And The Struggle Continues.
Author Chick's Notes: Just moving right along here. Disclaimers are in chapter 1.
And The Struggle Continues.
Stalker crept down the dark tunnel leading towards the main storage area of Mt. Graham. Tripwire had come along to help defuse any traps that COBRA might have left behind. And at Tripwire's request, Chaz had joined them as well. The ranger's keen eyes spotted yet another trap and he motioned for Tripwire to come forward and take it out. Chaz held his breath as Tripwire followed the lead to the main switch of the bomb and defused it.
Stalker saw Chaz's apprehension and laughed. "I don't know what you were told, but Tripwire is really cool under pressure when it comes to things that go 'boom'."
Chaz cracked an eye open and scanned the bomb that his friend had just defused. "I bloody hope so." He muttered as he again followed the other two deeper into the cave.
"Ooo." Tripwire purred when he saw the next trap.
"What are you 'Oooing' about?" Stalker asked.
Tripwire ignored Stalker as he scanned the far wall for the access panel that would defuse the latest trap. "Chaz? Wanna slink over the floor there and dig around the third panel?" He asked. Chaz stepped forward and lit a cigarette. Exhaling, the trio saw the smoke light up a brilliant red.
"Motion sensors?"
"Yup." Tripwire counted the few wires he could see and heaved a sigh of relief. "And just motion sensors. No pressure sensors."
"You sure?" Chaz asked as he laid on the floor and began slinking forward under the lasers.
"You'd have set them off by now." Tripwire smirked as the youth slowly made his way forward.
Stalker winced when he saw some of the gymnastics Chaz used to get towards the far wall. "Damn that had to hurt." He mumbled when he saw a particularly extreme contortion.
Chaz got to the far wall and stood up. Opening the third panel he found the wires that controlled the trap. "Okay. There's four of them, which one do I cut first?" He called out.
"What colours are they?" Tripwire asked.
"From left to right, they're grey, blue, green, and white." Chaz replied.
"Green, white, blue and then grey."
Chaz cut the wires in the order Tripwire had called out and the lasers disappeared. Tripwire and Stalker joined Chaz and Tripwire began digging around the first panel. After he finished tinkering with it he opened the second one. "Okay this should open the door." He said as he fiddled with the components inside.
"What door?" Chaz asked. Just then the rock began to slide off to their left and revealed their prize.
The trio stared slack jawed for a moment before Stalker reached for his radio to call in for back up. "This is recon one, move em in." He ordered as they made their way into the large room.
"Jesus fuck." Chaz cursed when he saw the mountains of stolen medicines and other necessities.
"At least now we know where they hid it all." Stalker chimed in.
"This is only a small portion of what is supposedly available." Tripwire added. "There is a whole hell of a lot more stashed all over the place."
"You're kidding?"
"No." Tripwire confirmed. "Sea and Blaine found out that there is an even bigger stash in Mexico. Then there's the caches in Europe and China." He added. "This haul will at least help replenish supplies for the moment though."
A small convoy of trucks moved down the wide access tunnel slowly. Clutch got out of the lead one and stared at the piles of supplies neatly stacked in the massive cave. As Clutch called out the orders to start loading up, Chaz and Tripwire walked further into the cave. Tripwire spotted a pile of a dozen crates hidden towards the back of the cave and called Chaz over. With the youth's help, the two pried the top off of one of the large wooden boxes.
"What the…?" Tripwire muttered when he saw the box full of black bricks. Chaz took a closer look and could swear he smelled honey.
"Wax?"
Tripwire scraped at the black stuff and sure enough it was bee's wax, dyed black. Once Chaz was sure the substance was safe to touch he reached in to retrieve one of the bricks. Only it didn't want to come out of its crate so easily. "Shite Tor, this thing weighs a tonne."
Tripwire raised an eyebrow and scratched at the wax a little more to reveal what was underneath. "You're from the Witwatersrand area in South Africa. What is yellow, very heavy, and worth a fortune?" Tripwire smirked.
Chaz smirked as well as he put his full weight into pulling the brick out. "I'd say about a million dollars US, of gold per brick?" He retorted.
"Bingo."
"Let's drop this lot and head back to Vegas." Chaz laughed as he set the gold bar down on the edge of the crate. Tripwire playfully slapped the youth and called in their find to Stalker.
"You found what?" Stalker repeated over the radio.
"Twelve crates of poorly disguised gold bars. I'd say each one is about eighty pounds a piece." Tripwire replied.
Chaz was looking into the crate they'd opened and could just see the bottom of it. From the light that was available, Chaz figured that each crate contained roughly a hundred bars of gold, if the others were as full as they one they'd discovered.
"What's that heavy, the crates or the bars?"
"The bars…all twelve hundred of them." Tripwire groaned.
"Just checking." Stalker laughed.
Tripwire and Chaz could hear Stalker barking orders to Clutch to take a forklift over to the two and their find. Clutch pulled up a short while later and stepped down from the forklift. "Damn! I say we take a few of these and hit Vegas!" He laughed.
"See!" Chaz grinned at Tripwire before ducking another swat. It took Clutch almost an hour to load the gold onto three different transports. After securing the gold, Stalker led a small, armed convoy to an airfield an hour away to fly the gold back to Washington. Another plane was loaded with some of the supplies they had recovered, and the area was secured to protect the remaining horde.
At the bunker where they had staged the overthrow from, they unloaded their cargo. The Baroness removed the wax from one of the gold bars and discovered that it was part of the supply taken from New York.
"The Federal reserve?" Stalker asked.
"According to the marks, yes." She replied. "So some of these may well be from other countries." She added.
In another part of the main hangar, a truck pulled up and Sci-Fi got out. "Hey Babe, Kiddo. So what'd ya bring me?" He smiled as he greeted Tripwire and Chaz.
