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A SUPERIOR STATE OF AFFAIRS
by Tom Maringer, ISBN 1418427624,  6"X9" paperback, 500 pages

Here are the cover, back-cover intro, and first three chapters of my sci-fi/adventure novel....... a guy can't just sit around you know! Enjoy!!!

INTRODUCTION:

    It is January, 2017. The Copper Country, on the shores of Lake Superior, is socked in by the biggest blizzard of the century. Beneath a heavy blanket of snow, the simmering separatist movement in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (the U.P.) is coming to a boil. Ever since the United States merged with Canada and Central America and formed the new "North American Federation", the state government had given scant attention to the problems of its northern outpost. Digger Puttonen is a freelance geologist who grew up poking around the old copper mines. Possessed of an uncanny ability to "find" things, he and two other Michigan Tech graduate students formed a small partnership called the Midnight Mining Company and developed a radically new technology based on an enhanced understanding of the laws of physics. With grudging university backing, they set up shop underground in part of the old Quincy Mine to work on their projects. Lost in an idealistic dream world of invention and research, the partners do not realize that their efforts have been noted with alarm at the highest levels of government and business.
 George Frederick Sherman, a ruthless Chicago industrialist, gets wind of the tiny company through his computer people. He quickly sees how important it is, and decides that he must gain control of it before the government does, at any cost. The only flaw in his scheme seems to be a couple of his own employees, Steve Sanders and Eileen Donovan, a pair of computer geeks who have fallen in love with each other and seem to be just too damned smart for their own good. But then... that's just the sort of problem that Sherman's "board of directors" is so eminently equipped to handle.
    Kicked out of his own laboratory by Sherman's machinations, Digger Puttonen is trying to drown his sorrows in beer at a local tavern when he meets Arne Harjaala, an old-time miner down on his luck. Arne tells Digger an unbelievably tall tale of a mine disaster, yet Digger's "finder" sense inexplicably alerts him that there is some real significance to the story. Digger and Arne leave the bar together and, apparently by chance, meet up with Joan Niemi, the beautiful leader of the separatist movement, who has some special abilities of her own. Digger has got to find out what happened to Arne, what it has to do with him, who is behind his ouster from Midnight Mining Company, and why Joan's eyes seem to sparkle so strangely when he looks at her. Along the way, agents of the revamped FBI become involved, along with the local Ojibway tribe, Sherman's members of the "board", and operatives of the super secret United Nations Environmental Command. The struggle for control of the new technology erupts explosively upon, as well as below, the pristine snowbound landscape as even hard-boiled government agents, political extremists, and corporate assassins find that; with the fate of the world at stake, sometimes the most potent weapon you can have is a clean heart.

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A SUPERIOR STATE OF AFFAIRS copyright 1996, Tom Maringer
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Click here to  Buy the Book from the publisher
or click here to Buy a signed copy directly from Tom

Superior State of Affairs       Copyright 1996,    Tom Maringer
                        CHAPTER 1

 Tiny bubbles streamed upward from a minuscule point on the side of the glass, an endless column of spherical soldiers marching upwards in perfect cadence through the amber fluid. Digger Puttonen sat staring at them, captivated by the precision of their motion, brows furrowed as if his mind probed the phenomenon for some deep cosmic significance. He tried to use the concentration to brush off the heavy melancholy that had settled over him like a mantle of new-fallen snow, then shook his head slowly... it was no good, the stuff clung to him. Familiar scenes danced at the edges of his mind, clamoring for attention. With his elbows on the bar, Digger cupped his face in his hands and gave up his resistance, letting the demons within have their way.
  Just two years earlier his life had been very different, everything had seemed so exciting, he had felt so confident and full of purpose!  But now, even though all those plans had come to fruition more spectacularly than he'd ever dared to dream, he was locked out, separated from everything he'd ever cared about.
 "Digger they call me," he whispered to himself, recalling the origin of the nickname he'd been given as a freshman geology student at Michigan Tech. "Ha, if they only knew. I'm a fake... a phony... a fraud." He looked at his image reflected in the mirror between the half empty bottles of tequila and vodka. His light brown hair was conservatively long, framing the round face and falling over his ears onto his shirt collar. A curly full beard and mustache hid the self-deprecating curl of his lip. He had steadfastly refused to trim his beard in the current foppish style. His sky blue eyes peered blearily past the wire framed glasses into their likeness in the dim light of the tavern. "Everybody thought I had some kind of amazing talent for finding things." His voice rose to a mumble."SHIT! I can't even find my own nose half the time anymore, not unless it's stuck in a beer glass. We were the ones that got the whole damned project started in the first place, it was our idea... Joshua, James, and I.  It was our baby! And now... Josh... what did they do to you man? Did you even see it coming? Those other assholes barely even understood the concepts much less the implementation. And did they help us then, at the beginning? They wouldn't even lift a goddamn finger! It was like pulling teeth just to get permission to do it on our own!" Digger lifted his head to the right, took another sip, and gazed fixedly through the paneled wall of Jerry's Bar towards the labs under Quincy Hill, across the frozen Portage Lake shipping canal. "But now... oh yes... NOW they swoop in, like vultures on a rotting carcass, claiming they supported the project all along. And now they say..." Digger snorted with frustration. "Now they're saying I'm no longer an asset. NO LONGER AN ASSET! I can't believe that idiot Farley stood there and said that shit to my face! I ought to go over there and kick some of their pompous assets!"
