Gray Skies

by Justin Bell

  They were all injured, Brad thought then. Every one of them. If not physically, then mentally. Emotionally. The entire world was broken, and they were all broken right along with it.

  Chapter 5

  The local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sat in northwest Houston, on the other side of downtown, which had placed it more than far enough away to avoid any potential fallout from the Galveston incident. The building was intact, though power was sporadic, sometimes working, and sometimes little more than a flickering reminder of the infrastructure that used to exist.

  Even though Houston was far away from any of the detonations west of the Rocky Mountains, the continuing effects of the crumbling infrastructure reached out and touched every corner of the nation, and compounded with the Galveston destruction, even some busier, more urban areas of Houston were left in the dark. As a federal building, the FBI offices had several redundancies in place, but as more hospitals, health centers, and critical access facilities required some of that power, redistributed circuits left One Justice Park Drive occasionally in the dark.

  Ricky Orosco sat at a desk with a battery powered desk lamp shining a pale white cone at the stack of papers in front of him. He meticulously flipped through his notes, cross referencing them with copies of other documents Liu had brought from Boston on his plane trip down previously—tooling identification, material analysis, and trace residue of the explosive compound, all of it entered line by line.

  The metallic housing material they’d recovered from the cartel truck had not been used to craft a device, so there was no residue, but based on its size, shape, and material, it seemed evident that what they found in the truck was remarkably similar to the equipment recovered in Boston.

  Flipping over one of the large metallic structures on the desk, Orosco traced the surface, looking for any kind of manufacturing number and eventually found it in the left corner. It was a different series of tooling identifications than the previous device that Liu had presented, but that didn’t surprise him. It likely was produced in a Mexican factory, with Las Balas bringing it across the border for distribution.

  So who owned the factory?

  Liu had headed to Springfield, Illinois to track down a manufacturing facility owned by Consolidated Tool and Dye and had found the warehouse and manufacturing plant stripped and bare, as if it was never used. Still having limited, sporadic connectivity to the DOD redundant network at the time, Liu had cross referenced and found an umbrella corporation with an office in Chicago, which is where he had apparently headed.

  So where did that leave Orosco?

  That left Orosco doing things the old-fashioned way. He turned in his swivel chair and rolled across the concrete floor of the records room, squeaking to a stop by one of the wide lateral filing cabinets. Easing out the top metal drawer, he fingered through some folders until he came across what he was looking for: An FBI dossier on Las Balas. It was thin, and he slid it out, turning and slapping it down on the desk behind him. Next, he thumbed through some other files, looking to see if they had any records on Consolidated Tool and Dye. He slipped a second folder out of the drawer and wheeled back to the desk, digging through the scant documents within, looking for any possible links or connections between the two.

  There was nothing evident. Consolidated Tool and Dye’s corporate structure was in one of the first few pages, and he scanned the documents, confirming the corporate office’s location in Chicago and their manufacturing facility in Springfield, but there was no record of any international contacts or commerce. Their biggest contract appeared to be with a third-party action figure manufacturing company which seemed strange as most of that production was—or at least used to be—done in Asia.

  Flipping the folder closed, he pulled out the folder on Las Balas and looked through the hierarchy of known operatives and the information on their base of operations in Reynosa, Mexico, but once again found no common ties to known Consolidated facilities.

  A faint slam came from his right, followed by quiet squeaking, but Orosco continued to focus on the documents in front of him, until the door swung open behind him.

  He turned in the chair and looked at Agent Fields, who was wheeling a hand truck behind her, stacked deep with four file boxes. The FBI SWAT specialist blew out a quick breath, knocking her red hair out of her face and signaling her entrance.

  “Ohhh,” he said, spinning the chair. “What did we find, Fields?”

  “Swung by the DEA office on West Loop. Met my friend Becca there, and she did us a solid. Loaned me everything they had on Las Balas.”

