Internal Affairs

"...Blue on black, tears on a riveeeer, push on a shooove, don't mean much. Joker on Jack, match on a fiiiire…"

The main reason Dozer decided to give Sheridan his Texas twang can easily be laid at the feat of his mother. All those years listening to country music, and watching TV shows with country and/or southern speakers, had a real effect on the young Billy Barnum. Heck, one time he found himself slipping into the accent when talking to someone from his platoon that was a native speaker, only really noticing when it was pointed out.

So as he quietly sang to himself as he was cooking, he was just as much practicing Sheridan's twang as he was getting himself into the mindset.

Another thing he could thank his mom for, of course, was cooking. A self-reliant Yankee through and through, she was determined that her boys were going to be self-sufficient, including making food for themselves. Funnily enough though, her teachings never really caught on with Dozer until after he was deployed, when he was making engine-grilled recipes and doing his best with MREs. So while he'd probably be nowhere near being fancy with his food, he was good at following directions, being methodical with each step, syncing timers, and knowing how to keep something from being burnt.

"'Crandon Park. 10 AM,'" he heard from the other room. Sheridan quickly walked over and pulled out his phone, punching the location into Google Maps. As the display popped up, the timer beeped.

"Food's ready!" he called as he put the food on plates, taking 'Mickey' and Nayda's food and drink out first before returning to grab his scrambled eggs and bacon with toast. As he picked at his food, he used a stylus to look at the map, planning out their approach, as well as looking at possible problem directions.

Viscayne Luxury Condos

Mykola nodded in thanks when the breakfast was served and discussed their next moves while eating.

"Things have gone well so far but let's not get cocky. Things can turn bad in a heartbeat." Mykola said.

"The Intel we have gathered so far suggests that they may have another business or venture going on so we may need to do some more recon. If we do dig up enough dirt to put an end to their organization, your people are going to need to know where everyone is hiding. We also need to find out what their plans are, what's their end game, why are they here. If we can get access to their computer network we might be able to find out some information there as well."

---

Sheridan looked up to put in his two cents...

*ZZZZZZZZ*

…when he was interrupted by V snoring. No one had really noticed that she hadn't moved once since breakfast was brought out.

"Must have been a very soothing report," he said, walking over with a piece of bacon, before putting the pork slice under her nose, "Wake-y wake-y boss lady, got some mooks ta spook."

Crandon Park - Key Biscayne

The well manicured lawns, combed beaches, and elegantly trimmed palm trees of Crandon park were a stark contrast to the bored well tailored gentlemen leaning against a steel Maserati Levante and smoking a cigarette. At their approach he tossed the vice aside right in front of two park signs thanking the patrons for not smoking and picking up their trash. His face scruntched, a flash of annoyance as his gaze dropped from sizing up the trio to Fenris. Annoyance less from any sort of fear of the dog and more from the fur the long haired animal was clearly going to leave in his luxury car. Mouth taut, a frustrated snort, proceeded the man walking to the trunk of the car and pushing the button that would raise the automatic lift gate.

"In," he said in a very thick accent, his look moving from 'Nayda', to the rest of the team, and then the dog as his hand gestured to the dog and then the trunk. Before the dog could jump in, the man removed two car magnets ... that read Sunshine State Realty and clearly another source of annoyance as he placed them on the front passenger and driver side doors and motioned the rest of the team to get into the vehicle.

The man had little to say, eyes focused on the road ahead and occasionally adjusting the radio when commercials or a song he did not care for played. They stayed on Key Biscayne, slowly driving through the wealthy neighborhoods that covered the island. As they made their way out on Mashta Island the houses increased significantly in both size and value and at the end of the islands point the gentlemen slowed the car and creeped around a culdesac.

Pointing at a particular house and in very heavily Italian accented English, "The bossa say ... you wanna in. Kill the man in that house."

---

Safe House

Nadya jolted awake, thanked Sheridan for breakfast, and ate with the others.

She felt her phone buzz. Pulling it out of her pocket, she squinted at it in confusion "what the... I don't have a ScrapBook app. Ohh, but Nadya does. Hey, I'm looking damn good in these beach pics, of the vacations I never went on", she commented on the deep fakes of her in skimpy swimsuits, including a digital face replacement video that looked almost as real as the genuine article sitting at the table.

"Might have to make some of these a reality sometime..."

---

Crandon Park - Key Biscayne

Pulling aside her team out of earshot, Nadya whispered, "Alright, what are our options? Fake the guy's death & put him under FBI protection until we get the thing w/ the Mob to blow over?"

