Ring Transport - Origins Pt. 02

Back in gear and going, and having passed no one on the whole detour, we pulled onto a main highway and then onto bigger highways until we were headed East and South towards the main routes to Vegas.

At a small town, we pulled into a big gas station and filled up, then parked off to the side of the giant lot, away from other vehicles. I got out the cube and did a dive into the suitcases, looking to make sure there wasn't a booby-trap bomb or something. I found just rolls of coins, so we started opening them up.

Each suitcase was the same, containing about 100 rolls of 16 coins each, 50 pounds, plus the weight of the suitcase. It had been hard to lift with one arm so that made sense. At 1600 one-Troy-ounce coins per suitcase, and $1200/oz gold prices, that was about $1.6M per suitcase.

So, each suitcase would pay for between 10 and 20 full-ride college scholarships, more than enough for myself and the trio, plus Krista if she wanted to do that.

One interesting part of this was finding one case also had 4 old-style cassette audio tapes tucked in it. These were labeled 3, 4, 5, 6. There was space for 1 and 2, but they were missing. Whoever left the cases had use for those two cassettes, at least.

We had no tape player, but Krista had the idea that maybe the truck stop we were at would have one... and it did!

Playing these, the audio quality was scratchy but listenable. Someone was reading off numbers, and then talking with a woman about going on vacation, very mundane. After a while, it just struck me that this was probably either audio of a crime being committed, or some kind of blackmail material, and I wasn't a blackmailer.

Since just having the tapes might tie us to crimes, I pulled out the tape itself from the cassettes and cut it up into bits into one of our cooking pots. Our charcoal-grill lighter quickly set it all ablaze, though we did that part outside in the breeze for the smoke. Krista worried there might be drug residue on the tapes, but that seemed like a little overboard as a worry.

The next problem was what to do next.

I didn't know what I wanted to do about the giant bags of cash in that house in Reno.

Certainly it was a huge haul. We were a ways from Reno by this point, but it was tempting. We turned our rig around and headed back to Reno.

At another truck stop outside town, we parked the RV and I got the Mini off the trailer for driving around. We had fun driving the little car compared to the hulking behemoth RV, but ended up as planned parked across the street from the Real Estate office and waited. We knew the guy's schedule; I'd seen it.

About 2 pm, he came out and walked to his car. We weren't that far away, it wasn't a big street. I did a PUSH to him, "Your back-right-bottom molar hurts. You want to fix it. There's a dentist across the street. Drive there."

We saw him drive off, navigate around, and pull into the parking lot next to ours.

Just after he got out, I walked towards him in a twisting path to prevent him from seeing which car I'd come from. This left Krista in the Mini, safe. I didn't want to do anything to put her at risk.

I got close quickly since he was looking for the door to a dentist's office, but this was a defunct hairdresser's office. Turning around, his eyes were already changed, soft. I said, "Hello."

His accent was Hispanic but clear, "Hello. I will do anything you ask of me."

I said, "You are unable to lie to me in any way. Tell me what your job is."

"I am a real estate broker most of the time. I also am a courier for drugs and cash for the __[redacted]__ cartel. I transport things. I don't ask questions, and I'm reliable. Some of the time, I actually sell a house, though I also have to buy houses for cartel members, or businesses, too."

It made sense, a lot of money changed hands in this business. "Who is the boss of your cartel?"

"Uh, _[redacted]_, everybody knows this. He lives somewhere in Bolivia, I think. Of course, I've never met him... I don't think, at least. Though, sometimes I think the boss of my boss is his son, _[redacted]_."

"Where does the money go when you take it to them?"

"They come in a panel truck that says 'ABC Plumbing' on them. They load in the cash, and drive away. I don't know."

"Do you realize you're killing people by selling them [_drugs_]?"

"Yes. I used to worry? My best friend growing up, he died from _[redacted]_. But, he was weak. He couldn't stop. But, if not me, they'll get the drugs somehow anyway."

"Have you ever killed anyone or done any violent things?"

"Yes. Two different times. In El Salvador, I shot 2 men who were trying to rob me. One more of my shots went past them and hit an old lady in the leg. I was a little sad, how she screamed, but she dropped her purse. I took that and used the money to buy dinner that night. I don't know if she died but no one found out, so I was okay."

