Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [56]
After a few days, the leak was found. A guy named Brad Kugler in the central marketing unit was running around on the decks. I knew Brad because I went to Delphi with his younger brother Ryan. When I was at ABLE, I knew his father, Ben, because he was regularly a source of high figure donations. So Brad was getting sec checked full time. Brad being security checked out of the blue at the same time as the Tom Cruise leak was a sure sign something was up. The word on the street was that he was talking to his mom on the phone and telling her about Tom’s visits. She was then, in turn, giving the data to someone at some grocery store gossip magazine. Brad was gone within a few days. He was offloaded from the base and his mom was supposedly declared an SP. Brad’s wife Tasha was made to divorce him. Whether any of that was true, there always had to be a “head on a pike” when some flap occurred. That was Dave’s way of getting closure. You could count on the pain and agony dragging on until someone got RPF’d or declared suppressive. Then we would all concentrate on the next flap on Dave’s plate.
Anyone who had phone access at the time lost it. Since one guy used the phone to secretly tell his mom some data, no one on the property could call out without going through reception.
To top it off, Tom Cruise was not showing up anymore either. His secret garden was not so secret anymore.
Chapter Ten – Sea Of Sin
It was August 2nd, 1990. It was like any other day. We had gone home at 8:00 a.m. and I was quick to get to sleep. At noon I was awakened, not by someone, but by the noise of the rain. It had been deathly hot out and, being August, rain was the last thing I would have expected. I got some shorts on and went outside. It looked like what you would imagine hell would be like if it was located in the town of Hemet. The sky was literally black with clouds. The rain was coming down in sheets. The water had no place to go. It pooled up where it fell. The apartment complex parking lot was flooded and the sidewalks were covered with water and it was starting to come inside the front door of the apartment. This was crazy. I could not believe this was happening. I headed back inside. I threw a bunch of towels on the floor inside of my door to keep any water out and soak up what had already made its way inside.
I fell back to sleep, got up at 4:30 p.m. and headed outside. Tony and CB were outside and we talked about the rain that had woken all of us up. The bus usually picked us up at 4:45 p.m. It was now going on 5:00 p.m. and no sign of the bus. At 5:15 p.m., I called in on a pay phone in the manager’s office. Someone would be sent out to get us.
At 5:45 p.m. this Italian guy showed up in his car. Marcello was his name. He did not speak English very well, but for the most part you could understand what he said.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked him. “Why didn’t the bus pick us up?”
“I was come get you,” Marcello said. “The base flood all over. Roads not open.”
Oh boy, this wasn’t good. Marcello had actually been in town picking up someone’s stuff and got stranded because he could not get back to the base on the closed roads. When he called in, they told him to go and pick us up and try and get back to the base somehow. Sanderson Street was flooded out in Hemet so that way was no good. The other road to the base, State Street, was flooded though not as bad, but the road towards the base from that direction had been completely blocked with a mountain load of mud.
After about an hour, we finally managed to get through on the Sanderson side and come around the west side of the base. It looked like a war ravaged country. There were trees down everywhere. Not just branches and leaves, whole trees toppled over and uprooted. There were huge palm fronds all over the place.
As we drove into the main gate, it