Chapter Fourteen
Ty
“All right,” T-Rex said. “We can roll out tonight. But I think we need to sift through some information beforehand. I need a good idea of what to pack in my jump bag besides a passport and Rory’s plane meds.
” He turned to where Rory lay belly up, his lips pulled back, making whimpering noises in his sleep.
“Here’s the tricky thing. I’ll show you the pictures and go into more detail on the plane, but we have observed the men getting dressed and undressed in their bathrooms.”
“Quite the kink, White.”
“Shut it, Jeopardy,” T-Rex growled.
“At first, we thought that these might be sacred shirts, similar, for example, to those worn as Mormon Temple Garments. They don’t seem to wash them or have a second one, and they wear them all the time except when they shower.
They shower, use deodorant, and put on the shirt. I sent a picture of it to Iniquus.”
“Iniquus?” Ty leaned forward to scritch Rory and calm the dream.
“My colleague Grey was on a mission with Strike Force. They were all wearing uniform shirts that sent biofeedback to their tactical operations center. Their TOC manager, Deep, kept telling them to drink water because they were dehydrated. When I showed Deep the picture of the shirt, he thought it might be similar to the garments that DARPA had sent to its teams for field testing. Their command has ties to DARPA, and they are often given prototypes to test. Much like one of the automaton start-ups that just deployed battle-droids to Ukraine to test their capacity to carry things on a real-world battlefield. It allows them to put the prototype through rigorous field testing with solid data before it goes into costly production and training cycles.”
“Those automatons can shoot, too,” Havoc said. “So watch your six, White, if you’re in Ukraine and see a bot running around.”
“What’s your concern about the biometric shirt?” Ty asked.
“If these men have biometric shirts, that might be how they activate an alarm between the players. A working theory: They take off the shirt for a stipulated amount of time so they can shower. Then the shirt is back in place within a given timeframe.”
“Just showering? Not for sex?” Havoc asked.
“I haven’t got any data that shows them engaging in sex with each other, and they have no other outreach in the community,” White said. “No friends.”
“No hookers even,” Jeopardy said, “so we have a bunch of guys with a bunch of pent-up testosterone.”
“Nah,” Nitro said, “they take care of that in the shower.”
“Okay, since this is a running theory, Iniquus has looked at the images that you have for the shirt and has said it’s plausible,” Ty said.
“Yes.”
“And one would assume that it would have GPS coordinates as well,” Ty looked at his boots as he thought this through. “The shirt should have heartbeat, respiration, possibly hydration levels, temperature, and place. So we have to have everything locked down before we move anyone.”
“I imagine so,” White said.
“Six different locations?” Ty asked.
“Five,” White answered. “The two new members live together. They’re brothers.”
“When do the targets shower?” Nitro asked.
“Before bed.”
Ty looked up to catch T-Rex’s gaze. “That works.”
“Why do you say that, Ty?” he asked.
“We know where the shirt is supposed to be. We divide and conquer. We go in, take out the guy in the shower, medicate them, stick the shirt back on, and put them in bed. We move on to the next. Rory does an apartment check for a surprise boom. Leaving the prisoner with an Echo teammate to monitor the situation, the rest of the team moves on to location two. Wait for everyone to get wrapped up. Does the phossy guy have a shirt?” Ty asked.
“No,” White said. “Not that I’ve seen. He might be the one who’s managing their system.”
“Take him out, and there is no system,” Havoc said.
“Or,” White said. “Do something unexpected and set off whatever he has going on.”
“Do they shower, then go to sleep?” T-Rex asked. “Does lying in bed with the shirt make sense?”
“Yes.”
“Do they all sleep at the same time?” Jeopardy asked.
“Yes.”
“Are these eight-hour sleep periods?” Nitro asked.
“More or less.”
“Lots of variables with that plan,” Ty said.
“We won’t be able to pounce on all of them in the shower.
