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“Interrogation” I answered. “I need cold running water in the basement too. I don’t suppose anyone has access to banana bags and IV needles?”
Blank stares answered me.
“I hate winging things like this!” I shouted.
“Calm down Old Timer” said Slim softly. “They killed your friend and you just told his wife. You haven’t had time to put it all in a box yet.”
“It’s not the box, it’s the chicken and the egg!” I said near shouting. “We need to know what is going on. That means we all need to pull things from our work phones. The only safe place to turn those on is back by that house because any other place can give them a chance to locate us. However, the next time we go there we need to also bag the watcher so I can have a polite weight loss conversation with him. Before I have that conversation, we all need to know what corporate actually assigned each of us to do. Once we nab the watcher, the clock has started. We have just a few days, if that. I’ll need the IVs to keep him conscious while his fluid levels drop. Sadly, he is probably nothing more than muscle. I will spend hours cutting on him and learning less than nothing.”
“Knock back the wine and go to sleep” Slim instructed softly. “We’ll spend a few hours looking through this thumb drive. Compare what is here to what we already know about our assignments and the files we pulled from our phones. You sleep and clear your head. Tomorrow morning we will have a better understanding of what we are dealing with. You or Henry might even be able to use one of your paper shells to buy and abandoned butcher’s shop or small, defunct meat packing plant. As long as there is power and water we should be able to find a way to quiet it. Just give us until the crack of noon before you wake any of us. It will be a late night. Henry says this place is safe so we don’t need a guard, just empty bottles behind the doors.”
“We should probably put Scotch tape on the hood seams as well” Stretch piped up. “Assuming we have any.”
“Should be some in that drawer by the door” said Henry pointing. “Though I must confess to not catching the gist of that request.”
“The Avalon is too low to the ground for someone to put a bomb under it unless they lugged in a floor jack” answered Stretch. “If we only think we are safe and they want us to be an accident, or a big ball of fire on the news, they need to pop the hood. You should probably do the same to your ride Henry. I grew up ghetto. Lots of people had skills when it came to messing with a ride. Brake lines, ignition, steering. Unskilled bangers use guns. Skilled bangers target a ride to take someone out. A bullet wound is a police investigation. A wreck is just a fatal accident report.”
“There is one thing which needs doing” I said softly. “A burner phone with an unrecognizable voice will need to call the police from somewhere on that street. Need to report a stench like a house full of rotting animals or something. I don’t yet know when it needs to be done. Before, during, or after the grab, but, it needs to be done. Once it happens our company phones have to be destroyed.”
“That’s a big gamble!” Stretch blurted.
“Has to be done” I said. “Someone at Dimitri’s company and someone at our company decided to create a third company using the resources of both companies without telling management a hostile merger was going on. I don’t know who can be trusted and I don’t have another way to get Badger’s body back to his wife. We use our phones the last time before that call is made. Police will obtain cell tower records and track the phones back to our Company. Even if they don’t happen to watch New Orleans local television news, the police will make the company aware of the situation by phone and personal visit. Management won’t be able to snuff out the reports without a heads up. They will have to put their spin doctors in place and hope for the best. If Badger’s wife comes forward to claim the body, big stinky chunks will hit the high speed fan.”
“I followed everything up until that last part” commented Stretch.
“That’s because I told you Badger has a wife and children. Nobody, and I mean nobody in the company knows that outside of the people in this room. Picture yourself as the little weasel, thinking they, like Google, have all the data in the world, and will pull off this hostile merger before either management team figures it out. Here comes a piece of data you didn’t have. Reporters hounding a wife you didn’t know about because you don’t really have as much personal data as Google.”
“For the terrorist organizations called the news media, this is ratings bronze” I continued. “Not as good as the school shootings they cause by immortalizing the shooter and their family, but, one more excuse to spend an entire week marketing gun control legislation to the sheep that watch, read, or listen to them. You’ve seen them stuffing microphones and video cameras in front of the school shooting survivors. Do you think they will be able to resist the chance of doing the same to Badger’s kids? Nah. That’s ratings gold. They will profusely tell anyone who will listen they don’t do it for the ratings, but that is only partially true. They do it for the advertising dollars better ratings brings in.”
“Picture yourself as that part of management who thinks they are still running this company. I don’t know exactly who that could be since we recently retired someone in management, but, I was involved so they might have deluded themselves into believing my issue with HR got a wee bit out of hand. Assume they, whoever they are, did. Three condoms and Badger are dead in that place. When they frantically dig through the database they will not find any valid records with orders for the condoms to be there. Trust me. Someone will verify the purchase order with Dimitri’s people.”
“The weasel wouldn’t have been smart enough to erase all record of the condoms. One still had what looked like a company phone on him. If the records had been deleted the phone would have automatically deactivated. No. Blowing the lid off that site is our only option. It is just a matter of choosing the correct time. If Dimitri reported in, he may well be dead now too. The only way his management team is going to learn about this sad situation is to have footage all over the evening news getting picked up by national networks.”
“Won’t our quarry scatter if they see the news and can’t reach their watcher?” asked Slim.
“Yes, they will” I answered. “That’s why we need to have some idea about what we are really looking for and exactly what all six of the muscle look like. I’m fairly certain we are looking for thumb drives or micro-SD chips. Hell, they could have stuffed a micro-SD in their phone. Just don’t seat it all the way and the socket won’t read it. No encryption or special protection needed.”
“Dimitri and you have made one fatal assumption” spoke Giant. “There could be multiple copies and who knows how many copies hidden on-line.”
“That would be why they paid for interrogations. I seriously doubt any of the muscle know what we need. The leader of the group will be the only one who knows where things are, so why the Hell does Dimitri want him for theater? He’s really the one I need to enroll in my high speed weight loss program. I’m going to bed. Hopefully you stumble on something useful in all of your reading.”
***
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