“And that would be?” Zucker asked, not relaxing for a moment and watching for anything that might suddenly come his way in the form of an attack.
“It is time we initiated the first part of the Round-up Protocol. I have, or will in the very near future, been making contact with several of your counterparts in various states to convey this information as well.”
Now Zucker did relax, since this particular operation had been well established in their little clandestine group from its inception. What was surprising was to discover that apparently there were other similar groupings as this one in other states. That meant this particular group of law enforcement personnel wasn’t really a group at all. It was a cell. An anti-fey cell.
Did that make them terrorists? No, Zucker decided immediately; terrorists killed innocent people to further some kind of religious or ideological doctrine. They focused explicitly on fey, and their goal wasn’t necessarily elimination either. Simple containment away from the human population would be sufficient, for now.
The Round-up Protocol, however, was something entirely different. As it had been explained, Zucker was to focus on investigations that involved one particular type of fey with the intention of detention, likely through the use of force, for some future purpose beyond containment. It was a very risky proposition, but it had been pointed out that the benefits could very well be worth it.
“Target parameters?” Zucker asked simply.
“Those fey in possession of healing abilities, for others not themselves,” the man clarified. “We will ensure your office receives tips or complaints that will fall to you specifically and possess enough legitimacy for you to affect an arrest. Once the fey is in detention, we will take over from there.”
Unable to help himself, Zucker began to experience a sense of nervous excitement. Up until this point, other than his own ‘off the books’ cultivation of unknowing allies through internet blogs and websites, all he and his associates had done with this shadowy stranger was gather information. While it could certainly be useful, it was also pointless unless the information was acted upon. Now, he and he alone out of his little… well, there was no longer any point in denying they were a cell was there… had been given an assignment. The feeling was close to what he experienced the first time he had been told he would be working under Agent Jacobs.
“By the way,” the shadowy man asked in a deceptively casual voice, “how are things progressing with your… alternative efforts?”
“Everything is coming along smoothly,” Zucker replied, doing his best to sound professional and keep the anticipatory grin out of his voice. “There are many members chomping at the bit to take some kind of action and more than one has suggested the Institute.”
“Is there a danger of one of these ‘members’ taking action before proper preparations and coordination can be put into place?”
“Not yet, but it’s a little dicey how long they’ll sit on their hands,” the agent admitted. “With Harold Westlake’s speech yesterday, it’s really added some serious fuel to the fire.”
“That was to be expected,” the secretive leader told the FBI agent, “and in the end, could prove beneficial to us.”
“How?” Zucker asked in confusion.
“When a very public and well-respected figure makes an announcement like Harold Westlake did, it sows the seeds of legitimacy when it comes to people’s hidden feelings on certain matters.”
“In other words,” the agent surmised, “if someone like Westlake can be anti-fey, it can’t be all that bad of a point of view and people shouldn’t be ashamed to make their opinions public.”
“Essentially, yes, and I imagine these results will reach beyond the country’s borders as well.”
That caused Zucker to raise a speculative eyebrow. “You really think so?”
“The world watches the United States, for the most part, as a leader in not only governmental, but sociological norms. If other countries view the United States exemplifying anti-fey views as being acceptable, it is very likely others will follow suit.”
“Including Canada,” Zucker said, following the man’s logic with a smile.
Much to the agent’s surprise, the man shook his head with a sigh. “Unfortunately, while some of the populace might hold those values, the majority of Canada and its government do not and there is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon. There is a reason why that country is considered one of the friendliest in the world.”
“But if there are segments of the population that are already strongly anti-fey,” Zucker argued, “then, it’s possible more could follow suit.”
“Possible,” the man admitted, “but not to the degree of certainty that would be useful. For now, we will simply continue as we have been, and you will begin your assignment.”
Nodding, the agent took that as a signal the meeting was over and slipped from the booth, walking directly to the front door of the restaurant and departing without even a sideways glance. From there, he made his way back to the Bureau in anticipation of the next case that came across his desk.
It was a full two minutes before the man in the shadows, still in the restaurant booth, retrieved his phone from his suit pocket and sent an encrypted text message informing the recipient that the New York contingent was now in operation.
Undisclosed location, Chicago, Illinois
“Dammitt!” Gear snapped as the circuit board sparked briefly before completely frying.
“What’s up?” WiseCrack asked, poking her head out of the door leading to what she called her ‘command center’.
“Nothing,” the weaponsmith sighed, leaning back in his chair and scrubbing at his face in aggravation.
“Burned out another circuit board huh?” the hacker smiled knowingly. “How far did you get this time?”
“I was able to get the voltage up by a factor of ten, but when I cycled it through the capacitor, it fried the onboard electronic regulator.”
