And The Box.
Every one who serves has A Box. A foot locker, generally, from the Old School Days when one rested at the foot of your bunk in the open bay barracks (when they still did that, before the military got Politically Correct), a box in which you saved the totems and the memorabilia you collected. Old uniforms, medals, certificates and citations, pictures you didn't want to hang, old weapons.
That was what I was looking for.
I opened The Box, pushed aside the boxed flags, the challenge coins in their custom cases, reams of photographs, banded files, and down at the bottom, a Glock 19 still in a partially burned and melted Safariland thigh rig.
I took it out and cleared it. The muzzle and metal slide were fine; the plastic frame touched by fire, blackened and melted in places.
...resting the Glock on a rock, fire pouring out of the chopper, couldn't crawl, shooting at the Muj bounding towards him...
...Jimmy, help me, fuck, I'm burning....
I jacked the slide forward and snapped the trigger.
Who was coming for me? On that day, the Task Force QRF had come in heavy, lit up the mountainside, plucked me away. No one else survived. They had to come back and bomb the chopper wreckage, make sure the commo and the surveillance equipment was completely destroyed, it was too hot to make a body recovery. When they finally sent a team in to get boots on the ground, all they found were body fragments and bone, enough to get ID, but by then I was Outside, no longer in the loop, OPSEC and Deniability at play, recuperating in Johns Hopkins and staring at the wall, watching the hands go round the clock...
And there was someone out there that knew what happened and what was said on that day. Or knew someone who did.
Who?
I put the holster back, took the Glock to the desk and cleaned it, studied the burns on the frame and grip. Maybe Deon could fix this.
***
"Looks like the start to a grip reduction," Deon said. He ran his long bony fingers over the grip and frame. "Best way will be to do just that. Whittle on it, clean the edges up. Go through a house fire?"
"No," I said. "Downed bird."
Deon gave me one of his looks. Studied, calm, his blue eyes seemingly wide and without guile; the way he studied someone before he shot them, the way he looked over his sights.
"Foreign lands and long ago," he said.
"Yeah."
"I could get you a new one."
"I want that one."
"Numbers?"
"Leave them."
"Give it a few days, oke. I'll have it right for you."
"Thanks, brah."
He inclined his head, tilted his jaw as though slipping a punch.
"I think there's a storm coming," he said.
"Yes."
"The other day?"
"Yes."
He held up the charred pistol. "And this?"
"From that day."
"Friend or foe?"
"I don't know."
"Ah," Deon said. "And what one doesn't know, might kill one, yes?"
I looked around the gun store, the cases filled with handguns, the racks of rifles against the wall. All the accouterments of violence, the world we'd both spent our lives in.
"Just might."
"No, I don't think so, oke. Not today, anyway. I'll have this sorted out for you. In the mean time, watch how you go, and let me know what you need."
"Thanks, Deon. I'm good for now. But it's a good idea to keep an eye on the sky."
Deon laughed. "All manner of things fall from the sky, oke. Not just birdshit and fools. Later?"
"Yeah."
"Go see your lovely. That will clear your head."
I left on that note. Fired up the FJ, pulled away from the scarred brickwork where Deon's shop had been hastily repaired after the gunfight we'd staged with certain baddies not so long ago, and drove down to the Chain of Lakes to clear my head.
It didn't work.
Dee Dee Kozak
Dee Dee was on a roll. Working the Net was like that. Just like jamming on an Old School pinball machine: tilt, whirl, give it a bang and sooner or later it would give up what she needed.
Just like men.
Any operator, no matter which side of the fence you stood on, has a network of private sources to get things done: provide weapons, cars, shelter, hide/wash money, run errands, partner up.
Right now she was in her's, looking for someone who could do the hacker thing, someone more controllable than most of the hackers that the civvies thought about. Think hacker, what do you see? An emotionally immature, generally fucked up adolescent or post-adolescent case of retarded development, whose entire life is focused on a keyboard and proving that he (mostly he, though some shes, these days) is smarter than everyone else...and probably so in coding and deceit of the keyboard kind, but pitifully fucked up when it came to dealing with the rest of the world.
