Once he’d moved in and made himself comfortable, Daniel, on Leon’s orders, purchased a number of Honda four-wheel-drive ATV’s, and put in a very rough trail between the farmhouse and the tunnel. He had disguised the entrance to the tunnel as best as he could, with boulders and brush. It looked like just another part of the rugged mountain range. Not that anyone ever came this far north.
Leon installed a large generator and a series of lights in the tunnels. He improved the lift system and installed rails in the lower tunnel. He created a series of storage tunnels and rooms where equipment and product could easily be hidden. Within another two months he was ready to go. He bought ten kilos of heroin from his connection, Bartholomew, a smuggler from Pakistan with whom he had been dealing for the past year. It was time to give the new and improved Devil’s Anvil a test run. The whole process took four days, from pickup at the Vancouver docks, to delivery in Los Angeles. Before he left Fernie, he cut the heroin and was able to resell it in Los Angeles for $100,000 a kilo. He’d paid Bartholomew a scant $50,000 for that much. His profit from that first trip, after supplies, travel costs, and payment to his workers, was $500,000. Leon had definitely reached the next level. As an added bonus, he purchased a couple kilos of cocaine while in Los Angeles, and took that back through Devil’s Anvil to sell to the surrogate biker gangs in Vancouver. His path was very clear — at this rate it would take only months for Leon Lestage to become one of the heavy hitters in the drug-smuggling game.
A few more runs left a few hundred thousand dollars sitting in his mine. By the spring, there was, by his estimation, close to $1 million stashed away in Devil’s Anvil. However, he had a growing problem. How to get rid of it? How to launder it? He already had all the Halletts and Lestages of Fernie and the surrounding area smurfing for him full time. Of course, too much money is never that large a problem. He gradually purchased all the houses and properties along the Corbie-Flathead Forest service road, and even bought the bicycle tour company that ran through the area, to ensure that any contact between the public and the mine would be minimized. In this way he controlled virtually all activities along the road.
There was only one really big wrench in the works. The little Paki asshole who had bought Bartholomew’s smuggling outfit. He had come with one sailor and put 200 keys of horse on the docks. Leon gave him $25,000 per kilo, and the little bastard told him that he wanted more. Even told him that he owed him the money from the last time they traded. Then he took off with the money and the drugs, in his piece of shit Pakistani boat. When Leon had tried to take action, the Paki’s psycho-eyed sidekick had killed three of his guys. The nerve of the little fucker. These days they had a grudging understanding. Leon had vowed to himself that one day he would make the Paki die a slow and horrible death. Until that day, he might as well make money off of the foreigner.
“Drop your utility belts and packs right now. Guns on the ground.” Dennis Lestage barked. Catherine and Indy did as they were told. “Now turn around and walk forward, slowly. One false move and I’ll kill you where you stand. No one will ever even find your bodies.” They turned and headed south, back toward the four rooms, Dennis following them. He noticed that the four doors were open.
“A little break-in, I see,” said Dennis, grimacing. “Get in there, now.” He shoved them roughly into the American money room. The door slammed shut. They heard a padlock slide into place; even if it was broken, a padlock could keep someone inside a room from getting out. A solitary light bulb hanging from the ceiling provided the only illumination in the room. A minute or two later they heard Dennis return to insert and lock a new padlock.
Catherine looked around her. She started to laugh.
“What on earth could be funny about this?” asked Indy.
“Look around you,” Catherine replied. “Look at this. We’re locked in a room with millions and millions of dollars. Look at this.” She grabbed a stack of hundreds and threw them in the air. “I feel like Scrooge McDuck in his money room.”
“At least he didn’t lock us up in the marijuana room,” replied Indy. “The fumes from that much weed, in close confines, would get to us after a while.”
“What’s wrong with that, Indy? If we died, at least we’d giggle to death.”
Suddenly the distant throb of the generator ceased. The single overhead light abruptly went out. The room became as black as the coal in the walls. The silence was oppressive. Instinctively Indy reached for Catherine’s hand. “Oh, God, Catherine. I feel like I’m inside a tomb. Or a coffin.” He realized that after having held it at bay for so long, this was the final straw; his claustrophobia was finally going to overwhelm everything else. He was fighting back the panic.
“We’ll get through this, Indy,” said Catherine. “We’ll get out of this somehow.” Her mind was racing. She didn’t have a clue how they were going to spin this one.
“I have a tough time in enclosed spaces, Cath,” said Indy. “I had a near death experience when I was a young undercover officer. I’ve been to some therapy, but it didn’t do a whole lot of good. We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to find a way out. I can’t deal with this.”
The phone in Leon’s palatial home rang, cutting sharply into his warm drug-laden thoughts. He was still deliciously stoned, gazing at the very container dock where, so many years ago, the party had really started. But when he heard the voice on the phone, he snapped to attention. It was Dennis, and he was beside himself. Cops. RCMP. In Devil’s Anvil. They had gone through the storage rooms. Dennis had them locked up for now, but was desperate for guidance.
“Describe the people for me, Dennis,” said Leon at length.
“A lady, not bad looking, about 30-ish. A Hindu, maybe 50. Short.”
“Keep them locked up. I’m comin’ over. How’d they get in to start with, you fucking moron?” snarled Leon, in his usual style.
“They broke in,” Dennis responded.
Leon hung up the phone without answering and got ready to saddle up and head out. Didn’t matter that he was stoned — the wind would clear that up soon enough. The Hindu might be the same character he saw there a week ago. They were cops. If they were cops, they would have a warrant. No cop in Canada in this day and age would break in without a warrant. Bad news in court. But a warrant meant affidavits and information upon which the affidavits had been sworn. It meant that they had been looking into his affairs, possibly for some time. It usually meant a major investigation. This could be serious. How had they found him? Leon moaned aloud. Not now. Not goddamn now. He would net $10 million, in laundered money, real money, American money, from the deal he had going this month. Not to mention the money and drugs he had stashed away in the mine. Jesus Christ, not fucking now.
Val came to him with another ice-cold beer, which he proceeded to throw down in two gulps. “Where are you going, honey?” she asked, seeing him in his riding leathers.
“None of your fucking business, bitch,” came the toxic reply. He stormed out before she could protest. He was seething with rage. The only reason he had acquired that idiot bicycle tour company was to control precisely where tourists could go, and to ensure that no one would accidentally stumble across the mine so close to the park gates. He had left Dennis in charge of that company when he left — it was a simple enough task, one that even an idiot should have been able to handle. Sometimes Leon wondered whether he’d been put in the wrong crib at the hospital. No way could he actually be related to the brainless wonders he was forced to call family.