3 Days Later. 04:25 Daniel K. Inouye International Airport – Baggage Claim

Alice and John were standing in front of the baggage carousel. John had checked two bags. One was offloaded immediately. The other, well it still wasn’t here yet. Over two hundred other people had received their things and left the terminal. Not so for the young couple.

“You know it makes sense,” John said sarcastically.

Alice sighed, “That the bag you checked with the military gear and was more valuable than your clothes and whatnot, showed up first, right?”

“It’s proof that they know about this and are purposely fucking with me.”

“Did you ever think that maybe you brought this upon yourself?”

“Yes, and I rejected that out of hand.”

Alice groaned internally and decided to change the subject, “For a flight that long I was surprised by how comfortable it was.”

“The shower was a nice bonus too. Flying always makes me feel filthy, so timing it so I feel clean here was nice.”

“Good call on that. Do we have any big plans for today?”

“Not really, the house is in Waipahu and on one of the golf courses. If I remember right, we’re technically out of the city limits and some farm fields are behind the house. I am also going to write at least one if not two letters to these clowns.”

“Do we need to get groceries?”

“Nope, the house is fully stocked already. We probably won’t need to go to the store for a few days.”

Alice smiled and pointed, “Fourth to the last. Slowly improving.”

“That’s just mean honey.”

Alice smiled as her husband walked over to the carousel to fetch his remaining bag. The curse of the baggage claim continued. Alice heard John mumble every expletive in the book as they were heading to catch the bus to the car rental facility.

05:25 Royal Kunia Resort

When the couple arrived at their home away from home, Alice went straight to the bedroom to take a nap for a couple of hours. John, being the ever stubborn and overly driven young man, opted to read some reports and send out an update on where they were at.

John was reading the report on the freighter that had the pistols from the Academy loaded. It was inspected by a special wing assigned to the First Fleet that was commanded by Intelligence assets. Thousands of cases worth of small arms and ammunition were found. Less than ten percent of them were from legitimate orders.

He sighed as he read the encrypted part of the report. More ship components, though these were from a heavy cruiser. No one knew who or even where these orders or gear were coming from. Like the initial crew, they were recruited by a middleman and were provided older but still valid Intelligence command codes.

That was yet another problem with this whole damn mess John thought. How did they have the command codes? They were used to effectively tell military ships to leave them alone. The group that was running this operation must have its hooks in at all levels of the military and government.

The freighter also had preferred docking at several stations. But how they had those arrangements were not known. John swore to himself. Nothing about this damn case made any sense.

John continued to write the update to the investigation. The sheer number of unanswered questions left a sour taste in his mouth. When the report was finished nearly an hour later, he didn’t even want to send it. But despite his reservations, he pressed the send button and stood up.

“What a clusterfuck I’ve found myself in again,” John sighed.

John’s attention turned to the door when he heard the doorbell rang. He walked over, checked the peephole, then opened the door. There was an older gentleman, likely in his late sixties.

“Good morning, I farm just north of here and wanted to give you a heads up that we’re going to be harvesting some rice this morning.”

“So y’all are going to be loud and sending dust and shit everywhere.”

“Basically, yes,” the farmer looked a bit nervous.

“Cool, you gotta do what you gotta do. You won’t hear any complaints from my wife or me.”

“I also want to let you know to be careful when your outside. The feral hogs have been aggressive as hell this year,” the farmer paused, “Too many resort goers feed them or leave food outside.”

John paused then started smiling, “Is there a hunting season for these hogs?”

The farmer looked confused but answered the odd question, “They are considered an invasive pest. There’s no season nor any limit.”

“Sweet,” John was growing a maniacal look on his face, “Don’t suppose you’d mind me shooting some of the pests for ya?”

“I’ve never had one of you vacationers ever ask me that,” the farmer started to laugh.

“Soooo, is that a yes or no?”

“Sure thing, I’d only ask that you not shoot at any hogs when our equipment or people are behind them.”

“We’re military, well aware of the rules of shooting,” John smiled, “Can you give me one minute?”

The farmer nodded and waited at the doorway. John walked back in a change of clothes and held an assault rifle and a pair of magazines. A couple of knives were in a sheath on his left hip while a pistol was on his right. A pair of binoculars and a range finder were on straps around his neck.

“Is there any particular place you want me to dispose of the entrails and other non-edible bits?”

The farmer smiled, “Nah, just toss it in the wildlife reserve. Let the critters clean it up.”

John followed the farmer over to the field. A new John Deere combine was harvesting the rice found on the field. A Case IH tractor was hauling a grain cart that was following the combine. When it was full, they had a series of semi-trucks that were hauling the rice to a storage facility.

The two made small talk as they walked over to the field. The farmer showed them the three fields they had planned to harvest today and then barring any weather concerns what they planned the rest of the week. It appeared that only the first two, maybe three days of their trip may experience a mild inconvenience.

A cooler was made available to John should he bag any hogs. John was also told he could one of their trailers hang any hogs that need to be skinned and butchered. John climbed up on one of the empty grain carts and began scanning the fields for any sign of movement.

