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“Undoubtedly, criminals’ use of role-playing games for exchanging money with each other will only increase.” — Imran Khan, Fraud Magazine, June 2016
Rita
Rita Goldman bulled her way through a herd of sluggish, tired passengers disembarking from American 1053, the connecting flight from Dallas, at El Paso International’s Gate A2. Her heels clicked on the smooth tile, echoing in the nearly empty terminal. She passed a Latino guy running a buffer and dodged a family—mom, dad, grandma, and sixty-eleven kids—ambling in a cluster between her and the baggage claim exit.
A wizened, squinty-eyed Marlboro Man in a Western-cut suit and cream Stetson waited by the luggage carousel, one foot propped on the rubber edge. As weathered and lean as a barbwire fencepost, Captain Les Marshall stood six inches taller than her only by virtue of his black cowboy boots.
Next to Marshall, a pro wrestler in his late thirties, wearing a sport coat and slacks, scanned the area with eyes like a gun turret. He spotted her first and nudged Marshall, who nodded.
“Glad you could join the party, Goldfarb.” Marshall shook her hand. “This is Trooper Duncan. C’mon. Car’s waitin’.”
Rita fell in step next to Duncan, trailing the fast-moving Marshall. The captain was the only Texan who seemed to move like he had a purpose. “Are you a Ranger, too, Duncan?”
“No, ma’am.” Duncan’s voice was surprisingly soft for someone with his build. “DPS, plainclothes. I’m here to help the captain interact with the twenty-first century, ma’am.”
“Huh?”
“I work his cell phone for him.”
Marshall’s rental car was parked by the curb in the passenger-loading zone, flashers blinking. Wade Duncan held the passenger door for Rita, took her suitcase, tossed it in the trunk, then climbed into the back seat.
“You don’t want shotgun?” Rita asked.
“No, ma’am, you go ahead, please.”
She shrugged. Texans. Slow but polite.
Dry, desert air instantly evaporated the moisture in her sinuses and made her wish she’d remembered to bring bottled water. The dark shoulder of Franklin Mountain, outlined in twinkling lights, rose behind the glow of El Paso. Rita shut the car door, cutting off the roar of jet engines spooling up for takeoff.
“What about—Holy fucknuts!” Rita’s head snapped back when Marshall floored the gas, barking the rental’s tires and spooling up its own little engine in sympathy with its big brothers on the airfield.
He made a right onto a six-lane divided road with barely a tap on the brake then took a left at the next traffic light, mashing Rita against the door. “Goddamn Japanese piece of shit. Turns good but no guts.”
Duncan leaned forward. “Now you know why I prefer the back seat, ma’am.”
“Lesson learned.”
“Y’all knock it off,” Marshall growled. “Wade, get Dolph on the phone, put him on speaker.”
The lean captain powered up the I-10 entrance ramp and nipped in front of a semi rig at somewhere near the speed of sound.
Rita adjusted her seat belt. “Now that we’re going fast enough for time to run backward, would you mind telling me what the fuck has happened in the last five hours I’ve been stuck on planes?”
“Nothing on the plane crash.” Marshall cracked the window, dug out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one up, holding the steering wheel with his knee while he cupped the flame. When he spoke again, smoke drizzled from both nostrils. “What’s happened, Agent Goldberg, is that Dolph’s picked up one of Bartlett’s boys down in Houston and found a warehouse fulla smuggled cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes?”
“I have Dolph, sir.” Duncan reached over the seat and held the phone between them.
“Bring us up to speed, Dolph,” Marshall ordered. “Use small words because I got the FBI here.”
“Goldman? That you?”
Rita leaned closer to hear over the rush of wind from the open window. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“All right, then. Let me see...” Dolph cleared his throat.
Rita thought, Oh my God, he’s gonna tell a story.
“Donald Ray Adams is a civilian employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. He is responsible for the destruction of confiscated goods seized by that agency, under the supervision of sworn agents of, well, that agency.”
