Jimmy looked down at the packed dance floor on the main level of the Operator's Club. Even for a Thursday night, there were plenty of college-aged dancers enjoying the latest dance tunes. Most of the crowd wore the latest in urban "camoflage" styles -- summer editions, of course -- involving garishly swirled bright colors on various shorts, vests, t-shirts, and bikini tops.
A couple of people sitting at a table on the far side of the dance floor caught Jimmy's attention. They looked distinctly Asian and wore dark clothes under black trench coats and trendy wrap-around sunglasses despite the poor lighting on the floor.
Jimmy noticed Colonel Stevens, the owner of the bar, standing near the railing. "Hey, Colonel. What's with the MIBs?"
"What? Oh, the Keanu Reeves Matrix wannabes. Yeah. They've been hanging out here for the last few days. Every now and then, one of 'em tries to get upstairs. They claim to be needing to meet someone, but they don't have any names. My guess is that they're probably some new fans of your team who flew over from Japan to meet with the people who foiled their boss's attempt to steal that sword."
"Hmmm. Does the team know about them?"
"Yup. I warned them an hour ago when they showed up for the open mike. Martina was apparently pretty excited that she was about two meters away from the Fed who's been hunting her and got to walk away unscathed. That, and she really wanted some more free drinks."
"I still can't figure that one out, Old Man. This guy's the Number Two honcho at the local FBI terrorism office, and he let Martina and Jesse walk, even though he knew exactly who they were. Something doesn't quite click for me there."
"I hear ya. Don't know what to say, other than watch out."
Special Agent Wayne Norton sat across from his boss, Carla Simons, the head of the FBI's Denver branch of the Domestic Terrorism Unit. Once again, she was looking through his After Action Report of the drug bust his team helped coordinate.
"Agent Norton, who were those people you let go? The ATF agent on the scene says you talked to them for several minutes and let them go. I know you have an explanation in this report, but I want you to explain it to me right now."
"Ma'am, those were deep undercover contacts of mine. I can not reveal their identities right now because I have reason to believe this building may be compromised," Norton wasn't sure there was reason to suspect it, but he had seen reports that the New America organization had compromised security at some FBI offices.
"Didn't the female fit the description in the ATF report that was used to call the raid? Isn't that odd?"
"According to the information I've seen, that report just materialized on the local ATF database a few days ago. There's no routing information to show where it came from. We have reason to suspect that the ATF network is compromised."
"Great! So you think that someone has breached security at both the FBI offices and the ATF offices here in town?"
"We cannot discount the possibility, ma'am."
"What about the raid Wednesday?"
"It went well enough. The FBI came clean without casualties. The ATF made some tactical errors and tried rushing the site. That was stupid. The bad guys had some stolen military weapons -- including a prototype of the next generation M16. Army never reported it missing, so we are trying to figure out what the hell is going on. They might ask us to help in that investigation."
"So we shut down this drug lab the mercs were using, at least. How many did we round up?"
"There were twenty-two shooters and twenty-one unarmed lab workers. Ten dead, twenty in the hospital. By the way, they were not mercenaries. Those idiots were just another drug gang. Whoever called that a merc lab was trying to make sure we hit them hard and fast. Only thing the ATF had going right for them was their new airplanes. They took out the perps in the cars before they could get away. I still don't know why they are flying military counter-insurgency aircraft."
"With the lawlessness around here, and all the military hardware winding up in criminals' hands, they had to do something to keep up," Carla looked at the glowing red numbers of the digital clock on her desk. "I need to make a phone call. I will finish your report and get back to you."
Carla Simons watched Special Agent Norton leave her office. After he had closed the door, she picked up the phone and dialed a long-distance number.
"Yes, sir. This is Agent Simons reporting. Still nothing new on the New America investigations. However, I am concerned about security in this facility. Agent Norton suspects we may have a leak somewhere. He even has some operatives working for him that he refuses to identify... No, I don't think he's a problem. He's just concerned about security... If he starts acting too strangely, I think we may need to consider transferring him, yes. I will keep you updated."
John "Soup" Campbell walked through the hangar at Boulder Airport. It was fairly spacious for the helicopter he was planning on flying into here, but he did not think the ceiling was high enough to leave the sensor mast attached. We may have to remove it before we liberate it from the ATF lockup.
After completing the walkthrough of the hangar, he returned to the civil aviation terminal. Inside, he found the representative for hangar rentals.
"Well, Mr. Campbell? Will that hangar suit your company?"
"Yeah, yeah, I think it will work. It'll be nice to be able to avoid all the traffic around here when I need to get my boss to DIA."
"I understand. Bar None Imports? Is that a new business?"
