Two years later
“SO, YOU’RE GRIER LASKIN,” Captain Frank Muspar said, standing and extending his hand, “I’ve been anxious to meet you.”
Muspar was thinking the guy looked all wrong, like he belonged in a goddam fashion magazine. Lean and well built, Laskin’s blonde spiky hair was more rock star than Navy Seal.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Laskin said, grinning, “but don‘t worry, I got cojones the size of a T-Rex.”
“You don’t say? Well, let’s hope that is what we need in this case Mr. Laskin.”
“Trust me, it’s what you always need.”
Bob Scott, head of the Security Division of Talos, had told Muspar that Laskin was the answer to their problems in the Territories. What the hell was he thinking?
Scott came around from behind his desk, extending his hand, said, “Grier, good to see you again. This is Captain Frank Muspar. As you may be aware, Talos is heading up security for the City and often works hand in hand with Captain Muspar’s Emergency Police Services. As you may also know, Talos is responsible for overall resource allocation, both for the City and the Territories. Our problem today involves both components of our mandate.”
Scott was leaning back on his desk as he talked, arms crossed, file folder tucked under his arm. Muspar figured his own office was maybe a quarter the size of this one. The desk was large, a deep red wood, and next to it a long couch and a coffee station. Stylish black and white photos along the far wall, showing cityscapes from back in the day. How the city used to look, all lit up at night, sweeping down towards the big lake.
Scott crossed to the coffee station, held up a mug and asked if anyone wanted a coffee. Muspar said no, he was fine, but then clearing his throat and nodding across the room said, “So Bob, this is a classified briefing. Maybe Mr. Laskin’s friend could wait outside until we’re done?”
“Outside,” laughed Laskin, “no way man, Mitch is my right hand man.”
“Mr. Laskin, I don’t know about your arrangements, but as far as I know there’ve been no security checks on anyone else concerning this issue.”
“Relax Capitano,” Laskin said, shrugging good-naturedly, “she’s a Talos girl, got clearance up the ying yang. I’m sure Bob here can straighten this out, but, just to let you know, if she’s out, I’m out. I don’t work without Mitch Black, that’s just the way I roll, comprende?”
Muspar looked to Scott. He could tell Scott was ready with the bullcrap. “That’s right Captain, sorry not to have mentioned it earlier, but Ms. Black has done numerous contracts for Talos. Ms. Black and Mr. Laskin have a good deal of experience working together and it just seemed a good overall fit.”
That had to be the fifteenth time in the last twenty-four hours Muspar had heard the ‘sorry not to have mentioned it’ shit. He’d found out about the proposed mission more by accident than anything else when one of his guys had said, “See you in the a.m. over at Talos, sir.” Muspar had asked Private Pete Solanski what was going on at Talos and he’d said, “Well, you know, a few of us got seconded for that mission into the Territories.”
Muspar had just said, “Oh yeah, that,” and then made for his office, sending a blistering voice mail over to Bob Scott. His cell rang a few minutes later, Scott saying, “Frank, calm down,” and Muspar cutting him off, “Why the hell wasn’t I consulted about this mission to the Territories?”
“Why don’t you drop in sometime, we’ll have a drink…”
“I want an answer.”
“Okay Frank, you weren’t notified because there was no reason to notify you.”
“They’re my men, that’s reason enough.”
“Frank, you know the drill, they’re your men until we need to borrow them, then, technically, they become our men. After all, it’s in our Memorandum of Understanding with you people.”
Muspar was silent, thinking, then said, “I want to know what’s going on Bob. I think that’s also part of our Memorandum of Understanding. ‘Informed cooperation’ I think is the expression used.”
Scott sighed, said, “You know I really don’t have to tell you anything, but just to demonstrate our desire to have a collegial relationship, you can sit in on the meeting. Tomorrow, 10:00 a.m. sharp,” then added, “as an observer. I’ll send over the briefing notes for you. This is pretty sensitive stuff, not the kind of thing you want people hearing about on I-TIME.”
“I thought Talos controlled all the programming on I-TIME, it’s your networking service after all.”
“Frank, what I am saying to you is that this mission is not for public consumption.”
“What’s this about?”
“Frank…”
“I can be over there in ten minutes.”
“Alright, calm down. We’re going in for the Wintermen. See you tomorrow,” and the phone had gone dead.
Muspar now realized that he should have blocked the second-ments then and there. He didn’t like getting mixed up with Talos. When things blew up, it was always the Police Services that ended up wearing it. He knew Talos was desperate to get the Wintermen under control, and the damage was getting expensive. And public. The recent border raid that had turned up a trade in raw silver for black market gasoline had renewed questions about Talos’s control over the Territories—the huge swath of land that ran east from what used to be the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border over to the James Bay ice fields.
