Chapter 534: Defuse What?

Why do I feel Winter’s parents don’t want me to go for a walk with them to see if I would help the new couple buy a house?

We were in a secure location when the Admiral, Winter’s mother, said, “David, the Seal team did a lot of recon in the last twelve hours. We have the opportunity to take out multiple high-value targets involved in the movement of radioactive materials. In the run-of-the-mill transactions of these materials, the CIA deals with it should it involve a threat to the U.S. or our allies. The details are need-to-know, and I never wanted to know. The targets aren’t run-of-the-mill merchants. Lead-lined containers get loaded with enriched uranium and plutonium, with these containers pushed into their human mule’s bowels. The shapes were designed so that they appear to be stools inside the person’s intestines. Their packaging prevents all but a tiny bit of radiation from escaping. That’s less than the threshold that would set off sensors at commercial airports. Those tracking these people have been unable to interrogate any of the mules. If they don’t die from having the canisters pulled out, the lead or radiation poisoning kills them. So far, the longest they’ve managed to keep one of these mules alive is twenty-four hours. These people have been selling bomb-grade plutonium and uranium since the Manhattan Project, but no one has been able to find any traces of them other than rumors. Occasionally, a country will catch one of this group’s disposable assets. Those guys have more brains in their pants than between their ears. Eight years ago, they managed to catch someone who managed to acquire radioactive materials, lead-lined containers, and mules. His bosses hung him out to dry.”

As I already knew, it was standard practice, but it seemed surprising to the Admiral and Colonel. The family stopped that activity for a while, and the guy who got caught only knew what those above in his family told him. Whoever caught him thinks they have the kingpin. In this case, it didn’t take much to track down his suppliers and distributors because he gave them up. The problem was that when they tracked these people down, the target was dead or what he knew was of no value. Those behind the scenes covered their tracks as they have for centuries.

“The Seal team’s intel indicated that this group relocated the operation in the middle of one of the largest cities in the area. It appears they are scared shitless of you finding out that they use children as their mules, which is always fatal for the child. I learned they would have been better off continuing to make child porn and risking your wrath when you found out about their sexually abusing children for profit. We had a tactical strike team ready to launch when it got scrubbed due to the appearance of thousands of children coming into the area for a youth soccer tournament. Multiple special forces teams got deployed to secure the high-value targets. They found the only way to reach them was to kill their wives, children, nieces, and nephews. Before we had the teams extracted, the targets knew of the operation. An unknown source reached out to my bosses to ask me to contact you after the wedding to see if you would be willing to defuse the situation,” the Admiral told me.

The colonel, Winter’s father, told me, “Assets in the area indicated the people in this group aren’t going to permit their capture. They will sacrifice themselves and their families to keep from being captured. Multiple sources have indicated that the team has enough nuclear bombs to kill a minimum of eleven million people if they detonate them. We don’t know the death toll from the radiation and blast damage outside the blast radius. Those about my pay grade told me they are willing to lose the targets to prevent the detonation of multiple megaton nuclear bombs. If you walk in there with April and Ellen, they will stand down and disarm, at least while you are there. If you could arrange some sacrificial lambs to draw away the pack of wolves, the rest could slip away untouched.”

I used my implant to reach out to Corwin, Mary, and Skylar about what was happening. They were well aware that families had their asses in a jam. All those securing themselves with nuclear bombs were considered high in the food chain by the world governments. In the elite families, these were bastard step-children who got greedy and careless. I got a list of who to extract from these families. They would know how to escape from the crowds for the soccer tournament when whatever the three had planned caused people to evacuate the area. By the time I walked out, all that would remain were those who knew they were dead anyway.

“Winter said if you wish to help out that you only need to put in a request for transportation. You can depart from your airstrip that is part of the base you purchased to build the new foster care complex,” the Admiral told me. “If you leave immediately, you can be back here in time for an early dinner.”

Damn it! I am tired of going to rescue parts of these elite families from the rest of their families. They are chicken-shit bastards.

“I’m going to need a large yet discrete way to transport the first group of kids moving into the new foster care complex before I even do the dog and pony show to open it officially,” I explained. “I would guess around three hundred young children, tweens, and teens. If these people could dig themselves into the city deep enough to have undetectable nukes distributed around it as a deterrent, they would have been here long enough to have bastard children all over that city. They support these children because that lets them pick out those with a natural talent for the family business, who are useable as dumb muscle or are only smart enough to get greedy and screw up. I expect the latter to be one rung higher on the ladder than the one you picked up eight years ago. I require that you let your superiors know that these kids are hands-off if they want my help. I don’t care if one of them is a six-year-old with a sniper rifle randomly picking off people in a mall parking lot a mile away.”

“I have a counter-offer,” the Admiral said. “We will ensure anyone you extract from the area is hands-off, but I want the four girls and two boys around ten years old who are doing that right now. Our intel indicates that they are not killing random targets. The CIA has confirmed the last ten of these children killed come from the CIA’s long list of targets to assassinate should the opportunity arise. They do not know how these kids are getting their information on the targets. Footage from whoever is spotting for these shooters is irrefutable confirmation of the target moments before the target’s head explodes.”