Stepping out of her room, WiseCrack walked over to look at the hodgepodge of electronic equipment spread out over the light table. “Okay, I’m not an engineering wizard, but what are you trying to do here?”
Turning slightly, the weaponsmith pointed to the computer screen currently projected against the far wall. On it were a myriad of electronic and mechanical devices in exploded views along with several engineering formulas. “Ashe was able to get me the specs for that Canadian railgun he was talking about. They were able to get the components miniaturized enough that it could all be contained within the frame roughly the size of a Barrett fifty-cal sniper rifle without needing any external power source.”
Strolling over to the wall, WiseCrack looked over the various technical schematics and formulas, some of which she understood and some she didn’t. “So, where are you running into problems?”
“Miniaturizing them even more so they’ll fit in the grip of a forty-five,” he grumped, reaching over to take a long slug of his energy drink. “Somehow, I need to come up with a way to house a pretty damn powerful energy source, capacitor, power transfer unit… all of which are capable of generating a focused electromagnetic charge ranging from one hundred to five hundred thousand amps.”
It was that last bit of information that had the hacker turning to raise a delicate and curious eyebrow. “Why the amperage range?”
“Ashe wants to be able to adjust penetration capacity on the fly so he doesn’t end up shooting through three buildings and killing a bunch of civilians.”
“Then, why not simply have an established amperage that matches the kinetic velocity of a standard forty-five or thirty-eight round?” WiseCrack asked. “That way he doesn’t have to worry about it.”
“He says he wants to be able to have ‘maximum penetration in case the target has armored cover’,” Gear grumbled in an obvious parody of his boss. “If I can even shove technology like this into a pistol, which I still don’t even know if I can, stuffing in the tech to be able to modulate the charge that
much is damn near impossible.”
While the weaponsmith dropped his head into his hands with a groan, WiseCrack was looking over all of the data projected onto the wall while lightly rubbing her chin. While, as she said, she was no mechanical engineer, the problem Gear was currently having reminded her of a similar computer issue she’d dealt with a couple of years ago involved chaining together a virus and multiple command codes to operate simultaneously. It had taken several months of testing and experimentation, but eventually she’d been able to get the problem worked out to create one hell of a computer virus. Maybe the same principle could apply here.
Turning around, she smiled as the weapons engineer lifted a dull, beaten down gaze from the table. “You know what; I think I might have an idea.”
From the seat before his command module, Ashe allowed the smallest trace of a smile to briefly cross his lips as he heard the weaponsmith and hacker begin to animatedly discuss a new approach to their current problem. He was pleased with their progress, but not at all surprised by it. After all, it was why he had taken Gear into his confidence in the first place and why he had brought WiseCrack into the fold as well. The pair might not realize it themselves, but they were in the top tier when it came to their specialities. Individually, they were outstanding. Together… well, Ashe was quite certain they would accomplish their assigned tasks within the next two to three weeks.
Which was good, because the vigilante was growing tired of waiting. Operation Insurrection had already begun, having been worked on parallel to his other operations and nightly patrols, but at present, he was limited to what he could accomplish without more specialized equipment. Obtaining public and even not so public records about Westlake and his company had been pathetically easy. They also told him very little more than he already knew:
Harold Westlake was born to blue collar parents in Pittsburgh. Large in size, he maintained a very solid, high grade point average that only seemed to suffer slightly because he was also very active in sports. Logic dictated that he was likely pressured into those by his father, who was also a former high school football star who never went anywhere after graduation.
Upon graduation, he went to the University of Pittsburgh business school on an academic scholarship as opposed to one related to sports. In fact, beyond personal physical fitness, Westlake seemed to have forgone any sporting activities since high school. That was perhaps why he seemed to excel in his classes, graduating with high honors and even making the dean’s list. A check of his grades and even some of his term papers indicated a highly intelligent individual with a very cutthroat approach to the business world. What was surprising was that he chose to hold a minor in chemical engineering as well – something that commonly wouldn’t be closely associated with a business degree.
Apparently, the approach and his choice of major and minor had served him well. Shortly after graduation, he was able to establish a very small chemical distribution company that worked very closely with Pittsburgh’s three largest chemical manufacturers. It wasn’t long before he not only began to expand his company, but he was actually able to begin purchasing the chemical plants as well. This allowed him to obtain something of a monopoly on the chemical manufacturing and distribution for the majority of Pennsylvania.
From there, things seemed to have steamrolled. Between Westlake’s merging and his own considerable business savvy, the company started doing better and better while also continuing to expand into other states. In ten years, they had practically a stranglehold on the chemical manufacturing and distribution business. While the companies themselves might have retained their former names after being purchased, they were all subsidiaries of the now behemoth known as Westlake Industries.
