cobra and the delinquents 10 for the cliff hanger

 

Chapter 10 The World just got bigger

 

“So, Hammond, how much is this drug culture a part of your school? And what happens to the scholarship kids?” I asked.

“It’s almost impossible to avoid being drawn into it, if the upper classmen want you to be,” he said. “A lot of scholarship kids seem to drop out… what have I missed?”

“Trafficking,” I said.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. Brave kid.

“I’m going to put you through the Cobra special course,” I said. “With help from Willow and our wards. Who are essentially going to be your sisters from now on. You’ll carry a panic button, and I’ll have a team on overwatch for you.  I want you to find out who’s involved in the school infrastructure, and I suspect that those of the faculty not actively involved, they are laying low and sayin’ nuffin, as they say.”

He nodded.

“Craig was on good terms with a lot of the faculty. It made it harder to escape him. Beating him up was not an option, even if I’d known how. Mrs. Willow is a sight to behold.”

I am afraid I could not resist purring.

“I’m biased in that direction, but yes,” I said. “I taught her.”

“I want to learn,” he said.

“It’s more about attitude than skill,” I said. “To be aware that you are the weapon, and not to overthink things. But we’ll get to that. I’m going to hand you over to Ruth and Hana to get started, because I must take care of you all, and minimuse immediate risk.”

He nodded.

“I understand, sir.  I am a bit scared,” he said it like he expected me to be cross with him.

“Good!” I said. “If you weren’t scared, you’d be a fool, and failing to appreciate the risks.”

“There’s a gang at school,” he volunteered. “They call themselves the Bratpack. You’re in, or your out.  Being a member of the Street Rats is sort of associate membership, and you’re tolerated. I was thinking, when I’m clean of drugs, I’d tell them I want in, that I’d do their initiation ceremony.”

“And what is it?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s to humiliate some other kid,” he said. “Which I don’t want to do, but if I don’t, I’m not in.”

“The alternative is to stand up for being out,” I said.

He whistled.

“They’ll want me either drugged or in… but I might learn a lot that way,” he said.

“You’re a brave kid,” I said. “I’ll have a subdermal recording device on you at all times, blasting everything to Willow.”

He sniggered.

“I’ll have to remember not to wank,” he said. “I wouldn’t want Mrs. Willow vexed with me.”

“Yes, there is that,” I said. “She’ll turn off while you take a dump, and will step away. She had one on me during Extreme.”

He did a double take.

“Sir, you mean you are Jay Silverheels in disguise?”

“Rather, say that Jay Silverheels was a disguise,” I said. “And I’m trusting you with that secret.”

“It’s not that surprising, seeing how you handle the bad guys,” he said. “You’re a scary sort of person in some ways, but in other ways you make me feel safe for the first time since I went to school.”

“Was your dad at the same school?” I asked.

“I… yes,” he said. “Oh! So he knows about the Bratpack and trafficking?  Sir…”

“Call me ‘Rick,’” I said. “I’ll be adopting you one way or another.”

“Rick… do you know what was going on before I got into Starburst?”

“No; but you’ve had a revelation,” I said.

“I was dating one of the scholarship girls, Tula Dench,” he said.  “I don’t suppose it would have gone far, because kid’s dates rarely do. But she disappeared, and I kicked up a fuss, because she was the class star, and no way would she have dropped out. And it was then that Craig got me on Starburst, and introduced me to the Street Rats because I was already tinkering with engineering projects. My father knew! He knew and he allowed it to be set up! Then he came swanning in to have me put in a clinic to dry me out, and gave me a pep talk about keeping my nose clean and not rocking the boat. And it never occurred to me that he meant about staying in with the Bratpack!”

“What a nice, sweet, innocent boy you were,” I said, sadly. “But it argues for a better upbringing than an entitled daddy’s boy.”

“My mom did most of it,” said Hammond. “She was supposed to hire tutors, but she taught me at home. She said when I had to go to school, I should be careful, because people were not always nice… sir! Rick, I mean, I think she was an alumnus from the school, a trophy wife, beautiful and intelligent, and dad treated her like a servant. When I went to school, she was certified insane because she begged him not to send me there. Do… do you think she didn’t choose to marry him?”

“I suspect he either swept her off her feet, or, yes, she was owned by him as a slave,” I said. “He picked new blood for the family, but on his terms. He did not want you choosing someone for love.”

“I want to kill him,” said Hammond. “Can we rescue my mom?”

“I don’t know, on either count,” I said.  “But I’ll do my best to get your mom out soonest. She… may not be sane after several years in an asylum; it was something they used to do back in the days of the Soviet Union, put inconvenient sane people in the insane asylum until they went mad.”

