A collab by Schaft and [@Ionisus]

Joseph closed the manila envelope the case files on Blackriver were in, deciding that it’d be best for him if he stopped reading all the shit that reminded him too much of little towns tucked away in his past and the people in them. The tree line zipped past his errant gaze as Jason took them on a course from the mountain roads that snakes down from the hills the safehouse was tucked away in and the depressing excuse for a town that White Tree was. His eyes fixed on the Explorer that Clint and Pari were in, wondering just how the old salt and that girl would get along. Well, he hoped.

As the Explorer took a turn down the road towards the Mulligan residence, he looked to Jason. Wondering now just how he and this fellow intelligence officer would get along. Surely, behind those business-first eyes of his, he was wondering what the hell kind of use a DIA agent was going to be on a homicide case. Foster had a nasty habit of putting all the theatrics into his agents’ first Operation. Making questions start to just boil over but before they could and those questions come frothing out of angry, frowning, heated mouths, he’d break the whole thing open as if their admittance into the unapologetically criminal conspiracy that was Delta Green was a gift.

It was years ago that the mountains of Afghanistan had shown Joseph just what they were hiding. Not just evils leftover from the CIA’s meddling there in the Cold War, but evils far darker and more ancient than the religions there that put Kalashnikovs in young men’s hands and Jihad in their hearts. It was the same unknowable evils under black marker in both Joseph and Jason’s files, tucked away and flagged by the Delta Green recruiters.

Although Jason’s attention was on the narrow trek of road snaking down the steep hill, every time Joseph flipped through the manila foldered files he was instantly distracted and looked over. Thankfully the winding turns kept him from swerving. He wanted to see the files, see all of this the way Joseph did. There  was something in his look, something like a sour taste or a bitter word held on the back of his tongue. It surprisingly worried Jason. It wasn’t that nothing added up between the agencies, the tasking, or that he was told practically nothing but a suspected serial killing. It was that stare. The way Joseph looked  like he needed to look away. 

It never occurred to Jason until now that was how he had always been. When it wasn’t supposed to be seen, when you had to look away—those were the things he found irresistible.

“I read your file.” Joseph finally said, still staring out the window at nothing in particular. “Or what I could of it. Air Force PJ, Afghanistan. I was there too. My ODA was stationed near the Pakistani border. Before that, I was kicking in doors with the Ranger Battalions, cozying up with SEALs and even Delta a few times. You ever work with them boys much?” He asked.

“Yeah, I was a flyboy,” Jason said. “Selected for some highspeed shit, but uh…” He looked out at the hills rolling into the morning haze on the horizon. There wasn’t an answer waiting for him, just a dreary sky smothering the mountains. “Yeah, I was patching up Rangers all the time when they’d let me. Supported some SEALs and what I thought was Delta, but I was never given the chance to work with them. Worked with spooks in SOUTHCOM mostly.”

Jason smirked, and asked, “What side of the Pakistani border?”

Joseph let out a single bark of a laugh at that. Jason was an intelligence officer, an operator before him just like he was. The simple fact that there was so much damn black in his file meant he lived the things people made conspiracies out of. But to speak so coyly and nonchalant about it was still something that burned Joseph’s tongue. Not because of legality or some sense of morality, but because his mouth just refused to fit around the words. “Afghan mountains.” Joseph said, simply, “We worked with a spook once, said he was a Combat Controller.”

‘Probably was once,” jason replied of the spook. That’s how it worked, wasn’t it? A grain above the rest, a propensity for killing. And smart. Jason knew  they needed to be smart enough to stay alive. Ghazni crept up from somewhere deep in his mind like the swallowing shadows between the trees blurring past them. Had he been smart then, or savage? Or was it luck?

“Foster said you were hunting Daesh meth cooks. I spent some time tracking their recruiters and people smugglers in the Middle East,”Joseph said, deciding he’d let on a little bit about where he’d come from. He knew this was a game to them, for a couple of spooks, secrecy was the word. Half-truths, fast-talking, outright lies.


“No shit? Syria then. Lebanon, maybe Turkey.” Jason replied, nodded in thought. He felt a little more at home next to the grizzled wolf that was Joseph knowing they had played in the same yard. “Yeah, mostly chemists cooking up meth. You’d be surprised how much other shit they like to make. Crude blister agents, chlorine based gases, explosives—but you know that.”

By now they had entered the town, but it was no less choked by the forest. Old stones of grimy buildings peaked up from ancient, defiant treetops. Nothing concrete was newly set, but looked steadily reclaimed by the hungry hills. Cracks were filled with dark earth and twisted grass. Paint was always faded, washed out in the filter of an overcast sky. Jason was just as foreign here as he was in Jordan, this time displaced in the shed skin of deep Appalachian country. 