Crandon Park - Key Biscayne

Oh, now that is a special kind of evil, Sheridan jokingly thought at the fancy dressed man littering.

The gentleman stopped Sheridan after Ms. Koslov was in the back seat. The Italian looked at Sheridan's arm tattoo, much easier to make out because of the muscle t-shirt and cargo pants combo, and mouth still taut, simply pointed, "Back."

"Heh, some people don't appreciate art," Sheridan smirked as he got in behind the driver's seat, pointing to Nik (whom they had picked up on the way) toward the front passenger seat.

---

Maserati Levante, Mashta Island

"The bossa say ... you wanna in. Kill the man in that house."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sheridan saw Nadya lean over to whisper something to 'Mickey'.

However, a grimacing smile was on Sheridan's face.

Eeeeeasy now, security outside, don't want to raise too much of a ruckus, the soldier thought as he fought the urge to grab the thug driving by the throat and dragging him into the back.

Instead Sheridan just chuckled as he unclicked his belt, and leaned forward to clamp his left hand onto the driver's shoulder.

"Yo boss, I think there's something wrong with this guy's speakbox," he said toward Nadya, slowly pulling himself forward until he was leaning over the 'gentleman's' right, Sheridan's right arm resting on the back of the seat just so the burning demon-man on it was in full view, "because it almost sounded to me like this dipshit pastaball told us to 'kill' a guy, like we were some low-rent hitmen or something."

Sheridan leaned in closer to the guy's ear, an evil looking grin on the soldier's face, "In fact, he was SO DAMN VAGUE about it, why don't we just kill this guy, and say he was in that building over there when we did it?"

His left hand squeezed tighter.

"After all, if his boss can't be bothered to take this seriously enough. TO SEND SOMEONE WHO CAN GIVE PROPER DIRECTIONS. Then I don't see why we should take this guy seriously either."

Sheridan slapped the guy's right shoulder before leaning back in, "I know! Why don't I start pulling this pizza fucker's teeth out until he starts saying the 'correct' words for this situation! I brought my handy-dandy multi-tool with me, I'm sure I can find something that'll work..."

Maserati Levante, Mashta Island

Mykola sat in stunned silence at the display in the car.

Oh &#!#, what is he doing? Mykola thought to himself. I hope he has a plan.

---

Maserati Levante - Mashta Island

The driver's eyes widened in a flash of surprise at the sudden invasion of his personal space, before narrowing as his face changed a deep red, his mouth momentarily going taut before stretching out into a forced smile that was at odds with the barely controlled rage in his eyes.

"You one to talk," he growled, "You sound like unintelligent man whose neck is red."

In the rear view mirror his eyes flicked towards Mykola, "Did he not offer your services? To take care of our hacker problem?"

His lips curled into a barely amused sneer, "What more directions you need? Man in house make many mistakes. Man in house gets made example of."

---

Maserati Levante - Mashta Island

Sheridan paused, his face a blank. He then cleared his throat, and straightened the driver's outfit.

"On second thought, don't want to have to clean out spit and blood outa the thing," he said, doing his best not to sound deflated as he got back in his seat.

*Thunk*

The tip of Nadya's cane passed diagonally under the driver's neck and impacted the inside of the driver's-side window.

In a tone cold as vodka on the rocks, she whispered into the driver's ear "I may be blind, but my other senses are perfectly fine, even better. Tell me I did did not just hear you mouthing off to one of my guys over a little friendly rough-housing? I was under the impression we were all on amicable terms here. Were that to change, you'd be outnumbered 4-1. So how do you want to do this - you wanna play tough-guy or play smart?"

The burly driver snorted dismissively with a roll of his eyes, "What you carrot. He stick?" His eyes, looking in the rear view mirror took in Sheridan, Nik and Mykola, narrowing slightly at Fenris and what the large animal was most likely doing to the trunk of his vehicle, before turning to Nadya. "You all whine like mule," he spat, his tone clearly stating that he felt carting them around was beneath him, "You want in. Take care of problem."

And with that he turned his attention back to the road, clearly done with any further discussion, mumbling to his self in Italian. When the returned to the park, he couldn't get them out of his SUV fast enough, tires squeeling as he left.

---

"Yeah, he'll be regretting that in a minute," Sheridan said as he watched the SUV squeal away, "When that silent fart I left him catches up.""Alright, what are our options? Fake the guy's death & put him under FBI protection until we get the thing w/ the Mob to blow over?"

