by G M Eppers
One member of the team that doesn’t live in HQ is our director, Miss Chiff. Her living quarters and offices are in the heart of D.C., in the D.C. CDC. The main CDC is still in Atlanta, but several branches opened up in major cities to deal with the Uber crisis. Washington D.C. was one of them. Miss Chiff schedules the three teams, A, B, and C as needed. I’m on A Team, with our headquarters in DC. B Team is headquartered in Maryland and C Team is headquartered in Virginia, each one just over the respective border so they are all easily accessible to each other. Miss Chiff is the one with ears on the intelligence-gatherers who tell us where we are needed.
Not long after the Boyd case, Miss Chiff came to our HQ to explain our next mission. We met in the conference room, where Billings and I had set out coffee and donuts.
I was sitting at one end of the table, near the donuts because I’m not stupid, sipping a strong black coffee. I bit into my custard-filled donut, using a finger to catch a glop of custard that squirted out. Sir Haughty handed me a couple of napkins. “Thank you, Sir.”
“Very welcome, my dear,” he said.
Roxy Dubois is an experienced trial lawyer, good at persuasion and acquiring legal documents like search warrants, and other mysterious legal things. Some would say she is good at it because she is built like a Hollywood bombshell, with more curves than Lombard Street, and despite the sexual revolution, most judges are still male. She also insists on wearing entirely inappropriate gowns and almost never wears heels that are less than four inches high. Today she was wearing this slinky black satin number that was shorter in front and sleeveless on top and narrow six inch heels. It really brought out her long, wavy red hair, and her delicate pale complexion. It’s possible that her legs appearing to be four feet long is just an optical illusion, but one of these days, while she’s sleeping, I swear I’m going to measure them. She sat down next to Nitro just to see him get uncomfortable and inch his chair away from her as flop sweat began to ooze out of every pore.
Roxy had a large canvas bag with her, and she removed a stack of collated papers. She distributed one to each team member. “You know the drill. Sign and date the last page and make sure I get it back before we get on the plane.” They were liability and disclosure agreements. Boilerplate stuff, and a pain in the ass, but absolutely necessary. Everyone immediately flipped to the last page, signed, and then slid it back to her on the spot. No one ever read it, and I felt briefly ashamed each time. She could be requiring the eternal soul of our firstborn and no one would even know until it came time to pay the piper. I glanced over at Billings on my right as I slid my signed contract across to Roxy. Billings handed me his and I slid it over right behind mine. Roxy gathered them back up and visually verified the signatures before slipping them all back into her canvas tote.
A couple of minutes later, Director Chiff walked in carrying a large, extra wide briefcase. She is about 75, but as sturdy as they come in a very Bea Arthur kind of way, with silvery gray hair which she wears in a tight, intimidating bun, and what I would call spectacles, not glasses, that sit low on her nose so she can look down through them. She removed a laptop computer and placed it on the table, then flipped the top up and turned it on. While it was booting, she passed out copies of a report to each of the team members. “Good afternoon, everyone,” she said. “I’ve called you all in today because we have a situation brewing in rural Wisconsin. The location and details are in your reports.”
As she spoke, Badger tucked his report under his own laptop and began typing notes. He served as secretary and sent minutes of each meeting to the Secretary of State. The soft click of his keys was almost inaudible, and didn’t disturb our conversation.
None of us looked at our reports. We’d be reading them on the plane, later. Miss Chiff spun the computer around so we could all see the screen. On it was a picture of a grizzled man with a ragged beard that was almost, but not entirely, grey. His moustache disappeared into the beard, or possibly vice versa. In any case, his facial hair blended into one feature. He was wearing a camouflage cap, a flannel shirt, and overalls, with one strap undone. “This man is Cletus Grundy. He’s 58 years old, a dairy farmer by trade, married with between two and ten children.”
“Between two and ten?” I asked. “We don’t know?”
