Chapter 7: Run Money
"Call," said Jones, tapping his knuckles on the table and keeping his cards to himself. The woman to his right studied her own cards for a few moments as she decided how to proceed. Her poker face was atrocious. Jones knew right away that if she stayed in the game, it would be a bluff. She was a young woman, younger than her companions by several years. Her hair was shaven at the sides and back while the top had been tied back into a ponytail. She wore a dark green shirt with the sleeves ripped off over a plain black vest, accompanied by black shorts and steel toecap ankle boots. Her weapon of choice, a Colt Buntline, hung loosely from a holster tied around her waist. Its barrel was ridiculously long, almost to a comical degree, but she was very capable with the revolver. When she finally came to a decision regarding the poker game, she bunched up the cards in one hand and threw them down on the table.
"Ah, I fold!" she hissed.
"Hard luck, Chelsea," the Task Force leader told her with delight. "Just me and Clarissa, then. How's about it?" The redhead examined her cards, giving nothing away as she did so. She also called, signalling for them to reveal their hands. She did so first, subsequently folding her arms in satisfaction and confident that she had won.
"Flush," she said smugly, having revealed five different spades. "Read 'em and weep, boss." Jones chuckled to himself slyly and then showed his own cards.
"Damn good hand, but not good enough, I'm afraid. Full house, m'dear. And as we know, the house always wins." Clarissa's joy instantly turned to annoyance.
"Goddammit!" she snarled. "You haven't lost a damn game yet."
"And I never will, either."
"I won't bother suggesting another, then," Chelsea told him shrewdly. "Save the two of us the embarrassment."
"Fine by me," Jones answered, reaching for the pile of dollar bills in the middle of the table. "Doesn't change the fact that I still won your hard earned cash."
The door at the far side of the room opened and two men entered, much to Jones's interest. He had been expecting them back any minute. With any luck, they would have some useful information to offer.
"Maybe the boys will have more of a spine than you sorry lasses," the Task Force leader said scathingly. "You two afraid to get your asses whooped?" They both sat down at the same table so they could get down to business. The shortest of the two, to the right, produced a bunch of folded papers from inside his utility waistcoat and waved them from side to side. He was an attractive man, with dark, tanned skin and curly black hair. Stubble covered his face, also, and he wore a white tee shirt under the waistcoat. Both hands were covered with black leather gloves and his green cargo pants were accompanied by slip-on buckle up boots that matched his gloves. A Wildey pistol was holstered around his right thigh, silver in colour with a small line of stars carved into the handle.
"Got something for ya," he told Jones. He proceeded to slide the papers into the middle of the table and leave them there for the time being. Jones snatched up a bottle of Heineken beer from the ground and took a drink.
"You boys have been busy," Chelsea told them, gesturing to the papers. "How many POIs you find?"
"Five," the other man said. "With a bonus few for good measure. You know Emery, poor bastard just can't help himself." The man whose name must have been Davin was the only one who looked out of place amongst the rest. He wore only a navy tee shirt, exposing his enormous biceps, and simple grey chino trousers. His shoes were plain, too, and certainly not designed for wet work or excessive walking. His face was clean shaven and his large, meaty head had been shaven all around into a sort of buzz cut. Under one arm, a Smith and Wesson Model 59 could be seen in its holster.
"So, we finally got ourselves some work to do," Jones exclaimed, taking the papers in one hand and opening them on the first page. "Tell me about the first one. Scary woman. Bala…Balik…Balaka…how the fuck do you say it?"
"Balalaika," Emery told him. "She's the big dog around here. Been on international radar for a while, now, but nobody could ever pin her down. She runs the Russian mafia in this city. Hotel Moscow."
"That so?" Jones breathed. Emery was a recon specialist and there was a photograph accompany the file, which he had written up himself by hand based on what he had discovered. "Heard rumblings about the Russians in my day, alright. If she's as bad as it sounds, it ain't just this city she's got sway in."
"That's right," Emery agreed. "It's all there, every little whisper we heard about what they have their hands in." Jones set the bottle down and rested one hand on his chin as he read the page. Then, he placed it in the middle of the table and turned his attention to the next person of interest.
"And this one? Mister Chang? Looks like someone from a cheesy action movie."
"He runs the Hong Kong Triad," Emery explained. "From what I hear, there's a relatively stable balance of power between them and Hotel Moscow here. Anything happens in Roanapur, those are the two factions that will know about it."
"The hell do the Chinese want with this shithole?" Jones asked aloud, but he was speaking more to himself than the others.
"Could ask the same of the others in that file," Davin pointed out. "I don't get why anyone would want to settle in this place. It's like a powder keg waiting to go off."
"That's just the thing," Clarissa suggested. "It's perfect for people like them. No laws, no rules…and no consequences. It might look like a shithole to us, but to them it's a paradise."
