“Damn, got too excited and burned my tongue,” barked Tarvish slurping soup.

“Hey. We’re in public. You wanna calm down over here. You’re drawing attention this way,” said Saga. He wore a flannel, two sweatshirts, and a red trucker hat. He had two pairs of baggy jeans so no one could see his spaghetti-thin legs. He’d told Tarvish to dress “rural”. The general showed up looking like he was in the Matrix.

Great fucking disguise.

They were meeting in Cumberland, Maryland. Tarvish had some intel about the parade terrorists. That’s all he said on the phone. When they decided on rural Maryland, Saga knew they needed acres of country to discuss. They couldn’t trust the city, especially not DC.

Tarvish and Saga had both worked before on cyber terrorism for over a decade. They never crossed paths directly, but their reputations had.

“I am calm, prick. We’re fine.” People were starting to look. The Capitals game was on full-blast in the background. Tantrum Tarvish, however, was loud enough to compete with the noise.

“Look at what you wore. You’ve been behind a desk way too long man.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” spouted Tarvish.

“Yea, why don’t you take a chapter out of your own book before everyone sees us talking here.” Saga started to get up and Tarvish dropped a heavy envelope on the table. It had taken on the clear shape of lots of cash. It hit Saga that this wasn’t Monopoly money. Whatever Tarvish found well it sure wasn’t getting through bureaucratically. Someone was ignoring the intel, or the intel was too precious for the police to handle.

As Saga sat back down, the waitress, Sophia, popped her way up to the table. Saga instinctively laid his forearm down on the envelope, covering the heft of the package from poor little Sophia’s eyes. He didn’t want the young blond gal to gaze at things she couldn’t unsee.

She was a college student, making a few bucks before winter break ended. And clearly took dance lessons, as she pressed up from the balls of her feet.

Tarvish was impressed with Saga’s reflex. He had found the right man for the job.

“You gents need anything?” Sophia asked in her soft but forward Appalachian accent.

“Yea, how about your number and two Modelos for us.” Saga tossed her a smile. She returned his confidence. Without words, she veered over to the bar.

“That really work?” said Tarvish.

“Wouldn’t you love to know. So what’s going on? You gonna tell me something I need to know, or just pay me for my company?”

“Fuck off, smartass. You know why we met here.”

“No surveillance. Got it. What’s next?”

“Your phone off?”

“Yea.”

“Let me see it.” Saga rolled his eyes. This was some beginner level interview bullshit. He didn’t have the patience for it, but figured the game really never gets any easier. He gave Tarvish a long, hard stare, and then pulled out his phone. He flung it down on the table with a hard clap.

“You wanna shake me down too?”

“Do I need to?”

“No you don’t fucking need to, ’cause I fucking showed up the way I was suppose to, goddammit. Now poor little Sophia is gonna have a nice snapchat story to tell about the suit and the truck driver meeting at table number 5.”

“Who?”

“Sophia… waitress. You really ain’t observant.”

“Not my line of work, Mr. Snapchat. Alright, $10,000 in the envelope. We’re gonna need you to buy some guns so that we can track down how they are using the Bitcoins to buy them.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“How does that make any sense? Who?” said Saga, sliding the money onto the bench and sitting on it. By the feel of it, Tarvish was paying him in $10 bills. “Back the hell up, you said this was about the Parade attack.”

Sophia came back with two Modelos. She pulled out one coaster and put one beer underneath. She slid it over close to Saga. He returned a smile to pay for it. “If you need anything else, just let me know.”

“We should be alright for now. Thanks sweetie.” She turned and leapt off.

“Where the fuck is my coaster?” said Tarvish.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a grumpy old man, people might like you better,” said Saga. He lifted his beer and showed the underside of the coaster to Tarvish. 512-1918 was written on it in black sharpie.

Tarvish continued spooning the soup halfway up his mustache. “You know the gunmen weren’t Muslim. Nearly all of them were white, middle class teens. I don’t know what got into them, but they turned. Went ISIS. You know how? Dark Web. They started watching those ISIS videos and were scouted by ISIS. We can close our borders, but ISIS is talking to our kids on Facebook. What a time to be alive. They got recruited, got guns mailed to them, and got real good instructions about where to be and what to shoot. Frankly, I’m speechless. I didn’t think we had it in us,” Tarvish pointed at Saga and himself, “but here we are.”

