Trust Issues (5)

The morning came, the world keeps spinning even if you feel like shit. I woke up, took a quick shower and went to the dining room of the hotel at the top of the building.

I arrived 10 minutes before our meeting time and Lee was already there, drinking a cup of orange juice and eating a toast with strawberry jam on top of it. Seeming already waiting for me.

He looked at me, didn't even stood up and said "Yo, kid. All clean"

I nodded and sat on the table. A cute girl asked for my order and I ordered the same as Lee. Curiously it was my favorite type of breakfast too, simple, bland and tasty.

Somewhat it was a way to remind me where I came from, I was nothing but a poor guy on a moldy apartment 2 years ago, now I'm eating breakfast at the best hotel on NY with an amazing view.

All of these would be gone if they had stolen all my money, well I didn't transfer all the money from my foreign account just for one of these reasons. But it would be a heavy hit to my bank account. No more "yeah, buy a 50 million dollar building" and more like "Do we really need to expend so much on a teenager band?".

I was not like that, I don't like to micromanage a business that I have no idea, I leave that to the professionals. I'm the guy that gives them money and control that the huge expenses are kept under control.

Anyway, as I was recalling my past and thanked my LCK stats to maybe influence on the manager of the bank I stared at the window without looking at Lee I said:

"That guy shouldn't have told them about yesterday, believe me. If their brains work, they shouldn't talk about this business on the phone. They should meet all up. That's our honeypot. All in one place. Do you have the means to keep constant surveillance on 4 people at the same time? Don't bother about the girl. If you need more people or more equipment just hire or buy it. I will cover it all. We should gather a security team soon enough to have more assets available in these kinds of situations. If you have people who you trust, gather them. I will offer them a deal similar to your but lower salary, you will be their leader."

He nodded and said "Took you long enough kid. Sure I will gather the boys and do this, after this task you will see their performance and decided who will you hire. But I trust these people with my life and are good folks. But their personalities are a little weird that's why they are only hopping from job to job. You are an O.K. guy, so I trust you enough to not send them to their deaths for a whim."

After he said that, he stood up and told the waiter that the bill was on me. After the waiter saw me nodding they let him go.

I slowly ate my bland breakfast, thinking about was the best way to punish them. After I was finally finished with my meal it was time to decide. I flicked a coin on the air and before it landed I catch it and took into my pocket.

I left money on the table with a large tip because I didn't bother waiting and left.

The young cute waiter was watching and asked an old waiter next to her "Why he didn't look at the coin when he caught it?"

The old waiter did a low laugh and said "You are young. Not all people do these, but some do. Is a simple trick to decide something. The moment the coin is on the air you are subconsciously hoping to land on one side, and that side is one choice. So now you have your decision made. Those kinds of tricks are mostly done on important stuff that has similar weights. If that's not that case, a simple 15 minutes alone in a dark room meditating your options would make you do the most reasonable choice. That's what most millionaires do."

The young waiter nodded enthusiastically and cleaned the table imagining her doing the same thing as a young businesswoman.

______________________________________________

I took the call from Lee, he wanted me to go to an intersection and enter an internet company van. I walked a few blocks and arrived at the said van, I knocked and a big black man opened the van and said "Yeah? What do you want kid?"

I calmly ignored him and saw Lee on the pass anger seat, "One of yours?"

Lee shouted at the black guy "Travis, this is our fucking boss, I told you about this 5 minutes ago. STOP LOOKING TOO MUCH PORN, IS MAKING YOUR SMALL BRAIN SMALLER!"

Travis said "NO NEED TO SHOUT THAT MAN! Jesus, sorry boss! I didn't know it was you. Let me start again, I'm Travis, your candidate informatic security agent! Nice to meet you!"

I nodded and went inside while I took a seat on a cushion on a metallic part inside of the van. It seems rented and not custom made. Makes sense with the short notice. The strange thing was that I saw 5 monitors all connected to a super PC like some kind of server. Looked like a scene from Matrix.

I was impressed with the quality of the equipment, I recognized the top quality 4k monitors because I used to salivate looking at them on my cheap monitor on the internet before all these. Hmm, I should buy a super gamer PC and play a lot like I was used to doing back on my youth. Good old times.