He shuddered.

“Well, we can care for her; I can work for you to afford nurses,” he said.

“I can afford nurses,” I said. “And therapy.”

I went in search of Tarquin. He was eating apple crumble with clotted cream as if he had nothing on his conscience.

“And what did you have to tell me about Briggs, Dix, and Obama?” I asked. “You know I work better when I know what is going on.”

“Obama, I gave to you because you know her, and would be gentle with her,” he said. “You have experience with her, and know her. The other two boys? Window dressing. I didn’t think anyone would believe you having just two boys on a ranch.”

“No, I suppose not,” I said. “But why didn’t you just tell me up front?”

“Because there was nothing I knew,” he said. “I had a hunch there was something more; but my hunches are not evidence. I knew you’d find out.”

“Well, keep on keeping things quiet from everyone else,” I said, grimly.  “Every alumnus of the school Hammond has been attending for I don’t know how many generations, but including Fitzgerald senior, may be tainted by drug dealing and child trafficking. I don’t rule out people in the Feds. Or Congress.”

“Shit,” said Tarquin. This the man who never swears.

“Exactly,” I agreed.

He considered.

“You’d better sanction anyone involved. And I mean, anyone.”

He was serious.  He actually looked frightened, which wasn’t like Tarquin.

“This could go all the way up,” I said again, but making it less ambiguous.

He nodded, grimly.

“Alumni of the school, that’s a matter of public record,” he said.

“Willow can pull it without anyone knowing it’s been accessed,” I said.

We exchanged looks.

I felt like a co-conspirator of a coup.

In a way, it was; topping a corrupt, inner government.

I had a couple of loose ends to tie off.

One was to distribute the list of Cliff’s teams to a couple of aspirants to the black board; and the other was to phone Jamie’s dad and send him the information about Sylvia’s thefts, and tell him to go ahead with the divorce.

“What about this Cliff?” he asked.

“He’s been hanging around with the wrong sort of people,” I said. “You know what? I’m going to send him home, on his own recognisances and send the info to the authorities. He shouldn’t even be in the system, the kid is innocent.”

“He’s my boy and he’s a good kid,” said James McNeal.

Well, that was good; I gave Jamie a hug.

“You’re going home,” I said.

He cried.

“Stay in touch, please?” he asked.

“I will,” I said. I had given Tarquin the evidence on having him framed to take away with him, and the kid’s record should be expunged. The victims would receive the evidence too, and if they wanted to sue Sylvia personally, they could.

Sylvia was in for a bad time. The two organised crime bosses had let her go as harmless; killing a wife of a high-profile man would do neither of them any good.

It was her character I was busy assassinating, though to be honest, it was so far past morally dead as to have become a kind of vampire.  A parasite, anyway. Soon, it would all become public, and I wanted Jamie at home for that.

I sent Dave with him as an escort. I could manage without him for a couple of days.

That shifted one innocent out of the firing line.

I was tempted to get rid of Obama… Hermione… as well, but Ruth and co had her well in hand. She was busy learning how to identify when to step in, and when to sit back and make notes to do things another way.

She was cleverer than she appeared, and if she got the message, she’d be a half capable operative. Jamie, bless him, was going to be a half-decent gurfer if he stuck to it, but he was an asset on the sidelines, so to speak.

 

 

The team they sent to find out what had happened to Craig Thomas and his flying monkeys was a bit more capable, and were definitely shadow-smart.

Everyone seems to like that back way up past the girls’ bunkhouse. And they all want to try the doors.

Ruth let me know that she had taken the kids out through the tunnel, because this lot of thugs weren’t taking a locked door as any kind of impediment.

Too bad that the first one through and the one behind him pulled the pin from a frag grenade by the act of opening the door. Ruth is no idiot.

The pop-up sentry gun she armed took care of most of the rest of the team.

The car was rigged to be driven by thought of course; these people are so predictable, and Willow took it over, and brought the driver and the greater parts of the two survivors to me.

They squealed. I only had to suggest feeding each of them feet first into the furnace an inch at a time. One of them expired while we waited; no great loss. The driver knew very little, and the other survivor only knew what his orders were. Find and extract Craig. Orders from Craig’s daddy.

It was time to move the girls, unfortunately.  It was nice for them to be independent, but sometimes you need to keep your assets close.

The ranch could handle the number of horses; and we had a sufficiency of spare rooms to divide them into two, as five would have been cramped.

“We should make the bunkhouse look more decrepit than it is, and keep a watcher there,” said Ruth.