 Digger felt the heat of anger rising in his abdomen, and rather than push it back down, he went ahead and let it rise, he helped it up, felt his face flush, his temples throbbed... "No!" he decided suddenly, not now. He knew how to let his anger work for him, he knew how to control it, but in a fleeting crystalline moment of sober clarity he realized that this was neither the time nor the place. He experienced a roaring sound in his ears as the delayed adrenaline rush hit him, he let it pass, then took another sip and sighed heavily. "Ah, the blessed amber nectar, so soothing, so............"
 He stared into his beer glass and tried to think about what to do next. That was always the big question wasn't it? Getting himself sloshed had seemed to be an answer to the short term variant of the question, as well as a way to avoid dealing with the long term aspect. "I shouldn't feel this way!" He said to himself under his breath. "I should be happy." But the mere thought of the abstraction called "happiness" seemed to make him sink ever deeper into despair, as if the contemplation of the very concept was driving away the reality. Digger noticed suddenly that there were no more bubbles in his glass. He squinted and examined it more carefully. Fact: the glass appeared to be quite empty except for some bits of foam slowly sliding down into the interior from the rim. The descriptor "empty" seemed to indicate a condition that might possibly be correctable. He looked up then and caught the knowing eye of the barkeeper, who silently walked over, refilled the glass from a tap, and withdrew the necessary amount from the pile of money lying on the counter. Digger raised his glass in thanks and took a sip. Ahhh... fresh and cold, the water of life it seemed. How many had he drunk since he came in here? When was it? It had been light out at the time, he remembered that! He looked out the window and saw the falling snow swirling in the light of the mercury vapor lamps. He shrugged... okay, so it was dark out now, so what else is new. In Houghton Michigan it was dark most of the time in the winter. This far north the sun rises late and sets early, people knew that and expected it. How many glasses of beer had there been?  The question was undoubtedly profound and, for the moment, grabbed Digger's full attention and concentration. Wait a minute! If he could simply apply the powers of reason to the problem, treat it as if it were a college examination, he might be able to deduce the answer. Digger had always been good at tests. Let's see now... he'd started with a handful of paper money on the bar. Pawing at the dwindling pile left, he tried to count it. The numbers on the crumpled wad of bills swirled in his vision. Well, there was a smaller pile than there had been earlier, and now there were some plastic coins as well.
 He heard a dry rasping sound and looked to his right. The guy next to him was trying to spin one of the coins on the bar. It would quickly slow down and fall flat with a hollow click. "Hey Digger, lookit dis here. Da sumbitch don' spin worth a shit. Dey don't spin so good like dose old metal ones used ta." Digger nodded silently, mechanically, trying to remember what he had been thinking about before the old coot had interrupted him. "I mean, lookit dis crap!" The weathered face of Arne Harjaala grinned at him, the hand clutched a few of the plastic chips off the bar and held them in a gnarled fist. "Why, I remember when we got paid wit' real money boy... I'm talkin' about gold an' silver, da real goddamn ting! At least back den ya could punch a hole in a dime and use it for a washer if ya needed one bad enough."
 Digger pulled his eyes away and examined his own pile more closely. The molding of the coins was not even particularly well done, the parting line could easily be seen on the edges of the quarters. "Money" they called the stuff. People seemed to think it was important for some reason. He repeated the word to himself over and over until it lost all meaning... "money, money, munny, munny, muhny, muhnee, muh-nee, muh-nee-muh-nee-muh-nee..." It became a sort of hypnotic mantra. "Money": some pieces of thin plastic textured to imitate paper, with pictures of dead guys on them... pieces just about the right size for wiping your butt. That's it, "dead-guy butt-wipes" that's what they are! But hell, they're not even made of paper anymore, it's some kind of damn petroleum product nowadays, some kind of poly something-or-other... not even absorbent enough to use them in the toilet. What about the round things though, "chips" they call those, though some old-timers sometimes still used the word "coin". Dead guy's pictures appeared on them as well. About all they're good for is to spin on the bar and see how long they keep going. But like ol' Arne said, they just don't spin so good anymore. And what's the deal with all these dead guys anyway? Money... it's just this stuff you leave on the bar; if there's enough of it a guy comes around and fills your glass. Hmmm. Well, maybe that's not such a bad deal after all! Somehow it seemed to matter how much of it you had. If you had the right number you could do anything, so they said. Sixty million was a big number. Sixty million dollars would buy a lot of beers, more than..........
  Suddenly Digger remembered that he'd been trying to figure out how many beers he'd had. Since he didn't know how many of the butt wipes he'd left on the bar to begin with, there was no logical way to deduce the number of beers he'd consumed. Digger felt a profound sense of failure at being unable to solve the problem he had set for himself. He shook his head gravely and gave himself a resounding "F" on the impromptu exam. "SHIT!" he said out loud, to nobody in particular. It was just as well, none of the people in the bar paid him any attention, not even Arne. He gave a short laugh, which came burbling out as a snort.
 Digger looked over at his companion on the adjacent barstool. The grizzled old miner was a fixture in Jerry's Bar, telling tall tales and droning on endlessly about fictitious events from his supposed youth. They were goofy, impossible stories. His cheeks were sunken and the wrinkles in his face were deep and coarse. He looked to be at least eighty, but still had a full head of short hair, almost snow white, and a growth of beard that looked like about five days worth. He moved slowly these days, but with a compact grace that told a careful observer that he had been a powerful man in his youth. Almost nobody paid any attention to old Arne anymore though. Digger was the only one who still sat with Arne at the bar, and even Digger tuned him out some of the time. Something had happened to old Arne Harjaala years and years ago, nobody seemed to know just exactly what it was, but he was definitely "out of it" they said. He was friendly and well liked though, if you didn't have to listen to him for too long at a stretch. He lived in a dingy little apartment on the next street above the bar on some kind of government pension, just enough to keep him out of the snow. Arne could be found in Jerry's most any time of the day. Sometimes he was just sitting quietly sipping his beer, but most often he would be found staring off into the distance and talking endlessly in a monotone voice about weird stuff. People tended to find it disconcerting. Once in a while some new bar patron would sit down and try to talk to him, but they would invariably get bored or annoyed and drift quietly away. A couple college boys came down once, Digger remembered... said they were working on a psychology paper and recorded some of Arne's ramblings, but they lost interest after the course was over and they got their grade. About once a year some guy in a suit would blow in from out-of-town and would come to talk privately with Arne for a few minutes, leave an envelope with the barkeeper, and then disappear again. Digger had tried asking questions of the barkeeper, but never could get any further than to find out that Arne had once been a miner... as if he couldn't tell...