“What’s your impression of Foster?” Joseph asked.

Jason made an effort to look everywhere but Joseph's eyes. “He’s your boy, isn’t he? No bullshit it’s too early to tell.” They eased up to a stop sign, a testy nissan pickup coughing in rattles as it crossed the road in front of them. Joseph followed the vehicle with his eyes as Jason kept looking in the distance, adding, “No, not sure yet. Whatever this is I’m guessing it’s an interview. You want to see how we work.” 

Jason wanted to tell Joseph he saw that look in his eyes, that he practically fell in its depth, but it wasn’t fear. He thought it was concern. Joseph knew something. Any one of the team members had to already be guessing there was more to this. Whatever it was had Joseph feeling something, but he couldn’t tell them. Jason was perplexed at this.

“But he likes me,” Jason went on, the Explorer rolling forward and ever closer to the Mulligan Residence. “Someone does, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Joseph chuckled, “Yeah, if being with him on assignments means he likes you, he fucking loves me.” It remained to be said that Foster only ever called him for assignments like these. Not ever things like assassinate a people smuggler in France or interrogate some ISIS asshole attempting to get into the US in Panama. It was always asset recovery of some strange books with oblivious flyboys just like Jason used to be, running SIGINT or HUMINT collection with Intelligence Support Activity operators in support of something shady he and Delta Green were at work at. Butt into a Homeland Security raid on antiquity smugglers, once. “And yeah, I want to see how you all work. I might have known Foster for a bit but the guy keeps you at arm’s length unless he thinks it’s time.” He frowned, “If he ever does. But that’s how it goes sometimes, you know.”

“Turkey, by the way.” He said, “Spent a lot of time there doing morally ambiguous things to the locals, as it were. When I wasn’t teaching Kurds how to kill ISIS.”

Joseph’s acknowledgement was something. It made Jason feel less like he was being toyed with. That they didn’t have to talk around, didn’t have to keep stepping in tune with the dance. From what Joseph was saying it sounded like Foster was one of those deep state guys you only see for a moment, someone far up the marionette wire. His mystique made Jason almost excited. Somewhere something in these hills was bringing them together. It had taken Moralez. He was the purpose, but it was morbid curiosity that had Jason hooked. 

“So we aren’t focusing on Moralez, not the two of us. What’s our angle?” It was a meaningless question, but it opened up dialogue about the case. Unless otherwise directed, sometimes there was no angle for intelligence gathering, not when there was little known about their ‘target.’ The pattern would reveal itself weaved in the minds of White Tree. Buried deep in their secrets, in their fears, was whoever killed Moralez. Buried like the others meant to be forgotten in the hills.

“The CDC. One of Foster’s people knew them.” Joseph said, “Black welts in the town caught the attention of the CDC. The CDC caught the attention of somebody else, somebody who didn’t like them much apparently.”

Joseph, sucked his teeth, shaking his head. He wasn’t allowed to tell them the truth, not until Foster deemed it the right time or if they happened upon something that blew the assignment wide open for them and laid the truth bare. He found it appropriate the dark iron of the clouds pressed down on White Tree and the hills beyond with the same weight. The hills and mountains seemed to go on forever until they were just faint rumors in the mists beyond. 

“I was telling the truth, Jason.” He said, fishing around in the inside pocket of his coat for his cigarettes and something else they’d need. “When I said to leave any weird shit we might find out here alone. Let’s just focus on finding this team or whatever happened to them. One step at a time.”

That was it, it seemed. Find the CDC team, see how it links up with Moralez. Jason tried to piece it together rationally, in the way his military analyst brain was trained to do. The black welts could be a biological weapon and its controllers disposed of the team. Moralez finds their trail and gets murdered. Jason shook his head, knowing that linking Moralez to the CDC team was mental red herring. Moralez was responding to a domestic call, yet something was nagging at Jason, telling him they were somehow linked. Nothing but conjecture, he thought, shitty spitballing. 

“You know,” he said coming out of his reverie, “if you and I being in this car in the middle of strip mine, USA isn’t weird enough I can’t wait to see ‘weird’. You’re telling a bull to polish the china. So what, domestic terrorists leaked agents and dosed the locals?”

Then why not have Homeland Security and the F.B.I. in on this, Jason wondered. Nothing was adding up, but conjecture was only making him anxious. He wanted to be where they were heading, but the town’s 25 mile speed limit bade him wait. 

