"Seek and Ye Shall Find" Part 1
Owl's Nest 1800 hours, 15th of April, 2008 ERIC the snowy owl, not Kihn, but still the snowy owl, he told himself, made his way toward his cabin.  He was off the road, making his way up the steeper side of the hill through the brush, in fact.  He moved slowly, as the world considered movement speed, but more quickly than he had so far, with his eyes closed.  Once he was able to sprint to and from his house and other secured positions, with and without a pack, he started teaching himself to do it with his eyes shut.  Bogies would probably attack by night, and his advantage, then, even over those with night vision goggles, might be an intimate knowledge of the place. He stopped, then sidled to his right.  Had he continued, he would have tripped off a flash bang.  But not too far, the ground there was clay, and quite slippery, difficult to climb, and noisy, with the alders along the sides of the swath, to fall down.   It got steep up ahead, the reason attackers would be more likely to head for one of the traps, and he reached forward with his hands, almost immediately finding the hold he knew was there in the ten foot boulder half buried in the hillside. His cell phone, attached by force of habit and protocol into one of his cargo pants pockets, rang quietly but insistently.  He ignored it, wedging his other hand into the hold, bracing his feet against the rock, and hauling himself up using the friction of his sticky rubber soles on the rock.  The caller could leave a message, stay on the line, or call back.  His current task took his full concentration, and no cell phone was going to distract him, not even for a moment. Now, hauled up as high as he could go by the pull up, lacking good footholds apart from the friction, he had to maintain his hold with one hand while quickly reaching up with the other and grabbing the small lip at the top of the boulder.  He let out half a breath, eyes still shut, and lunged upward.  Too far, and his hand slid back toward the edge of the rock.  It would be an uncomfortable fall if he didn't catch this hold, and if the one he currently had was insufficient.  He spread out his fingers, pressing their ends down into the rock, and there!  He had the edge.  A moment, a breath, and he swung his other arm up to grasp beside the first on top of the rock.  The phone continued ringing.  A toe in the hold where his hand used to be, and he lunged upward, kicking his other leg over the top, and rolling on away from the edge of the rock.  It was vital that the maneuver be done just so, as to rise any more above the top of the rock would run the climber into a low hanging branch in just the right position to take them off balance before they had a firm footing on the rock, and send them falling back the ten feet to the steeply sloped and bracken thicketed hill below. Out from under the branch, he came up to a crouch, and got his bearings, feeling the slope, the foliage.  The safe way was to go back down and around the small scree field he'd set up directly between here and the house.  People didn't like going backward.  He was confident an attack from this angle, at least, would not proceed very quickly, but that he could safely reach one of the safe spots if pursued.  He sat with his back against a tree trunk, eyes still closed, pulled out and activated his phone. "Schweig here." "Next time answer in a more timely manner." "I was climbing."  His voice and face remained blank. "Eric, we could need you on a moment's notice.  There are standards, pressure to maintain them." "You want me in briefing.  That takes time, and if you didn't have it, you'd send a chopper.  You aren't my ex-boss, and I'm not a cop or operative, so responses will not be immediate.  What do you want?" It had become accepted and more or less automatic that they would use vague terminology when on the unsecured line. "Aah, you . . .  Yes we need you for a briefing.  Come to the HQ in two hours, will you?" The irritation, the stress in Gray's voice was evident.  The teams and he, it seemed, were not entirely comfortable with each others styles yet. But if Gray had a problem with Eric, it would be Gray that would have to change. Gray had sought them out, and not vice versus, and they'd proven themselves of value to him.  He would adjust.  Then there was the hope issue.  It had seemed great to be free of Section, finally, but Eric now had his doubts.  The pleasures of the freedom had been short lived and seemed hollow by comparison with the pleasures of operations.  What, then, had he hoped for?  Perhaps he was more likely, in this life, to continue longer without encountering a close range 9mm bullet to the head, but what was the point in that?  Why live, if people were going to make it too difficult?  The hope unlooked for had shown itself, and promptly faded.  There was that one possibility, her, but he could not afford to be distracted by it. "Copy two hours to HQ.  Bring anything?" "No, you'll have time for that later.  Just be there." Eric sat for a moment, contemplating.  It was his first briefing since the testing, possibly for a real mission, not that it would make a difference if it were it training. People perform in combat as they do in training, and if you didn't take the one seriously, you would falter in the other and people would die. It was, however, something, something more real and directed to do than what he'd had so far.  Sure, he'd taken the brood to the warehouse for four hours a night, wrestling with their "real life" schedules to do it.  But some civilians did that kind of thing too.  This, if real, would be his first operation in three months, he figured.  Something within him rose in anticipation, a life seeming to return that had been absent.  It wasn't much of a hope, but at least he'd be doing something his body and mind were meant to, he thought.  He rose smoothly, eyes opened as he put away his cell phone, and turned back toward the house.  