Fan Fiction

If anything, what kept them together was their brotherhood, more than the fight. The fight brought them together, that's true. When that was gone, they still had that connection, that love.

And THAT is the real victory......

Chapter 1 :: Chapter 2 :: Chapter 3 :: Chapter 4 :: Chapter 5 :: Chapter 6 :: Chapter 7 ::
Chapter 8 :: Chapter 9 :: Chapter 10 :: Chapter 11 :: Chapter 12 :: Chapter 13 :: Chapter 14 ::
Chapter 15 :: Chapter 16 :: Chapter 17 :: Chapter 18 :: Chapter 19 :: Chapter 20 :: Chapter 21

A few stars twinkled visibly in the hazy sky if you looked away from Miami's brilliant skyline.
The old man sat on the secluded deck gazing out at the endless saltwater night.  Not so distant city lights made true darkness elusive here, and Emil truly preferred the absence of light.  He didn't care much for the faint whiff of harbor smells either, the faint composted smells of ancient refuse.  Completely unaware that they resembled the odors of his private chamber of horrors.  Slow dreamy violin music drifted in the air from one of the worlds most expensive sound systems.
        Emil was profoundly single minded, aloof from the world and all humanity.  He had only one true interest in life.

Control, and the degree of absolute control he could create over any creature's actions.  Dogs bored him quickly at a young age.  Cats were slightly more interesting, but so often seemed to go mad or die in his early experiments that he had stopped using them as soon as he was able to work on prisoners.  Emil felt only a great nostalgia for the huge concentration camps, he had been very young when he quit medical school to work in one of the experimental units, and the camps had been for him a revelation.  Endless possible combinations of drugs and conditioning.  An unlimited supply of subjects to work on.  The old man missed that most of all. He was one of the few staff intelligent enough to plan his escape before the Americans took the camps and ended his experiments there.  From there he had slowly built his own business with carefully controlled layers of separation from the world.  Emil had long ago reached a point where his price was so high that he worked as he wished, never from need.

        He sipped a very fine cognac, rolling the taste on his tongue and raised a disapproving eyebrow when he observed his assistant Johan approaching with a heavy file.

Emil immediately noticed the file in his assistant's hands.  He lifted an eyebrow haughtily.  Johan's eyes flickered unhappily.

"Blue call."

Emil's thin lips compressed.

"What is the question?"

"The subject now has amnesia covering the last 27 years.  Will this affect the program?"

Emil's face showed his mild surprise, then became thoughtful.  He snapped his fingers and Johan placed the file on the table immediately and stood ready.  The caller was being charged by the second, something Emil found amusing but necessary for security reasons. The old man opened the folder, the files within bore no names only numbers signifying his own private system of order in the world.  This question implied that the money broker and the supplier were not part of the same plan.  Interesting.  But Emil never wasted his time trying to untangle his customer's plans.  After studying his notes for several minutes he looked up.
"Tell him the amnesia will not affect the outcome.  Once the drugs wear off he will follow the conditioning as arranged for."

Emil smiled thinly, shutting the folder and waving it away.  Johan retrieved it neatly and left.  There had been subjects who tried to escape into the oblivion of amnesia.  Invariably they had fallen into amnesia during the initial softening process, and the need to kill one particular person could be easily overlaid.  No.  There would be no problem.  It had been a very long time since any failure of his techniques.  Even with the shortened schedule, he had no doubts.  The old man picked up the cognac and swirled it in the glass, inhaled the heady perfume of it and took a satisfied swallow.

