Undeclared War by Dennis Chalker

the building, and wiretaps turned up nothing useful. The police and DEA never connected more than rumors to the Factory, and that wasn’t enough to get a warrant. Not that any authorities expected to get past the first floor of the place with any real chance of finding anything. The huge plant was small only by automotive manufacturer’s standards. The block-long edifice was a nightmare to a police agency.
    On the first floor, there were still remnants of the conveyor system and frames that had assembled cars decades before. The place could be a whirling flux of gyrating bodies during peak hours, and just a huge area to cover during slack times. All attempts to infiltrate undercover agents into the club had failed. Without having hard intelligence on what was going on inside the building on the upper floors, the police could do nothing. The only thing that was known was that the public owner had his offices on the sixth floor at the east end of the building.
    The owners of the Factory according to official documents was a consortium of investors. The listing of investors consisted of other businesses, holding companies, even mutual funds. Following the line of ownership would only result in running up against a blank wall as the paper trail disappeared into foreign finance laws. Liquor licenses and such were all in line with the necessary requirements, no legal details had been missed.
    A very stylish Steven Arzee showed himself on the club floor on occasion. He was listed as the executive manager of the club, but he reported to the real manager regularly.
    Cary Paxtun had opened the club several years earlier with funds from his overseas investors. Hedid not maintain quarters or offices in the Factory. The money from the legal aspects of the club were quite lucrative though they were small change in comparison to the profits from the drugs, money laundering, and other activities.
    Part of that money had gone through more fronts and businesses to pay for several very major land purchases. Two whole islands in Lake Michigan had been purchased almost outright by Paxtun through cutouts. He now maintained his quarters between a luxury high rise in downtown Detroit and the mansion of a private hunting club on South Wolverine Island in Lake Michigan. Paxtun’s privacy was very important to him, and so was the maintaining of cutouts between himself and his trusted lieutenant Steven Arzee.
    But in spite of his security and distance between the illegal activities of the Factory and himself, Paxtun was anything but a relaxed man. He had his own bosses that he had to satisfy. The overseas investors who not only had supplied him with funds, but were also his source of high-grade narcotics, had made demands on Paxtun. These demands were ones that he could not refuse, and must not fail to satisfy, and he was in the process of failing them now.
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    â€œâ€¦officials said that the quantity of arms seized was the largest ever taken in Canada. Elsewhere in the news…”
    A thumb punched down hard on the remote control. The TV screen across the room immediately faded to black with a dull “snap” as the sound clickedoff. Cary Paxtun looked up from the desk and snarled at Steven Arzee standing nearby.
    â€œHow the fuck could this have happened?” Paxtun said. “That route was supposed to be solid. The weapons had been built into the bottom of the shipping container itself and shouldn’t have even been detectable through the insulation. There was no reason for anyone to have even been looking at that shipment—we spent a bucketful of money to make everything seem as legitimate as possible.”
    The fact that Paxtun was cursing indicated just how angry he was—a fact not lost on Arzee. He knew that the situation was a serious one. The seized weapons were intended for people who expected them. They wouldn’t have accepted the shipment even being delayed. The fact that the authorities had