Chapter 3
Dark Night
Alvaro Gonzales looked around at the little bonsai on his desk, the three years of hard work spent on the tree had developed it into a miniature sequoia, a minute replica of the mountainous sequoia’s that could be found in the north. The North American Protectorate border patrol office for the Fifth Region was practically empty, soon all the cleaners would be returning home after cleaning up the days result of a weekly roundup of illegal immigrants trying to cross the border into the state of Mexico. It was close to 5 am, the hours before dawn were always the quietest in San Miguel, Washington was another matter entirely, the capital was always hungry for information on the state of the border and telephone calls would be frequent, even at this time of the morning. Alvaro may have been the captain of this outfit, however it was his turn for the night watch and even captains had to respect the shifts. He looked out of the window and wondered when the sun would rise.
Twenty kilometres south, in the Liberated Southern America’s, or the Lawless Southern Anarchy as it was more commonly known, a group of military vehicles, ex Empire models made to withstand the heavy rainfall that would occur there periodically, passed through a sleeping village, bound towards the city of Rainer, the closest city to the northern border, a base for all kinds of illicit activities and a gateway even more clandestine citizens to enter the Northern protectorate.
Alvaro shut the door of the toilet, reminding himself to put less Chilli in the tacos next time, walking towards his desk he passed Miguel’s computer and saw a message alert flashing on-screen, the damned fool had forgotten to close the connection, security or no security, a digital attack was more likely to succeed if a connection was left unattended. Alvaro was going to have a few words with the detective; however before shutting down the machine, curiosity overtook him. Looking at the monitor, Alvaro noticed a few non-protocol files on his colleague, the usual files a person might keep to brighten up a computer, photo’s, music and other non-related files, this was not Alvaro’s concern for the moment. A much more interesting file had grabbed his attention; it was named TTT and looked to be a file full of charts, as he could see from the preview appearing on the desktop. The alert message popped back up as Alvaro clicked on it “DD: Ref 223” the nick which wrote the message was “Loopa9er”, Alvaro had no idea who this was, so he answered back “Hi, Miguel isn’t here at the time, want me to tell him something?” Alvaro thought about Miguel and how he was away for a few days, “following a case” was what he said when he had told Alvaro he was leaving. Loopa9er answered back “Leave the building now, security is compromised – Direct Danger – Leave now” Alvaro looked at the screen, he was wondering who this prankster was, he felt a thud to the head and wondered why the world had gone red.
The man behind Alvaro wiped the blood off the screen of the monitor, and pushed the chair the body was sitting on towards the left; he put a micro-drive into the USB port of the computer, and copied the TTT file onto the portable drive. Ignoring the flashing message he put his gun into Alvaro’s hand and walked away. Suicide from stress was frequent in the police force.
The vehicles had just left the main dirt roads leading to Rainer when they took a sudden turn to the left, towards the forest, a few minutes into it the stopped at a clearing. A Silent-Storm helicopter was hovering above it; the people in the cars hadn’t noticed it but knew it would be there. A line was dropped and two men went out of the second vehicle, the other two switched off their lights. The man that got out from the passenger side looked at his companion and nodded, his companion took the rope line and attached the suitcase he was carrying. The rope quickly tensed and then the suitcase was reeled up. The two men on the ground looked up, for a few minutes nothing happened, then another rope was lowered, thicker than the previous one, and a man abseiled down from it. The two men looked up, but they couldn’t see who it was. With a soft thud the man landed between them and went straight for the middle car. Without waiting the other two followed immediately whilst the remaining two cars turned on their engines, in half a minute all three cars were running out of the clearing and towards Rainer.
Detective Miguel Jonathan Caballero put his multi-focal binoculars away and lowered himself from the tree he was perched on, his information was correct, the exchange had taken place when his informant had told him it would. He didn’t know why, but an exchange had just taken place between two of the most important companies on the planet, Typhoon High-Tech and Typhoid Biotech, an exchange taking place in the LSA, 20 km from any kind of civilization these companies might be interested in, away from any of the drug fields which Typhoid cultivated in the LSA and away from any of the test labs that Typhoon owned in some of the LSA’s bigger cities. There was obviously something someone wanted him to find out about. Now the real problem lay in the why and who. Why, well, thought Miguel, a grudge, a business deal, a contract to secure… could be anything, could be nothing at all and he had been diverted from his work back in San Miguel, but no worry, if it involved the first of the two T’s in his TTT case file, Typhoon and Typhoid, then he was interested no matter what. Who on the other hand was a more relevant question at the moment, because of the who, then the why could take on all kinds of meanings. A Business rival? Miguel thought about this for a moment, both companies had their fair shares of rivals on the planet, but the corps, much like a nation, didn’t like interference, especially from the NAP police. So that could exclude SlyphTech and SoenjeGear, two of Typhoons biggest weapon building rivals and also NadrasG and Biolabs, Typhoid’s biggest rivals in the pharmaceutical field. So maybe it was a disgruntled employee, maybe a grunt that didn’t get paid, or a lieutenant that got left behind. There were too many options to contemplate without any proof, whoever this Loopa9er was he wouldn’t find out by standing in the middle of the jungle. Miguel put the thought aside and made his way back to his 4-wheeler. The night was ending and he didn’t want to get caught in the daylight. Not when the Silver was prowling.
