Chapter 21

The house was extremely quiet. Beth and Kelly were at work. They had been accompanied by Ling and Bob to serve as bodyguards. Tiger was at the hospital with them. John, Ed, Shadow, and Rover were in the informal living room getting ready for the days events. Marguerite was in the kitchen where she lived for most of the day and Bill was in his office taking care of the bills.

John fiddled with the remote control for the entertainment center trying to get a cable news network. He pressed a button and the stereo came on. He punched another button and a CD started playing. He hit the off button several times. Everything went dead and then turned on again. He punched the TV button and nothing happened. He hit the power button and the TV came on, but there was no sound. The stereo was still on. He was tempted to throw the remote control across the room.

He muttered, “Who picked out this system, anyway? What’s wrong with old fashioned televisions that you turn on and turn off?”

Ed stepped in front of him with his hand out to receive the remote control. “Give it to me.”

Ten key presses later, Ed had the television on, the sound coming through the speakers, and the channel set to the news station. He smiled as he said, “Now that wasn’t so bad.”

John grumbled and went to the refrigerator. He poured two glasses of iced tea and brought them back to the couch. He set them on coasters on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “Have some tea.”

Ed smiled at John’s irritability. He said, “We still have half an hour before anything starts.”

John nodded absently. He finally answered, “I know. This is killing me.”

“Are you worried or excited?”

John paced a little around the room. He answered, “I’m worried about whether it’s going to go well. I’m excited about seeing the plan go into action. I feel constrained by the fact that I’m here rather than out there somewhere. I couldn’t even stand the feeling of clothes this morning.”

Ed laughed. “I noticed that. You’re still naked.”

John looked at Ed with a large grin. “What about you?”

Ed’s laughter carried through the room. “Same here. I got dressed this morning and found myself pulling the clothes off before I hit the door.”

“I need to be doing something.” John walked over to the intercom and pressed a button. “Marguerite, could you fix a snack tray for us? We’re in the informal living room.”

Her reply came back, “You already asked me five minutes ago.”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

Ed smiled at John’s nervousness. He hadn’t seen John this nervous since Betsy had visited him after their breakup. “John, how about I give you a blow job? Maybe that will help you relax.”

“I’m too tense to get it up.”

Ed laughed at the admission. He said, “Same here. That’s why I offered to give you one, rather than ask you for one.”

John looked around the room. There were papers detailing the schedule of events piled up on the coffee table. The pile was almost nine inches tall. The speakerphone was plugged in and he had tested it by calling Beth at work. He walked around the room again.

Shadow and Rover watched him pace. Tired of it all, both cats got up and strolled out of the room. John watched them as they left the room and entered the atrium. They vanished amongst the plants. He always marveled at how quickly they could vanish.

Bill entered the room and stopped abruptly. His eyes locked on John’s cock, but his conscious mind didn’t make the connection that John was naked. He announced, “Uh, Ann Moore is here to see you two.”

Absently, John said, “Bring her in.”

He wondered if she was here to complete the argument that they had on their last visit to the office. She had been upset and he hadn’t been all of that helpful. He walked over the refrigerator and poured a glass of iced tea.

While pouring the tea, he said, “I guess we probably owe her an apology.”

“I’m sure we will, pretty soon,” answered Ed with a grin. He had just realized that Ann was about to be brought into a room with two naked men. He was about to suggest that they go get dressed when Bill returned to the room.

“What’s going...” Ann, not yet in the room, was complaining already. She stopped the moment she saw the two men in the room and their lack of attire. Her eyes never reached as high as their faces.

John walked over to her and handed the glass to her. He was totally oblivious to her discomfort. He said, “Make yourself comfortable on the sofa. You will want to examine the stack of papers on the coffee table.”

Ann said, “Mike ordered me to come here.”

Ed commented, “That makes sense to me. We should have invited you, but we were so caught up in this, that thought didn’t even cross our minds.”

She had finally gotten over her embarrassment at the naked men in front of her. Her anger at being left out of whatever was going on returned ten-fold. She stomped her foot. “Invited me for what?”

John’s voice was soothing as he said, “Ann, please read the papers on the coffee table. They will explain everything.”

Ann sat on the couch near Ed and picked up the first page. She started reading the material on the page with a frown. It was a timed agenda for a raid to take place on a restaurant in New York. The individuals targeted in the raid were identified, as were the agents. She picked up the next page and studied it. This was for another raid that was to take place the same time in Washington DC. She looked up at the stack of papers on the coffee table. She looked at her watch and realized the raids were to start in five minutes.

She asked, “How come I didn’t hear of this before now?”

John bowed to Ed. Ed answered, “No one has heard of this before now. The lead agents were woken this morning by a call from Mike Holden and directed to pick up a box of instructions, each. Inside the box were specific instructions for every individual agent. The instructions for the lead agent were to notify all participants to meet at specific locations at a specific time. Once there, individual agents were given their instructions according to a timetable.”

“How many raids are there?”

John smiled, “Almost eight hundred, spread across twenty cities.”

“This is huge! You’ve got local police, state police, ATF, Federal Marshals, and the IRS involved as well.”