 Digger had been sitting next to Arne all afternoon... or was it night now? He looked around, there was no clock above the bar. Wasn't there usually a clock above the bar? He had essentially tuned Arne's monologue out for a while... except for that little bit about the money... hearing it but not really listening to it, as if it were the constant droning of a construction crew's jackhammer. But something had penetrated his self-imposed isolation, something Arne had said. What was it? The words floated through his mind like tangled ticker-tape in a stiff breeze. He tried to focus his attention on Arne's words. It was a difficult task. A combination of the beer he'd consumed and the habit of tuning Arne out conspired against him. He closed his eyes and tried harder. Arne's musical Yooper accent was familiar, but his words seemed to be strung together far more coherently than usual.
 "So dere we was see, down on da fifty fourth level of da number two at da underground machine chop dere. We start feeling da ground moving den see, just real gentle, like a rowboat rocking a little on a calm lake. But den dere's all dis noise see, like a roaring noise, like it's a big waterfall or someting. I'm jus' sittin' on a stool by da lathe in da shop dere, off da side of da drift, and den dese two guys come running down. `Hey...' says one of 'em, and den dere's dis big like a `whoosh' and dose guys are just gone, smeared on da wall like so much ketchup. Den ore cars and twisted rails come shootin' down da tunnel from da direction of da number six, along wit ragged pieces of flesh I just guessed were some udder guys, and then everyting went all dark. Dere's still all dis noise dere in da dark, slowly dyin' out, but it never touched me, never touched me at all."
 Digger blinked his eyes repeatedly and tried to focus on his companion. "Arne!" he said in a harsh whisper, but Arne took no notice and kept talking.
 "So den, after a few minutes everyting seemed ta like settle down and I got my carbide lamp goin' again an' I seen what happened ta Toivo, an' den I go on over to da shaft, an' it's all just a shambles, like it was a war or sometin."
 "Arne!"  Digger said again, louder this time.
 "Oh yeah, hi dere Digger. Ya want ta buy me a beer eh?"
 "Uh... yeah, sure Arne." Digger waved to the barkeeper, pointed to Arne's empty glass and the pile of money still on the bartop. "Listen Arne, what are you talking about? Something about a mine disaster?"
 "Oh yeah, da big one ya know, back in nineteen ought and six it was, da big air blast dey called it. I was working in da number two shaft when da whole ceiling of da big stope of da number six come down all at once. Dat's what dey tol' me later was da cause of it. Laumontite dey blamed it on, said dere was a vein of it in da hanging wall dere an' it just cut loose all at once I guess. It pushed all dat air down da shaft and out da drifts where all us guys was workin' den, down deeper in da mine. Nobody ever tought it could happen like dat see? 'Course we dint know what was happenin' at da time, just seemed like da world was comin' to an end. God it was awful! You young folks just don't know, it was bad den. Dere was no such ting as da "good old days" I tell ya. Times were tough, really really tough back den. You know, I oughta tell ya, dere was dis udder time......."
 Digger was wide awake now. He felt as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown into his face. He felt a tingling on the back of his scalp, just like that time when he'd found a big chunk of native copper buried six inches below the surface. He'd just had that funny feeling and he'd dug there and found a solid 100 kilo mass of float copper. The professor of the summer Field Geophysics course and the whole class, more than twenty people, had seen him do it. That was when they'd given him his nickname, Digger, and it had stuck ever since. He looked at the calendar on the wall behind the bar, a glossy photograph of a scantily clad young lady holding an air impact wrench graced the top... she looked very friendly. Below her feet the lettering said "January, 2017" The little squares with numbers in them were crossed out up to the one with the number 18, in the column marked "Wed". Digger squinted hard, trying to make the numbers come out right, then he interrupted Arne's continuing monologue...
 "Arne, hold on a second, you're saying that you were there during the 1906 Quincy mine disaster?"
 "Yep, dat's right boy. I was dere." Arne leaned close and breathed yeastily in Digger's face. "I tell ya, I seen da whole ting, it was terrible I tell ya, just awful. Everyting was all tore up, and the smell, Jesus, it was worse dan anyting you can imagine. Dere was dust and blood and puke and guts and pieces of guys all over da place. I trew my lunch up right dere. God you just can't believe it, it was worse than............."
 Digger shook his head sadly. "Arne, that's impossible, there is no way......"