“Don’t make this an all-nighter, Dolph.”
“Hold your horses, you old coot. Here’s the good part, anyway.” Dolph sounded a lot like Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles. “Bartlett and some of the other agents from the Houston office been die-vertin’ the evidence instead of destroying it. They’re supposed to witness the destruction, sign off on it, but they been fudging the paperwork and stealing the contraband. Cigarettes and liquor.”
“Guns?” Rita asked. The back draft of lingering smoke in the car made her eyes water.
“Naw, strangely enough, Donnie says Bartlett’s against guns being sold back to criminals. He ain’t above traffickin’ in tobacco and booze, but he won’t do weapons.”
“A crook with a conscience?” Marshall said. “What next? Aliens from Mars?” Marshall flicked his cigarette butt out. When he reached for the pack on the seat, Rita stopped him.
“You light up again, Captain, I’m liable to shoot you and take my chances in the wreck.”
“Hah!” Dolph laughed. “She got you there, you damned fossil.”
Wade Duncan looked away, holding the phone like an offering to the spirit world, tucking his smile into a shoulder.
“Keep talkin’,” Marshall growled. He snapped a glare at Rita but kept his hand off the pack. The car rocketed through light traffic, passing through the residential section of El Paso. Shopping malls. Car dealerships. Except for the preponderance of signs in Spanish, it looked to Rita like any city in the US.
“So where was I?” Dolph said. “Oh yeah, the criminal conspiracy part. Ah, okay. The crime part is simple: steal the stuff, sell the stuff. Takes no great smarts to figure that part out. Where it gets interesting is how they washed the money. Y’all ever heard of Em-porgs?”
“What?” Rita and Captain Marshall said in chorus.
“Wait, let me look at my notes. Uh, here it is. M-M-O-R-P-G. More-pigs.”
Rita squinted in confusion; the captain shook his head.
Duncan said, “Massively multiplayer online role-playing games.”
“Yep,” Dolph agreed, “that’s it. See, here’s how it goes: People use real money to buy what they call in-game money. Gold doubloons or fairy gold or whatnot. They use the in-game money to buy, uh...”
“Enhancements,” Duncan supplied.
“Enhancements. The genius part is there’s no physical product sold, no inventory records, not a shred of accountability. The gaming company can report whatever income they want. I mean, who’s gonna track to see how many people are actually playing the game and see what all they’re buyin’?”
“A perfect placement strategy,” Rita mused.
“Exactly,” Dolph agreed. “The first stage of money laundering. Get the funds from an illegal source to a legal one.”
“Isn’t creating games expensive?” Duncan asked.
“Not these games,” Dolph said. “They paid high school kids to build a few More-Pigs. Donnie says they’re junk, but who cares. Nobody’s really playing; they’re just buying the game tokens themselves. Bartlett’s people bought prepaid cards with their dirty money then spent them in their own games. Presto-chango, real money rolls into the company bank accounts.”
They rode in silence for a full minute. City lights had faded away to black desert, leaving them with only the glow of the dashboard and the screen of the cell phone held by Duncan.
A sound of shuffling papers came from the phone, then Dolph cleared his throat. “I asked Donnie who all was in on this, and here’s the list he gave me: Bartlett, of course, as the ringleader. Then a cat named Dan Luksa of the BATF. All these guys are BATF, except for Tommy Grace, the Dallas detective. Then there’s Reuben Naranjo, Ray Fuentes, James MacKenzie, Dominic Lazzari, Lee Bragg, and Toby Glenn. That last guy is a civilian contractor, works for the bureau as a chopper pilot.”
“That’s a lotta damn people,” Marshall said. He reached for his pack of cigarettes, cut his eyes at Rita, and slid his hand back to the steering wheel.
“Lookit,” Rita said, “this is all very interesting, and it looks like the fugitive lawyer—whatshername, Stone—was maybe right about the conspiracy and this and that, but it don’t mean they brought down Sam’s plane. I mean, c’mon, right? Maybe they wanted to shut her up, maybe they didn’t, but we got nothing to tie them in to crashing a plane in New Mexico.”
