Lobo Malo

Chapter 7 - Dead Men's Chests

The White House
1153 EST

Gregory sat in a corner of the White House's improvised server room, tapping on a keyboard, a pen behind his left ear, a small whiteboard with markers on the wall to his right. The problem he'd been given to work on was not only important, but intriguing. Ryckmen had brought up a good point. The Hyenas were just too well armed for scavengers. While it was possible they managed to raid some JTF stockpiles and had been husbanding their limited resources, it didn't seem likely. Particularly when one considered the fact they were using weapons which were definitely not US military or police issue, like the SVD Ryckmen had recovered. Refurbished and "sanitized" weapons suggested somebody had connections to an arms dealer of some sort. But if that was the case, how were they getting resupplied?

"All right, let's start with the one example we know about," Gregory muttered. "ISAC, I need a records search."

"Specify record criteria."

"All air and maritime cargo manifests for the last calendar year. Country of origin, Angola. Destination country, United States. Limit records for destination country to Gulf Coast or East Coast ports of entry. Eliminate any records which do not indicate any layovers or transshipment stops in nations on or in the Caribbean Sea."

There was a short pause while ISAC considered the parameters. "Search results have returned fifteen thousand, six hundred and twenty-three records."

"Create a repository for these records and restrict access to my eyes only. Transfer a copy of the records to workstation..." Gregory took a moment to find the computer's ID. "Workstation JTF-WH-45263. Hard line only."

"Repository created. Access restrictions established. Transfer beginning. Estimated time to completion: one hour, five minutes."

* * *

Ryckmen peered into the server room, seeing Gregory tapping away at the keyboard, fingers flashing. He seemed to be in a trance as he manipulated the data, pausing only now and again to sip at the cup of coffee which JTF staff had silently kept full for the last fourteen hours. As Gregory turned back from making a note on the whiteboard, he noticed Ryckmen standing in the doorway. "Hey, Lowell," he said pleasantly. "What brings you down here?"

"Wanted to make sure you hadn't been sucked into the computer. It's damned near oh-three hundred."

"Really?" Gregory glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. "Wow. I completely lost track of time." He suddenly shut his eyes tightly, a grimace coming over his face. "And I may have forgotten to blink. Damn!"he growled as tears began to seep out from the corner of his eyes.

"Are you at a good stopping point? Don't want you burning out on me."

"Yeah, I think so. But I should at least give you the high level overview." Gregory opened his eyes, then began to blink them rapidly. Once he was satisfied, he leaned back in the chair. "I don't have as much as I would like. No names or faces we can work with. I can say unequivocally that your bete noir Aaron Keener isn't involved. This seems to have been one of those odd little coincidences which do happen from time to time, and somebody was smart enough to pivot from their original course of action to the one which they found themselves in."

"So what happened?" asked Ryckmen, leaning against a server rack.

"Not gunrunning in the traditional sense.  I started with Angola, since you mentioned the SVD came from there. Since the manifests have the weight of the cargo listed on there, and since we know how many containers were on a ship, we can determine the gross displacement of the cargo vessel. Crew, consumables, fuel, also known variables which help refine the displacement value. From there, it's a basic math problem. The mass of the ship and the speed it maintained tell us how long it should have taken to get from Point A to Point B. If it takes longer than that, when you discard the amount of time spent transshipping or laying over in case of stormy weather at a port somewhere in the middle, then logically it has to have been heavier than what the manifests show."