Sean straightened his tie and tried to smooth his rumpled suit with his hands. He popped a couple of mints in his mouth to mask the odor of whiskey, and walked into Anna Gutierrez's office.
Heavy drinking had almost gotten him ousted from the FBI years ago. Even after several rehabilitation attempts, he could not stop drinking completely. Now the FBI was giving him a last chance. This newly formed unit was designed to fight environmental crime, the latest threat to national security.
"Good morning, Mr. Ryan," said Gutierrez.
"Good Morning, Ma'am," mumbled Sean.
"I called you here to brief you on your new assignment as a special agent assigned to the Environmental Crimes Unit."
"A job for women," Sean uttered quietly, but his annoyed superior heard him.
"Mr. Ryan, this unit needs your expertise. I urge you to treat this assignment with the same professionalism you demonstrated in all of your prior assignments. Environmental crime is..."
"A lot of sitting around waiting to catch midnight dumpers of leftover paint!" interrupted Sean. "Mrs. Gutierrez," pleaded Sean, "I don't know if this assignment is right for..."
"Mr. Ryan, you are obviously underestimating the true dangers of environmental crime to our country. You will learn that this criminal element is just as insidious as all the others are, and the damage is more widespread. A cocaine addict may have a choice to get that first fix. A victim of toxic poisoning will suffer for years with health problems, pain, even cancer, but he or she never chose to take the poison. This stuff gets into kids and robs them of their childhood and robs parents of a chance to see their children grow up." Mrs. Gutierrez took a deep steadying breath to hide her tears. "Do you think it's a waste of your time Mr. Ryan? If you do, there's the door, and you can keep on walking, out of this organization!" Agitated and angry, she waited to gain her composure, before continuing.
"I lost a child to leukemia five years ago, Mr. Ryan, thanks to the poisons dumped in the ground many years ago. Contractors falsified records to get their building permits. No one asked and no one cared. We lived over that filth for two years before our first child developed the disease. Homes were abandoned and the site still isn't cleaned up. The lawyers keep shifting the blame back and forth. The original polluters, who dumped those toxins legally, are long gone. Contractors closed their shop. However, the creosote in the soil was not the only thing in our backyards; it wasn't concentrated enough to cause severe illness. Those poisons came later.
