Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) Read online

  “They all shoot good,” said Smiley, his face lighted up with pride.

  “We keep them oiled up,” said Katy, regaining her composure.

  “Want to shoot one?” Smiley asked his guests.

  Buddy shook his head. Tench started to decline but Smiley pulled him over to the wall and picked out a revolver.

  “Come on out back, Jimmy,” he said. “This one’s a percussion cap like they used at Cold Harbor when the Rebels got revenge for Gettysburg.” He turned to Katy.

  “Bring the boss man,” he commanded, and, as they left the room, she started to pull a box from under the bed.

  Tench held the gun hanging at his right side as they moved out of the trailer and toward the firing range in the back yard. He noticed the heavy weight of the gun and the fact that even though he was an average size man, when the pistol butt was at his waist level, the barrel extended halfway down the distance to his knee.

  “Big mother, ain’t she? That’s a Navy Colt,” said Smiley as they walked through the weed at the side of the trailer. Buddy followed behind with Katy at the rear carrying the large flat rectangular cardboard box.

  Smiley took the revolver from Tench’s hand. “I’ll load her for you.” His mechanic held the gun with deference, the same kind of soft touch that Tench imagined Smiley might give to a human baby if he and Katy had one. Smiley prepared all six chambers with charges quickly. He then turned the gun around and placed percussion caps, small metal tops, on the six nipples extending from behind the chambers. He cocked the hammer back and, pointing the revolver down range at the large plywood sheet a hundred yards away, handed the pistol to Tench, “Try your luck.’

  Tench held the gun out in front of him, his arm level with his eyes and the gun barrel also parallel so that he could sight the weapon. When he had the sight in line with the target, he squeezed the taut trigger. An explosion flew up in front of his face almost immediately, the gun moving upward in the air until it was at a forty five degree angel above the target. The arch of his hand from the forefinger to the thumb ached from the force of what seemed like an ax handle chapping hard against him.

  He practically dropped the gun and Smiley, moving his hand up, took the revolver from him.

  “I forgot to put on the grease,” he said, eyeing the revolver.

  “What happened?” Tench said, the smoke gathering in a cloud that moved away from him, his face burning from the black power on his skin.

  “Besides you getting a black face, all six chambers went off at once,” said Katy, without expression. “Smiley forgets to put the grease on the caps to keep the fire from jumping from cylinder to cylinder. You get all shots going off at once like happened to you.”

  Tench felt his face. Smiley said, “You didn’t lose any skin. Don’t’ worry. We get this sometimes with old guns.”

  “Show him,” said Katy, her eyes looking behind her as she signaled to Smiley.

  “Yeah,” said Buddy. “I want to see too.”

  “Old Beets pretty excited talkin’ about that African snake, wasn’t he?” said Smiley, taking the cardboard box from Katy.

  “Yes,” Tench said.

  “I bet he wouldn’t be so scared, if he knew I had me one of these.” He held up a metal cylinder about two feet long, olive drab in color. Then, he snapped the back end of the device outward so that the tube was extended another foot.

  “What is that?”asked Tench.

  “M72. Katy and me, we call it the boss man. Lookee. You’ll see something.”

  “I want to shoot it too,” said Buddy. The other two men crowded around and said they wanted a shot too.

  “You’ll get your turn,” Smiley said.

  Smiley moved away from them and held the weapon with its back aimed away from the trailer. He looked behind him to make sure nothing was in the way. Then he loaded a small rocket that Katy took from the box. He pointed the device at the plywood target.

  “Get him,” Katy said

  “Cover your ears,” said Smiley as he pushed the firing device.

  Smoke came up from the plywood and the woods beyond as pits of flame tugged at the brush and splintered wood. Tench thought the noise was deafening, like a dragster taking off with all its exhausts wide open and lighting up candles, as the drag boys said, when the flames came out of the engine pipes and into the air.

  “Get the hose,” said Smiley as he put the launcher down and walked towards the woods. He picked up a shovel near the ruined target and began to stamp out the vestiges of flame along the side of the woods. Katy came behind him with a long garden hose which sprayed water up into the few burning branches.

  “Where did you get that thing?” asked Tench as Smiley knelt on the ground preparing the launcher for Buddy’s shot.

  Smiley didn’t smile. Tench’s host was very serious as he said, “You think them terrorists can get these weapons so easy over there in the Middle East. Wellsir, we can get them here too, right in the old USA.” Smiley looked up, lifting the rocket launcher slightly from the ground, “Let me tell you, I see a man like that Snake old Beets was talking about at the garage, or if he make a mistake and come around here, that’s be the last anyone’ll see of him, I’m saying that for sure.”

  “You guys need tiger suits like the Army Special Forces,” said Tench grinning.

  “Real camouflage is blending with the people not with the woods, Jimmy. The targets are in the cities. Ain’t no woods there. Let me tell you, man, we got enough of us to one day take over like Hitler did only this time we won’t lose because the rest of the white nations will be with us. Goddamn United Nations be damned. I mean we ain’t go no name but all of us know who we are.”

  “I hope it doesn’t happen,” said Tench.

