Chapter 142

The one thing that technology did was make surveillance a hell of a lot easier. With all the cameras and gps trackers, I could sit in the motel room drinking coffee, while I watched the subjects of my investigation.

On day one of the new ccvtv deployment I noted that the twenty odd employees did almost no work. They punched in which seemed to be the height of their work day. They then sat playing with laptops and smart phone for their eight hours. The guys seemed to rotate at the loading dock but no trucks came.

About three days in a truck finally arrived. They quickly unloaded the boxes. Evans was there to sign for them. The employees stacked them in an area not far from the overhead door. I found out that night why. It was after the midnight guard came on duty at the gate.

On the first camera I had installed I saw a cube van pulled through the gate. The van backed against the dock. I recognized the two men as employees of the company. Neither of them were the men with records. Right away I knew most of the scam.

Evans had wanted to hire me as cover when he inevitably shut down. He was going to blame it all on someone in the employee pool no doubt. It was pretty stupid of him to think the regular employees, who sat around playing grab ass all day, weren't going to roll his ass up. Nothing about the scam made any sense at all.

I mean I had a good idea how it worked, but I still didn't know who Evan's was. I also had no idea why he thought he could get away with such a poorly designed scam. I was just lost. Usually I could get inside the mind of the perp, but this time I had not a single clue what was going to happen.

I had met Happy in the chat room several times, but I didn't let anything slip. Just for the hell of it, I had Wilson do and in depth background on Happy. Something about her almost stalking me set off alarms. Still there was no proof of anything.

I could lay out the facts but I didn't really understand the why. Till I understood the how and why, I couldn't say it was solved. I probably had at least another month of investigations to go. It was going to be impossible to infiltrate the crew, so it was just observe and follow up.

I felt pretty good about being able to solve the crime eventually. It was going to be a scam to steal the grant money and produce nothing. Exactly how and why, I didn't have an answer, but I did have a clue.

At two in the afternoon while I watched the live feed there was a knock on my door. I pulled the .22mag revolver from the my shoulder rig before I went to the door. I looked out the peephole and saw of all people Andrew.

I threw the door open and was shocked to see him using a walker type contraption on wheels. Andrew rolled it forward a foot or, then walked into it. It was a pretty sad thing to see. In my mind's eye I could see Andrew moving like a cat up behind someone, then silently cutting his throat. It appeared those days were gone forever. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that there was a throwing knife hidden somewhere on the walker contraption.

"Andrew," I said hugging him so hard he almost fell.

"Easy Sylvia, I'm not the man I used to be," he said.

"Bull shit you are every bit the man you used to be. You might have had to learn to do it differently, but I'm sure you can still do all the things you once did," I said it and I meant it. Men like Andrew might slip and slide, but they never stayed down.

"Nice of you to say," he said. His demeanor was all wrong. It wasn't about him, there was something he was hiding.

"So what brings you here?" I asked.

"This," he said handing me a dvd.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Play it and see," Andrew suggested.

I added it to my laptop and it started to play. "Sylvia if you are seeing this I'm either dead or damn close to it," The image and the voice belonged to Colonel Martin.

I hit the pause, "Is this his idea of a joke?" I asked.

"Martin had a massive heart attack yesterday. I was holding the DVD for him, but I hadn't watched it. You need to finished viewing it," Andrew said.

"What I have decided to do was put your name before the board. If you are seeing this they have approved it. So you have a job offer. You can be the next head of Swamp Dog Enterprises," Martin said. "In case you don't understand, you are being asked to keep Swamp Dog in operation. Mostly it will be your job to keep the operatives alive. So make a decision and do it quick." Then the screen went black.

"Andrew are you sure this isn't someone's idea of a bad joke?" I asked.

"No it's for real. Frankly I concur. You are the most ruthless operative I have ever met. When you tell someone you will kill every living thing in their life, they better fucking believe it. I never met anyone who doubted you. The men all know you won't leave them behind, and that's important because they proved they won't leave you either. That is loyalty that transcends chain of command."

"Andrew I can't do this. I don't even know what Swamp Dog does or how it gets it's jobs." I explained.

"That's okay because I do. I'm going to help you get adjusted, if you take the job. It's part of the six month transitional plan. Martin wanted to convince you to do six months and then decide." Andrew said. "You owe us all that much."

"Did you just play the guilt card on me," I said laughing. It was a nervous laugh. "How long to I have to decide?"