Chapter 23
I had barely slept the night before due to the anticipation and excitement of my new assignment as well as Pathfinder’s current medical condition. Dangerous, could sense my anxiety, and rub repeatedly against my legs. After feeding him, I looked over the confines of my quarters one last time trying to ascertain if I was leaving behind anything of value. My feline friend made short work of his breakfast as I reached into my desk drawer to retrieve a protein bar and some trail mix. I contemplated getting a coffee but didn’t want to risk any uncomfortable stomach rumbling on the ride over. A few minutes later, the phone in my room rang.
“Hello.” The voice on the other end informed me that the humvee had arrived and was ready for loading. “Alright, buddy. Say goodbye to your room.”
I folded his travel crate and secured his working harness around him.
“No leash today boy. You’re gonna have to walk next to me.”
The cheetah let out a vocal chirp and waited obediently by my left side as I picked up my duffle bag and his folded crate. I placed them close to the door as I opened it and propped it open with my boot. After placing everything in the hallway, I flipped the inside door knob lock and closed my room door.
“Time to go, buddy.”
Dangerous and I made the trek down the hallway to the elevator together. Each of us had been informed that the humvees would be parked in the loading zone outside of Entrance 2C. As the doors of the elevator opened, I was surprised to see Mayday standing holding her gear. Having had no previous encounters with her, I had no idea where her quarters were located in the complex. She was a more experienced Joe team member so it made sense that her room would be on a higher floor in the Pit.
“Good morning, Sergeant.”
I dropped my bag and saluted her before entering.
“At ease PFC, and good morning to you as well. Please pick up your bag.”
I immediately complied and stepped into the elevator with Dangerous close to my side.
“That’s a rather large cat you’ve got there. Is he friendly?”
“Only to people he likes.” I smirked as I replied.
“Great! Well, I’m allergic. So, if you can keep him at least ten feet away, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
Dangerous made another chirp as I asked him to heel and as he enjoyed meeting to new people I could tell that he was displeased.
“What about dogs? Junkyard is part of the task force as well.”
“Yeah, dogs too. Pretty much anything that has fur. She reached into her pocket and retrieved a pill bottle.
“Look, I love animals. The problem is my allergies don’t. When I was a kid, I had a snake and fish as pets. Less mess and no fur. Oh, and please call me Mayday.”
She removed the cap from an unlabelled bottle and shook out two yellow pills which she placed in her mouth and swallowed.
“Thank God for over the counter medications.”
I smiled in response. I too had had allergies growing up as a kid, but I was one of the lucky ones who had outgrown them. The elevator came to a stop a short time later and the doors opened. Out of respect for both her rank and her gender, I waited for the Sergeant to exit before me. My parents had raised me properly in terms of manners and the military only further reinforced these practices.
Claymore, Bombstrike, and Muskrat had already loaded their bags onto their humvee and were talking nearby. Once they saw me, they motioned for me to join them. I also spotted Stretcher, Mace and Long Arm loading their gear onto their assigned transport.
“Good morning guys and girls.”
“Hey Buddy, I was wondering when you’d show up. You’re on our humvee. Are you ready for this?”
“I barely slept last night, but absolutely. So, who else is taking our ride?”
“Luckily not Mutt and Junkyard, I could really do without needing a flea bath later, but it’s the four of us and Cutter. It was listed on the back window.”
We all enjoyed a good chuckle, and I took a minute to load my duffle bag and Dangerous’ folded crate into the rear of the Humvee.
Major Morris emerged out from the passenger door of the second Humvee just as Mutt and Junkyard exited the building. General Hawk gave him the thumbs up signal that everyone was present and accounted for.
“Good Morning members of the D.E.F. I’m so happy that we are all on time and ready to move out. I just wanted to give all of you a quick briefing before we load up. We will be taking the humvees over to Brighton Air Strip and boarding a single transport plane to our new base of operation. We should be arriving in under four hours. Are there any questions?”
Bulletproof looked out upon the assembled team, but no one had any.
“All right troops. Fall in!”
We each boarded our respective vehicles and it was a mere twenty-minute ride to the army airstrip. I wondered briefly why we hadn’t just flown out using the Pit’s airstrip, but I’m sure there had to be a legitimate reason for it. After parking, we disembarked and grabbed our gear in order to board the unmarked military transport plane. The interior was surprisingly comfortable and a bit unexpected. Parachutes were available on the back wall in case of an emergency but the plane had been outfitted with two dozen oversized seats with built-in video monitors, a wide aisle and a larger screen at the front.
“OK D.E.F team, we will be airborne in about twenty clicks. We are scheduled to arrive at 1300 hours, 1600 hours Eastern Time, give or take fifteen. Light food and drinks will be available during the flight, but I highly encourage each of you to watch the training video programmed into the plane’s video monitors. Headphones are available in the seat backs. Sit back and enjoy the flight.”
The major took a seat near the front of the plane and it was only a few minutes before the captain’s voice came over the intercom and asked us to find our seats and buckle up for takeoff. I opted to watch the video after only being in flight for twenty minutes. It was an informative narrative focusing on the mission of the D.E.F and the ongoing war on drugs, starting as far back as the 1960s. The video concluded with profiles of some of the world’s most notorious drug lords and the location and names of their associates and cartels. Some, like Los Muertos and the Sinaloa Cartel, I had heard of. Others like Chepe Diablo and the Headhunters were completely foreign to me. I absorbed as much of the information as I could and when the video ended I decided to watch it a second time.
