The Shack: The Milk Run

We bumped down the road for a few miles until we pulled into a barn. An older Toyota SUV was waiting inside.

Delaney hopped out of the truck. This close, I could see how heavily reinforced the front bumper was; just short of an I-beam -- and it looked like everything else was equally sturdy. "We'll come back later for the van and the tank."

She caught my expression and answered my questions before I even asked them. "It's armored, even the glass is good enough to stop most handgun rounds. You can buy anything on the internet. Gets about four miles to the gallon, though, so it doesn't have much range, even with the extra self-sealing tank."

"That limited range is why you had to pre-position it, isn't it?"

"Yeah. 'Excuse me while I refuel; I'll be back to PIT you in a few minutes.' It just doesn't work."

"You had to have another vehicle down near the FBI."

"A motorcycle. Best way to get through heavy traffic and get ahead of everyone."

"And you couldn't let me in on this plan because...?"

The irritation in my voice caught Delaney's attention. She frowned. "This is important to you, but it's fucking important to us, too. We're risking a lot, and that means we get to choose how to do this. That's how this works. You pay us to take risks, but we decide how because we know what we can and can't do."

"Like choosing to take them down on the road."

Delaney nodded, and tried to bite back her response a bit. "There were five guys in that SUV, probably all trained and experienced mercenaries, plus the two in the car."

She took a deep breath. "I've dealt with guys like that before, and they are fucking dangerous." She shook her head and shivered. "These guys weren't ready for us the first couple times because they didn't know what was going on, but by now, they had to have some idea, and they'd have been ready. We wouldn't have had a chance on the ground. We'd have been dead meat."

"I can understand that. Some of these guys may have more years in the field than you've been alive."

She looked a touch mollified. "We're trained mostly as couriers and surveillance, not combat soldiers, but we can use that. I'm 88 pounds, soaking wet and wearing work boots, but in the tank, I'm a fucking Godzilla. We have tons of driving training, and we've practiced PIT maneuvers hundreds of times, more than most instructors ever get a chance to. If we didn't take them down this time, they might catch up to us later when we didn't have all the advantages. Now their guys are down. They can probably replace them, but that takes time, and if you're right about what's on that jump drive, they just ran out of that."

I thought for a second. It was smart, and it made sense, even if I didn't like being used as bait. "So why did you grab the guy?"

Delaney gave a short snort. "We're making the drop in less than two hours, so we have to take you with us anyway." She opened the rear door of the van, carefully eyeing the man to make sure the restraints had held before lifting the black hood off his head.

I stared at him for a moment. It took a second since they'd taped gauze bandages over his eyes. "Is that...?"

"Your friend from the mall."

Tess walked up and stared down at him. "He's a side quest."

I blinked, trying to figure out what she meant, then Mackenzie cut in. "A target of opportunity."

That, at least, seemed to make more sense.

"He's cash money; that's what he is." Delaney slid the hood back over his head.

The three girls transferred their equipment and the man to the Toyota. The odd look to the glass and weight of the doors gave away the fact that the Toyota was armored as well.

*****

Delivery Included

*****

An hour and a half later, we were at a small airfield with only one aircraft on it, a very pricy looking corporate jet with a stylized "C&W" on the side. The "tower" was a small one-story building that was mostly windows.

The three girls scanned the airfield with high-end optics and a very nice thermal imaging scope, one that was typically way out of budget for law enforcement.

Eventually, Tess called it. "I have two in the tower, at least one in the plane. None in those open hangers."

Mackenzie nodded. "That's what I have."

Delaney looked down at her phone. "K2 says 'site secure, safe to make the drop.'" She took a deep breath.

"Let's do this." Mackenzie slowly pulled onto the airfield and parked the Toyota some four hundred yards from the aircraft and the tower.

Delaney looked at me. "You might want to come with us; our contact has some information for you. Kurt says it's safe, but it's up to you."

I walked with Tess and Delaney. Mackenzie was leaning on the hood of our vehicle as we walked to the plane, seemingly texting on her phone, but the heavy rifle was right up against her side, out of sight of the aircraft and the tower. Her sunglasses were hiding the fact that she wasn't even looking at the phone. In any case, I was sure her "cell" was a rangefinder and ballistic calculator.

