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A Cat Among the Stool-pigeons. Episode 4. Note: Dafydd is the Welsh equivalent of "David" and is pronounced "Davith"

About an hour after Mike left my office, a courier delivered an envelope. It contained two things. A photograph and a handwritten note. "The name she's using is Vivian Downer. Fell off the radar sometime in the last 48."

There was a lady I wouldn't mind rescuing.... a curvy lynx with a cute smile and the most gorgeous golden eyes. I indulged myself with a moment's daydreaming about her expressing her gratitude after I after I did the Hollywood action hero thing to rescue her from certain death... Yeah, right. That kind of thing only happens in the movies.

I made a copy of that photo, labelled it "#4" and tucked it into the envelope on my desk along with two others, then turned my eyes and keyboard back to the document I was creating.

"..... Photograph #1 is designated "last target" and is not to be engaged unless no other targets remain or under the active protection circumstances detailed below. Photographs #2 through #4 are non-target individuals potentially associated with legitimate targets. If threatened with deadly force by any target agency, active protection of these non-target individuals is strongly advocated, even before activation, but secondary to the overall mission. Intel revealing the location of non-target individuals #3 and #4 is to be reported via the above comms plan..."

Finished with the document and putting it into the same envelope as the photographs, I sealed the envelope and grabbed the whiskey bottle out of my filing cabinet. Nothing to do now except wait for the phone to ring, which it did - 45 minutes later. Not my office line, not my personal phone but the burner sitting on my desk. Apparently my insurance policy had arrived.

"Hello?"

The electronically distorted voice read off a phone number followed by "Not from the phone in your hand and use Marko's secondary authentication protocol or we disappear. You can contact him and change it after we establish a secure channel." My caller then hung up.

Perfect. I grabbed a second pair of burner phones out of my stash of them and went through the same rigmarole, albeit with different authentication phrases and codes as I'd used with Marko and I had a secure channel with my earlier caller.

"One team has overwatch on your office. Another has established overwatch on a dead-drop by lake Calhoun. In the wall by the boulder monument in the cemetary. One stone has a splash of red paint. It is loose, with a cavity behind it. Deposit documentation and leave within 6 hours. What else do you need?"

"How many teams?"

"Six."

"Overwatch and demonstration phase, maintain coverage on the individuals identified by the first two photographs in the file I will be dropping you. A second envelope will also be dropped. For the demonstration I will require a live video feed from the active spotter on the individual in the first photograph and the anonymous delivery of the second envelope to him while that video feed is active. Execution will be triggered by either my death at the hands of a target or that of the individual in photograph number two by the same agency. In addition this channel can be used to order you to execute the mission. Fire and forget protocols, execution means the comms go dark, permanently."

"We can do that. Deposit your package. Execution criteria are active from the moment that you do so. Return We will contact you on this channel when we are ready to initiate a live spotter feed." *click* ... I watched the video feed from the spotter. You wouldnt think this guy was so dangerous - he was a skinny little leopard gecko. However, the even dozen well-muscled and well-armed water monitors that were his spear-carriers and enforcers that spread out to secure the building and escort their boss into the office of the sleazy club... They looked dangerous.

Ok, Show time. The courier vehicle was in sight. I watched the courier pull up and deliver the envelope to Koob's sicario on the front door. Saw it caried up to the office and saw the man himself open it and spill out the burner phone and the note.

"Speed-dial 1 if you want to live, Koob."

He showed the note around to the lizards in his office - I had no audio but I could tell they were laughing. I directed my voice to the phone on the desk, set on speaker.

"Blow that bourbon bottle off his desk."

About 45 seconds later the office window shattered and the bourbon bottle on Koobs desk disintegrated. His security detail scattered, one covering his boss with his greater bulk, the others taking up positions covered by the window frame. Yeah, like that wall is going to stop a .50.... They were good but this wasn't a threat they were set up to handle. After a moment Koob grabbed for the phone and I saw him dial. The second phone beside me started to ring a couple seconds later.

"Yo, this is Koob."

"Good afternoon, Mr Needle. My name is Dafydd Owen. We need to talk about the Mitchell family."

"They snitched on me, I kill them all. You get in the way I kill you too, you won't always be as lucky as you were by your office."

"Koob, you really dont want a war, a real war, between your people and mine."

"You talking war, you know how many gangs I killed to get this territory? You know how many bones I made personal? You talking war you dont know who you dealing with."

"Take it off the speaker, Koob."

"Why? I got no secrets from these guys"

"OK, it's your funeral."

"Maybe yours, smartass."

"There's a few new people in town, Koob. I can't tell you who they are, what they look like, or anything more than one thing because I've never met them. The one thing I can tell you is that every one of them can hit a target with a sniper rifle from more than half a mile away. A slightly more emphatic demonstration, please."

The last was directed at the other phone, but since both phones were on speaker, I knew the gang members would hear it. BOTH guys by the window frame shrank back into cover, naively trusting to the wall to keep them safe. Safe? They really hadn't thought this through.

"On target. Ready."

Both of them looked back at Koob for orders - or perhaps for salvation. I'll never know. I gave them a few more seconds opportinity before saying anything else but they were too dumb to take it.

"Fire."

The goon to the left of the window was still perfectly visible to the second sniper team and he dropped like a sack of rocks.

"Target. Cease fire." I returned my attention to the phone call with the gang. "When I said 'my people' I was talking about people that have fought real wars, not some pissant gang turf fight. Compared to the fucking Taliban, your crew really isn't that scary."

"You get them to kill me, the whole crew wont rest until they get your ass."

"That isn't how it works. Your ass is off limits until you aint got a crew left. If they get activated, then one by one your crew start collecting headshots until they are all too scared to be anywhere but a basement or until one of them loses patience and pops a cap in your head themselves to get them out of the war. You get one chance to accept my deal, because if it starts then my commo with this team will go dark and I will have no way to call them off."

"What deal, bastard?"

"You lay off me, you lay off Hannah and her family, you do not piss me off enough to call them and issue an execute order and you give me Vivian Downer."

"I can give you three of four. That Downer bitch aint available."

"The proper term for a feline female is a 'queen' but we'll let that pass. Explain."

"She's making a run to Rochester tonight, already left, making a buy. It's gonna go bad and that cop aint coming out of it. The other guys know what she is."

"Give me details and I'll count it as four of four, but if I go in to get her out you'd better hope that none of your guys are responsible for me going down, because that's an automatic trigger for your crew starting to lose their heads."

The guys on the video feed were looking at their boss like they were staring at a ghost.

"You got a deal, asshole. Details in txt to this number I called you on in 5 minutes and let's agree to not fuck with each other, OK?"

"Agreed. Getting in each others way has already proved expensive. This wasn't personal and no need to make it that way."

"You're still an asshole, but you're an honest asshole. I'll tell my crew in Roch to stand down and disappear if anything happens off-plan."

"That's fair. Anyone disappearing doesnt get chased. I'm not a cop."

"You kinda proved that." He hung up.

Having placed myself firmly on one more of the local lowlives "do not mess with" lists, I relaxed a bit. I didnt have to go to this kind of extreme very often. Word was starting to get around that up front I was a respectable businessman, but get under my feet and I'll squish you - by methods appropriate to the social circles in which we interacted. On the legal side of the tracks I'd bury you in lawsuits. On the other side I'd just bury you.

My intercom beeped..

"Mr Owen, you might want to come out here, we've a gentleman that insists on speaking to you, he claims his name is Mitchell."

to be continued....