"So what do we have?" Agent Drew was looking at the video conferencing camera and monitor in the New York office, the other end linking to the equivalent place in Denver. On it was displayed Special Agent John Gale, someone he knew fairly well having worked with the man several times over the years.
"A very confusing mess, by the looks of things," John replied with a shake of his head. There was a stack of paperwork in front of him, at least a dozen file folders and several notebooks, and two tablets and a laptop at his elbow. Beside him were two of the other Denver agents, both looking through more paperwork. "We're still working on Nyquist and Ortiz, they're being stubborn, but we've got them dead to rights on a number of charges up to and possibly including conspiracy to commit air piracy. Certainly crossing state lines with an unregistered weapon, false identity documentation, smuggling a weapon onto a restricted vehicle, and so on. They're not going to get out of this and they have to know it. But they're definitely not wanting to admit to anything. It's taken five hours to get what we have out of them which isn't all that much. But it was enough to start digging into the background of the whole thing."
"Does anything you found match what our mystery informant handed over?" Gary asked.
"Yeah. Pretty much exactly. I don't know who it was, or how they got their information, but they're good. It must have taken weeks or months to infiltrate all the financial data aside from everything else." John looked rather impressed, as had been Gary. "Following that rats nest of accounts and shell companies was damned impressive. I've got the people here in forensic accountancy following up on the information and they're finding all sorts of interesting things. You?"
"Same thing. We've been digging into the New York end and while we don't have a clue who actually sent the information in, everything we've looked at seems legit. We've got orders from the top to keep going, and a lot of warrants are going to get issues in the next few days. We need to be able to recreate this data trail in a verifiable way to make it stick in court, but our guys are pretty sure that won't be hard as long as we move fast before the people we're looking at get wind of our interest and delete things. Whoever it is that dug this up didn't exactly do it by the book…"
John smiled grimly. "No, we noticed that. Effective though. I've been wondering if it was an inside man. There's definitely a lot more than one or two people behind all this. Maybe one of them grew a conscience?"
"Might be. Who knows at this point?" Gary shrugged a little. "But it's a theory, certainly. Maybe we'll find out at some point. Right now, I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes."
"Deep, from what we've already found out. Some of the names being connected to this pair of losers… Yeah, there's going to be questions asked in high places."
"Assuming those high places don't kill the investigation." It was something he'd sadly seen more than once in this sort of thing when someone with money and power got caught up in the sweep.
"It's a little late for that unless they really make it obvious," the other man replied. "We've got way too much evidence even if we can't use a lot of it directly. It's not a tip with a few scraps, this is the full data dump. Names, addresses, times, account numbers, payments… You name it, we've got it. And it's looking like this goes back at least a couple of decades. Some very wealthy people are involved, I'm certain of that, and they're people who don't much like their private affairs being aired in public."
"Sucks to be them, then," Gary snorted. "This is going to be headline news if we can get all our ducks in a row. It could bring down some of the biggest companies in the country."
"Yeah, that's kind of the problem," John sighed. "That sort of money thinks it's invincible and all too often it manages to buy itself out of trouble. We keep getting the ones pulling the trigger and not the ones paying for it. Hopefully this time we might be ahead of the game for once."
"We can but try." Gary nodded a little. "So walk me through what happened and what you have so far."
"OK. Grabbing Ortiz and Nyquist went smoothly. You've seen the video?"
"I have. Good job by the way."
"Thanks. Once we had them in custody, our guys along with the airline security people swept the entire aircraft for any other evidence, any signs of a bomb, or something of that nature. Used the new scanners, sniffed for explosives even the exotic ones, drugs, weapons, you name it. Came up dry. Not a trace of anything other than minor residue around the seat Ortiz was in and the locker directly above it, which was undoubtedly from his weapon's ammunition outgassing. Those scanners are insanely sensitive."
"So at least they weren't planning on blowing the plane up."
"Not that we could find. Considering the weapon they might have been planning a hijacking but personally I doubt it. My guess is that it was going to be a hit, or more than one. Likely in the airport. LAX is big and busy and that gun would have let them take out several people discreetly before vanishing into LA. With a little luck they've have been in the wind for an hour or more before anyone raised the alarm."
"I've never seen a weapon like that before."
"I have, once. It's something based on the old wartime British Welrod that our guys reengineered back in the early eighties for a certain organization that likes to think it's got central intelligence." The other man paused as Gary chuckled. "Never seen much sign of that myself. Anyway, most of it is made of polymers and ceramic. X-rays will find it, and a metal detector, so it's not entirely stealthy, but at the time it would have got through most security checks. Subsonic ammo and a very clever built in suppressor, and at point blank range the damn thing is as close to silent as any firearm can be. Good for a full magazine, maybe two, before you need to service it. I've seen one fired about six years back and it was seriously impressive. In the noise of a busy airport unless you were standing right next to it you probably wouldn't even notice, and even if you did, it doesn't sound like a firearm discharging. More like a door slamming."
"Christ."
