The Alberta Connection (34 page)

Ryce had just gotten out of the shower when
John stopped by to drop off a cooler of food left over from the
bar-b-que.

“I do not know how long you plan to stay
here, although Babb has a decent grocery store. O2 and Ramona are
staying to help you investigate the motor home. They have their own
transportation and half the food. See you in Idaho. Be safe.”

John turned, walked out to his Hummer, got
in, and drove off, followed by four vehicles. Ryce chuckled and
turned to Tanya.

“Didn’t he say he was going back in a convoy
of three? There are five now.”

When Ryce finished getting dressed, he
returned to the motor home and selected one of the payout
notebooks. With the nine-name list of the cabin executioners, he
began to scan each page. On the last line of page eight, he found
one of the names from the cabin. Simon Caldwell had received
$100,000.00 in 2003. Ryce’s shout of joy brought Tanya, O2, Ramona,
and two Montana officers rushing to the dining area.

Ryce looked up. “Sorry. I just found
something I had been looking for.”

The forensic search did not add any documents
to the pile on the dining table until the second day. O2 noticed
scratches in the vinyl floor near the refrigerator. One of the
Montana officers provided tools to disconnect the propane line.
When he moved the refrigerator, O2 found a compartment with three
spiral notebooks. He also discovered he did not have to move the
refrigerator. The notebooks could be accessed from the large
compartment in the center of the motor home.

When Ryce picked up one of the new notebooks
found under the refrigerator, he let out a soft, “Whoa, Nelly.”

A single name was listed on each page. On
most of the pages, more than half of the page was filled with notes
scribbled in two different hands. Names, addresses, loved ones,
relatives, pet dogs, birthdays, favorite car. It appeared the
Haskins had listed everything they knew about the people they had
working for them. Tanya immediately dubbed them “The Biography
Notebooks.”

The notebooks confirmed that Dianne was
married to Grant, and they had three children. She had kept her
maiden name. Although Haskins’ handwriting was sometimes hard to
read, Ryce discovered Dianne’s birthday, favorite color, and her
children’s names.

Ryce was absorbed in the biographies for
almost a full day. Frank Redding and George Haskins were second
cousins. George had started his criminal career as a car thief, but
had branched out into human trafficking, gems, secret documents,
and even forgeries.

Kathy Giles was George’s daughter. She had
five children. According to a note Haskins had scribbled on her
page, she was living in sin with Adam.

Tony Matlock was the brains behind the gang.
He and George had met in a holding cell in some backwater jail in
New Bloomfield, Missouri. Tony had just killed his wife, and George
had stolen an unmarked police cruiser.

Andrew and Gregory Lyste were cousins of Tony
Matlock, and big-time smugglers who were moving drugs, money, and
humans in and out of Vietnam.

They had started small before the fall of
Saigon. A South Vietnamese general wanted to get a junk filled with
American money out of Bien Hoa. The convoy was attacked, the Lyste
brothers commandeered the junk and sailed it to Cambodia, which was
a little friendlier to Americans. They now had several million
dollars of untraceable money, and everyone thought they were dead.
They contacted Tony, who was stationed in Cambodia. Tony provided
new documents at a fair price, and Andrew and Gregory sailed the
junk to Hong Kong and sold it.

Haskins treated the nine names used by the
executioners at the cabin as individual identities. He apparently
was not aware of who he was dealing with. According to Haskins,
Farley Westfall was the mastermind behind the identity alterations.
Under Farley’s name, Haskins had written “If you need good papers,
Farley can do it.”

Ryce was still puzzled as to why the Lyste
brothers and Matlock were at the cabin until he looked at a second
notebook from the refrigerator. Mable and George had kept a daily
diary of everything they had done.

Gregory, Andrew, and Tony were at the cabin
to keep an eye on a side smuggling operation they had started. To
make things look legal, they had applied for a packer’s permit for
the park. Using an assembly area outside the park, they could load
up their animals, enter the park, and follow the trail over the
border. Unfortunately, the paperwork associated with the
application was in a delay pattern. According to the diary, the
packing permit was on a ninety-day approval track. If nothing came
up to un-track the permit, the three at the cabin had about a week
before they could go into full operation.

Ryce searched the diary notebooks for details
about the smuggling operation, but found nothing. Did they have
merchandise ready to move over the border? Where was the assembly
area? Were there numerous pack animals abandoned somewhere in
Montana? Ryce doodled a note to check with the park service.
Perhaps the trio used a name on the master list to apply for the
permit.

Mable Haskins was still squawking that the
laptops needed to be brought to her long after she was placed in a
Montana Highway Patrol cruiser. Her next destination would be the
evaluation ward of the University of Montana Medical Center. She
lived out her remaining months in a locked room with padded
walls.

