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Gadget met with Wrecker and Reggy in an upstairs room where they tracked the development of criminal enterprises. Despite his rough exterior, Reggy had once been a decorated police detective before his world fell apart. His skills had lain dormant until he came to Baltimore for Gadget.
Two large boards dominated the room, cluttered with photos, notes, and strings of different colors connecting key figures and operations. Gadget had never seen such an intricate web of information; detective work wasn’t her forte. Sitting quietly in the back corner was the formidable presence of Special Agent Lisha. The stern expression on her face did little to inspire confidence. At the other end of the room, Wrecker had several dozen firearms laid out, each in various stages of cleaning.
Gadget walked by, eyeing the collection. “You know, Wrecker, a cleaning spell, even a simple cantrip, would do a better job than you.”
Wrecker nodded. “Clean, yeah, but it leaves everything dry. Look at this.” He handed her a long bullet, one used in a .50 caliber. It was larger than anything she had fired before. “That’s an M33 ball round for the M82. A training round, really, but it’ll put a hell of a hole in a meat target. Remember that world with the dinosaurs? This is what Reggy and I used to put down that T-Rex. It’s all we had at the time. Good range, decent stopping power.”
He handed her another round of the same size, this one with a black tip. “This is an M8 armor-piercing round. If I’m shooting a dinosaur, a Kalac, a lizardman, or a human, the M33 will do fine. But this one—this is for buildings, vehicles, and dragons. Both will ruin your day.”
He pulled up another round and a file. “See that groove? Barely a scratch. But at a hundred yards, that could throw the shot off by inches, even for me. If I’m shooting a car, I want precision. A scratch inside the barrel? That could shift the impact by a foot or more. And if I’m aiming at a dragon, I want to hit an eye, not graze an ear. So, I check every barrel and every round. A clean spell could do part of the job, but I need to oil them too. I’d rather go over everything myself.”
Gadget nodded and moved on, reminded of the meticulous weapon care drilled into her by Lord David and Rae. Magic swords required little maintenance, but guns were a different beast.
She turned to Reggy’s boards, noting his dour expression and the mostly unsmoked cigar in his hand. “What am I looking at, Reggy?”
“The Valera Syndicate. Been around since Prohibition—that’s over a hundred years of crime. Their reach is global. Funny thing is, when I worked in Denver back on my world, we never connected the dots this far. But once we got that sicario from Panama talking, everything fell into place. He knew names, product flows, and, well… all this.” He waved at the boards. “He led us to several others. We just got back from Panama a couple of days ago, and this is what we’ve pieced together. Lisha looked it over about an hour ago and hasn’t said a word since.”
Gadget glanced at Lisha, who stood and walked over. Uncharacteristically, she lit a cigarette. Wrecker pulled up chairs and set four open bottles of beer on the table. Lisha took one, another rare sight.
“Alright,” Gadget said. “Give me the details.”
Reggy nodded. “The Valera Syndicate is structured around a council of elders. We don’t know if these elders are the regional bosses or if there’s another layer above them, but their reach is massive. More trouble than we can handle. Even Lisha’s agency wouldn’t dare move on this without a total nightmare on their hands.”
Lisha muttered, “Even requesting information or backup could get us all killed. We have to rely on your otherworldly contacts for this mess.” She took a sip of beer.
“Alright, go on,” Gadget said.
“Regional bosses: Kane controls Baltimore, D.C., and the South. 'Dom' Verratti runs New York and New England. Manuel ‘El Carnicero’ Ruiz operates out of Mexico City. Ricardo ‘El Fantasma’ Ortega holds Medellín. Santiago ‘The Wolf’ Alvarez commands the West Coast. Most of their money flows through a laundering process that ultimately ships it south. The final destination is unknown, but once it hits Panama, it vanishes.”
“You mentioned a plan in your message?”
Lisha snorted. Gadget smirked. “This should be good. Let’s hear it.”
Reggy finished his beer, and Wrecker handed him a six-ounce pour of Old Crow.
“Kane and Alvarez are moving a shipping container through the port of Los Angeles in a month. It’s small compared to their usual operations, but this one’s special—cash, gold, valuable antiques, high-end cars. We’re talking billions in assets. It sails from San Pedro, stops in Ensenada, Manzanillo, Puerto Quetzal, then through the Panama Canal. After that, it changes routes, and we lose it.”
“You thinking of sinking it?” Gadget asked. “That’s a lot of explosives.”
Wrecker grinned. “Nope. We don’t need to sink it. We just need to make it disappear.”
“Rafe or Dalt get onboard,” Reggy said. “They shadowwalk the whole ship into another dimension. Middle of the night, international waters, no land in sight. Crew won’t even know something’s wrong until they check the GPS. Knock them out, offload the cargo elsewhere, and drop them off somewhere inconvenient—Dutch Harbor, Petropavlovsk, maybe even Nome. Let the Syndicate figure out how their ship ended up there empty.”
Gadget considered. “Or they could just scrub them.”
Reggy shook his head. “Gadg, Wrecker and I don’t mind killing bad guys. But some poor sailor? That’s just cruel. Rafe can get them off-world without bloodshed. If the Syndicate decides to take them out later, that’s their problem.”
Lisha exhaled smoke. “Gadget, is this magic bullshit actually doable?”
Gadget nodded. “I’ll call Rafe, but yeah, it’s possible.”
Reggy continued. “Three days until the ship leaves L.A. Once it does, the game is on.”
“What’s the take?”
“Hard to say until Rafe unloads it. We distribute the cash to charities worldwide, let Rafe keep the gold, cars, and anything else useful.”
“Anything else?”
Reggy and Wrecker exchanged a look. Wrecker spoke. “We’re putting a bullet in Santiago Alvarez. He’s running a global human trafficking operation out of L.A. Kidnapping, child exploitation—horrific stuff. He needs to go.”
Gadget turned to Lisha.
Lisha sighed. “Can’t build a case against him. Too protected. But there’s enough proof of his ‘private parties.’ No one will miss him.”
Gadget nodded. “Approved. I’ll call Rafe. You two get to L.A. and make sure those containers get on the ship.”