The colonel said, “It figures that my wife would ask for the sloppy ones. I’ve got orders to attempt to secure the ones expected to have genius-level IQ or higher. These are the ones that scare the shit out of the top brass. One in particular, who they believe may be around ten to twelve, is exceptionally patient and creative. The last one she killed in this area died fittingly, given his brutal past, which put him on their hit list. She fired two shots from what they guessed might be a fifty-caliber sniper rifle two seconds apart, from approximately a mile and a half away. The first removed his twig and berries as cleanly as if removing them with a knife. Her second shot blew apart his left knee. She chose the exact spot on his body to flip him over the railing to direct his descent down the sloped sides of the building. I shit you not, how she had his body fall, he would have survived the thirty-four story drop. He landed in a rock crusher used to break up rocks and boulders from the construction site excavation to provide gravel for the concrete. One of her preferred techniques is to find the shot that lets her slow the projectile, using the target’s internal organs so that it hits the spine at the base of the skull. She appears to like having the head drop in someone’s lap, a punchbowl, and, with surprising frequency, through the sunroof of a moving car.”

“If these are the kids I think they are, then that song Heathens from Suicide Squad fits what you are asking. Please get with whoever wants these kids and let them know the kids are going through my medical and mental health intake process first. Once the doctors finish, I will bring a few of the kids you requested, along with a random selection of other kids from their families. It would be beneficial to have anyone who thinks they want these kids to be there too,” I told them. “It is something I can’t tell you. I need you to trust me when I say that you have no idea what you are getting here. Those who want these kids don’t either.”

“I don’t think I know that song,” the colonel told me.

Wait for them to ask you who you know.Please don’t make any sudden moves.
You don’t know the half of the abuse.

You’ll never know the freak show sitting next to you.You’ll never know the psychopath sitting next to you.

We don’t deal with outsiders very well.
You have trust issues, not to mention they can smell your intentions.

I went back in to talk to Ellen, April, and Ariba.

“April and Ellen aren’t required, David, but I need to go,” Ariba told me. “They would willingly fall at Aunt Elise’s feet than sit in a room with me. I’m your sister now, and they don’t want to find the hell they will find themselves in if they hurt me. Plus, I have a few dear friends in those families.”

I was trying to figure out what to tell my parents when April did what she did so well.

“Day-id is taking Ariba to go get kids for foster care,” April told them.

That solves that problem.

Ariba and I both had flight suits waiting. Mine already had the black widow guns in the integrated holsters. I found a note saying the EMP rounds would render the bombs inoperable. They would have to rebuild them from scratch. I knew Ariba wouldn’t be asking questions about the appearance of a flight suit that looked painted on her body.

It is nice not having to worry about explaining things that are best left undiscussed.

Ariba and I landed outside the city. We got a cab to take us to the soccer tournament venue. Ariba looked cute in the outfit they put in the storage place on the plane for her to wear. She had jeans, sneakers, socks, a tank top, a short-sleeved shirt, and a thin long-sleeved hoodie. You couldn’t tell she was an albino with her wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. I had board shorts, a t-shirt, a ball cap, sandals, and cheap sunglasses.

The spooks and people told to watch for us didn’t notice Ariba when she asked one of them if they would take a picture of us beside the soccer stadium sign. I’m unsure how they could miss me, but many buff guys are here for the tournament.

We made our way around the front of a building that would take us to one of the family’s homes. Our clothing was carefully selected to match that of the people in the various families used as human shields for these fuck-ups. The security for the family didn’t stop us but didn’t let us out of their sight. When we entered this family’s home, we were about to get challenged when a kid around ten came up to me, held her arms in the air, and said, “up, please.” The girl was one of the ones that the colonel wanted me to turn over to him.

I bet that got some raised eyebrows. I’m the only person she responds to this way, and they all know it.

One of the head servants told me, “This young lady hasn’t eaten in days. Please follow me to the kitchen so we can get her fed before you continue to your destination. Those you are here to meet don’t have anywhere else to go and don’t have any other obligations today.”

As with so many kids in the families before her, this girl ate whatever I put in her mouth. Her stomach was bulging out when she thanked me for making her eat.

“Run, tell the others it is time to clean up their toys and pack them up if they want to take them with them. Once they eat, they need to go down near the tournament and blend in. You know the drill,” I told the girl, and she rushed off to do as I asked.

Ariba hadn’t said a word as she sat with the girl and me at the table. We soon headed toward the passages that would take me to where these guys secured themselves from being arrested.

“You know you can’t go past this point, miss,” said the man leading me to reach these morons.

Ariba took off the long-sleeved shirt, put her sunglasses and hat inside the shirt to keep them secure, and tied it around her waist. He still insisted that Ariba wasn’t going with me.

He told me, “I’m sorry, but none of the children are allowed past this point. I cannot give you entry until she leaves this area.”

“Oh, I don’t need you to give me entry. I will just break the door down. My sister is coming with me regardless of whether it is permitted or not,” I told him. “It would probably be best that you go stroll down by the stadium. I’ll let myself in. Those inside can directly raise their complaints about my sister’s presence with me.”

