In fact, none of the other team members from The List had revealed their whereabouts, although a few were still sharing any data they were able to obtain.
Thankfully, Bubba was smarter than Dr. Riley Perkins in terms of hacker sophistication. He was finally able to trace ping trails on the hacked sat-link IDs. They’d all originated from Los Angeles, at free public access points like libraries and coffee shops, all within a five-mile radius.
Hence why they were now here.
Lima also wanted to know why the hell Hannibal Silo had such stringent security on his church’s network. Nothing they’d tried so far had allowed them access. It didn’t make sense that a non-banking organization as large as that of the Church of the Rising Sunset didn’t have at least one backdoor security flaw they could exploit.
Lima found he had a new message waiting for him from Bubba.
Is the new church facility there easily accessible?
Lima didn’t know. They hadn’t ventured out to it as of yet. They were trying to maintain as low a profile as possible.
He replied.
Unknown. Why?
Bubba replied almost immediately.
Find out. Specifically, access to personnel workstations.
Lima sat back, considering that request. He already suspected he knew where Bubba wanted to go with this.
Roger. Will run past PTB.
The “powers that be” in this case meaning Papa, their unit’s leader.
He closed the lid on the laptop and went in search of their leader. Unfortunately, the man was in the men’s bathroom, locked in a stall.
Lima knocked on the stall door.
“Fucking seriously?” he replied. “There are four other damn toilets in this room, and five in the women’s. Use one of them.”
“Sorry, no. I need to talk to you.”
He let out a sigh. “This better be important.”
“It is.” Lima repeated Bubba’s message.
Now Papa’s tone sounded serious. “Hold on.”
Lima heard the other man hurry up and finish his business. The toilet flushed and Papa emerged from the stall, with his tablet tucked under one arm. He headed for the sinks to wash up. “Let’s go.”
Lima led him back to his room and reestablished the connection with Bubba for him.
After a few minutes of back and forth, with Quack looking on from across the room where he was lying on his bedroll, Papa focused on Lima.
“It needs to be you and Quack who go do this. You’re the one with the necessary computer skills. No one else is really qualified in this department but you. Grab a couple of others, maybe Omega and Echo. Omega’s from this area, and Echo is an expert at disguise. Use them for your logistics and backup.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Lima asked. “Just walk in there and say, ‘Hey, we wanna drink your Jesus juice, so why don’t ya just show us around?’”
“Well, considering we don’t know what their security setup is, it needs to be during the daytime when there are people there. I would suggest walking in and flirting your asses off.”
Quack snorted. “Oh, sure. Because that’s just what people go to churches to do, flirt their asses off.” He lifted his head and looked over at their commander. “You sure you ain’t getting soft, sir?”
“The building,” Papa said, using his “instructive” tone with them, “is in a crappy neighborhood. Lots of liquor stores around there. Use your imaginations. Gargle with some cheap booze and follow after a couple of women who go in there and pretend you’re drunker than skunks.” He pointed at Quack. “Takes you ten minutes to grow five o’clock shadow anyway. You’re halfway to looking like a hobo as it is.”
Lima couldn’t help but snort at his partner’s aggravated expression in reply.
But despite their OTG status, neither of them would dare outright challenge their commander. It just didn’t work like that.
Which was another reason they enjoyed the hell out of watching the two women who’d joined their group verbally spar with the man. Vicarious pleasure.
Papa tapped a final reply into the computer before standing. “I want it done by tomorrow or the next day. Don’t put yourselves at any unnecessary risk, but get it done.” He headed toward the door.
Lima thought Quack didn’t know when to shut up sometimes. “Oh, suuure,” Quack snarked. “Let’s just walk into a building that might be housing some nefarious Armageddon plan. No risk at all.”
Lima shot him a “shut up” look.
Papa didn’t turn. He lifted his left hand and flipped them a bird. “By tomorrow or the next day at the latest, gents. Coordinate with Omega on anything you need and logistics. Don’t make me make it an order.”
“Yes, sir,” the two of them said.
Quack sat up and looked at Lima. “I suspect this isn’t going to go according to plan.”
“Since when does it ever?”
Chapter Two
Stacia Rooney was sick and tired of Marco’s bullshit. She yanked her hardhat off and let it fall to the floor as she stalked down the grated walkway. Despite the asshole having a good six inches and at least eighty pounds on her, she got in Marco’s face when he turned at the sound of her shouting his name.
“I asked you, what the fark’s your problem, Marco?”
He didn’t immediately reply. It seemed her direct approach had caught him off-guard so she kept it up, forcing him to take a step backward as she screamed like a crazy person and shook the large, heavy monkey wrench she carried in his face. A month of toting the twenty-five-pound pipe wrench nearly every night had not only toned her arms, but had also given her lean muscles she’d never had before. Now, carrying the wrench felt like carrying a popsicle stick had before she started working the swing shift at the brewery.
“I am sick and tired of your innuendos,” she screamed, adrenaline, anger, and a tiny bit of fear all amping her volume. “Of you slapping or pinching my ass when you walk past me. Of you ‘accidentally’ walking in on me when I’ve got the bathroom door closed, you fucking monkey. You knock it the fark off or you will be going to see a doctor about getting this goddamned wrench surgically removed from your asshole!”
