PRIMAL Reckoning (Book 1 in the Redemption Trilogy, the PRIMAL Series Book 5) (12 page)
Read PRIMAL Reckoning (Book 1 in the Redemption Trilogy, the PRIMAL Series Book 5) Online
Authors: Jack Silkstone
CHAPTER 12
“No, sir, but they’ll keep looking.”
It was late and he knew if they hadn’t
found the truck by now it wasn’t going to happen. “Forget it. Call them off.”
He pulled his satellite phone from his
jacket and dialed King’s number as they pulled up at the sheds. The CEO of the
security company answered in two rings. “Burning the midnight oil, huh, George.
What’s going on?”
“The guy
with the journalist in New York. By any chance was he about five-eleven, well-built,
and wearing a Yankees cap?”
“That’s
him. Why? Don’t tell me he’s turned up in Mexico.”
“He sure has.
Are we any closer to finding out who he is?”
“Not yet.
We’re chasing down the UN angle but it looks like it’s fake. From the way he
worked over our boys he’s got to be former military, maybe a security
contractor. He’s not government or we’d know by now.”
“We just caught
one of the local resistance guys so I might have more for you by morning.”
“OK, I’ll
pass that on. You need anything?”
“Yes, sir.
I want to request extra support through our man in the CIA. Another two hundred
grand would be useful in case he needs more motivation.”
“I’ll
have it transferred to your operations account.”
“And I’ll
let you know what I turn up.”
“Good. If
you need tactical support let me know. I can have Team 2 down there within seventy-two
hours.”
“Will do,
have a good evening, sir.” Pershing terminated the call and hopped out of the vehicle.
Burro was waiting. The cartel killer had a bandage taped to his cheek and wore
a scowl.
“Mr.
Pershing, have you found out who that bastard is yet?” he asked as Pershing
joined him under the florescent lights.
“Not yet.
Let’s ask our new friend.”
A tractor started its engine, catching their
attention. The bright green John Deere drove in through the sliding doors with
the bucket high. The captured youth hung upside down from the bucket with his
hands tied behind his back.
“Well isn’t
that just the prettiest sight.” The tractor came to a halt in the middle of the
shed. “All trussed up like a hog.”
The teenager’s
eyes fluttered opened and he moaned.
“Burro,
did you bandage his wounds?”
“Yes, Mr.
Pershing.”
“Good, we
don’t want him bleeding out anytime soon.” Pershing opened the trunk of the Chevy
and prepared himself an espresso. A minute later he walked to the tractor,
glass in hand. “
Hola!
” He raised the coffee
in a mock salute.
The captive’s
eyes were wide.
“What’s
your name, boy?”
“Cccccarlos,”
he stuttered.
Pershing
sipped from the coffee. “Listen, son, I’m not a violent man. All I want is some
information. If you tell me what you know, I’ll let you go. Do you understand?”
Carlos
nodded.
“The
journalist, she had a friend. Who is he?”
“I, I, I
don’t know. Some guy from the UN.”
Pershing
took another sip. “Does he have a name?”
“Aden,
his name is Aden.” The boy sobbed.
“Just
Aden?”
“That’s
all I know. I promise.”
“Do you know why Aden is here?”
Carlos shook
his head. “No, he never said.”
He finished
his coffee. “Are you lying to me, Carlos?”
“No, no,
I promise, I’m not lying.”
“The
farmer, Roberto, what’s he planning?”
“I don’t
know. I promise, I don’t know.”
He stepped
closer. Their noses were almost touching. He smelled the chili on the kid’s breath.
“Carlos, do you know what that sick fuck, Burro, is going to do to you if you
don’t tell me the truth?”
Mucus
bubbled from the boy’s mouth as he sobbed.
“He’s
going to slice around your middle and pull your skin over your head. Then he’s
going to tie it with a piece of wire and you’re going to suffocate slowly, in
your own skin.”
The youth
made a feeble noise. It reminded Pershing of the bleat of a wounded deer.
“They
want to blow something up at the mine. Stop the digging and the mine will
close.”