“He is known to have lied on the last census, where he reported two children. On tax forms, he reports ten. Only five are currently registered in local schools. But when we canvassed neighbors they assured us the couple have at least ten children. With any luck, the wife and children will not be an issue, but they and other family and friends are likely making the stand with him. We can also expect local chapters of cheese support groups to be present, so be aware of civilians in the area.” She turned the laptop around and pressed a few buttons, then turned it back towards us. It was an aerial view of his farm, showing a large red barn and a white farmhouse both badly in need of repairs and paint. Several large trees shaded the yard. There were a few cows in the corral next to the barn, and two pickup trucks in the driveway. One was up on blocks, the other seemed to be parked on the grass. Behind the barn was a tall silo. “We’ve received intelligence that the silo is filled with a large amount of cheese. We haven’t been able to determine which variety, and Grundy and his family are currently guarding the silo with some pretty heavy weaponry.”
“What kind of firepower are we talking about here?” asked Avis Nicely. Agnes was busy chewing. At 5’3”, they were an inch shorter than Nitro, but still deceptively powerful. I heard that as teenagers they had taken down their 6’5” bodyguard, who their parents had hired after the girls had received death threats, and made him whimper. They were connected, like the original Siamese twins, by a band at the waist, and each twin had two arms and two legs of her own. The years of martial arts training during their childhood had stretched the band to a couple of feet, which made movement much easier compared with most conjoined twins. I’ve seen them use the band itself as a weapon and as leverage.
“Your usual array of semi-automatic rifles for the most part,” Miss Chiff replied. “They’ve also got an MP5, an Ultimax 100, and a ten barrel Nordenfelt that we’re assuming is not operational. Keep in mind they could have cannon or a tank hidden in the barn.” None of these things could be seen in the photo. I figured it had been taken by Google Maps and was probably at least a year old.
“Do we know how many cows he’s supposed to have?” I asked. “There are only three in the corral. Does that view include his entire property or could he be grazing them elsewhere? If cows are unaccounted for, they have to be in the barn, which would argue against there being major artillery hidden there.”
“The cow population is unknown, but there are grazing sites within a 10-mile radius. Also, there’s no guarantee cows in the barn would rule out at least some kinds of heavy artillery. He seems to have shifted his profit focus from dairy to black market cheese and his husbandry of his cows would undoubtedly be affected.”
Nitro raised his hand timidly. Miss Chiff nodded at him. “Yes, Nitro?”
“What about local law enforcement? Have they tried to subdue him?” He popped a baby carrot into his mouth with a loud crunch. They were so fresh they still looked moist from being washed. Nitro is a vegetarian and for the life of me I can’t imagine what keeps him alive. He never eats meat. Normally, Nitro’s favorite phrase is “Don’t eat that”. I’ve only seen him eat apples, cauliflower, celery sticks, and various raw vegetables, but he has the same physical requirements as the rest of us. He does eat a variety of nuts and beans but it just doesn’t seem like it would be enough protein. I guess it’s just me because I so enjoy meat of all kinds. According to his personnel file, he grew up on a farm in rural Iowa, which are two words you can probably find on a Wikipedia page about redundant place names along with the Sahara Desert and Minnehaha Falls, Minnesota. He is a somewhat nervous man, but a more than creditable EMT, with three years of medical training. He had just finished a surgery rotation when we recruited him int
o CURDS. He’s completely confident in emergency medical situations, steady as a rock sewing people up, and never flinches no matter what comes out of a person when they’re down. He’s far more disturbed by what’s going INTO a person.
“Yes,” she replied, pointing to an area on the aerial view north of the silo. “State troopers approached from this direction three days ago. Two of them were shot, neither fatally. There was a negotiator, but there are no demands. Grundy intends to sell the cheese on the black market and he’s just trying to protect it while he finds a buyer.” She then anticipated my next question. “We have people set up to make the purchase on the government’s behalf, but he’s still entertaining bids. In the meantime, we’d like to try to confiscate the cheese and avoid dealing with a sniper.”
“Sniper? You mean a bid sniper or a gun sniper?” Badger asked, pausing his typing.
