Agent Barker was tired of this hot attic room where he had spent the last month. After that mess with the cult and its cargo the Director had taken his anger out by assigning him surveillance duty. Here he was stuck in a stuffy room observing the island’s shipping. For weeks now he would watch out the window as the cargo ship loaded containers coming from a Panamanian company called “Hawk Habitats”. He knew he would have lost 20 pounds from the heat if it wasn’t for all the junk food and beer he had while sitting here. Looking down at the shipping invoices he had bribed one of the port workers for they all showed the same thing. The contents were plants and seeds which were ridiculous to even think someone would bother shipping quantities like that to an island. What was even more suspicious to his mind were most of the plants listed in the invoices wouldn’t even grow on a tropical island. He looked them up and the plants were native to humid continental and semiarid climates not the Tropical wet climate of the Caribbean.

  Agent Barker had sent multiple messages to the agency’s Central America office requesting a physical search be made of the containers and Hawk Habitats but so far there was no response. It seems the president’s attempt to take back the canal was causing a major diplomatic issue here in Panama and all clandestine activity was on hold. Sweating in the heat he deciding enough was enough. The only way he was going to get out of this hell hole was to take action himself. Agent Barker wasn’t a field agent but how hard could it be if those muscle bound field agents could do it so could he. Packing up his surveillance equipment he left the trash filled room that had all his food containers and beer cans lying around to go prepare. Thinking about what he would need as he walked out he wondering if they sold black ski mask here in Panama. That night an overweight man wearing all back clothes and black paint smeared on his face was caught by port authorities outside of a broken open shipping container. The man was holding bolt cutters still with their price tag on while sobbing. Looking in the container all the officers saw was racks of potted plants.

  * * * * *

  Things were going well with the terraforming for the Habitats. To good actually which is a sign things were not going to be going well shortly. An Email arrived from Emiliano Garcia our front man CEO of Hawk Habitats saying he was having some issues and wanted a meeting. I decided to play it safe and took a few precautions setting up the meeting. A small restaurant near his office had a private room available to rent. After arranging it I had Hawk copy the room on Tawny. After emailing Emiliano back with a time and the place I then carefully watched the room through a portal to see if anyone took an interest in it. Emiliano arrived on time for the meeting and was directed back to the room by the hostess. I had Hawk transfer him to the copy of the room on Tawny as he walked through the door. He didn’t even pause not realizing he was now on another planet. If he was bugged or being followed it wouldn’t do them any good now. We were well outside the range of any type of tracking that could be done.

  Emiliano was smiling when he saw me so I assume whatever the issue was it wasn’t too serious. He helped himself to a coffee and pastry before sitting down to talk about the issue he was having.

  “I’ve been approached by some scary people about your shipments.” He began.

  “Have they threatened you?” I asked with concern.

  “No, not yet but they are asking what I’m shipping and didn’t believe me when I told them plants and seed. The captain of the cargo ship we hired also said unfriendly people have been asking him questions too”

  I was getting a bit worried about the interest our shipments were now getting. It was too early in our plans for that level of interest to be showing up. I decided we would need to accelerate the schedule to deal with it.

  “Stop the shipments from here and switch them to go through the Puerto Cortes port in Honduras and Acajutla one in El Salvador. Also charter a couple of different cargo ships for those ports as well. You should probably get an agent in each of those ports as well to oversee the shipments. If and when those men come back just tell them the client has stopped shipments. We’ll see how long it takes whoever they work for to find out about the new shipping points.”

  “We don’t need to hire anyone, I can go and handle the shipments there” he said with a worried look on his face.

  I realized my comment about hiring agents had him worried he was being replaced. I quickly reassured him we would still be head quartered in Panama. What I wanted him to do was expand the business. To start arranging supply shipments to the Brazilian Ministry of Environment and any other reforestation groups in Central and South America. With the money I would be funneling to the company he should be able to arrange quite a few donation shipments. I did remind him to use multiple ports and ships to do it.

  After thinking about what I said Emiliano grinned and said “Needle in a haystack?”

  I grinned back and said “Yes, so make the haystack as big as you can”.

