Some Days, Part Six. (Finale)

...Leak is proven and precise. Don't file a flight plan home anytime soon.

What the hell does that mean? He found the leak, and obviously has proof of it. So far, so good, but what does precise mean? Is it just one leaker, is the info going to only one buyer? Is only one team being tracked?

Don't file a flight plan home anytime soon. Obviously, the last one got us shot down. More to it than that, though, there always is. Don't file a flight plan anytime, home soon?

Message received. We're still coming home, though. By now, information would have leaked about the shootdown and the subsequent operation.

Mercenary companies simply do not have the luxury of idealistic members. PBE employees fight for brotherhood, glory, entertainment, and a host of other reasons, but all of us also fight for money. Few of us would stay with PBE if the money stopped coming, and we're definitely not in it for Queen & Country. So, from time to time, people leave the company in a somewhat less than respectful fashion, and occasionally they try to vent their frustration on company members or property. It's always a fatal mistake.

This was different, though. Someone inside was actively leaking information, and doing so to a specific party, not simply selling data on the information black market. Of course, one of the reason that we've caught all the leaks so far is that we have enough fixers dealing in information that we're normally among the first to know that there's a new dealer in the game.

That information was being leaked to Iran was obvious. That it was coming from someone who had access to our flight plans was also obvious, that meant someone at the Chateau. We hadn't filed flight plans with the US authorities in A-stan, they had orders to let us in whenever we showed up.

Oh, we are definitely coming home.

Athanasius, FPoP, and I left early the next morning. The shooters stayed in country, they'd gotten a new assignment in the area, and wouldn't be needing a pilot for a few days. Of course, the flight back to the Chateau would itself take a few days. A C-47 is just not a fast aircraft.

We got to the Chateau around midnight, three days later. By that time, I'd learned to absolutely love/hate the bird, and I couldn't wait to see it get painted in some proper colors. It was tough, fairly powerful, had great cargo capacity, and was slower than it had any right to be. Also, it was older than my mother. With some modernization, we'd have something that was a definite improvement over the plane we'd lost.

We were greeted on the runway by the command staff and a medical team. I don't mean just HM, the entire staff was there. HM, owner. BTDT, head of Chateau Security and God only knows what else. Echo, chief medical. Bushwacker, wild card member. IEC was there, too, looking like he was torn between being happy and getting ready to level a third-world country.

"Welcome back, Soren. Is this the new bird?"

"Yes, it is. C-47. No major mechanical problems that we've found, but she needs some upgrades."

"And you got The Prince out?"

"He's fine, but Wut's team lost a man during the extraction. Liquid's body is in the plane."

"Fuckers. Get yourself inside, and we'll fill you in on what we know."

This can't be good.

It wasn't. Apparently, upon my asking him to find the leak, IEC had gotten his James Bond on in an impressive fashion. He'd been able to isolate the time and date that the flight logs had been accessed, and then used that data to find the leak.

Not being content with simply having circumstancial evidence that it was him, he'd picked his way into the man's room, planted bugs, and then waited for him to talk in his sleep. The idiot made a phone call the next day, using an encrypted smartphone, to an outside contact about a team we had operating in Africa.

He'd taken the audiotape of that to BTDT, who listened to it, and then both of them went to HM. HM reacted in a surprisingly calm fashion, had the medical team pump him full of drugs, and then interrogated him. The spy hadn't been a drug user, very few of us are, and the sudden influx of chemicals (with the additional stress of rave lights, loud music, and people yelling at him for hours on end) had made him very talkative.

He'd been approached just after he'd finished law school (paid for by PBE) by some Iranians. They'd given him a sugary deal: simply take paychecks for a couple years, and leak information only if it pertained to the Middle East. They hadn't wanted everything, and they'd paid on time, whether information went their way or not.

What an idiot. HM would have paid more just for the chance to slurp them false info.

So, quite happily, the spy had done his job, giving the Iranians info whenever we had a team in the area.

What had really started a shitstorm was when PBE's intel team had cross-referenced the information recovered from him and his off-site data storage with our personnel logs. Every time we'd had a team in the Middle East run into serious trouble, it was because of this spy.

14 of our men had died in those incidents. What would have been an execution quickly turned medieval, and while no one was talking about how the spy had been disposed of, it was rumored that he'd been burned alive. I didn't want to know anyways, I've never been a fan of torture.