 "...worse dan when we was fightin' dose damn Spanish bastards on San Juan Hill. You know, dat Ol' Teddy done us proud dat day I tell ya, why I said to da guy next to me, I sez 'yep, dat guy is goin' places in dis world.' Yep, dat's what I said, but dat was nuttin' like da mine disaster. Dat was bad, God it was jus' really really bad." Arne started to sob a little, his eyes getting wet with tears. Digger had never seen Arne display any emotion before. "And da worst ting was... Digger I got ta tell ya, I got ta tell somebody! Da worst ting... was being alone down dere. God dat was spooky... everybody... everybody was dead but me, an' it was as dark as da pit o' hell. Da telegraph didn't work, hell I couldn't even find it. Da power was out, an' water was hissin' and sprayin' all over da place from da broken hydraulic lines. Even da ladder in da shaft was all broke up, I was too scared to try to climb it, I was more'n half a mile down, so I had ta just stay where I was and' hope somebody would come. I stayed right dere Digger, musta been eight or ten hours, I don't know, 'til I got so scared I had ta try to go somewhere, I didn't know what ta do! Everyting's soakin' wet 'cause of the water sprayin' around. I tried ta make it over to da number six, it was da only way I could go. I managed to get my carbide light goin' but I dint have any fresh carbide so it dint last long. When it starts ta go out, I lit some little candles I always carried, but dey weren't much... and finally I'm all alone in da dark. I don't know how long... a long time. I remember dat I started gettin' really hungry. And den... dat's when da blue light come." Arne sat up straight and looked around, taking a deep breath. He stared dreamily at Digger with a quizzical look in his eyes. "Yeah... I can remember it now. All of a sudden I can remember it..."
 "Arne, listen to me, that was more than a hundred years ago! Do you understand? There is no way you could have been there, you're just daydreaming!"
 "But I was Digger! I was dere, I remember da whole ting, right up until da blue light come. Yeah, it's like I can remember da whole ting now. I couldn't remember it before! How come I couldn't remember? What's happenin' ta me? Dere was dis blue light see? I thought, "Tank God dey come to rescue me!" But it wasn't no rescue party. It was something else...dis blue light come and den... and den..." Arne got real quiet, seemed to sober up a little. He looked around the room from the corner of his eye, and turned slightly to face Digger. He was shaking a little and his hand went out and gripped Digger's forearm in a surprisingly strong clasp. "Listen Digger,"  he said conspiratorially. "Don't you tell nobody what I'm tellin' ya now, okay? Please?" Digger looked at him. Arne's mouth was twitching slightly, and his eyes... his eyes were filled with terror, there was no faking that. "Please Digger, ya got ta promise me, you tell nobody okay? NOBODY! I mean it. I been shootin' off my moutt where I shouldn't ha' been."
 "What do you mean Arne? What's this about a blue light?" Digger asked.
 The bartender was walking over towards them, wiping down the bar with his cloth and looking at them. "Say, youse guys okay down here, you look a little pale Arne?"
 Arne managed to stammer out, "No, s'okay Jack, just talkin' is all, just talkin'...  could sure use anudder beer though," he laughed nervously.
 Jack pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at Arne for a moment, then at Digger, who nodded and pushed another dead guy butt wipe towards him. Digger pretended to drunkenly examine another crumpled bill while Jack filled Arne's glass, giving the pair a suspicious glare.
 "Hey Jack, did you ever take a good look at this stuff? It's not even made of paper anymore, did you know that? They try to make it look like paper, but it's just a damn piece of plastic trash. Can't even use the things for buttwipes anymore. Ha!" Digger tried to slur his words a little more than necessary.
 Jack looked up disappointedly. "Yeah Digger I know, they've been like that for ten years now, what do you think I am, stupid or somethin?" He moved off down the bar to handle a drink request at the other end.
 Digger's sixth sense was working overtime. He was trying to think. It was not an easy task considering the amount of alcohol flooding his brain cells. Why should his "finder" sense be activating like this? He tried to tell himself that there was certainly nothing to the story. Arne's tales were legendary for their ridiculousness, everybody said that he was just a crazy old man. Digger checked himself... "But wait a minute," he thought." Just who is this `everybody?' And why does what `they' say have to be accepted as any kind of truth?" Digger had seen enough impossible things happen in his 34 years to be severely skeptical of the so-called "popular wisdom". And why was he suddenly so suspicious of Jack? Arne sat there with a worried expression looking at him. Digger tried to think...
 He remembered the time he'd been working on his master's thesis. He'd needed some information on a certain drill core log in the Jacobsville sandstone. The card catalog at the Michigan Technological University library had listed the exact reference he needed, but it wasn't there on the shelves where it was supposed to be. He checked with the librarians, but it hadn't been checked out. "Probably shelved in the wrong place," they had told him resignedly. In frustration he had spent the better part of the day in the library then, looking up alternative references... and then it happened. Walking down the stacks, he'd felt this same feeling... he'd stopped, looked up, and there it was. The book he needed for his thesis was right there, in a completely different section of the library, misfiled, just like they had said. The sensation he had now was the same. He had come to accept it as the "finding what I'm looking for" feeling, without really understanding or caring enough to pursue its nature.
 Digger  made a sudden decision and turned to face his companion."Okay Arne, I tell nobody."
 Arne breathed a sigh of relief. "God tanks kid. Jesus you had me worried dere for a minute. Hey, did I ever tell ya about da time..."
 Digger stared hard at Arne and interrupted his tale. "But I have a price," he said.
 Arne stopped talking and looked at him again with a worried expression. He smiled and laughed abruptly as if it were a joke, but Digger's expression did not change, his eyes were steady and one eyebrow was raised in question. "Hey Digger, don't do dis ta me, I... I got no money, you know dat, dey give me just enough ta live on, please I......"
 "Who gives you the money Arne?"
 "I don' know, some guy from da government or sometin'. I don' know who it is, he never tells me, he jus' asks some questions an' goes away. Look Digger, it's not much, barely enough ta live on ya know. Please... I..."
 "What sort of questions do they ask? What are they trying to find out?"
 "Just stuff about da mine, like exactly where I was, an what da blue light looked like an' stuff. But I dint used ta be able ta remember so good den. But dey said not ta tell anybody else about it, an' I should tell Jack if I remember anyting new. So maybe I should tell Jack I remembered some new stuff hey? Maybe I should do dat now."