  After that we talked about a few other matters of common interest like the US president’s attempts on the canal as well as the refugee issue we finished up. After that Emiliano said his goodbyes and headed out of the room. As he passed through the doorway I had Hawk transfer him back to the café in Panama. One of the servers was shocked seeing him come out. She had gone in to check on us a few minutes earlier and found the room empty. She thought we had already left and was getting ready to go back and clean it up. After a moment of thought she convinced herself he must have been in the restroom when she went back to check. Somehow she must have missed his leaving and returning. Later that night she suddenly remembered there was actually two people in that room, where did the other one go?

  When I got back to Tawny I met up with Sammy and Grandma to talk about the issue with our shipments. I mentioned we would need to keep a closer eye on the shipments going forward now that there was outsiders’ interest in them. Sammy agreed but from the look on her face I knew she was dreading taking more time off from school. The on boarding of all the workers had put her behind in her studies and with finals coming up she was feeling the stress. I also knew how busy Grandma was as well. Sammy and I were both worried she was taking too much on herself. After some thought I suggested we see if Hawk could do it. At this point none of us was sure of what he could do on his own but we kept getting surprised by what we did see. Sammy was a bit doubtful of the idea but she hadn’t spent as much time with Hawk as I did. Grandma was all for it but she had always considered Hawk a person. I had even caught her telling him gossip about some of the people she knew. We all knew we didn’t have much of a choice so I said I would explain to hawk what we needed monitored and we would see how it went.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  With the habitats on schedule in their expansion we decided it was now time to start project “Seed Spreader”. Grandma’s suggested name for our plan to use grain for widespread germination and growth. The habitats were intended to get suitable vegetation setup for the different environmental zones. Later those zones would host animals suited for that environment. The problem was the size of the planet and how long it would take for the habitats to grow to cover it. None of us had the centuries to spend waiting for that. Our plan was to take advantage of Earth’s mass production of grain to provide forage across the majority of the land. Later as the habitats grew they would displace the grain fields for their own plant species. Using grain for initial vegetation was simply because of the massive, wide spread availability of the seeds. Grabbing grains like corn, barley and wheat before they are ground into flour while also replacing them with our inert copied version would give us enormous quantities of viable seeds. The nice thing about our copied grain was even though it wouldn’t sprout it still tastes the same after milling.

  The big issue before we started to spread the seed grain around the planet was to get the inert soil ready with the required nitrogen fixing bacteria. There were numerous sources on Earth we could use for live soil bacteria but most were fairly limited in how much we could take before it would be noticed. The bacteria multiplied fast so even if we did nothing the bacteria from the habitats would eventually spread across the planet. However, nowhere near fast enough for our plans. Thinking about how the bacteria propagate and spread out through the soil I decided to try and approach it like we were plugging a lawn. The gardener at my uncle’s estate often did that when he had a large bare area of lawn. He would take small plug from a good section of yard that included the soil, roots, and turf and plant them in the bare spots. For larger areas he would make a grid of the plugs leaving a foot or two in between. When I asked him why not just re-sod he said it was cheaper which my uncle liked and the plugs would quickly take over the bare spots. The idea sounded like it could work to me and Grandma who was raised on a farm thought it would work as well.

  The next day many alluvia deposits and some agricultural waste water treatment centers had a small but constant amount of their material be transported to Tawny. Thousands of small portals started appeared over Tawny’s recreated topsoil. They deposited the bacterial loaded material in a grid pattern on the ground. Within days the soil was no longer inert as the nitrogen cycle started. Week’s later new portals open several feet above the areas spreading seeds. The seeds were primarily grain but with some other seeds from wild bird feed switched out from wholesale pet suppliers. Months later the area was covered in spotted green and brown plants and flowers all growing wildly. The coverage wasn’t a 100% in the areas seeded but the bare spots were slowly shrinking. The planet still had a long way to go but progress was being made.