“When?”
Carlos
shook his head and a fleck of mucus landed on Pershing’s jacket. “I don’t know,
soon. They will go soon. The woman needs photos before she leaves.”
Pershing
took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the snot from his suit. “Thank
you for your cooperation, Carlos.” He walked back to the Chevy punching
Howard’s number into his phone.
“Do you
know what time it is?” the CIA analyst whined when he picked up.
“Time for
you to do some goddamn work,” Pershing snapped.
“Hey man,
I’m at home.”
“Then you
better get your ass back to the office. I want you to access the C4I4 footage
and find that damn journalist. She was in town earlier today with a guy wearing
a Yankees cap. He’s going by the name Aden and I need to know everything about
him.”
“Is it an
emergency? I can pull up the footage tomorrow.”
“Yes,
it’s an emergency. This Aden guy beat seven shades of shit out of our boys in
New York. Now he’s with the journalist and a bunch of dirt farmers who are
trying to work out how to shut down the mine. Run him through the database and
put him on your target deck. We need to shut him down.”
“Yeah, no
worries, man. I’ll just call my buddies at Homeland Security and borrow a
couple of surveillance birds. Maybe they’ll throw in a SEAL Team as well.”
“You done?”
Howard stayed
silent.
“Good.
There’s a ten K bonus for every day you get a dedicated line of
Pred
.”
Howard
gave a low whistle. “Now we’re talking. I’ll see what I can do. You got a
preference for day or night?”
“Night
coverage, my boys can handle it by day.”
“You got
any threat reporting I can use to sell this?”
“Course I
do, the guy with the journalist. I think he’s some kind of environmental
terrorist. Probably looking to abduct American workers from the mine, or worse
still, blow it up. I’ll let you fill in the details.”
“Details?
Man, that’s going to cost you an extra ten grand.”
“Fine,
just make it happen. Send me everything you’ve got on our Person of Interest.”
“Will
do.”
“Have a
lovely evening.” Pershing hung up. He contemplated another espresso but thought
better of it. He wanted a good night’s sleep.
“Mr.
Pershing, what do you want us to do with him?” Burro asked.
He
knocked the grounds out of the coffee machine’s group head onto the floor and ran
the machine through. “Make an example of him. You people seem to be pretty good
at that.”
He finished
packing and got into his SUV as Burro and his boys lowered their victim to the
ground. They untied his chains from the bucket of the tractor and looped them
over the tow ball on the back of a pickup. He started screaming and Pershing
pulled the heavy door shut to block out the noise.
A moment
later Burro hopped into the Chevy and they drove out of the shed onto the dirt
road. The truck dragging Carlos followed. It was twenty-five miles to the mine.
Pershing guessed the kid would last one at most. By the time they hit five
miles his body would be a grubby piece of meat bouncing along the road. He
sighed. These people were savages.
***
FORT BLISS, TEXAS
Howard took a sip from his drink as he
zoomed in on a recording of her walking away. She was wearing tight-fitting
jeans and her butt looked awesome. He took a screenshot and hit print.
Scanning
through the footage, he found the guy who was travelling with her, Aden. He was
tall with an athletic frame, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a casual jacket. Some
kind of ex-military jock, Howard thought. He was probably already in her pants.
He edged
the recording forward frame by frame until he had the best shot of Aden’s face.
He had aviator sunglasses on and a baseball cap. That was going to make facial
recognition difficult. Still, it was worth a try. He exported the clearest
image to his desktop. He opened a CIA database and imported the picture.
While he
waited for the software to analyze the image he walked across to the printer
station and picked up the screenshot of the journalist. As he waddled back to
his desk he smiled. He was going to take some of Pershing’s bonus to Vegas and
find an ass like this in one of the strip clubs. A fist full of cash would make
it his for the night.
A beep
from his computer interrupted the sordid fantasy. He sat and checked the
results of the search. “What the hell?” The database had returned over five
thousand hits.
Howard
opened the sorting parameters and tried to find one that might narrow it down.
