(9)
 Nestor stopped and pointed for us to enter what looked like a small auditorium.
"Are you a magician?" the little boy asked with a serious face. It was the first time either child had spoken.
Nestor smiled in utter self-assurance. "No, I'm not. I'm a tychniker."
"What's that?" asked the little girl. She too did not crack a smile. Both dead children had intense black eyes.
Nestor said: "Magic is only science that hasn't been discovered yet. What you call magic, I call tychnik." It sounded like picnic.
We walked into a round room that had no seats of any kind. As we entered, I noticed that a ring of concrete ran around the perimeter. This ring was about ten feet wide and the outer diameter of the plain walls from one side to the other not more than 100 feet. A soft light just barely illumined the hall. The ceiling was flat, but the floor inside the ground-floor ring descended sharply in a series of steps. There was a flat area at the bottom. The flat area was round, and about 60 feet in diameter.
"There is nothing in here," Lolo whispered. Her voice echoed around the bare, hard walls. There was only the one door, through which we had come.
"Right," Nestor said. "I am the director of NEWS. We are a, shall we say, problem-solving organization, operating between the living and the spirit world."
"Are we coming to our purpose?" Lolo whispered. "Am I almost finished? Am I about to move on?"
Nestor had a mysterious streak, I could see. His little smile illuminated an inner something. He wasn't telling any more than he needed to. "One thing at a time. You have come here because it is your destiny."
He raised his hands over the lower arena. "This is a staging area. Here, we can bring circumstances to us rather than going to circumstances. We are an institute that dabbles in destiny, fixes little things, sometimes works a little tychnik where it's needed. This is one of those moments. Watch."
The room went totally dark, and the staging area suddenly looked bright as daylight. Which it was. It was a forest with a shallow river in it. Just visible beyond it, cutting into the arena steps on our side, was an asphalt-topped back road. A light green van pulled up. Two teenagers in uniform got out as we watched.
"Boy Scouts," I said uncomprehendingly. Two more youths came around the van, carrying a cooler between them. Their scoutmaster followed. The scout master was a school teacher type, who patiently explained things as he gesticulated, and the boys nodded.
"They are planning to camp in the woods here tonight. What they don't know about is that."
Our viewing perspective swung around 180 degrees. We saw another road not far away, sweltering in heat, and a black car parked on the road. Several men in dark clothing stood around the car.
Nestor's loud voice shocked us when he spoke. "Don't worry. They can't hear us." The scout patrol didn't seem to notice. The boys had begun unpacking their camping equipment from the back of the van. "These kids are about to walk into a trap. They don't know that the black car belongs to a Tijuana drug cartel. Tonight, several cars will come from Los Angeles, bringing a lot of money. There is a cache of drugs—Colombian cocaine, and Afghan-sourced heroin, processed in Colombia—hidden near the river below. The exchange will take place at midnight tonight. It will be a moonless night, the kind these people prefer.
We watched a scene of Interstate 5 as a trio of black SUVs cruised south in heavy traffic.
"Six scouts and their scoutmaster will blunder into the middle of the drug deal and be gunned down."
Night fell. One of the scouts came from one of three tents, yawned, stretched, and went into the darkness to relieve himself. As he stood in the bushes, he saw lights and looked up. He saw four cars, and a group of men with guns. Frightened, he zipped his fly and stepped back.
As he did so, he stepped on a twig.
It snapped loudly. Faces turned to look, eyes full of menace.
The boy uttered a wail of fear.
Instantly, several flashlights blinded him. Looking down, shielding his eyes, he saw that he had peed on a pile of green canvas sacks. Angry men babbled in a violent mix of English and Spanish.
Behind the boy, two other scouts and the scoutmaster had come out of the tents. Two of them held lanterns. "Josh, are you okay?" the scoutmaster called out.
As the boy turned to run back to the tent, men stormed down the embankment from the road, and opened up with assault weapons. The shooters scooped up the bags and high-tailed it up to the road. As they got in and the doors closed, the vehicles were already in motion. With screeching tires, the vehicles fishtailed away. It was all finished in a minute or two.
In the eerie, brooding silence, gunsmoke roiled among the trees, mixed with river fog. One tent still half-stood, while the other two were flattened by the hail of gunfire.
"Seven dead males lie sprawled in the swamp, where Border Patrol agents will find them," said Nestor. "Our tychnik, your magic, gives us means of warning us about things like this. I think we can do something about it, given the resources at hand."
The scene in the staging area moved, like a camera panning, even as bright daylight returned. As the view mechanism zoomed into the forest, an outline of…something…started becoming visible. It was a machine of some kind, choked with years of growth. River reeds, ivy, even an oak tree grew on it or in it. When I saw the numbers on the tail, I realized it was an aircraft. "This was a small commercial plane that crashed in there. A search finally found it, after it was almost given up as lost in the Pacific. The beach is only a few thousand feet from here. Now, Louise, I want you to walk down there with the children."
She did as he instructed.
"Hold their hands. That's it." Nestor looked at me. "You follow. I want you to walk right up and stand outside the tents."
Puzzled, I walked down behind Lolo and the children. The children started to cry softly.
"It's okay," Nestor said to them, gently. "Hold their hands, Louise and Ray. They are scared. This is the place they have been haunting for many years. The reason the Boy Scout troop picked this spot was on a dare. Kids at their high school have said for a generation that the ghosts of the people who died in the plane crash have haunted this spot in the wilderness. They will be able to see you and speak with you. You can save their lives tonight."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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