Survivors Sample Chapter Excerpt – Chapter 5: Hornet’s Nest
by James Wesley, Rawles
LewRockwell.com
“The only purpose of a government is to protect a man’s rights, which means: To protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, an agent of man’s self defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper function s of a government are: The police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud from others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective laws.”
~ John Galt in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged
Houston, Texas – October, the First Year
Growing up on the streets of Houston had made Ignacio Garcia both wary and smart. He never used any drugs other than some occasional marijuana. And he never sold drugs. He realized that was sure to get him arrested, eventually, because customers always talked. His only contacts with heavy drug users were some that he hired, to work his burglaries. Garcia developed a reputation as a clever burglar who never got caught. His modus operandi was exacting: Hit between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on weekdays, when nobody was home. Avoid lower class neighborhoods, where the pickings weren’t worth bothering, and avoid the wealthy neighborhoods where they all had burglar alarms. Instead, he hit middle class neighborhoods, where there were still things worth stealing, but where they didn’t have their guard up.
Garcia started out by doing burglaries himself, but soon moved on to organizing and equipping teams to do the work for him. To approach middle class houses surreptitiously, he outfitted his teams to look like plumbers, carpet cleaners, or gardeners. Their vehicles looked very convincing. Garcia then fenced his goods though a network of pawn shops, flea market dealers, and coin dealers who could keep their mouths shut. He had his teams concentrate on jewelry, guns, coin collections, cash, and high-end digital cameras. He made a point of never keeping any stolen merchandise at home. He paid several little old ladies to rent storage spaces for him. Eventually, he had almost a dozen places to hide his stolen goods.
Garcia was never associated with any of the big gangs, although he did recruit a few members of MS-13. He kept his own gang – “the gang with no name” as quiet as possible, and discouraged them from antagonizing any other gangs. Garcia often said, “Let them bicker and kill each other, while we hang back and just make lots of money.”
The Rest…HERE
