Firestarter

by Jan Stryvant

  He suspected the only thing really holding Talt back at this point was the other princes. Because when a new king rose from the princely circle, the first thing he did was to kill all the other princes. The lords and the rest would be so busy scrambling for the open positions, it would give the new king time to secure his position and forge new alliances with the new emerging princes.

  "Well then, let us discuss what our strategy will be for the next storsindet gate. Prince Skarm, I believe it will be your turn?"

  "Thank you, Your Majesty," Prince Skarm said, and then proceeded to outline his own plans for the next gateway. Apparently his sole goal would be to plant a large number of demon eggs in an attempt to sow discord when they hatched. Which would be weeks after the gate had closed and, hopefully, all enemy activity had left the area.

  King Sladd found it a novel plan. Oh, there would be breakout attempts and other things, but those were just to distract from the main plan. Though they wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of anything they might find.

  When Prince Skarm had finished, he dismissed them all, paying extra attention to Prince Talt as he left the room. Once they were all gone, he went to talk to his own advisors, who had been spying on the meeting from the next room. After that, he would talk with the spies he had planted in several of the princes' entourages.

  Preparation and Discovery

  Geoffrey stood in the parking lot with Pastor Cross, George, and Cheranko, looking at the two trucks.

  "There's no way you're going to get that tanker truck up the hill without them stopping you," George said to Geoffrey.

  "I've been thinking about that," George said. "They have a lot of helicopters up there, right?"

  Geoffrey and the others nodded. "What of it?"

  "Helicopters need gas, or jet fuel, or something like that. I bet they have tanker trucks going up there all the time."

  "So you think they won't notice one more?" Geoffrey asked, still a little skeptical.

  "Not if we paint it to look like the other ones. I mean, who's going to want to bother looking at 'yet another tanker truck', right?"

  "And we should paint the other one to look like a UPS truck!" Cheranko said excitedly.

  "UPS? Why UPS?" Pastor Cross asked looking at him.

  "Because they're everywhere! Who notices them? Have you ever looked at one and asked 'what's he doing here?' No! Because they're everywhere. You never think twice about it."

  Geoffrey laughed. "Too bad we can't do that with a tanker truck! 'Cause he's right. They're everywhere, and you never think twice when you see one! Good call, Cheranko!"

  Cheranko smiled at the praise from Geoffrey as Pastor Cross and George both nodded in agreement. Pastor Cross couldn't help but notice just how pleased Cheranko looked with himself. Geoffrey was right; it wouldn't take much to convince the young man that this was what he needed to do.

  "How are we going to hold the stuff in the truck?" George asked. "It's empty back there."

  "One of those big plastic water tanks from the farm goods store should handle it," Cheranko suggested again.

  "Damn, I'm sure glad you're on our side!" George laughed and clapped him on the back. "I was thinking we'd just build something, but I like your idea better."

  "Me too," Pastor Cross said with a smile. "I think the Lord gifted us all when he sent you to us, young man! You've just saved us a lot of time, and a lot of effort.

  "Geoffrey, see if you can't find out what the tanker needs to look like. Cheranko, why don't you and George see if you can find one of those tanks that'll fit into the back of that truck. I'll see about getting it painted after you've picked that up."

  "What about the," Geoffrey looked around, "stuff we need to put in them?"

  "I'll be talking to our dear friends over at the ALS about that today," Pastor Cross said with a smile. "I think they said they'd have it in a few more days; they've already started preparing."

  Pastor Cross gave Geoffrey the keys to the car he'd been using, then walked over to the small office they'd had to rent in order to get access to the large parking lot. He had to admit that Robert King was a most thorough man. Anything Cross had asked for, Mr. King had gotten for him almost immediately.

  Going inside, he locked the door behind him. Picking up the old-fashioned phone that used an actual landline, he called Mr. King. Apparently the government couldn't tap phones like this without a warrant, unlike cellphones, which apparently were all tapped by some sort of national agency with 'super-computers' and such.

  Pastor Cross briefly wondered if that should be his next campaign? Once the animals were dealt with, of course.

  "Hello?" someone answered.

  "Is Mr. King in? It's Pastor Cross."

  "Just a moment."

  It was only a few seconds before he heard Mr. King on the phone.

  "Was your trip successful?" King asked him.

  "Yes, we have what we need, and will have it ready to be used in a couple of days. What about our cargo?"

  Mr. King had told Cross, while their phones shouldn't be tapped, it would be foolish to tempt fate, and they should be careful about what they said all the same.

  "I'm afraid it's going to take us a bit longer to supply your needs, Pastor."

  "What! Why? How much longer?"

  "Well, you see, we're limited as to how much we can procure each day, and my teams are having to drive all over to find what they need. When it was only the cargo for the one, it was a simple task. But even you must admit that your wonderful idea is going to take a great deal more then we were first prepared to acquire."

  Pastor Cross sighed. "Fine, but we can't wait too long. Send us whatever you have, as soon as you can, and we'll deal with it. The second has four sections; if we can fill three of those, I'll be pleased."