I used my implant to weaken the concrete around the six-inch thick steel door’s frame before giving it a hard kick. It slammed into the wall behind it before dropping loudly onto the floor. After I destroyed three more doors, the others were open when I came to them. The servant escorting us took my advice and quickly departed.

I let Ariba go in first, which caused some discussion. I walked in, went to the place where I felt it would be the most impactful, pulled my black widow guns, and fired EMP rounds at each nuclear bomb. I ensured that I singed some hair or went right over the top of the bridge of the noses of those in the room when I fired. I let them get that through their heads for a few seconds.

One of the men started raising a machine pistol to take a shot at me. It clattered around as the black widow round dropped him to the floor in excruciating pain.

Now, the head of one of the families here gave me a shit-eating grin as he let go of the dead man trigger for at least one of the nukes.

“Detonation unsuccessful. No devices present,” a computerized voice said over the speakers in the room.

That happened to the other two heads of families in the room when they released their detonators.

“That confirms that you are all dumb shits,” I told them in their respective languages. “Do you think I would walk in here with my little sister Ariba if there were any chance you could have set off those bombs? I disabled them all when I walked into this room. I didn’t need to come in here to do that. All I can say is that you just screwed yourself out of me trying to do you a favor.”

“What favor could you ever do for us?” one of the twenty-something, arrogant pricks asked.

“Well, let me see. Corwin, Mary, or Skylar have already set something in motion to clear the blast radius of your bombs. I will be taking your illegitimate and legitimate children to my new foster care facility when I leave. That is a favor to the kids, not you,” I told them. “What I came in here to offer before you tried to blow up my sister and I was to have you leave a few sacrificial lambs for the various governments to find when they raid the place after I leave. I had planned to ensure the rest of you slipped away unseen. Now you’re on your own.”

Ariba pointed out seven of the men in the room. I popped each one with two stun rounds to ensure they weren’t going anywhere unless someone carried them. My implant told me that these men had a lot to tell whoever was coming to arrest them, but none of them knew anything of value to take down their elite families. I saw two that I needed to have come with me.

One has nothing to do with this, but they would kill his wife and children if he didn’t come here with the others. He was a decent guy in a shitty situation.

The other was a CIA operative who spent the last twenty-five years working his way into the inner circle of one of the lesser families in the room. It wasn’t to extract them but to get them where they could escape with the others. They would return to the elite head of the lesser families.

This man knew all the details about the operations the men in the room ran.

Once we were in a place where he could speak with me privately, the man told me, “The last head of this family knew I was an operative before my superiors conceived of their plan to have me infiltrate a lower rung of an elite family. He took me to a room in a hole where I could choose to rot away slowly or come to an arrangement that worked well for us both. He would ensure that the family knew I had his trust in exchange for doing what the CIA trained me to spy on people. I married one of his daughters in exchange to legitimize my spot in the hierarchy. I learned everything about the part of the lesser family’s business before he assigned me to be a worthless son-in-law, that he had to stick somewhere for a lesser head of a family to babysit. It took a few attempts to find the best fit, but I became the face of whatever lesser family business where he assigned me. I was the dumb blonde, too stupid to understand the business and too pretty to make part of the muscle. All the elite families have men and women like me, not CIA operatives, but in this role. We are the ones the families send to galas, dinners, and weddings outside of the elite world, where the family must have a representative in attendance. Governments will grab us from time to time to get information out of us, but the others like me aren’t bright enough to know more than their family is beyond wealthy.”

The arrangement with the big head of these lesser families had this spy going two or three times a week to some function to represent the family. It allowed him to update what was happening in that part of the family business. He never had to do anything regarding family business, and the heads of the lesser families paid more attention to the staff than the operative. They worked out what to provide to the CIA when this operative checked in.

As he explained, he was one of the most valuable in this family. When this family needed to rid themselves of a head of a lesser family, this operative fed details to the CIA. It was to screw over another family by giving details of a transaction way before anyone even discussed the deal.

It didn’t come without peril, though. When shit hit the fan, the family looked for the crapper. His CIA training kept their interrogation techniques from working. It happened a lot during his first ten years undercover.

He does get grabbed for “chats” occasionally, but the family’s interrogators generally accept that someone overdid it and caused brain damage.

“I found that I enjoyed fucking with their heads. They broke three toes, trying to get me to tell them about what they wanted. I asked when I was getting the puppy not to tell daddy that I fell down the stairs again. Another time I asked them if the correct answer to the question was purple. I told them I hadn’t studied for that test on a different occasion. Could they give me multiple-guess answers? The best so far is me answering their questions by discussing what types of seaweed they thought would get us high if we smoked it. They knew better than to hurt my face, back, chest, arms, and hands, as that is what makes me the family’s party boy. I kept discussing smoking seaweed for two days, asking if shrooms would grow in sea cow shit and similar questions along those lines. The head of the family told me that he watched them interrogate me to ensure they didn’t hurt my face, and he wasn’t sure if I was faking it or not,” he explained.