 "Relax Arne, don't worry, look, it's not money I want, I just want to hear your story, all of it. You don't need to tell Jack about it yet. We've been drinking buddies a long time haven't we? I'm probably the only guy that still listens to your stories. All of a sudden you start making sense, you start remembering some things, and I just want to hear about it. You know I've always been interested in stories about the old copper mines. I promise I'll never tell anyone, if that's what you want, but I can see that you're in some kind of trouble, and it seems to be related to these stories somehow. I'm interested, and maybe I can help you. But, Arne...  I have to know what the problem is. Fair enough?"
 "So, youse guys want one last beer then? Last call." Jack startled them by looming up suddenly.
 "No, no thanks Jack." Digger tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. "I think we've about had it for tonight."
 He looked around the room, it was virtually empty now. A couple of college kids from da Tech were over in the adjoining room still playing pool. Jack left the bar and went over to give them last call. The clock over the bar said 12:50. Had that clock been there before? How could it be last call already? Had he been here that long? He looked over at Arne who was struggling to get into his heavy gray winter coat.
  Digger climbed into his own heavy blue parka and they shuffled to the door together, Digger called out, "G'night Jack!"
 "Yeah, see youse."
 Digger thought he saw Jack give them a strange sidelong look from under his bushy eyebrows. "Get a hold of yourself Digger," he thought to himself. "You're getting paranoid now." He tried to relax, calm down a bit, but that old feeling was burning at the base of his scalp, and the adrenaline seemed to be pumping through his bloodstream at a furious pace. As soon as they opened the door they were hit by a ferocious blast of icy wind. He glanced at the big round thermometer mounted next to the door. The needle hovered just below minus twenty Celsius mark. Shit, it was like a damned blizzard or something! They turned left out of the door, and hurried into the force of the wind. Digger glanced back through the door just as it swung closed and saw Jack pick up a cordless phone and begin punching buttons. The snow was blowing so hard out of the west that visibility was down to just a few hundred feet, there were no cars or people within sight on Shelden Avenue. As they passed the alcove in front of a sporting goods shop Digger stepped into it out of the wind, and pulled Arne by the sleeve in after him.
 "I'll walk you up to your place okay?" he shouted at Arne to be heard over the roaring wind. Arne looked at him and shivered slightly, then nodded. Digger just couldn't shake a weird feeling of wrongness coming over him. Over the years he'd learned to trust these feelings, and now was no time to quit, even if they didn't make any sense. He hesitated. "Listen Arne, I want to check something out okay? You stay right here, hunker down out of the wind behind this sign here, okay? Try to stay out of sight if any cars come by." Arne looked quizzically at Digger, caught the serious look in his eyes and nodded. Responding to a whim, Digger quickly took off his coat and turned it inside out before putting it back on. It had been blue when they left the bar, and was now a bright red. Digger then continued walking at a normal pace, and turned left up the next street towards Arne's house. He tried to keep his eyes open and looking around despite the bitter cold and the stinging sharp particles of snow driven by the wind. Christ, where had this weather come from?  He carefully walked up the steep street towards the block above, the hard packed snow making a croaking sound with each step, barely audible over the wind. He kept on until he reached the cross street on the level above, even with the entrance to Arne's upstairs apartment. Everything looked normal... except for a black Hummer parked on the hill facing him one block above. That was strange! The street department started plowing about 3 A.M. every morning, all cars had to be off the streets by then to avoid being towed, or sometimes simply plowed off the street. You almost never saw cars parked on the street that late, not more than a few meters from an open bar anyway. That must mean... what did that mean? Digger was still having trouble thinking. Let's see... okay, either they're from out of town and they don't know about the parking rules, or they're visiting somebody and plan to move it soon... or... what?
 He kept walking forward towards the Hummer. Who drove those damn things anyway? The price had come down in recent years but they were still pretty expensive as four by fours went, and real fuel hogs too. Digger tried to examine the car as he approached without appearing to do so. The squat four door wagon was mostly covered with snow, but not very deeply he noticed... not as deeply as, for instance, the other cars parked nearby, safely tucked into their carefully dug-out parking spots. So it hadn't been there very long. He tried to slow his walk a bit, to give himself time to think. He purposely slipped and fell, playing up the drunk act a bit, letting the alcohol loosen him up. Making a show of looking both ways down the one way street, he crossed Montezuma, away from Arne's apartment towards the car. He was less than fifty feet from the Hummer now, and could see that the passenger side window had been rolled down a little bit, wisps of vapor or smoke rose from the opening and were whisked away by the driving wind. "Holy Shit!" He thought to himself, "Somebody's in there!" Digger redoubled his drunken act with ease and made an exaggerated effort to peer up at the street sign, and then walked east on Houghton Avenue as if he were lost. He thought now only of how to get out of sight of the mysterious black Hummer and back to Arne without arousing suspicion. He felt sure that these people were looking for Arne. He still didn't know why, but he was convinced by the prickling sensation at the back of his neck that it was something important, something real, something that he, Digger Puttonen, desperately wanted and needed to find out more about. Out of sight of the Hummer he took a deep breath, shed his drunken gait, and hurried back downhill towards where Arne was hidden. There was no explaining it rationally, but he suddenly felt more alive than he had for years. It was almost like the old days as a bad-boy geology student, breaking into the abandoned mines and going down the old shafts looking for mineral specimens and firsthand experiential knowledge. The potential of danger stimulated his senses to a razor's edge. He thought again about Arne then, cold and scared and all alone, and quickened his pace, hurrying into the swirling snow.