She’d started to swing the wrench at him, but Billy, the lead shift supervisor, had stepped up behind her and grabbed her, pulling her back.
“Come on, Stace,” he muttered in her ear. “He’s not worth it.”
Marco leered at her and grabbed his crotch through his work coveralls. “Geez, you want a piece of me, honey, all you gotta do is ask.”
She felt Billy freeze. Then, his restraining grip disappeared. “On second thought,” Billy said, “go ahead and clock the fucker. He deserves it.”
Despite his height and weight advantage, Marco was also thirty years older than her, and a pack-a-day smoker. When she rushed at him, he wasn’t expecting it and tripped on the grate flooring as he tried to scramble back and away from her.
She swung the three-foot-long pipe wrench like a golf club up between his legs, nailing him squarely in the nuts. Around her, she heard a loud chorus of sympathetic “oohs” from her male coworkers, and cheers from the few female ones, even over the sound of the production line running up on the bottling floor just above them.
Marco let out a coughing roar of pain and doubled-up on the walkway, clutching his hands to his crotch. She planted the business end of the wrench on the metal grating with a loud clang, right next to his head. Using the wrench as a crutch, she leaned in.
“You’re done, asshole,” she shouted. “Hear me? Next time, I’ll catch you alone and cut ’em off. You fuck with me, you are fucking with a special kind of crazy that they don’t even write about in textbooks. You understand me?”
He groaned.
She slammed the wrench down again, the sound ringing through the area and making Marco flinch. “You hear me?” she screamed in his face, spittle flying and hitting him in the forehead.
He finally nodded.
She stood and, snat
ching up her wrench, had turned to head back toward Billy. But when passing Marco, she took one more swing at the fucker’s tailbone for good measure, drawing another howl of pain out of him, and more cheers from the onlookers. Reaching down for her hardhat, she settled it on her head before turning to Billy.
“Am I good, boss?”
He nodded. “Yep.” He pointed to two of his guys. “Get his farking locker cleaned out and drop his ass out the front gate with all his shit. Confiscate his badge and bring it to me personally. I’ll tell HR to send someone out there to meet you with his final paycheck. He doesn’t get another chance. He’s done.”
The men grabbed the still-howling man under his arms and dragged him away.
Then Billy turned to her and dropped his voice. “You get a pass because I saw what he did to you,” he muttered, too low for anyone else to hear, “and because I needed an example made out of him once and for all. Don’t make me regret I looked the other way this time for you. I know your family needs the money.”
She nodded, her heart racing. He turned and spoke to the rest of the crew. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I expect any jerk to be handled who lays a finger on any of their coworkers. The days of tolerating that kind of bullshit are over, you understand me? I can go out there and find fifteen people before I walk a damn block who’ll be glad to put their asses in this brewery at a fraction of the pay you all are earning right now. Tenure doesn’t mean shit to me if you waste company time harassing your fellow employees. Got it?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good. Get back to work. Show’s over.”
Stacia headed back to her station, adrenaline still surging through her veins. She hadn’t meant to do it, to go after Marco. But after weeks of subtle harassment that turned into not-so-subtle harassment, and threats by him to get her fired because he had tenure and she didn’t, she’d snapped.
Yes, her family needed the farking money. Desperately. Which was why she hadn’t reported him before now. She knew it wouldn’t do any good. She’d hoped that by ignoring him he’d move on to more interesting pastures if he couldn’t get a rise out of her.
But Marco had gotten on her last nerve tonight by pinching her ass when he walked past her.
Fortunately for her, Marco hadn’t seen Billy standing right there in the alcove with her, doing his shift rounds earlier than usual and talking with her.
In fact, it was the luckiest damn thing to happen to her in a long, long time. Because if Billy hadn’t been standing right there, it was likely no one else would have stood up to report what Marco had done. She would have lost her job for attacking Marco, and the fucker was just vindictive enough he might have pressed charges against her for it, too.
Then who would have taken care of Aunt Darla?
Her brother Marvin damn sure wouldn’t.
She had to be more careful, rein in her temper. Usually she wasn’t quick to pop off like that, but with all the other stresses piling onto her shoulders, between never-ending money issues and her ditzy brother’s absences lately, Marco had snapped her last nerve.
Taking a deep breath, she slowly let it out again before getting back to work.
I will be a lot more careful.
Chapter Three
By the time Stacia’s shift ended at six the next morning, she was worn out, as she always was after a long workday.
Which, right now, was pretty much seven days a week, when she could pull the extra shifts. She took every additional shift she could get them to give her, filling in for people who took a sick day or PTO leave.
The bottling plant was hot down where she worked in the bowels, helping keep the place running as one of their maintenance monkeys.
Even when an apocalypse was brewing, people still wanted their beer.
Thank goodness for that.
The irony that she couldn’t afford to drink it was not lost on her.
She couldn’t be wasting a couple of dollars on a bottle of beer when those same dollars would buy a pound of beans.
Or some of Aunt Darla’s pain meds.