Two hours was easily enough time to get cleaned up and make it to the bar, IF nothing went wrong between now and then.  If something went wrong, he might arrive just in time.  He picked out the rout, and leapt up the scree field, placing his feet precisely on those rocks firmly in place among the loose sliding stones, and made it up in five seconds.  He sprinted the rest of the way over the relatively flat and unobstructed stretch to the house.  Here he just had to avoid the small foot twisting holes, the shots that could catch him from the windows, were he an attacker, and the two pressure plates that would set off claymore mines.  No problem.  He'd warned the rest of the brood as soon as he'd put them in, to stay either right behind him, or on the driveway, when approaching the place. The door reached, he punched in his code and turned the key in the bolt lock, and entered quickly, turning to shut off the alarm and other programmed security counter measures, most of which were psychological from here on in.  He kept moving, cooling down, as he gathered the things he'd take with him including clean clothes, stripped, and headed for the bathroom. A leisurely fifteen minutes later he exited the bathroom, goosbumps fading from his bronzed skin.  He liked the cold shower after a hard workout.  It did more, he thought, to get rid of sweat, and reminded him of his childhood home.  The clothes he donned were generic grey work clothes, the closest things he could find to BDUs without them being obviously military. An hour and a quarter later he arrived at the bar, entering through the adjoining underground garage.  He had a little time, so he made his way up to the "civy" section, as he called the portion of HQ actually used as a functioning bar.  He leaned against the counter for a moment, eyeing the employees critically, and drank some tea they'd stocked at his request.  There was a new one, probably of minimal age for the work, but with a street wisdom in her eyes and a quickness to her step. He wondered if she was employed in less overt tasks for the SIA, or anyone else, for that matter.  He wondered if she was taken, but found he didn't really care.  He slapped a couple of dollars on the counter for appearances, as any difference would be taken out of his pay-check, turned and made his way back to the briefing. SIA Taskforce Head Quarters Briefing Room 2010 hours "Mr. Schweig!  Finally.  You're just . . ." "Five minutes early, sir."  Eric interrupted.  "Something bothering you, sir?" "Oh, yes, of course.  Well, have a seat." Eric wondered which statement Gray had replied to, or if it was a reply to both.  He approached a seat near Gray, the rest being empty, but remained standing and regarded the other man trying to hide in the empty room, and trying not to appear to be hiding at the same time.  He was clearly frightened, nervous, and uncomfortable.  His clothes were torn and dirty, and he smelled like he took showers a couple times a week at best.  He smiled nervously at Eric, his teeth not well cared for, a couple missing that should have been visible. "Oh yes.  This is Howard, our . . . Human Intelligence element."  Translation: Turncoat informant off the street, valuable, but not to be trusted without verification, and, it appeared, highly freaked out about what would happen to him if his former boss found out. He shrugged, extended a bony paw out of sleeves that were too loose, but not quite long enough to cover his wrists, and smiled again.  His breath smelled of fresh alcohol, just enough to loosen him up, Eric wondered, his eyes on Gray, his face schooled to hide the distaste he felt like expressing. "Eric Schweig.  Shall we begin?" "Yes quite.  We've been observing a potential target for some time now, uhm . . ."  He shuffled some papers on the table in front of the chairs "Determined him to be a threat to, ah, national security"  He paused in his talking, determining it to be futile, and focused on choosing which paper to begin with. "Here it is.  The record of crimes attributed to your man.  As you can see, he's highly suspected, Howard here confirms it . . ." A vigorous nod and a dour look "of heavy drug smuggling and distribution activities, and more recently, weapons smuggling to several key organized criminal elements upstate.  This is the reason for our concern, as, were it simply urban gangs dealing with him the NYPD could handle it.  According to reports, though, he's back and forth over the border, dealing with suspected Mafia, suspected militia's with potential for violence."  Yadda yadda yadda. Gray wanted him to kill an American criminal, and would pull out all the evidence to convince Eric that the man was scum of the earth and deserved to die at his hands.  Here it came.  He has a pet diversion of buying young women, the same age as Eric's would be had she not disappeared, off the street, using and abusing them, and throwing them back out with the trash.  Of course.  There was always something, the bad guys were never just honorable soldiers fighting for god and country or some other cause.  Sure, the guy was scum, and society would be better off without him, but Eric wasn't about to commit his life to taking the man out due to some personal dislike for him or his foibles.   Eric would kill the man so that his weapons and drugs wouldn't be distributed as widely, and because his new boss told him to, and because fewer people would die if professionals such as he and his team did the job, himself and the brood. "Howard here will tell you about his habits, and whatever else you need to know, won't you Howard?"  Another vigorous head nod, and Eric wondered that dandruff didn't fly. "And Eric?  We'd like this to be clean, covert, if you know what I mean.  We don't need a bad rap with the PTBs, we ARE supposed to be> secret, and we don't need the authorities after you." No duh.  Why do you think you hired the Snowy Owl and put him in charge of a team?  