  "We'll have the first shipment there by Friday. I'll call you, but the rest of it shouldn't be much longer than that."

  "Thank you," Pastor Cross said and hung up.

  #

  Special Agent Dilardo was looking at the report his two analysts, Mary and Chester, had just given him.

  "Okay, what am I looking at here?" he asked, looking at the two of them sitting across the desk from him. They were quite the unlikely pair. Mary looked like an underwear model, and often dressed as provocatively as she could. Chester looked like Clarke Kent, the ultimate clueless straight man, right down to the suit and tie.

  "We're seeing a large upswing in fertilizer sales in California, Oregon, Southern Nevada, and Utah," Mary said.

  "Define large?"

  "Enough so far to fill a large box truck to the top," Chester said.

  "It's probably just some farmers. Have you called the stores?"

  Mary nodded. "Yes, we called several of them. They've all reported a ten percent increase in bag sales."

  "We only noticed," Chester continued, "because the manufacturer called us to report an unexpected increase in product sales."

  "They called you?" Dilardo asked.

  "It's required," Mary said.

  "By law," Chester agreed.

  Dilardo sighed and looked at the report; there were a number of charts and maps in it, probably Mary's work. She was good at putting information into easy to digest pictures. Chester tended to stick to the legal and statistical aspects. Paging through it some more, he came to a map of the western states, and sure enough, Mary had color coded it to show where the increase in sales were. The pattern there was quite interesting.

  "Do you think you could add some time stamps to this graphic?" Dilardo asked.

  Mary leaned over the desk, reminding Dilardo once again of her unofficial office nickname, the one human resources would have a fit over if they knew, and turned a few pages.

  "There."

  Dilardo looked it over and nodded. "Okay, thanks. I'll have the teams call the rental agencies and keep their eyes open for anything suspicious.

  "I think this level of planning indicates that we're not dealing with some homegrown terrorists,
Sir," Chester said.

  "They're all homegrown, Chester," Dilardo said with a smile. "Some are just more capable than others. Is there anything else you two have for me? I'd say from what you've shown me here, the chances are high that somebody is planning something. But we're still left without a target."

  "The target is inside the circle, Sir," Mary said.

  "The probabilities suggest it to be almost a certainty." Chester agreed.

  "And how many square miles are inside that circle?" Dilardo asked. "How many towns? Cities? Keep me apprised of the situation, but I don't think we have anything to worry about just yet. If I show this to my boss, they're going to want answers. Answers we don't have."

  Mary sighed rather dramatically, causing her shirt to stretch in a most distracting fashion.

  "Yes, Sir."

  "I still think you're making a mistake, Sir," Chester added, "but I see your point. Come M, let's see if we can't find something more definitive."

  "Okay, C."

  Special Agent Dilardo shook his head quietly as they left his office. They really were a good team. But they were also complete nerds who believed that everything was a conspiracy. Two years ago they'd tried to sell him on some secret conspiracy that had been going on for decades, perhaps centuries, after a couple of terrorist attacks in Sparks. Thank god he'd sat on those! He could just imagine what the response would have been.

  He left the report sitting in his 'priority' box. He'd pass their information around the office and see if anyone could turn it into a lead, but more likely it was that kid in Reno buying up everything he could get his hands on. Dilardo had heard through channels that the kid liked to blow things up, and the government was more than willing to look the other way.

  #

  Meanwhile on the other side of town, Steve looked at the troops Sean had sent him. He'd arranged for fifty to bunk over at Sapientia, and another fifty over at Eruditio. Both had agreed that Sean's concerns were valid and welcomed the extra protection, especially as they didn't have to pay the upkeep for them.

  To Steve, it meant that once he sent these people out, he'd have two more secure facilities he could stage his events from, even if the ALS managed to tie him down at their main building. Two more groups of people their German spies didn't have pictures of.

  "Okay everyone," he said, looking around the hanger. They'd all just gotten off the airliner Sean had chartered to bring them here. He didn't want to give any of the spies out there a chance to learn how many reinforcements they'd gotten.

  "As you've no doubt been told before you were sent here, things are starting to ramp up in the DC area. Mostly it's the ALS freaks, so we're going to target them first. But there's a distinct chance we may come under a more direct attack from other forces, and that 'we' includes Sapientia and Eruditio, who are both our known allies.

  "What this means is, I'm going to need fifty of you to go to their compounds when you leave here and hook up with their existing security, so if things do go sideways, they won't have to wait for us to send reinforcements. Because you'll already be there."

  "So we're back to protecting the magic users?" someone asked in the ranks.

  "Only of they're attacked," Steve said, and then smiled. "The real reason we're putting you there is so the people who are spying on us won't know you're here. You're going to be a third of our forces in the area, and yes, do I have plans for you!

  "You see, right now they've got us under heavy surveillance, and breaking free from that is a difficult job with the small numbers we have. Even doubling the people at our headquarters, they still have a lot more resources. But if they don't know about you…"

  "They can't follow us!" someone said with a laugh.

  Steve nodded. "Exactly. Now, here's what we're going to do. Right now the ALS people are doing all sorts of protests, propaganda ads, events, you name it. All to make us look bad. They're provoking us constantly, trying to get us to throw the first punch, because whoever breaks first is going to get a lot of bad PR."

