The camp was hidden in the mountains of Montana. Officially, it was a hunting camp, there was a lot of good game in the area. Maybe that's what made it a favorite meeting place for them. They were hunters, they liked matching their skills up against other predators. Though he had to say, he felt a great deal more respect for the four legged variety than the usual prey.
Or perhaps it was the camp's second purpose. It reminded them of the old days. Here was where they trained the SOG teams. The stoic warriors of the Special Operations Group. There was a hierarchy of covertness in the world of clandestine operations. A kind of inverted pyramid, with the most official being at the top and the most covert at the bottom.
The top level was comprised of legitimate military and police actions, the kind of thing that included mounds of paperwork and Congressional Medals of Honor. Below that you had Special Forces operations, things that couldn't make the papers until after they'd happened but were eventually expected to come out into the open. Below that were 'official' covert operations, handlers and assets, people who had diplomatic covers who got PNGed and sent home if shit went sideways while their assets' releases were negotiated. Beneath them were the unofficial covert operations, operatives without diplomatic covers who were responsible for handling whatever couldn't be done by the official operatives. Beneath them, lay the SOG, the black ops teams that served as the muscle to the unofficial operatives. And at the very bottom were the blackest of the black, the kind of operations that could never come out into the open, performed by the kind of people that the public could never know about, people like Aliza Brennan and Niko Bellic.
Ed stubbed out his cigarette on the railing of the second floor balcony. He'd been through the inverted pyramid, from top to bottom. He'd joined the army right out of high school, at the time he'd just been another farm boy from a town too small to put on a map who didn't want to spend the rest of his life working the family farm. He wondered, if he could go back in time to that day when he'd hitched a ride with his buddies to the army recruiting station and told his younger self exactly what lay in his future, would it have changed anything? Probably not, he decided, his younger self would have probably told him to fuck off and gone ahead anyway.
His subordinate cleared her throat behind him. Karen stood there in one of her ugly-as-hell pantsuits, he couldn't help but feel sorry for her. It had only been four years since they'd recruited her, but she seemed to have aged twice that since then. It had to have been Niko, every operative had that one operation. The one that where the water went over your head, the one that gnaws at your guts and ruins your marriage. The one that you spent long nights going over again and again with a bottle of booze, agonizing over every decision you made and wondering how it could have played out differently. For Karen, it had been Niko, for Ed, it had been a three month operation in Istanbul. If Ben hadn't dragged him out of the basement of that heroin den, he'd be dead, that Ed was certain of.
He shook his head, he couldn't focus tonight for some reason. Early onset Alzheimer's maybe… now there's a pleasant thought. Ed caught himself before his mind went off on another tangent and turned to his subordinate. "So give me the rundown on Ronald Porter." Ed knew all there was to know about the man of course, but he found it was always best to start these briefings with established facts, then building up from there.
"Ronald Porter, born in North Carolina in 1963, no living family members, got a bachelor's degree in English literature on an ROTC scholarship. Navy after college, ended up with the teams. Apparently he was good, a Navy Cross, a silver star, and a legion of merit. Became a BUDs instructor in 2000, dishonorable discharge in 2005 after he was caught sleeping with and admiral's seventeen year old daughter." Karen tossed one of the files on the desk between them and moved on to the next one.
"After his discharge, he put his skills as an instructor on the open market. He started out with the usual gigs, training private military contractors for a couple of different companies. After a year of that, he realized he could make a lot more money working with less legitimate groups. That's when he came onto the agency's radar. Since then, he's trained Somali pirates in refined hijacking procedures, he's trained central African warlords in tactics and strategy, Chechen rebels, cartel siccarios, we have photo evidence he was there when Gadhafi was killed. The list goes on and on, and that's just what we have confirmed. Basically, he's had a hand in training every major paramilitary group that could afford him in the past six years." Another file went on the desk. Karen opened the last, and thinnest, folder.
"He was grabbed as part of one of a dozen other operations that were greenlit by the gang of eight after the Finance Summit Hit." Ed grimaced, it already had a name, and not even a very creative one at that. Karen either didn't notice or pretended not to because she just kept talking. "A SEAL team pulled him out of an insurgent training camp in Afghanistan shortly before two Joint Strike Fighters blew it to kingdom come."
Well, that covered what they knew for sure, and as was often the case with intelligence it was incredibly useful in every area except the one where it was needed. "And he says that he was involved with the hit on the summit?" Once again, something Ed already knew. Now he wanted to see how Karen presented the information. Different perspectives turned up different facts.
"Yes, he claims he can point us straight to the man behind the hit. He also claims that we've missed an entire network in Los Santos." Already sensing his next question, Karen answered it. "He's provided intel on seven possible targets so far. Those are all confirmed, and we're working on confirming other intel he's provided. Considering his resume, the intel this guy provides could be a gold mine. And he says that all of that is just the piddly shit. He won't open up about the LS network or the summit hit until we give him what he wants."
Ed lit up a fresh cigarette and turned back to the balcony. Snow was coming down at a good pace now. Ben would be here in the morning, he'd insist on running with the men, if only to make the rest of the attendees at this little meeting look bad. Ed would have to join him, people would be amazed at the level of schoolyard bullshit that happened at these things. As he watched the ashes fall from his cigarette, he decided that no, they probably wouldn't. Politics was always full of schoolyard bullshit, even kids still in actual schoolyards knew that. What would surprise them would be the way the cliques were divided up.