The week after we got back, a company-wide alert went out. All employees not currently on assignment were requested to attend a red-carpet screening of FPoP's movie.

Fucking red carpet affairs. I know what's on that video, there's no reason for us to be in three-piece suits for this. HM's dicking with someone, I just know it. Last time he did this, he invited a bunch of celebrities, then screened the Dagestan massacre video.

Whether we liked it or not, working for PBE came with some oddities. One of them is that our boss occasionally goes insane.

I don't know where he got the carpet, but damned if HM didn't literally roll out the red carpet for the event. Journalists aren't allowed inside the Chateau, but some Hollywood-types did show up and walk down that carpet. I wasn't going to let myself get photographed, so I went to the chow hall to get some food before the show.

"You're the one they call Soren, right?"

What? Who doesn't know me around here?

"Excuse me, Miss...? The movie will be screened in the theater, on the other side of the Chateau. This area's not normally open to the public."

"I'm not here for the movie. Don't you remember me? From college?"

"That was eight years ago, I don't remember everyone from...wait, you?"

"Yeah, me. How've you been?"

"I'm here. Why the fuck are you here?"

"I told you I wanted to be a writer. I talked to your boss, told him that I wanted to do some research for my next novel, and that I'd known you from before. He thinks it would be a good idea, and said he's OK with it."

I highly doubt that. HM's probably trying to get me to relax after the shootdown, and thinks you'll end up in my bed.

That I don't take girls home when we're out on the town in various countries isn't a secret inside PBE, and more than a few PBE employees have sent various women to my door in an effort to get me to relax. I don't mind, and the women are redirected to someone else's room. It's become something of a joke, since me trying to shoo a naked model out of my hotel room was once caught on video and passed around the company 'net.

"Well, if the boss said it's OK, then I'm OK with it." I lied, and looked at my watch. "After the screening, though. I had to shoot people to get this movie here, I'm not going to miss it."

"Certainly. I'm here for the next few weeks anyways."

Shit.

She took my left arm as we walked to the theater.

OK, maybe this isn't so bad, as far as escort missions go.

Aside from the unclassifiably weird shit that comes out of Japan, there's a definable difference between "good" and "bad" porn. Iranian porn is normally in the "bad" category. An Iranian sex tape made of and by the wife of the prime minister...who am I kidding, it was amazing. Not because any of us wanted to see a 50-year old woman naked, but because of who else was in the movie.

None other than the current Supreme Leader of The Islamic Republic of Iran. Adultery is definitely against the Qur'an, as is sodomy, and the fools had set up a scenario where he was the seducer. It was a short movie, only 8 minutes long, but no one in the audience could believe what they were watching enough to talk.

"Holy shit."

"What?"

"Well, this explains why we had to shoot our way out of the country. Man, I can't wait for the news tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Well, unless I miss my guess, this has already hit the internet, and will probably tear Iran apart from the inside. The secularists have been a fairly prominent minority for a while, and the Islamists are going to shit themselves."

"Oh."

"Yeah. This is going to be a profitable year."

"You're looking forward to this."

She sounds disappointed. Does she not understand what we do for a living?

"Paid cash for kicked ass. We had a team in Iran last week, extracting this movie. We have more recent intel on the country than the CIA does, and we've got assets in the area that will be more than happy to go in and make some money. Plus, I've got a new plane that I'll get to fly around that country, and the locals are amazing cooks."

About that time HM walked up.

"Ah, she found you. Very good, I hope you two are catching up on old times and enjoying yourselves?"

"Yes, boss, I was just telling her that we're likely to be involved in the civil war that video will start in Iran."

"More than likely. You're going back in..."

Fuck.

"...in four weeks to start that war. The gentlemen over there are from the US government, and are offering us the chance to go in early and get a head start on things. I'm sending two teams, and offering you the chance to fly them in, since you know the area."

"You bet your ass I'm in. My plane needs some upgrades first, though."

"It's on the top of the list, and some of the parts are already on their way."

He took a long pause.

"Oh, and one more thing. PBE has hired her as a combat correspondent. She'll stay in the plane, but she'll be talking to the shooters to get information for her book. I want the real story to be told for a change, not the fairy tales the shooters tell, and not the smear job the media puts out."

"Her? In a combat zone."

"Yes. Training starts tomorrow, she'll be qualified by the time you leave."