That was when things started getting interesting. Apparently, Westlake hadn’t been satisfied with chemical engineering and started integrating mechanical engineering into the company’s portfolio. This allowed his corporation to not only be the premier business for chemicals, but it also designed and manufactured the very devices used to store, distribute, and utilize those very chemicals.
Which was when he apparently decided to dip his toe into the field of biology and genetics. While there were no records of him receiving any schooling on the subject, the various memos, emails, and other records that were still accessible through the internet showed a very keen understanding of the subject matter. That meant Westlake had essentially taught himself a great deal about biology and genetics.
That in and of itself, was impressive. It also made Ashe wonder what else there might be regarding Westlake hidden in those highly secured servers in the heart of Westlake Industries. Based upon some of their activities that he was aware of through WiseCrack’s brief undercover operation, it was pretty clear that there was more to Project Mantis and Project Norman that a DOD contract. While the rationale for Project Mantis might seem logical in a very foolish, sci-fi fantasy sense, Ashe knew better.
Regardless of what people might think of military leadership, they weren’t a group of misogynistic morons sitting and drinking brandy, smoking cigars, and talking about their latest sexual conquest alongside their military ones. They examined facts and tactical data very carefully and made decisions that would be most efficient and, more important, most successful. The idea of the DOD coming to Westlake with Project Mantis just didn’t fit. Even the most green of generals or CIA heads would know that an operation of this type was a huge risk. WiseCrack and Gear’s questioning the very feasibility of such a project when they could simply use female agents was quite correct. It was a waste of time and resources to essentially turn a male agent into a female one by transplanting his consciousness into a female body. It would take months of conditioning to get the agent to be able to act like a natural female, and that wasn’t even taking into account the specialized nature of the operation. Even working on the completely false assumption that female agents were more inclined to develop debilitating emotional bonds with their targets, in the time it took to develop and train just one transplanted agent another ten could already be in the field and well into gathering intel. It made absolutely no sense…
Unless the purpose of Project Mantis, and by extension Project Norman, had nothing to do with the DOD or CIA.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that Westlake had been working on Project Mantis and Project Norman, with an actual success under his belt and then announced his candidacy for President only a few months later. The question was, how did these two projects fit into Westlake’s bid for the presidency. More importantly, why did he even want to be President.
Yes, President of the United States sounded impressive on paper, but Westlake probably possessed more power financially and politically with his business than he would as President. He was easily one of the wealthiest men in the country, if not the world. He had made a significant number of political contributions to a great many members of Congress, which basically meant they worked for his best interests. Why, then, would he potentially give that up for a minimum of four years? What was his end game?
Letting out a slow breath, Ashe shook his head in frustration that he wouldn’t really be able to obtain any solid answers until Gear and WiseCrack had completed their assignments. Until then, it would do him no good beating his head against the wall. The best solution to this level of anticipatory frustration was work.
Rising from his chair, Ashe walked over to his equipment and arsenal storage facility along the far wall and began his preparations to… relieve some stress.
Tearmann Institute, Newfoundland, Caim Hall
“So, are you excited?” Kitty asked excitedly.
Turning his head slightly, Link raised an eyebrow at his current walking companion. “Why would I be excited?”
“Because we finally get to really work with our power,” the brunette sexpot said with an eye roll that clearly indicated such a thing should have been obvious.
“I’ve been using mine for years,” Link pointed out. “I pretty much know wha
t it can do.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Kitty said with a pretty pout, “I’ve always been so worried about accidentally hurting someone, so I haven’t really been able to practice with my knives.”
“Well you’ll get plenty of chances to cut loose here.”
Turning, Kitty and Link saw the man who was their instructor approaching them from the far side of the building. When she had first met Gunther (call me Gunny) Sheppard yesterday, it had taken everything Kitty had not to let her tongue roll out of her mouth while practically salivating with a primal kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food.
To say that Gunny was an excellent specimen of the male form was something of an understatement. In his workout attire of simple black shorts and a black T-shirt, both bearing the gold ‘Ranger’ emblem, there was absolutely no question whatsoever that this man was in prime physical shape. While Kitty was no longer under the influence of Libidine, and thus no longer a nearly out of control sex-fiend, she still had quite the healthy libido and was most certainly a girl who appreciated the male form. If any man would test the limits of her dedication to Angela, Gunny Sheppard was that man. Kitty had persevered and not made any kind of sexual overture towards her instructor, but damn if she didn’t need to take care of herself that night when her friends were asleep.
As it was, she could only hope neither of them could see that her nipples were standing at full attention beneath her sports bra. “Hey Mr. Sheppard,” she called out hoping her voice didn’t take on the husky, bedroom tone that she oh so wanted to use.
Marking Territory: An Awakened Novel (The Rising Storm Book 1) Page 8