This guy had no remorse at all. "And the second time?"

"I had to kill a man who was stealing from my boss. I had to do pretty horrible things to him, while he was still alive, so we could take pictures of him. Even in my head, I can see what I did, they haunt me. I wake up sometimes. Anyway, after, I put his body parts in the street outside his house."

This was a very bad man, I decided. He had only a small amount of guilt, if any. So, the question was, what would I do about it?

I said, "Right. Do you know how to set a house on fire and make it look accidental?"

"Yes, I think so. I can buy flammable varnish and some wood, start refinishing the woodwork, and accidentally leave the oily rags in a pile. They heat up just by themselves if you don't watch it. My uncle had that happen once. So, then, they start on fire many hours later, and it's not my fault."

"Ah. You've done this before?"

"No, but I've imagined it."

"Told anyone?"

He grinned, "No, master, never, not before you. I keep this one to myself, in case. Just, in case."

I said, "You have a new plan. Here is your plan. You will go to the house with the drugs. You'll park in the garage, get the bags with the money and put them in your car. Then, go back in the house and dump all the drugs in a bathtub full of very hot water to unfreeze them."

He looked like he understood, so I continued, "Be sure to puncture all the bags you can, quickly, so the water gets into the drugs. Then, leave like normal."

Again, he nodded, understanding.

"Go back the next day, run the hot water and flush all the drugs down the drain as best you can; don't worry about getting all of it, just most of it. Then, leave like normal, but instead of going back to your job, just get the bare minimum of what you need, if anything, and drive away. Trade in your car for another car, smaller and gas-efficient, and drive it to Mexico City."

He said, "Yes, Master."

I said, "Do you see any problems with the plan?"

"The lookout. She will say something. She will probably come over before I am even half-done with the job."

"Do you know who the lookout is?"

"No. One of the ladies on that street, or a relative of them, maybe. Carlos uses old ladies a lot, though, so one of them is more likely. She will notice I am pulling into the garage instead of the driveway. She will call Carlos. Carlos will drive over quickly, because I am holding a lot of money right now."

I nodded, "Okay. Then, we need a new plan.... Does that house's backyard join to another house's backyard?"

"Si. Yes, master."

"Could you throw them over that fence? Or, hand them through that fence? Or, is there an easier way?"

"I would go across the street, to each house, and shoot each of the people that was home in the head with my pistol, the one with a silencer. Then, I could do what I want, as fast or slow as I want."

Clearly, I was not thinking like he was.

"Can you go to that house at night?"

"The house has alarms and maybe cameras. I don't know what kind, but one time I didn't tap the statue and I got a cell phone call about a minute later."

"Ah." I thought, "Do you turn the alarm back on when you leave?"

"Yes, master."

"Okay. So, the new plan can be: you go like normal today. You bring up the bags from the basement and put them in the backyard, quickly. You leave like normal, in about the same amount of time. No one sees anything from the front. You drive where you're supposed to be and do what you normally do. Then, you leave from the office later this afternoon, go over to the house behind yours, go through the fence and get the bags of money and put them in your car."

"I understand. Do I kill the people in the house, take them hostage, tie them up, what?"

"They will be gone, or they will ignore you. If they give you any trouble, go through another house's backyard to get to your house's backyard. You must never shoot innocent people again. Understand?"

He understood. I would just be around to ensure they weren't there.

"One more thing. If anyone asks you about this, if you get in trouble, tell them your plan was to run off with the money and live in Cameroon. That is your eventual plan, to go to live in Cameroon, Africa. Once you do this for me, you're going to go there."

"With the money?"

"No. You're going to bring me the money, in this parking lot. If I'm not already here, or something goes wrong, you'll wait here. You wait for me until I get here, but not longer than a day, 24 hours. You will be patient and it will be easy for you to relax and wait. When I get here, you will put it in my car. You will say nothing to me unless I ask you something. Then, you will drive your car to Mexico City, and then from there somehow you'll go to Cameroon, you decide. Got it?"

"Yes, Master."