  “Nice,” Orosco said, stepping up from the chair and moving towards the hand truck. “Very nice, Agent Fields. This is huge.”

  It made sense that the Drug Enforcement Administration would have more records on the cartels than the FBI would. In normal circumstances, he could have filed a requisition form online and probably gotten access to the documents within twenty-four hours, but circumstances were about as far from normal as they’d ever been.

  Plucking a box from the top, Orosco swung around and dropped it on the desk, slipping the cardboard top off of it.

  “So how are these organized?”

  “That box is people,” Fields said, nodding towards the opened box Orosco was already digging through. She turned back towards the hand truck. “Second box is arrests, cross-referenced with cartel members who are actively incarcerated. Third box is associated companies.”

  “We’ll want that third box. What’s in the fourth?”

  “Miscellaneous stuff that hadn’t quite been filed and organized yet,” she replied. As she stood up, a thick clump of her red hair spilled away from her freckled face. Sweat glistened on her forehead as she looked at him, pushing the first box aside and moving towards the hand truck to retrieve the third.

  “So you’re making headway?” she asked as he peeled the box away and hefted it up onto the desk. That one was heavy.

  “Yeah, sure, I’m good,” he replied nonchalantly, not taking his focus away from the papers in the box.

  “You wanna talk about what happened on the op tonight?”

  “What do you mean?” Orosco ruffled through some papers, focusing even more on the contents of the box.

  “You know what I mean. The way you took off towards the gunmen. You almost got whacked, boss.”

  “I knew you had my back.”

  “That’s bull and you know it.”

  That got Orosco’s attention. He pulled up from his spot, holding it with a finger, and turned to face Agent Fields.

  “Excuse me?”

  She flushed, but didn’t hesitate. “I know what happened, okay? To your family. We all do. Life is a huge pile of crap right now. But you’re doing something about it. You’re surviving, and you’re working to find truth and justice in all this mess. Don’t throw that away by being reckless.”

  Orosco looked at her. “You’re just as smart as I am, Fields. The world would be no worse off if I was gone. Don’t try to pretend it would be.”

  “You think your wife would want this?” she asked. “You running half-cocked into a gunfight, trying to get yourself killed?”

  “What my wife would want is none of your business, Agent Fields.” His voice was a hard edge, a narrow blade on the knife of truth.

  Fields shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that we need you right now. Not just us, but this whole stinking country. Have you talked to other branches of the FBI? Is anyone else doing anything about this?”

  Orosco didn’t reply.

  “If you don’t want thousands more innocent people going through the same thing you’re going through right now, we need you in this fight, okay? We want you in this fight.”

  The lead agent dropped his head slightly, looking at the floor. There was silence in the records room that seemed to stretch on for an hour until he lifted his head again and nodded.

  “You’re right,” he whispered. “I hate to say it, but you’re right. I
owe it to you and the team to keep my head in the game and not to put us all at risk.”

  “You owe it to yourself, too, boss.”

  Orosco turned back around, looking at where his finger was holding his place, and leafed through the papers and folders in the third file box. After a few moments, he halted and slipped a folder out, glancing at the name on the tab.

  “Velasquez Holding, Ltd,” he whispered, splitting the folder and leafing through the further documents inside. “You heard of them before?” he asked, looking over at Fields. She shook her head, but moved towards the filing cabinet and opened the top drawer.

  Orosco read through the papers, his finger tracing down over the surface.

  “We got something,” Fields replied, removing a narrow folder from the filing cabinet. “Velasquez Holding. Their CFO was being investigated for embezzling.”

  “What’s his name?” Orosco asked.

  “Her. It was a her. Louisa Hernandez.”

  “Okay, what do you have on her?”

  Orosco continued flipping through the papers. There was something to be said for old school, skin on paper detective work, and his heart raced as he went through the folder, skimming page after page, waiting for the information to speak to him.

  “Got her, too,” Fields replied. “Woah.”