“The Feeb’s right, Dolph.” Marshall steered around a slow-moving semi, and Exit 155 flashed by. On the left, the neon lights of a truck stop flooded a small patch of desert. “You got enough for a warrant; get the US ADA, and start rounding these assholes up. Sweat ’em and see what they have to say about all this.”
“Can’t.”
“Say what?”
“Well, boss,” Dolph drawled, “here’s the real interestin’ part. According to the BATF, Bragg and Glenn are undercover and can’t be reached, on assignment by their Supervisory Special Agent, John Reed Bartlett. All the others, including Bartlett, suddenly took PTO and quote-unquote went on a hunting trip.”
“All of ’em?” Marshall met Rita’s look with one of his own.
“Ever’ stinkin’ one. I had the boys do some checkin’, and six guys led by a man matching Bartlett’s description chartered a plane out of Houston night before last.”
“A plane,” Rita spit. “Do we know where they went?”
“Yep. Same place y’all are goin’. Silver City, New Mexico.”
~~~
Sam
I WOKE TO A HAND WORKING my belt loose.
“Stop,” I hissed at Jade Stone. Then my words came out in a rush as her hand dug under my waistband and found the prize she sought. “What d’you think you’re doing?”
“Shh,” she whispered. “You’ll wake Marlon.”
I glanced over at the trooper, who snored with a bubbling wet sound. The reflected light of a full moon shone into the mine through the gap above the door, allowing me to see Marlon’s covered body. I pitched my voice low. “Don’t, Jade. This is a really bad idea.”
“You can stop me anytime you want.” Her breath warmed my ear, and her body pressed into my side. My hand at her back slid down and discovered she was naked below the waist.
Jade’s hand continued its mission, working me into fullness. A groan escaped me, and the tension flowed out of my back. I cupped her bare bottom and lifted my hips as she worked my jeans down. Moments later, she added the soft warmth of her mouth to her stroking fingers.
I didn’t stop her. I thought about it... right up until the moment she swung a leg over me and pressed the soft lips of her sex against me. At that point, it was fair to say I gave up thinking.
I held Jade’s bare hips as she rocked atop me. The silky flesh under my fingers flexed with her movement, and I marveled at how firm and strong she was. My hands traveled up, and I covered two pebble-hard nipples with my palms. She bit off a moan and rocked faster, her breath coming in short pants.
I clamped down on the urge to drive into her, letting her set the pace, which had grown desperate, almost frenzied. Jade covered her mouth with both hands to hold back the noises coming from deep in her throat. Her eyes fixed on mine, glittering in the dark. They were wide open, her expression reflecting surprise, delight, need, and a bunch of other emotions I could only guess at.
And then her stomach clenched, and she shuddered. Jade buried her face in my shoulder and bit down, stifling the cries that erupted from her as she twisted her hips and shook from head to toe. I held her tight and let her spasms subside.
“That never... happened before...” she whispered.
“What never happened?”
Jade touched my lips with a finger. “Shh. Never mind.”
And then she was sliding up and down again, moving with me, urging me. I didn’t need much urging. I braced my legs and exhilarated in the sensation of being inside her, filling her up, and taking her. Being with her. Having her...
All too soon, it was over. Both of us together this time, gasping into each other’s shoulders. The scent of her damp hair and two-day-old sweat struck me as the finest of perfumes right then. If I never stopped smelling Jade Stone pressed against me, well, that would’ve been just fine.
We fell asleep that way, her on top of me, our bodies loosely joined, with me breathing her in and her whispering small words that made no sense but conveyed her pleasure just the same.
~~~
“COME ON, STONE, MOVE your ass.” I waited outside the mineshaft, one hand holding up a tree.
“Hey, I’m not the one who fell asleep on duty.”
“Ain’t that just like a woman,” I muttered.