Dangerous spent the majority of the flight pressed up as close to me as possible. It was apparent that the great cat did not enjoy flying which was evident from his flattened ears and intermittent nervous chirping. I rubbed him behind the ears trying and spoke softly to him trying to quell his anxiety. Eventually, he calmed and spent the rest of the flight napping soundly next to my seat.
The plane landed close to its scheduled time and I actually managed to sneak in a nap between watching the video and prepping for landing. I felt slightly refreshed after having not slept much the previous night. As the cabin door opened, we all grabbed our gear and disembarked from the plane. The airstrip was small and as we walked out the door and down the extended aluminum ramp, the major made an announcement, welcoming us to the Garden State.
“Whoah, whoah! We’re in Jersey? No way!”
“That’s right Armed. Welcome home.”
I couldn’t believe it, my task force was going to be operating out of my home state. I looked around the airfield trying to find telltale signs of my location. It wasn’t Teterboro, I was very familiar with that airport. I thought about other smaller airstrips and figured that we were either in Morristown, Lakewood Township or Atlantic City. The surrounding vegetation seemed to match. We boarded a modern-looking silver bus at the bottom of the ramp. After a fifteen minute ride down on a dirt road, the bus came to a stop and parked in front of a rather indistinct two level brick building. There were no identifying signs posted on the building itself, only the following alphanumeric code, N2C-T7. A heliport was visible off to the left as well as a small parking lot with a free-standing matching brick, three bay garage. A large satellite dish surrounded by a barbwire-topped fence completed the location. My time on the G.I.Joe team had sharpened my observation skills, and I could glean from the information, that the site was much more than it first appeared at a cursory glance. We exited the bus and followed Bulletproof through the front doors of the building.
“Welcome to N2C-T7 or base camp everyone. Private quarters and showers are on the second floor. Two roomies per suite. Conference room, computer room, cafeteria, gymnasium, laboratory and weapon’s locker are on the main floor. The bomb shelter is in the basement. It’s not grand, but this is what you will be calling home for our time spent here. Pick a room, unpack and meet me in the conference room in an hour. Any questions?”
“No, sir!”
Muskrat and I opted to share a bunk across the hall from Claymore and Cutter. The ladies bunked together down the hall. Only one room was already occupied and clearly labeled “Bulletproof director.” I set up Dangerous’ travel crate and unpacked my personal items into the footlocker on the left. We then flipped a coin for the top bunk, I lost. The room was larger than our quarters at the Pit, but it did have to accommodate two people.
“I’m going to go check out the cafeteria and the gym. You coming?”
“I’ll be down in a few, just gotta feed the kitty.”
“Alright, I’ll wait.”
We made our way back down to the first floor. The floorplan was basic and the various rooms were easily identifiable. There was a gym with a universal, an elliptical, a treadmill and a sparring mat. The conference room was large enough to seat up to twenty people with a long table, folding chairs, and a projection screen. Directly across the hall was a small but antiseptic laboratory. The cafeteria at the end of the hall was more like a kitchen with a stove, refrigerator, microwave. sink, two vending machines and several tables for sitting. The amenities were not brand new, but everything was quite cozy.
It wasn’t long before the other members of the task force joined us in the conference room. Major Bulletproof Morris entered about ten minutes later carrying a laptop.
“Welcome once again. I trust you all have had a chance to settle in and see the facilities. I would like to take this opportunity to brief you on the recent goings-on. Yesterday, one of our informants, Jimmy the Leech, was shot execution style on one of the Newark piers. He had connections to a local drug ring known as the Headhunters. Our sources have also reported a firebombing at a small dive bar in Connecticut earlier today known to be a hangout for some of the local drug-dealing riff-raff. At the moment, we’re not sure if the incidents are connected, but we will need to run further surveillance to see if the two are linked.”
Everyone in the room looked on as the footage streamed across the big screen at the front of the room.
“A camera secured to a phone pole across the lot caught most of the activity but was out of range to run facial recognition software. No one was killed by the blast and we’re checking local traffic and security camera footage to see if they captured anything else.”
“Would you like me to put a drone in the air over the Newark piers? sir?”
“Negative Bombstrike. The piers are in close vicinity to Newark International Airport and we would have to get military clearance from the state and local government in order to do that.”
“Do we have any other assets that are willing to talk? Or anyone that I can make talk?”
Claymore pounded his closed right fist into the palm of his left hand loudly.
“Right now, we have no one else willing to share intel with us, but I have a bad feeling that something big is going down. I’ve got our resident tech specialist working on it. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Hacker.”
A tall lanky fellow with glasses, a baseball cap and a superhero shirt walked into the room. He looked like a comic-con attendee, but with a little better hygiene.
“Hi everyone. I currently have ears in ten different known meeting places for the local drug rings. If anyone is talking, I’ll hear them. But right now, it’s as quiet as a church mouse out there.”
“I hate sitting on my hands waiting for something to happen, but the hit on Jimmy was completely unforeseen. He was virtually an underling, wasn’t much more than a gopher in the drug world. Someone used him to send a message to someone who obviously poses a much larger threat and I need to find out who that someone is. So in the meantime, I am asking you all to hit the web and do some research. See if we can’t find some answers. Mace and Long Arm take Mayday with you in the cruiser and hit the streets. Clock’s ticking people. Jimmy was an informant with ties to the drug world, but he was still a father, a husband, and someone willing to put his neck on the line in order to make the streets safer. So let’s move out and keep me posted!”
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