I started laughing, and HM stood there with that smile of his, then gave a little laugh and walked off.

"What? What are you two laughing about?"

"Ma'am, some days, when you ask for an inch, you get a mile."

Some days.

The End.

Some Days, Part Five.

"At midnight, when the shift changes, we strike." That's how it always goes in the movies. Idiot writers, when the shift changes, that means there's two shifts in the building. One fresh, one tired, but still twice as many men.

Twice as many guns pointing the wrong direction.

Twice as many bullets flying the wrong way.

Only a a fucking idiot would attack then.

Wut's men waited 55 minutes after the midnight shift change to strike. By that time, he told me, the shift that had just finished would be in bed, or close to it, and that would slow down the response time. It also gave me and Athanasius time to get the plane ready.

At 0055, Camo Cowboy backed the bus into the front doors of the local military headquarters at a fairly high speed. Their sturdy construction prevented them from breaking, but they flew right through the front desk intact. A flashbang followed, and the game was on.

We knew FPoP was being held on the top floor. Basement holding cells are a nightmare to deal with, but top-floor cells are easy. Or so Wut told me while we were planning it. Apparently, anyone being held on the top floor is too much of a security risk to let them talk to other prisoners, which meant that everyone in the path of the shooters was hostile.

The first alarms went off at 0057. The Iranian equivalent of a beat cop had driven past the headquarters by chance, and had seen the bus embedded in the lobby. He'd radio'd it into his boss, then gone in for a closer look. He'd been taken down by the two troopers guarding the bus, but it was only a matter of time before the local PD sent in another unit.

At 0100 exactly, I started the engines on the C-47. It would take about ten minutes to get to the end of the runway. The bus should arrive about five minutes after that.

At 0103, the troopers found FPoP. Apparently, the shooters had to clear a few extra rooms, they'd seen some lights on. In most situations, civilians would have been simply detained, or bypassed entirely. In a hostile country, with no way to pick out who's gov't, who's off-duty or irregular military, and who's simply working the wrong shift, the shooters took no chances.

FPoP was in surprisingly good condition for being a prisoner of the Islamic Republic. He wasn't up for running, but he didn't need carried. They said he started laughing when he saw the patches. It was certainly the last thing he expected in that situation. Apparently, he'd been hoping that some internal connections would lead to his release, some prominent politicians owed him some favors.

At 0104, the first cops showed up. Like most cops around the world, they at first attempted to set up a perimeter to contain the problem. Unlike most cops, they had Kalashnikovs, but they still weren't soldiers. The soldiers were being called, though, and it was now a race.

The shooters got FPoP, with a briefcase retrieved from the CO's office, back to the bus at 0107, and it was moving before the back door shut. We hadn't had time to up-armor the bus, but we'd stocked it with as much ammo as we could. It was 5.4 miles from the headquarters to the airport, with one major turn. No one was expecting much traffic, which meant that the bad guys didn't have to worry about collateral damage.

I have no idea what the cops were expecting. There's no section in the manual for what to do when a school bus starts spraying accurate bursts of small-arms fire into the cops attempting to contain the situation. The ones that didn't dive for cover died almost immediately.

The school bus smashed the cop cars aside like they weren't even there. Unlike the US, Iranian cop cars were tiny little things, about the size of an old Honda civic. Fast, but completely useless in a combat situation. Which by that point, it was.

The old phrase "kicking open a hornet's nest" applied. People who had been woken up for the assault on the building were on the way by the time the bus started moving. Once it became a war, all pretenses of "Protect and Serve" were gone. Cop cars and military jeeps started showing up from all corners of the city, and it was a shoot-first, don't ask questions situation.

I'd have loved a video of the battle. It would have outshined every Hollywood car chase ever filmed. Nine very pissed-off men, fighting for their lives from the inside of a school bus, being chased by all the cops and soldiers a large city could throw at them. Wut later said that it was beautiful in the way that only war can be.

I reached the end of the runway at 0112. We had enough fuel for a 3600-mile journy, and in the closest direction, it was over an hour to safety. We expected to be shot at, and Iran's Air Force was more than a match for a C-47. Now it was a waiting game. We couldn't move, all we could do was hope the troopers got here before a tank did.

