Free TW12 The Six-Gun Solution NEW by Simon Hawke Page B

diverse smuggling operations throughout the timeline. The potential for profit using time travel was simply staggering, and the resources the Network had amassed were impossible to calculate.
    As Forrester had reported to his superiors, it was difficult enough trying to unravel the complicated financial structure of modern, 27th-century corporations. But even using all the considerable investigative resources at his command, it was impossible to trace complex and clandestine financial operations that cross the boundaries of time.
    Profits skimmed from the revenues of the Roman Empire could be used to finance bootlegging and gambling operations during America's Prohibition and the capital that was generated there could be invested on Wall Street in the bear markets of the 20th century, using the knowledge gained from time travel to pull off the ultimate in inside trading. Money skimmed from gambling casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Monte Carlo could be funneled into arms trade in Brussels and profits realized there could finance drug smuggling and prostitution rings operated under the cover of the Mafia. It was impossible to follow the trail of the money unless one or another of those operations were discovered and shut down, the participants taken into custody and interrogated. Even so, the closed cell system that the Network utilized insured that only small portions of its vast, illegal empire could be exposed. And then the trail simply ran out once again.
    Unintimidated. Forester had set out to bust the Network and, in so doing, had incurred a price upon his head. Steiger, too, had a contract put out on him by the Network and, on his last mission, he had been assassinated, though he had managed to take his killer with him. Forester's relentless pursuit of the Network had driven them more deeply underground and his only real hope of stopping them was to find their leaders, the people who would possess the records of all the Network branches and their operations. However, so far, only a few of the Network's operations had been uncovered. Its leaders remained hidden and unknown.
    As a result, the merging of the T.I.A. and the First Division had gone somewhat less than smoothly. There had been considerable resentment for the time commandos among the agents of Temporal Intelligence and the members of the First Division had reciprocated with distrust. For years, the agency had been a lot like a corrupt police division. Not everyone was on the pad, meaning that not everyone was actively involved with the Network, but many of those who weren't involved had known about it and kept quiet. Indeed, there had been little else that they could do, considering the fact that the former agency director had been a Network man, himself.
    Forester had instituted scanning procedures for all agency personnel in an effort to unmask those with Network connections and all the agents, even those who weren't involved, resented it. Many resigned or transferred out. Others, significantly, simply disappeared. New personnel had been brought in to replace them and, eventually, things began to settle down. But it was significant that none of the old agents from the days before the two units had been merged were present in the First Division Lounge. The newer personnel had no background of camaraderie with the soldiers of the First Division. They, like the older agents, tended to socialize together. Consequently, when Delaney, Cross and Priest entered the lounge, they saw only a few other members of the First Division at the bar and lingering over their drinks at several tables. They nodded greetings to them and took a table of their own, near the back wall.
    It was late and the sprawling base below them was all lit up. The glass wall gave a panoramic view of the base and the surrounding countryside. Off in the distance, they could see the lights of traffic on the interstate and, farther off, the distant glow of the city of Los Angeles, a vast