     CHAPTER 2

 Frank Giacoletti leaned back in his chair with his feet up on his desk and stared out the window at the driving snow. A cold cup of coffee and a stale, half eaten glazed donut mocked him from the windowsill. He looked down at his gut, starting to swell slightly over his belt now.  When the hell had that started? He'd always been in excellent shape in the old days. He was not unaware that comments had been made within his hearing about how he was "letting himself go".  He shook his head in self deprecation, then refocused his eyes to look at his reflection in the window. His hair formed a speckled salt-and-pepper horseshoe around the bald top of his head. The cheeks were sagging he thought, like the extra chin, and the brown eyes looked tired.
 Except for that E-mail message that had come through over the computer network an hour ago it had been a quiet night. It was almost always quiet around the Marquette Michigan office of the F.B.I., at least since the Federation of North America back in '09.  Nothing but small time stuff ever happened in this neck of the woods. Frank had been transferred up from the Detroit office four years earlier. There had been an "incident", and Frank had gotten sent to the "North Pole", as the Detroit agents lovingly referred to duty in the Upper Peninsula. Frank had been the logical choice of course; he was a native. They'd explained the assignment to him by saying that he would have a "rapport" with the locals. Yeah, right!
 The inhabitants of the Upper Peninsula were notoriously uncooperative with Federation agents as a rule, not even trusting the Michigan State Police, who were usually regarded as an occupying foreign police force from "down below". There was still a simmering separatist movement, a group of "Yoopers" who were lobbying in the legislature that the U.P. should separate itself from the state of Michigan and form its own state, to be called Superior. They called themselves "Soopers". A few even suggested seceding from the Federation itself, but these were a decided minority. Nobody in the federation government or the FBI really understood the Sooper movement at all, which had gained momentum after the Quebecois had achieved independence from the Dominion of Canada back in '06. Frank Giacoletti, they had said, was the perfect guy to be in the forefront of the F.B.I. presence in the U.P.
  The Giacoletti family immigrated from Italy and had settled in the Copper Country and the Iron Range back in the 1800s, they'd been miners and lumberjacks during the boom times for the area. By the time Frank was born however, the copper was mostly gone or too deep to get at, and the really high grade iron ore was already used up... most of it sent to the bottom of the ocean during World War II. Even as a child Frank had known that he would have to get out of the U.P. or go nuts. He had applied himself assiduously at school, getting outstanding grades, starring on the school hockey team, and then when the chance had come to apply to the F.B.I. Academy he'd jumped at it. He had been one of the few who survived the change of government in '09 when English-speaking Canada had joined the former United States and all of Central America in the new North American Federal Union. He had risen steadily through the ranks during a series of choice assignments, Philly, D.C., Orlando, Moosejaw, Vancouver, Acapulco, Detroit... and then there had been the incident, and here he was in this damned snowbound hell-hole. Even Calgary would have been better than this! When he left this place he'd thought it was for good. Frank knew that some people liked it here... the long winters, the big lakes, the history and the culture. For Frank Giacoletti though, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan had always been a place of misery and despair, of mind numbing boredom and limb numbing cold. He knew without a doubt that his career was as good as over. There would be little that he could ever do here to distinguish himself. He'd been banished to this wasteland, and that was that, end of story. Sometimes he even toyed with the idea of quitting the Bureau and joining up with the Soopers. A lot of their ideas were sincerely valid, and could potentially help the local economy emerge from the stagnation imposed by the apathy of a state government five hundred miles away in Lansing. The lack of a tax base made the option difficult however. The mineral wealth of the region had been carted away long ago. Five hundred miles from Lansing he mused. Ha! More like five hundred light years.
 Oh... sometimes there was a little excitement up here. Sometimes the college kids at Northern or Tech would bring up some kind of drugs to share with their friends, and things would get out of hand. And then there were the locals with their clandestine methamphetamines, and their "ice" and "cat" labs scattered here and there. Occasionally a domestic dispute would erupt in gunfire, usually during the coldest part of the winter, when cabin fever made everyone just a little crazy. The Soopers had thus far limited themselves to peaceful acts of civil disobedience and tax protest. For a hard-bitten professional federation agent of Frank's style though, it was all kid stuff.
 There was a knock on the frame of the open door, and Frank looked up. Jimmy Canaris looked at him with eyebrows raised. "So, what should we do then? It's almost two o'clock. You want me to warm up the Hummer?"
 "Are you kidding? In this weather? Hell Jimmy, E-mail or no, I'm not driving a hundred and seventy klicks up to Houghton in this blizzard. We could end up stuck out there on the road somewhere and freeze to death for Christ's sake! If anything it's probably even worse up there than it is here."
 Jimmy frowned. "I don't know captain, that message from Washington sounded pretty urgent. We could throw some emergency gear and our cross-country skis in the back just in case."
 Frank looked over at Jimmy. He could see the light of excitement in Jimmy's powder blue eyes. His tall lanky frame and shock of stiff blond hair that stuck out at all angles made him look like the scarecrow from The Wizard Of Oz. Frank remembered the excitement of his own first big case. Hell, the poor kid probably wouldn't get a wink of sleep if he had to wait 'til morning. He just didn't understand these "urgent" messages from headquarters yet. Ninety nine times out of a hundred you had to hurry your ass someplace on the double, then stand around and wait for days or even weeks for something to happen. Of course... there was always that one other time... he hesitated.
Jimmy spoke again.
 "Uh captain, I uh... I took the liberty of getting all the stuff together already, just in case. We could be ready to roll in about ten minutes if you give the word."