It didn’t take long for John to find a hog. In this case a sow with a small brood following behind her. John checked her range, three hundred fifty yards with a slight wind at his back. That would cause the bullet to sail on the wind a bit and not drop as much.

In true redneck fashion, either to not knowing the laws about hunting from a county road or from a general disregard for the laws, John set the zero on his scope to three hundred yards and then found the sow. Just before he was about to pull the trigger, he changed the range down twenty yards. He was shooting down almost thirty feet.

John slowed his breathing, flicked the safety off with his thumb, and slowly pulled the trigger. A loud bang happened which startled everyone around. A one hundred twenty-nine grain bullet was sent downrange at just under three thousand feet per second. It struck the sow right behind her eyes dropping her immediately.

“FUCK YEAH!” John shouted as he scrambled down the semi-trailer.

John ran off down the road and toward the divider between fields. He slowed down to a slow walk when he got to about fifty yards away. The juvenile pigs that had scattered came back to their fallen mother. John drew his pistol and took aim. He crept closer to his prey, he stopped when one looked in his direction.

He slowed his breath and then pulled the trigger at the closest juvenile pig. John fired fifteen shots in total. The pistol’s slide was locked back. John slowly dropped the magazine and placed it in its holster, afterward he reloaded the gun with a full magazine.

John holstered his gun and unsheathed his bowie knife. He grabbed the back of the juvenile’s head and slit the throat. He repeated the process five times. John walked back to the trailer and dropped the piglets unceremoniously on the floor of it. He walked back to get the sow. She was far too big and heavy to carry the way he did the smaller ones, so John ended up being a bloody mess by the time he got back to the trailer.

“Jesus Christ son, you don’t take long, do you?” an old farmer, likely related to the one John spoke with earlier said.

“No sir, after I get this lot on the ice and the unwanted bits are taken care of, I’ll see about eliminating a couple more.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t take much beyond the tenderloin on the big ones. Never know what those filthy bastards eat. Young ones should be mighty fine eating though.”

“Good to know, thank you, sir. If I managed to bag anymore do any of your workers or family want any?”

“I’ll ask around, but it isn’t often we say no to free meat.”

10:45 Rice Fields

Alice walked along the gravel road towards a semi-trailer. If her hunch was correct, her idiot husband was there. But she was genuinely curious what he was up to. She could see lots of farm equipment around. John wasn’t a farmer, that much she was sure of in this situation. She started to laugh when she got to the end of the trailer and looked up.

“So, I wake up and thought, maybe my husband and I could go for a swim. Or for a walk. Relax and sunbathe. Talk maybe. But then he was nowhere to be found.”

John slowly turned around, “What time is it? Because I can totally explain.”

Alice continued to laugh as she looked at John. He was covered in blood. The truck drivers and farmers around John were all looking really happy for some reason.

“So, as I said, I can totally explain,” John paused, “See that guy's older brother stopped by and wanted to let me know that they were farming in the area and may make some noise and a mess. He mentioned something about the wild hogs being a menace.”

“So naturally you wanted to kill something,” Alice was grinning.

“In my defense, it’s been a while since I killed anything,” John shrugged, “Plus the little ones are supposed to taste damn good.”

“And how many did you get?”

“Well, I got five big ones and twelve little ones,” John looked very proud, “And this one is the last one I need to skin.”

“So how much are you bringing home?”

“Two little ones and two tenderloins from a bigger one. I’m going to use the smoker and do a whole hog smoke on the two little ones. Going to be plenty of nice leftovers.”

Alice smiled and told John to get back to the house as soon as he can. John complied and was home within thirty minutes. Alice told him to go around the corner and strip to his underwear in the backyard. John did as he was ordered, afterwards, he went to the bathroom and took a shower. Alice took care of the meat, then walked to the backyard and hosed down the clothes.

19:00 Royal Kunia Resort – Backyard

Alice and John were having a feast. Alice made three different sides. John made cornbread and potato salad. There were going to be lots of leftovers. The juvenile pigs weren’t very big, but they took around eight hours to smoke in total. John was almost drooling when he pulled the foil off of the pigs. Enough meat for the immediate meal was scavenged off of the pigs and put on a platter.

“Not a bad start to the vacation,” John said smiling as he added the meat to his plate.

“Yeah, nothing like going Rambo on local fauna,” Alice grinned, “But very good work, I know that if I’m ever stuck in a random place along with you that you can produce food for us.”

“Pigs aren’t local technically.”

“Semantics,” Alice laughed, “But you are right, it was quite tasty. So, what do you want to do tomorrow?”

“I’d like to visit the memorial and take a tour of the USS Missouri.”

“Oh my god, we are like just across the bay from there. How did I forget about that? We are definitely going to go. How’s your case going?”

John shook his head, “Poorly. I don’t understand how they are pulling the strings they are much less who the hell they are. That’s the irritating part. Plus, those jackoffs that I had to deal with at the warehouse, they were given an order that I was a spy.”

