The Recoil Of The Mind

Chapter 3: Les Écorchés

"You smashed a rod in someone's face?"

"I had to do what I had to do. Did he die?"

Margo hesitated for a moment, looked at Bradley, and spoke. "No", she answered, "But he is pretty shook up."

"I'm glad."

"Bradley was right. You are one snappy little fucker."

Rickard looked across the well lit garage. He was sitting in a comfortable chair and in front of him lay a good amount of densely packed files. Margo was standing and leaning against the Western wall of the garage, while Bradley sat in the far corner, farthest from Rickard while he worked at his laptop and only spoke up whenever Margo needed help.

But now he laid his attention off of his laptop and looked at Rickard with his cold, calculating eyes. The man who Rickard had trained and sparred and studied with had gone and in his eyes he could see the man he truly had become. Even his superiors knew him as one who would always put his weight on his duty and not his emotions. Even his call sign suited him - Antarctica.

"And yet you say DeShawn Rimes has agreed to meet you", Bradley told Rickard as he got up.

"Yes. I sent you a report. Apparently I'm valuable."

"Valuable until the moment you're not. Do you know who he is?"

"I have been doing nothing but reading these dossiers for almost 2 hours now."

Bradley walked over to the table and Margo began searching for Rimes' file at his command. "Here it is", Margo said as she handed him the file. She looked at Rickard. "The man is a walking time bomb about to go off. He's been described vicious, loyal, cunning and extremely unpredictable - and all of it pales in comparison to his brother."

"Half-brother, as a matter of fact." Rickard reached out towards another file. "Leon Griffin". Margo nodded affirmatively. "Dealing with one of them is impossible - the two of them are inseparable and extremely powerful. They have men who would die for them."

"But that doesn't seem the case in the current scenario", Bradley said. "Rumours are stirring about the leaders being unsatisfied about the current state of affairs. And there's the issue with the Chinese", Bradley said as he handed Rickard a file. "Sorry for the delay on this one. Had to pull rank for this one."

Rickard accepted the file and opened it to the first page. The file was full of newspaper clippings and probability graphs for every move made by the Triads and the Hounds.
There were photographs of the gang leaders, their current whereabouts and even their economic accounts had been carefully documented. Bradley had created a micromanagement nightmare, he thought and smiled at his own joke. The file gave proof of a vicious struggle for power between the Triads and the Hounds. He studied the file for another few minutes while Margo helped Bradley out with a issue over the phone, probably something which needed immediate addressing.

Rickard cleared out his throat to bring their attention to himself. "I noticed a pattern there", he said as both of them looked up at him as though they knew what he was going to say. Probably they did. "Everytime there's an attack, or a kidnapping, or whatever; both of the groups claim their responsibility within a few days."

"Yes", Margo said. "They love to assert their dominance. But things have never really gone beyond the occasional skirmish."

"Not this time. The frequency has increased these couple of years. Almost as if somebody wants a war."

"And?". Bradley's ears shot up as if something had triggered him.

"And their buying tendencies. They have been preparing -"