Thursday 6:58 AM

The outer office of the OCB was still dark when Gina came in the door carrying a cardboard box filled the small bottles of orange juice.  She carried a heavy file under one arm.  She could see that nearly everyone was gathered in the conference room.
"Good Morning Gang."
Several people said 'Thanks' as they grabbed orange juice.
Trudy entered the conference room with a computer wad of folded paper, opening it onto the table.  Sonny finished drinking half the bottle before taking a look at the papers.
"How're you gonna keep McKinnin from noticing this much paper?"
"McKinnin thinks I'm the secretary, this is just accounting files."
Switek lifted a sheet of computer paper and looked at the backside with a lift of his eyebrows.
"She's not kidding guys, there's accounting files on the backside.  How did you do that?"
"Cost management, remember?  They turn stuff over now and run it through to use the other side."
Sonny finished off the orange juice and put an empty bottle down.
"What did you find?"
"It's really creepy, INTERPOL has a list that goes back almost 40 years.  Always the same basic setup.  A trusted person, goes on vacation, calls in sick, drops out of sight for 7-10 days.  They come back to work and then commit a murder within 4 days of their return, then suicide.  No notes, no motives.  Anybody who gets in their way usually gets hurt or dead."
"Ugly."
Gina's doubt showed on her face as well as in her voice.
"There's never any motive?"
Trudy frowned.
"Well.  Not any motive for the shooter.  The shooters were usually friends, completely above suspicion. Sometimes long term co-workers.  But the targets are all politically hot."  She paused a second,
"I got a name.  I went through a lot of old material and called in some favors for information.  You remember we heard them talk about the 'Cowboy', and the name Emil comes up once.  'The Cowboy' is sort of a bogey man."
"Not Fairytales huh?"
"Terror tales. He's referred to as 'Emil the Cowboy'. He's German,= that's pretty well established.  He's like a brainwash artist.  The problem is there's never much left to examine.  By the time they figure Emil was involved, everyone's dead.  No one to ask any questions."

Gina's voice was a whisper.
        "They think this guy got Castillo?"
Arnie spoke up then, wiggling fingers as he tried to calculate.
"But he was only gone 5 days?"
Sonny's face was stark,
"How long does it take to turn a friend into an assassin?
Guys, if this is what we've got to go on, we need to know who is worth assassinating in Miami in the next week."
Trudy frowned.
"Great.  That could be anyone."
Rico spoke up.
"Who's got a grudge?"
Arnie answered him matter-of-factly.
"Everyone.  The question is how big?"
Switek started ticking fingers.
"Well there's politicians, Mafia, money, religion, sex, Rappers, not to mention drugs, sex, and rock and roll."
Everyone stared at each other for a silent depressed moment.
Sonny didn't like what he knew was going through everyone's mind.  They were all tired and this looked impossible.  They had broken harder cases together, he refused to doubt they could solve this one before it was to late.  He pulled himself together.
"Okay, this Cowboy can't be cheap, so there's a lot of money involved.  That usually means drugs or money." 

"Or politics." Switek pointed out gloomily.

Sonny waved an open palm in acknowledgement.

"Remember what Arnie heard, We gotta check on any Vietnam memorial services or anything like that with important people coming."

Gina looked up.  Shaking loose curls out of her face impatiently.
"That sounds like the best bet.  I know who to start with."

"And Castillo's got to stay away.  All those cases you found have the victim coming back to work and then going off to kill someone."
Sonny looked at his watch
"As soon as McKinnin 's finished his morning briefing, I'm going back to the hospital and talk to Freidman.  We can meet this afternoon at Tony's again."

Rico:  "I wish I had the contacts, I'd like some idea who Reese is working for.  Mine are all F.B.I."

Marco looked at Tubbs,
"I think I might have a way in."

Rico looked at Sonny who grinned, 'Go for it'. Was in his eyes.
 
"I'll hang with you then, we can check out bad drug deal grudges after that."

Arnie suddenly turned around and walked to a chair.  "We can check out the music and mayhem scene Stan."  Switek snickered,
"Politics right?"
Cued by Arnie, they all shifted focus.  McKinnin was walking across the outer office.  Everyone at the table shuffled papers, and Marco handed out sheets of information on the ongoing Rio Dezipas case.  There was enough there now to cover any contingency for time needed elsewhere. 
McKinnin marched in with his usual bundle of papers.  Trudy wondered if the man ever even tried to organize them.  He seemed to spend most of his time shuffling through them.  She couldn't help but remember Castillo's quick precise, clearly organized meetings.  After his usual ineffective search through the pile, he extracted a page and announced.