"Yeah. We just opened up some offices near here, and we have to do a lot of travel, you know. So, how soon can we move in?"
"I just need you to sign this contract. It renews annually. The rate is just $250 a month, and includes electricity and security."
"Oh, yes. Security. What is your security like?"
"We have roving patrols at night, cameras watching all the flight line, the usual stuff. Will that be sufficient?"
"Can we add some security to the hangar ourselves? I would hate to think that our helicopter could be broken into, and my boss is very big on electronic alarms and things like that."
"Well, you could add those things. Just remember that someone will need to let our facilities maintenance in from time to time to fix leaks and repair the heater and the like. We can make arrangements, I'm sure," the agent said as he handed Campbell some forms to sign.
"Okay. Well, great. I'm sure we will appreciate having this hangar. I will be flying the helicopter in here in a couple of weeks when it gets delivered."
The agent gave Campbell some keys after Campbell finished signing the paperwork. "Fine, Mr. Campbell. We appreciate the business of Bar None Imports."
Ellen shut off her computer and rubbed her eyes. She had been digging for anything on this Mr. Wiesel who had hired the team to take out the crank operation in Castle Rock. She knew the guy was dirty -- and not just from his hygiene problems. She couldn't find anything that linked him to the Chicago drug wars that had been raging for the last two weeks. He may be from Chicago, but he wasn't part of the action up there. Maybe the piss-ant is trying to get into the action. There's a lot of money in hiring mercs to clean up the mess up there. What's this?
She grabbed the top page off of a stack of newspapers on her floor.
Bogota, Colombia -- Jefe Santiago Malantez, leader of the vicious Malantez drug cartel, has vowed to destroy his competition. Over the last decade, cocaine use in America has dropped sharply as more people started buying the cheaper and easily available methamphetamine crank. Malantez claims he will send "armies of loyal troops" to America to destroy the hundreds of small crystal methamphetamine labs that produce crank and reduce the demand for his cocaine.
That's too easy. Wiesel couldn't be brokering for the Colombians, could he? I'll have to figure out how to check that angle.
I ought to change careers, Jesse grumbled to himself. Yeah. 'Jesse's Airport Tours', I can see it now.
Jesse was at the Front Range Airport near the southern end of the Denver metro region, once again running recon for the team. He was currently feigning interest in renting a Cessna sitting on the general aviation tarmac. It didn't matter if he didn't have a license -- he spent enough time with John Campbell to fake it well enough for today's transaction. The rental agent had stopped prating about the value of his company's timeshare plans and was looking at Jesse expectantly.
"Yeah. I need to talk to my pilot buddy before I sign a contract," he said as he looked towards the Hollywood Rentals hangar. "What's that place?"
"Oh. Hollywood Rentals. They rented military airplanes and helicopters."
"Rented?"
"Yeah. The police or somebody closed them down last month. Locked the place up good and tight."
"Huh. They just left that stuff there?"
"I guess they don't have anywhere to put it before they put this guy on trial. A couple of people from an alarm company came by at the end of last month and spent the day wiring the place, then the police locked it up tight with some nasty locks and left."
"Wow. Must have been pretty exciting. Well, I don't want to take any more of your time. I'll try to be back later this week with my buddy to take a look at the planes and figure out if I really should start renting before I get my instrument rating tests finished."
A little dejected from the apparent loss of a commission, the rental agent mumbled something encouraging and walked towards the general aviation terminal. Jesse watched him leave for a moment before taking one last long look at the Hollywood Rentals hangar.
Basic aluminum siding, small office on the south side, main doors on the east. Standard doors on the office and the west side of the building. Good sized locks on the doors -- welded on some additional stuff, it looks like. Has to be an alarm system of some sort inside there. Office also has a couple of windows -- I can see the alarm tape on them from here. There are a couple of fair-sized ventilation shafts on the top so they can work on the planes during the winter. There has to be a heater somewhere. They wouldn't be dumb enough to have mobile space heaters around all that JP4. As long as we don't trip the alarms, it shouldn't be too tough.
That evening, at The Operator's Club, Jesse relayed his intel to the rest of the team. He provided his assessment afterwards.
"I didn't see any guards, but I will bet Martina's hide that they have an alarm system tied to the local police department. I would also think that they have the alarms tied to their own offices. We probably ought to expect them to react pretty drastically to any alarms sounding there -- I'm thinking we might have some hostiles airborne fairly quickly from Loveland. I doubt if there are any real AAMs or SAMs in the rental place, and the helicopter can't carry them, anyway."
"Heeeyy. No problemo, man. Me and Knock-Knock got pretty good at shooting down airplanes, ehhh?"