So since the skill set went hand in hand with the lack of social competence and maturity, she had to apply a certain filter to her selection criteria. Most outlaw hackers want to be caught -- it's no fun being a teenage genius if no one sees your work and applauds you, and the need for attention generally leads the dogged investigator to the well hidden and spoofed IP, the place where the hacker entered into his electronic relations with the world.
So they get picked up, put in jail, if they're lucky they don't get butt fucked and turned out, but sometimes they do, and then they are at least a bit more discreet, because just like pedophiles, they've got a disease and they can't stay away from the keyboards, which are the playgrounds for the hacker-addict.
Dee Dee could ply her formidable sexual charms on most any man, but most hackers would rather cyber-fuck with someone else's computer (or brain) than have sex with a real woman, so she had to engage her top shelf social engineering skills to utilize a combination of flattery, cajolery, challenge and straight up money, as well as facilitation to deliver various services and goods (which ranged from blow jobs to custom pistols, all in a day's work for her) to get a small stable of unstable computer nerds, any one of which, on any given day, might be in jail, locked in a sugar frenzy from overdosing on Ding Dongs and Mountain Dew, or immersed in the one millionth level of some massive Multi Level Player game.
But today, if she was lucky...
Ping.
On her monitor: This is Neo Dark God. Who dares to invoke me?
Loud laughter of pure dee-light from Dee Dee Kozak, the cheeriest assassin in Lake City.
"Why, my goodness gracious, it's Neo Dark God," she said. And then typed those words out.
Who dares to interrupt my rest?
Reach down and unbunch your panties, Dark God. It's Double-D Bodacious, your favorite equal opportunity employer, seeking an audience on the clock. You still interested in what I've got to offer?
In Kansas City, MO, a 13 year old girl in a severe Catholic school frock, sneaked a look up from her laptop in the library, studied the room, and then typed:
Bet your sweet ass, Double-D Bodacious. Go to this link and we'll run deep and secure.
Dee Dee laughed.
Oh, you bet, NDG. I got something to bust your cherry wide open!
LOL. I hope so. I'm bored out of my mind.
Got any boyfriends yet?
Go secure first!
Nina Capushek
"Yo, Nina!" Detective LT "Oozy" Fabruzzi shouted out his door. "Grace me with your presence, will ya?"
Nina shouted back without looking up from the case files stacked ten deep on her desk. "Busy!"
"C'mon, at least try to act like a subordinate, will ya, fer Christ's sake, Nina? C'mon, I ain't got all damn day!"
Nina grinned, stood up, and walked into Fabruzzi's office to the scattered applause from the other dicks in the Detective pen:
"Oooooh, look...Nina's being subordinate!"
"Only till he shuts the door."
"Hey Loot! Leave it open this time, will ya?"
Fabruzzi shook his head. "Shu
t up and get back to work, alla you, be grateful you got a job this economy!"
He slammed the door on loud laughter.
Nina leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "So what now, boss? You got some more shit rolling downhill you gonna dump on your favorite girl detective's desk? I think I'm being discriminated against here...."
"That's what you get for being my best detective, Detective Capushek," Fabruzzi said, plopping down in his chair with a groan of satisfaction. "Man, my fucking ass hurts."
"There's this thing, it's called a gym? You get to go there free if you're a cop, you know, have that badge and gun thing going on? You go to this gym thing, you can exercise, ogle hot chicks in spandex, or guys, if that's your speed, no offense, I don't care, don't know, don't ask, don't tell, you know, Oozy?"
"Fuck you, Nina. Why you always got to bust my balls for?"
"It's my job to remind you that you've got some. It's on the duty roster. Go look."
Fabruzzi laughed. "Crazy bitch. You got some balls on you."
"Yep."