  Grandma caught up to me as I was heading to the monitor room to check on our cargo ship that was arriving tomorrow. Lately we were seeing more and more interest in what was being sent to the island. So far it was manly just a few break-ins and some ransacking of the cargo. There was never anything for the different groups to find but they weren’t losing interest yet. Because of that I made it a point to quick check the cargo’s history to make sure nothing had been done to it.

  “Daniel we have an issue with one of my cafeteria girls” She said with a concerned look.

  Grandma had basically adopted the first set of employees we brought over to help her so I knew which group she meant. It was the girls in the van that the coyote was sneaking over the border with. The girl Maria had overheard his plans to sell them into prostitution so she escaped with the others into the desert.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “One of the employees from the Mexico refugee camp that came across a couple of months ago was talking to her and mentioned seeing someone there that she thinks is her cousin. She thought her whole family was dead and now that she thinks her cousin is still alive she wants to go back and look for her.”

  “Who is it, Maria?”

  “Yes, she’s insistent on going even knowing how dangerous it is. She also knows the odds of actually finding her cousin.” Grandma said with a worried look.

  Thinking about it I decided that even if finding her cousin alive was pretty slim I could with Hawk’s help could at least check. If she was alive I could check on her situation and let Maria know.

  “Why don’t we tell Maria privately we will get a detective to check on her cousin. Then have her give you the last time and place she saw her. Hawk can track her forward from there to see what ended up happened to her.”

  Grandma got a happy look on her face when I told her that but the next thing I said stopped it.

  “You do know it’s more than likely going to be bad news right?”

  With a sad node Grandma turned and walked to the cafeteria to find Maria. I wasn’t feeling to good about it myself but even if it’s bad news it was better to know that than to always be wondering. I headed over to the monitoring room trying to think of a way to get those groups that were messing with our shipments to stop.

  There were three groups spying on our shipments; the CIA, one of the drug Cartels and a local Panamanian based gang that ran a protection racket that focused on businesses working out of the local port. I was originally thinking of convincing the two criminal groups that it was a CIA undercover operation. That should convince both of them to stop poking their noses into our business but what to do about the CIA itself? Then after thinking about it some more I realized that I could use the CIA undercover story on the CIA too. They were so heavily compartmentalized that not even the Director himself knew every operation they were involved in. Also the Agency had a long history of engaging in the drug and arms trade. Not so much now but going all the way back to the Vietnam War. Nowadays they were very careful to maintain a plausible deniability for any illegal operations like that. I just needed to make our shipments look like one of those operations and then shine the right amount of publicity on it. For that all I needed was to find the right wildcard at the Agency.

  William Hunt was a rather infamous field agent for the CIA. He had an illustrious career until forced to retired from the agency in 2008. His involvement in the Nicaraguan Contras' cocaine trafficking operations during the 1980s Nicaraguan civil war became public then. His key involvement in how the Agency financed the Contra group revolutionaries with the drug trade made him a liability. They put him out to pastor and removed his involvement from all the Agency’s more accessible records. He died last year at the ripe old age of 93 without any family left behind.

  After his death a Cayman island back account with over 20 million and his name on it came to light. The Department of the Treasury got involved and after some investigating tracked a history of payments and withdrawals going all the way back to the 1980s. Some of the transfers could be traced to known Contra groups from back then but the most recent was couple were from the Hawk Habitat company in Panama. An official call to that company requesting a reason for the payments got the response that they should contact the CIA. The Treasury Department had a long history of working with the CIA so a general request was put in to them about the account and the deceased agent.

  Analysis for the Agency working the request quickly found an old operations file that was never been closed indicating the agency was provided smuggling assistance for criminal groups there wanting to get their cargo though the canal. In return for money and information the assistance was provided. Agent Hunt was listed as the agent in charge with a link back to the original 1980’s Contra operation. With the Treasury Department now getting more and more curious about the operation Director Ratbourn decided to just bury the whole thing. The Agency was ordered to stop all operations with the different groups involved and to scrub Agent Hunts file on it. A simple thing to do with Agent Hunt deceased and the only other agent tied to the group Agent Barker being suspended. Of course a couple of stories about the operation did make it to the ears of the groups spying on our shipments. They both decided to give Hawk Habitats a wide berth just in case.