"Yeah. Luckily there aren't a lot of them out there. The company in question only made about eighty of them, then the contract ended. Went out of business about two years later, and no one has ever really heard of them these days. But a few of the things were unaccounted for from what I could dig up, and I guess we just found one of them." He shrugged. "If it was me I'd have done the job, dismantled the thing, crushed all the plastic or ceramic parts, and dropped the rest into a few garbage cans on the way out. Would have been a nightmare finding enough to prove what was used. I have no idea if our guys downstairs were planning that but it wouldn't surprise me."
"Who were they after?"
"We're not entirely certain. We pulled their bags off the plane, but they only had one checked item apiece. Lots of evidence inside, but nothing particularly helpful from that point of view. Just under ten grand in twenties each, so barely under the ten thousand reporting limit. Two complete sets of ID, the highest quality I've ever seen. Whoever made it has complete access to every current security measure used for passports, driving licenses, the works. Which is yet another worry, of course."
"Fuck. That's not good. We're going to have to look into that." Gary made some notes, as this was definitely the sort of thing that raised flags.
"There was nothing suggesting a target in their bags, either checked or carry on," John carried on after a moment. "But we cracked the security on their phones and found a number of photos and some background information on several people, all of whom were on the flight." He reached off-camera and did something for a moment, a file arriving on Gary's laptop a few seconds later. Opening it, he studied the document. There were photos and brief background information on a number of men and women, none of who he recognized. Some of the images seemed to be photos of printed documents, he noticed. Looking back to the camera, he shrugged.
"Who are these people?"
"Representatives of a number of shipping and port unions on the east coast. Kyle Winters is the General Organizer for the International Longshoremen's Association, for example. High up in the union. Liz Knowles, Port Controller of Baltimore, then we've got Danny Hebert, Head of Hiring at Brockton Bay Dock Worker's association, and so on. Between them they represent almost every person who works on docks and in ports on the east coast, from the Canadian border all the way down to Florida."
"Huh. Why are they all traveling to LA, and why are these two idiots following them?"
"For the first part, I checked and there's a big international shipping company conference in LA over the weekend. Organized by a subsidiary of WWM, Inc. A name you may recall from such times as about five hours ago and a mysterious data dump."
Gary smiled thinly as he continued reading the document with interest. "Funny, until today I'd never heard of them before, but their name does seem to keep popping up recently, doesn't it?"
"Odd, that. I can't help wondering exactly why myself," John agreed wryly.
"So these two were after someone in this union group?"
"Looks like it. Or more than someone. They certainly had all this data on them, which is mostly public information but there's a few things in there that's not easily available on the web. Someone went to some trouble to collect it all. I'm curious about what the rest of the documents they've got photos of but we don't have it. You can see these are photos of something more extensive."
"Yeah, I see that. I wonder where that is? And what's in it?"
"No idea but I want to find out. If we can locate where our friends were staying before they got to JFK we might get lucky enough to find those files. Might not, if they had any sense they burned it, but from what we're finding out these two aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box. Decent tradecraft skills according to their original employers, but both of them tended to get sloppy according to what I was reading. Which is why they both got caught of course. Got greedy and careless."
"That's how it often goes," Gary agreed. "I'm guessing whoever is behind all this paid off a fair few people to lay hands on these guys and made them an offer they were all too happy to jump at. Playing spy for real money or something."
"Probably. They're good, but they're not as good as they probably think they are. My guess is that whoever is ultimately funding all this has spent a shitload of cash on the very best IDs and tools but couldn't quite get the very best people. Or maybe these two are the B team or something. Good enough for something that's not high priority but not their best. No idea yet. They were good or lucky enough to evade detection for several years so there's that. We wouldn't know about them now if it wasn't for our helpful informant." John looked annoyed, as was Gary. "I suspect there's at least one Thinker involved somewhere too. It's a complicated plan to get all the moving parts correct on and that takes either an awful lot of experience and skill or cheating. Or both."
"God, if the PRT get involved in this it'll turn into a complete cluster-fuck in hours," Gary sighed. "Let's hope they don't find out and stick their damn noses where they're not wanted for long enough that we can do some actual work."
"I'd prefer that myself, yes," his friend replied sourly. "On the upside, there's no positive proof of a Parahuman involvement so with any luck they're not going to get in the way for now at least. I'm guessing a Thinker, it might just be some talented amateurs who've seen one too many movies. That's definitely happened before, as you remember from Chicago."
"Don't remind me of that idiot, please," Gary groaned. "It was just embarrassing. Especially how he damn near got away with the stupidest plan I've ever heard of."
"It was so stupid it nearly worked," John agreed, shaking his head. "Everyone was working on the basis that no one would try something that idiotic and it must be a cover for something much more subtle, right up to the point he'd almost finished. Funny in retrospect but a pain in the ass at the time."
"Yeah. Oh well. What's the saying? 'God save us from talented amateurs, for they do things the professional doesn't even attempt.' Which usually means someone else needs to pick up the pieces…"
Looking back at his laptop, Gary mused, "I wonder which of these people was the target?"
