Shadow of a Doubt V: Interconnection
Whoever had lived here before us was some kind of radio enthusiast, with CB's and HAM's littered across the desk in their den ranging from antiques to more recent digital models. While I wasn't overly familiar with such dated tech, one of the less dusty interfaces was pretty intuitive for an untrained beginner. Hearing only faint static when I flicked it on, I hit the scan button and listened as it flickered through the wavelengths. Still, nothing beyond white noise came out. A button labeled "SBC" sat on the bottom row of controls; I'd heard of sub-band coding before, but never figured a use for digital encryption on radio airwaves. Clicking it on, the soft roar of radio feedback continued as the channels got chopped up and sampled together.
"Sup, nerd?" My back jolted upright as I spun around hastily in the office chair. Raphael leaned in the doorway, a briefcase in hand and a devilish grin plastered across his mug. "Wanna see something cool?"
"I swear. Raph, if Mikey put you up to some kind of juvenile prank…" He slammed the case on the desk before me, and unfastened the latches, revealing a veritable pile of banded bills.
"Forty-eight thousand dollars. No prank." He smirked. "I figure since you kinda run the finances, you should take care of it."
"What…what on earth am I gonna do with this much cash? More importantly, where the hell did you get it from?"
"You ain't gonna like this." He chewed his lip momentarily. "Mike and I scoped out a Coast Guard ship trading this to some Natives for a bomb. The same one someone planted in that Foot lab back in Two Bridges."
"Are you serious?"
"No, I shat out fifty grand and used two to wipe. C'mon, egghead, what do you think we should do?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes tightly, trying to process everything.
"Well, one thing's for sure. We're not going up against the US military. It's absolutely impossible. But this does need investigation. These Natives, what were they like?"
"Big, ugly, and armed to the teeth. Had a little shack across the river packed full of guns, drugs, and smokes. Oh, Semtex too, a shit ton."
"Well…fuck." I heaved a bemoaning sigh. "We've dealt with some twisted people before, but not even the Shredder went around blowing up apartments. If we can't find out where the bomb is going, at the very least we have to find out where it came from."
"Agreed, and Mikey thinks so too. Thing is, Fearless apparently ain't too keen on leaving the island."
"I can't blame him. But I'll see what I can…" The roulette of static channels finally stopped spinning, as an accented voice cut through.
"…and one caught a bullet through the fucking foot."
"A man in green, you say?" Another replied.
"They weren't making much sense, but it sure sounds like someone in your…organization isn't playing ball."
"That's bullshit. Every unit within a hundred miles has at least someone on payroll. This wasn't our men."
"Well, whoever did it, we haven't seen shit like 'em on our side of the border, and they have all the cash. You know how much fent we'll have to push to make half that back?"
"We'll work something out, just hold tight. But trash the safe house, move the next load to Saint-Regis, and we'll see you in a week."
"Take care of those motherfuckers first, and we'll see about another load."
"Look, we can make sure we aren't getting tailed. But whoever did this, civilians, a few random straight arrows…It's not like we can just report this up the chain of command. It's all black ops."
"Well, that just makes your job harder then, don't it? We ain't talking again unless the money's back in our hands."
The channel went silent, and the radio went back to surfing through frequencies. Raph and I finally broke our stares from the speaker, and locked eyes.
"That was fast." He coughed in surprise. "That froggy-sounding fuck has the same stupid accent as the guys I took out. Shit, bro…you think we're still safe here?"
"Well, it sounds like this runs pretty deep, but some corrupt splinter of the Coast Guard can't rightly go door to door, asking if anyone intercepted their money. I'm far more worried about the Canadians." I pulled out my phone, writing a note of what channel we'd heard the chatter on. "But one thing's for sure: the same people are meeting in a week, and we've got to stop whatever they're trading from making it into the country."
One thing I'd learned from being the "brains" of our operations was that Leo didn't like to make a move unless we had all the details. I combed some satellite maps and learned that Saint-Regis was as big of a border loophole as the US and Canada could afford to maintain: a Mohawk reservation straddling two provinces and a state, with a peninsula jutting into Quebec, but no Customs station between it and New York. Raph informed me that the "fent" these men had mentioned "pushing" was, more likely than not, fentanyl: a wildly powerful opiate that'd been creeping its way into the black market from China and Mexico (and, apparently, Canada).
Poring over the internet for any more relevant info, I stumbled upon an obscure blog devoted to some wild conspiracy theories mentioning something about Akwesasne, as Saint-Regis' inhabitants called it. In an "exclusive interview" with a "CIA whistleblower", a group called the Mohawk Warrior Society was propped up in Quebec with the intention of becoming a stay-behind paramilitary in the event of Quebec seceding from Canada. Drugs, guns, and money were going in both directions as far back as the late '70s. Born out of a fear any far-left state forming so close to the US in the peak of the Cold War, the sketchy website called the group "the Canadian Gladio", referring to a post-WWII plan for similar groups in Europe. Apparently, ties were cut after an incident in 1990 where a Canadian soldier was shot in a 78-day standoff with the Mohawks. The lack of US-forced stability in the Quebec underworld set the fuse for the bloody Biker War that was taking place when the article was written in the '90s.
My gut instinct when dealing with websites such as the one I'd been perusing is always skepticism, especially when there's no other corroborating evidence to back it up. This, though, was relatively deep in an archive of sites since washed from the expanses of the Internet, and lined up almost perfectly with a constellation of real, well-documented events. Raph was convinced the post was genuine from the moment he laid eyes on it, as was Mikey when we consulted him.
"Alright, shot-not telling Leo we're going to stop these scums." He lifted a finger to his nose, and Raph followed suit in an instant. "He wasn't feeling it when I told him about it earlier."
I grumbled in defeat, but knowing the two of them, I probably had the best shot convincing Leo anyways. Down the stairs I plodded gently, finding him reading in front of the fireplace.
"Hey." I meekly broke his concentration.
"Hey, Don." He shifted upright on the sofa, folding a dog ear into the book and setting it on his lap.
"Mike said you were…less than pleased with the conversation earlier."
"That's one way to put it." His expression tightened, eyes narrowing.
"Well, I get that it's not what any of us had planned for when we came here. But Raph and I just overheard something and…well, I took a little convincing at first, but he shook any doubts I had."
"He what?" He barked, exasperated. "Wait, you didn't know about it until now either?"
"Well, you know those two, leave them unsupervised and they're bound to do something unorthodox, at best. Now that we all know about it, I don't know about you, but I can't just stand by and let it happen."
"Donatello…I can't believe what I'm hearing. You know better than anyone else that I wasn't in a good place when it happened the first time. Now, Mike forces himself on me again, and you let Raph do the same to you?" He stood up abruptly and whipped the book to the ground, pushing me aside and marching toward the stairs. "This little game ends now."
I wasn't sure my brain processed the last few sentences properly. After a moment, I chased Leo up the stairs, stammering, "Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait, no, I've talking about the bombs and money!"