  “What?” Orosco asked, turning around.

  “Murder,” she whispered.

  “Who did she kill?”

  Field shook her head back and forth. “She was the victim. Found in South Texas north of the border of Mexico.”

  “Guess that’s what happens when you embezzle from the cartel, huh?”

  Orosco pulled out a bundle of papers. “Wait, wait, wait,” he said, his voice low, but excited. “Here we go.”

  “What is it?”

  “Jackpot is what it is,” Orosco said, pulling out a single piece of paper and handing it off to Fields. “Velasquez Holding, Ltd. is a parent organization of Consolidated Tool and Dye.”

  “Holy—” Fields read through the legalese on the document, then flipped to a few attached affidavits. “DEA was after them hard.”

  Orosco nodded. “Yep.”

  “What does this mean?”

  Orosco sat back in his swivel chair, the hinge underneath the seat cushion squealing. He folded his hands in his lap and looked out into nothing in particular.

  “Honestly? All it means right now is there’s a connection. A connection between our friends Las Balas and the company in Chicago.”

  “Chicago?” Fields asked. “What’s this about Chicago?”

  Orosco looked at her, his eyes narrowing, and his hands bunching up in his lap. “Agent Fields,” he said, “can you keep a secret?”

  ***

  A glass bottle clattered off the side window, sprang away, and shattered on the pavement to the right of the RV. Phil winced reflexively even though the window sat between him and the hurtling projectile. Another bottle flew ahead of them, bouncing and smashing off the squat, sloped hood of the camper, spraying amber liquid and broken glass along the right side of the vehicle.

  “Careful, Rhonda,” Phil warned as she guided the RV around the groups of cars, sliding just past the crowd of clumped and screaming people.

  “What gives you the right?” shouted one of them as they scooped up a rock off the ground. It arced through the air, sharp and heavy, heading toward one of the side windows.

  “Look out!” shouted Winnie from the back, but the stone dipped low and crashed into the driver’s side door, hitting with an echoing bang.

  “I hope none of these crazies have guns,” whispered Phil as he glanced out the window. Up ahead four of the agents in tactical gear made their way to the large structure and began pulling it apart, scraping against the pavement. Outside of Rhonda’s drivers’ side window, a figure broke away from the crowd and dashed towards the opening gate, and immediately a huddle of bodies from the barricade charged forward and swarmed over them, dragging them down and away. The RV lurched forward, continuing its progress as the gate eased open just wide enough for the large vehicle to slip through the gap, passing by the barrier and out deeper into Illinois.

  Behind them the door scraped and slammed shut, leaving them to pass along an empty road in the quiet darkness. Headlights shone ahead of them, pale globes against the marked pavement of route 24 leading deeper into the state, crawling northeast towards Chicago. It was quiet on the other side of the fence, and though it was dark, the swift streaks of blue lights from the outside of the makeshift barricade still cut through the air in patterned arcs.

  “So, what does it take to be a customs agent?” Max asked Liu as they sat in the relative darkness inside the RV.

  Brandon chuckled. “Lots of school. Lots of training. You have to get through a bunch of really boring stuff before you can do any of the fun stuff.”

  “Life is kind of like that, huh?” Max asked.

  Liu nodded.

  “You ever kill anyone?”

  Liu glanced over towards Brad, who had asked the question.

  “That’s a personal question, man. How old are you?”

  “Eleven,” Brad replied.

  “Eleven going on twenty,” Max interjected. “Being a kid’s not so much fun these days.”

  “I get it,” Liu replied. He looked at Brad. “Well, for what it’s worth, I have, yes, but not until the day of the detonations. That was the first time.”

  “How did it make you feel?”

  Liu sat back, resting his head on the window, the darkened sky and stars streaming behind him as the RV cruised along the desolate path of route 24.

  Peoria faded South and Rhonda navigated the complex web of roadways, easing the large, box-shaped vehicle onto Route 29 which stretched north towards the city, crawling alongside Peoria Lake just east of where they were.

