Lakelanders

Stealing the stuff was brutal; too closely guarded during shipment. Finally, at points of distribution indigenous adherents, temporarily holding forth as local military, made off with 75 1.25 pound bricks. These were delivered across an adjacent border to governmental personnel. Seventy successful passes; five interdictions were duly reported; smugglers’ yakking encouraged; some did. An inventory revealed overall losses. The system was faulted. The managers were exasperated; the potential for cataclysmic evil, maybe eight out of ten. All in-country service personnel were red alerted.

Seventy bricks were individually sealed in wax, packaged with normal commerce and arrived at Miami without fanfare. The company retrieving the shipping container signed off on a bill of lading for European machine parts. At their pitifully secured warehouse the container was violated. The ensuing police report indicated none of the machine parts inventory went missing. The incident was written off to teenage vandalism.

At a Maryland munitions plant dynamite sticks were packed for shipment to a Connecticut quarry. During the night before prescribed cases were opened; some bricks in; some sticks out; and resealed.

Stealing the stuff was easy. Two men waited near the quarry; tucked into tick infested undergrowth; hopeful that applied chemical weaponry would prevail. While bushing it they captured a hapless bunny and grass snake. One frayed the end of the nylon ladder they were going to use later until a lengthy piece separated. He rubbed the bunny and snake; tried to imbed some pinched bunny fur. He then released the animals.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“Just a little mud in the ocean; give our federal friends something else to fuss over.”