  Smiley said, “Look, this is our place, our land, our home, and no United Nations going to get an army to take it away from us. I don’t care how poor we get to be. We’ll survive. Just like the people who settled here a couple centuries back. Them foreigners can push us back like animals, but we’ll put up a fight and we’ll win too.”

  Katy added, “Don’t worry, we still got hope that the old US will figure out an answer so we still got something left, not much but something. Whatever we got here in this land, the bad guys want it real bad. It’s just we are not going to lose it are we, boys?” The others laughed and Smiley added, “No, Katy, we are not.”

  Smiley leaned toward Tench. He said, “You a nice boss, Jimmy, but you don’t get it. Remember there ain’t too many white men running that United Nations. Pretty soon it’s all black and yellow calling us with orders. You remember then I told you back when we could have done something to stop it.”

  The smoke still drifted from the rocket blast as Tench moved around to the front of the trailer to head back to his own home. Katy walked with him and pointed to her tiny Focus car with the huge exhaust pipes coming out under its rear bumper.

  “I been practicing in the field near here. Smiley thinks I can tune it to take on any of the Japanese drifter racers. Maybe the garage could sponsor me.”

  He knew that she was referring to the new sport of sliding cars around in a circle as they proceeded ahead, a test of driving skill and car strength. Tench smiled. “Let me get my Mustang racer up and running. Maybe I can set it up for the drift races too. You’ve done a good job with that Ford Focus. I bet you got some Civics pretty scared around town.”

  She smiled. “We’re talking the same language, Jimmy.” She gave him a big hug. He thought, as he hugged her back, that maybe she does get it after all. Make money, then start her homestead. He smiled. She might make it after all, just like her father wanted her to.

  Chapter Eleven

  9 AM Friday August 20

  The River Sunday town authority didn’t have a very large budget for security in its yearly financial plan. Except for hurricanes which arrived irregularly each fall season and caused electricity to fail and roads to be blocked with fallen pine trees, the biggest town security issue was the annual summer p
owerboat regatta. It drew a multitude of outsiders and some national television sports reporters. Trouble was limited to the hydroplane spectators, people who tended to get drunk and have fistfights. They didn’t require more than a few extra town policemen for a weekend of overtime duty.

  Satter tried to make sure that the town was protected even though he had little time to prepare. First of all he had the town police out in force, a team of ten men of various experience consisting of parking officers to harbor patrolmen. These people usually did town type crimes such as investigating fires and a few stabbings. They also investigated drug cases, especially those of secret shipments for Baltimore and Philadelphia coming in at night along deserted shorelines. He borrowed five more officers from the State Police. They stood at corners in their trim uniforms adding a sense of military precision to the goings on and making everyone walk a little more carefully in the morning heat. The sheriff’s office also had two part time detectives and they were placed strategically to watch for any signs of trouble. These were a man and a woman he had brought over from his old job on the Baltimore force. They knew their business, even though, like him, they were near retirement age. The Coast Guard station agreed to put out both its boats on full time patrol around the harbor and cancelled all leaves.

  The demonstrators were already arriving by busloads. More and more filled the narrow street near the hotel. Many held signs, some of them well made from brightly painted plywood. The United Nations was definitely the subject of most crowd complaints. As Satter had suspected, the NUN or No United Nations protestors were there, dressed in purple robes. Confederate flags were visible along with United States banners. Many people dressed in jeans and muscle shirts. Motorcycles purred among the audience. Two well-dressed black women held up a white plastic sign that proclaimed in large red letters that they were members of the Fair Africa Committee of Philadelphia. A second group were also people of color, these coming from New York and from another chapter of the same organization. Children were part of the demonstration dancing and singing under the lead of a black robed man moving his arms and keeping time to a loud song on a boom box. Few of the participants appeared, at least to Tench, to be from River Sunday. He did not see Pastor Allingham, who most locals considered the River Sunday black leader, or any of the people of color he knew to belong to the Pastor’s church. One chant was louder than the others.

  Give us freedom and we’ll be free

  Give us freedom and we’ll be free

  Give us freedom and we’ll be free

  Me-o me-o me-o dee

  The children swayed in time to the song and snag the chorus at the top of their lungs. A small wagon appeared in the midst of the children and in its bed was a large plaster hand. Its fingers stretched skyward several feet so that the palm and back of the hand were perpendicular to the observers along the sidewalks. Across the palm of the hand were the words,

  “All we ask is a friendly hand.”

  Tench saw the Mayor in the lobby. She was smiling as she stopped to be interviewed by newsmen. Tench joined her and they proceeded to the room in the lower floor where the committee would hold its meeting.

  One of the Sheriff’s deputies, a large husky white man in a carefully pressed uniform, was taking names at the doorway to the room. He nodded to Tench and the mayor. They passed by another table stacked with Doctor Owerri’s books. One of the African men from the Island was sitting behind the table, staring directly ahead without expression. He would only bend his head when someone offered money for a copy of the book. Then he would take the money without a word, place a book in a paper bag and give it to the customer.