Jesse suppressed the urge to inflict violence upon Martina. His jaw was sore before he continued.
"Yes, Martina. You got a lucky shot on a civilian HELICOPTER! The ATF has airplanes that fly about twice as fast. Your anti-tank grenade WON'T cut it."
"Okay, ehhh? Hey, Jeemmy! Know where I can get a couple of Stingers?"
"Sorry, Pepper. Not my field of expertise. You guys are the ex-military types, remember?"
"Heeeyy, you're supposed to be the Fixer, right? I need you to fix me up with some Stingers ... or maybe a Chapparral SAM launcher."
"Pepper, I fix people up with troubleshooters. People have a problem with something, I find a team to fix it."
"Hey, yeah. I like shooting trouble," Martina's voice started picking up speed and pitch, "as long as it doesn't start shooting me. Stupid crutches..."
"Guys, may I finish?"
"Sure, Jesse. Go ahead, ehhh?"
"Thank you. So, if we can get in and out without tripping the alarm system, we can probably get clear. Of course, if someone notices our B & E and calls the ATF or police, we can expect trouble. Only question is, how do we deal with the trouble? I can guarantee the helicopter would last less than a minute against those Pucaras."
Anthony Brockman, 20th Tier New American and commander of the Denver Cell of New America, looked across the row of shotgun-armed Initiates in front of him, standing in a slight depression in the Pawnee National Grasslands in northeastern Colorado. All of them were dusty and tired after a day of hard drilling with their weapons. Not bad, really. Most of them got decent combat shotguns. Nobody was dumb enough to bring their duck hunting gun. He looked again at the last man in line. How the hell did he get that military shotgun? The Initiate held an Olin Close Assault Weapon, a fully-automatic 12 gauge shotgun licensed from Heckler & Koch. There weren't any of them outside the military, or so Brockman thought. The man holding it definitely was not a serviceman, though. No matter. He got a handle on that beast pretty fast. He'll work out for the urban assault teams, if he makes it through the next round of interviews. Brockman took a couple of steps forward as his assistants called the Initiates to attention.
"That was some damned fine training. You men really are doing well for a bunch of green Initiates. You'll be able to give my urban assault teams a run for their money in no time. Let's get under the tent and we'll wrap up this week's session."
Brockman led them underneath an open-sided tent that he and his assistants had put up early in the morning, before the Initiates had been transported to this training site. Underneath the tent, sheltered from the sun and any prying eyes flying overhead, were twenty-five folding chairs and two long crates. As the Initiates sat down, Brockman opened one of the crates. He hefted the brand-new M16A2 assault rifle and held it up for everyone to see.
"When we head up here again in two weeks for the next training session, we are going to introduce you to some serious firepower. We managed to acquire a fair cache of brand new weapons, and you are going to help us break them in."
An enthusiastic murmur sounded in the crowd under the tent. Brockman placed the assault rifle gently back into its crate and opened the other one. He hefted the M60 machine gun from it and grinned as someone in the crowd exclaimed "Holy shit!"
"Yes, we are playing for keeps. The bleeding hearts in Washington and all their self-proclaimed 'oppressed minorites' will stop at nothing to grind us all under their heels. We in New America are not going to let them turn this country into a Godless, heathen caste system with us on the bottom. When the time comes, all of the New America cells will activate, and we will return this country to its glorious God-fearing past, with all those who would stop us back on the plantations doing what they are genetically suited to do!"
Brockman lowered the machine gun, sitting it on one of the crates with its bipod unfolded. "If any of you know of some good candidates for New America who have a background in the military, you might give us their names. We can use more experienced trainers for everyone, especially in the use of these heavy weapons."
One of the Initiates -- O'Malley, Brockman thought -- stepped forward. He was pretty damned good with that police issue shotgun he had.
"Sir, I don't know if these people are good for joining the cause," O'Malley said as he held forward a business card. "They know what they're doing, and they will take cash and shut up, I'm sure."
Brockman looked at the card. Across the top it read, "Jimmy the Fixer", with a line underneath "Agent, Solutions, Liaison".
"Mercenaries? I've been wanting to meet up with some of them anyway. I'll give them a call and see what they say. Good idea, Initiate O'Malley."
O'Malley stepped back to his seat, somewhat pleased with himself.
"Okay. Cadre, load your people up and let's go home!"
Special Agent Wayne Norton's cell phone rang.
"Norton... Reilly, how's it going? Really? You gave them the card. Good. Let's hope that I can convince them to play along. We need to gather a little more info so we can knock these New Americans out of the ball park. Yes, I will give this Jimmy the Fixer a call. Good work. Stay low, and don't call me again before they take you out for training on the 15th."
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