“Bid sniper,” she admitted, and Badger resumed typing. “He’s put it up on eBay, but he is still not disclosing the exact makeup of the cheese, so there aren’t very many bids. There is no Buy It Now price and the auction has several days to go. eBay is threatening to disallow the auction, but hasn’t pulled it yet on our request. While he’s watching auction results, he won’t be paying attention to us. We have people watching the auction who will report to me if a bidding war gets started. Badger will be linked in and can keep you informed.” She paused, then closed up the laptop and put it back in her briefcase. “There are no further questions?”
All of us shook our heads. We knew our jobs.
“All right then. Wheels up in 27:34.” CURDS could be very precise.
Chapter Two
The CURDS plane is a custom designed, custom built Boeing 837, and belongs to the GREAT APE class. That stands for Government Regulatory Emergency Air Transport with Automated Pressure Equalization. Yes, the United States governmental love affair with acronyms is alive and well. If it were a normal plane, it would hold about 400 passengers, but we had different priorities. For one thing, the twenty seats on the lower deck are spaced far enough apart for each one to fully recline without infringing on the next person’s space. Each one has a foot rest, a cup holder, and an attached pillow that can be flipped to the back if not needed. There is also a specially designed double seat for the twins with no arm rest in the middle. I would have asked for swivel, but it’s a plane, not a Tilt-a-Whirl. We rarely need all twenty seats, so, except for the twins, the team can sit wherever they feel like sitting. Ten seats have a window view and ten are nestled next to the wall that supports the upper deck. The designation CURDS1 is painted on the outside of the plane. When the crisis began, CURDS itself was created, approved, staffed and equipped within a couple of months, quite possibly a record speed for this sort of thing. I guess when people are dying full of crap, things get expedited. We’ve even been able to make improvements now and then, like four restrooms fully equipped with toilets and showers. They are located under the upper deck and accessed through a door at the rear end of the plane.
Dinny met us at the door and led the entire group into the locker room. You can’t get into or out of the body of the plane without going through the locker room. Each member has their own very generously sized locker for the smaller version of their stuff they need to keep available. I try not to be too nosy, but we’re often all in there at the same time and it’s interesting to see the different storage styles. Let’s just say that if you had to match them up, you’d probably be completely wrong. We all stored our gear and locked it up. In addition to personal stuff, there is individualized PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment of various kinds, which is why the size of the lockers is so generous. These include bulletproof vests, riot helmets, canvas, rubber, and leather gloves, thigh high rubber boots, one tailored Tyvek coverall, one stun gun with a charger built into the wall of the locker, a walkie talkie, and the HEP belt to hold the smaller items when we went into the field. The last stop in the locker room is the arms locker. All our weapons are locked away during the flight. The arms locker also has additional long rifles and a large supply of ammo. The only one with the key to this locker is Dinny. That’s right, not even me. I may be the coordinator, but when it comes to arms control, I’m the same as anyone else.
Dinny Rosensglet is my personal MVP for the team. She’s the plane steward, not to be confused with a stewardess. She’s in charge of everything about the plane except flying it. She keeps it fueled, stocks lovely meals, makes sure the in-flight phone service is working, handles the blankets and pillows and amenities and liaises between the team and the pilots. There are three pilots and four co-pilots on the payroll, who rotate however they see fit. Whatever is on the plane that needs taking care of, she’s the one who does it. It’s Dinny’s world.
We all went into the lower cabin and took seats for take-off. Just like passengers on any other plane, we have to be belted in until we are in the air. But after that it’s like a flying motel. I love take-off. I always take a window seat so I can watch the ground fall away. It’s the most exciting part. Once we leveled off and were cruising, with nothing to look at but the cloud cover, we unbuckled, and moved via a curved open stairway just outside the locker room, to the second level of the plane, where there was more comfortable seating and a conference style table. You could barely hear the engines, felt very little vibration, and with the new APE technology there was no problem with air pressure popping your ears or muffling conversation. Badger set up his laptop so he could Google as he read, which may or may not have been related information, and we all took out our reports. Knowing we were only going to Wisconsin, Badger didn’t have a foreign language to bone up on. How boring for him.
For a while, we all read silently.