They'd parked so that anyone trying to return fire at Mackenzie would be looking into the bright winter sun, just high enough off the horizon to blind them without backlighting her.

A lone figure stepped gracefully out of the plane and started down the stairs. Somehow I wasn't surprised by the familiar expensive black suit.

She had a few more grey hairs, but Wendy looked more or less the same as the last few times we'd met. She smiled at me, a smile that would make a wolf check for an exit, if the wolf had any sense. "Maria. So nice to see you again."

"Wendy." The machine pistol was the only comfort I had. I couldn't imagine the girls selling me out, but Wendy's reputation for ruthlessness wasn't something I could completely ignore. "Nice to see you too. I hope."

"I was in the area when we got the call, so I couldn't pass on the chance to say hello. I was rather expecting you to buy a ticket out. I'd have given you a family discount, you know."

"I decided to try to handle it."

She nodded, then glanced at the girls, noticing they'd moved out and slightly forward, using the body of the plane and the wing to shield themselves from anyone in the tower or the aircraft itself. "I suppose these two are part of Kurt and Katie's crew."

She stepped down and off the stairs. "Don't worry, we're clear. I own this airfield. I understand you have a package for me?"

Delaney stared at her unblinking for a long second and pressed a small bowl-like object onto the aircraft body. "In the back of the vehicle. He's mummy wrapped in antistatic foil, but we didn't really have time to search him for trackers."

Wendy nodded. "Can I send someone to get him?"

Tess signaled to Mackenzie, who popped the back hatch open.

A lone man with a luggage cart headed out of the tower building for the long walk to the Toyota. I looked over at the smuggler. "Alright, Wendy, I'll ask. Why are you interested in this guy?"

She gave a perfectly practiced shrug. "I'm not. He's just paid cargo as far as I am concerned." She gave me a slight smile, just as rehearsed as her shrug. "The Volkov Group, on the other hand, is most certainly interested in him. The bounty on him is quite substantial, something about a rather large amount of missing money after one of their Syrian operations, or so I hear. If I deliver him, the bounty gets paid with no argument; I subtract my carrying fees and pass the rest to K2. Everybody walks away alive." She glanced at the now-loaded luggage cart headed back to the tower building. "Well, almost everybody."

"Makes sense. Nobody would cross you, not even the Volkov Group. They might try to take delivery then refuse payment to someone else, but not you."

"It's a good deal for everyone." She looked at me. "There's a bounty on you too, very substantial." She glanced at Tess and Delaney. Delaney looked back at her laconically. "But I'm not stupid enough to start anything with K2. It would be bad for business."

Tess gave a somewhat plastic smile. "We're glad to hear that."

"Kurt warned me to be on my best behavior. He said any misunderstanding with this particular team is likely to result in... I believe the term he used was 'immediate and substantial property damage.' That doesn't sound very profitable at all."

Delaney looked slowly from Wendy to the plane. "But it'd have been fun. I've never driven a plane before."

Wendy appraised her for a moment. "Are you planning on flying it?"

An outright evil grin lit Delaney's face as she eyed the distance from the aircraft to the tower. "I wouldn't have to get it that far. It's got wheels. I'd get it there. I've driven any kinda rig that's ever been made."

Whatever I was expecting from Wendy, it wasn't a completely honest answering smile. "'I've driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed.' I haven't heard that in...forever. God, Kurt loves that song."

Delaney's grin was suddenly almost friendly. "He sings it all the time. He was sure you'd remember."

Check and double-check. Delaney and Wendy had just used a secondary pass-phrase and counter-sign. Kurt had told the team they could trust Wendy. The extra layer was a way to ask Wendy if she was under duress. A way to make sure that Mackenzie was the only sniper on the field.

A check set in place decades ago. Damn, it was good to be working with professionals.

"We used to..." Wendy stopped and looked down at her red-soled Christian Louboutin high heels for a moment. "I'm glad he still sings."

"Every week, the training team does a Karaoke night." Tess shook her head with a rueful smile.

"Please tell him that Chip and I would like to try to drop by some time." Wendy sighed and looked at them. "Can I get a moment with your principal?"

We walked several feet away.

"Evelyn said to put your ticket on her tab if you need one."

"No, I think we've just about finished this."

"In that case, she said to let you know that she is covering your K2 bill. She sees this as her responsibility.'

I snorted. "I'll let her do that. I don't even know how much this will all cost."