George Haskins’ body was transferred to the
Chinook helicopter piloted by Phil and flown to a mortuary in Great
Falls. An announcement was placed in the local newspaper and three
large regional newspapers, but no one ever claimed the body. John
had the body shipped to the Ranch, and George Haskins was interred
in the Pendergast Ranch Boot Hill. A year later, John did the same
for Mable Haskins.

John was later asked why he had gone the
extra mile for two people he did not even know.

John thought for several minutes. “My
grandfather used to say that everyone deserved a good chunk of land
to be buried in.”

During Tanya’s search under the dash of the
motor home, she found a small notebook. It contained a list of
seventeen overseas bank accounts, the numbers and locations of
thirty-five bank boxes in nine states, and a key. The key opened
the box that contained the other thirty-four keys.

When Ryce showed O2 the notebook, O2
laughed.

“You won’t get much out of the overseas
banks, but you have the keys to the safe-deposit boxes. Take Tanya
on a long road trip and collect what is in the boxes.”

On the third day, Ryce collected the
notebooks and placed them in a fireproof safe for the flight back
to Idaho, where they were given to Mark. It took five days to scan
every page of every book and email everything to the Annex. Of the
sixty-five adult names listed in the biography notebook, fifty-nine
were eventually rounded up or were determined to be dead. The six
extra names of the killers at the cabin never showed up in any
database and were eventually considered fictitious.

Three weeks after the shootout at the
trailhead, Dennis Blaine was picked up as he was attempting to
cross at the International Falls, MN, border crossing. He was
trying to return to the U.S. When the Immigration and Custom
Enforcement agents interviewed him, he said he was coming back for
Samuel Karrigan’s funeral. Dennis was a little vague about where
Samuel was going to be buried. He was also confused about when
Samuel supposedly died. He was placed in protective custody.

Ryce, Tanya, O2, and Ramona confiscated the
Suburban and the travel trailer a week after they returned to Great
Falls and drove to the cabin. More than half of the structure had
burned in the explosion, and the area was strung with yellow
caution tape.

Ryce didn’t stop at the cabin. His focus was
the lake. When he had led his team past the lake almost a lifetime
ago, he had seen several fish jumping. He still had a small block
of salt pork, and those fish looked like they were really
hungry.

Epilogue

Six
months after the gunfight at the Milburn Mine trailhead, a Yellow
Cab stopped in front of the main entrance of the FBI office in
Grand Forks. Frank Redding was assisted out of the cab, wheeled
into the office with a laptop, and asked to speak to Jack
Taylor.

Over the next two days, Frank answered
questions eight hours a day. What was his relationship to the
Haskins? Frank admitted that George Haskins was his second cousin.
Why did Dianne steal the laptops from the Pentagon? Dianne was a
co-investor in an office complex in Grand Forks. She, along with
Frank and Glenn, had lost millions when their investment failed.
Dianne was hoping she could make enough money to live well for a
few years. What was Glenn’s part in the thefts? Glenn had no
knowledge of the theft. Why was he carrying a laptop? Frank replied
that it was his personal laptop. He had forgotten it at the
Pentagon when he retired three years earlier. He was notified when
he received the invitation to the award ceremony that he could
retrieve it. He flipped it open, logged in, and showed everyone
that it had not been used for three years. It was still running
Windows Me.

When asked if he had received any money from
the Pentagon laptop thefts, Frank pulled several pages from his
laptop case and handed them to Jack.

“These are my tax returns and financial
statements for the past ten years. As you can easily see, I am
personally about three million dollars in debt. My Army pension
does not even pay the interest and penalties on the loans. My house
has been repossessed, my car has been repossessed, and even my
teeth have been repossessed. I can ride around on the bus when I
have enough money for the token. I am now living at the Men’s
Benevolent Center.

“Mr. Taylor, I was informed by my doctor
yesterday that I have perhaps twelve months to live. I would like
to spend those months in a federal prison. You guys serve better
food than what I get at the Men’s Center.”

About the Author

R. Clint Peters (Ron) was born in 1948 in a
small town in central Washington State. Many people will not
recognize him as R. Clint Peters, which is his pen name. Most
people will know him as Ron Peters.

He was first introduced to writing in high
school, where he was told by his English teacher that he had an
ability to write. Unfortunately, it took almost 40 years to use
that ability.

He is the author of 7 completed novels, and
at least six that are in-process. He has written several series,
including The Pendergast series, The Ryce Dalton series, the Klete
Wilkins series, and has started two new series, the Nixon French
series, and the Brinkerford series. Additional information can be
found at:

R. Clint Peters now lives in Mesa, AZ. He
likes fishing, camping and trying to grow a garden. Perhaps the
best thing about growing a garden in Arizona is not having to cook
the vegetables; they are cooked when they are pulled out of the
ground.