With her surgical mask in place, Stacia trudged down the sidewalk with others just off their shift and heading toward the bus stop that served the south end of Carlkilney Brewing Company’s Los Angeles plant. She needed a new mask, because this one, even though cloth, was about worn out. She always wore it when not at home or inside the plant. Everyone got stick tests before they were allowed to enter the plant, proving they were clear of Kite.
As far as she knew, no one at the plant had yet tested blue.
But if the rumors she’d heard were correct, it was only a matter of time before that happened. She wasn’t about to take any unnecessary chances with her health. She couldn’t afford to get sick and miss work.
She couldn’t afford to miss work for any reason.
Luckily for her, the company was extremely interested in their profits, which meant making sure they kept a clear workforce running the plant. Billy had already hired a replacement to put in the slot below Stacia that had opened up as a result of Marco’s firing and everyone else in line advancing a step.
Turned out tenure couldn’t protect the man after all. Not when there was a management witness to what Marco had done to Stacia. The company had zero-tolerance for sexual harassment.
Lawsuits were expensive, after all.
Billy had also ensured not a single damn person would report Stacia’s response to Marco’s asshattery, so Stacia’s job was secure.
And she was now one rung ahead on the ladder at work. The new grunt below her would work their way up, the way Stacia was in the process of working her way up.
Maybe I can finally move out of piping.
When the bus finally showed up, Stacia and her fellow passengers queued and climbed aboard, scanning their bus passes as they did. The driver wore one of their optional full-body protective suits. She’d been seeing more of those lately. There were growing rumors that the busses and trains would soon start stick-testing passengers, but Stacia hadn’t seen any signs of that happening yet.
She knew the airlines were doing it, but since there was no way in blue heaven she could ever afford an airline ticket in her damn lifetime on her pay, it didn’t really matter to her. That was a rich person’s problem.
And while she had a metric shit-ton of problems in her life, being rich was not one of them.
Her problems lay in things like bringing home a paycheck so Aunt Darla could keep the rent paid, the lights on, and food in the fridge.
And buy the meds that helped keep Aunt Darla’s severe arthritis at bay as much as they could.
If Marvin would get off his farking ass and find a damn job and keep it for more than a week or two, it’d make things a lot easier.
Even though her aunt didn’t have the heart to toss Stacia’s older brother out on his ear, Stacia was damn close to it herself. If it wasn’t for Marvin, they could take in a roommate. A paying roommate. Hell, maybe even two, if there were two beds in the room. The small apartment only had two bedrooms. Stacia and her aunt shared one, and Marvin had the other.
I can’t believe he couldn’t even cut it in the military. Who the fark flunks out of the military?
He’d passed his physicals when he turned eighteen, and then he shipped out to basic training. Stacia had only been sixteen then, and relieved as hell that he was finally gone. She’d seen the problems in him even as a kid, that he was someone devoid of focus and ambition.
She’d hoped, if nothing else, that the military would provide him with training, self-discipline, and a steady paycheck he could send home. At least with her still being underage, they’d been able to get food stamps and she’d still drawn a tiny death benefit from losing their mom.
Then Marvin had returned home two weeks later, unannounced, and said the military had let him go. He had discharge papers, which Stacia had backed him into a corner and forced him to show her to prove he hadn’t just given up and gone AWOL.
For good
measure, she’d taken them down to the local enlistment office the next day, just to confirm they were legit and he hadn’t lied to them about what happened.
They were legit, and he was out. But they wouldn’t confirm why he was out, only that he’d been honorably discharged.
Worse, he wasn’t even in long enough to earn bennies. If he’d been discharged for an injury, he would have received full bennies. Had he at least been in a year before the discharge, he could have gotten housing discounts, work-school opportunities, hell, even health insurance and a PX card.
But nope. He couldn’t even fark up the right way. When he farked something up, he farked it allll the way up, in the worst possible way.
At least they’d had his extra food stamp credits and death benefits until he turned eighteen. He’d flunked out of high school at fifteen and had bounced around from part-time job to part-time job, never holding one for more than a few weeks at a time.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected any better from him in the military.
Aunt Darla wanted Stacia to be more patient with him. To be more understanding. Their aunt was convinced the deaths of their parents had made Marvin the way he was.
Stacia didn’t buy that theory, because it hadn’t turned her into a worthless waste of space. She was convinced Marvin just didn’t give a flying fark and wanted people to take care of him. Stacia had not only graduated from high school, she’d held part-time jobs from the day she was old enough to get a work permit at fifteen, and had even tried to take a few classes at the local community college.
The problem with that being that she couldn’t afford to go to college, and work enough hours to pay the bills, and afford tuition, and have time to study. Her grades in high school, while good, weren’t good enough to compete for scholarship money. And unless she stopped working altogether, she couldn’t apply for most charity scholarships.
And then their aunt likely would lose the apartment because they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills.
Stacia had switched tacks and taken a few vo-tech classes at night for free from the local high school system, enough to give her basic mechanic skills that put her a notch above the average person looking for a job. Until it had closed five months earlier, she’d been working on the line at the local Taimu auto plant as a maintenance tech. But only the rich were buying cars now, and the company wasn’t selling enough of them to keep the plant open.
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