When Richard didn’t return from the basement, two men went downstairs to check on him. They found him unconscious on the floor in front of the crawl space.
That’s when the Sheriff was called. The phone rang a half-dozen times before the Sheriff picked it up. “Damn it, this better be important ‘cause you called me right in the middle of a wet dream,” he said.
“Sheriff, Clay escaped.”
“What the fuck, Karl? Can’t you do anything right?”
“I think Justin broke him out. He nearly killed one of my best men to get him out.”
“You worthless piece of shit. You were supposed to take care of both of them. What, do I have to do everything for you, Karl?”
“No, we’ll find them and take care of it, but I think we’re going to need your help. We’re going to need to move a lot of merchandise in case they aren’t alone. Can you alert us if you hear anything? Also, can you get some of your men to keep an eye on the other side of the lake in case they try to get to our place in the woods?”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of it. But when you find them this time, take care of the problem permanently. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you, Sheriff.”
The gash left by the hammer blow left a deep cut in the back of Richard’s head. But he was lucky. He would survive with no more than a few stitches and a hell of a headache. Risa stayed with him while most of the others in the condo went searching for Clay and Justin.
“I love you, Richard,” she told him, giving him a gentle kiss on the lips. “I’m so sorry for what I did. But I’ll never leave you again. When this is all over, let’s get married and move back to Sikeston.”
Richard didn’t say a word. He just smiled and reached for her hand. He had dated Risa since she was a freshman at Sikeston High. He knew her better than anyone. She was so full of love, and she was impulsive. That was a bad combination. She had never been with anyone except Richard until she met Justin. What she saw as a second chance at love was no more than infatuation. Richard always knew that she belonged to him. He knew that she would tire of Justin and come back to him. He knew they were meant to be together. He also knew that her affair with Justin had put her life in danger. He was trying to protect her by keeping her at the condo. She had no idea how close she came to being killed.
Right now, there was nothing he could do to protect anyone. He would need to heal. At least he had Risa by his side to nurse him back.
Only a handful of men remained at the condo. Richard wasn’t sure if they were there to keep an eye on Risa or there to wait in case Justin returned. Karl had an idea that Justin might come back for Risa. He was convinced that Justin was in love with her. He was equally convinced that Risa still had feelings for Justin. Earl Myers remained at the condo too. Karl thought he would be useful as bait if Justin were to return. After all, Justin and Earl were good friends. Karl figured that Justin trusted Earl, and he could use that to his advantage.
In ten more days, Christmas break would end, and the students would return to campus. Karl figured that whatever Justin was going to do, he would do before the students came back to campus. He was right.
***
Justin shared his plan with Clay. The two friends waited until nightfall. Then, they left the cabin. About a mile away, in a cove near the lake and hidden away from other homes, they found a pickup truck parked on a gravel road near a house. The doors were unlocked, and inside they found the keys.
“People in the Ozarks never lock anything,” Clay said with a smile.
They got inside, started the truck up and took off. Several miles north of Branson, Justin turned down a gravel road and onto a construction site. The state was building a new highway that connected with Highway 65 north of Branson and would bypass Branson on the west to connect with the tourist area of Branson to the west of town. The project was designed to alleviate summer tourist traffic in downtown Branson. The challenge was that mountains surrounded the town on three sides. In order to construct a highway, the state had to blast through miles of mountain rock. The area that Justin drove to was where they stored the dynamite and blasting material to do the job.
The entire complex was fenced in. Normally, the entire area would be illuminated in lights, and there would be guards stationed at the entrance. But no one was there tonight, and the area was completely dark. It was New Year’s Eve. Justin reasoned that they were off that weekend and home with their families.
The lock on the gate to enter the area was strong. The fence was at least ten feet high. Justin and Clay considered climbing it, but then they would need to carry everything they needed back to the truck. So, Justin backed up the truck about one hundred feet. “Buckle up,” he told Clay. Then he pressed all the way down on the accelerator. He was going about fifty miles an hour when he collided with the gate. It flew open under the force of the truck.
It took only a few minutes for the two friends to find the shed that housed the explosives. The door to the shed was locked, but the wooden building was old and in poor condition. Justin and Clay were able to pry some of the wood planks away from the shed and get inside.
Once inside, they used a flashlight they found in the cabin earlier that day to find the boxes of explosives. They loaded four cases of dynamite, along with blasting caps and fuses into the back of the truck and drove away.
Justin drove to the other side of the lake, down several gravel roads that led to the edge of the lake. There, he parked the truck in a hidden area off the gravel road. Justin and Clay grabbed two cases of dynamite and fuses and began walking through the woods.
It was cold that night, near freezing, the wind was blowing, but the moon was out. There didn’t appear to be a cloud in the sky. The moon provided just enough light to move through the dense Ozark woods. The flashlights the boys had taken from the cabin helped guide their way.
When they emerged from the woods onto a path leading to the meth lab, they could see lights in the distance. The closer they got, the brighter the lights were. They heard voices in the distance.
“People are at the lab,” Clay said. “Maybe we should wait.”