"Looks like it's gonna have to be," Sheridan sighed, pulling out his phone, "Thanks for trying to follow me up on trying to open up our options, though.

"400 South Mashta Drive, Key Biscayne, FL... Yeah, thought I saw this when we drove up. Bill Bags Cape Florida State Park," he showed the map to the others, "Got a spot we can swim over from, and a lot of foliage to get lost in."

He then got a bit closer to Mickey and lowered his voice even further, "Hey, uh, how good are you at disguising other people? Because we got a spare identity lying around, don't we?"

Nadya tapped her cane on the sidewalk, deep in thought as she stared at the horizon...

"Well, we could always "borrow" a John Doe from the city morgue, and work his face over until it's unrecognizable..."

Feeling the eyes of her teammates upon her, she shrugged and responded "What? The corpse is already dead."

Location Unknown*

Nope, he didn't.

"We can get a boat for the approach. Then, we may not need a body. If we can get him out of the house and onto the boat we can smuggle him to a safe house and claim we gave him the ol' 'Chicago Overcoat'. Depending on how cooperative our target is, we probably could disguise him and give him the spare cover identity."

---

Crandon Park - Key Biscayne*Sheridan's eyebrow raised a little, as if such an obvious thing hadn't occurred to him.

"Riiight. Boats. That'll make things easier." he leaned back a little, "Sorry, been a while since I worked in an area with functioning businesses."

Sheridan looked back at the map, and scratched his chin.

"Well, whatever we think up, we're gonna need a bit more info. While I get the feeling we weren't gonna get much help regardless, we kinda… ticked off the guy before we asked him to elaborate," he looked back up with a mischievous smile, "we might be able to use that to our advantage later. But what we do have are some binoculars, a radio..."

Sheridan looked over at Nik, "... and a sneaky guy. Up for a bit of a nature walk, Nik?"

Crandon Park - Key Biscayne

The park was lightly crowded, being still early on a Friday morning, so the small assembled crew was afforded ample time to discuss the task. One thing was made abundantly clear ... killing the mystery man was not an option. A theory was proposed, or rather it was wondered aloud if the target might not be Kevin Medroff, the recently captured hacker who had realized an opportunity in SEER. Nik, chuckled aloud and mentioned if witness protection included a mansion like that he knew plenty of individuals he'd be willing to flip on. Discussion moved to how to dislodge the target from his luxurious confines, a loose agreement that perhaps acquiring a boat might make the most sense. It became clear that a concrete plan could not be established until they knew more about what they were dealing with.

Smirking, a roguish glint to the eye that only Nik seemed to effortlessly pull off, he turned to Sheridan "What'd you have in mind?"

Sheridan hmmm'd when Nik pointed out the flaw in Kevin possibly being the target.

"What'd you have in mind?"

"Like I said, Bill Bags Cape Florida State Park," he showed the map again before bringing up satellite view in 3D, "It was a bit difficult seeing inside from the street, and while you could try scouting from across the South Basin, there's a bunch of trees in the way. But this little patch of wilderness to the south… They got a nice view of the ocean, and you can get a nice view back in. Main issue is that it'd be a bit of a hike through some Florida greenery, with, erm, all the risks that entails."

Sheridan worked his mouth back and forth as he tried to calculate how useful that idea would actually be now that he looked closer at it.

"Y'know, it never seems that far when it's on a map on this little screen..."

Nik leaned over, looking at the map over the burly soldier's shoulder.

"Hike!," the thief exclaimed as he looked at the park's dense vegetation and water, "Looks more like a mosquito infested swim." The thief's long locks shook in motion with Nik's declining gesture with his head. "You were talking about renting a boat. Can't we just pretend to fish out in the harbor?"

Sheridan chuckled, "Or as they called it in Ranger School, 'Tuesday'. I get your point, though."

The soldier clicked his tongue, "Problem with boat rental is that we'll be under a time limit. Unless we really fork over cash, we'll have a really tight window to be able to actually do one thing, let alone two."

Nadya wondered out loud "perhaps we should check in w/ the field office, find out what they have on this guy & his hideout. Any intel would be better than going in blind."

"As for convincing him to come with us, he's hiding out for a reason, so he might prove...uncooperative. I could play the part of the poor lost blind lady asking for directions & get close enough to zap him with my cane, or we could get some cheap suits & respirators from a hardware store, make them look to be like we're from some "agency", & claim that there's a biochem hazard in the area & that he needs to come with us."