 Frank smiled and shook his head with amused tolerance. Jimmy was a good kid, bright and resourceful, fresh out of the Academy. Jimmy had been with the office less than six months, but he had done his homework. He was a native of Thunder Bay, Ontario, had spent two years in the Unified Command Special Forces, was an expert in winter orienteering and marksmanship, and participated competitively in the local cross country ski races. On his own time he had driven  around on the back roads and had familiarized himself with the complex geography of the region. It was time to get him onto a real case, if that's what this was. "Okay Jimmy, let's do it!"
 Jimmy's face lit up. "Aye aye Cap'n, we'll be ready to shove off at four bells."
 "Make it five after okay? I want to brew up a fresh pot of coffee and fill a thermos, and cut that navy crap."
 "Yes sir!"
 Jimmy hurried off towards the storeroom with a spring in his step. Frank called out after him.
 "And don't forget to bring the printout of that message from H.Q., I want to study it a bit more on the way."
 "Yes sir!"
 Frank got up out of his chair and stretched, "Yep," he thought to himself, smiling, "that Jimmy is okay, but now it's time to get this old butt in gear." First he went to the break room off the hall and started a fresh pot of coffee, dumping out his cold cup and tossing the stale donut in the trash. He then took a duffel bag down off a shelf and started stuffing things in... a thermal suit, some heavy gloves and other important pieces of winter clothing, sleeping bag, radio gear... He checked the pistol he kept in a shoulder holster and started walking out the door.  Almost as an afterthought he reached up on a shelf and threw an extra box of 10mm cartridges in the bag. He filled the thermos and shed his shiny dress shoes for an old pair of swampers by the door to the garage, before switching on the telephone answering machine and heading down the hall towards Jimmy and the waiting vehicle. He paused a moment at the door. Bureau policy held that an agent should be on duty at the office at all times. He tended to run his office a little loosely though, as so little ever happened around here. The next shift was to start at 6:00 A.M., just four hours away.  For a few moments Frank considered calling to get them in early, but rejected the idea as being overly paranoid. He left a note telling them what was up, along with a copy of the message transcript from H.Q. Why had they put it in priority "one" encryption mode? It didn't make sense, it was a simple assignment. The phrase "most urgent" was common in messages from headquarters, but of course those guys could not appreciate the difficulties of U.P. winter storms. Oh well, Sammy had the mobile phone number if they needed him... still.........
 He reached for the phone, then heard two quick honks from the Hummer's horn in the garage, Jimmy was anxious to get going. He chuckled a little, and waved at the phone dismissively.
 "Get some sleep you guys," he said to it, then turned towards the door. The Hummer's powerful engine could be heard warming up, a deep throaty rumble that sounded reassuringly confident against the howling of the wind beyond the garage door. Jimmy stood by the squat black vehicle as Frank entered.
 "All set? You want to drive, or you want me..?"
 "Go ahead Jimmy, you take the first shift, best soften up the tires a bit right off though," Frank said as he heaved his duffel into the back.
 "Yes sir!"
 Frank surveyed with satisfaction the equipment that Jimmy had stowed, raising his eyebrows as he recognized a large molded thermoplastic rifle case. Jesus, the kid thought of everything! He hated to imagine how much stuff Jimmy would put in a backpack. They got into the four-door wagon, chugging smoothly now, and warm as toast inside. "Say Jimmy, you really think we need all that stuff? You've got enough equipment back there to get us to the north pole!"
 "Well, not quite captain, but I just believe in being prepared for any contingency, who knows what we're getting into here. Besides, the extra weight will just give us better traction."
 "Okay, but what about the Barrett? Why bring the big gun out on this one?  It sounds like a simple pimple investigation to me."
 "I don't know, I just, well, I felt that it would be prudent, you just never know."
 Frank shrugged as Jimmy used the dashboard control to lower the tire pressure to 20 p.s.i. all the way around for better traction in the deep snow. Frank then punched the garage door remote control button as Jimmy revved the motor a couple of times before dropping the transfer case into four high and the gear shift into low. He stepped on the accelerator and charged out through the four foot drift that had blown up against the door, turning right out of the short driveway and heading out towards Highway 41. The door closed quickly behind them, and within moments they disappeared into the night, the low purring of the Hummer's engine quickly swallowed up by the heavy veil of falling snow.

           CHAPTER 3

 George Frederick Sherman sat with his back to his guest and gazed north out of the huge picture window of his office. His gaze strayed to the Chicago skyline dominating the horizon and the cluster of high tech assembly plants in the foreground. He smiled as he contemplated the fact that he personally owned them all. Behind him an employee waited to speak with him. He mused on the situation and recalled the axiom he had once heard from another great industrialist to the effect that one did not rise to such a position of power and authority by being kind and polite to subordinates. He allowed his hireling a few moments to fully appreciate their lowly position in the power structure of the corporation. When he heard the telltale signs of nervousness: a shuffling of the feet, an attempt to clear a dry throat, he whirled about and barked, "Report!"
 "Yes sir! The results of our investigations into the Midnight Mining Company suggest that it would be an excellent candidate for acquisition sir. The real assets are fairly low, but several significant patents and other publicly undisclosed intellectual properties position the company to gain considerable market share in several high growth fields in the five to ten year time frame."
 "What fields?"
 "Uh, let's see," papers were shuffled, "that would be: undersea mining, ore recovery, resource management, oil exploration, pollution control... sir, the list goes on for quite a while."
 "I see. What do you mean by "considerable" market share?"
 "Sir, our computer projections show them to be capable of dominating those industries within ten years."
 George Sherman jumped up out of his chair to face his subordinate. His chiseled face and shock of bristly red hair contrasted sharply with his underling's thin sallow face and ponytail of brown hair. Steve Sanders pushed his wire framed glasses up on his nose and tried not to flinch at his boss' icy gaze.