They were beginning to understand what was so special about Roanapur. It was like someone had plucked an old town of outlaws from the American Frontier and dropped it on the coast of Thailand. It was self-contained in its own little bubble of crime and depravity, with no connections to the outside world. Until the arrival of some others who had discovered the city in the past, that is.
"We'll have to make a point of taking these ones down," Jones said gleefully.
"You might want to be careful, boss," Emery warned. "There's a reason nobody screws with these people."
"Oh, I'm aware," Jones told him. "It's gonna be slow. We're playing the long game. But in the end, we'll be the ones left standing." He left the page on Chang and the Triad down, too. The next three pages detailed the leaders and notable members of the Colombian, Irish, Italian and Mexican cartels and mobs in the city. Emery had a theory that the city, though an unstable hornet's nest of warring criminals, also had something of a council that governed it. In times of trouble, the different faction leaders would come together to meet and discuss current events. Jones hadn't been too worried before by the warnings about the ruling factions. He had often been tasked to investigate and, on occasion, eliminate powerful criminal groups around the world. But this notion that the most powerful organisations in the city would put their operations on hold and come together to destroy potential threats had him spooked. And impressed.
"I'm starting to see what happened to the last few war maniacs that came here," Jones said to the others. Now, he knew why they were telling him to be careful. He had been blinded before, by complacency and a desire to get started with why he was here in the first place. But he would have to be smart about it. He could not risk drawing unwanted attention and bringing the wrath of multiple different crime families down on him. His people were dangerous, they could manage against some of the deadliest lawbreakers. But even Jones did not want to test Roanapur, and truly discover why it had such a reputation.
"I visited one of the bars," Emery interjected, making the others come to attention. "Bought a few drinks for some of the small timers, loosen their lips a little. Sounds like the rumours might have been right. You know, about Wolf Pack?"
"Thought as much," Jones replied, unsurprised. "All the shit we heard back in the world must have been true. No smoke without fire, as they say. Been some big fish to swim their way into this toxic pond."
"I think there might be some stray wolves roaming the streets here," Emery continued. "But I'll need to do some more digging before I know for sure."
"Keep me posted. We need to know everything we can before we come out of the shadows. Best thing about this place is we can play dirty, fight fire with fire. All bets are off, ladies and gentlemen. Ain't nobody gonna get in our way."
"Fuck yeah!" Chelsea concurred. "None of those supervisory assholes breathing down our necks, check-ins with updates. Feels good to be free, doesn't it?"
"Can't say Davin agrees with us," Jones said pointedly. All eyes fell on the big man, who was currently staring out the window at the buildings below. They must have only been a few floors below the penthouse.
"Think he needs surgery to remove the stick up his ass," Clarissa joked. They knew it was bad when she was the one ridiculing caution and prissiness, though it was fair to say Davin was excessively uptight.
"I like a sunny vacation as much as the next man," he said defensively. "Doesn't mean we should lose our fucking minds. We still need to remember we're here to do a job."
"Duly noted," Jones told him with a tone of finality. "But do us a favour, bud. Lighten up a little. Learn to live like a real outlaw for once, might do you some good!" Davin did not respond, but the others were used to him by now. He never was much for bending the rules, which was a stark contrast to the rest of Task Force 216, who all relished the opportunity to escape their lives of being tied down by policy and procedure to enjoy the taste of a less lawful existence.
Jones smirked to himself before glancing over the final page in the bunch. An expression of confusion spread across his face. While the others Emery had done up files on were undoubtedly persons of interest regarding 216's operation here, the last page appeared, at face value, to detail a much less important gang of smugglers.
"You want to tell me what's so special about these here pirates?" Jones asked. "We ain't got time for pissants like this Lagoon Company."
"Thought you might want to make time," Emery suggested. "It's their leader, the big man, there. Dutch."
"What about him?" Jones asked, still failing to see why he should be bothered with a random smuggling outfit.
"Nothing concrete, but the opinion around the city seems about the same. Drives that torpedo boat in the picture, there. Was a nightmare trying to sneak into the boathouse and take it. Not a whole lot is known about him, or where he came from…but there are a lot of rumblings. You get what I'm saying?"
"Ah," Jones grunted, understanding at last. His free hand went to his throat and he began to fumble with the pair of dog tags around his neck, ones he still wore after all these years. His interest was suddenly a lot more piqued.
"It's just a hunch," Emery told his boss. "But if it turns out to be true, he could lead us to more like him. This place reeks of gunpowder and blood. I think we could have over-the-hill runaways hiding in the shadows." Jones chuckled to himself. If there was one thing he enjoyed more than laying down the law for dangerous criminals, it was killing those he considered to be turncoats.
"Well, we got ourselves a first order of business," he told them all. "We can't move on the big timers until we're prepared. But these cowardly sons of bitches? I say we go on a little hunting trip, see how many we can sniff out before we set our sights on the leaders of this glorious little wasteland."