"No shit." He picked up a file. "You know the Fed-ulas love you, Nina. Alla the time. You got DEA wants to kiss your ass, the Feeble Bureaucratic and Incompetent, and now ATF..."
"Those guys should open a retail outlet. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms...they'd make a killing."
"Good one. Now. Back to this shit."
"I've got enough shit on my desk, Oozy."
"You'll like this! Explosives and shit."
Nina sat down. "Okay, so what you got?"
"See, I told you."
Nina sighed. "What *we* got, Oozy?"
"Here's a little something I didn't know. Did you know that except for Kentucky and West Virginia, there are more industrial explosives stolen in Wisconsin than in any other state in the Union?"
"No, I did not."
"Fucking surprised the shit out of me. Cheeseheads lose more heavy duty ordnance than anybody else in the Upper Midwest. Anyway. There's some military grade shit gone missing, and an ATF snitch claims he sold it to some guy here in the City."
"So why the fuck am I sitting here?"
"ATF needs a street animal."
"They've got a couple of their own."
"Yeah, they do, and they're all tied up with the bikers and the gun dealers. You'd think they'd have time to do their own work..."
"That's probably where that shit is right now."
"You'd think. But apparently this stuff went to some nice white guy. No bad guy connections. Nothing on the books except Clean White Citizen."
"So go talk to Clean White Citizen."
"He passed it on. And they don't quite know to who or how."
"And..."
"They're throwing that Lone Wolf thing around again."
"Oh, fuck me. DHS too?"
"They got their finger in that pie, along with the Feebs. You got a good rep for finding that kind of shit, when you're not killing suspects and shooting up city blocks like Ramba, Return of the Eternal Fucking Warrior or some shit."
"Gimme the file."
Fabruzzi slid it across the desk. "And Nina? I know it goes against your Lone Wolf nature, but this file got an ATF body attached to it."
Nina slid it back. "Then they don't need me."
"Actually they do. Check it out."
Nina opened the file. An ATF business card and a one-page briefing note: Special Agent Nicholas Le Fronte. Ex-Special Forces, multiple combat tours in the Big Sandy, 5 years with ATF mostly undercover in the Deep South doing that long standing tradition of dealing in guns, reassigned to the Lake City Joint Terrorism Task Force. There was a picture.
Long thick black hair combed straight back with a streak of white on either temple. Mustache hiding part of a scar that started at the upper right of his mouth and stretched across both lips into his left cheek. Hard brown eyes that stared right at the camera and the hint of a tat in the faded neck of the black t-shirt. Muscles underneath that, not the gym kind.
Not bad.
"His cell phone's on the back of the card," Oozy said.
"I'll call him."
"Nina?" Oozy said as she got up to go.
"Yeah?"
"Please don't kill him."
She laughed all the way back to her desk.
Lance T
Lance T handed a thick envelope to the squat elderly Laotian man who stood before his desk.
"Thank you, my friend," Lance said.
The older man inclined his head, smiled slightly. "Thank you, my friend. It is always good to see you."
"I appreciate your...patronage."
The older man took that in. "Yes. I know this word. 'The regular business given to a store, restaurant, or public service by a person or group.' Yes?
"Yes. Exactly."
"So please, Lance...help me with my poor English? Are you a store, a restaurant, or a public service?"
They both laughed hard and long.
"I would think...a public service, my friend. We do endeavor to serve the public, and serve the public well."
"Public, this is close to pubic?"
"In spelling only. It's a good thing we don't gamble on crosswords in here."
"Yes. Though that does give me an idea..."
"I don't know if I can afford any more ideas!"
"We will let that germinate. You know this word?"
"Yes," Lance said, grinning. "This word, I know."
He watched the third most senior Laotian gangster in Lake City walk out the door, sat back, put his Ferragamo shod feet up on his desk (carefully, so as not to disturb the shine on his shoes or the walnut desk top) and considered his day. So much to do in The Trojan Horse: audition some new dancers pleading for a shot? Long lunch downtown with the Chief of Police? Spot check both sets of books? Or maybe just a long excellent cigar, a glass of Macallan, and take the rest of the day off?
