Two Mercs: Part Eighteen - Enter the Vixens

A pair of young women were lying on the deck of a yacht's forecastle, enjoying the feel of the warm Mediterranean sun on their bikini-clad bodies. One, a willowy brunette called Cassandra Valentine, sleepily lifted her head at the sound of approaching feet.
"What is it Avril?"
The named woman stopped at the base of the steps leading onto the forecastle, a look of confusion flashing across her face.
"How'd you know it was me?"
"Didn't hear Heidi come down from the wheel."
Avril glanced back towards the aftcastle, shaking her head upon seeing the fourth member of the squad standing there.
"Has she moved at all?"
"No. Now what do you want?"
Both Cassandra and Avril looked over at the other sunbather, the woman now propped up on her elbows and glaring at them.
"I got a hit. The… uh… Venice Appreciation Society."
Cassandra frowned and started to get to her feet, snatching her bikini-top from the deck.
"Let's go tell Heidi then. She's the one you should have spoken to."

The imposing woman at the helm glanced at the pair as they climbed up towards her. Heidi McLaren was a veteran of the Victoria's Vixens mercenary group, one of the first hired after its founding, and her simple glance was enough to make Avril slow her pace.
"A hit?"
Cassandra nodded after a moment and gently pushed Avril up a couple of stairs.
"Someone on the internet was snooping around a group called the Venice Appreciation Society."
"VAS." Heidi rested her hands on the yacht's wheel. "What have our own trawlers uncovered about them?"
"There's a large number of accounts sending money in, enough to make the surface-level check make you think it's from members, but once you investigate those accounts you find them being supplied by their own set of accounts."
"Have you found an endpoint?"
Avril shook her head, having got into her element as the squad's computer expert.
"Not yet. Every account seems to spawn a dozen more and some of them are dead-ends, collecting money from siphon programs."

After Heidi had summoned Seluna from the forecastle the four women gathered within the bedroom. A diagram map had been drawn on several pieces of paper, displaying one of the money trails that fed into the Venice Appreciation Society.
"This is an example of the trail feeding into the VAS. I've also run checks on any other accounts these interact with." Avril circled three. "These feed into other…"
"Other groups whose initials are VAS?"
Heidi smiled as Avril nodded in response to Selune's question.
"That's right. I'm running a program that'll cross-reference emails of the members with known members of the cells we've identified."
When Avril paused Heidi pushed herself up from the bed she'd been sitting on, turning to look at each of her squad.
"We're returning to Gibraltar right now. Avril, keep working on your programs, and Cassandra, I want you to identify whoever it was that tripped our watch-program. Selune, you'll take over at the helm in four hours."