"I have direct orders from the Chief, he wants all of this unit to cover the Asian Festival this Friday and Saturday, afternoon and evening.  Information has been received that a large drug transfer operation is set to take place during the Festival. The Festival committee is offering full cooperation in this matter.  They are just as concerned as the Chief about any drug deals hurting the festival's reputation.
        You are all assigned to work on this.  There will be a meeting tomorrow morning at 8:00.  I've made up area assignments for everyone.  The Festival is sending over some background materials and a representative.  They would like you all to blend in quietly as much as possible."
Switek's face creased in baffled disapproval.
"This is crazy-I've never seen more than a gram of hash change hands at one of these things.  And that was two bozos in a parking lot.  Who the hell insisted this was so important?"
McKinnin  looked extremely affronted and growled,  "That's not our business.  I expect to see you all at 8:00."  With these parting words he marched out.

Thursday 8:23 AM Bayshore Hospital

Dr. Sidney Friedman yawned as he walked the halls toward his office in the hospital.  He had dreamed badly in the few hours sleep he got after dredging through ancient files and books of arcane third world medicine.  He felt guilty.
Friedman had signed most of his current patients over to other Doctors when Martin was brought in.  He still felt guilty, and he knew it was irrational.  Sidney was afraid that nothing he did might make much difference.  He had failed before, and spent years learning to reconcile that failure with research and successful work with trauma victims.  Now he was faced with the ultimate test of everything he might have learned. With no room for failure and virtually no hope of success.
Friedman carried a pile of papers up a back stairway to his office.  He hated coming in so late, and lack of sleep was dragging behind him like a log on a chain.  His office door was slightly ajar. Pausing for a moment, he kicked the door open lightly and stood looking in.
A whip-thin older man with eagle sharp eyes and leathery skin, lounged near the bookshelves glancing over titles.  Dark grey government suit.  Somehow the hard looking old man managed to seem casual even while his back was never exposed to the door and a hand was always free to grasp a weapon, and Friedman knew the man was armed, even if you saw nothing.  He was not the last person Friedman had expected to see.  It was just sooner than he prayed for.

"So, Post Traumatic Stress is now your specialty.  You could have stayed with the Company if you wanted to play with people's minds."

Trust Smith to remember a sore spot.

"Smith.  I don't play with people, you know that."

        The thin mouth twisted up in sardonic humor.
"Yeah, more's the pity, you could have been good."

Sidney knew what was going on, but he had to ask.
"What are you doing here?"

"I've come to take him back to the company."

"You can't do that!"
        Smith looked dispassionately at the Doctor.
"I can and I am.  He's a national security threat, if the Cowboy broke him, that means a major assassination is scheduled, you know how this works.  He's also the only one of the cowboys horses we've ever taken before the event.  I'm going to keep it that way."

"He won't cooperate with you."

"It doesn't matter.  He's going under sedation and full restraint."

"It won't work.  Smith, don't do this, he doesn't remember you, and you don't remember him, he'll kill you if he can.

"Well I'll just make sure he doesn't.  I arranged for long acting sedatives last night while you were away.  I don't think we'll have any problems this time.  McKilty will take over from here
Freidman.  He's downstairs now arranging things."

Friedman's face went white in his sudden fury. 

"NO!"  He threw his papers on the desk and ran.

Chapter 1 :: Chapter 2 :: Chapter 3 :: Chapter 4 :: Chapter 5 :: Chapter 6 :: Chapter 7 ::
Chapter 8 :: Chapter 9 :: Chapter 10 :: Chapter 11 :: Chapter 12 :: Chapter 13 :: Chapter 14 ::
Chapter 15 :: Chapter 16 :: Chapter 17 :: Chapter 18 :: Chapter 19 :: Chapter 20 :: Chapter 21