Airports are a strategic resource. At 0114, some cops showed up to defend the airport from the terrorists shooting up the city, and decided to investigae the only plane on the tarmac. They should have kept their lights off, it was really easy to aim just above the headlights. The first car coasted to a stop 30 yards from the plane, and for a second, we thought that might be all of the airport guards.

Then the tower hit us with a spotlight, and all hell broke loose.

It turned out that the Iranian Air Force had a small presence at the airport, which we hadn't noticed because we couldn't read the writing on the closed hangar doors. With that presence came the kind of firepower that can kill C-47s with ease: A pair of old F-14 Tomcats. If we didn't kill those planes or the pilots, we were well and truly fucked. The soldiers were suddenly the least of our worries.

I threw Athanasius his rifle and grabbed an extra ammo can for the M-60.

"GO! Take those planes out!"

"What the fuck with?"

"Don't you have any grenades? I'll cover you, just keep them from taking off!"

He hit the ground running as fast as he could towards that cop car, pulled the diver's corpse out, and took off towards the fighters. I jumped out onto the wing, and started sending short bursts towards the soldiers, hoping to keep them suppressed enough to give him a chance.

As it turns out, these were not crack troops. They scattered almost immediately, diving behind anything they could find. Fine by me, I thought. I just need to keep them scared for another few minutes.

Jet fighters are amazing pieces of high-tech machinery. They've got thousands of moving parts, many of them with tolerances of less than a thousandth of an inch. They're extremely effective at dealing death once they're in the air. However, if they're sitting on the ground, they might as well be piles of scrap metal, especially when a frag grenade goes off underneath one of them.

I was a bit disappointed, actually. I was expecting a huge explosion, maybe for the plane to split in two, but all that really happened when hundreds of metal slivers shredded their way through the plane was it started leaking everywhere. High-pressure hydraulics and explosion-resistant fuel tanks simply gave way, and fluids started coming out of the plane all over. It kinda looked like the plane pissed itself.

The grenade Athanasius threw at the second plane was a Willie-Pete, and he landed it on top of the plane's back. I think he wanted to see what the difference would be. Explosion-resistant fuel tanks are designed so that the fuel-air mixture inside a half-empty tank is never explosive. That way, if a red-hot sliver punctures the tank, it won't kill the plane. White phosphorous grenades aren't aware of those rules, however, and this particular one decided to simply melt through the plane itself.

The difference was dramatic. There was a brief burst of flame out the back when the tank was breached, and then a lake of burning jet fuel poured out the belly of the jet. It was glorious. It got even better a minute later, when the wave of fire from the second plane met the fuel that had gushed out of the first.

I wish I had a picture. That would make a wonderful photo for the "Services Offered" portfolio.

Athanasius had just made it back to the plane when the bus arrived. By arrived, I mean they smashed through the entry gates at 40 MPH with a string of cop cars and military vehicles chasing them.

Shit, this is going to be close.

The bus pulled up alongside, and it was clear that the fight had not been one-sided. The inside was spattered with blood, and it appeared that not everyone had made it to the airport alive. Athanasius and I added to the fire headed towards the locals while the troopers loaded the plane.

"Soren!!"

"Yes, Eff-Pop?"

"Get me the fuck out of this country!"

"With pleasure."

I rammed the throttles forward, and the second the last man was on, I let the brakes go. The old warbird jumped forward, and we were on our way. The old girl left the pavement about 2/3 of the way down the runway, and I heard cheering from the back of the plane. It wasn't time for that right now, and I keyed the intercom.

"Everyone who can, get to the left side of the aircraft with a rifle NOW, and kill that radar!"

The Douglas DC-3 has had a long and varied history. It was originally a passenger liner, until WWII happend and Uncle Sam ordered 10,000 of the cargo variant, designated the C-47. I didn't know this at the time, but this was one of the WWII birds. Some of those C-47s that survived were later outfitted with a trio of 7.62 miniguns, designated AC-47 "Spooky" gunships, and charged with scaring the shit out of NVA troops.

We didn't have miniguns, but we did have two M-60s, three AR-pattern rifles, one Kalashnikov, and someone had grabbed my Tavor. One slow loop around the tower, and the radar dish stopped rotating, the lights went out, and I heard laughter as they threw the rest of the grenades out the door.

I suppose it's not enough to simply shoot our way out of a hostile country. Payback Enterprises occasionally sees the need to add a little extra "Fuck You" to the shame of defeat, and I certainly enjoyed seeing the tar on the terminal roof catch fire from one of the Willie-Pete grenades.