Under key words he entered Aden, terrorism, military, and environment. That
left him with five results. He checked them but none looked like his man. He
deleted Aden and searched again. Twenty hits. A couple of guys looked similar
but nothing definitive. He deleted environmental; three hundred hits. “You
shitting me!” It was going to be a long night.
He
decided to check the unknown results first, in case Aden had been caught on
camera but never identified. It was a smart move; within seven images he
thought he had a match.
The image
was from Kiev, Ukraine, in 2012. It had been shared by the Ukrainian Security
Service as part of a counter-terrorism cooperation program. According to the
metadata, the single shot was from a terrorist attack on a nightclub. It was
grainy, and at a bad angle, but to a trained eye the guy was almost certainly the
same person. This time, however, he was wearing a chest-rig over his civilian
clothes and carrying a suppressed submachine gun. A tall blonde man in a
similar outfit stood next to him wielding a larger belt-fed weapon.
Howard
shook his head and scratched down some notes. There was no way these guys were
terrorists, he thought. They were more like well-resourced Tier-1 operators. He
recognized both the weapons carried. The
HK MP7
was a favorite of
DEVGRU
,
as was the
MK48 machine gun
.
He
checked the data associated with the image. There was nothing else on file. Not
even a police report. He dragged the image into PowerPoint, and added the
original picture from Mexico. He looked around, double-checking to see if
anyone was in the office. It was well past midnight and the room was empty. He
took a photo with his cell phone and emailed it to Pershing’s private account
with a few notes. After that he opened a CIA report template and started fabricating
a document to convince Homeland Security to approve a line of surveillance from
one of their Predator drones. His chubby fingers danced over the keyboard as he
typed the title of the report.
Militant
Environmentalist Planning To Strike US Mine in Chihuahua.
CHAPTER
13
LASCAR ISLAND
In the last six months they’d enabled PRIMAL
operatives to target sex trafficking in two countries, and brought an end to a
civil war. Not a bad effort for a small intelligence cell, he thought. Still,
working in an underground bunker was a little depressing. He decided he needed
to go topside for a few hours off. A bit of mountain biking on a few of the
trails and a swim would help reinvigorate him.
He left
his desk and crossed the operations room, glancing at the huge screens bolted
to the bare rock wall. He stopped in front of the personnel tracker. It showed
the location of all of the PRIMAL operatives, each with their own icon. There
was a dumbbell for Mitch in Alaska, a flower in Indonesia for Saneh, and a
smiley face in New York where Mirza was. A chess piece was located in Northern Mexico;
Bishop. He turned to the watchkeeper manning the operations desk. “Frank, is
there some sort of glitch with the tracker?”
The
former Para officer checked his computer. “No mate, I’ve got green lights
across the board.”
“Then why
is Bishop in Mexico?”
Frank
shook his head. “Not sure, I figured he might have headed down for some sun.
Or, it might be linked to the work Flash did for Mirza. Something about a fake
online profile and phone hack.”
“Tell me
this has something to do with the journalist?”
Frank
shrugged. “Beyond me, boss. All I know is they were investigating a mining
company and some kind of corporate fund.”
Chua
rolled his eyes. “You give that guy one job, one damn job. Frank, can you get
hold of Bishop and patch it through to Vance’s office.”
“No
problem. I haven’t gotten them in trouble, have I?”
“No,
Bishop’s proven more than capable of doing that by himself.” He spun on his
heel and strode to the office of PRIMAL’s Director of Operations. He rapped his
knuckles on the opaque glass door and pushed it open. Vance was not at his
desk.
“Hello,
Chua,” a deep voice sounded from the behind the door.
He pushed
it open to find the PRIMAL director reclining in his leather armchair with a
book. On the side table sat a steaming mug.
The bull-headed
African American took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his
nose. “What can I do for you?”
“Sorry to
interrupt, Vance. I wanted to know if you knew anything about Bishop being in
Mexico.”
Vance’s
eyes narrowed. “Mexico?”
“That’s
what his iPRIMAL’s saying. I’ve got the watchkeeper tracking him down.”