Sure, a drive by, car bombing, or ambush with heavy weapons and a car crash might be easier, but that was not Eric's way, never had been.  He'd gotten out of the Rangers and into the Green Berets just as soon as possible, on his way to the D boys (Detachment Delta).  Covert missions had always been his thing, the cleaner the better. "And there's no deadline, but the sooner the better, we don't want the big weapons in the wrong hands, and we think he might have some coming down the pike." Eric nodded to the speech, attempting to appear to take it seriously, and glanced down at the papers.  He wasn't really reading them just yet, as he did need to hear what Gray had to say, even if only ten percent of it was "need to know."  Gray got the point though, it appeared, as he announced that he would leave Eric and Howard alone for a while.  Only a brief briefback would be required, he wanted to be sure Eric wouldn't try anything TOO crazy and needed to get him the supplies he would need.  He could bring in any members of Beta team, the brood that he needed on the mission, but it was all strictly confidential.  Then Gray was finally gone, and Eric focused on the target's file before him. Howard coughed, and Eric ignored him.  He coughed again, and Eric looked up, his dark eyes boring into the man, waiting disinterestedly while demanding total honesty. "So, where ya from?"  The man asked. Another pause, uncomfortable for Howard "I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you."  He cracked his neck without touching it, before returning his eyes to the paper in his hands. A nervous chuckle. "ah, uhm.  Well.  Don't'cha want to know something from me?" Eric decided the man was primed and ready to talk. "All right, Howard.  I need to know everything about the target.  You got that?  Everything.  And if you lie, turn on me, double cross me, mislead me, or otherwise compromise this mission, I will hunt you down and kill you with my bear hands."  He slapped the paper down on the table with a bang that threatened to crack the table itself, accentuating the last word, his eyes digging deeper into the other's soul. "Do you understand?" Howard clicked his mouth shut, blinked his eyes rapidly, and nodded as he had not yet done in Eric's presence. "Y-y-yes sir.  Abso****nlutely sir.  I w-wouldn't think of it, sir.  I'm on your side here.  Cross my heart and hope to . . ." Another nervous chuckle "Well, you know.  I swear I'll do good by you Mr. Eric"  Apparently he couldn't pronounce the last name, but he was scared.  That was good. Eric smiled, leaning back in his chair, and folding his arms. "Very well.  What is your relationship to the target, Howard?" "I transport his stuff.  You know, the innocent things, household goods, letters, orders, an' all that, but big stuff too."  His voice rose in excitement. "Some big trucks, sensitive stuff in the back, you know.  He TRUSTS me to drive the WEAPONS across the border!"  He whispered the last part conspiratorially, as though he were insanely proud of the fact. "Yeah, he sends the stuff wi' me, da weapons, and da drugs & stuff, an' he tells me, `Howard' he says, `Howard m'man, this is very important to me that you get this shipment to the client, Howard.  They've got something big coming up, and they're depending on this shipment for it.'  See?  He says they've got something big!  That means he trusts me. . . Ain't you gonna' write any of this down, or nothing?" "Operational Security.  If I write it down, someone may get ahold of it.  It is all up here."  He deliberately removed a hand from where it lay folded and motionless until that moment in the crook of his other elbow, to tap the side of his head. "So you drive his trucks on errands.  License plate numbers?" Those would take some committing to memory, for Eric, but he could manage it, if he saw them again he would know them. The interview, Eric tried to keep from turning it into an interrogation, continued till he had addresses, names, a loose daily routine, armament levels, training, and a load of other "No one gives a . . ." junk that Howard clearly thought vital.  There was no way Eric could remember it all, even the stuff he DID need to know, but he was not going to let Howard go, either.  The man would rehash it all until Eric and the rest of the brood could do perfect hour long imitations of his shpeil on the facts, or nearly so. "Very good Howard, thank you for your time and contributions.  I assure you, you are doing the right thing, and no harm will come to you as a result.  Here is a number."  He wrote it down on a note pad.  It would call a machine, which would send a record of the call to the Conspiracy Theorist's computer, and from there to Eric's, via the roundabout path such information had to follow. "I want you to call that number three times a day, at 0700 hours, that's Seven o'clock AM, One P.M, Six P.M. and 10 P.M.   If you are well and the mission is a go, press 1, once.  If you have been compromised in any way, or if the safety of anyone will be put in more danger than expected by the mission's continuation, press any other number or numbers, and go immediately to the nearest police station.  Stay there until we find you.  Understood?" Howard had to consider the details for a moment before he nodded. "Repeat my instructions back to me" Howard did so until Eric was confident he could perform.  They arranged a meeting for two days later at a small, anonymous city park Eric knew of and had scoped out for just such purposes. Howard would wait at a bus stop on the border of the park, at a time where he would have just missed the bus. If all were clear for the meet, he would be reading a newspaper. If all was not clear he would roll up the newspaper and tap it on the bench impatiently as he waited. Thus their meeting was concluded, much to Howard's apparent relief.  Eric called Gray, who came to retrieve his informant and offer them refreshments before they departed. Return