by Captain Sammitch, GoozX and Chewy Walrus
The docks in Puerta Mibela:
"Here we are," Phil Smith announced as he piloted the Hummer down the pier to the waiting freighter. Grissom Montag was riding shotgun, with Charlene Montoya in the back seat and Priest occupying a sizable portion of the cargo area.
"I still want to know what it is that we're picking up," Grissom said.
"You'll find out," Phil said, grinning.
Grissom looked out the window, frustrated. "I don't like surprises."
Phil stopped the Hummer and jumped out, the others close behind. He approached the harbor master and presented his ID. Grissom, Charlene, and Priest followed at a distance as the harbor master led Phil to a loading zone where a crane was lowering one of several identical shipping containers to the ground.
Phil walked up to the container as it touched down on the pier. He picked up a crowbar and began working on the door of the heavy steel containers.
"This might take a while," Charlene muttered to Grissom as Phil struggled with the heavy door. Grissom nodded but didn't say anything. He was sure Phil had heard what Charley had said, one way or another.
Finally, Priest stepped forward without a word. He held out his massive hand and accepted the crowbar from Phil. Priest wedged the crowbar behind the metal hinge of the door. With one tug on the crowbar, the huge man wrenched the door from the container, letting it clatter to the ground noisily, stirring up a cloud of dust.
Phil stepped into the container, his eyes fixed on something the others couldn't see.
"What is it?" Charley asked.
"Damned if I know," Grissom replied.
The dust finally cleared, and the mercenary peered into the shipping container. His eyes widened.
"It's a... it's a bloody auto." He turned to Charlene. "This man had an auto sent all the way out here!"
"Not just one," Phil said as he emerged from the container.
"What's all this?" Grissom demanded.
"I thought you'd never ask," Phil said with a smile.
Priest shrugged his shoulders and turned toward Charlene. "So, is he gonna tell us or not?"
Charlene half-smiled and shrugged her shoulders in return.
"It's like this," Phil explained. "Before I came here, I used to hire myself out as a... security contractor, you might say. A few months back, I was hired by a Chrysler executive who was suspicious of one of his employees. He had me track the guy's every move and see exactly what he was up to. Turns out that the guy was intentionally sulfur-contaminating his batches."
"Excuse me?" Grissom raised an eyebrow.
"The alloys that go into cars' engine blocks and frames and such," Phil explained, "are very complex combinations of metals and non-metallic composites that result from years of metallurgical research and require careful composition and frequent testing in metallurgical labs. This particular employee was supposedly being paid by someone connected with Toyota to contaminate the batches of alloys that were made in his plant with sulfur dioxide, making the metals brittle under temperature changes and less resistant to corrosion. Then the guy tampered with the test samples so the contamination wouldn't show up."
"Why would he do a thing like that?" Charlene asked.
"It's simple," Phil said. "Weaknesses and corrosion in the metal would take a while to show up -- after a lot of cars had come off the line and been sold. Somewhere along the line, a customer would notice the problem and complain to their dealer, who would take it up with their distributor, and the problem would go up the line all the way to the top. Chrysler would trace the source of the problem to the plant where the sulfur contamination had taken place, and then they would have to issue a recall of all vehicles made here, shut down the plant, and examine all the tooling for defects. It would cripple that particular plant and cause a lag in production for Chrysler, giving the competition a chance to undercut their prices."
"Chrysler would take a hit," Priest said.
Phil nodded. "Fortunately, I caught the guy and managed to stop the sulfur contamination from spreading throughout the plant. I saved Chrysler a lot of money and caught a saboteur that had been doing damage undercover for quite a while. There was only one catch."
"The executive had hired you secretly," Grissom said.
Phil smiled. "How'd you guess that?"
"Call it intuition," the mercenary said.
Phil shrugged. "Anyway, the guy knew I was expecting some serious kickback, so he told me about his pet project and how I might be able to benefit from it."
The crane finished lowering the last of eight shipping containers to the pier behind the four of them.
"For the last few years," Phil explained, "Chrysler had been trying to break into the market for law-enforcement vehicles. The problem was that all the major police departments in the U.S. and Canada had standing contracts with either Ford or GM, who have historically dominated that segment of the market. So this executive's idea was to develop vehicles for the higher echelons of law-enforcement and the intelligence community."
Charlene's eyes widened. "FBI? CIA?"
Phil nodded. "He took off-the-shelf parts and existing vehicles and heavily customized them, adding quite a bit to them. But once that was done, he still couldn't find any buyers. So now he had these expensive, super-specialized, and completely unsellable vehicles taking up space on the factory floor. And when most of our infrastructure went down the tubes in the hurricane, I called the guy up and offered to take some of them off his hands. He didn't even hesitate to fax me the necessary documents." Phil grinned. "So now we have some more stylish transportation around the island."
Grissom looked at the eight containers. "Eight cars?"
"Four cars," Phil corrected. "Four Dodge Intrepid Interceptor models. And two Durango Special Purpose models. And my car."
"Your car?" Grissom asked curiously.
"You'll see it," Phil said.
"And what's in the eighth container?" Charlene asked.
