Lobo Malo - Chapter 7 - Dead Men's Chests
The White House
1253 EST
Gregory sat in a corner of the White House's improvised server room, tapping on a keyboard, a pen behind his left ear, a small whiteboard with markers on the wall to his right. The problem he'd been given to work on was not only important, but intriguing. Ryckmen had brought up a good point. The Hyenas were just too well armed for scavengers. While it was possible they managed to raid some JTF stockpiles and had been husbanding their limited resources, it didn't seem likely. Particularly when one considered the fact they were using weapons which were definitely not US military or police issue, like the SVD Ryckmen had recovered. Refurbished and "sanitized" weapons suggested somebody had connections to an arms dealer of some sort. But if that was the case, how were they getting resupplied?
"All right, let's start with the one example we know about," Gregory muttered. "ISAC, I need a records search."
"Specify record criteria."
"All air and maritime cargo manifests for the last calendar year. Country of origin, Angola. Destination country, United States. Limit records for destination country to Gulf Coast or East Coast ports of entry. Eliminate any records which do not indicate any layovers or transshipment stops in nations on or in the Caribbean Sea."
There was a short pause while ISAC considered the parameters. "Search results have returned fifteen thousand, six hundred and twenty-three records."
"Create a repository for these records and restrict access to my eyes only. Transfer a copy of the records to workstation..." Gregory took a moment to find the computer's ID. "Workstation JTF-WH-45263. Hard line only."
"Repository created. Access restrictions established. Transfer beginning. Estimated time to completion: one hour, five minutes."
* * *
Ryckmen peered into the server room, seeing Gregory tapping away at the keyboard, fingers flashing. He seemed to be in a trance as he manipulated the data, pausing only now and again to sip at the cup of coffee which JTF staff had silently kept full for the last fourteen hours. As Gregory turned back from making a note on the whiteboard, he noticed Ryckmen standing in the doorway. "Hey, Lowell," he said pleasantly. "What brings you down here?"
"Wanted to make sure you hadn't been sucked into the computer. It's damned near oh-three hundred."
"Really?" Gregory glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. "Wow. I completely lost track of time." He suddenly shut his eyes tightly, a grimace coming over his face. "And I may have forgotten to blink. Damn!"he growled as tears began to seep out from the corner of his eyes.
"Are you at a good stopping point? Don't want you burning out on me."
"Yeah, I think so. But I should at least give you the high level overview." Gregory opened his eyes, then began to blink them rapidly. Once he was satisfied, he leaned back in the chair. "I don't have as much as I would like. No names or faces we can work with. I can say unequivocally that your bete noir Aaron Keener isn't involved. This seems to have been one of those odd little coincidences which do happen from time to time, and somebody was smart enough to pivot from their original course of action to the one which they found themselves in."
"So what happened?" asked Ryckmen, leaning against a server rack.
"Not gunrunning in the traditional sense. If anything, it's backwards, bringing stuff into the US from other countries instead of US arms going out. I started with Angola, since you mentioned the SVD came from there. Since the manifests have the weight of the cargo listed on there, and since we know how many containers were on a ship, we can determine the gross displacement of the cargo vessel. Crew, consumables, fuel, also known variables which help refine the displacement value. From there, it's a basic math problem. The mass of the ship and the speed it maintained tell us how long it should have taken to get from Point A to Point B. If it takes longer than that, when you discard the amount of time spent transshipping or laying over in case of stormy weather at a port somewhere in the middle, then logically it has to have been heavier than what the manifests show."
"Which means there was cargo in there which wasn't on the manifests," nodded Ryckmen. "So far, I'm following you."
"There was a pattern of small cargoes, only about a hundred metric tons or so in each instance, mostly from southern Africa, but a few here and there from Suriname as well. A hundred tons doesn't sound like a lot when compared to the amount of cargo one of the big container ships can move, but that's the point. It's not supposed to be noticeable. It threw off the transit times by a small but measurable amount each time. Something which would probably be chalked up to bad weather or ocean currents. Except those ships weren't slowed up by natural factors."
"All right, so what would make up a shipment of a hundred tons?"