Scott passed a mug of coffee to Laskin, “Heard of the Wintermen?”
Laskin sipped the coffee, said, “This tastes like crap, where are you getting this shit, those tax-free zones in Mexico?” then added, “The Wintermen, yeah, I’ve heard of them, who hasn’t, they’ve been on I-TIME’S most wanted often enough. Hillbilly renegades right? Some guy went berserk at a government depot a couple years back, been holed up in the Territories since, rumours about illegal trading, poaching, all that kind of shit. What about them?”
“Talos wants them gone.”
Laskin said, “I figured you guys would have deep-sixed them long ago.”
Scott shook his head, said at the time it didn’t seem worth it, there was no real civilian population left, just a few holdouts, and there was enough to do elsewhere. “At the time of the incident at the government depot a team went in and did a recon, but they were long gone by then and we didn’t have any resources to spare. We tried rousting as many holdouts as we could during Operation Clean Sweep but the evacuations were massive, it was chaos up there. And after we pulled out it didn’t take long for it all to turn into a no-go zone, its just too goddam difficult to do anything up there. It took about six months for the phone lines and cable lines to go, the weather just did everything in. We’ve only maintained our communications infrastructure as far as the border with the Territories. We can barely keep up with the maintenance on our network to that point, beyond that, there’s literally fuck all.”
“So why go back in now? No one really gives a shit what goes on up there anyway.”
“To be blunt, the vision for the Territories has always been ‘people out, Talos in.’ As far as we are concerned, with no civilian populations, we can focus on re-establishing resource security and exploitation. The City is facing a crisis, our emergency measures are stretched to the breaking point, too many extended brown outs and blackouts, shortages of everything, our surveillance and financial infrastructures need major investments, we’re into food rationing, we need more of everything or we won’t be able to maintain order. Simple as that. Right now, our strategic corporate agenda is poised to ramp up power production and mineral extraction, but we got these yahoos riding around like cowboys fucking up the works.”
Grier seemed skeptical. “Yeah? A few cowboys and the cavalry can’t handle them?”
“Listen, it’s anarchy up there, no police, no army, no food, no supplies, nothing. Not even roads anymore. Zip. We’ve targeted three sites to launch fly-in mining operations over the next three years, but we just can’t get the resources in there to ensure their security. The logistics are overwhelming enough without this other shit to worry about.”
Grier ran his hand through his hair, giving his spikes new life, checking his hair in the reflection of one of the big black and white photos, said, “You think this guy and his drinking buddies pose a real threat?”
Muspar could see Scott tensing up, looking pissed. Scott said, “Yes, I do.”
Shrugging, Grier said, “Well, I’m not convinced.”
Muspar winced. He was sorry this wasn’t his show, he’d toss the smug little shit right out on his ass.
Scott said, “Murder of a law enforcement officer not enough for you? They’ve got weapons, food, fuel, everything they need for a serious insurrection. Then there is the illegal trading, poaching? Worst, there’s been a disturbing trend over the last year, civilians trying to get back up into the Territories, they’ve heard of these yahoos living up there, re-creating the goddam frontier, and they start thinking, yeah, I can make a go of it too.”
This was the first Muspar had heard of this, said, “Why weren’t we apprised of this, what kind of numbers are we talking about here?”
“A few stragglers here and there at first, now it’s steady, we’re hauling in dozens every week. Some are probably slipping through, after all, it’s not exactly the most effective border, there are gaps all along the perimeter, only the travel corridors are under adequate surveillance. Now we have an illegal trade in snowmachines—any idea of what one of those is worth on the black market? And a few enterprising sonsofbitches are smuggling people up into the Territories, we have no idea what happens to them. All of this shit is costing us time and dollars. And these Wintermen, word is getting out, the public starting to think they’re some fucking freedom fighters or something. These guys are terrorists, and they’re acting like they own the Territories. It’s time to teach them otherwise.”
Laskin nodded thoughtfully. “You need some guerilla action out there.”
“Which is why,” Scott said carefully, “Talos wants you in on this. There is nothing conventional about this operation, and nothing that we really want out there on the radar. We just want it dealt with.”
Muspar watched Laskin smirk, was surprised at his tone when he said, “Yeah, I’ve dealt with a few things for Talos before haven’t I?” like he was sharing a private joke or something, then back to business, saying, “So how do these guys keep going, I mean, supplies are short even here?”