"It'd be pretty substantial. Kurt says your team is a premium service."

I looked back over at the girls. "You don't exactly seem surprised by teenage mercenaries."

"One hears things. The fact that they placed sniper cover and put hollow charges on the undercarriage as soon as they walked up makes it pretty clear that at least some of the stories are true."

"I saw that."

Wendy gave a solemn nod. "If you can't be sure you'll win, make it clear that there's an unacceptable cost to trying to take you down. It's practically the story of my life."

"Mine too, although it's usually political and not murder attempts."

"There's a difference?" She looked pointedly at Delaney. "So that you know. She has a very substantial price on her head, too."

I followed her glance. "One does hear things. Do you know who?"

"I haven't pinned that down; it's a rather secretive issue, even by my standards. The rumor is that it's a trap. According to the story, everyone who's tried to collect has ended up quite dead, and the body count is supposed to be very, very high."

"I've spent enough time with her to suspect the body count rumor is probably true. Besides, it'd have to be one hell of a lot of money to risk bringing K2 down on you."

"Kurt and Katie would take it very personally."

"But they're okay with this...?"

"It's different. Business is business, Maria. Inherent risk. Kurt doesn't write greeting cards for a living."

*****

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis

*****

I sat alone in Mooky's bedroom with a brand new laptop. Getting into the flash drive was simple. The passphrase prompt was "Cabo Bikini." Only I knew what the obvious answer to that was. And I have every intention of taking that to my grave.

For a long while, I paged through document after document. Pay-offs, pay-outs, promises made, promises kept.

Wire diagrams outlining a vast conspiracy intended to dig in and spread like a cancer.

I'd seen something like this before on some nature show. There's a horrifying fungus that can infect ants. It takes them over from the inside, growing next to the brain and eventually taking over the central nervous system. When it does, the ant does whatever the fungus programs it to do. It has no resistance and no will. The ant looks the same, but serves to do whatever the fungus needs to grow stronger.

Until the ant dies, of course.

Folder after folder, document after document.

I clicked on a video in a folder, then just stared at the screen, feeling sick. Michael's thin, ravaged face stared back at me, frozen. I'd paused the video to catch my breath. I'd spent the last several days suppressing this. Not thinking about Michael actually being gone. As much as I had known it was coming with cancer advancing relentlessly, it still hurt almost too much even to feel real.

I pressed "play" even as I willed myself not to.

He'd suspected they were on to him, that they had people inside the Bureau. He wanted to look into one more thing but couldn't risk losing the data. One copy on him, one taped to the underside of the table. One more thing to do. The date on the file was the night before he was killed, the same day this all started.

He broke the one rule we'd always followed. He talked about the should-have-beens, the could-have-beens, and what we really meant to each other.

Even when the video stopped, I couldn't stop looking at him. I choked and held myself and felt all my internal walls give way.

It was almost two hours later when I left the room. All three girls took one glance and looked away uncomfortably. With my red puffy eyes and splotchy skin. I might as well have had a sign around my neck that said, "cried for hours."

The moment he saw me, Mooky got up from the counter and wordlessly gave me a gentle, practiced hug. The kind of perfect hug that someone who has dealt with grief over and over knows how to give. When we finally stepped back, he gave me a soft, understanding, sad half-smile.

After a long moment of quiet, Tess spoke up. "So what do we know, and what do we do next?"

*****

"Synarchists, Dude."

Delaney stared at Mooky in puzzlement. "What?"

"Super rich guys trying to take over the government. This isn't the first time. It was, like, the 1930s."

Tess shook her head slowly. "What are you talking about?"

"They've tried this before. There was like this secret cabal of rich guys..." He raised his eyebrows "...who wanted to rule the world. Dude named Smedley... Marine dude... Butler, yeah, Smedley Butler. I remember 'cause that's like the coolest name..."

Mackenzie looked doubtful, but Delaney's eyes narrowed. "Dude. Focus. What did he do?"

"He dimed them out. They tried to use him to take over, but he called them out to Congress."

Delaney swiveled to look at me. "Is he right?"

"It's been a long time since I took history, but it sounds vaguely familiar."

Tess looked up from her computer, looking drawn. "General Smedley Butler. The Business Plot of 1934 to overthrow the US government. Congress just sort of glossed it over, and everybody pretended it hadn't happened. Too many people with too much money and too much power involved."