"Once you're in Cameroon, you're going to find an orphanage, some religious place, a charity mission or something. You will join that mission. You will give it your wholehearted support and effort for the rest of your life. If that mission closes, you will find another mission nearby. Doing that work will make you content and sometimes happy. You will forget all about your former life, like it happened to another person, then, you'll forget entirely. You'll dedicate yourself to the highest standards of ethical behavior that you can, and will study to learn and develop more."

He nodded, and looked at me, open faced and ready to honestly and forthrightly agree to anything.

"Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"You may go now, get the money, put it in the backyard. You have the plan. You may not kill anyone as part of this plan, unless it's Carlos or the person you know to be the lookout, and even then, only kill the lookout if you absolutely have to. If anything goes wrong, continue with the rest of the plan."

"Si. Yes, Master."

"Go."

He got in his car and drove away.

Going back to the Mini with Krista, I filled her in, and we killed a few hours reading.

I checked in every once in a while with the cube. He'd done as we asked, moving the bags of money, returning to work at his real-estate job. The bags were right up against the medium-low back fence, like it was nothing.

We decided we needed disguises, so we bought some hats and sad looking clothes. At a house down a dozen blocks or so away, an older lady was getting her mail, and I pulled over, PUSH'ing her to come talk with us. We talked, she lent us her car (with license plates removed, a quick operation), and we went in her car to the back-lot house.

Pulling in the driveway of the house with the abutting backyard, we walked up and rang the bell, but no one was home. I regarded this as good luck, but also somewhat normal since it was a suburban area in very early afternoon -- people were at work and kids at school.

In the backyard, I jumped the fence and found the plastic bags he'd put there as requested. Getting them over the fence wasn't easy; I was glad to have bigger muscles than normal. As I threw them over, Krista dragged them across the lawn to our borrowed Subaru. They were probably 80 pounds apiece, so it wasn't easy.

I got the tenth and last bag over the fence, then climbed over myself, when a lady appeared in the yard next door, watching our process. I said, "Oh, Hi!"

I PUSH'd to her, "Come to me, trust me." She came. I said to her now-adoring eyes, "Help us with these bags, please. We're picking up donations for [_charity group_]."

She quickly agreed, came around her smaller fence, and we loaded the borrowed Subaru we were driving with the bags, significantly weighing down the car.

As she left, I told her, "Excellent job. Forget forever you ever saw us," and I sent her on her way.

Trading cars back and shifting bags to our Mini (which could barely hold that much weight), we paused to look in one of the bags. Sure enough, in the bottom, I found a GPS tracker. Quickly, we went through the bags and found the other trackers.

We had a quick debate on what to do with them. I wanted to put them on another vehicle, but it just seemed too complicated and might get someone else hurt. Pulling in a nearby parking lot, I found a rock and banged them to bits, and we put the remains in a gas station trashcan.

Driving our Mini back to our RV across town, we drove right on the trailer and got on the road quickly. Later, at a rest stop down the road an hour or two away, we transferred the bags from the Mini into the spare bedroom.

== ==

That night, unpacking and counting the money became kind of an interesting thing. One surprise was how bad it smelled. I hadn't realized that money smelled, but it did. Laundering money, in this context, could be a useful thing, but we didn't do that.

Trying to figure out how much we had wasn't simple.

None of the bundles were consistent in amounts or sizes. There were usually about 500 bills in a bundle, plus or minus 50, but the denominations were everything from ones to 100's, with a lot of 20's in there. Counting was going to be impossible on a large scale.

Leaving out a stash in one of the front cupboards, we just put the rest back in the bags and stowed them in the luggage space under the main cabin.

Krista wanted to know where to go, so I looked on our travel map, and eventually decided we'd both like to head for Yosemite, since neither of us had been there before.

We traded off driving since it gave us something to do. In between, I studied my math, moving through it pretty quickly now, far quicker than when I'd first started. Switching topics between study times, I realized I was ingesting a huge amount of info in a short time, and I retained almost everything I read. I could quote whole sections from some of the novels I read, paging through and skimming them seemed to be enough for me to get the gist of what was going on, and I thought about the thing later and realized how some of it fit together in interesting ways that I'd missed while I was skimming.

The next day we got to Yosemite and camped in an RV lot way away from anyone else, mostly because it lacked almost any amenities. Setting up shop, Krista and I just spent that day, and the day after, and the day after, just reading. She saw I was doing homework problems, and joined me, picking up from one of the algebra books I had. She was still slower than I was, but way faster than any normal person.