“Stealing. Anything that was left up there. We tried to get out as much as we could, but the in the case of the areas furthest north that were cleared first, there was tons of stuff left behind, partly because there was just too much shit to move out and also we thought we could repopulate those areas when things settled down. But things didn’t settle down and we never went back up. So everything from fully loaded hospitals to industrial plants to the mom and pop stores were just left as is. Now we know the Wintermen have to be getting around mostly by snowmachine. Fuel must be an issue, but they are still looting everything from municipal garages to police stations and drugstores. Lately, there’ve even been a few raids on our border stations. Christ, according to our sources, they even hit some of our liquor shipments in the travel corridor.”
“Cool, snow pirates.”
They’d almost forgotten she was there. She swung around on her chair to face them.
Laskin laughed. “Yeah, I like that, snow pirates. I guess that sort of makes us like the British High Command huh, hunting these rogues down on Her Majesty’s high seas.”
“It’d be more fun to be the pirates.”
“Can’t have everything babe.”
Muspar cleared his throat. He couldn’t believe these two, thinking it was all a big joke. “Mr. Laskin, I don’t have to remind you that this is a very serious situation.”
“Chillax Frank, I’ve got this. Just give me the specs on this guy and some idea of what he’s got, ammo-wise, where he’s dug in…”
Scott stepped in. “Okay, we don’t know a whole lot, but we’ve had a few reports about a group up in a old mining town, probably Cobalt from our reports, about an hour and half from the border. We have no idea what shape things are in up there. They might be holed up in one of the mines, a mill, might have taken over an entire town, we just don’t know.”
“Where’s your last outpost?” Mitch asked, standing up and stretching. Muspar paused with the other two to watch her for a moment, the tight black wife-beater creeping up along the flat of her stomach. Her pale blonde hair was cropped short, her eyes almond-coloured. Some broad, he thought. She was putting it out like a cat in heat.
“Right at the Green Line, edge of the Territories. We have one main travel corridor running up there from the City and it’s the last place with any maintained infrastructure, we’re talking roads, bridges, communications networks and, of course, security. There’s about a thousand people just south of there, a support community, guards, emergency workers, greenhouse workers, they stay put up there, no one gets in or out without special passes. And north of that, nothing.”
“So how far south have the Wintermen come?”
“Recently we had action from them as far as that last outpost. They got a few generators, fuel, a whack of batteries, mostly that kind of thing.”
“And how many of these guys are we dealing with?”
“Anywhere between twenty and two hundred.”
Mitch smiled. “Great intel.”
Muspar saw Scott give her a look. She sighed, “Sorry. Out of line. Okay, so you don’t have much on these bad boys. Can you tell me what you do know?”
Scott snapped open the file and spread it out on the desk.
“Alright. Looks like a bunch of them are just local low-lifes, you know the type, ‘nobody’s pushing me off my land’ kind of guys.”
“What about indigenous populations?”
Scott looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
Grier answered, “She means Aboriginals, you know, the First People and all that? What about them? Are they whooping it up on the warpath too?”
Scott sounded impatient, “Don’t know, don’t care. Those communities had the same chance as anyone else to get out, who cares if they chose to freeze their asses off up there. Anyway, this is about eradicating the Wintermen, whoever they are, not cultural outreach, got it?”
Mitch said, “Got it, loud and clear. So let’s talk about this berserker guy, the one who started things rolling, have anything on him?”
“We believe he’s a guy called John Slaught, divorced, late thirties maybe, dark haired, just over six foot.”
Mitch took the cup of coffee from Laskin and smelled it, made a face and passed it back to him, said, “So our boy is tall, dark and handsome.”
Scott ignored her, continued reading from his file. “We have reason to believe he is originally from Cobalt. The last location we have on him is that incident report on the murder of a Talos officer from about two years back that Grier mentioned. That was at the depot in the Temiskaming region, close to Cobalt. There was also a significant theft of arms and militia supplies at that time. After that he seemed to disappear for a while until these border raids started about a year ago.”
“So is he ex-military? From the cop shop, what?”
Scott, shaking his head, sighed and said, “Snowmobile dealer.”
Mitch looked over at Laskin and they both cracked up.
“Look,” began Scott, “I know it sounds ridiculous and at first we figured it would take us a few hours to round him up, but…” his voice faded out, then, exasperated, added, “I want this over, and I never want to hear about the Wintermen or this John Slaught again. Understand?”
In the silence that followed only Muspar’s raspy breathing could be heard. Then Mitch swung her arms up, clapped her hands together hard, said, “Gentlemen, I need to meet your crew, check out your equipment, and I want your baddest sled. It’s time to revoke this guy’s dealership.”