While I was thinking that Travis looked at me and said "Don't worry, I guarantee the quality of the equipment, I personally chose all these for this task. Lee told me that you are a potential boss, so I will make use of my best skills to impress you!" He said all these while flexing his big black arms.

I then said "Ok, that's fine. What about our driver?"

Lee looked at me from his passenger seat, fucker you should have offered it for your boss you know?, and said "He's Jason, he doesn't like to speak so much. You only need to tell him the destination and the kind of driving that you like and he will accomplish it. Notice that if you want some kind of best speed you need to provide him with the car with his specifics specs, he's quite a pain in the ass let me tell you that. Oh, and always be on time on site, he's very grumpy about that too if you don't respect that."

Jason looked at me and nodded. He was a bald man with a suite, looking somewhat like the guy from The Transporter, the movie. I was about to tell him that when I looked at the fierce stare of Lee and catch it and said:

"Nice to meet you, Jason, I hope you can just drive normally around town, avoiding heavy police zones if possible"

He nodded again and started the engine and started the van moving normally but without taking too much turns to make our work at the back as stable as possible.

I heard Travis voice "Hey boss, come to look at these!" he said while pointing at one of the monitors with his chin.

I followed his chin and saw a man walking out of a building walking quite quickly towards a direction.

I heard Lee said "We have 4 other guys that are surveying the houses of all these fuckers. They are OK guys, some are somewhat blood-thirsting, some of them are quite violent, some of them are cold-blooded killers. I realize that all of them are like that HAHAHA, well don't bother about small details, they are excellent guys. I will trust them with my life, but avoid trigger them AHAH"

I was massaging my forehead thinking if it was a good idea to give this kinda guy to gather his "dream team". Maybe I should have told him a few restrictions. Anyway, I will decide after watching them work. If they are too uncontrollable I would say no, not even with the mighty would I be able to control them enough to my taste.

Lee looked at my expressions and ignored me and said "So the plan is to follow all of them to their possible gathering places. Our man Travis over here gathered a bunch of information about them and took a liberty of telling us the possibility of the location to be chosen. We already bugged those places, so if they choose one of those places is gonna be easy. If not, we have to use the old satellite listing device thingy. I hate those fucking things, you can't hear your surroundings, it freaks me out. Anyway, we are currently going to highest probability meeting place as we speak. The Golden park."

I was shocked at the amount of work they did in just 2 or 3 hours shorts hours. I said to Jason "Go to that park, find a parking spot where our cameras aren't obstructed so we can see and hear what are they talking about. "

Lee looked at me and said "Kid, I have to ask. Why don't we just grab them at their home and punish them?"

I calmly said "I wanted to check your team performance, and this is a low threat target. I want to know if they relax in these kinds of missions or if they give 100% all the time. I don't need people who relax thinking is something easy and then mess up if something unexpected happens. If you are alerted at all times you can stop or mitigate that unexpected event. If you are not ready, of course not. I know this kind of focus is not something you can do all the time, but when I ask your team to do some task I expect the best of the best and nothing else."

Lee inflated his chest and said "Don't worry boss, with my team and my leadership we can take the most arduous task"

I heard from a radio "Tsk, look at the Drongo get all excited for being the leader. You used to follow us like a puppy back then HAHA"

Lee shouted at the radio "Don't call me that! I'm not a Drongo! All of your family are Drongos!"

While he kept shouting and insulting at the radios Travis said in a low voice "Black Drongo is a small Asian blackbird, our seniors on the team used to call him that back then when we 3 were rookies. Our seniors are really good at fighting and watching people, but not so much to use their brains. Please don't tell them that I said that!"

I laughed at the sight of the big black man cowering thinking about the punish from his seniors if they heard him. It was a good relationship, I didn't detect any real hostilities between them.

I then stared at the monitors and said "Begin the operation then, follow the targets, hear about their plans and then individually capture them and gather in their designated extraction points. After we pick all of them we must go to a facility with 4 individual rooms side by side. That's all"

Lee nodded and repeated the orders on the radios. After they confirmed we finally started our little tactic operation.