“Let’s see what is going on first. Then, we can decide what to do,” Justin said.
They got off the path and went into the woods to go around to the side of the property in hopes of getting a better look and avoiding being seen.
Clay was the first to spot the ATVs, eight of them, all near the entrance to the lab. They were being loaded with large canvas bags. One-by-one, as they were loaded, they were driven off in the direction of campus.
“Do you know where they are going?” Clay asked.
“I’ve got a good idea,” Justin said. “When we broke into the transportation building, Dennis found a logbook in a desk drawer. I remember seeing it. It listed dates, cities and bus numbers. For each, there was a code listed. I remember seeing one that seemed out of character from the rest. It was dated January 2. It listed Chicago as the destination, and it listed a bus number, but I can’t remember what it was. The code, if I remember correctly, was 20L, 1000 something. I thought a lot about that code. I think it is the number of pounds of meth and the payment. I think they are transporting the meth to the transportation building to be loaded on a bus leaving January 2nd.”
“Should we follow them?” Clay asked.
“No, let’s see what happens,” Justin replied.
After all of the ATVs had left, the lights in the compound were turned off. The area went completely dark. There were no sounds coming from the area. It appeared that everyone had left. But, in complete darkness, it was impossible to know that for sure.
“Time to find out if anyone is watching the lab, Clay,” Justin said with a smile. Slowly, they came out of the woods. “If there are sensors surrounding the property, we’ll know soon enough,” Justin said. “If the lights go on or if an alarm sounds, run back into the woods and head back to the truck.”
With each step farther onto the property, they expected the lights to come on. But they didn’t.
The sensors around the property must have been turned off, Justin speculated.
That wasn’t necessarily good news, Justin thought. There was always a possibility that this was an ambush. After the break-in at the condo, they might be expecting us.
They were about fifty yards from the building when Clay saw the flash of what looked like a match lighting a cigarette at the entrance to the building.
“You lay down and stay with the dynamite,” Justin whispered to Clay.
Justin moved quietly toward the rear of the building, hoping to come up from behind. As he moved closer, he watched and listened for any sign of people. He heard nothing. Justin circled around to the other side of the building. There was one window on that side of the building. The shades were down on it, and there were no lights on inside. He edged up to the side of the building, hoping that if anyone was inside, they would not see him.
Justin was ten feet from the front door when he heard someone say, “Stop, put your hands up where I can see them and turn around.”
Justin did as he was told. When he turned around, a large man wearing a security guard uniform was standing there, pointing a gun directly at him.
“What are you doing here, boy?” he asked. “This is private property. You’re in a world of trouble, son,” he said. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” he said, reaching on his belt for a pair of handcuffs.
Then Justin heard a loud crash and saw the guard fall to the ground. Clay was behind him, holding a large, thick branch.
“I couldn’t warn you, buddy. The guard out front smoking the cigarette must have seen or heard you. He came in behind you. I figured that I had to do something to save your ass.”
Clay bent down and picked up the gun that had fallen to the ground. Then he removed the handcuffs from the guard and put them on him. He reached into the guard’s pockets and found a set of keys and a cell phone.
One of the keys opened the front door to the meth lab. Clay was the first to enter, holding the gun. Justin followed. It was completely dark inside. Clay used the flashlight to find a light switch. When he turned it on, the inside looked like a regular cabin with a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. It certainly didn’t appear to be a meth lab.
The boys searched every inch of the main floor. They didn’t find anything until they moved a rug underneath the bed in the one bedroom. That’s when they saw the trap door with a latch secured by a lock.
One of the keys they had taken from the guard’s pocket opened the lock. They removed it and opened the trap door. Beneath it were stairs. It was completely dark inside. Justin took his flashlight and shined it down into the area. At the bottom of the stairs was a large open area with a concrete floor. The area smelled like a hospital room. It was clean and smelled like antiseptic.
Justin and Clay walked down the stairs to the room beneath. The room was completely white, sterile and cold. A ventilation system pumped clean, fresh air into the room and a large air conditioning unit against one wall kept the room cold. The room was reminiscent of a morgue. There was not a spot of dirt or dust anywhere.
The area, about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, was completely void of furniture or clutter. At the back end of the room was a narrow hallway.
Justin shined the flashlight along the wall until he found a light switch. Then he turned the lights on. The room illuminated from six large florescent lights attached to the ceiling.
“If anyone is down here, they know they have company now,” Clay said, looking at Justin.
Clay raised the gun, and both boys headed into the narrow walkway. Ten feet down the hallway were two steel doors on each side. Both doors were locked.
Clay raised his gun and fired one shot into the lock on the door to his left. The lock blew open. He did the same on the lock attached to the door on the right side of the hallway. Justin opened one door. Clay opened the other.
One room contained dozens of metal shelves stretching from the ground to the ceiling. They were all empty.
The other room contained stainless steel equipment and tables used for cooking and packaging meth. That room was the meth lab. It was easily the largest room, about half the length of a football field and nearly as wide. It was built underground with large ventilation systems and commercial air conditioning unit pumping cool, fresh air into the room.
