Free Too Wylde by Marcus Wynne Page B

a wire transfer from each bank to
arrive at staggered intervals at an account set up for face to face
access in --
    -- Lake City, Minnesota.
    Hmm.
    She opened a new screen, checked out the
distance and the flights. She could get a direct flight from here
to there, and be on the ground in a few hours. She'd have to get a
driver to take her around. Maybe a cute bodyguard-driver?
    Kiki grinned into her knee, her leg pulled up
like a crane's as she looked up driver and escort-services in Lake
City.
    Never know. A girl could get lucky on a
little visit.
     
    Nina Capushek
    "What the fuck?" Nina said to Fabruzzi.
    The detective's bull pen overflowed with
plain clothes and uniformed cops; radios turned up were filled with
traffic sending ambulances and fire trucks and the National Guard
over to St. Paul. She recognized a couple of the Feebs from the
JTTF over in a corner, and a bunch of other obvious Federale types
not known by face.
    Fabruzzi shook his head. "Still getting the
picture, Nina. We've sent over all the off-duty who came in to help
out. We've cranked the whole city up to full terrorist alert
status. We got our hands full covering what we got."
    "They blew the fucking Capital up?"
    "No," Fabruzzi said. He lowered his voice.
"The non-suits over there?" He inclined his head at a much older
man with a full white beard and head of hair sitting with two very
fit guys dressed in the tactical dirt-bag combo of Arc-Teryx and
Levis that meant some kind of military or para-military operator.
"OGA."
    "Like somebody's not supposed to know
CIA?"
    "Whatever. The word is that what got fucking
blown apart in the first explosion was an off-the books CIA
facility. The Feebs claim they were never informed that facility
was there, and it's not affiliated with the one they've got over
here. The second blast took out the first tier of first-responders
in St. Paul; they lost something like three trucks, all the
firefighters, two ambulances and EMS, the fucking Command and
Control Van and about a dozen cops and squads. Whoever did this was
not fucking around."
    "Damn."
    "Yeah."
    "So who you want me to kill?"
    "Did you ever meet up with that ATF guy?"
    "Not yet. Was busy."
    "Well, he's over here somewhere." Oozy
scanned the room, then yelled: "Le Fronte? Come over here!"
    Nina turned and stopped dead in her
tracks.
    "Oh, you've *got* to be fucking kidding me,"
she said.
    "What?" Fabruzzi said. "You two know each
other?"
    Le Fronte walked up, extended his hand, and
said, "Nice to meet you in person, Detective Capushek."
    Nina ignored the hand. "Oozy, I have a
problem with this."
    "Deal with it. I got marching orders for you
two. Wait here."
    He slid off the desk, shouldered through the
crowd and spoke to the old white haired man surrounded by his
war-dogs.
    Nico was the first to speak. "Look,
we..."
    "Shut up. Seriously. You're a fucking asshole
and incompetent to boot. I won't work with you. Don't say another
fucking word."
    "You don't have a choice. You fucking deal
with it."
    Nina rose up on her toes, settled back when
she saw Oozy gesturing at her. Le Fronte crossed his arms and
stared off into space.
    Oozy walked up to them and said, "You like
movies?"
    "What?" Nina said.
    "You two remind me of Casablanca. 'This looks
like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.'"
     
    Jimmy John Wylde
    The big screen TV showed the same footage
over and over again. A couple of Japanese tourists had been
shooting video of their family on a visit to St. Paul when the
building went up, and they kept filming and then got that footage
right over to the first arriving TV truck. In between the footage
of the building going up, the constant update of casualties from
the two blasts, and the arrival of every kind of heavy duty
counter-terror organization, the news was pretty much non-stop St.
Paul, St. Paul.
    I had a stale beer in front of me. Thieu kept
shaking her head.
    "No good, Jimmy. Things very crazy right now.
War, terrorism, now this here. I'm happy my family