[b]Vancouver[/b]


Hank Kelly stared down into his cup of coffee and tried to ignore the sounds from the next room. The thumps and groans penetrated through the concrete wall and filled the small room where Hank kept his makeshift office. The building Operation Cruiser used as operational headquarters was an old slaughterhouse that had been closed since before the war. Fittingly, the interrogation room next door had been the slaughterhouse's killing floor.

"Hank..."

He looked up and saw Patrick Connelly standing in the doorway leading into the interrogation room. Pat had a serious look on his face and the cigarette between his index and middle fingers was dangerously close to burning both fingers as it burned down to the butt.

"I think he's ready to talk. Come on in."

Hank took a deep breath and polished off his lukewarm coffee. He flipped a switch on his desk that turned on the microphones in the next room. CIA, DoD, and who the hell ever was involved in this op wanted to hear whatever came next. Hank took another deep breath and sighed. He had to steel himself for what awaited him inside. He was an analyst, a desk jockey through and through. He read and wrote reports on everything from the production of rice in China to the criminal structure of the organized crime syndicates in France. There was a sense of detachment to his work. It was more academic than applicable. Pat had no such luxury. He did legwork for CIA and saw the brutal truths of the job firsthand. Pat had no problem keeping his composure in the interrogation room, but Hank wasn't sure of himself.

They went inside the long, dim room with a single naked lightbulb serving as the sole source of light. Master Sergeant Silas Crystal and two of his Green Berets stood close to a metal chair bolted to the concrete floor. A bloody and beaten man sat on the chair strapped with down with leather belts. A metal tub of water sat next to the chair. Hank noticed drops of blood on the floor leading towards the tub. He also noticed the beaten man's wet head and the black gloves Crystal wore. They were weighted with lead in the knuckles and palms. Sap gloves, they were called, and they were used to issue beatings.

"Reg," Pat said to the beaten man, slapping him gently to wake him up. "Reg, my man. You need to wake up and talk."

Reg Boland, the bloody mess in front of Hank, broke out into a fit of coughing. A broken molar came out of his mouth and clattered on the floor. Boland looked up at Hank with swollen eyes that seemed to look through him more than they looked at him. 

"We need to know about the Friends of Northwest Sovereignty, Reg. They're getting equipment from somewhere. We need to know how they're getting it, who they are, and how to find them."

Boland started to say something but stopped when he saw Crystal approaching with his sap gloves. The beaten man flinched and quickly looked down at the floor. Blood dripped from his open mouth and spilled onto the floor in drips and drops.

"I been smuggling them weapons," Boland finally said. "I come out from Canada, head across the DMZ where protection is the thinnest, and meet them outside Vancouver."

"What kind of weapons?" Pat asked.

"Pistols and shotguns and rifles. Mostly I give them explosives, pounds and pounds of TNT and plastic explosives."

"How long has this been going on?" Hank asked.
 
"A month or so. I... I'm not sure, but I think they had a guy giving them shit before me. An Army guy working out the base in Vancouver."

Hank and Crystal exchanged looks. Crystal's A-Team heard scuttlebutt at Fort Dixon about an ordnance sergeant that went AWOL and was found dead by the territorial police a few weeks later. The territorial police and the FCB were looking into the murder. They were pretty damn close to finding out the truth, too. Their kidnapping of Boland managed to beat a police arrest raid by just a few minutes. The cops, just like the spooks, were in the dark.

"Can I have a cigarette? Boland asked.

"Soon as you answer my question," Hank said. "Who all is part of the Friends, Reg? Give me some names, please."

"I just know them by their first names," he said with a shrug. "And only two guys I've met so far. Guy name Alex and one named Arthur. Alex runs the show, Arthur seems like some kind of geek. He's always inspecting the explosives before I hand them off."

"What do they look like?" Pat asked as he started to pull a cigarette out for Boland.

Boland shrugged in his chair. He regretted the decision immediately and winced in pain at some injury. "They're young guys. White with dark hair. I couldn't pick 'em out of a crowd. Their just average, boring looking guys."

Pat put a cigarette in Boland's mouth and lit it up for him. 

"How young we talking?" Pat asked while Boland inhaled the cigarette smoke. 