“Good idea,” I said. “Organise it.”

“Yes, Ranny,” said Ruth. I gave her a hug. She was a good sort of sister, and I was glad I had adopted her. Hana, Olive, and Marie were gentle souls, and Ob… Hermione… was learning. Meantime, Hana and Olive, the younger two, would have one room, and the other three could have another. I turned over another bedroom to be a common room for them. No reason they should have to interact with the delinquents. I did not count Hermione. She was heavy-handed and about the best mason I had ever met with regards to laying flagstones on the way to Hell with good intentions, but she was a well-meaning kid.

Dix was no hardened criminal either, but he had form for temper; and he and Briggs were slowly learning to respect other people, because you don’t know who is hard enough to break your balls if you try to push them about. Briggs was taking a harder lesson than some, having been flattened by Olive, Ruth, Willow, Aunty, Dave, Julia, and two black cowboys, not necessarily in that order or merely once.

He hadn’t tried with baby Tarquin, who was now self-motile but then, Quin, as he had become, to differentiate him from his larger namesake, was watched at all times.

 

Anyway, we moved into disappear mode; the car went into the chop shop, the two survivors went into the bunker, and the DBs went into the furnace.

The blast from the grenade had, at least, thrown most of the parts of its victims outwards; but it was a messy bit of clear up. Ruth helped, having been responsible for making the mess, and much of it required shovelling into buckets.

We had a compost heap for that.

Gasolene took care of most of the rest, and made the place look derelict enough. When I had time, I’d build a house inside a ruin.  The Brits did that in World War two; they built the odd derelict cottage to hide machine-gun posts. I’ve never figured out how they numbered those old wars. If you’re calling them world wars for involving far flung places, they really ought to call the Seven-Years war in the mid-18^th century World War one. Unless it was because of the number of civilians who were dragged into it in the 20^th century’s two major wars.

And there are still historians who debate whether the 21^st century’s Muscovite aggressions count as a single third world war, or should be divided up into a series of wars, and whether the war of Chinese aggression, the Israeli-Arab conflicts, and the India-Pakistan temper-tantrums count in there or not. A lot of the middle east is radioactive glass, but at least that stopped runaway greenhouse. It’s an ill wind which blows nobody good.

Which musings are of no use whatsoever, but we had now a derelict bunkhouse, which was a waste of a good dwelling, and fitted it out with surveillance cameras for the time being.  It was not as if it mattered that much any more for it to be covered by the mark one eyeball. Oh, and we bolted the bolt-hole into the bunker. Not that it would do them much good as it was stand-alone, but it would be irritating to have to pry anyone out.

And Willow went virtually to see what Mr. Thomas senior was up to.

 

cobra and the delinquents 9

 

Chapter 9 Cliff Hanger

 

While I was in Denver, I thought I might as well infiltrate Cliff’s lair. He owned a nice penthouse suite, which was as friendly as any shadow haunt might be.

I took an apartment overlooking it, and used drones and very high-powered cameras to film the interior.

He also had a janitor, who was paid fairly well, but who was not averse to a win of a lifetime, two tickets to Hawaii, all expenses paid. He and his wife were happy to pack up and go at the drop of a hat.

I made it seem that his win had been delayed in the post so he had to leave right away; I laid on a car to the airport, too. He wasn’t about to turn it down. I took on his face and finger prints, and made my way around the place. I had limited time – I did not want to leave Willow with an idiot like Briggs for too long, especially if Cliff was thinking of sending another team.

He used Sylvia’s birthday as the combination of his safe.

Why do these people go for expensive security systems, only to use easy-to-guess passwords? I went in there and methodically photographed everything. He was working for both the mob and the Yakuza; a nervous sort of splitting of masters, but then, he was arrogant, and thought he was untouchable.

I took the floor below his in the name of Abraham Lincoln, and the appearance of Abe if he had ever been bald with a long moustache. Yes, I do carry the odd prop with me. I can’t alter my amount of facial hair.

I went to the effort of copying Cliff’s apartment precisely, though my antiques were quick mockups 3-D printed, just for the look of it. And worth buying a 3-D printer just for that purpose. Equally worthwhile buying a couple of decorating drones to paint the walls the right colour, and a lot faster than I could. What, did you have an image of me with a paintbrush, taking four hours to do what a drone with a spray nozzle could do in half an hour, and more accurately at the edges, too? Bite your tongue. There are tools for such work and I provided the brains, not the gruntwork. I scanned every ornament, to be able to recreate it pretty closely.  Only the room I was filming had a touch of work done to it, with a false wall installed, which had a secret panel that came forward with the shelving attached to it, to reveal a secret space behind.  I loaded this with documents, and jewellery.