  Inside, the room was dim. “Just think, Jimmy. This is making River Sunday the theatre of the world,” his aunt said, excited with the prospect of her town being famous and her leadership strengthened among her local male counterparts with this accomplishment.

  The room in the hotel where that the United Nations had rented each year was relatively small. It had room in front for the table with the committee, about five persons. There were chairs for twenty visitors. Normally at business meetings only a few audience chairs were required.

  The United Nations personnel were taking their places, four men and a woman, all dressed casually in vacation wear, shorts and polo shirts, some with ball caps. These people expected to be out in boats or on the golf course during their brief summer sojourn in River Sunday. They had not planned for lengthy committee work. In front of the panel, a male and a female representative of the United States State Department had already arrived. They were very young, white, and well-dressed officers who seemed very nervous, their briefcases on their laps. The Mayor, who had met these two for the first time earlier this morning, cracked to Tench that they looked like they were somewhere overseas in a fortified villa at the beginning of a revolution, that the main gate had just been broken down by a mad crowd, and that they had realized no place was left for them to hide. Tench replied that she was right, that he expected them to get up and run pretty soon.

  On the table in front of each committee member were a scattering of papers and notebooks, glasses of water and a moveable microphone. A podium had been hastily set up at the side of the room for the use of Doctor Owerri. Against the wall behind the podium was another pile of paper bags filled with more copies of the Bell.

  His cousin smiled and whispered. “A little bit of excitement really turns on River Sunday. This is going to be good for our tourism bottom line.”

  The chairman of the committee, a white haired gentleman, pulled the microphone to rest in front of him and then spoke with a decided French accent. “We are here today to conduct some inter session research and business of the United Nations sub-committee on African matters. Fortunately before we start our regular deliberations we have been pleased to receive the remarks of an outstanding writer on these affairs. Doctor Owerri has graciously agreed to deliver copies of her new book, The Bell, for our committee persons to review. We look forward to her comments for our consideration and further, to reporting to the members of the General Assembly in our committee conclusions. Doctor Owerri, please proceed.”

  Doctor Owerri stood, orange robe around her, and clopped in her African sandals to the podium and began to speak.

  She began, “When I looked around for a symbol of what I am going to talk about today, I had to search no further than the slave monument in the River Sunday harbor. To me, it is similar to the bell of my book, also in a harbor. My bell called into shore the traders to buy the human cargoes. The slave trade as ancient as it was is still the symbol in the minds of all of us who are oppressed. We know that this can happen again and again, not so much in human slavery of body but in human slavery of spirit.

  “I testify to the United Nations here today because I see no value in bringing my case to any individual government. The world faces a catastrophe for freedom and no single nation can fight this war, can face this crisis alone.

  “We must first truly in our hearts accept that all people are equally human, subject to the same needs for medical care, mothers and fathers, education, shelter, and love. We must also accept when we say this that the same genes spent on birth on the North American continent could as easily be spent on birth in the African jungles and that the babies from these genes should have the same chance at life. If we do not accept this then we are truly separated.

  “As we move toward a more perfect world, we recognize that at present all humanity is divided into those who are controlled and those who control. These great masses of poor, unsheltered, sick and without hope have masters, the elites who use the resources, own all health services and shelter, and selfishly express hope only for the future of themselves and their own children. What we must observe and prepare for is the growth of the controlled to the point where the controllers can no longer restrain them. I would rather see this be a time of joy rather than a time of war, a time of success and welcome rather than a time of fences and horror.

  “The crack
s are appearing. The war is coming. We know that we have with us those who drive followers to kill the controllers with bombs so as to free the controlled. These humans work each in his own way for the salvation of humanity and for change and they work with few tools to do this, to bring forth our attention to inequities. For these persons, death is preferable to life with no future.

  “So what do all of us so called rational people do to save the world from these cataclysms of terror? I see the answer as very simple. The rich must give back to the poor what they have taken. Surely no one truly believes with any sanity that all the rich have is not taken from the poor. If their riches are truly their earned share, I have no problem, but we all know that the rich absorb, in order to fulfill their constantly growing definition of rich, far more than their equal share and thus by definition must take resources from those who do not have, those who cannot have, those who at present have no power to take for themselves This rule of law that protects this theft is no rule of fair law at all but a rule of unfair law legislated by the rich that makes sure that the rich can continue to take. So we must change this.

  “As an African let me say that I can see this interchange all too plainly. I have witnessed in my own lifetime the theft of oil resources and the return of little except worn out destroyed farmland for the original owners. I also see that this has been going on for centuries beginning with the biggest theft of all, the slave trade, that existed from the earliest civilizations, even during the time of the Hebrews and Christians and Moslems and Buddhists, where our own people were stolen to insure the production of riches for the elites. As today, some of the controllers were our own people too, misdirected by the values of the outsiders.

  “Later the oil companies came to our land and the first wells were dug. We were paid for the oil but our lands were destroyed. The rule of law as much as the laws of physics presented us with no respite. The law says we are beaten before we start to live. We were paid yes, but the payment only served to cause us to undertake debt and that we have incurred. This debt in turn limits us to any future growth and the more we support the rule of law and the draining of our oil, the more we support our status as debtors of the rich.