The meth lab was empty. All supplies, ingredients and product had been removed. The room was completely clean and void of any evidence.
“Damn, they must have known we were coming,” Justin said.
“Justin, do you know where they took the drugs?”
“Not for sure, but I have a good idea.”
They spent the remainder of the night setting up explosives inside the lab. They ran the fuses through the ventilation system to the outside. Then they moved the fuse to the wooded area behind the building, burying it in the ground as they went. They set up the detonator in the woods about two hundred feet from the building.
“Clay, I need you to stay here. Keep out of sight. When you hear an explosion, push the detonator and blow up the lab. If, for some reason, the explosion doesn’t occur by sunrise, go ahead and blow up the lab anyway. Then, get the hell out of here. Take the truck and drive to Kansas City, to Elise’s house. Tell her father what has happened and that, most likely, Karl Gholson and Sheriff McClain are holding me or I’m dead. Either way, he’ll know what to do.”
“Where are you going, buddy?”
“I’m going to find those drugs and blow them up.”
“Shit, be careful, Justin.”
Justin took the gun and the rest of the explosives and started on foot back to the campus. The only place he could think of where they would keep the drugs was the hidden room in the back of the office of the transportation building.
It is too soon to load them on the bus leaving for Chicago. They would need to store them someplace safe until then, Justin thought. They had stolen the key from Justin and Clay’s dormitory room a month earlier. They didn’t know that Justin had made a second copy of the key.
It was a long shot that they would hide the drugs in the vault of that hidden room. But it was the only place Justin could think of. Even if the drugs were in that vault and Justin was able to get inside the hidden room, he didn’t know the combination to the vault. There was no way that he could get to the drugs.
Justin avoided the path back to campus. Instead, he went through the dense woods in an attempt to avoid detection. It was the long way around to the transportation building, and in the dark, it was a challenging walk. He chose not to use the flashlight he carried. He didn’t want anyone to see him coming. The moon, as it peeked out behind the clouds, provided his only light. The woods around him were dense. They provided him with cover.
An hour into his walk, he saw the lights from the lot outside the transportation building. It appeared every light in the parking lot was on.
They are waiting for me, Justin thought. Fifty yards from the edge of the lot, still deep enough in the woods that he couldn’t be spotted, Justin set up the first explosives. He buried them next to a large oak tree and attached a fuse. Then he moved fifty yards to the side of the building and buried more explosives.
After that, Justin moved to the path used by the ATVs to transport the drugs from the lab to campus. He buried explosives near several large trees on both sides of the path. He waited there.
The first rays of daylight were beginning to come over the horizon. He had told Clay to blow up the meth lab if he had not heard an explosion by daylight. He hoped that Clay would do as he had told him.
As the sun rose higher over the horizon, Justin waited nervously with thoughts that either the explosives that he and Clay had set did not work or that Clay had chosen not to follow his instructions.
It was nearly 7am when the explosion rocked the ground like an earthquake. Huge flames followed by smoke shot up into the sky. Smoke from the explosion darkened the sky.
Soon after the explosion, men on ATVs roared down the path from the transportation building.
Justin waited as they passed. When they were well past him, Justin lit the fuse to the explosives he had placed on both sides of the path. Then he moved deeper into the woods and closer to the transportation building to watch.
When the explosion around the path occurred, four large trees toppled onto the pathway, completely blocking it. That was exactly what he intended to do.
The ATVs would not be able to use the path to get back to the transportation building. The men would need to go on foot through the woods or take the long way around to campus. Either way, it would buy Justin more time.
He moved to the first set of explosives that he had buried near the front edge of the transportation parking lot. From there, he could see three security guards outside in the parking lot looking at the flames shooting up in the sky for the burned-out meth lab.
Justin lit the fuse for the explosives he had buried near the edge of the parking lot. The wick was long and provided him plenty of time to reach the second set of explosives he had buried near the side of the building. He lit that fuse too. Then, he ran through the woods to an area near the rear of the transportation building and watched.
The explosives near the parking lot went off first. Trees toppled, one falling onto a bus parked near the outer edge of the parking lot. The three security guards scrambled to that area. About a minute later, the second explosion occurred near the side of the building. The impact shattered several windows on one side of the building.
From Justin’s viewpoint, he could see one of the security guards talking into a walkie-talkie. The other two were surveying the damage.
Justin didn’t know if anyone was inside the building. He didn’t see any movement from his view of the windows. He knew that he had very little time to act. People would be coming soon.
He ran to the back of the building, broke out the remaining glass from one of the shattered windows and crawled inside. He didn’t see or hear anyone inside the transportation building.
Quickly but quietly, he worked his way inside to the hidden room. He pulled the key from his pocket, put it inside the lock and turned it. The door didn’t open. He tried again but failed to open the door. They must have changed locks, Justin thought.
Deciding that there was no way he was going to get in that room, he placed the dynamite in several places near the door and outer wall of the hidden room. He lit the fuse and climbed out the window. Then he ran toward the woods. Just as he got to the tree line, the explosion rocked the ground, and he fell hard, hitting his head on a rock laying on the ground.
He was out cold.