20 minutes, too many bumps later, feeling his backside go numb, Miguel thanked God that he was back on a civilized road, which in the LSA meant a road which was at least two metres wide and didn’t have trees growing in the middle of it every metre. He also thanked God he didn’t meet the Silver along his way out, that machine gone wild, killing everything it gazed at, not a happy thing to meet in the middle of a jungle. 5 years out in the jungle now, it had replaced the old and possibly fake legends of the Chupacabra with something altogether more real, more deadly and definitely more vicious. Anyway, that wasn’t his concern now, let the Realterers deal with that, if they ever managed to find it. He looked back once just to make sure, then sighed and sped on towards a possibly tarred road.
It was about noon when Miguel reached the patrol office, that flat tire and the fact that he had to trek for 15km to the nearest Officina and back didn’t help him get back any quicker. He looked around and saw more activity than usual, sure there where hectic days, but this was definitely not normal, helicopters where flying in mid air, about a dozen or so he counted, a few black ones, NAP Internal Affairs, around here? There were a few Jeeps near the compound, and then as he entered the road leading straight to the office he noticed a mass of mixed border patrol officers and NAP Internal Affairs agents. Something had happened and it had happened while he was gone. Miguel looked up, the helicopters were hovering around the office, he spotted the local news network helicopter and wondered if his friend Antonio was up there, piloting the helicopter, he wouldn’t have missed a good chance to sneak a look inside the Border Patrol precinct, but then, he wouldn’t have missed a chance to see anything. Miguel parked the jeep opposite the precinct after weaving his way through the Internal Affairs vans.
Alvaro Gonzales looked around at the little bonsai on his desk, the three years of hard work spent on the tree had developed it into a miniature sequoia, a minute replica of the mountainous sequoia’s that could be found in the north. The North American Protectorate border patrol office for the Fifth Region was practically empty, soon all the cleaners would be returning home after cleaning up the days result of a weekly roundup of illegal immigrants trying to cross the border into the state of Mexico. It was close to 5 am, the hours before dawn were always the quietest in San Miguel, Washington was another matter entirely, the capital was always hungry for information on the state of the border and telephone calls would be frequent, even at this time of the morning. Alvaro may have been the captain of this outfit, however it was his turn for the night watch and even captains had to respect the shifts. He looked out of the window and wondered when the sun would rise.
Twenty kilometres south, in the Liberated Southern America’s, or the Lawless Southern Anarchy as it was more commonly known, a group of military vehicles, ex Empire models made to withstand the heavy rainfall that would occur there periodically, passed through a sleeping village, bound towards the city of Rainer, the closest city to the northern border, a base for all kinds of illicit activities and a gateway even more clandestine citizens to enter the Northern protectorate.
Alvaro shut the door of the toilet, reminding himself to put less Chilli in the tacos next time, walking towards his desk he passed Miguel’s computer and saw a message alert flashing on-screen, the damned fool had forgotten to close the connection, security or no security, a digital attack was more likely to succeed if a connection was left unattended. Alvaro was going to have a few words with the detective; however before shutting down the machine, curiosity overtook him. Looking at the monitor, Alvaro noticed a few non-protocol files on his colleague, the usual files a person might keep to brighten up a computer, photo’s, music and other non-related files, this was not Alvaro’s concern for the moment. A much more interesting file had grabbed his attention; it was named TTT and looked to be a file full of charts, as he could see from the preview appearing on the desktop. The alert message popped back up as Alvaro clicked on it “DD: Ref 223” the nick which wrote the message was “Loopa9er”, Alvaro had no idea who this was, so he answered back “Hi, Miguel isn’t here at the time, want me to tell him something?” Alvaro thought about Miguel and how he was away for a few days, “following a case” was what he said when he had told Alvaro he was leaving. Loopa9er answered back “Leave the building now, security is compromised – Direct Danger – Leave now” Alvaro looked at the screen, he was wondering who this prankster was, he felt a thud to the head and wondered why the world had gone red.