It was good to be Lance T.
Maybe the gym. The fighter he was and always had been clamored for some expression, though these days he spent most of his fighting time boxing for fun. His wrestling days had left him with the ripped physique and a bevy of old injuries; boxing gave him a chance to work hard on something he'd always admired and never tried; it was always good to be a beginner at something.
The gym.
***
Rudy's Gym looked like it had been plucked right out of a 40's noir movie. Stained ancient wooden flooring, racks of duct taped bags, boxes of sweat blurred gloves and hand wraps, jump ropes hanging from pegs. The sweet familiar smell of old sweat, sweat expended in honest effort, the creak of the canvas mat in the ring, the clink of the ropes. Young men, and a few women, in various corners shadow boxing, working the speed bags to a steady rat tat tat, a few of the old timers, still cut hard though greying, chatting in the corner, nodded at Lance when he came in.
He nodded back, one fighter to another, changed in the locker room, the old wooden bench bowed by many years, slammed the rusty locker shut and went out to warm up with a few rounds of jump rope.
Rudy, the second generation of Rudy's to own and run this gym, was a black densely muscled former champion kick boxer who'd taken over the gym from his father; a longish stint in Korea and Japan as a pro fighter had left him with a little money and a lot of injuries, so it was time to work the gym, coach a few fighters, and work on nurturing the next generation of warriors.
"Lance," Rudy said.
"Hey, brother. How's it?"
"Good. You?"
"Never better."
Rudy laughed. "I guess not. It's good to be Lance T. You looking for a partner today?"
"Maybe later. Jump some rope, do some bag work."
"You want to work mitts, let me know. I got a new guy working off some of his fees."
"Who's that?"
Rudy inclined his head towards the corner of the gym, where a tall, heavily muscled man with long black hair tied back in a ponytail worked a heavy bag.
"That's him," Rudy said.
Lance studied the fighte
r. Streaks of grey in his hair, no kid there, but seriously fit, with the dense muscle of someone who worked at it, watched his diet as well, when you get older it's not just the workout, it's what you put into the machine, skilled, too, boy was making the bag hum, and each of those punches was putting a dent in a 100 pound heavy bag. That's what set a serious puncher off from the newbies and wannabes; a newbie hits the bag and watches it swing, a serious puncher hits it and watches it fold. Footwork was there, and the leans and bobs of someone who'd been on the receiving end more than once.
"I'll check him out later," Lance said.
He went to a corner and worked his leather rope, made it sing, a not inconsequential thing for an athlete who went over 200, worked his footwork drills, and kept himself to an honest 3 minute round each time, which left him drenched in sweat and feeling fine.
And he noticed the new guy noticing him.
Lance was a player, and had been for a long time. He'd bounced, done a few other things when he was young and needed the money. These days he kept his business away from the hands on end of things, but working in a club, and especially owning one, kept his radar cranked up high. He was getting pinged pretty heavy by the new guy.
What's up with that?
He thought about it while he toweled down. Alpha males have this thing, especially alpha males of the fighter type. They make each other pretty quickly, as part of their never-ceasing situational awareness, and they size each other up, and if there is *any* question about who's dominant over who, the testing process proceeds. It starts with a look, and takes off from there.
Lance grinned to himself.
So be it.
He looked over, caught New Guy's eye, nodded, got a nod back. Went over and stuck out his hand.
"I'm Lance. Rudy says you're willing to work with an old guy and run some mitts?"
The new guy grinned. "I'm Nico. You don't move so old, Old Guy. What did you do?"
"Wrestled a little bit."
"Little bit."
"Yeah."
Nico grinned. "Sure, I'll run the mitts for you. Let's go."
Nico took two focus mitts off a shelf, laced them onto his hands, slapped them together. "Working anything in particular?"
"Jabs and crosses to warm up."
"Rounds or whatever?"
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