The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Scorekeeper, written in 2017, is my second novel. I'll post it a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
By 9:00 p.m. the rioting had begun. By 11:30, TV crews from Birmingham and Huntsville were in Boaz and broadcasting live. Karla and I were glued to the television. Shortly after midnight, she went to bed. I changed clothes and drove to Oak Hollow.
Ever since my release from the Etowah County jail in March, I had been executing my plan. It was one I had started designing after Randall’s disappearance, when I decided not to make a ransom demand. I had also decided against demanding money when I dealt with James. However, Gina’s unexpected disappearance and death changed my ability to eliminate him. Adams Chevrolet, Buick & GMC, and Radford Hardware and Building Company, were the two largest brick and mortar financial targets of all five families. The Hispanic rioting gave me the best opportunity to do some damage to these two old, but continuing, money presses.
My idea was simple. The explosives were nearly identical to those used by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995. The only difference would be the size and power of the bombs. I had no intention of killing anyone. I only wanted to level the two city blocks controlled by the Radford’s and the Adams’.
My plan was both simple and elaborate. I had used every opportunity when I was out of town on law business to purchase 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate from farm and garden supply stores. It’s funny how one doesn’t notice things if he’s not looking for them. It seems every place I went, Heflin, Muscle Shoals, Russellville, Scottsboro, Huntsville, Moulton, Oneonta, Fort Payne, and dozens of places to and from these county seats, had one or more farm and garden stores.
I was careful. I always paid with a different prepaid Visa card I had purchased from a Dollar General store in a different area. And, the cards were never purchased in my name. I had perfected the creation of false identity cards, such as driver’s licenses and health insurance cards. For example, when buying four hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate in Oneonta, I used the Visa card I had purchased in a Dollar General store in Heflin that I had loaded cash to in Huntsville. Also, at every location that I purchased or loaded a prepaid Visa card, or purchased ammonium nitrate or any other ingredient or item I needed to execute my plan, I rotated the disguise I used. For example, at the Heflin farm and garden supply store, I wore a pair of dark brown coveralls, a blond wig with pony tail pulled back and tied off, a reddish blond mustache, and a Pittsburg Steelers ball cap. I also arranged with the store clerk to set my purchase somewhere outside where I could come back and pick it up later. I always parked a block or so away from the store and walked to make the purchase. Within an hour or so, I would come back in my vehicle. Sometimes, the store had already closed for the day. Even if the store was open, I never had anyone notice me as I loaded my purchase.
I was also careful about the two box trucks I purchased. I located them both on eBay. The first one, a 1992 Ford F600, was in Birmingham. It was owned by an older lady whose husband had recently died. He had purchased it new and used it in their small appliance business. It even had a lift-gate on the back. The lady’s daughter was helping her sell it online. I hired a technician from Long Lewis Ford to inspect the truck. I paid him, not his employer, $375.00 to travel to Roebuck and determine whether the vehicle was road worthy. If it was, then he was to drive the vehicle to the Cracker Barrel restaurant at the Trussville Exit, locking it and leaving the key wedged under the inside left rear tire. I told him I was from Chattanooga but was sending my nephew to pick up, and drive the truck to Jackson, Mississippi. After the technician called my burner phone and gave me the go ahead, I used one of my prepaid Visa cards to pay online. Later than night, I hired a taxi out of Gadsden to pick me up at the Eaglemart parking lot to take me to Trussville. Wearing my best suit, I shared that I was the owner of twelve Cracker Barrel Restaurants in Tennessee and Alabama and that my car had broken down after leaving my store in Guntersville. Everything went like clockwork. The truck key was where it was supposed to be, the vehicle started right up, was full of gas (thanks to the technician), and performed like a new one all the way back. At 3:30 a.m., I pulled into the barn’s center hallway at Oak Hollow and rode my previously-positioned bicycle the two miles back to Hickory Hollow.