It was about the fourth day when I realized our phones had been off and in foil since we went looking for the gold coins in the desert. We put them back together, and soon I found I had a set of texts from various people.

Happily, my only texts were from the Trio, saying 'hello, I love you!' once a day.

Krista's texts included some from her roommates saying, "where are you?" and "You forgot your shampoo." She didn't, she knew that, she decided it was intended to get her to reply and she wasn't taking the bait.

I had kind of expected to see some news from Reno's online papers about the Hispanic guy, somehow, or that house, but instead, nothing. Thinking about it, I realized our Hispanic courier guy had probably waited at that parking lot, confused, for a while, his bags gone and not knowing what had happened. I didn't worry about it too much, either he got away or he didn't, and my instructions were pretty clear that he wasn't to remember anything about me.

Driving down the road, I thought, Hey, I can try connecting with him the same way I connected with Krista while she was running. I sat back in the recliner where I was reading and pictured him, and tried to reach out with my mind to where he was. At the bottom of my vision, my eyes closed, I imagined a webpage that had names of people in alphabetical order.

I mentally 'clicked' on the one for him, "Ahando". I didn't know that was his name, but it came to me and I decided it was good enough.

My 'connection level' dial was at zero, so I turned it up gradually, reaching 40, then 50, and I could see what he was looking at. The view was out of a car windshield, driving somewhere on an interstate, in a place that was mostly desert. He'd gotten away, which was both good and bad, I figured.

Turning the dial down to zero again and opening my eyes, I got back to work.

== Chapter: Fun at Lunch ==

Over the next 5 weeks, we lived a pretty simple life in the RV. We both were reading most of the time, listening to music, running or hiking trails nearby either alone or together, and having really good sex both inside and sometimes amongst the trees, too.

For food, we had plenty initially but as that got low, Krista started driving down to the closest town's grocery store nearly an hour away outside Modesto.

Given ingredients, she made beautiful meals, and we had just the right kind of working vacation that I needed.

Right when we got there, all the rest of my teeth had fallen out.

This was obviously a by-product of the ring's rejuvenation, delayed, but how was I to know what and why my body did the odd stuff it did. I wasn't objecting too much, really, since I got all new teeth and gums out of it, but it was still a giant hassle to work around for meals.

Food was a hassle for both Krista and myself, for her making it and for me gumming it.

Only the barest hints of new teeth had come in and more slowly than I'd like for sure. I felt very odd, and my mouth and jaw were sore, though normal ibuprofen did the trick most of the time.

My mouth shut much more tightly and I had too much "lip", like an old-timer grandpa guy or something. Krista and I laughed about that part.

Reading, doing math, working my way through, I was spending most of my hours just getting schooled. This was happy-making. I wasn't in a large classroom with people, granted, but it was nice to know that I was re-learning and mastering everything I should have learned in high school the first time, and even going far beyond that by reading textbooks that were for college-level stuff.

More than just reading, I could remember everything. I was so far ahead of where I'd been in high school - and the few college courses I took in TLB - it was crazy to even make the comparison.

The second week there, Krista and I went on a tear reading Shakespeare to each other, each of us taking a part and trying to do the voices of people in some kind of character, great fun. We read through the book once, then with our functionally perfect memories just recited things at each other and had a grand old time.

Where there was kissing, of course, we took the opportunity to do so. In 'Taming of the Shrew', I even tried a little light BDSM, but Krista wasn't really into it and I didn't actually want to hurt her or make her enjoy pain. That kind of a thing would have been too much change, and I wanted to be very careful of what kinds of changes I made in her.

There was lots of responsibility involved in the kind of power I had, after all.

I ran twice a day, hard, and my body felt better and better doing it. In the morning, I went out alone, up the mountain roads at a clip that Krista couldn't have kept up with. It surprised even me. Sometimes I'd take cut-offs that went steeply up the side of ridgelines, climbing fast through the scrub brush and pine trees, faster than I thought any person should be able to do. I was breathing very hard, and my smartwatch said I was putting out over 1000 calories an hour (its max), so I knew that I had to be doing something way above the normal range.