The phone
on Vance’s desk started ringing.
“That
should be him.”
“Put it
on speaker.”
Chua pressed
answer. “Bish, this is Chua. Vance is also here.”
“Hi guys.
I’m guessing this isn’t a welfare call.” Bishop’s voice sounded distant.
“No it’s
not. You’re a little further south than we originally discussed. You better
just be buying Tequila and fireworks,” Vance said.
“I can
explain.”
Vance
raised one of his eyebrows and Chua shook his head. “Is this linked to the journalist?”
“Yes, I
met her like Chua wanted. The good news is she’s not anywhere close to compromising
PRIMAL.”
“And the
bad news?” asked Vance.
“The bad
news is she was attacked by a bunch of thugs. Security contractors. I stepped
in and–”
“And then
you chased the rabbit down the hole,” said Vance.
“She’s on
to something big. The guys who attacked us in New York are linked to some kind
of dodgy security company with ties to a private equity fund.”
“How does
that link to Mexico?” asked Chua.
“The PE
also has ties to a company called Resources and Environmental Development Group.
They’re running a big mine down here in Chihuahua. Chua’s journalist was
investigating them for running farmers off their land.”
Chua
muted their end of the call. “They’ve already done some digging into these
guys. Mirza’s been posing as an Indian mining developer.”
“They
don’t mess about do they?” Vance gave him a nod and he un-muted the call. “Have
you been able to verify any of her claims yet?”
“Sort
of.”
“Sort of?
What does that mean?”
“We hit
the ground earlier today and linked up with a local activist group.”
“And?”
“And then
we were attacked.”
“Attacked?
By who?”
“Cartel goons,
they managed to grab one of the activists. These guys weren’t messing around,
Vance. They must have had surveillance on them from the get-go, or maybe they
tailed us from town. I don’t know.”
“And you
think they’re tied in with the mining company?”
“The guy
in charge had US contractor written all over him. Looked like a cowboy, he was
wearing a bloody ten-gallon hat.”
Vance
frowned as he digested the information. “I want you to get everything you can
to Chua’s team. They’re going to chase this down from our end. In the meantime,
I want you out of Mexico.”
“That’s a
bit of a waste, isn’t it? I mean, I’m safe now. We’re switching vehicles as we
speak, then moving to a secure location outside of town. Now that I’m here, I
may as well check out the mine.”
“What do
you think, Chua?”
“So long
as Bishop thinks the risk is acceptable.”
Vance
sighed and got up from his armchair. “OK, get in and do a recon. But I want a
full debrief first and if Chua assesses the risk as too high, then you’re out
of Mexico immediately.”
“Roger.”
“Bish,
I’ll call you back in five.” Chua ended the call.
Vance
reached over and pressed a button on the touch screen behind his desk. He
selected the personnel tracker and studied it. “What do you think, bud? Bish
chasing pussy again?”
“There is
that, but if Mirza’s going along with it they’re probably on to something
significant. I’ll take a close look and get back to you.”
Vance
zoomed in on Bishop’s location. He was on the outskirts of Chihuahua city in what
looked like a car yard. “Have your analysts work up a target pack for presentation
at the board. Look into the security company, the miners, and the fund.”
“Will
do.”
“Oh, and
get Frank to put Mitch on stand-by. If this turns out to be something big,
Bishop will need his support.”
Chua
nodded. “So much for down time. I was going to hit the trails on my bike.”
Vance shrugged.
“Well, I wasn’t enjoying the book anyway. Who needs fiction when real life is this
exciting.”
“Hey, I
need sunlight.”
“How
about you take a day off next week? Get one of the crew to chopper you and your
bike up to the rim of the volcano.”
He grinned.
“That’s not a bad idea. You should come, it’s good exercise.”
“No one
needs to see me in lycra, bud. I’ll be in the squat rack if you need me. Just
try not to break your neck.”
***
ALASKA
He had
joined the musher, led by Sonny, yesterday at checkpoint Kaltag. He’d helped
feed and prepare the dogs before they set out over the 82 miles to the next
checkpoint in Unalakleet.
