Chapter 13: Out of the Wilderness

12:17 p.m.

LaGuardia Airport, Hanger B, Queens

The assorted FBI agents and Joes sat around the table slightly bewildered, each trying to figure out how to process the information presented to them by Lady Jaye. Agent Miller pulled at his collar a few times, the perspiration from his neck causing it to stick in a most uncomfortable way. Perhaps it was just him but the room was getting rather warm. Although it was a balmy 60 degrees outside, he was certain the conference room was pushing 80 with all the bodies crammed inside. Then again, perhaps it was the crazy scenario playing in a loop in his mind. Lady Jaye was a detailed and astute agent, if her seemingly detached recitation of the past few hours was any indication. Try as he might, he couldn't quite shake the image out of his head of her and that twin (as an aside, he was still troubled by his run in with the twins, plural that is) intertwined, for a lack of a better word.

"So let me get this straight, he said he had to fight you because he couldn't feel Xamot? That, that right there is priceless." Shipwreck leaned back in his chair. "Let me tell you, I am one hundred percent behind that as our new operating strategy." He folded his arms across his chest glancing with some concern at the paper clip Flint was terrorizing in his hand under the conference room table. Shipwreck did not want to be on the receiving end of Flint's aggression after this one. Those five days, technically four and a half, he had remaining on his bet in Ace's pool couldn't come fast enough. Shipwreck scanned his brain for more ways to feed the flame.

"That's what he said." Lady Jaye was doing her best to ignore Shipwreck's goading.

J.T., seated across the table from Jaye, gestured at her sunglasses and narrowed his eyes as he asked, "And did he do that? Because if he did . . ."

Lady Jaye quickly shook her head sideways, "No, it wasn't like that. This," she pointed a finger upward, "this was all me. I tripped and caught my face on the edge of his desk. He wasn't near me. When he cornered me against the bookshelf he wasn't trying to hurt me. It was as if he was trying to get himself hurt."

Shipwreck sprung forward in his chair, glancing around Flint to get in Lady Jaye's direct line of vision, "Wait, he cornered you against a bookshelf? I think you left out the good part." The paper clip in Flint's hand fell to the floor, a misshapen lump of metal.

Lady Jaye's cheeks reddened slightly, "Get your mind out of the gutter Ship. If you happened to be listening, the bookshelf was the site of the first exchange."

"Yeah, but cornered is the start of a way better story then exchange. In fact . . ."

"Shipwreck." Flint didn't even bothering turning toward Shipwreck, the tone of his voice was enough to send chills down the sailor's spine. Robo-Flint had finally made his first appearance.

Shipwreck dropped his head, "Sorry Sir, serious time, I know."

Flint began, "Why do we trust Tomax?" Flint gritted his teeth together, that wasn't quite right. He for one could never trust the man and he wasn't buying Jaye's full story. There was more to it, he could sense it. Something had happened to make her trust him though. He trusted her instincts completely and tried to focus on that. "Why do you trust him?"

"He has nothing to lose." Her answer was succinct and to the point. She had abandoned all thoughts of it being some type of con job to catch the Joes unaware. While that might be a tactic Cobra would employ, it wasn't the twins' style. They had enough savvy to not stoop to those levels on their own. She didn't doubt that Tomax was using the Joes for his own means. But that left out the why; he was using the Joes for his own means because he had nothing left. He was alone. "We're his only conceivable option. He doesn't trust anyone else and our beef wouldn't be with him."

"What now?" Patterson's voice broke the ensuing silence. Even though Patterson was on speakerphone, sitting comfortably in his office, Flint, and he noticed all of the FBI personnel straightening up in their seats, felt like Patterson was in the room right with them.

"Well Director, there's still the documents Tomax provided, if they only made some sense." Agent Miller threw his hands up in the air. Mainframe and one of the FBI techies had managed to decode the flash drive and retrieve a series of documents before the drive erased itself. The documents seemed to provide little evidence of any trail of money as alleged by Tomax. Rather, they looked like a set of land shipping documents with jumbled numbers and illegible letters typed in the blank fields.

Shipwreck, finally sufficiently distanced from his imaginings of himself engaged in an amorous hand-to-hand with Jaye, allowed his brain to refocus on the task at hand. "Hey, Mainframe, pop those docs back up on the screen." Mainframe complied as Shipwreck stroked his beard, deep in thought, "Well tell it to the Marines, we've got some pirates at work." He turned back to Mainframe, "Can you do that thing where you put the images all together?"

"You mean juxtapose?"

"No, not that, on top?" Shipwreck placed his two palms together in a not all that helpful demonstration of his intent.

"You mean superimpose?"

"Don't get all lofty on me, can you do it?"

"I can try." Mainframe set his jaw to work and after a few grunts of frustration managed to superimpose all of the data onto one form. "Hmmm."

