Gold Raid – Chapter 1 – Book 2 in Ed’s Gold Lust Series

When Nolen focused away from his discomfort he became aware of a barely audible murmur. He turned his head toward the sound and creaked apart his dry eyelids. Father Gabriel’s black cassock draped his lanky form as he sat on a chair beside the hospital bed, head lowered in prayer, clasping his cherished Bible.

“Giving me my last rites?” Nolen whispered, closing his eyes.

The white-haired Catholic priest looked up, then smiled. “No, just a few prayers for recovery. I’ve prayed over you each morning since the shooting.”

“Maybe you should administer the rites, Father. The unending nausea makes me feel like road kill.”

“The doctor told me that your fever will soon subside, now that she has the infection under control. Seems that the man who shot you coated the bullet with human excrement. Calculated violence is hateful business.”

Nolen willed himself to answer. “Especially when you are on the receiving end. Did the guy I stabbed die?”

“Yes, he bled to death in the warehouse yard. God forgive him for his actions.”

Nolen caught his breath, surprised by how weak he was. His head ached. His shoulder ached. Most of all, his conscience ached. “Each time I wake I see his leering face, then the ones I killed when I was in the Army. Can’t shake them.”

Father Gabriel patted Nolen’s arm. “The doctor warned that the combination of drugs and pain might spark some depression for a few days.”

“And I keep dreaming or remembering…can’t tell which…about the women I have hurt during the years.”

Father Gabriel noticed Nolen squeeze tight his eyes. “Is there something you wish to tell me?”

Nolen hesitated. “I caused my ex-wife pain before our divorce. Slept with some women when we were separated. One started to care deeply for me. I didn’t see her after I learned she was married. Always seem to be making women sorry.”

“Nolen, in each of those instances the other person also made choices.”

Nolen sharply shook his head back and forth, then regretted it. The stabbing pain signaled that his shoulder wound was not yet healed. “But I influenced them. Offered doorways I should have never offered. Entered some I should have left shut.”

“Did you know you were wrong when you made those decisions?”

“Sooner or later it always became clear.”

“Then did you do the right thing?”

“Not often enough.”

“Seems you are confessing this morning.”

“Yes…yes, I guess I am.” Nolen made the sign of the cross and began the ritual phrases he had learned as a boy. “Father forgive me for I have sinned. It has been ten years since my last confession.”

Father Gabriel extracted a white fabric from a small bag lying beside his feet. He unfolded the long, narrow stole, kissed it, placed it around his neck, then closed his eyes and recited a silent prayer. As the priest contemplated what to say, his thumbs rubbed the brown leather smudges on his Bible where the black veneer had been worn away over the years. Finally he spoke. “For your penance, pray each day during the next two weeks asking God to forgive the man who attacked you. And after you leave the hospital, do good with your new wealth. Change someone’s life for the better.”

“Whatever happened to just requiring ten Hail Marys?”

“You know I’m not your average priest.” Father Gabriel traced the sign of the cross on Nolen’s forehead and chanted, “As a minister of the Church, I beg God to hear your pleas and absolve you of all your sins. Be at peace, my son.”

Nolen sighed thankful to be relieved of some of the guilt that had been dogging him. He gladly closed his eyes, seeking sleep.

Outside the hospital, Father Gabriel packed his Bible into the saddle bags of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and slipped on a leather jacket stenciled on the back with ‘Ride with God’. He was eager to return to his duties in his tent church tending to the needs of the men and women rushing into the new gold district.

Once on the two lane road, heavy with traffic, he wondered about Nolen and his foster family. Were they better off now that they had found every prospector’s dream, the mother lode vein. Which would it be? A mother lode of opportunity? Or a mother lode of trouble?

 4 October, Northern California

Three helicopters churned through the moonless sky, one hunter and two prey. The unseen pursuer, followed at cloud level above and to the rear of its lumbering targets. On the hunter’s forward looking infrared radar, ghost-white images of the large twin-engine Chinooks shone bright, as did the metal canister dangling from the belly of the lead helicopter. A canister holding tons of gold ore.

Inside the hunter, the pilot spoke to the president of the Western Division of Continental Mining and Refining. “Clearing the highest mountain line, Mr. Tower. Twelve minutes from the truck site.”

With a tense nod toward the pilot T. J. Tower acknowledged the alert. He scratched through an item on his plan for ambushing the shipment west of Reno over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Upon seeing his manicured hand shaking from the adrenalin rising in his body, he frowned. Tiny wrinkles crinkled across his tanned, and youthful face. Youthful only because of the cosmetic surgeon he routinely visited.

I hate being here, he thought. Much better when I hire others to do the dirty work. Less chance of getting caught. But heisting $17 million worth of gold can’t be trusted to thieves. The scum would rip off the load. And I’m not letting anyone screw me!

“Boss, ya wants me to blow one of dem ouda de air?” a scrawny, goateed Cajun sitting behind the pilot asked.

“Scarray, don’t call me boss.”

“Sure boss.”

Tower gritted his teeth. The type of men who performed special operations for him were always irritating and often barely in control. Like his insolent cousin, their greed for money was the only constraint to their undisciplined nature.

Scarray was one of the Tribous from Louisiana. A lowly clan of scavengers from the bayou country, adjoining the Texas border. An invisible line of safety that they often slipped across depending upon what they wanted to steal or which sheriff was hunting the latest suspect. Families so poor that they never discarded anything. Around the perimeter of their shacks they hoarded gray-splintered boards, yellow-stained toilet bowls and crumpled cars leaking black oil.

Members of the clan were intelligent though most were not well educated. They would rather poach alligators and earn a living helping drug smugglers than follow the rules of society. Few ever accumulated savings. Instead, the quick earnings from a smuggling run were squandered on liquor, fast trucks, and faster women.

Now Scarray, who reminded Tower of a twitchy gaunt rat, was doing his bidding — way too close to him. “Destroy the radios in both helicopters,” Tower ordered, hoping he sounded calm. “Then take down the security bird.”

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End of sample section.