 "What? You're telling me that this little upstart company is going to claim more than fifty percent of my market share in ten years?"
 "Well, that's how the projections look sir, and we've refigured them every way possible."
 "So, what are we doing about it?"
 "Sir, as per standing orders, a generous offer was made to try to buy the company."
 "And...?"
 "They refused to sell sir."
 "So? Double the offer!"
 "No sir," said Steve with some hesitation. "You don't quite understand. We tried that already. It wasn't the offer that was the problem. They simply refused to even consider selling, under any circumstances, for any price."
 "Hmmm, that's rather unusual."
 "Yes sir, we thought so too. Rather than bother you with this we brought in Mr. Jameson on the project. As you know he has had some previous successes in similar situations."
 "Okay, good thinking." Sherman grudgingly had to compliment Steve's procedure. "But if Jameson is on the case, why are you here?"
 "Well sir, you see, there have been some complications. Mr Jameson has encountered an unusual situation and has requested your authorization to, ahem, um, apply "sanctions"... as he puts it... to some of the more recalcitrant individuals involved. Also, there seems to be another factor in that we have information indicating that federation officials are involved in investigating certain aspects of the Midnight Mining Company operations. The problem is growing sufficiently complex and troublesome that it was felt that perhaps your personal direction of the project would be advisable. Mr Jameson has suggested also that perhaps a board meeting is in order."
 "I see." said Sherman as he leaned back in his chair and for several minutes he gazed through Steve's chest into the distance in a very disturbing way. Looking up finally he said, "So, Jameson has requested a board meeting eh?"
 "Yes sir. His latest communication, on a secure channel, indicated that he had left two associates, uh... Scott and Jeff,  to monitor the situation. They are under orders to observe only, to take no action until further notice. Jameson himself is due to arrive here sometime this evening."
 George Sherman sat in his chair again and leaned back, closing his eyes and steepling his hands in contemplation for several minutes, until Steve began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep. At last he spoke. "I agree, this is too important to be dealt with by ordinary means. I want a full report, all details on my desk before midnight tonight. Be ready to brief me on more recent developments by seven o'clock tomorrow morning. Relay this message to Jameson over his secure channel with his personal encryption algorithm: 'Code 9, 8:00 A.M. tomorrow.' You've done well to bring this matter to my attention. That will be all, Dismissed!" Sherman turned away and began poking keys on his computer.
 "Yes sir... Uh sir?"
 "What is it now?"
 "Sir, I've taken the liberty to prepare the report already, I have it here. This folder contains a written overview of the situation, and here is a 16 gig optical disk containing detailed files on all the principals of the Midnight Mining Company, as well as everything we could dig up about their operations and resources. I've integrated the data with a search and association program to assist you in finding the information you need."
 "Well all right! That's what I like to see, a little hustle around here! Which search program did you say this was?" George inserted the disk into his computer's floppy port and started punching a few buttons.
 "Oh, just a little something of mine."
 "I see. Okay, dismissed, but I still want that briefing at seven."
 "Yes sir!"
 Sherman watched Steve leave the office out of the corner of his eye. Not bad! He'd have to watch this kid, he was a real self starter. People who could think ahead and anticipate the company's needs could either be very good... or very bad for an organization, depending on where their loyalties lay. He made a mental note to himself to find out more about Steve Sanders. Then returned to the study of Steve's report on Midnight Mining Company. Oh yes... very good... yes... Oh! This is big alright. George Frederick Sherman would certainly want to handle this project himself. He thought his ancestor, William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general of Civil War fame would certainly have approved entirely of the plan that began to form in George's mind. It would be a bit messy of course, the Shermans were famous for that, but when it was over.....
 He punched a button on the desk intercom. "Marsha?"
 "Yes sir?", a woman's voice answered.
 "I want a full meeting of the board in my office, tomorrow morning at eight A.M. sharp."
 "Yes sir. I'll inform them immediately."
 "Oh and Marsha, and this is very important, tell each of them that this meeting is "code 9". If anybody misses this one.... well, let's just be sure they're all here, alright?"
 "Yes sir. I'll tell them."
 Sherman sat back in his chair and gazed out of his fourteenth floor window again. Steam rose from the square heating units clustered on the flat roofs below, falling horizontally into a layer of shimmering haze which gleamed in the light of the waning crescent moon. To the north there were the lowering clouds of a winter storm moving in. He smiled again, though if anyone had been there to see it, they would not have been particularly comforted by that smile.  Once the Midnight Mining Company belonged to him, there would be very few people with the power to stop him from doing virtually anything he wanted. If it was as big as they said, and he had every confidence in his computer people, then this was the biggest thing since the microchip. He rubbed his hands together and chuckled. Oh this was going to be great! He turned back to the computer and started doing his homework. He'd be at it all night, and by 8:00 A.M. tomorrow his knowledge of the situation would be encyclopedic. Then there would be the "board" meeting, though of course, a board meeting at Sherman Industries meant something quite different than it did at most other companies. Sherman would present the data to the board, and the members, in their own so delightfully direct and visceral way would offer suggestions as to how to "sanction" the "problems" that Sherman had defined. Sherman would then select from among their plans, or propose one of his own, and make the final selection of personnel and method for dealing with the problem. Jameson was usually the person who kept the minutes of these board meetings, in especially encrypted files. Chris Jameson was the only member of the board who worked for Sherman full time, his most trusted lieutenant. Jameson had been with him for years and his loyalty had never been in question. George smiled again in anticipation and turned back to his computer. Outside the window, the gloom deepened as the cloud bank obscured the moon and a heavy snow began to fall.

***************************************
I hope you enjoyed reading the first three chapters!

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