"College kids," Boland said, expelling smoke from his mouth as he spoke. "The boy Alex wore an army field jacket with a button on it that said 'NWC or Die.' That's some A-1 college radical bullshit."

Hank made a mental note. Alex and Arthur, college kids with potential backgrounds in science and electronics. One of them had to know something to rig the raw explosives up into a bomb. He'd start combing the roles of local universities as soon as they were done here.

"Let's talk about the Canadian connection," Hank said. "Where do you get your stuff from on the other side of the border."

Boland shook his head so vigorously his cigarette threatened to fly out. For the first time since Hank came in the room, Boland's eyes were showing emotion. They showed fear.

"No, I can't..."

Crystal stepped up and hit Boland with an open-hand slap. The gloves added to the slap and whipped Boland's head back. The cigarette, along with blood, went flying across the room. Hank turned his head to keep from watching as the sergeant let into Boland with a few more blows.

"Alright!" Boland finally screamed, on the point of breaking down. "I'll tell... It's some guy named Jones, okay? A big fucking guy with blonde hair. Most times I meet him across the border, he gives me the shit and I smuggle it back. Please, that's all I know I swear."

"Most times?" Hank asked after his stomach settled. 

"One time he made the run himself, okay? I went to meet him, but he told me to piss off. What he was delivering was too fucking important for me to fuck up."

Hank saw the rest of the men in the room start to stir with interest. They, like him, wondered what in god's name could be worse than guns and bombs. 

"What was it?" asked Pat.

"I dunno, I swear. All I saw was a crate with that weird ass symbol they use when something's poison."

"The biohazard sign," said Hank. "Is that it, Reg?"

"That's it. It was a small crate, but whatever it was was bad."

"Shit," Pat said, taking the words from Hank's mouth. "Shit, shit, shit... I think these fuckers have got their hands on some heavy duty shit."

"Reg," Hank said in a reassuring tone. "We need to know how to find them right now."


-----


[b]Cascadia Territorial Police Force Headquarters
Vancouver[/b]


Inspector Mark Echols sat at his desk and played the scene over again. A joint CTPF/FCB raid ended up with jack shit thanks to persons unknown. Reg Boland, their target, had absconded minutes before they arrived and was in the wind. That pissed off everyone taking part in the raid, Echols included, but something else gnawed at him. He'd thought he saw a ghost from the past on the streets of Vancouver. The man walking down the street near the raid looked just like... him. Echols was brought back to that night a few years ago when his world was on fire and coming down around his ears.

"Echols," Special Agent Byran Simpson said as he came into the office. "Echols?"

Echols looked up from his desk at the FCB man who served as his partner. Simpson's eyebrows were raised as he looked at Echols curiously. "You okay?"

"Bryan, I saw something when we tried to find Boland... someone I thought I'd never see again."

"Who?"

"A US Special Forces solider," said Echols. 

Simpson started to protest, but Echols cut him off with a look.

"A man I saw on the street just a block away from where Boland was supposed to be was a dead match for a man I once knew. He was a Green Beret back during the war, Sergeant Crystal... I haven't forgotten his face since because he's the reason I have no kneecap, but he's also the reason I still have my head. Crystal saved my life, and now he's here in Vancouver doing god knows what."

"Are you sure, Echols?"

"I know what I saw, Simpson," Echols said. "I'll never forget that man's face, and that man was in the same area as our missing person."

Simpson started to curse while Echols looked at the corkboard beside his desk. The Stiff and Surrey had morphed into something else altogether. A dead soldier, a missing weapons trafficker, terrorist, and now spooks. Echols was a long-term detective and was used to cases having legs and going unexpected places, but this?

"I think Crystal and whoever he's working with kidnapped Boland," said Echols. "They're after the same people we're after."

"I'll be goddamned," Simpson said. They sat there in silence for a moment before the special agent spoke again. "I'm going to call D.C. and try to get to the bottom of this shitstorm, at least from the government side of things."


-------


[b]Boston[/b]


Elliot Shaw looked through the darkness of the bowling alley for his captor. The lights popped on suddenly to reveal twelve empty bowling lanes with warped and rotting wooden planks across each one. Elliot saw cobwebs in the rafters and a snack bar missing its counter.

"How'd you get in here?" He asked Jane. 

"Friend of mine owns it, I told him I was in trouble and needed a place to hide out."