  "So you want us to attack them anonymously?"

  Steve recognized the wolf talking; it was Ogg, one of the ones Sean had captured from the Vestibulum.

  "No, we want them to attack us! In public, and with lots and lots of witnesses, too!"

  "And just how does that happen?" Ogg asked, looking confused.

  Steve smiled widely. "Simple! We're going to have those of you who are staying at the magic users' compounds infiltrate the ALS movement. You'll show up at their protests and join the crowd. We'll even see about getting the mages to put illusions on some of you to look like some of the more recognizable ALS members."

  "Oh!" Ogg said with a sudden smile. "I get it! We'll 'attack' the lycans they're harassing, so the ALS gets the blame!"

  "Exactly," Steve said, grinning. "One or two of you will lead the attack; the rest will try to egg on the rest of the protesters to see if we can get some of them to attack as well. By the time the police act, the ones who actually started the attack will be long gone, and only the real protesters will be left."

  "Won't that look suspicious if the attackers take flight like that?" asked Card, the surviving prime who had signed up with Sean, and who, due to his experience, was now leading one of the ten wolf teams.

  "Yes, it will look very suspicious. It'll make it clear that the ALS has decided to up the ante by using physical attacks, while making sure the perpetrators avoid arrest. Though if you can get away without being seen, all the better."

  "So when do we start?"

  "As soon as you get settled in. Granite and Tisha will circulate among you in a minute so we can decide who will be best, where. We also have a few simple rules about these attacks that I want to be sure you all understand before we leave here. Mostly they're covert identifiers so you'll know who in a group to attack. The attacks will start out as minor things at first, thrown liquids in faces, that kind of thing. But we'll be ramping it up eventually to physical attacks, once we're sure the groundwork has been laid."

  "Sounds painful," Card said with a grimace.

  "I'm sure it will be; that's why I've agreed to be one of the targets, once it gets that far," Steve told them. "We're running a false flag operation here, we need to push it over the top, and you all need to remember, we don't talk about this with anyone in public, not even each other.

  "Now, let's get you all sorted out. We can supply the rest of the details later," Steve said, stepping down and finishing as Granite and Tisha gathered up the team alphas to find out who would be best for the different positions.

  "Do you really think this will work?" Nate asked Steve.

  "When it comes to the news, 'if it bleeds, it leads'. Oh yeah, this is going to work. Tisha is going to order them not to talk to anyone about this without permission, so we don't have to worry about loose lips. The ALS people have already tried to kill me once, no one is going to be surprised they'll try it a second time."

  Thirty minutes later, Steve left with the hundred who were going to be his 'extra support'. The other hundred would wait a couple of hours before filtering out to the two magic user compounds, just in case any of the people watching Steve had managed to follow him to the airport.

  "So how is this going to work?" Criss, one of the team alphas, asked Steve. They were all sitting around a conference table and had just finished settling in the new people. Steve, Terri, Tisha, Granite, Nate, and several of the other alphas from the teams had joined them.

  Steve started off, "Most of our people are known to the Anti-Lycan Society. They've been taking pictures of everyone coming and going, all that stuff."

  "But they don't know anything about the people we sent to the two councils, and the magic users are a lot more secretive, as well as pro-active about their secrecy," Terri added. "So while they know about those of us who have been here, and will be learning about the new ones, they don't know anything about them."

  "Okay, so?" Criss said

  Steve picked it back up. "So when they s
pot some of our better known people, the ones we know they have records on, it's not going to surprise anybody when they harass them, right?"

  "They're doing that already!" Nate grumbled. "I can't go food shopping without someone creating a scene!"

  "Right, so we're going to have our unknown friends infiltrate those groups, and they're going to know when and where you're going to be, because we're going to tell them."

  "As if my life wasn't miserable enough."

  Terri laughed and the others all smirked. "Oh, it's going to get a lot worse."

  "How so?"

  "We're going to have them start throwing stuff at you. We'll start off with sodas, milk shakes, things that cause a mess, but won't hurt anybody."

  "Can I hit them?" Kyle, one of the other alphas, asked hopefully.

  "No, no one is going to be hitting anybody. For the next few weeks, we're all going to get harassed. Things will be thrown at us—feel free to dodge by the way—and our cars will get scratched and vandalized. The goal is to create an atmosphere of violence."

  "The police never do anything about this kind of shit," Granite said. "They mostly can't be bothered. Technically it's assault, but they don't want to waste their time on something that no one ever gets convicted or even fined for."

  "And," Steve said, continuing, "it almost always leads to a ramping up of violent behavior."

  "Which I take it is part of the plan?" Criss asked.

  Steve nodded. "We'll wait a few weeks, then we'll start off with some simple assaults. Their leadership will probably try to nip it in the bud…"

  "If they're smart," Terri interjected.

  "…but as it's our people doing it, they're not going to have much success, and the rank and file will see that as either a loss of control, or just lip service to avoid lawsuits, believing the leadership is actually behind all of it."