I had similar good luck in buying my second truck. I had to pay more for it given my time frame and the fact I didn’t want to travel so far to drive it home. I was tempted to again use Love’s Taxi out of Gadsden but knew that wasn’t reasonable. This time I didn’t use a taxi service at all. I had Doug from the Albertville Municipal Airport fly me, the real Micaden, to Auburn, Alabama. I used the cover of a continuing legal education conference at Tichenor Hall titled “What We Can Learn from the Movies,” telling Doug that my wife was meeting me there on Friday. In Auburn, I caught a cab to Montgomery where the 1998 Chevrolet C7500 box truck was waiting at yet another Cracker Barrel restaurant (later, I beat myself up for not changing this). That night, actually, that early morning, around 3:00 a.m., I pulled my second box truck into the hallway of my barn at Oak Hollow.
With two good trucks and ten tons of ammonium nitrate, I turned my focus to bomb construction. I had been amazed at the available information online about bomb making. I also learned most of it was incomplete. I ultimately learned the missing two or three secrets from Timothy McVeigh himself, well the U.S. Attorney’s file that investigated and prosecuted Mr. McVeigh. Here, I won’t share how I gained access to this information, other than saying that Greg unknowingly helped me. One secret was the process used in saturating the ammonium nitrate with diesel fuel. This turned into a very laborious process. I had conducted many tests. I had learned that simply pouring diesel fuel on the ammonium nitrate wouldn’t cause any explosion. But, the secret process, which I will maintain as a secret, along with the firepower of the igniter, made all the difference.
For the month that Nate Baker was in town working on his New York Times article, I spent most nights at Oak Hollow working on my two bombs. I met with him most every day and began to conclude that what he was going to say would itself be a bomb of another kind. I had that deep feeling the Hispanic community, already hot and bothered, would take to the streets the night Nate’s article was published. I decided this would be my cover. I had to be ready by the middle of July, the time his article would go public. It was not until Saturday July 7th that I tested my activation device in a quarry outside Heflin. Of course, I didn’t use one of my trucks. The actual process was rather simple. A phone call to a cell phone packed inside the rear of each truck vibrated just enough to trigger a switch that started a timer that in turn, at the designated time, sent an electronic signal to the battery. It was like touching the positive end of a jumper cable to a battery that was already grounded. The over-sized battery was suspended inside a metal garbage can half-filled with gasoline. One simple spark would explode the gas, and it, in turn, would ignite the fertilizer bomb.
That was a little over two weeks ago, now it’s ‘D’ day. At midnight, I rode a bicycle to Oak Hollow and drove the Chevrolet truck to the back side of Rayford Hardware and Building Supply. I had previously scouted this area when I had picked up a generator I had specially ordered. The day I had backed my truck to the loading dock to wait on the generator to be loaded, I had walked around to the side of the building on the west end of the loading dock. There was an alleyway between the main building and another building that no doubt had been added on. It created the perfect hiding spot for my truck.
After backing all the way down the alleyway, I exited and locked the door. I walked two blocks to Snead College where I had stashed a bike. This would be the hardest part of the night. I rode the eight miles to Oak Hollow in 45 minutes and drove the Ford truck to Adams Chevrolet, Buick, & GMC. It was now close to 2:00 a.m., and as I stopped for the light to change on Highway 431, I could see three police cars, and what looked like a hundred Hispanics in the north parking lot. I turned west on Hwy. 168 and could see that the front windows in the dealership’s show room had been broken. I almost ditched my plan but noticed the back side of the building was dark. All the attention was at the front, nearly a city-block away from the entrance to the body shop off Darnell Street. I pulled the Ford on around the building about half way towards the front which was hidden by a tall hedgerow along a chain link fence. Parking here was the closest I would get to the center of the facility. I really had no idea how powerful my bomb was. I had not been able to conduct a full testing, afraid of being identified.
Once again, I parked and locked the vehicle and this time walked to Duke’s Cleaners where I had hidden another bicycle. I took the long way this time, down Highway 205 to Mountainboro avoiding Highway 431. By 3:30 a.m., I was back at Oak Hollow. I had decided not to detonate the bombs until I was safely away. I made the first call at 3:34 a.m., and the second was at 3:36. Inside my truck, sitting at Oak Hollow, I tuned my scanner and waited less than five minutes. The Boaz Police dispatcher announced a Code 10-80 and ordered two cruisers to Adams Chevrolet and two to Radford Hardware. I listened to the back and forth chatter for another ten minutes before concluding that the bombs had out-performed my highest expectations. It seemed half of Boaz was on fire. I drove home and slept until 7:30 a.m.
The Pencil-Driven Life 