"I'll show you," Phil said quietly, "when we're all away from prying eyes." He handed Charlene and Grissom crowbars. "Let's get these cars to the motor pool and get them secured. Seven cars. First trip we take the Intrepids. Second trip Griss and Charley get the Durangos, I get my car, Priest gets the last container in on a truck, and we can unload it when he gets to the building." He started tossing them sets of keys.
"Let's go to work."
Grissom slipped his cell phone into the hands-free dock on the Intrepid's dashboard. "Dial," he said, then said Charlene's number aloud, as per the instructions printed on the plastic sticker placed on the dash. The car dialed Charley's number, and after three rings she picked up.
"Yeah?"
"Griss here," the mercenary said. "Obviously your phone works."
"These things are fantastic!" Charley exclaimed. "I don't think I want to know how much these cars would have cost if it weren't for whatever deal Phil cut with that Chrysler guy."
"If that's the real story," Grissom said.
"What do you mean?" Charlene asked curiously.
"Phil has been quite reluctant to tell us much of anything in detail," Grissom explained. "But for an amnesiac he's got quite a few talents -- and connections -- that even surprise me."
"You don't think he is who he says he is?" Charlene asked. "You've been around him longer than I have."
"I don't know what to think," Grissom replied. "But for now at least, I think we can trust him. He helped out quite a bit when the hurricane came, and he's been helping me rebuild pretty consistently, so I think he's earned my trust. For now. I just don't always take everything he says at face value, that's all."
"I understand." Charlene paused. "So what all did they do to these cars?"
"This is obviously not the stock V-6 Intrepid power plant," Grissom said. "I'm guessing it's a V-8 based on the Dodge Ram stock engine. There are quite a few electronic gadgets in here, most obviously this hands-free phone link, and I also see a GPS, some other navigational aids, and a multi-band scanner. I looked at the bodywork when I got it -- particularly the edge of the open door -- and the material is quite a bit thicker than standard aluminum or fiberglass panels. My guess is that there's Kevlar and possibly other synthetic-material armor incorporated into the body panels of these vehicles. There might be other modifications, but only Phil knows about those."
"Still beats walking," Charlene replied.
"Indeed." Grissom pushed a button on his steering wheel and ended the call. He turned left and followed Phil down the tunnel into the motor pool. Maybe these cars weren't such a bad idea, after all.
Later, Grissom stood outside the loading dock helping Priest back up the truck. Charlene had just parked the other Durango, and she got out to help Grissom. Walking over to him, she looked around. "Phil still hasn't shown up?" she asked.
"He was opening the last container and told me to roll out," Priest called from the cab of the truck. "He said he'd be along soon."
"He was probably making sure his car was undamaged," Charley said, rolling her eyes.
"It'd be bloody helpful," Grissom said, "if we had some idea what he'd be driving."
All three heads turned at the whine of turbochargers and the throaty rumble of what had to be a very large engine. A black Viper ACR rounded the corner and sped into the motor pool with none other than Phil Smith at the wheel. He pulled into a parking space, killed the engine, and hopped out of the car wearing a huge grin on his face.
"I suppose that will help the team immeasurably," Grissom said sarcastically.
Phil shrugged. "These help the team," he said, motioning to the other vehicles they had brought. "This one's for me."
Grissom looked at Charlene, who wasn't sure what to say.
Priest broke the silence. "What's in this container, anyway?"
Phil looked around. "Pull that truck in here and close the door."
Priest obeyed. Grissom and Charley both had suspicious expressions on their faces as the truck slowly entered the motor pool. Priest shut off the engine and got out of the cab, circling around to where Phil and Grissom stood behind the container door. Charley pushed a button, and the heavy door slid shut across the entrance to the motor pool.
The dim light cast eerie shadows across Phil's face as he pried open the container door. Grissom took one look inside and stepped back. "You're joking."
Priest's eyebrows went up, but the huge man said nothing.
"What is it?" Charlene walked over and looked inside. Her eyes widened. "No way."
The container was filled with weapons and ammunition from floor to ceiling, ranging from sidearms to mounted machine guns to a surface-to-air missile launcher.
"Definitely not something Chance would like to see," Phil said softly.
"Where... where did you get all this?" Charlene's pretty face paled.
"I have connections," Phil said cryptically. "Where is not important."
Grissom let out a long, low whistle. "Lovely, mate. Lovely." He picked up an M4 rifle. "I'd sure love to know where you get the cash for all this."
Priest eyed the missile launcher. "Just a bonus piece, or do you think we'll actually need this thing?"
Phil shrugged. "Better to have something you don't need than to need something you don't have."
"What are we going to do with all this?" Charlene asked.
"What good is a solid security system," Phil said, "if you can't back it up with something?" He turned to Grissom. "You're the security man. I'm sure you can figure out where to put these." He looked at the others. "And we don't need to talk about this too much. We don't need to borrow trouble from either the pacifists or the loose cannons on this team, and there are a few of both."
Grissom eyed Phil curiously. "Not a very trusting person, are you?"
Phil smiled coldly. "In my experience, it can be dangerous to trust too many with too much." He turned and headed off. "I'm going to get a forklift. We can set up a security office and a motor pool office right down here."
Charlene and Priest looked at Grissom.
Grissom shrugged. "I don't really know what to think."