Page 6 of Statler

Tonka, being very large, operated on a lot of calories. A lot. He was never happy if he wasn’t eating. Which meant they were going to have to lay in a massive amount of food, to keep Tonk assuaged.

On the hospital front, however, Statler wasn’t worried.

He’d seen Tonka—under the worst of conditions—practically sew limbs back on while taking live fire in the field. Which meant if any of them sustained an injury on the job, Tonka could put them back together again, no sweat.

“And that’s the town, in a nutshell,” Stat took over. “Not much to see there, and if I had to guess, that’s exactly how Flazer wants it. Now, on to our two job descriptions; the one we’ve been hired to do by Flazer, and the one STUDS will be doing, covertly.”

“Wait. I need more coffee.”

Hazard, who practically inhaled caffeine all day, swiftly got to his feet and trotted off to the kitchen, coming back with his mug full and steaming.

He gave a happy sigh as he sat back down. “Okay. Go.”

Statler wasted no time.

“Dark says the initial intelligence regarding the manufacture of illegal weapons in town—which constitutes our primary mission—was gleaned from a source who first contacted the FBI just over a year ago. That intel was eventually sent over to our division due to the fact that the alleged criminal activities—at least how the agencies are interpreting it—crosses both national and international borders.”

This was always a gray area where the FBI and the CIA were known to butt heads on jurisdiction, so these questionably located investigations were often sent STUDS’ way, to keep the peace.

Not that either agency was ever happy with that outcome, but…

Suck it up, boys and girls.

As a bone, one or the other of the letter bureaus would be called in for back-up if and when STUDS needed it.

Statler went on. “The source previously mentioned as being the one who alerted to the illegalities, was simply known by one name. Holden. And unfortunately, since Holden’s initial reach-out, all contact with the man has gone dark.”

“You think he got caught spilling the beans, and Flazer ‘took care of the problem?” Pipes offered up.

“That’s the theory we’re going on,” Statler agreed. “But still, Holden was able to give General Dark a lot of information before he went off-grid a year ago, and since then, our home office has been running constant satellite surveillance on the entire area in question.”

They weren’t going in blind, as sometimes was the case.

“Here’s what they’ve found.” Statler apprised. “One night every month, always on a Saturday around midnight, a huge semi arrives at the current, smallish factory.”

“Wait, boss,” Dizzy interjected. “What is it that they’re manufacturing, legally?”

“Good question,” Statler nodded. “They assemble aerospace components. Under contract with our government. Which makes them look legit on paper. But what it also means, is that the materials they import for production of those components haven’t raised any red flags. The parts needed for their legit business are virtually indistinguishable from those used in their illegal automatic weapons manufacturing.”

Everyone nodded, and Stat continued.

“The satellite imagery has confirmed that the weaponry is indeed being loaded onto that once-a-month semi by what appears to be a group of six to twelve individuals. We have no idea whether it’s the same bunch every time, or if the crew is rotated in and out.” Stat cleared his throat and continued to fill them in. “After everything is loaded, the truck then heads to a little used, remote border crossing that’s no more than a glorified garage, where it travels into Canada after it’s waved through without inspection.”

“Flazer has paid someone to look the other way,” Blue speculated.

“That’s been confirmed,” Statler acknowledged.

“The truck, once across the border, heads to a secluded, shallow water inlet up the coast approximately two and a half hours away, where it transfers the weapons cache onto a waiting scow. The scow heads through the shallows and out to deeper waters, where it meets up with a small coastal freighter and passes off the cargo. It’s not always the same freighter, but the manifests—which our office has been able to get ahold of—shows they are all owned by the same shell company that they’re still trying to trace.”

It wasn’t all as easy as it was purported to be on TV. Sometimes it took months and months to follow trails and uncover who was behind illicit, offshore accounts.

Statler kept the information flowing. “The freighters have subsequently been traced to Venezuela, where the contraband is offloaded rather casually. We can only assume that they are supplying weapons to foreign factions who are sanctioned by that country.”

“Sounds pretty straight forward to me,” Hazard put in, his left leg jiggling with his latest jolt of caffein. “Our role in Liminal, that is.”

“It should be,” Sherbert agreed. “We go in as hired construction, confirm from the ground what the satellites have shown, then shut everything down.”

As the building crew, they would—by day—begin to erect a new factory, while STUDS at night would do the dirty work.