Gregory smiled tiredly. "Strangely enough, it would take a lot of weapons to make up a hundred tons. And that many weapons would increase the chance of them being noticed. Arguably, you could save some weight repackaging them, taking them out the usual wooden shipping crates and putting them in either fiberboard or polymer-based boxes, but even so, that's still a lot of guns. Ammunition wouldn't be quite as obvious. Lead's heavy. Even if you put a thousand rounds into a vacuum sealed bag and a cheap carboard box, it'd still be a lot of weight, despite being a very compact bundle. I roughed out several combinations, but each shipment seems to have been around a hundred weapons of various types, along with enough ammo for sixty days of maintenance training or three weeks of sustained operations."
"So how do the Hyenas fit into this?"
"A few known Hyena leaders had connections to the black market arms trade. Friend of a friend sort of connections, nothing direct. Whoever brought the cargoes in was being very careful about it. They went mostly for smaller ports on Chesapeake Bay. The only big port they were willing to risk was Baltimore. Norfolk would have been closer, but given the Navy presence there, it was probably considered to be too much of a risk. Once they were in the port, the cargoes could have been loaded on to trucks and shipped damned near anywhere. There's probably a central cache where the gear is being stored. It's got to be outside of the District itself, but close enough that small groups of people could pack the gear into the city by foot."
"Do the Hyenas know where this stash is located?"
Shaking his head, Gregory took a sip of coffee. "I don't think they do. The organizing force behind the shipments has to be aware of the fundamental unreliability of their 'customers.' Otherwise, they would have collected everything, then turned the whole pile over to the Hyenas, and that would have turned D.C. into what you've told me Philadelphia is like. Or do you think the True Sons could have held out against the Hyenas if all of them had been given mil-spec hardware, refurbished or otherwise?"
"From the intelligence assessments I've read so far, probably not. Mind you, I'm not saying the Hyenas would have gotten through unscathed, but it would have been bloody as hell, and there's the Outcasts to contend with. Whatever happened, I suspect JTF and the civilian communities wouldn't have survived."
"Almost certainly. So whoever brought in the shipments has been drip feeding gear to the Hyenas, and they've been doing it for seven months after Black Friday. Which means they've got a collection of manpower which they've kept from exposure to Green Poison or DC-62 and a secure enough facility to store the gear."
"A secure facility that's probably close by, relatively speaking. Something within ten miles or so."
"Ten miles?" asked Gregory, an eyebrow going up.
"That's about what a normal person can make in half a day assuming a decent degree of physical fitness and a sufficient amount of water to stay hydrated."
"OK. So, figure our mystery gun runner has a depot, and he's probably got enough people to act as both delivery boys and security. People he trusts or has instilled sufficient discipline in to keep them essentially in lockdown for the last six months, barring the occasional delivery run. Face to face meeting, you think?"
"Dead drops would be more likely. As you say, our guy has to know the Hyenas can't be trusted as far as he could spit. Not to say they're just going to drop the stuff off and hope the Hyenas stumble across it. If I were running this sort of operation, I'd keep a couple observers in a hide somewhere to make sure the delivery was picked up before returning to base."
"That would make sense to me," nodded Gregory. "The question in my mind is this: why would they be stockpiling guns when nobody knew Amherst was going to release Green Poison?"
"Either they did know, which means they're ultimately behind Green Poison, or they had something else in mind and simply decided to take advantage of the situation that presented itself." Ryckmen grimaced. "Funny how neither one of those scenarios makes me feel a lot better."
* * *
The Theater
1428 EST
"Knock, knock," said Ryckmen as he leaned against the door frame of Odessa Sawyer's quarters.
"Lowell," said Sawyer with a smile. "What brings you around here?"
"Part of it is a standard check-in. Making sure you're not having any problems with ISAC."
"No problems so far, least with ISAC itself. That 'calling card' idea your new friend came up with was inspired. The only problem we are facing is logistical right at the moment." Sawyer grimaced as she stumped over to the door. "Finding the right electronics components for the comm modules is proving a little tricky. We'll get a handle on it eventually, I'm sure. But for the moment, we're having to restrict the modules to our long range patrols." She looked at him curiously. "What's the rest of the reason you're here?"
"I need to pick your brain. Mind putting out the 'do not disturb' sign on the door?"
Sawyer nodded and went over to Eleanor, talking with her quietly for a few moments before coming back over and shutting the door, leaving her alone with Ryckmen. "Too early for a beer?" she asked as she went over to a cooler.
"It's after five somewhere in the world." Sawyer handed Ryckmen a can, then brought out a second one. The two agents popped the tops open and clinked the cans together. "Absent comrades," he said solemnly.
