Chapter 10

"You know, honey, if those Russian bastards were killing for the meat and just taking the skins as a byproduct, I wouldn't be nearly as incensed. Does that speak good or ill of me?" Jim asked.

"I think it just marks you as human. I feel the same way, and, I'll bet, the vast majority of humans would feel the same way, too, if they knew what was going on."

"I think that the people who are buying those skins are just as guilty as the Russians killing for them. I wish there was some way we could sting every one of the fools!"

"If we could find a list of the customers, we could publish it and embarrass the hell out of the buyers. That wouldn't hurt them as much as I would like to, but I don't know of anything else we could do."

"Well, we still haven't caught the Russians, so I guess we better concentrate on that. I think I'll bring my Ranger buddies in for a conference. Maybe, one of them will have an idea."

A week later, Jim's six Ranger friends were assembled in a TWT conference room, along with Jim, Susan, and George. Refreshments were passed around and acquaintances were renewed after months of separation. Everybody commented on Alice Jackson's obvious pregnancy when she announced her upcoming marriage to Doug Bogart. Congratulations flew around to the two and the women asked for details. Jim asked that they postpone discussion of the wedding as he had invited them in to help solve a serious problem.

Jim explained the situation and what they had been able to find out. He admitted that he was stymied in tracking the criminals and asked for ideas from the group. All of the reasonable ideas were shot down because none of them spoke Russian. Admittedly, the trans-com could solve part of that problem, but it was no good for infiltrating an agent into the Russian group.

Jasmine Conner asked, "Jim, since you can spot when a portal is active on the dinosaur planet, is there any way you can trace back to the source. That way, we can pin down what needs attacking."

"Damn it! Why didn't I think of that? Sure I can. It'll take me a day or so to set up the tracker, but I should have it operational by sometime day after tomorrow. Jasmine, you're a genius!"

Everybody at the meeting except Alice, for obvious reasons, wanted to take part in the raid to destroy the rogue transporter. Susan and George were disappointed when they were turned down for the jaunt; they simply couldn't absorb the necessary training in a short time. Susan made arrangements for a training facility to be set up for a refresher course in physical fitness and weapons use. Jim would join the training as soon as he had the tracker operational.

Jim knew that the rogue transporter had to be in Moscow, Russia, so he set up an automated search pattern to look for it. The transporter was found to be in a warehouse in a slum area. Susan was set to work mapping the area and preparing detailed drawings and pictures for the assault team to study.

They wanted to strike in two weeks. This would not have been enough time to prepare a full scale assault on a military installation, but should be enough time for them to be ready to take out a bunch of thugs. The weapon of choice for the assault team was the stun rifle, set for about 2 hours of unconsciousness. They practiced stalking each other with a stun setting of two minutes; getting shot was not painful with this setting, but it was embarrassing, since it did make you piss in your pants!

The attack had two objectives: recover the rogue transporter and gather any business records that might be around. They didn't want to just wreck the transporter because they had to assume that it could eventually be repaired. They wanted to return it to TWT so that they could be sure that it would never again be used for criminal purposes. They hoped that business records would help them to identify the criminals they didn't catch the day of the raid and identify the customers so that they could be publicly embarrassed.

Finally, the day of the raid arrived. They donned the latest in body armor, since the Russians would be using bullets. They left TWT in the afternoon so that they would arrive in the middle of the night, Moscow time. Esther transported them as a unit with their weapons; they took nothing else, since Esther's crew would be monitoring the operation very closely, ready to provide any assistance they could.

The warehouse was divided into a large open area on the ground floor and an upper floor partitioned into various offices and specialized storage areas. Esther transported them to one corner of the downstairs area and they proceeded from there. The first part of the operation was to "spray" a stun blast over the entire area of the warehouse. The stun ray was electromagnetic in nature, thus, it would pass through wood, though it would be reflected by metal. In other words, it was OK to stand in front of a wooden wall and shoot at it, but you shouldn't try the same thing if there was a metal cabinet on either side of the wall, unless you were prepared to be hit by the reflected stun beam.

Once they were sure they had covered the entire area of the ground floor warehouse, they directed their stun beams toward the ceiling, trying to stun anybody on the second floor. They found several men and two women lying on the floor where they had been hit by the stun beam and nobody awake to oppose the removal of the rogue transporter. Esther used the largest portal available and scooped up the rogue transporter in one bite; George was right: it had been assembled from repair warehouse parts.

They carefully went up the stairs, in case there were any active opponents on the upper floor. None were found, at first, but they had hardly started down the main hall when a shot rang out. A bullet whizzed by and bounced off Jack Smith's armor. Everybody on the team returned the fire, which raised an interesting question: would hits by six separate stun beams put the target out of action for six times as long as one hit? Well, they'd find out.

They did not meet any more opposition, so they were able to search through the various offices and storage areas. They found a refrigerated store room containing not only dinosaur skins but also some very beautiful furs. This was evidence of poaching on more than one world. It looked like hundreds of animals had been killed.

Farther along, they found what looked like jail cells containing women who did not look quite like modern humans. Jasmine Conner was delegated to talk to the women, using her trans-com, as she was deemed the most nonthreatening looking. It took a few minutes for the women to grasp who it was talking to them and that she had no intention of harming them. These women had been captured on another world and brought here to be sold as sex slaves to individuals, not all men, and to brothels.

Finally, they found what looked like a business office. Shelves and shelves of records were found, but they could not be identified because none of the team could read the language. A quick council of war was held and it was decided to bring in Alexi Kobolov, the TWT Russian expert, to see what there was and was it worth taking back to TWT. Jim was transported to talk to Alexi and they both returned in minutes.

Alexi looked at a few of the books and said, "These are complete business records for the whole smuggling operation. This set contains the sales records for the past six months and those list the people who were paid off. The bosses are listed in this book."

Jim asked, "Can you ID the bosses for us and tell us where to find them? We need to get them all tonight, before they can be warned that we have compromised their operation."

"I can help you find many of them, but I don't know if we can find them all in one night."

"Alexi, you take that book and go back to TWT headquarters. Feed the information to Esther so that she can use the transporter to kidnap as many as possible and put them in a secure area at TWT. Esther, call Security and have a guarded warehouse set up, immediately. Tell them what is going on and that they will be responsible for the safety and security of the people you drop on them today and tonight.

"Esther, have one of your people transport these records to a safe place at TWT and have another transport the hides, furs, and skins to a refrigerated storage area at TWT."

Alexi and Esther picked up 23 individuals before daylight in Moscow the next morning. Four were not home, so they would have to be tracked down. These people were the top three echelons of the criminal gang and this should wipe it out.