  “You know, I haven’t even thought about it,” he confided. “With everything else that happened, it seemed…less important.”

  Brad continued watching him, his eyes wide and in rapt attention.

  “Besides,” Liu continued, turning to look at the young man, “he was there on a suicide mission. Life was apparently not very important to him, anyway.”

  Brad looked away.

  “Why are you asking this?”

  “No reason.”

  Liu cocked his head. “Not buying it, kiddo, sorry.”

  Winnie smirked at their conversation, then looked over at Angel who sat next to her, his eyes resting closed, leaned back slightly against the interior wall of the RV.

  “So what’s it like?” she asked. “Jail, I mean.”

  Angel propped open one eye. “You really wanna go down that rabbit hole, chica?”

  Winnie shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Well, mostly it sucked,” Angel said. “I mean, it’s good for the workouts,” he flexed his left arm, covered in a web of tattoos, and his bicep bulged, tightening the sleeve of his gray shirt. “But beyond that, the food is junk, the people are mostly scumbags, and you feel like you’ve got no privacy.”

  Winnie nodded and looked around the RV. “So…kind of like this, then?”

  Angel snickered and Winnie joined in. “Trust me,” he said. “Prison ain’t nothing like this. Not even the smallest bit.”

  She fell quiet after a few moments. “Do you miss it? The way life was before that?”

  “I miss mom and sister,” Angel said finally. “And my cousins. My brother was a punk; he probably deserved to get turned to charcoal. The rest of them, they didn’t deserve none of that. Yeah, if I could go back in time, I’d go back to jail so they could be alive again. That’s a fair trade.”

  Winnie sat quietly as they continued driving, the RV humming over the uneven asphalt. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to drive at normal speeds, down normal roads. It felt refreshing. She wanted to roll down the window, stick her head out into the sky, and let the cool night winds thrash at her shoulder-length hair. Just a simple thing—something she never w
ould have wanted to do before she lost the opportunity to do it.

  “What do you miss most about the way things were?” Angel asked.

  Winnie had to bite back the urge to say ‘YouTube’ because of how lame that would have sounded after what he’d said about his family.

  “My friends at school, I guess,” she replied finally, though in all honesty, she didn’t think she meant it. Her friends from school weren’t all that friendly, and while she was sad that she was likely never going to see them again, she didn’t feel as if it was some great tragedy. Though just thinking of them and the way life had been not even a month ago wedged a thick slice of melancholy into her, filling the space above her stomach and lodging there like an oversized swallow of steak that just wasn’t quite chewed enough to digest.

  Greer sat across from the two of them, hunched over slightly, resting his elbows on his bent knees. As they spoke, he thought of his own situation, realizing that there really wasn’t anything specific about his old life he was missing. His wife had been dead for a few years, and while he loved the town of Brisbee, the way things had ended there had left him with a sour enough taste in his mouth to ruin his memories of the place, convincing him it might have always been like that, even though he hadn’t seen it. He’d stood up against racial injustice, against a small town in a mostly white community, and managed to rise to a point of prominence, but once the smallest thing went wrong, the citizens shouted him down, called him names, and tried to stab him to death, leaving him bleeding in the street.

  The thought of this punched a jab of pain in his abdomen, a faded reminder of a wound still relatively fresh. It was just a little older than his other wound, which kicked it to the back burner. Greer placed a hand to the left side of his chest, the sudden throb of pain rising up to meet the pressure. The bullet had mostly grazed him, hacking a trench of skin and gouge of muscle out of his left pectoral, really causing very little damage, but still quite a bit of pain. He thought it had hurt more than the stab wound at first, the skin raw and oozing, and even with the help of Brad’s trauma nurse grandmother, there was still more than a lingering ache that sometimes radiated from the entire left side of his chest, as if a hot iron had been held there too long.