Joseph chuckled at Jason’s quip. He’d have to save that one for sometime. If domestic terrorists were behind this, he could breathe just a tad bit easier. He thought that to be ludicrous coming from anybody else, but in his line of work, that would’ve only welcomed a sense of normalcy back into things. He shrugged, “Maybe, but that’s what we’re here to find out. I can’t imagine the town’s soil and water to be the cleanest after all the pesticides and chemicals tainting everything in a miles-wide radius.” He said, “But that’s what the CDC was surveying, now it’s our job to figure out why a cop got dusted, a killer’s loose, and the CDC team is dead. Why no fucking news outlet is giving this shit airtime is… well, what did I tell you about weird?”

“You get a town no one wants to remember and it’s easy to carve your own little slice of bad news from it. Also easier to cover up,” Jason replied.

“Stop here.” Joseph pointed to a condemned gas station to their left, and Jason parked it as inconspicuously as he could. The pair got out, Joseph surveying the surroundings before lighting his cigarette and walking to the trunk of the car. Jason stepped out and hung his arms over the car roof and the door, surveying the rusted out squalor with the hills looming all around them.

“I was reading about this area—about Blackriver in general,” Jason said, Joseph rummaging through the trunk. “The rivers turn black from all the plant tannins. Decay, you know? Black in the water, black coal in the hills. On their skin now.” He joined Joseph, “Why the fuck they name this place White Tree.”

Joseph shrugged, “Wishful thinking?” He shoved his hands in his pockets,. “Why the fuck’d they name it Greenland?”

In the trunk was tactical gear for the both of them that Joseph was very much hoping they wouldn’t need this early. He brushed the ballistic vests away to reveal a strongbox. He rustled around in his jacket pocket and produced a key, which fit neatly in the strongbox’s hole. A quick turn sent the lid swinging open on its own to reveal Velcro patches and a few wallets. POLICE, SECURITY, DEA, ICE, SHERIFF, FBI and whatever other agency or organization that wasn’t his emblazoned in bold on the patches. He grabbed two of the wallets, tossing one to Jason.

“If you’re familiar with the law, Jason, I’m not even supposed to be here in official capacity. Freeze, scumbag.” He flipped open the wallet to reveal an FBI badge belonging to Joseph Holt, “Unless I’m working in tandem with a federal agency. It’s a good thing Pari is with us. As for you and me slipping her leash, we’ll want these.”

He took another drag of his cigarette just as a gob of spit landed dangerously close to him, followed by a young voice calling him a fucking lost tourist. “Fucking kids.” He dropped his cigarette and placed his badge in the inside pocket of his coat. “Let’s get to it. Where to, Special Agent Jimenez?”

Without answering Joseph, Jason broke out in a trot after the teenagers. He peeled up his best fake, warm smile while Joseph followed after Jason like a hunter and his bird dog. There wasn’t any black marks on the teenagers’ as far as Jason could see, and he received defiant scowls his examining gaze. 

“Not a tourist, just out here like those CDC fellas. You run into those guys at all? Asking about those marks cropping up around town?”

“Lot of good those pricks did,” one kid said.His hook nose peaked out from the shadow of his sweat stained ball cap. An almost vacant look gleamed like stones under the brim of his hat. 

The other was almost a foot taller than him and rounded in every place imaginable. A mean-spirited stare soured his boyish, rosy-cheeked face, and Jason could tell he was being sized up. It was their outsider appearance, their otherness that assured the teenager victory. Jason hated both stupid and strong  in one person. 

“Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Well, I’ll tell you what-” Jason said, flashing his fake badge as Joseph came up on them. Both teenagers sucked in through their teeth, physically recoiling.

“Hey man, we didn’t-”

“Save it,” Jason interrupted, his warm front going cold. He retrieved two twenty dollar bills from his wallet and rubbed them twice between his thumb and fingers. The pair seemed shocked at the offer at first, but the longer Jason held the money in front of them the more a wickedness began to glimmer in their eyes. Twenty dollars, their stare said. A bribe from a cop. 

“Listen, we just want to help. Honest. Give me something worthwhile and I’ll help you two even more. You understand that, right?”

“We never saw ‘em,” the hook nosed one said.

“Yeah,” the baby faced one added.

“But you heard  about them?” Jason asked. 

“Most people thought they were government men tryin’ to close the mines again,” the hook nosed one said. “People had them sores and what not but didn’t show ‘em anything at first.”

“I saw ‘em once, the welts,” the big one said. “Down the way from my house.”

“Most folks went to the doc if they had ‘em,” The other went on. 

“What doctor?” Jason asked.