"Hmm is right." Shipwreck elbowed Flint, "Check it out boss man. I see a raise in this sailor's future." Shipwreck addressed the group, "We busted a gang of Somali pirates before I became a Joe. They'd pass messages to each other through bills of lading. Individually, the receipts made no sense. They just had random words and numbers typed in the blanks. There were correct forms accounting for all the cargo though and as long as the cargo was verified, the ship masters just assumed a stray form was a clerical error. But if you took all those receipts and stacked them together, the pirates had found a way to communicate."

"I don't get it." Mainframe worked on adjusting the resolution.

"The student has become the teacher." Mainframe rolled his eyes as Shipwreck soaked up the spotlight. "The guy devising the job would slip in a bunch of these fake bills of lading on various ships headed to the same port. That way, if one got intercepted or didn't make it, the others were still out there. Once the ships docked, the customs agent would collect the documentation but wouldn't take these because the cargo was fully established by the legal receipts. Then in the dead of night the pirates would send someone to the ships to gather these receipts, under the radar so to speak. Put the papers together and it was a whole code communicating any manner of thing from ships to avoid to places to hit." Shipwreck pointed at the master document Mainframe created, "See here, it looks like we've got a lot of goods heading to some place in Pennsylvania. That's the money and so am I."

"Shipwreck, I could kiss you." Lady Jaye winked at him.

"Pucker up butter cup." Shipwreck grinned, puckered up his lips and placed his hands behind his head. He leaned back in the chair a little too far and went crashing head over heels to the floor. He gingerly picked himself up, held up his left hand in Flint's direction and stated, "I know, don't say a word Sir. Serious time, loud and clear."

"Nice work Shipwreck. But what is this, Salum Mountain MC? Jubinsky Road? Lake Quinn? Does this ring any bells? Mainframe, how long would a search take?" Flint looked around and was met with a lot of blank stares, except one. There was a big light bulb going off over Agent Miller's head.

"Actually, I might have an answer for that." Flint turned to Miller. "I think it's supposed to be Salem Mountain. And if so, I bet MC stands for mining company. I grew up with that logo," he shrugged his shoulders. "I'm originally from Carbondale and Salem was a pretty big mine operator back in the day. And all of those other locations," Miller pointed to a series of addresses toward the bottom of the form associated with the movement of supplies, "those are places and roads around Carbondale. Granted, the mines are mostly abandoned now. There was a pretty big one that was sectioned off near the local game lands, which would be that reference to Game Lands 300. I used to go fishing out there with my dad. You couldn't get near the old mine site. They said there was an underground coal fire but as kids poking around we never found any evidence."

"Agent Miller, how hard would it be to access one of these mines?"

"I'm no expert but it's pretty easy to get lost out there. With the exception of the game lands, it's empty. The exits from the highways were barricaded after the mines were shut down to discourage visitors and the dirt roads won't get you where you have to go. Might as well be Timbuktu. You have to understand, there's something like 180,000 acres of abandoned mine tunnels in Pennsylvania. There are tunnels under cities that most people don't even know exist. I'd guess if you wanted to hide an operation and had a reliable map and guide, it could be done."

"Let's assume Cobra did it. We need to figure out the how and where because that's the only thing that's going to lead us to them. I suppose if we know the how, that narrows down the where." Flint scratched at that spot between beret and eyebrow, struggling to place himself in Cobra's shoes. He was a farm boy though and the ins and outs of mining were not a natural fit. "Ok, Miller, like it or not, you're our expert miner right now."

Miller gulped, not at all accustomed to being front and center, "Well, if you look at the sheer amount of these supplies, Cobra will need access to a shaft and cage." Miller tapped his hand on the desk, raking his mind for almost forgotten knowledge of his youth. "Sorry, I haven't had to think about this stuff for a while. My family was a coal mining family-my uncle was superintendent of one of the local mines and my dad owned an outfitting store. My aunt still runs a B&B out there. But Cobra couldn't just patch into a tunnel and take over. They need an established shaft with an elevator. That reduces the haystack. We're still looking for a needle because any good shaft, if it hasn't been filled in, is probably still in use. Although mining has dropped off considerably, it's not completely dead."

"Um, Mr. Flint?" The techie working with Mainframe waved his hand in the air.

"Yes, agent . . .?"

"Actually, just Tewes. Not an agent, yet." The man let out a nervous laugh. "While you were discussing I ran a few searches in our database and hooked up with some reports coming out of our resident agency in Scranton. Past few months there's been an increase in UFO sightings around Archibald Mountain. That's close to Carbondale. People report weird lights drifting in the sky. And just last month there were reports of a biker gang taking up residence in the mountains and threatening hunters. Local authorities haven't found them, just evidence of destroyed camp sites littered with donut boxes and grape soda cans."

"Excellent work Tewes. Can you pinpoint the reports and compile a list of shafts in the area?"

Tewes broke out into a big grin, "That I can do."

"Miller," Lady Jaye entered the fray, "Are you still on good terms with your family?"

Miller nodded his head, "Aunt Margie says I don't visit enough."

"Good, I think I have an idea."