Gathering

Chris rose and moved to look out the window in his office as soon as he set the handset of the phone down.

It had been seven months since he had first met Judge Orrin Travis in this very building two floors up. At the time, he had had no idea what the man had wanted from him. Travis' offer for him to head one of the ten new Special Operations ATF teams based out of the new Denver office had been a total surprise.

Chris’s first reaction had been an emphatic, “Hell, NO!” Fortunately for him, Chris had clamped down hard on that initial reaction and somewhat more politely, but no less firmly, expressed his disinclination to take the offer and left, thinking that that would be the end of it.

Not so.

For the next two weeks, Travis had kept after him. Chris had finally agreed to think about it, just to get the man to leave him alone. And, being a man of his word, he had thought about. And the more he thought about the more he liked the idea, provided he could pick his own men.

After more than a month since the original meeting, Chris had gone to Travis and laid out his conditions. To his surprise, Travis had readily agreed. Travis had then casually inquired if he should be on the look out for an application from his old friend Buck Wilmington.

Chris grinned faintly as he looked out over his city. He really shouldn’t have been surprised that Travis knew of his friendship with the lieutenant of the Denver bomb squad. They had known each other since theirhigh schooldays, and their friendship was well known in law enforcement circles. Yes, Buck had been his first thought of and recruited team member.

Next to sign on had been Nathan Jackson, another member of the local PD and a certified EMT. Buck had worked with him many times and liked the man and his work enough to bring him to Chris' attention. Though it was debatable whether he had actually done him a favor or not, Nathan had taken the job with no hesitation.

The fourth member of ATF Team 7 was Josiah Sanchez, former FBI profiler and long time friend of Nathan Jackson. At their first meeting, Chris had been impressed when Josiah pegged him in less than ten minutes; the man was obviously very good at his job. It had taken less than an hour to convince Sanchez to come out of retirement and join the team; confidentially Josiah had told Chris that he had been going crazy from boredom since his retirement. He just wasn’t meant for a quiet life.

Chris turned away from the window and grabbed his coat as he left the office and head for the basement garage.

Against his will, Chris’s thoughts returned to the mixed bag of misfits he had brought together.

After Josiah had joined them, it had taken him only another month to find a sharpshooter…or should he say for their sharpshooter to find them!

While they weren’t running their own investigations yet, Team 7 had been called in to provide back up for other teams in the field.

Vin Tanner, bounty hunter, had saved Chris and Nathan’s lives when a bust had gone bad. He had been content to sit back andlet the ATF have the guy he had been chasing until he had seen two men come up behind Chris and Nathan and take a bead on them. Vin had given away his hidden position in the rafters of the warehouse to take out the men that Larabee and Jackson hadn’t heard or seen.

A little investigating had brought to light Tanner’s experience in the military and subsequent work as a bounty hunter. It had taken some convincing, but Chris had managed to get Travis to take a chance on the man and waive the education requirements. When Chris had made the offer to Tanner, Vin had been totally incredulous at first. When he had finally convinced Chris wasn’t joking with him, he couldn't sign up fast enough.

In themonths since then, Chris had been proven right in spades! Vin’s phenomenal aim had saved the lives of four more agents in the time he had been with them. He also seemed to have a knack for teaching, too; and since Tanner had started spendingtime instructing them, all of the Denver ATF’s range scores were up.

After that, Chris had sat down and started looking around for a surveillance and electronics expert and an undervcover man. His attentionhad been drawn to an application from a young man currently working for the Boston PD. JD Dunne was young, no doubt about it, but he had the experience and determination to make a good agent. When the young man in question had arrived, Chris had almost rejected him out of hand since he looked like he should still be in high school, until Buck pointed out that that might come in handy when dealing with underage drinking and smoking. After Chris had welcomed him to the team, he had noticed that Buck had taken an almost brotherly interest in the kid.

That just left the Undercover man. Chris had read applications and files for undercover operatives until he was cross-eyed. Finally last month, Travis had issued an ultimatum. Chris had one more month to find the man he wanted, or Travis would assign him an undercover until he did.

Two weeks after Travis’s little announcement, another folder had been left on his desk during the lunch hour. Chris didn’t know who left it, though he suspected it was probably left by one of the team, but the man described in it had caught his attention enough to investigate the man.

As he climbed into his truck and headed for home, Chris thought about his last man. Ezra Standish, FBI undercover specialist out of Atlanta, was a man with a past foggier that London. Accept for his school and FBI employment records, the fold had been practically empty. When Chris went hunting, he found that he found very little that wasn’t in the file and some things that were in the file couldn’t be found elsewhere.

According to what Chris read, Standish had been a maverick his entire career. His first case out of Quantico had gone bad soon after he went under, and his superiors had been sure he had been killed and dumped somewhere. A month later, Standish had tied the whole group up in a red ribbon and handed them to the ADA that ran the Atlanta office. After that, Standish had developed a reputation as a man that could beat any odds to get his man.

Until about six months ago, when a case he had worked was thrown out of court on a technicality and rumors of corruption and bribery started. No proof had been found, but the rumors persisted. Since then, Standish’s already high injury rate had increased sharply, even including one confirmed case of friendly fire. To Chris, it looked a whole lot like someone had screwed up and was trying to make Standish take the fall. Except that Standish didn’t seem to understand the concept of giving up.

After giving it some thought, he had gone to Atlanta to meet the man, and hopefully get a better read on him.

He had liked what he had seen. Standish had been polite and professional, maintaining a certain aloofness, even in the face of obvious slights and slurs. When he had extended the offer to transfer to his ATF team, Standish had remained silent and stared at Chris for a full minute. Chris didn’t know what the criteria had been for the test Ezra had subjected him to in that minute, but what ever it had been he had passed and Standish had agreed.

That had been a week ago. Tomorrow, Standish would be coming into the office for his first day of work. The call he had received from Standish just before he left the office had been short and clipped. Chris could understand Standish’s reservations. He had been sold down the river by men he had worked with for years, why should he trust men that he hadn’t even met?

Chris knew they were going to have their work cut out for them, but he had a gut feeling that gaining Ezra trust would be well worth the effort they put into it.

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