I pulled my night-vision gear from my backpack, switched it on, and settled in for a low-level night flight. I told Athanasius to get back to the cargo hold and send Wut up to see me in the cockpit. Their job was over, mine would be over when we hit the Afghan border in two hours. If we made it that far.

"What's up, Soren?"

"Who didn't make it?"

"Liquid. Caught one above the vest, tore his aorta open. Bled all over the bus before we could get it stopped, it was too late."

"Fuck, I'm sorry, man. Is anyone else critical? I can fly a bit higher if we need a more stable platform."

"No, everyone else is just bleeding. We'll be fine, just keep us from getting killed."

"Alright, can you send FPoP up here when all the medic work is done?"

"Sure."

A half-hour later, a Persian man sat down in the copilot's seat.

"You have some talking to do. What do you have that the Gov't wanted, and how the hell could it be so important that we got sent in to get you out instead of simply bribing the guards to let you out?"

"Porn."

The explosion of profanity that resulted from that statement mixed together words from five different languages, eight countries, covered the topics of procreation, genetics, destiny, God, Hell, defecation, drug users, various ways of dying slowly, cannibalism, black magic, and philosophy, and lasted for ten minutes. I was later told it shocked even the grunts in the back.

"Porn. Of. What. Exactly?" I finally managed to say.

"Mrs. Ahmedinejad."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me. You've got a sex tape of Mahmoud and his wife? Is it any good?"

"I didn't say it had Mahmoud. Apparently, his wife is quite the freak, and her partners in this video are, shalll we say...not the usual porn stars."

"Who?"

"Wait for the screening."

"What screening?"

"Oh, don't worry. When HM finds out about this, there will be a screening of it at the Chateau. Red-carpet affair."

"I'd rather get shot at."

FPoP went back to sleep in the cargo hold. The troopers had all zonked out by then, except for the two who decided to look out the windows for any sign of a pursuit.

My phone rang about then. I don't normally carry a drop phone, since our cell phones are pretty much the definition of "unlisted numbers" anyways. The ringtone told me who it wasn't, so I picked up.

"Soren, Illuminati. Leak is proven and precise. Don't file a flight plan home anytime soon."

Some days.

Some Days, Part Four

Travel in corrupt, sparsely populated countries is always interesting. Take Iran, for example. The border isn't watched very closely, it's too big for the gov't to fund a full-on, first world border security program. So they end up relying on isolated outposts and checkpoints.

These work, since the isolated officials and guards trade honesty for brutality. They make more if they shake down travelers, and are more often than not corrupt enough to take a bribe. Official PBE policy is to offer bribes when shooting is inadvisable. Money is silent, and if the official gives us enough trouble...well, let's say that we once documented ourselves bribing our way past a checkpoint, then anonymously sent the information to his superior.

That man was found dead shortly thereafter. He'd spent most of the interim dying.

However, what works for two men never works for a ten-man merc team. There's no way a border official is going to let what's obviously a highly trained paramilitary unit through. The risks are way, way too high that said unit would be traced back. Mercenaries and corrupt officials have two things in common: We have to be alive to spend our profits.

Luckily for us, there's always another way through. Apparently, at some point, some rural folks had put in enough of a jeep trail to run goods into and out of the country. Whoever was running our UAV overflight that day spotted it. Panda Force just loves being sneaky.

What we didn't love was that the trail in question forced our driver, this Ted Nugent-like guy callsigned CamoCowboy to slow down to a crawl. Nothing says "high speed, low drag" like inching along a mountain road, praying that no one looked in our direction. Eight long, slow hours, and we were home free.

To the inside of Iran.

Maniac had said that The Prince was being held in Gorgan. I'd remarked that the last place I really wanted to go was a place that shared a name with Medusa's race.

When I got to the city, I'd realized just how fucked we were. 90% of PBE operations take place in villages of less than 500. 99% of them take place in towns of less than 5,000. Gorgan had a population of nearly 300,000.

Shit.

We parked the Panda bus about 20 miles outside of town, and waited for the call from the Boss. We had no way in, not armed as we were. We had no way to find him, not without something a hell of a lot better than what we'd learned watching Dragnet.

I hate this whole setup. We're hundreds of miles from safe territory. We're in a city that we cannot blend into. We're armed just enough for the cops to call in back up, nowhere near enough to survive fighting the backup.

