Loose Ends (The Hammer Commission Book 3) Page 19

  "Well, just keep this in mind, the both of you. You're going to want to find your own places, and soon. Denise, Dave will probably take the lead on that, he knows the area and probably already has an idea.

  "As for you, Michael. The girls will undoubtedly have an idea on that as well, but understand that they're both probably going to have their own territories, thought they'll be side by side."

  "What about me?" Michael asked.

  "Yours is going to be both of theirs; just like mine is all four of my wives'. But the thing you need to decide, right up front, is do you want them living together in one house, or separately in two?"

  "Like you have all four living separately?"

  "That wasn't my idea," Mark admitted. "They already had their own homes when I met them. However Faith and Hope have their houses less than a quarter of a mile apart, so if I'm with one of them, odds are the other is there too.

  "The point I'm making is that, whatever is decided now, you'll have to live with it. So best think about it, and make sure you get your way. This is going to be one of those decisions you have to make, not them."

  Michael sighed, "I'm going to be in for a fight, aren't I?"

  Mark laughed, "Probably, and knowing those two, no matter what you choose, they'll want to do it differently."

  "Why's that?" Denise asked.

  "Because they want a strong male, why else?" Mark chuckled. "And don't think I haven't heard of your little stunts and putting Dave through his paces!"

  Denise grinned, "Guilty as charged, but it sure was fun!"

  "Well," Michael said, "now at least I know why they want to go camping."

  Mark went back to Hope's after he had dropped them both off. Helena was still there, and Faith was there now as well.

  "So, when's Charity due to get here?" Mark asked, after kissing each of them hello.

  "What makes you think she's coming?" Helena asked with a grin.

  "Because I can tell when I'm about to get ganged up on," Mark said smiling and went over to sprawl on the large couch in the living room. "So, what do you all want this time?"

  "Oh, we just want to make sure that you really do call up and talk to your bosses about working from home," Hope said and glided over seductively to join him on the couch. Helena and Faith were not far behind.

  "Well, they won't be open again tomorrow," Mark looked at the clock on the wall; it was already past four, "until eight hours from now. Give them an hour to get settled and I should probably call in about one or two am."

  "Oh, whatever shall we do to pass the time?" Faith purred.

  "Whatever indeed?" Helena laughed.

  Nine hours later, after watching the latest version of the Jungle Book, the original Lion King, Disney's animated Robin Hood, and several of the girl's favorite old Bug's Bunny cartoons, Mark called Father Otto. Apparently movies with anthropomorphic characters were big favorites with most lycans, and after two decades of being one himself, Mark was starting to understand why.

  "Yes, Mark my son, what can I do for you?" Father Otto asked when Mark finally got him on the phone.

  "Well, Father. It's like this..." Mark started and explained everything to him. When he finally finished he was rather relieved to have Father Otto agree with him. While Mark could quit, he really didn't want to.

  "It's okay, my Son," Father Otto told him. "In all honesty, I was beginning to worry about you a bit when I found out you had a family, yet spent all this time traveling for our work. After all you've done, I don't think anyone will have a problem with you working from home."

  "Thank you, Father."

  "You're welcome, Mark. Bless you and have a good night."

  Mark then got jumped by all four of his wives, all of whom now had other ideas on how to celebrate, which didn't involve staying up late and watching old movies.

  California

  21: Central Valley, Northern California.

  Carlos watched from the co-pilot seat of the helicopter as they flew over the building. It was a pretty large installation, but it was set just off the highway in the middle of the central valley, miles from any major town. It would take the police many minutes to respond, once someone managed to call them of course.

  "Their phones are now jammed," Juan, the man sitting behind Carlos said into his headset. Juan had a box they had bought from a company in China that jammed all cell phones and several other radio frequencies. The internet was such a useful thing these days.

  As they circled the building, six sedans pulled up around the building, one at each of the exits, and a large van pulled up in front of the main entrance. Thirty well-armed men piled out of the vehicles and charged the building, shooting the locks off the doors and going inside.

  The men from the van had come up from Guatemala with Carlos to lead this operation. The others were local gang members who worked for Carlos' boss, Manuel Guaviare. Manuel had been more than happy to loan Carlos some of the soldiers that ran and protected his distribution business in the United States. Carlos really didn't care what they did, or who they killed, they knew enough to listen to him and his men. Other than that, they were here to keep the other people out of the way, and to help him make a clean getaway.

  "The building is ours Carlos," Juan said a couple of minutes later. "They have one of the company's techs opening up the secure areas for us now."

  Carlos nodded and pointed to the convenient landing pad on the roof.

  "Land us there," he told the pilot.

  Less than a minute later, Carlos was walking into the facilities special secure labs. He'd had to step over a few bodies, but from the way the short bearded technician who was leading his man around was trembling, Carlos could see that he'd already pissed himself, those deaths had quickly encouraged the rest to do as they were told.

  "Where is the dark flesh?" Herman, one of European mercenaries who worked for Carlos was demanding in a thick accent from one of the scientists.

  "I don't know what you are talking about!" the man yelled.