Leading with the gun, she pointed Elliot towards a living area set up by the snack bar. A small kerosene lamp on the floor beside a cot and two metal folding chairs along with a few suitcases. "Sit, please."

"Well, now how can I refuse when such a pretty lady has such a big gun in my face?"

He took a seat across from Jane and pointed to his jacket pocket. "I got some cigarettes in my jacket. I can get you one if you want it." 

"No I'll get it. I insist."

She stood up and reached into his jacket, pulling out a silver cigarette case and a silver lighter. After a moment of setup the two were smoking in silence.

"So," Elliot started. "What are you going to do with me?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Why don't you just give me whatever Kane wanted me to get for him?"

Jane chuckled. Even with a smoke in her left, the gun in her right hand was still trained on Elliot's chest. "You don't know what it is, do you?"

"I think it's one of two things. Evidence of him having an affair or something worse. Something that can seriously hurt him, something he doesn't want to quietly pay blackmail for."

The girl got up from her seat and kicked open one of the suitcases. She placed the smoldering cigarette to the side and reached inside the suitcase. She produced a small folder and opened it for Elliot to see. Sitting at the top of a stack of papers was a black and white photo of Kane naked and on top of a woman just as naked as he was. "That's me he's with. He had a camera hidden in the bedroom where we had sex. Apparently he gets off on it."

"So, you found the photos and took them. Why? Blackmail?"

"That was the plan. He hired me just to fuck me. I was getting paid alright, but not like I wanted for what I was being asked to do."

"Fucking over the guy who fucks you over, not a bad motive," he nodded before pointing towards the photo with his cigarette. "Are all those photos?"

"Some of them. Most of it is papers and bullshit written in lawyer speak."

Elliot sucked on his smoke and wondered what else she glommed. Dirty pictures were bad, but certain documents could be as equally damning but not quite as sexy.

"Can I see the other stuff? You can hold on to the pictures."

Jane eyed him for a few seconds before finally picking out the photos and passing him the folder from across the lantern. He thumbed through if and skimmed the papers. Files, paperwork, contracts, all of it pointing towards one thing.

"Huh. Apparently, they're doing some development with the marshes. About time, if you ask me. Place is a shithole."

There were memos from developers and investors and other politicians. A bunch of names and corporations listed all over the contracts and files. Plans to turn the swampy area just outside of East Boston into a whole new town. Subdivision, condos, parks. The whole nine yards. Wedged towards the back was some survey from a geological firm. That was all greek to Elliot, but the last page was interesting. Minutes from a meeting between Kane, a guy named Abbot, and Big Jim Dwyer.

He had to laugh at the audacity of them recording the conversation. They talked about planning to tank the investment deal and short the investors to make sure the project didn't even get off the ground. That made Elliot pause. They were embezzling, sure, but taking the money from investors seemed short sighted compared to the price the real estate in the marshes would be after the deal. It was like trading in for five bucks now, instead of five thousand bucks six months down the road. 

Jane raised an eyebrow when she saw Elliot's puzzled look. "What?"

A sound from outside kept him from explaining his thoughts. The sound was of a car coming to a stop. "Oh, shit," Jane said as she sprung up, dropping the photos to the floor and running to turn off the lights. "You were followed, you asshole!"

"No I wasn't, dammit!"

Elliot took off after her and stopped suddenly as she turned off the lights. He crept through the darkness towards the door and wedged it open enough to see through a crack. Two men, tough looking and serious, were just climbing out of a black sedan. The car clicked with Elliot. He saw it once or twice on the drive here.

"Son of a bitch, I was followed!"

He suddenly realized Kane didn't want him to get those photos. He wanted Elliot to lead him and his men to Jane. He was the bloodhound for the hunters, but he was damn sure that he was going to be put down after they found what they wanted.

"Son of a bitch," Elliot hissed. "He played me!"

Sean McKenna's warning from earlier hit home hard. These people were not to be trifled with, he had said. They were ruthless and did not let obstacles stand in their way to get what they wanted. Now young Jane Wilson was an obstacle. So, too, was Elliot. 

"Give me your gun," Elliot said to Jane through the dark. She started to protest but he raised his voice to speak over her. "If you want to live, give me your goddamn gun and trust me."

He felt the cool metal in his palm and gripped it tightly as the two men approached the bowling alley door.