No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) by Randall Farmer

not public public, but I’m going to formally let the Network know my lair is in the greater San Francisco area and that I’m open for business again.”
    “Ma’am, aren’t you worried about the Feds?” Tiamat said.
    “Damn straight I’m worried, scag,” the Skinner said.  “But I can’t do anything about it in secret with you two hanging around here and watching my every move.”  She paused.  “I expect that my attention attracting device will work, I’ll get Feds and Chimeras on my case, and I’ll have to move territories at least once before this is over.  But I think going public will be worth it.  It might give me a much better idea of which Focuses are out to get me, for instance.”
    “What’s my role in this to be, ma’am?” Tiamat said.
    “I want you to organize us an army,” the Skinner said.  “I want it ready by this time next year, or sooner if possible.”  Tiamat paled.  “Step one for you is to finish recovering, which you have to do under any circumstances.  Step two would be to secure yourself a new territory.  Then the army.”  She paused.  “Scratch that.  There’s no need for you to turn down recruits during the first two steps if they walk across your path.”
    “Ma’am,” Tiamat said, her voice actually shaky.  “How big an army?  What sort of army?”
    “I want 40 to 60 real recruits and a lot of stooges, perhaps as many as a thousand.  The real recruits need to be people tied to you who won’t betray you, even by accident.  The stooges need to be in small groups, so we can use them as needed, in small numbers.  The stooges shouldn’t even know we exist.  Remember how you were betrayed in Chicago.”
    “Ma’am, actually, I don’t.”  Gilgamesh had to turn away, the ache in his gut consuming his entire self.  Carol had been through so much, and it took so much for even an echo of her Tiamat self to shine through.
    The Skinner sighed.  “One of your loose recruits, Pete Sanchek, had been trolling your assumed name around in the underbelly of the Chicago police department and telling them you could turn into a demon.  He finally got the ear of an FBI Agent serving as liaison, who recognized the ‘turn into a demon’ as the Arm predator effect.”
    “Ma’am.  I should have killed him.”
    “Killed him or fully broken him to your service.  Live and learn; do better next time,” the Skinner said.  “Understand that if things worked normally you would have, at worst, been forced to flee Chicago with your tail between your legs, giving me a good belly laugh.  As it was, only three hours passed between Sanchek’s chat with the FBI Agent and the first boots on the ground in Skokie.”
    Gilgamesh goggled.  He knew the attack had happened fast, but three hours was insane.  “Then Officer Canon must be a real police officer or federal agent.  I’m going to have to check out the FBI, dammit.”
    His comment caught both Arms by surprise.  “Kiddo, I think you’re going to solve this,” the Skinner said to him.  “You’ve got the right sort of mind for this kind of work.”  Keaton paused.  “So, who wants to hear about my swamp?”
     
    Carol Hancock: April 17, 1968
    Keaton leaned back in her chair and studied the night sky.  I had no idea what Keaton wanted or where she was going with her ‘swamp’ comment.  This whole situation bothered the hell out of me, for no good reason.  “I transformed five years ago; today marks the five year anniversary of the start of my stay at the James Mead Transform Sanitarium in upstate New York,” Keaton said.  She had never before spoken of her past.  I drank this up like a thousand page page-turner novel, instantly forgetting all my worries.  “Before Mead, the Feds held me for a week in a now defunct Transform Transfer Center in Westchester County, run by the Communicable Disease Center, what they called the CDC back then.”
    President Johnson, as part of his Great Society, had