  BANG!

  Herman shot him in the head and turned to another scientist, this one was female and she was crying.

  "Where is it?"

  "I... I can show you all the samples!" she cried, hysterically. "Take whatever you want! I don't care! Just don't kill me!"

  "Have her show you, Herman," Carlos said. "She may not understand."

  Herman nodded, and both he and Ricky, who was one of Carlos's own lab people and who had a good idea of just what it was they were looking for, started to ransack the laboratories.

  Carlos almost laughed as Herman shot several delicate pieces of equipment to keep everyone scared and compliant. Herman loved shooting things, especially people. Carlos had picked ten as the number of people Herman would kill in the betting pool. Herman didn't know about the pool of course, or he'd pick a high number and make sure he shot and killed that many people.

  That was just the kind of man Herman was, and why Carlos appreciated his skills so much.

  They found what they were looking for in the second lab, and in a rare show of compassion from Herman, he only shot the woman helping them in the knee. Checking his watch, Carlos saw that they'd been here ten minutes now; it was time to get going.

  "Tell everyone to withdraw," Carlos said, and headed back to the helicopter on the roof, all four of the men who had come in the van were evacuating with him. The van was rigged to explode remotely; they'd blow it as soon as they were far enough away. That was both to destroy evidence as well as to give everyone something else to think about.

  "So, getting soft are we?" Carlos teased Herman as they went up the stairs to the rooftop landing pad.

  "I rub my bullets with dung, you know that!" Herman laughed, "She'll be lucky not to die from the infection!"

  Carlos chuckled and shook his head as they made for the helicopter still running on the roof.

  "You are a man of rare talents, Herman."

  Getting in they flew off to the local airport, Carlos had a
jet waiting there all ready to fly them out of the country within minutes of landing. He turned to look back at Ricky and the specimen box he was holding.

  "How does it look, Ricky?"

  "It looks good, Sir. Very good. I set up a growth solution for it back in the jet, based on the information Mr. Smith got us from the other lab. I'll transfer it to Doctor Huffman's lab as soon as we land back home."

  "Excellent, Ricky. Juan, once we and our helpers are clear, trigger the van."

  "Yes, Sir!" Juan said and got back on his radio as the helicopter flew off, climbing out quickly. This whole operation had ended up costing Carlos a lot more than he would have preferred spending, but the half-assed one his assistant Luis had set up in New York had turned into a complete fiasco.

  It was good that Luis was dead, or he would have had to kill him himself. Not only had they not gotten the sample or the original researcher, but they'd lost Smith. Smith may have been a bit greedy, perhaps too greedy at times, but he had always come through for Carlos, and the information he'd sent them on setting up and running a biotech laboratory had been worth far more than they had paid for it. But Luis had leaned on Smith too aggressively and after the failed kidnapping, which Luis had unwisely involved Smith in, Smith had panicked and gotten himself needlessly killed by the police.

  The truth was, as his father had always told him: If you want something done right, you must do it yourself.

  An hour later they were relaxing on his private jet and flying south towards the border.

  "Hey, Boss, we made the television!" one of his men said.

  Turning to look he could see a live feed from a circling news helicopter of the BioGenTek building that they had just attacked. The bomb in the van had blown out all of the windows and collapsed the front lobby. There were people and ambulances everywhere.

  "Guess they'll remember us a long time now, won't they?" Herman laughed.

  Carlos smiled, "Yes, I guess they will."

  22: BioGenTek, Northern California

  Mark looked around at the wreckage and the carnage; he'd grabbed the next flight out of Portland to Sacramento within an hour of hearing about the attack. The local FBI office in Sacramento had arranged for a helicopter to pick him and Michael up at the airport and fly them directly here to the scene.

  Mark had told Woods he was coming, to see if this was where their last sample had ended up. After six weeks he'd been starting to worry that it might never turn up, all of the FBI's efforts to date had turned up dead ends. Whoever had bought that last sample, obviously had expertise at doing things undercover and out of sight, and had obviously engaged in a great deal of effort to remain undiscovered by avoiding the usual channels. None of the emails, once decrypted, had named the buyer, or the process of shipping.

  Mark had only just returned to Portland from DC a few days ago as they started the process of moving some of the office staff and functions out to the west coast. After the entire 'Bethany issue' as the case had now come to be known, both the Director and the oversight committee had agreed on a west coast office and the moving of the main office to Atlanta. What had surprised Mark, and apparently Woods as well was that they wanted a third office in the northeast and were willing to fund it.

  Woods just didn't know how he was going to staff it yet, but appeared pleased that his budget had been increased and some of his concerns had been addressed.

  "Wow, what a mess," Michael said looking around as the helicopter that had deposited them took off. "I wonder how many died?"

  "I'm almost afraid to ask," Mark said and looked up as a man in a dark suit with a very harried expression walked up to them.

  "Agent Morrison," he said shaking hands with them, "Agents Levin and Sykes I presume?"

  Mark nodded. "I need to go and see the lab that they were interested in. I also need to talk to everyone involved in that lab, as well as the company president."