We have to find one guy, that none of us know on sight. He's being held by a military unit, in a building we're going to have a hell off a time scoping.

And I'm on foot, not 200 feet of the deck, providing a nice platform to pour bullets into the area.

The phone rang when my silent bitching session was just starting to warm up.

I wonder when the last time Slayer was played in the Islamic Republic?

"This is Soren."

We needed a miracle. We didn't get one per se, but we did get an address. A local contact, someone inside that had been getting paid for years to keep track of arrests and such inside the city. He'd sent the Chateau a message a few weeks back, said someone had been black bagged a few weeks back. His source within the cops said the guy was wanted for a whole host of computer crimes, but what had piqued his interest was that the guy wasn't being held by the cops, but by the military.

Apparently, the timing of that coincided with the disappearance of a man known to PBE as the Fresh Prince of Persia. He wasn't PBE, but we all knew of him. He was our source in Iran, keeping us appraised of not only the internal politics, but the mood of the populace. That sort of thing was invaluable when invasions were planned. No country was going to forget America's mistake in Iraq, sticking around long after the welcome had run out.

We drove into town at nightfall. One of the few benefits of being PBE operator is that our haircuts and attitudes never fall into the "military" category, although we do still look like mercs. Our contact info was good. He was there, and we parked the bus in the alley behind what was to be our safehouse. Taking no chances, we brought the weapons in gear when the city was asleep.

"What's our plan, Soren?"

"First, we have to onfirm that Eff-pop's in the building, wait for an opening, shoot our way in, grab him, shoot our way out, and get out of the country."

"Oh, that simple, huh?"

"It could be worse. There's an airport on the way out of town, so that gives us an exit. Once we get there, we fly below the radar, all the way out of the country."

"We can't hotwire a plane, or just point a rifle at the pilot. We need a plane, ready for us and fueled, open hanger, by the time we get there. Preferably running, more preferably sitting at the end of the runway. You can handle that?"

"Yeah, unless you need me and Athanasius to kick doors with you?"

"No offense, but we're used to an eight-man team, not ten. You two secure the plane, we've got the building. We'll tear the damn thing down if with have to."

"What do you think the chances are FPoP knows where the data is?"

"If he doesn't, then it doesn't change anything. We still have to get him out."

Two of Wut's boys came back about three hours later. They'd taken enough pictures of the building for the tac boys to plan the assault. Athanasius and I left the next morning to scope the airport, hoping that someone had a Lear Jet for sale.

The best they had was a C-47. I don't think they realized how much Maniac would have wanted us to buy that anyways, and I did a wonderful job of overpaying for the plane, figuring I could blame it desert traders. But it flew, and had a reputation as being able to take a beating.

We got back that night to find out that our contact had pulled pictures of the building's inmate list, and we confirmed which one we were after with the Chateau. We also found out that they were planning on moving him to Tehran in two days, which meant that we had to get him the next night.

I'll say this for our contact: The man can cook. Most of the locals we work with can hardly cook a decent meal for themselves. This man cooked some of the best food I'd ever had and he cooked enough of it to feed eleven grown men. I made a mental note to pay the man extra if we all got out of this alive.

When this country gets the shit freed out of it, I hope they don't forget how to cook.

Invasion...is that what this is all about? Is it coming, and FPoP's got some relevant dox?

I hate not knowing what this is all about. All of this would make sense if it hadn't coincided with us getting shot down. Someone knew about our flight, far enough in advance to set up the AA. Someone found FPoP, had him arrested...wait, close enough to our shootdown that we were sent in to get him out?

Awww, shit. There's only one way all of that makes sense. PBE has a leak of some kind.

I made one more phone call that night. Any phone calls intended for the Boss are by nature routed through the Chateau's switchboard, since HM doesn't like getting unscreened calls, and doesn't carry a cell phone around anyways. That also, despite some of the best security money can buy, makes it theoretically possible for the call to be intercepted.

All of our intel boys carry cell phones. Almost all of them carry drop phones that are intended to be used once, and the numbers to those phones are some of the most closely-guarded secrets in PBE. I called the one man inside I knew I could trust to find the leak and close it without fucking up, and without needing help. I got the voicemail, which was expected.

"Illuminatus? This is Soren. We've got a leak. Find it. Tempus fugit."

Some days.