That makes me nervous. But if they were asleep, we could crawl in with night-vision gear, put a hand over their mouth, and give them a quick night-night shot.
It might look like a nightmare on a computer screen.
It would only spike adrenaline for a minute. ”
“True for one, but not a series as each one spikes, right?” Havoc looked over to White.
“There will be a random amount of time between. It might get attention, but it wouldn’t be meaningful. If we take their phones and have them in a Faraday bag, no one could call.”
“Or better,” T-Rex said. “We start by putting a jammer outside of Phossy Jaw’s apartment to mess up cell tower connections. No calls to emergency services.”
“How long?” Ty asked. “That could put civilians at risk.”
“I like the shower better, so there are no signs of distress,” White said. “But you’re right. That will be hard to synchronize. They’re all on the same basic schedule.”
“What if there are cameras and audio in the apartments?” Ty asked.
“There’s redundancy, and then there’s overkill. Right?” T-Rex said. “If you had the vital statistics shirts, would you need anything else?”
Ty shook his head, “I wouldn’t think so. No one knows who they are. They think they got out of Morocco free and clear.”
“More questions?” White asked.
“It would be helpful to have layouts,” T-rex said.
“I have the blueprints from their urban planning centers, and they have been confirmed on video for fine-tuning your plans.”
“Thank you,” T-Rex gave her a nod.
“How did you get hold of that?” Havoc asked. “Any chance they got tipped off and paranoid?”
White turned his way. “I posed as a city inspector and asked to see the apartments, checking for radon.”
“And the supers didn’t tell anyone or leave a letter on the doors?”
“Would you?” she asked Havoc.
“Their behaviors didn’t change afterward?” Rory stood up and circled a few times before lying back down on Ty’s feet.
“It’s been five days.”
“So what’s the problem with divide and conquer?” Ty asked.
“I agree with Ty. We hit the brothers’ apartment first as a team.” T-Rex put his hands on his knees. “Leave someone behind to monitor that space. The rest go on to the next apartment. We’ll be one more man down at each site.”
“As we take control of the apartment’s tango, Rory does a sniff test to make sure there are no explosives. In the next apartment, we do the same. And so on and so on.” Ty turned to White. “Any chance they’re putting together drugs for sale so they can raise the money they lost?”
“I don’t care.” White raised a single brow. In the shadows of the fire, she looked like a movie villain. “That’s not my mission. I want the six cell members. Here’s my next question:” White swiveled toward T-Rex, “How are you containing the prisoners without setting off any possible shirt alarms?”
“Medicinal restraints,” he said.
“The shot will hold them with enough time for pick up,” Ty said. “We put on carpet cleaner uniforms. We roll them up in carpets and dump them in a van to deliver them to transportation for your interrogation team.”
“Are they coming on the CIA jet for delivery?” Havoc asked.
“Not enough space unless I put them in the cargo hold,” White said. “No, I have a team with a boat.”
“We’d need to go to the pharma and get the supplies,” Ty said. “Everyone will need plenty of prepped syringes ready in case they miss.”
“What do you all use, T-Rex?” White asked. “Tell me why and the dangers. Dead men tell no stories.”
“If we’re leaving a babysitter with each guy to monitor them, that mitigates most of the problems,” Havoc said.
Nitro stroked a hand through his beard. “Whoever goes after Phossy Jaw will be doing it on his own.”
“I’ll take Phossy. I won’t be alone. I’ll have Rory.” Ty dropped his hand to Rory’s head.
“We’ve moved to using what we call ‘Fiver.’ We start with Ketamine for quick sedation—two to five minutes in an intramuscular shot.
But it cuts the connection between motor function and the brain like that.
” T-Rex snapped his fingers. “The danger is respiratory issues. We can have resus bags with our gear to help them out if they have any problems. In this stacked sequence, ketamine is number one. This stops injury to our operators, but it’s short-lived.
It would only give us a thirty-minute window.
Then we give them the bridge. The bridge is a combo of three drugs in one shot.