“Well, trace the source on the guns, the vids, and you’ll find—”

“That’s the thing. Whoever’s doing it wants to be caught. Everything we’ve found are breadcrumbs. Well thought-out breadcrumbs. We walked right into them. From what we’ve collected, best we can gather is someone is somewhere they don’t wanna be.” Tarvish swigged down his beer.

“What does that mean? Kidnapping?”

“Affirmative. Our guess is ISIS abducted someone. Someone big on the Dark Web. They have him now, and they’re forcing him to do their bidding. Literally. Buying guns. Guess where all those guns were ID’d to.”

“Tell me.”

“Burns, Oregon. Same people who shot up the Wildlife Refuge in 2016. Same American gun sellers, are shipping to ISIS.” Tarvish gulped again.

“You’re kidding.”

“This face look like I’m making a fucking joke?” Tarvish said.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Well, we’re wondering why Burns, Oregon. We think the hacker, this mastermind, might be Oregon-raised. All the breadcrumbs he’s left us cover his physical location. But he’s buying strictly from Burns. We think it might be a clue, but remember, it’s a gun issue. The president won’t touch it. He’ll put bombs in all the planes over us right now, but zilch about gun control or the NRA.”

“Surprise, surprise,” said Saga, slamming his beer.

“You have no idea. The money in that envelope is all marked bills. I want you to buy a gun with it. I emailed you all the specs on the guns from the Parade kids. See if you can trace those weapons systems to a dealer.”

“You know that cybercrime is my—”

“Your area of expertise. Yes, And you’re the West Coast “Bitcoin” guy we have in the FBI. I get it.”

“Cryptocurrency.”

“Whatever. Here’s the deal. I don’t care what a Bitcoin is. Cash is still king. I’m concerned with finding this gun dealer. If we give him this $10,000, we can pin him. He has to turn that cash into internet money, right? Well, that will help us trace everything. We can find this guy. Once we find this guy, we can find the hacker. Hopefully. You understand?”

“What if it’s a her, not a him?”

“You really know how to piss me off, don’t you.”

“What I know is that you have no clue about crypto. This guy won’t turn this,” Saga hopped up and down on the envelope, “into crypto. He’s going to turn it into groceries. These people aren’t stupid. They’re paranoid. This plan of yours, with all due respect, is kindergarten.”

“So what? You’re not gonna proceed with the mission?” Tarvish barked.

“No, I’m gonna proceed. I’m just gonna do it correctly. Don’t question my methods, I’ll stop questioning your missions. Deal?”

“Ease up, soldier. We’re all on the same side. You get me results, you can use your dick to get intel for all I care. So long as we can find this hacker and blow him off the face of the Earth.”

Saga laughed. “Kill the hacker?”

“Acceptable collateral damage if you ask me. If we find him, game over.”

“Damn, you are ruthless. Must be nice to just bomb your problems away-”

“Aw cut me the fucking social justice warrior Shiiit!” Tarvish said throwing his soup spoon. “There’s plenty of crying moms and dads whose kid died on Thanksgiving. You want more attacks just to protect some hacker? He isn’t innocent, he’s a criminal.”

“It might make more sense to find him. Coordinate with him. There might be something else in the works here,” Saga pleaded.

“No. We’re not going to do that.”

“We might benefit from having someone on the inside.”

“Did I stutter, soldier?”

“You serious? You see what the dark web can do. We’ve got someone who’s inside ISIS begging us to find him. Maybe he knows something we d—”

“Your mission is to get this intel, so my mission can be to neutralize this threat. And before you spout off any of your bullshit, I wanna make sure, damn sure, that I didn’t just find another snot-nosed punk in the Bureau that’s gonna go fucking up a mission on feelings. I thought they beat that out of you in academy… So are you going to execute this mission, soldier, or should I just get back to my fucking soup?”

Tarvish slammed an iron fist on the table, swizzling the soup. No one saw them in the corner, but the bartender sure heard a thump.

What more could Saga say? He didn’t have any say in how the Army dropped bombs. No more than this hacker guy did. He just looked up at Tarvish and calmly said, “I’ll be there tomorrow. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll coordinate a task force. We’ll get this guy. We’ll do it right.”

Tarvish started to slide out of the booth with his items.

“Hey, you gonna pay?” Saga said.

“I just gave you $10,000, Soldier,” he said placing a bandaged hand on the coaster, “She’s your problem now.”

With that, Tarvish took his great black coat, and exited the night as black and fancy as he entered it.