare began with two United States Border Patrolmen on a routine patrol along the shores of Lake Erie just outside of Buffalo, New York on May 21, 2008. Lake Erie in May was die-hard boating season. The water temperature at 60 degrees was too cold to swim; the air temperature was hovering near 70. The lake was just starting to cultivate recreational boaters, a sign after a long Buffalo winter that summer was approaching. Boats were slowly filling thousands of slips in and around Lake Erie, their winter hibernation over. The great lake was brewing its distinctive aroma of algae and fresh water. The weather was pleasant: overcast, with no precipitation, a two mile-per-hour wind with one- to two-foot waves; weather conditions a high-tech SAFE Boat could easily handle.

  Even though a typical night patrol in May was quiet, and possibly mundane, they had contacted dispatch as per procedure every hour while on patrol. At three in the morning, they failed to check in. Dispatch attempted to contact the crew; the crew failed to respond. Quickly, the Coast Guard dispatched additional boats to the area, and ground agents searched the shoreline. With no discovery, standard procedures were to inform Buffalo PD, Erie County Sheriff’s Office, and the Buffalo Coast Guard station. The Coast Guard would coordinate the search on water, while the Erie County Sheriff’s Office controlled operations on land. Within six hours the Border Patrol SAFE Boat was discovered by a Coast Guard helicopter at the north end of Lake Erie, ten miles due west of Buffalo. It was dead man drifting slowly towards the entrance to the mighty Niagara River and destined in 8 hours to meet the rocks of Niagara Falls.

  The ghostly-unmanned patrol boat was discovered in Canadian waters. Its last location was along the shore of the City of Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo. The prevailing easterly winds would have moved the unmanned boat to the shoreline of Lackawanna, or Buffalo. The craft would have run aground on the miles of stone break walls protecting the city’s inner harbors.

  If the crew on the patrol boat were in pursuit of another craft, standard procedures ordered them to radio their location, coarse, description of craft and probable cause of pursuit. The officers missing were proficient and had no history of deviation from their patrol area. The navigation system, a GPS plotter, was far too accurate. The investigation determined all the equipment on the SAFE Boat was deemed functional and in good operating condition. The competent crew was highly trained, and a mistake seemed unlikely. Reluctantly, law enforcement would conclude that the SAFE Boat had been towed to the middle of Lake Erie in an attempt by the perpetrators to scuttle the boat. The investigation floundered, failing to discover pertinent evidence or the missing agents.

  Patrol boats on both borders were on the lookout for smuggling of any type. Narcotics, currency, and cigarettes were the typical cargo of traffickers prior to the attacks of 9/11. However, since the attack on the World Trade Center, the Department of Homeland Security was established, and its limitless budget directed towards investigating anything that could remotely affect the security of the United States. In addition to weapons of mass destruction, law enforcement focused on human trafficking, narcotics, and their associated crimes. Investigators believed that the money made from human trafficking and narcotics funded Islamic extremist terrorism. American citizens were indirectly paying for the weapons used to kill their soldiers in Afghanista
n and Iraq. Senior investigators theorized that the methods used to smuggle human slaves illegally into the country were being utilized to move terrorists into and out of the United States.

  Secretary Stuart’s post-traumatic stress disorder was resurrected on December 12, 2009, the day terrorists brought The Department of Homeland Security to its knees. Two more law enforcement agents had gone missing, making the total unaccounted field agents 21. Not wounded, murdered, but missing in the field while on patrol on Lake Erie, off the shore of Buffalo. They were attempting to discover how the first 19 government agents had vanished while on duty with no evidence left behind.

  An injured agent, or a dead agent, would be evidence; something tangible that could be scientific analyzed and studied with sophisticated equipment. The crime labs in Buffalo’s Central Police, New York State Police in Albany, and the largest criminal lab at the FBI headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland could analyze microscopic evidence; if there was evidence. The absence of a body left the question, had a crime even been committed? Even with modern technology, scanners, DNA evidence, and computer simulation, the fact was there needed to be physical evidence. A dead body was a crime scene in and of itself. The dead do talk; their clues don’t lie.