By the time I was halfway through the report, a solid white cat was rubbing against my leg. I patted my lap and he jumped up, trying to see what was taking my attention away from him. This is T.B., one of the two cats that live on the plane. The T.B. stands for Toilet Bowl. Dad had always called cats stupid creatures because they didn’t come when you called like a dog would. They didn’t know their names, so there was no point in naming them anything. “You could name it Toilet Bowl and it would never know the difference,” he would say. Dinny found T.B. and his littermate, Backwash, in the cargo hold after a flight one day. In honor of Dad, I named the first one Toilet Bowl and christened him T.B. for short. I then let the team name the other one, a calico, and they chose Backwash. During take-off, the cats are kept safely in carriers in a storage room toward the front of the plane, somewhere in Dinny’s turf. After we reach cruising, Dinny simply lets them out. They recognize the little beep the pilots issue when it’s time to get ready for landing and return to their carriers. No one trained them for this, they just do it. Stupid creatures my ass.
T.B. has bonded to me for some reason and loves to sit on my lap, especially when I’m trying to read my report. Or when I’m trying to eat. Or when I’m sleeping. It had taken some time for T.B. to find the exact spot to curl up and where to rest his head. There were plenty of times when I’d been forced to shoo him off because I couldn’t hold the report up in the air long enough, or my leg below my knee had gone completely numb. But finally we got it figured out. I put my right ankle on top of my left knee and made a cradle, where he curled up, and he put his head between my right hip and elbow, sometimes upside down. I could hold my report comfortably and give him an occasional scratch between page turnings, and I didn’t have to shoo. And T.B. could decide instantly whether he wanted his back scratched or his belly rubbed. Backwash, on the other hand, tended to make the rounds with the rest of the team, whether they wanted to see him or not. Sir Haughty was not openly fond of either animal, but deigned to let the cat’s tail slip gently between his fingers in passing.
When I finished reading, I went back to a couple of sections and reread them, then set the papers aside and closed my eyes for a minute, absently petting T.B, while I waited for the rest of the team to finish reading.
“Found
a typo!” Nitro announced. “Page 12, third paragraph. It says ‘form’ where it should say ‘farm.’”
I’d seen it, too. “That’s okay,” I said. “On page 14, 4th paragraph it says ‘from’ where it should say ‘form’, so it all evens out.” A few minutes later everyone had finished reading. The background of Cletus Grundy’s life was something between a Stephen King character study and an article on how not to raise your kids. He’d stopped going to school in third grade to help on his family’s farm. An uncle who lived with them at the time had been convicted of tax evasion and Cletus had been heavily influenced by his uncle’s defense of, basically, “I don’t wanna,” followed often by “I shouldn’t have ta.” His parents divorced when he was fourteen and he was again exposed to a fine example of manhood when his father failed to make a single support payment. But when he went to visit his father, he noticed that his father always had plenty of money and would buy him new video games and feed him steak dinners. “Because I don’t give my money away to just anyone,” he was told. “You is special, son. Yur mother t’aint.” Cletus got married at the age of 24 to a cousin with even less education than himself, and they began popping out children the following year. Which meant they got married in December of one year and had their first child in February of the following year. From the looks of things, Cletus carried on the family educational tradition with his own kids. There was no record of any of them getting beyond the fourth grade.
“Sir Haughty,” I asked, “what’s the worst case scenario, here? How much of what cheese could he possibly have in that silo?”
Sir Haughty wove his fingers together and stretched his arms out until his knuckles cracked. “Well, my dear, there are a number of possibilities. I feel the worst case would be,” and he stopped for a moment to do some math in his head, “a couple of tons of tainted cheddar. Common, but easy to sell and the yellow cheeses seem to be a bit more addictive than the white. Cheddar is probably the main source of the OOPS, because it’s so popular that millions were addicted to Uber Rennet before we even knew its effects. And that much Uber Cheddar back on the market could set the containment forces back several months, if not years. However, if by ‘worst scenario’ you mean most disturbing, there is a rare cheese from Sardinia called Casu Marzu that may be harder to sell but would bring in a far larger paycheck.”