Delaney gave Mooky a suspicious stare. "Where did you hear about this stuff?"

He shrugged. "I have a friend, Petey, and she does this podcast. Cool stuff, you know. Aliens, weather control machines, she's the real deal."

At a total loss for words, Delaney held her hands up in surrender and looked back at Tess. "Just stick to the plot; let's not worry about weather control machines for now."

We all moved around next to her and looked at the screen. Tess took a deep breath and put one finger up to the screen. "Look at the names."

Delaney looked at the ones Tess pointed out. "You have got to be fucking kidding me. It's been a hundred fucking years."

"Almost." My voice sounded hollow in my ears. Reisner, McGuire...Reinhardt.

Mackenzie's tone came in a whisper. "It wasn't just the US, was it? France... they really meant it..."

She looked up at me. "Or still mean it."

"They spent three hundred million dollars trying to pull it off in 1934." Tess brought up another page briefly. "That's almost six billion today."

Delaney's lip curled in a nasty sneer as she looked at the screen. "Billionaires. That kind of money does something to people. It rots their brains and makes them think they're fucking gods or something."

I shook my head. "Aren't you the one that called the guy 'cash money' earlier?"

She gave me an unblinking stare. "I don't want money for money's sake. Money is just a tool to stay alive. I've dealt with people with this kind of money before." She gestured sharply at the screen. "They turn into monsters."

For a moment, she stared right through me, her eyes focused on a different time and place. Delaney's lip curled, grim and predatory.

Her jaw twitched and tightened; I could see tension and rage building in her, wire-taut nerves starting to fire, a growing manic glitter beginning to burn in her eyes. Something, maybe hatred, flashed behind the anger. "We're going after them, right?"

"No." I waited until she turned her now-unblinking stare on me. "This is for other people."

She was trying to figure out whether she believed me or not. I continued. "Part of this goes to the FBI and the White House. They have the resources to do this."

Tess looked over her computer. "The government didn't do much with it last time."

They already knew too much to bother hiding the rest, so I continued. "Some of it will go to Spooky's people, and some to the people Pogo works with. They won't stop. Ever."

"What about us?" Mackenzie seemed to be doing math in her head.

"I'd like to keep you and K2 out of it. This isn't your fight."

Delaney looked put out. But she smiled when she heard what else I had to say. "Besides, I'd like to keep you as a really nasty surprise if things go wrong."

*****

"I got a call from the Director of the FBI this morning." On the tablet, I saw Derek lean back as he talked.

"Let them know that once we see Reisner and McGuire in cuffs on the news, we'll talk."

"I already did, but it's not going to happen. They found Reisner hanging in his shower this morning. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense McGuire had a fatal one-car accident last night."

I shook my head. "Not very subtle."

"I think that's the point. To me, it looks like somebody has taken this personally."

For a moment, I wondered what he actually knew. Maybe Donna had let Spooky off the leash, maybe Howard was cleaning up, or perhaps the conspiracy was cleaning up after itself. Too many maybes.

"Maybe."

He flipped a page to check something out. "The FBI has swept a bunch of the lower level ones on the list, but a little bird told me that they were in it for the money and didn't really know who they were working for. Some in Homeland and Department of Defense, a number in the AG's office, some in the FBI. A fair number of Congressional staffers. A few more scattered across different departments and agencies. Even HUD."

A few hours later, I watched on the news as Emma, cane in hand, stood quietly behind the FBI Director as he conducted a press conference regarding a spy ring that had been uncovered "by hard work and sacrifice." He briefly introduced her as the lead on the investigation.

In the back of my head, I could hear Michael chuckle. Wherever they were, the leaders of the conspiracy had to be taking a very deep breath. Early on, Emma's insane drive had combined with her lack of height to give her the somewhat sneering nickname "Dangermouse." Now that name was only spoken with respect, mostly by members of the Hostage Rescue Team. Emma was a fanatic, the FBI-as-it-should-be was her religion, and she, a Holy Priestess, would fight to the death keep it pure. Worse yet, there was no way to buy her off. As Evelyn's daughter, she was the heir to the almost incomprehensible billions of the Reinhardt fortune. She should have been the conspirators' natural ally; she should have been one of them, as her forbearers had.