The man behind Alvaro wiped the blood off the screen of the monitor, and pushed the chair the body was sitting on towards the left; he put a micro-drive into the USB port of the computer, and copied the TTT file onto the portable drive. Ignoring the flashing message he put his gun into Alvaro’s hand and walked away. Suicide from stress was frequent in the police force.
The vehicles had just left the main dirt roads leading to Rainer when they took a sudden turn to the left, towards the forest, a few minutes into it the stopped at a clearing. A Silent-Storm helicopter was hovering above it; the people in the cars hadn’t noticed it but knew it would be there. A line was dropped and two men went out of the second vehicle, the other two switched off their lights. The man that got out from the passenger side looked at his companion and nodded, his companion took the rope line and attached the suitcase he was carrying. The rope quickly tensed and then the suitcase was reeled up. The two men on the ground looked up, for a few minutes nothing happened, then another rope was lowered, thicker than the previous one, and a man abseiled down from it. The two men looked up, but they couldn’t see who it was. With a soft thud the man landed between them and went straight for the middle car. Without waiting the other two followed immediately whilst the remaining two cars turned on their engines, in half a minute all three cars were running out of the clearing and towards Rainer.
Detective Miguel Jonathan Caballero put his multi-focal binoculars away and lowered himself from the tree he was perched on, his information was correct, the exchange had taken place when his informant had told him it would. He didn’t know why, but an exchange had just taken place between two of the most important companies on the planet, Typhoon High-Tech and Typhoid Biotech, an exchange taking place in the LSA, 20 km from any kind of civilization these companies might be interested in, away from any of the drug fields which Typhoid cultivated in the LSA and away from any of the test labs that Typhoon owned in some of the LSA’s bigger cities. There was obviously something someone wanted him to find out about. Now the real problem lay in the why and who. Why, well, thought Miguel, a grudge, a business deal, a contract to secure… could be anything, could be nothing at all and he had been diverted from his work back in San Miguel, but no worry, if it involved the first of the two T’s in his TTT case file, Typhoon and Typhoid, then he was interested no matter what. Who on the other hand was a more relevant question at the moment, because of the who, then the why could take on all kinds of meanings. A Business rival? Miguel thought about this for a moment, both companies had their fair shares of rivals on the planet, but the corps, much like a nation, didn’t like interference, especially from the NAP police. So that could exclude SlyphTech and SoenjeGear, two of Typhoons biggest weapon building rivals and also NadrasG and Biolabs, Typhoid’s biggest rivals in the pharmaceutical field. So maybe it was a disgruntled employee, maybe a grunt that didn’t get paid, or a lieutenant that got left behind. There were too many options to contemplate without any proof, whoever this Loopa9er was he wouldn’t find out by standing in the middle of the jungle. Miguel put the thought aside and made his way back to his 4-wheeler. The night was ending and he didn’t want to get caught in the daylight. Not when the Silver was prowling.
20 minutes, too many bumps later, feeling his backside go numb, Miguel thanked God that he was back on a civilized road, which in the LSA meant a road which was at least two metres wide and didn’t have trees growing in the middle of it every metre. He also thanked God he didn’t meet the Silver along his way out, that machine gone wild, killing everything it gazed at, not a happy thing to meet in the middle of a jungle. 5 years out in the jungle now, it had replaced the old and possibly fake legends of the Chupacabra with something altogether more real, more deadly and definitely more vicious. Anyway, that wasn’t his concern now, let the Realterers deal with that, if they ever managed to find it. He looked back once just to make sure, then sighed and sped on towards a possibly tarred road.
It was about noon when Miguel reached the patrol office, that flat tire and the fact that he had to trek for 15km to the nearest Officina and back didn’t help him get back any quicker. He looked around and saw more activity than usual, sure there where hectic days, but this was definitely not normal, helicopters where flying in mid air, about a dozen or so he counted, a few black ones, NAP Internal Affairs, around here? There were a few Jeeps near the compound, and then as he entered the road leading straight to the office he noticed a mass of mixed border patrol officers and NAP Internal Affairs agents. Something had happened and it had happened while he was gone. Miguel looked up, the helicopters were hovering around the office, he spotted the local news network helicopter and wondered if his friend Antonio was up there, piloting the helicopter, he wouldn’t have missed a good chance to sneak a look inside the Border Patrol precinct, but then, he wouldn’t have missed a chance to see anything. Miguel parked the jeep opposite the precinct after weaving his way through the Internal Affairs vans.
posted by Alberto Francesco Lemma at 10:32 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home