Most people would probably expect that it was a matter of politics. To a degree, it was, but what decided it was mostly based on personal relationships and favor trading. Ed was more likely to side with Ben on an issue over his counterpart at the DIA, his counterpart at DGSE was more likely to side with the BND over MI6. It was all schoolyard bullshit based on who did what for who, who did what to who, and who was on whose side back in the old days. And damn it… he'd gone off on a tangent again. Ah well, he decided, best to let it run its course, the idea would come.
That was a skill he'd learned to use over the years. If he couldn't focus on a subject, it was best to just let his train of thought go where it may and he would reach the conclusion he needed eventually. The one thing that stuck in Ed's craw about the whole system, or more accurately the current thing that stuck in his craw, it changed with every meeting, was the Bureau. The group that would be meeting at the camp tomorrow would all be people he knew. The world of intelligence, for all it's vast complexities, was small, and the operations aspect of it smaller still. Every one of his counterparts had been around since the old days, most of them had followed rather similar paths to reach the positions of power they all currently occupied.
Daniel Anderson had been one of them, a good one too. He and Ed had served together in Vietnam, they'd both brought home wives after the withdrawal. Daniel's marriage had been far more successful than Ed's, Daniel's first and only wife had been crying at his funeral, Ed's first wife of three had left him in 1976. But then again, Daniel had never gone nearly as deep into the black bag part of the business as Ed had. The, still unknown, assailant had broken into Daniel's hospital room after he'd gotten out of surgery and injected the man with enough oxygen to cause an embolism. It was quick and professional, he probably would have gotten away clean if it weren't for a young nurse doing her rounds early so she could leave for a date. The bastard had shot her in the head with a silenced pistol, then took out two members of Daniel's security detail when they rushed in with clean headshots. He was out the window before anyone else could respond, after that, he disappeared. They still weren't sure how he'd done it.
The full face mask, hooded sweatshirt, and baggy sweatpants made a physical description impossible. The gloves meant no fingerprints, the rope he'd used was standard climbing rope that could've come from anywhere. Ballistics were a no go, the gun they recovered was spread in pieces among various dumpsters and trashcans throughout the area around the hospital. It had been stolen from a drug dealer, who had stolen it from an illegal gun dealer, who in turn had gotten it off of a hijacked shipment from a weapons manufacturing company. No witnesses had seen him coming or going, no camera footage. It had been a pro job.
Ed sighed, a professional hitter takes you out right after the tumor in your brain is successfully removed. Some guys get all the luck, and all of it bad. Dan's right hand man was still there, Ed wasn't sure he could trust him, but Dan vouched for him. The problem was that he hadn't gotten Dan's old position, the position had become more public in the last decade and thus more political, so the job went to the professional ass kisser Steven Haines, who he definitely didn't trust.
It just didn't click right. Haines was a corrupt bastard, but he was a popular corrupt bastard. He may be a shitty cop, but he played the political game deftly. But even then, he wasn't a sure thing, he might have made a short list, but he wouldn't have the position locked up. Unless… Damn, Ed clenched his teeth. Unless he had a heavy weight in Washington, either a high power senator on Judiciary or one of the major donors. Which would mean a Washington powerhouse backed a terrorist attack against the U.S. and its allies. If that was the case, this shit was going to get nasty.
But one problem at a time, Ed told himself. If Porter's intel was good, then Haines had allowed an entire terrorist network to become entrenched on U.S. soil with no one the wiser. Haines wasn't an ideologue, he had to be doing this for money, or if he had a heavy weight behind him, power. And a corrupt pig like Haines would be greedy, so it was likely he was offering coverage to other criminal organizations on the side. They needed to wipe out the network in LS, they needed to get Haines and whoever was backing him, and they needed to get whoever was behind the hit on the summit and retrieve the drive.
Edward's scowl deepened. Every operation was at it's simplest when it was just an idea on the drawing board, it always became more complicated, and this one was plenty complicated already. He finally turned back to Karen. "Karen, you did the interrogation. Tell me, what do you think? Is Porter telling the truth, or is he fucking with us?"
Karen stiffened, this could be a cluster fuck if she was wrong. She forced herself to relax and looked her boss directly in the eyes. "Sir, the man has given us a lot of valuable intel already. Do I think that we should trust him; no, he's a mercenary ruthless enough to sell out his own mother. And that's why I think he's being genuine, the man has little to no concept of loyalty, thus he holds no loyalty to his former employers. He'll play any card he's got to come out on top, and right now I think he's holding a royal flush."
"Then give him what he wants, set up the identity, pull the money from one of the black ops funds. Tell him that if he ever gets back into the game again, it had better be on our side, or next time it'll be a bullet to the head instead of a bag over the head." Ed tossed another cigarette into the snow, the cleaners would be pissed at him. He had work to do, he had to prepare for the briefing tomorrow.
"Get me a brief on the targets he's given us, check any of the intel that you haven't already and add any new confirmed targets to the brief. I'll need it to present to the meeting tomorrow. Also, I want security triple checked, we just had one summit hit, I don't want an attack on the summit to talk about the summit attack." It was unlikely, but over the years Ed had realized that god loved irony.
"Also, have our people ready to move, once I've gotten everyone on board at the meeting, we're going to hit every target we know of."
"We've been putting off this bloodletting for far too long."
So let it begin, justice comes in crimson rivers. You know, I'm thinking of doing something different for the next chapter where this bloodletting shall be displayed. Experimenting with something new.
I had to change this chapter a lot because I couldn't decide where I wanted to go with it. It's pretty expositional to, but that's just because Edward's mind is like mine, it bounces around a lot before reaching any conclusions.
What do you guys think?
R&R people