“I heard that.” Jade emerged from the shaft, backpack over her shoulders, the Glock in her waistband. She spotted me under the tree, stepped in close, and slipped her arms around my waist. “That’s okay. I always wanted to sleep with a real cowboy.”
“Many do.”
She stepped back and slugged me in the arm. “Jerk.”
“But few succeed.”
“Nice save.” Her eyes glittered with reflected starlight. “But it wasn’t enough.”
“Next time.”
“Yeah. Next time.”
I stood like a stork, balanced on one foot, and soul-gazed with Jade. Two teenagers on a first date couldn’t have been more sappy. I knew a microscopic movement was all it would take for us to start kissing and not stop until we were a tangled heap on the rocky soil of the New Mexican mountain. The same way a few ounces of muscle pressure on a trigger will fire a gun.
The voice in my head spoke. You’ve done enough dumb things for one night.
I eased back, and the moment was gone.
“Well,” Jade said.
“Well.”
“I better go.”
“Ah, yeah. Good idea.” The outside temperature had dropped since we entered the cave, and a fresh breeze made it almost chilly. “You gonna be warm enough in that T-shirt?”
“Once I get moving, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, come with me. I scouted around a little while you were fixing your makeup.”
I hop-stepped from under my tree and led her along a narrow trail that hugged the base of the slope, angling left and upward away from the mineshaft. My right leg seemed to work as long as I didn’t test it with too much weight.
A half-moon and an ocean of stars lent enough light to follow the trail without tripping, but I still used the Mini Maglite in places where the overhanging foliage blocked the sky.
About fifty hobbling steps from the mine, the hill on our right was split, creating a natural shortcut pointed toward the summit.
“Here,” I said. We stopped and locked eyes again.
A century or two later, Jade whispered, “You know what my daddy would say at this point?”
“Huh-uh.”
She reached up, and cool fingers laced the back of my neck. “He’d say, ‘Fish or cut bait.’” Jade pulled, and I didn’t resist.
Despite our dry, cracked lips, two days of unbrushed teeth, and the sour smell of our bodies, Jade’s kiss blasted enough fire through me, my socks started smoking.
When we broke apart, she touched my face with her fingertips. “I wish...” She looked down and stayed silent.
“What?”
“Nothing. I need to get going.”
I squeezed her shoulders. “Be careful. Watch out for Mr. Bear.”
Her smile flickered for an instant; she turned and walked away, a dark shape in the night.
My knee was screaming at me, so I found an ottoman-sized rock, eased my butt down, and stretched my leg out to give it a break. The scuffing and scraping of Jade’s footsteps on the sandy trail continued for a time. Then she was gone.
~~~
Dominic
LAZZARI SETTLED INTO the third observation post in the last two hours, having systematically moved from position to position to scan different segments of the valley. The FLIR RS32 thermal scope was a joy to use, but the battery life allowed a limited window of opportunity. Eight times, he’d frozen on a hot spot, only to see it resolve into a deer or a raccoon. The image quality through the FLIR left no doubt, once he zoomed in and his eye focused on the shape. He panned the rifle in methodical arcs, sweeping from farthest distance to nearest, then back again. When he completed the terrain sweep, he would move to a different spot and try again.
For the ninth time, a dot of white crossed his field of view. Lazzari froze and centered the image. The FLIR had no rangefinder, and estimating distances through a thermal scope was more magic than science, but his experienced guess put the target somewhere between two hundred fifty and three hundred meters away, near the scope’s maximum range. Even zoomed in, the shape was nothing more than a white blur, smaller than a diamond-stud earring on a saltine.
Lazzari centered the image and controlled his breathing, reducing the jitter and achieving a Zen state of calm. The blob moved-shifted-resolved into a tiny human form, standing erect from seated position. He or she—Lazzari suspected a male, though he couldn’t say why—moved awkwardly, as if injured.
Lazzari smiled. “Got you, you bastard.”