It’ll keep our guys calm for hours. Again, there’s the risk of respiratory suppression, and the bridge shot increases that risk.
Blood pressure could drop. We can bring heart monitors and defibrillators from the cage. ”
“You have enough?” White asked.
“We have enough,” Jeopardy said as he moved onto the ground, wrapping his arms around his knees and using the log seat as his backrest.
“Once Phossy Jaw is bagged, what’s next?” Ty asked.
“He’s the smallest of the six,” White said. “Do you think you could wrap him up and throw him in the back of the van? Then you can work backward to T-Rex etcetera.”
“I don’t see a lot of choice. If we don’t do that, we’ll have to leave one of the others unattended.”
“That will not happen,” White said.
“Havoc, Jeopardy, and Nitro are on the transportation team, removing the six tangos to White’s X.” T-Rex said, “I’ll go with Ty and Rory up to the production apartment and see what’s what. That way, if there is a kaboom, we don’t lose the targets.”
“Or the whole team,” Nitro said grimly. “T-Rex, you’re our commander. You should be with our targets and the team. I’m the explosions expert, I’m the one who would best understand what’s happening if the production apartment has something to do with bombs.”
“All right,” T-Rex said.
“I have another way to deal with this, and it’s possibly simpler,” Havoc said. “Do you remember reading in the news how the men in a small town in Bolivia were raping the women by sending veterinary gas through the windows until they passed out? We could wait until they’re asleep and gas them.”
“That would be simple. But there are a lot of variables we don’t know we could account for,” T-Rex said. “If this were a house in the country, I’d be checking on what those men used. Not in a city apartment building, though.”
“Examples?” Havoc asked.
T-Rex stretched his legs long, crossing one ankle over the other. “Seeping into adjoining apartments and asphyxiating someone’s memaw or newborn.”
“Yeah, no,” Havoc said, “we can’t risk that.”
“Or our guy’s allergic and goes into anaphylaxis,” White said. “Again, I can’t question them if they’re dead.”
“That could happen with the shots, too,” Havoc said.
“They’re pretty widely tolerated,” T-Rex said.
“What if the neighbors get curious about moving carpets so late at night. Would they get involved?” Ty turned to White.
“Not in that part of town,” White said. “Everyone keeps their eyes on their own shoes. But I had the same thought. And just in case it’s helpful, I have access to three carpet cleaner vans. And yes, the targets all have rugs that are big enough for the job on the floor.”
“France is going to just let us slip on out when we’ve bagged our targets?” Ty asked.
“Because things are diplomatically tense, there has been some hesitancy to help us. If anything were to go wrong and the public became aware that the United States was operating on French soil, it would cause significant political fallout.”
“How’d you get them to agree?”
“I talked to my DGSE cohort and mentioned that the terrorist attack we thwarted on European soil was made possible by sacrifices made by a special forces operator and a CIA field officer that were career-ending. I requested that, in good faith, we be given a blind eye to go after the group as we believe they're planning an attack on American soil. Of course, if it came out that we asked for France’s help to stop the attack and they refused …”
“We could ask them for their equivalent of a SWAT team to post up outside until we have control.”
“They don’t want the public to notice anything.
There is a great deal of fear in Europe right now, and rightly so, that American allies will be targeted for terrorist attacks.
Because of Europe's proximity to the pressure points, Europeans are much more likely to be targets. We are hardening protocols at the various embassies and suggesting the same at America’s European industry headquarters and anywhere American tourists and military personnel might congregate. Anxiety is high.”
“Is there any chance this group is State-sanctioned?” T_Rex asked. “That an adversarial government might be running them as a cell.”
“We’ll know when we can ask our prisoners,” White said, pressing her lips into a thin line, then stood. “Gentlemen, it’s time for us to go. Leave the mess. I have someone coming to clean up. A quick stop to your lockers, get your sedation drugs, and gather Rory’s supplies, then we’re off to Paris.”