Precise copies of Jamie’s mother’s jewellery that James McNeal had never let Sylvia wear. She knew the pieces, though. You’d never know from surveillance footage that it was 3-D printed, with zircons and coloured glass.

And Jamie’s mother was from old money and those were honest solid antiques.

Next, I had a drone filming me, wearing Cliff’s face putting the jewellery in his new safe.

It did not take long to edit homing in on Cliff’s window to cutting in the footage of me fondling tiaras and necklaces and putting them into the secret room.

I sent the footage to Sylvia, to the Mob, and to the Yakuza.  The latter two just had ‘guess whose secrets he’s hiding there for blackmail’ as the tagline. I didn’t bother with a tagline for Sylvia.

I flew back to the airport nearest the ranch and drove home.

Something ought to give. And I had enough information on his other teams to take them apart at my leisure, or give them to someone else to play with.

 

When I got back, it was to discover that we had had visitors.

One Craig Thomas and other members of the Street Rats to be precise.

Their reason for being here? To bring drugs to Hammond Fitzgerald and any other kids who wanted them, and to bribe or intimidate whoever was in charge.

Craig Thomas had made two fundamental errors, besides that of turning up in the first place. Firstly, he had called Willow ‘Doll’ and secondly, he had informed her that if she played her cards right, she could be his main squeeze, and he would show her the high life.

Willow gave him one chance. She told him and his thugs ‘Get out now.’

Guess what? Strike three for three. He laughed at her. As Willow said, there were only four of them.

I noted that Jeff Briggs was suddenly being very polite to Willow.

Craig Thomas would be spending some of the time he would be doing in the Federal Penitentiary hospital. Dave had set the leg of the guy with the fractured femur, and ascertained that Craig could still manage to pee without too much blood in his urine, so he wasn’t about to die yet; and the other two only had concussion, so nobody would notice much difference.

Yup, this is a Federal facility, that means he comes under Federal jurisdiction.

In the meantime, he came under Cobra jurisdiction, and Willow had had Hammond put together a few leaf springs to make into collars, and had them chained to the wall in the garage facility.

“If we run the grinder, nobody will hear them scream as we question them,” she said.

The matter-of-fact tone broke them faster than threats. As it was designed to do. I don’t like torture; it’s inefficient. But bullies are cowards, and Willow had mentioned all the tools we had in there, and what they would do to human flesh. They were begging to talk to me, to a man who could understand. I learned more about the organisation of the Street Rats than I wanted to know, and enough about the hidden higher echelon to be able to piece together a lot about the bosses who ran the drug ring. They would tell me more. In the meantime I had names Hammond had not known, locations, contacts, and markets.  It all got recorded for Willow and me to sort through methodically when we had the time.

And until we were ready to give time to it, Craig and co were going on ice. This meant the cellar. Another bunker. You can never have too many bunkers. But bunkers also work nicely as jails. Our prisoners were not going into the system; because if they were in the system, they could be found, and removed from the system by those with enough pull. Because we could not rule out that they had that sort of pull when one considered that Craig Thomas had gone to the same expensive school that Hammond Fitzgerald attended.

Hell, I was not even sure if it wasn’t institutionalised in the school.

It was.

A few more questions… I had to start the grinder to set them off again… and I discovered that there were scholarships for clever girls and boys from poor backgrounds, who disappeared into trafficking. And they would have to be tracked down.

I did not know if there were those who were in the drug and trafficking ring who had that sort of pull, especially with the Feds…

Bloody Tarquin!

He was doing it again!

He got me into competing on ‘Extreme’ under the excuse of a sanction, and actually to investigate all its irregularities; now he had appealed to my vanity of being able to help troubled kids by pointing me at the troubled kids whose backgrounds had dangerous elements higher in the system.

I phoned him and told him to get his butt over here soonest.

He came.

“Any apple crumble?” he asked, hopefully.

“Aunty Fee probably saw you and is doubtless making it,” I said. “Not that you deserve it.”

“Why don’t I deserve it?” he asked, plaintively.

“Because you set me up to dig deeper into these kids and find out the extent of drug dealing and child trafficking in Federal circles, and how far Cliff Dunton’s organisation reaches, didn’t you?” I said.

He managed to look only marginally shifty.

“I wasn’t sure that Sylvia McNeal was involved with Cliff Dunton,” he said. “He is a fixer; he gets things done. That you have anything on him is a bonus.”

“That’s probably past tense by now,” I said.

“Past tense?”