"I'm not sure. Any one of them could cause some significant disruption to union activities. Especially if they managed to make it look like some sort of internal power struggle or something like that. It's a stretch but weirder things have happened. The Brockton Bay connection is interesting too; You saw the brief about the fallout from that super-villain case they had a while back there?"
"The Coil affair, yeah. That's getting more and more complicated the longer it goes on," Gary nodded. "I was reading some of the latest reports and it's insane just how much trouble one man managed to start. We've been keeping watch for any indications his activities might have reached this far. Nothing obvious so far but I wouldn't want to rule it out. Man had aspirations, you have to give him that."
"Indeed. The point is that there's been some rumors going around for years that the whole riot thing that hit that place back in the mid-nineties was the result of some sort of union-breaking action. I was in Boston then, straight out of Quantico, and we kept hearing things that no one could find any proof for. I do know the Dock Worker's Association was blamed for it, and were really mad about that as they swore blind it was nothing to do with them and was the work of outsiders. Nothing could be proven though. And after a year or so everyone stopped looking. I'm starting to wonder if maybe there's more involved with that whole thing than anyone realized at the time…"
"Something like whatever our pair on the plane were planning, maybe?"
"That's kind of what I'm thinking, yeah. Possibly someone who's making a huge profit from shipping decided that dealing fairly with striking dock workers was less profitable than cutting an entire city loose and making it look like it was their fault. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. Big business and unions go way back and they tend not to like each other very much. From what I'm seeing in that document you got WWM is mixed in up to its eyebrows in all manner of business which is very heavily unionized, and this conference is going to be full of the one percenters who want to stay one percenters. And might be quite pleased to find a union or two that's a pain in their ass having trouble. Paying all those workers a decent wage is a real drain on profits, after all..."
"Pleased enough to arrange that trouble?" Gary rubbed his chin thoughtfully as John nodded. "Interesting theory. And plausible. I think we need to look into WWM, Inc a little more thoroughly. OK. You keep the pressure up on our friends, see if you can get them to crack and give us names. I'll work it from this end and look into the trail from JFK. We'll need to loop LA in to chase up where they might have been planning on going after they did whatever they were going to do. Maybe another flight out, private charter, drive to Vegas, even a ship to Canada or something. They must have had an exit plan. It would be stupid to hang about in LA after offing one or more people, especially fairly high profile ones like these. I want to know what that plan was and who set it up."
"Can do. You going to handle LA?"
"Yes. I'll keep you updated on any new developments."
"Thanks. Same here. Good luck."
"You too. Later."
"See you."
The screen went blank as John disconnected, then displayed the FBI logo, as Gary sat back and thought for a while. Eventually he nodded to himself and gathered his things together, before heading back to his desk. He had a lot of work to do and people to talk to.
There was something much deeper than the obvious behind all this, he could feel it. Trained instincts were telling him it was much more involved than a simple, if somewhat overcomplex, hit. And he very much wanted to find out what was going on, because it suggested someone, or some group, had been doing very illegal things for far too long. Which annoyed him quite a bit.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Feeling pleased with the way things were going, Taylor cut another piece of very nice steak, while she listened to her dad talking to his friends in the restaurant they'd ended up in having checked in, finally, at the hotel after their unexpected diversion. No one seemed particularly upset by the delay, which in the end had only taken about two and a half hours out of their schedule. And it gave everyone something to talk about too. On the whole it had worked out very well.
And those FBI guys seemed to be putting in the effort to get to the bottom of everything, which was very handy. She resolved to pass on a few more queries to Lisa so the other girl could perhaps come up with information that would aid the FBI faster than they could find it themselves. It would be easy to pass it on to them in the same way she'd done the first time.
She wasn't quite sure what she was going to do with the dossiers in her luggage, though. Taking them had, in hindsight, possibly been not the best idea, but she'd been worried for her dad and the others having read them. There was a lot of information in the things which was definitely private and not the sort of thing she suspected they wanted handed over to the feds. On the other hand, Nyquist and Ortiz knew full well it had been in their luggage, and sooner or later they'd find out it was missing. Which might open a new line of questions. On the third hand, which she could easily arrange, there would be no practical way to prove it had been present, nor that it had subsequently been removed in a cramped and dark cargo hold mid-flight. It was more likely that anyone who seriously looked into the situation would assume it must have been taken from their bags at JFK, which was a much more plausible option. And as they already knew there had been one paid-off worker there, they might well start looking for another.
Which they'd find, as she'd already located three other people who were doing things with luggage they probably shouldn't be. Smuggling, by the looks of it. She had a feeling that sort of thing wasn't nearly as uncommon as the authorities might like…
Well, she could deal with that later. Right now, she was happily eating with her dad, exploring LA, investigating all sorts of interesting things underneath Denver Airport, keeping the crooks mostly honest back home, expanding through New York and Boston mostly for amusement, and keeping a very careful eye on that van, now half-way across the country from her.
The latter point was one she was definitely going to have to discuss with her dad tonight. She needed advice from the one person she trusted completely.
Smiling to herself, she reached for the pepper sauce again and made plans, while looking around for a whole laundry list of arthropods in several locations. There were several she was going to need for a couple of jobs soon...