“Wonderful, so the bad guy can make us think one or another of us is the bad guy.”

“Yup, not like the investigation needed to ramp up its difficulty any, but here we are.”

“Why take it on then?”

“Because I can, and both the Marines and Intelligence want me to do it,” John leaned back in his seat and took a swig of beer, “There was something on that freighter that should never have been there. This is huge.”

“What’s your working theory?”

John started to laugh, “Honestly we don’t even technically have enough information, to begin with, anything. That being said, my money is on an allied group of VPs in different industries. Like a James Bond cabal.”

“Not a foreign government?”

“Nah, wars have started for less overt acts. The big question is what their aim is. You don’t normally coordinate and move this much stuff without some sort of plan.”

Alice took a sip of wine, “Not some global level shell game? Sure, sounds like that.”

“Could be, but right now we just lack the data,” John leaned in and took another couple bites of food, “I don’t like waiting for them to make a mistake, but that is basically the situation we’re in.”

02:30 Living Room

John couldn’t sleep so he wandered out to the living room. He sat in front of the terminal reading a couple of reports. Neither Mizrahi nor LeCroix was happy that they still didn’t have any insights into who was pulling the strings. There did seem to be the belief that the small arms weren’t actually being sold to foreign governments or groups that were barred from possessing them.

They seemed to be a shell game to confuse and confound. The real issue at play here was the ship components. This group was either selling state secrets to foreign powers, or they were trying to create their own ships.

The two leaders both seemed to believe that was a foolish endeavor since they would never possess a numerical advantage. John responded that they didn’t need a numerical advantage. They could simply go somewhere else to colonize and hold that world while they build more themselves. All they’d need to do is figure out how to produce the items they are stealing.

John switched over to the communications tab and made an outbound call. He smiled when the call was connected.

“Mr. Lief, I was wondering when we’d conversate again,” Flavio Ricci smiled.

“Good evening, Flavio. Would you happen to know of a cabal or group of some sort that has deep ties into the military and could abscond with ship equipment and more?” John pressed a button on his keyboard to encrypt the call.

“I know several groups that could do that,” Flavio paused, “In fact, you might say I have something you want.”

“What’s the cost?”

“Straight the point, that’s what I like about you. Even now in your depowered state.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m that depowered.”

Flavio laughed, “We both know in some ways you’re a shadow of your former self. That being said, that might make you even more of a formidable opponent than you once were. But worry not, you’re not someone I’d want as an opponent.”

“Which leads back to my initial question. This isn’t information you’d give up freely.”

“Correct,” Flavio paused as if he was pondering something, “But the question of what I’d want is a vexing one.”

“Hell of a thing to have a hard time figuring out when you have everything already.”

“Too true. Contact me sometime tomorrow, I should have a better idea. Oh, and what I’m asking is between us, no one else can know.”

“Fair enough, be seeing you tomorrow,” John smiled as he closed the connection, “Making deals with the devil, eh John? Look what I’ve become.”

John sat in silence for several minutes. He locked the workstation and went back to bed. It likely wasn’t going to be cheap, that much was sure. Making this deal may help move the investigation along, but it may doom John to a degree of subservience to a third party. He was going to have to play this wisely so there wasn’t any debt hanging over his head.

07:45 Fargo, Hector International Airport

Kristin was walking off the airplane, “Oh my god that wind is raw.”

“Pffft, wait till January or February. That’s when it gets cold.” Andern said.

“Tell me again why we flew to Fargo? You live in Valley City which has an airport.”

“More flights here. We can be at my house by 09:00 or we could get there at 19:00 and have two extra legs. Plus flying here was cheaper,” Andern shrugged.

“Be honest, it was mostly because it was cheaper then?” Kristin grinned at Andern.

“Very much so, unlike John, I am dirt poor.”

“I think that applies to basically everyone.”

The couple walked down to the baggage claim area. The carousels here were woefully small. They started to laugh at the same time, clearly thinking about the same thing.

“John texted me this morning, his bag containing his kit was first off the plane, but his clothes were like fourth to the last,” Andern started to laugh.

“You know, I think he’s actually got something to legitimately complain about. Nothing about that makes any damned sense.”

“I think it’s the universe righting itself in some twisted karmic revenge against John’s ways. It has to be how he gets away with all that shit.”

“Hey, speaking of John, you know that amplifier thingy?”

Andern turned and looked at Kristin curiously, “Yeah, did you see something recently?”

“Wait, did you?” Kristin looked back at Andern cautiously.

“Out with it, what did you see?” Andern shot back.

“We were at the Academy armory when John was working on some investigation. He noticed the extra gear for his power armor needed to be arranged so he moved stuff around. The amplifier thingy…”

“Glowed when he touched it right?”

“Wait. When did you see that?”

“On the Marcinko, I swore I was seeing things and didn’t bother to say anything.”

“Do we call John about this?” Kristin asked.

Andern pointed at their bags coming down the carousel, “No, let's stow this for a bit till we get back to my parent’s place. Let’s call Kevin and see if he knows anything. He kinda helped modify the thing.”