"Absent comrades." Sawyer sipped the beer. "I've been cutting down since you brought Eleanor back. Can't really afford to start having the DTs, so I'm going through beer more than whiskey."
"Good to hear," said Ryckmen, taking a sip of his own. "Listen, Oddball, I need some background info about what happened around here after Black Friday. Kelso's given me a lot of the high level stuff. The quarantine at Roosevelt Island, the DC-62 contaminations, the presidential merry-go-round. But I'm looking for the street level stuff. I know Kelso's done her time in the trenches around here, but Peace and I flipped a coin for who got to talk to her. He won the toss, so I'm here talking to you."
"Careful, Lowell. Might drive me back to the whiskey," she warned half-jokingly.
"I'll try not to cause any flashbacks." Ryckmen shifted in the chair and leaned forward a little bit. "Peace and I are trying to track down a potential lead on how the Hyenas are getting their guns."
"You think somebody's been feeding them this whole time," Sawyer said flatly. "I've been having the same thought, but I've never been able to devote much in the way of time or resources to try and hunt down the pipeline."
"In your perambulations around town right after Black Friday, anything ever strike you as hinky?"
Sawyer took a long gulp from the can. "Not directly related to the Hyenas, no. But there was something which struck me as odd. When you got off the plane after coming back from the Ranch, where we were supposed to be returning from overseas, did you ever meet up with any PMC recruiters?"
"Not after leaving the Ranch, no. Couple of them were sniffing around me after my second tour with the 10th Mountain. Think the word got around I was not that kind of guy."
"There was one guy who tried after I got home from the Ranch. Dom chased him off before he got a chance to leave his card. But I saw him again after Black Friday."
"When was this?" Ryckmen asked curiously.
"About three months ago. Right before I lost my leg. He didn't give me a whole lot of details. Basically seemed like he was trying to double me."
Ryckmen's eyes narrowed slightly. A double agent within the Division wasn't something he wanted to consider possible. Rogues, he could understand, however little he liked them. But double agents, somebody deliberately betraying the Division for somebody else's agenda instead of their own disillusionment, that was far more terrifying. Sawyer reached over and patted Ryckmen's knee.
"He didn't get very far. I did try to string out the discussion, seeing if he would cough up any further information, but he was a very cool customer. He wasn't going to say anything unless I came out and said I would play ball. I didn't indicate I was going to go forward, but I also didn't outright turn him down. A couple weeks later, the Hyenas took my leg." Sawyer snorted and drained the beer. "Guess he wasn't interested in dragging things out much more."
"You think he sent the Hyenas out to hit you deliberately?"
"I hadn't before," said Sawyer, shaking her head, "but the thought does occur to me now. The timing's just too good, and the Universe isn't lazy enough to let that sort of coincidence happen."
"Does this spurned recruiter have a name?"
"Think he said it was Schaeffer." Sawyer shrugged her shoulders. "I wouldn't hold much hope it's a real name, Lowell. Not if he was as smart as I think he was."
* * *
The White House
1445 EST
"You're going to have to define 'weird' for me, Gregory," said Kelso as she moved around the map table in Ortega's office. "My threshold is kinda skewed these days."
"Between Black Friday and the start of spring. I know a lot happened, but something that just made no sense whatsoever to you."
"There was a lot of that going around, Paxton. I mean, the world came unglued."
"I know." Gregory frowned. "I'm talking about an event that was senselessly crazy. Something that couldn't be explained by the events going on around you. A mystery. There had to have been one or two."
"You're not wrong. There were some mysteries going on, but I was just way too swamped trying to keep the obvious stuff in check. I suppose Wallace dying of a heart attack struck me as a little odd. I mean, the guy had just come back with a clean bill of health from his annual physical over at Bethesda. That was back in mid-October, usual press release stuff saying the President was in good health and good spirits. Yeah, he was certainly at that age where it's a risk no matter how many bran muffins you eat. But the doctors who give the President his physical, the Navy doesn't pull their names out of a hat. They go for quality. The top guys." An embarrassed look stole over Kelso's face. "Right after he died, I snuck a peek at his medical records. ISAC was still up at that point, and when Directive 51 got signed, HIPPA regulations sort of got put on hold. He was in pretty good shape. Certainly not like some Presidents who are one cheeseburger away from a widowmaker."
"Was it suspicious enough to warrant an autopsy?"