"Drugs and money." Chaz replied.
"Aww, how'd you know I always wanted to be the head of a major cartel?" He teased back.
Tripwire was removing his helmet while the other two joked back and forth. After putting his glasses back on he shook his head. "The only reason you want to head a cartel is for the hordes of sex slaves." Tripwire retorted.
Sci-Fi shrugged. "Hey. Everyone needs a dream Babe."
Chaz laughed at the joke and reached to Sci-Fi's shoulder. "Just think fuzz ball." He said as he took Diz into his hand. "You'd have a gold cage and all the babes you could possibly want." Diz skittered up Chaz's arm and jumped over to Tripwire who was behind the youth.
"No. He'd use his cut to corner the towel industry." Tripwire joked as he scratched Diz's head.
Sci-Fi laughed before facing the two in all seriousness. "Okay, besides realising my wildest fantasies, I have good news."
"Oh?"
"We narrowed down, where in Mexico, they had their other North American stash."
"Where?" Tripwire asked.
"About an hour out of Ciudad Juarez. Right across from El Paso Texas." Sci-Fi drawled.
Tripwire winced when he realised where their next stop would be. "I hate those things." He muttered.
"Huh?" Chaz and Sci-Fi both asked.
"Those pint sized annoying as hell little yap dogs."
Chaz was still confused but Sci-Fi knew what Tripwire was talking about and laughed. "I doubt that the place would be guarded by armies of Chihuahuas, Babe."
"Knowing my luck it will be." Tripwire muttered.
"Okay, now I'm really confused." Chaz spoke up.
"Ciudad Juarez is in the state of Chihuahua, home to the little dogs of the same name." Sci-Fi explained.
"So what does that have to do with Tor hating them?" Chaz asked.
"I had an aunt that used to breed the damn things. Every time we went to her house I would get nipped to hell by them." Tripwire explained. "And I made a point to deliberately avoid the little bastards too." He added.
Chaz couldn't help it, he had to sit down he was laughing so hard. "You mean to tell me, you would rather face a tonne of highly unstable explosives, rather then a little dog, no bigger the Diz there?" He asked, pointing to the squirrel on Tripwire's shoulder.
"I'd rather face ten tons of explosives, then one Chihuahua." Tripwire stated. Chaz fell on his back and began screaming in laughter. "Keep it up Kiddo and I'll see to it that you'll be sleeping outside." Tripwire threatened. "That goes for you too." He added to Sci-Fi who was biting his lips to keep from bursting out in laughter.
Tripwire knew that the two would be useless for a while so he rolled his eyes and turned to leave. Diz looked up at him and then back to Chaz and Sci-Fi before deciding he'd rather stay with Tripwire, as the man left the hangar. After his lover left, Sci-Fi joined Chaz on the floor and began howling in laughter as well.
Later that evening, the Baroness shut the light off on her desk and left the office for her quarters. She had spent the last few days cataloguing the supplies and gold found in Arizona and getting them ready for distribution. Some of the gold was indeed from international banks and those countries that had established interim governments were pleased to hear that their national treasure was on it's way back to them. For the countries still struggling to start up governments, or those that were relying on others for leadership, the gold would be distributed equally, or held until a solution could be resolved to ensure that it would go to good use.
She had a small army based at Mt. Graham to help with the distribution of the other supplies found there as well. Flights were heading all over the globe carrying their priceless cargoes to those in need of them. Once the exact location of the Mexican horde was discovered, more vital supplies would flood the world markets and help those that so desperately needed them. Based on inventory reports, the Baroness figured they had about another month's worth of supplies left in the massive cave in the Arizona desert. They needed to find the rest of it and soon.
Then there was the other problem she had. After fleeing Australia, Edgewood's men had gone to ground. No one could find any report of activity that would disclose the rebel's position. She almost hoped that Edgewood would try and hijack any number of the relief flights for a hint, but the rebel leader wasn't that stupid.
As she entered her quarters, she didn't see Steeler anywhere. He would have been back by now, she thought as she made her way to the bedroom. Before she entered, she heard him. He was talking to someone softly and after listening for a moment, she recognized the story as an old Polish fable…in Polish no less. The door was open ajar and she peeked in. Her heart nearly exploded when she saw Steeler on the bed, holding the newborn Wyatt in his arms as he told the infant the story. After recalling the story in her head, she waited for him to finish before entering the room.
"Somehow I doubt he understood a word of that." She smiled as she came in.
Steeler chuckled before replying. "Doesn't matter…the kid doesn't understand English as is." He craned his face up to hers to receive the kiss she wanted to give him before looking back at Wyatt. "Anyway. I always get lost when I recite it in English. My Baba would always tell me that story in Polish."
Wyatt made a little noise and the couple looked down at him. "Yer aunty Anna's here, wanna say hi?" Steeler cooed before handing the infant over to the Baroness. She cradled him in her arms as she gently swung back and forth. "I figured his folks could use a break so I volunteered to baby sit. You don't mind do ya?" Steeler added.
"Of course not Darling." She replied. "How did you become so good with children?" She asked as an after thought.
"I have a ton of younger nieces, nephews, cousins and siblings. Trust me you get a lot of practice, whether you want it or not." He laughed.
The Baroness smiled as she sat down next to Steeler and leaned against him. She wasn't about to hand Wyatt back just yet, so Steeler settled with just holding the pair of them. "I wonder what your parents are doing right now?" She cooed at Wyatt.
Steeler snorted. "Probably snoring their heads off."
TBC…
~~~
By the way, for all you animal lovers reading this? I actually LIKE Chihuahuas, if I ever got one I'd name it Ren. ^^