“Mrs. Anne Levy,” the hooked nosed one answered. “Treats a lot of us.”

“Horse shit,” the baby faced one said. “That girl down my street went to her and didn’t get fixed. She was a praying woman and it healed her. I saw it. Welts were gone. I saw it.” He said it as if he dared anyone to question him, like it was an invitation to ball up his fatty hands and prove his own faith.

His friend scoffed at that, then nodded expectedly at the money in Jason’s hand. “So we, uh, in trouble or…” 

Jason handed over the money, thankful the boys were walking away as quickly as they could. He had given kids money in the Middle East all the time, and it shamed him to feel so dirty about it here and now. Jason tried to chalk it up to Joseph’s presence but he knew better. He also knew he detested the big one, now watching the lumbering teenager shove and demand his twenty from the other one that had actually earned it.  Stupid and strong and god fearing people. It was the Middle East all over again. 

“If the CDC was smart they’d have caught wind of this doctor and questioned her. I guess that’s where we start.”

Joseph nodded, “I guess it is.” He watched the kids shrink into the distance, “Just have to ask around for her whereabouts. Let’s hit up the bar, bartenders usually know a lot of the gossip around town and anybody who isn’t in the mines could be there.”

[hr]

Diner was a nice word for the place. Of course, nice words weren’t always true words, as it were, and the sentiment held true for Vicky’s Diner. More a bar than anything else, seeing as the tables were empty and only a lonely soul hung at the edges of the bar, mooning into his glass of whatever beer they had in these parts. Despite the fixtures for bulbs being there in the ceiling, Most of the lighting was done by that big ball of fire in the sky and some strings of white, green and red Christmas lights hung about the walls.

It was what you’d expect of a dive bar in the middle of a mining town in West Virginia. Manning the bar was a younger woman, busying herself with the task of wiping down glasses for nobody in particular it seemed. Her dusty blonde hair was done up in a bun and she equipped herself with a soft smile as she smoothed her shirt down, nodding to the two men who’d just entered. “How ya folks doin’? Have a seat wherever you’d like, got beer and whiskey.”

“Well, thank you kindly.” Joseph’s warm smile brought him to the bar, an errant glance thrown to the old-timer at the far end. Skinny from age and grey, gnarled like the rest of the town, he looked to be as appropriately placed here as the big nose on his face, “Say, ma’am, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Go right ahead, hon.”

“My friend and I, we’re looking for Dr. Anne Levy.” He said.

“Couple of newcomers to the town looking for the doctor?” She asked, “Sick?”

“Just got some questions for her.” He said, “Wanting to figure out what she knew about the black welts and whatnot on some of the townfolk.”

“More of you government boys?” The gravelly voice from the far end of the counter rattled out of the man sitting on his lonesome, “People ‘round these parts don’t like strangers getting into everybody’s business.”

“I’m not looking to get into everybody’s business, sir, just Doc Levy’s.” The old man huffed at that, but remained quiet. Thankfully. “We were talking, Miss?”

“Mary. Mary Easton.” She nodded, “Don’t mind Clement, he’s harmless. Yeah, Doc Levy’s office is about a couple miles down the road towards the city from here.”

“Why the fuck are you helping these fools, Mary?” The old man protested from his seat. Joseph was beginning to grow tired of the old coot, “Them other folk didn’t do anyone good ‘fore they up and disappeared.”

“Thank you for your help, ma’am.” Joseph said, casting a glance to the old-timer. So was it common knowledge that the CDC team poofed into thin air? Joseph mentally noted that as he rose and went for the door, Jason in tow.

Jason could like any place with the right company, but it was the vague nostalgia that made him feel somewhat comfortable in Vicky’s Diner. Cigarettes and spilled beer had soaked the wood ages ago and the stale perfume held a hint of Texas with it. Jason found it grounding. When Mary talked he listened, committing everything to memory while trying to flash his most wolfish smile. A smile that said he could be open to anything, that he was handsome and fun and whatever Mary would want him to be.She wasn’t particularly pretty or striking to Jason, but he did it all the same. At least this time he was doing it on purpose and not helpless to an urge.

 When Joseph led, he followed, finding the fresh mountain air sobering and liberating. Bars could bring the worst out in Jason. It wasn’t the alcohol or mean-spirited and hurting fluttering to bartop; it was the possibilities. If anything could be said about someone going into a bar it was that they longed for something, and Jason was no exception. In that longing and absence alcohol could fill it up, or at least people tried. And when that didn’t work sex was the next best thing—or the next step up in Jason’s view. He knew he was going to have to stay busy tonight, or get fucked up. Anything to keep him distracted.