Jennifer spent time over the last year hunting and making connections. One of those connections, the one camped out in one of her best safe houses in fact, was Dave "Cannonball" D'Souza. Dave was a lanky man with an air of good humor and a handsome face beneath a head of chocolate brown hair. Now, sitting on the couch inside the third floor apartment safe house, he nodded understandingly to the women across from him. Dave was a Hell's Raider. Incumbent leader of the Dynamite Divers and maintainer of some of Jennifer's higher end safe houses.
"Let's go over it again." he said thoughtfully, "You want cattle and you want to run a hit on that dealer over in the orchard." Atomos nodded, noting that Cherise had gone out the front door to take another look at the demolished staircase. It had been the easiest part of setting up the safehouse. The hardest had been the plank spanning the narrow gap between this one and the apartment across the narrow alley between two buildings. The Divers had been hard at work turning other apartments into pieces of the safehouse, making it more fortress than simple hide away. The bridges between were the most impressive bit. The bridge which had started as just a wide plank thrown across the narrow gap between two close set balconies had evolved to a system of retractable rope and ladder bridges.
"Yeah, basically. I'm willing to split the cattle between your my people and your people. As for the tower-" She began.
"Yeah yeah, we've heard the shit music too. I'm more concerned with what the orchard is dealing than I am about faggots moaning into my speakers or getting a prime rib." Dave said. He rummaged around in a drawer while talked and took out a compact. Jennifer scowled at it, but Dave just ignored her. He was a user, sure enough, but not of what Hoyt was dealing. "That guys dealing poison. Something wrong with his fix. I'd be happy to fuck with his operation for you just to get his filth off the map."
"Could you not?" Jennifer interrupted, drawing Cherise back into the room. Dave looked down at his fixings and realized what he was doing.
"Oh, oh yeah, sorry B. Sometimes I forget, right?" He explained. The compact vanished into a jacket pocket and wouldn't be seen by Atomos again that night. She thought that the stuff in the compact would be the death of Dave's clan. Too many of his people took what their leader called "tusk snuff" before their rides. The result was, inevitably, somebody getting too careless with the divers signeture weapon and detonating themselves at high speeds. She'd seen it twice already, one of several reasons she'd dealt fairly but seldomly with the Dynamite Divers. Dave reached over and turned up the stereo between them and listened quietly to the sound coming from it. A mix of heavy bass, low moaning, and a man's voice repeating the line "stuff me daddy" all arranged to some kind of techno beat.
"Ba! Ba! Ba! Bo! Bo! Bo! REACH! FOR THE LAYZUHZ!!!" The radio screamed, in so far as it could scream at the low volume set.
Dave grimaced at it then turned his attention back to the ranger. "Frankly though, if we tried to sack the candy man's place, we'd probably end up getting shot down or blowing ourselves up. Junkies they may be, but the dick heads got some hard folks over there. Also, say we did take the orchard? Then what? The shit may be poison, but junk is junk and most of my guys are just as tweaked as his." Dave went on, accompanying his statement with a telling sniff of the webbing between thumb and forefinger.
"It's all poison regardless..." Cherise interrupted, "If we take the place, it's all being burned to the ground."
"Yeah..." Dave said with a nervous calm, "but it isn't that easy. Seriously though, we could probably help with the steak. The radio, no, the steak, yes. Now listen, the candy man has to get his stock from somewhere right? He's not breeding them then and there on that orchard is he? The clans know because the clans keep an eye on things. The candy man is a tempting target, but he's a hardened target. Still worth watching though right? I'm getting off track, sorry. So... Where's he get the livestock?"
"If he isn't breeding it, he's shipping it in." Jennifer mused, "but where from? Nobody else that I know of has any cattle."
"He's stealing it himself?" Cherise guessed. Dave made a sharp clicking noise and mimed a pistol firing in her direction.
"Bingo. Guy may be a hard core dealer, but he's a raider too. His people are anyway. They hit small settlements for chemical supplies and livestock. If they've got skilled chemists or scientists, his boys kidnap or kills them. If they've got drugs, they burn them. The candy man is a shrewd businessman. The thing is, the cattle can't all be shipped with the rest of the stuff. They have to be checked over to make sure their healthy, then they're loaded into a cattle car and driven back to the orchard. You aren't going to steal so much as a fart from the orchard, but you could probably take the caravan." Dave went over all this with a distant look of whimsy. Entertaining the concept of a hit and run. Only, there was a snag.
"We'd still have to knock out their radio." Atomos observed, "Otherwise, Hoyt would know the livestock had been hit and taken and he might try hunt the truck down to retrieve it... Or send reinforcements if we can't take the truck quick enough..."
Dave leaned back and tucked a hand into the pocket where he'd placed the compact before, slowly turning the little clamshell over and over in his hand. The off white powder inside would send him right off, making him feel powerful and energetic for a bit. The situation seemed hopeless, but of course there were ways they could go about it. Maybe if they had the hardware and support... He thought about his rivals, the Screaming Eagles and the Sun Dogs. The Dynamite Divers were floundering and one of the rival clans would absorb them. The Eagles wouldn't be so bad, but the Sun dogs would be terrible for the Divers. The problem was that it was likely the Sun Dogs would be the ones to unify them. Dave didn't have the numbers or the wits to do it, but maybe... Just maybe, this situation could be used to make a power play? He took his hand out of his pocket and appraised the fox eared ranger sitting in one of the apartments huge overstuffed leather chairs. She had hiked her legs up into the chair unconsciously and crossed them. The luxurious tail lay in her lap like a bundle of blankets and she was running her fingers through it, feeling the fur like it was the first time. Then her ears perked and she shot a look to the radio. Dave didn't see the last because at that moment, he too had averted his attention to the device. It had been silent for some time and they hadn't noticed. When it made a loud "bwip!" noise though, they both realized that the station had been broadcasting nothing but white noise for at least two or three minutes.
"Huh." Dave said, "Guess the Aussie asshat finally got bored for the night."
"Maybe the candy man put him to bed." Cherise guessed ominously.
"Well, it just means we can have a quiet nights sleep." Dave suggested, "Speaking of which, you ladies better get some rest. I'll put some feelers out, maybe get the Eagles and the Sun Dogs in on it, and I'll give you an answer in the morning."
Jennifer perked up at that and gave Dave a hopeful look. "You really will? Try to get together with your rivals I mean? That's very adult of you. I hope it goes well then, I really do." Dave waved a hand at her as if to say 'aw, go on you.' For show at least. The girl had always been one to push for cooperation among the clans and especially between the clans and the refugee center. Dave knew all about her mingling with just about everybody, including her infiltration of a few God's Army scouting parties that came into the area. A lot of the clans did, and some of them even had the hopes that she would do it. Atomos was no Big Dog though. No "Great Khan" figure, and she wasn't willing to use the methods Big Dog had used to get everybody together like that again.
"Naw... Well, maybe. We'll see. Go get some rest and I'll see what's what in the morning." He instructed dismissively.