Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [70]
As I showed up, Danny was in the booth and had a phone in one hand and was talking on the radio with the other. He was trying to reach the guards sleeping at Old Gilman’s house and was having no luck. Danny told us a perimeter alarm had gone off up above Bonnie View at the top of the property. Danny still couldn’t get any of the sleeping guards on the radio and Tony and I were the totality of the security force besides him and the rover who he had sent to go wake up the other guards. Not only could he not get the other guards on the radio, he could not reach the rover either. The rover was the one who was supposed to be waking up the other guards. Danny, frustrated with the no answers, told me, “Run down to Old Gilman’s house, wake up the other guards and tell them we have an intruder. If you run into Deacon (the rover), tell him to answer his damn radio! I ran. Since this was a security drill, I ran straight down the highway as opposed to taking all the many paths that weaved through the property. Normally, security would bust your ass for being on the highway for any reason. As I was almost to Old Gilman’s house, I ran into the rover, his radio was dead and his bike was out of gas! Talk about Keystone cops.
I told him that that I was going to wake up the other guards as I ran past.
I busted into the security dorm, started yelling for them to get up and that there was an intruder drill happening. I turned on the lights and told them that I was heading back to the main booth.
As I got back to the main booth, I told Danny that Deacon was down by Old Gilman’s house out of gas and that the other guards were on their way. Just then, a few guards pulled up on one of their bikes. Tony was sitting on the curb by the booth watching me catch my breath. Turns out that the security radios were deader than doornails and that most of them did not work unless charged all night long. Well they’d only been on charge a couple of hours, so the radios were mostly still dead from the prior day’s use. Between the bikes being out of gas and dead batteries, this intruder picked the perfect time to bust onto the property! Danny had seen something on the cameras but lost it and now Tony and I needed to help patrol the villas until they located the intruder. Awesome! Some excitement. The adrenaline was pumping.
“You and Tony go up to the villas and keep an eye on things up there,” Danny said. “And take these.” He handed us two long flashlights.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” I asked. “Illuminate him to death?”
Danny was not amused, “Only turn those on if you see something, and then get a hold of the booth and let us know - and be QUIET when you go past the lower villa!”
Tony and I crossed the highway and walked up the path towards the villas. We had to be real careful as we passed the lower villa because the last thing we wanted to do was wake up COB.
For the next three hours, we walked around and tried to spot the intruder. It was pitch black around the villas. There were a few lights outside the doors that led into the villas but the surrounding roads and bushes were pitch black. Around 5:00 a.m. we saw something moving way down near the lower villa. It was definitely a person and they were heading straight for us. We could make out the outline of the body and it looked like they were carrying something. Maybe the intruder was a thief trying to steal something? We didn’t have time to make any calls to the security booth, we had to deal with this guy on our own. Tony and I decided that we were going to step to either side of the foot path and as he came by, we would whack him a few times with the flash lights and then call the booth. He was now about 50 feet away and we were right up by the upper villa waiting for him on either side of the path. 40 feet. 30 feet. 20 feet. 10 feet. 5 feet. “Oh damn!!!!” Tony and I cried out in unison. “What the hell are you doing up here!?!” I asked. “Bringing a submission to COB’s office,” she answered in her condescending French accent. It was someone