“Well, if the mob and the yak move with the speed I expect them to do, I would imagine he has gone to meet honourable ancestors, so sorry, not sorry,” I said. “I should have footage of the feeds I left. I have a list of all his teams; they can be taken out in detail.”

“How the hell did you arrange that?” he asked, shaken.

“I’m good,” I said. “I left Sylvia and his main clients under the impression he was double-crossing them all. Honestly? He’s too low a low life to step on personally, but I wanted him out of Jamie’s hair. So, I thought I’d arrange him an on-purpose.”

“Definitely not an accident,” said Tarquin. “I want to see what you did.”

I invited Jamie to view my recordings as well. I explained how I had set up the identical room and homed in on it.

“It was nice to get photos from inside his apartment, as well, by impersonating the janitor,” I said. “Even the most careful of people don’t even notice the janitor.”

“I ask mine about his family,” said Tarquin, mildly.

“You are, I admit, out of the league of most people,” I said. “Most people barely treat menials as human.”

Jamie was making mental notes. I was willing to bet he would soon know the details of the families and interests of every maid and cleaner in his home and father’s office.

“You’re very inventive, sir,” he said. “How did you get the precise ornaments? Isn’t that my mother’s jewellery?”

“I used a 3-D printer, which is why it was nice to go there and scan them,” I said. “Otherwise they would have been approximations only, and someone with a quick eye might have seen them. I hacked the insurance appraisals of your mother’s jewellery. It’s still safe in the bank.”

“Dad said it would be for any daughter I had,” said Jamie. “It’s been in my mother’s family as a collection for over a hundred years.”

“I’d have said some of the pieces were older than that,” I said. “I didn’t read the provenance; I didn’t have time.”

“I will, though,” said Jamie.

 

My surveillance of Sylvia had her staring at the feed I had sent her, in anger and horror; then she whirled right off to visit Cliff, and only did perfunctory repairs to her make up, taking no more than twenty minutes.

She arrived before any of the organised bunch. Hell hath no fury like a woman bilked of jewellery and all that sort of thing.

“Cliff!” she said in a clipped tone, which was not quite a snap. “I know you managed to get hold of it, and though most of it is too heavy for me without extensive remodelling, I hope you got it for me.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Tina’s jewellery,” she said. “I thought James had it in a safety deposit box I wasn’t able to access.”

“I have no idea who Tina is or what you mean,” said Cliff.

“Tina! Jamie’s mother,” said Sylvia, crossly.

“Oh, she had jewellery you covet?” said Cliff.

Sylvia gave a little titter.

“Don’t act coy; someone sent me a trideo of you stowing it in your secret room,” she said.

“What secret room?” said Cliff.

It was at this moment that the mob and the yakuza also came calling; two elderly, distinguished men, one with a name that sounded something like Fettucini and the other with a name approximating Sushi, and their two… associates. You know, the sort of associates who looked like gorillas by the time they were twelve, and devolved from there.

“We need an explanation,” said Sushi-san. [Oh, if you care, go and look up the gumi in Denver for his real name; I wasn’t that interested to remember. Equally Mr. Fettucini.]

“I don’t understand,” said Cliff.

Sylvia helpfully showed him her trideoclip.

He frowned.

“But that isn’t me. It can’t be me; I don’t have a secret room,” he said.

They tried to open it.

I skipped through the next bit where he was being… spoken to… severely and questioned on how to open it. He lost a few teeth along the way, and if he didn’t have internal bleeding, it wasn’t the fault of Gorilla one and Gorilla two, and Oni ichi and Oni ni.

“I can’t open the room for you because as far as I know, it doesn’t exist,” he sobbed. “Oh, God, oh, God, nothing has gone right since Sylvia had me try to get something on that retired schoolmaster who has her stepson in his care.  I don’t know what’s going on any more.”

This was not the right answer.

One of the Oni-sans slit his belly open, just as one of the Gorillas picked him up and threw him out of the window, quicker than I could manage to sensor it.

Jamie made a horrid gulping noise, Tarquin gasped, and so did Willow as Cliff flew out of the window with his guts trailing after him.

They snagged on the radiator, and he was still screaming, dangling by his insides until they tore out and dropped him to end in a rather messy puddle on the sidewalk.

“I suppose that ended on what you might call a Cliff hanger,” I said.

Willow slapped me across the back of the head.

“I’m not sure I fancy apple crumble anymore,” said Tarquin.

Well, the rest of the film saw them taking demolition tools to the wall and discovering Cliff’s bathroom behind it; and the police turned up.

There would be a lot of explaining to do.