"No, and we didn't have the staff to spare for one. It was chalked up as a stress-induced myocardial infarction. He was put in the morgue to await burial once we had the time and manpower to spare. I think we finally ended up burying him out by the Rose Garden just after Valentine's Day."
"What about Mendez?"
Kelso frowned, chewing on a thumbnail slowly. "Mendez wasn't a bad guy," she said slowly. "He got handed the world's toughest job at the absolute worst time under horrific circumstances. Thing is, I wouldn't have pegged him for a guy to commit suicide. I know that's not saying much. Suicide's always surprising to the people around the victim. But that being said, he was pretty stable mentally speaking. I know he'd done a lot of good work in and around the District while Wallace was focusing on New York and the international situation. It was only after Wallace died that it all hit the fan. The DC-62 contamination happened a couple days after Wallace's death." Kelso shuddered at the memory. "I heard about the Dark Zone in New York, but that seems like a preschool playground compared to what happened here. Mendez ordered an investigation over it. He wanted to know how the scientists who cooked it up could have missed testing it under cold weather conditions. Just after the results of the investigation came back, he shot himself."
"What about Secret Service? Didn't the boys in black suits try to stop him?"
"Supposedly, his detail was told to wait outside while he 'contemplated his abject failure to protect American lives.' Next thing they know, they hear a shot, they come into the Oval Office, and he's dead in his chair."
"Nobody else was in the room? Nobody could have been hiding in there waiting for him?"
"No. The detail always swept the office before he came in."
"What about the recording equipment?" asked Gregory curiously. "Did it catch anything?"
"The recording equipment had been shut down a week before Christmas. We needed to cut down power consumption as much as possible, and the recording equipment was sucking up a lot of juice. Wallace ordered it shut off." Kelso blinked, her head jerking back as a thought seemed to strike her. "He died within a day or so of that decision."
"And Mendez never turned it back on," Gregory said with a frown.
"Why would he? It still would have been a power hog, and he had other things to worry about besides posterity."
"All right. The Secret Service agents who were on duty when Mendez died, are they around? I'd like to get their impressions about Mendez's state of mind, see if there was anything they noticed."
Kelso shook her head slowly. "Afraid you're going to be disappointed. There were two of them at that point. Just after Mendez died, they went out to some garage and killed each other in a murder-suicide pact." She blinked as she considered what she'd just said. "Did that sound as stupid to you as it did to me?"
"At least," Gregory replied dryly. "For a city dealing with a pandemic running riot, there's an awful lot of folks dropping dead from non-disease causes. Folks in positions of safety which they should not be dropping dead in." He frowned in thought for a moment. "Which means Ellis would have taken over, correct?"
"Yeah. He and the rest of Congress were out at a bunker when Mendez died. Ellis tried to fly into D.C. about a month ago, not long before ISAC went down. True Sons shot down Air Force One. Crash landed right in front of the Capitol."
"So Ridgeway has him?"
Kelso shook her head. "No, if Ridgeway had him, we'd be hearing propaganda broadcasts with Ellis' voice spouting the True Sons party line. That, or we'd be hearing about how Ridgeway had executed Ellis for treason." She stared at the map table, a finger tapping close to the nutcracker figurine Ortega had chosen to represent the traitorous officer. "I had one of my guys check the crash site for survivors. You'd like him. He's crazy even for a Tactical guy. There were a lot of bodies, obviously, but Ellis wasn't among them."
"The Outcasts, maybe?"
"No, for pretty much the same reason. Emeline Shaw would be putting on the biggest, loudest, most vicious show trial she could think of if she did have Ellis, and she'd be executing him in the nastiest way she could devise. He's got too much propaganda value, alive or dead." Kelso sighed heavily. "Best case scenario, he survived the crash, escaped any nearby hostile patrols, and found some place to lay up till he figured he could safely call in the cavalry. Worst case, he wandered off after the crash and died of his injuries in some out of the way corner of the city."
"Did he notify anybody he was coming in?"
"He didn't. It was a complete surprise, and the True Sons were faster off the mark than I would have given them credit for."
Gregory nodded in sympathy. "Just does not pay to be President these days."
"Paxton, this may be my paranoia starting to get the better of me, but I'm starting to think there's something big happening which we've been overlooking this whole time."
"Even paranoids have enemies," said Gregory. "But I'm right there with you. There's somebody who's waiting to make their presence known, and I don't think we're going to like them one bit when they finally do show up."