  Morrison nodded, "This way then," and led them around the side of the building and in through a door that had obviously been shot up.

  "What exactly happened?" Michael asked.

  "From what we've put together so far, a large force showed up, shot their way in, and killed a bunch of people for no apparent reason. A smaller group of four shot their way into the secure research labs where the company keeps its special projects, killed a couple of researchers and shot a couple more, then stole some test samples and left."

  "Why'd they shoot there way in?" Michael asked. "Were there armed guards here?"

  "Fear," Agent Morrison said with a distasteful expression on his face. "There was no way anyone here could resist the attackers. The wanted everyone cowed and compliant. Plus I think they were just sadistic bastards who liked killing."

  "What happened to the front of the building?"

  "They set off a large car bomb when they left. Thankfully most of the people here were still hiding under their desks, but that still killed several people in the lobby and wounded dozens more."

  Mark looked around as Morrison led them down a hallway, one end of which ended in the now collapsed lobby of the building. There were several cloth covered shapes back there, and the hallway itself contained a few chalk outlines with spent bullet casings littering the floor.

  "Smash and grab," Mark said looking around. "These weren't military and they sure weren't your every day criminals."

  "It was a drug cartel hit," Morrison said, glancing back at them.

  "How do you know that?" Mark asked, but he was already certain that this was the same crowd as the one Luis Gutierrez had come from.

  "Several of the survivors noticed that a lot of the young men who were involved were tatted up with gang logos. We know they work for one of the cartels, plus they have a reputation for needless violence."

  Mark nodded as they came to the entrance of what he took to be the special research wing. There was a guard's station with a lot of blood on the floor, and what look suspiciously like brains spattered on the wall behind it. The door leading into the lab was laying on the floor, with enough bullet holes in it that Mark was surprised it was still in one piece. Spent cartridges were everywhere.

  Stepping over the mess, they went inside.

  Unlike his brother's setup, this was a long hallway with all the labs on the left side, all of which were behind heavy plastic or polymer windows that went from the floor to the ceiling. Several of them had been shot, but the bullets had just left divots in them.

  "This is the lab," Morrison said, walking up to the second lab. There was a large sign above the doorway that denoted it as 'Research Lab Two.'

  Mark nodded and went inside, there was enough blood in here to show that someone had been shot, but not enough to make him think anybody had died here.

  Looking around, it didn't take Mark long to find a couple of smaller samples that had been overlooked. Pulling out a knife he cut off the glove on the glove box the sample was in and reaching inside he picked up one of the samples and brought it a little closer to his nose. The scent of all the blood, as well as the burnt nitrocellulose from all the gunshots fired was making it hard to smell.

  He wrinkled his nose and made a face putting it back down.

  "Is that it?" Michael asked.

  Mark nodded and pulling out the small bottle of holy water he'd brought with him, he sprayed it on the sample, saying a simple blessing and watched as it shriveled up.

  "Seal the room, no one is allowed in here without my or my partner's say-so," Mark said, turning back to Morrison. "I'll have a few people here in a few hours to clean this up."

  "What is it?" Morrison asked.

  Mark shook his head, "I can't tell you that."

  "Really?" Morrison said, looking rather surprised.

  "It's need to know," Michael said.

  "Well, now at least I know why the place was raided," Morrison said. "Still, you'd think they would have had more security laid on, working with something this secret."

  "The sample was stolen and no one knew wher
e it had ended up," Mark said. "We've been trying to track it down for over a month."

  "Is this related to that incident back east in New York a couple of months ago?" Morrison asked him.

  Mark nodded, "Yes, and we suspect the same people were behind it. Now, where do you have the president of this place holed up? And have your people find everyone who worked in this lab and isolate them from the rest of the folks here. We're going to need a search warrant for each of their houses, to make sure they didn't make any copies of any of their research documents."

  Morrison nodded, leading them out of the lab again.

  "One other thing to consider," Michael said.

  "What's that?"

  "The other lab had a mole for the drug cartel working in its janitorial staff. You might want to round them all up and question them, as well as look at their financial records."

  "Good point," Morrison said, and pulling out his cell phone he called someone and passed that information on, then relayed Mark's request as they walked back down the hallway they'd come in, and he led them into a small conference room that contained several men and women in rather expensive suits. The effect was ruined however by the tears in the expensive clothing they all wore, and the dirt, blood, or bandages, on all of them.

  "What happened to them?" Mark asked Morrison.

  "Their offices were near the lobby, when the car bomb went off, they were all injured by flying glass."

  Mark nodded.

  "Okay," Mark asked looking at the seven people in the room, "Show of hands, who here is involved with what was going on in lab two?"

  "What do you mean by 'involved'?" one of the men asked.

  "Exactly that," Mark said and pointed at him, "Who are you, what do you do here, and what do you know about what was in that lab?"

  "I'm Richard Spencer; I'm the head of legal affairs and the corporation's lawyer. I'm not involved in the research here, per se. I advise on legal issues and see to the company's legal interests. Who are you?