“Darn right!” Ed sounded as proud as he felt. “The security on it has been very tight. As of the last time that I was in your office, only three people knew what was being developed. John and I were two of them.”

“You’ve been busy!”

John smiled as he thought about the past ten days. They hadn’t been busy working at all. They had spent most of the time playing. John had even gone hiking for three days. John answered, “Well, we did put in a couple of months on it.”

Ed had been hard pressed to help John with this effort and finish his degree. He complained, “It was closer to a year.”

Marguerite entered the room pushing a cart loaded with all kinds of snacks. They ranged from the healthy vegetables to the unhealthy potato chips. Ed frowned when he realized that she was still wearing the body jewelry and waist chain. At least she had added a chain mail bikini bottom to it. She had informed them that she was going to wear that outfit at work until someone broke down and did something about it.

She took a very long time to position the cart. Her eyes flicked between John and Ed constantly. Ann looked up at Marguerite with raised eyebrows. She knew John was involved in a weird lifestyle, but she hadn’t realized it was this strange.

Ed decided the whole situation was becoming surreal. “John, do you realize that we have a guest and we are both naked? Did you notice that Marguerite is still protesting her work conditions by wearing her little outfit?”

John looked around noticing the situation for the first time. He apologized, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

Ed watched Marguerite leave the room. She was smiling at John’s discomfort. Ed turned to Ann and said, “I must apologize. You caught us on a bad day. We don’t normally walk around the house like this when guests are here. Marguerite has been protesting her work conditions and has taken to dressing like that to make a point. Our lawyer is negotiating a new contract with her even now.”

Ann laughed at the suggestion the outfit was a protest. She said, “I’ve had problem employees before, but none of them chose that way to express their unhappiness.”

“Well, I apologize for all this.” John repeated. Ann glanced down at his crotch and licked her lips. She wondered how it was that both men were extremely well endowed.

She was lost in her thoughts when Ed jumped up suddenly and shouted, “Oh, yeah!”

She glanced at the television. The news anchor was acting very flustered.

“We are getting reports that a large number of raids have just been launched here in New York. Oh, wait a minute, we seem to be getting similar reports from Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and...”

The telephone rang and Ed answered it in speakerphone mode, “Control Central. Report!”

“This is city 4, group 2, raid 1. We have captured 9 and confiscated $200,000 in cash. Drugs and paraphernalia were present. They are nailed.”

Ed smiled and said, “Thanks. I’ll hear from you after raid 2.”

John went to the fax machine and pulled out the paper that listed the names of the people arrested. He went over to another sheet containing the names of the important people they had wanted to catch and started marking off the names on the list.

Ed scrambled through the stack of papers and pulled out the one he was looking for. He wrote the basic report on it and put it in a separate stack. He smiled at Ann in elation.

The telephone rang again. The report this time was from city 9, group 6, and raid 1. They had captured 4 and confiscated $500,000 in cash. Ann searched through the pile and pulled out the paper with the title that had been given. She handed it to Ed, who marked the results on it.

The telephone was ringing constantly. They went through close to one hundred calls. It took less than twenty minutes as each call was kept short. Ann took off her jacket and started to roll up her sleeves. She was sweating from the tension. She looked around and then took her shirt off. Neither man noticed.

When the calls stopped, they turned their attention to the news. The news anchor was reporting, “We don’t have all of the details yet, but it appears that massive raids on organized crime have been launched all around the country. We are trying to locate someone who knows what is going on.”

John came and sat down on the couch. He smiled and said, “We can relax. We have ten minutes before the next round of raids start.”

Ann asked, “Can I use your pool for a minute? I need to relax and I find a pool very relaxing.”

John smiled at the question and answered, “Sure, it’s right through that door there. Towels are kept in the cabinet in the corner.”

Ed looked at John and remarked, “Now I’m excited enough that I could use that blow job we were talking about earlier!”

John laughed and joked back, “I know what you mean, but this is not the time for it.”

The men went over to the snacks and started munching. They knew they would only have about ten minutes before the calls again started. Between handfuls of food, they congratulated each other on the success of the first raids. The news station was going crazy. Live shots from all over the country were being put up on the screen as the press chased cop cars, trying to find out what was happening.

Ann came back into the room. She was topless with a large towel around her waist. Her hair was still wet. She grabbed a couple of pieces of fruit and said, “I can’t believe how extensive this operation is. You guys are working miracles. I looked at the expectations for each raid as I found them. You’re hurting them big time. It’ll take them years to recover.”

A rather wicked smile crossed John’s face as he said, “You haven’t even seen the big stuff, yet.”

“We better get back to our positions. Calls should start coming in any minute now.”

Even as Ed and Ann sat on the couch, the telephone rang. Ed answered, “Control Central. Report!”

“This is city 3, group 5, raid 2, we have captured 3 and confiscated their computers. We found records for money laundering on the computers. They are nailed.”

Ed thanked them and hung up. He gave a shout, “We took down a money laundering operation!”

The telephone continued to ring. Short conversations were followed with marking sheets with the reported results. John continued to scratch off names on the master list as additional faxes arrived. The activities now were a little more involved than before. The raids took longer, but the confiscated materials were much greater. They were taking out drug manufacturing sites, warehouses, and fencing operations.