The dogs
pulled the sled though a thicket of pine trees and down over a frozen creek. As
they slid up the other side the sled hit a rock and flipped over on its side.
Mitch was thrown into a snowdrift.
“Ho, ho,
ho!” yelled Sonny in attempt to get the dogs to stop. He managed to hold on to
the sled as it skidded for another ten yards. “Stay, stay.”
Mitch extricated
himself from the snow and dusted himself off.
“You OK?”
asked Sonny.
“OK? I’m
having a bloody ball, mate.” Mitch collected an armful of equipment that had
been thrown clear.
Sonny
flipped the heavily-laden sled back onto its runners. “This thing is seriously
fast, Mitch. I’d wager we’re in contention for a top-five finish. Can’t thank
you enough for putting it together.”
Mitch had
hand-built the sled from carbon composite and donated it to the musher and his
team. As repayment he’d been invited to join them for a leg of the world’s last
great race. It was something he’d always dreamed of doing.
“I’m just
happy to be a part of it, mate.” He looked up to see the dogs pulling the sled
away. “Although it appears that the team’s off without us.”
Sonny
jumped into action. “Stay, stay!” he yelled as he chased the huskies.
Mitch
grabbed the last of the gear and stumbled after him. He skidded and slid on the
packed snow. “All they want to do is run.”
“That’s
what they’re bred for, eh.”
Mitch
climbed back into his seat at the front of the sled. “Any chance of me standing
at the back later?”
“Sure.
When we get out onto the flats.”
The dogs
started pulling as soon as they heard Sonny’s voice. In a matter of seconds
they hauled the four hundred pound sled back to its cruising speed. They
climbed up a small rise, skirted a rocky outcrop and slid down into a narrow
valley. There was not a cloud in the sky. The air was crisp and dry, the landscape
pristine and untouched. Mitch loved every moment. So much that he almost missed
his iPRIMAL vibrating inside his jacket. He slipped off one of his mitts and
reached inside the heavily insulated parker. The message was short.
Possible
mission pending. Be prepared to extract to NYC at short notice.
New York?
What mischief was Bishop up to? He opened the mapping app. The GPS had his
location as half way between the two checkpoints. At their current speed they
would hit Unalakleet in six hours. In an emergency he could hitch a ride with one
of the Iditarod Air Force planes and get there ahead of time. Then it was still
a six hour flight to New York. He sent a message to the watchkeeper.
Earliest
time of arrival in NYC is 24 hours from now.
He
stuffed the smart device back inside his jacket. Even if they recalled him, he
was still going to get in another six hours of sledding. He smiled; at this
stage, that was all that mattered.
***
NEW YORK CITY
Mirza
left the hotel early, eager to see a few of the city’s sights. A short walk to
Hell’s Kitchen and a climb up a set of wrought iron stairs brought him to the
High Line.
The mile-long
linear park was formerly an elevated train line that shipped freight in and out
of the city. Earmarked for demolition until a group of local residents
successfully lobbied for its development into a public space. Mirza thought the
result was spectacular. He wandered along the narrow walkway enjoying sculptures,
colorful murals, and views over the city streets.
After
half an hour he sat on a bench and spent a few minutes studying the brightly
colored mural on the wall opposite before opening a newspaper. He was dressed
in a threadbare black jacket with brown slacks, and a scruffy tweed paddy cap.
His moustache was gone, replaced by a day’s growth. It was an inconspicuous look,
an off-duty cab driver or a street hawker, another face in a city of eight
million.
He was
waiting for a call from Chua and knew exactly what it was about. The Bunker was
now fully aware of Bishop’s little sojourn down to Mexico. The discreet Bluetooth
earpiece beeped and Mirza rocked his jaw from side to side to answer the call.
“Good Morning, Chua, how are you?”
“I’m good,
thank you. I see you’re out enjoying the fine weather.”
He
smiled. PRIMAL’s intelligence chief was thorough. He would have checked Mirza’s
location indicator, then the local weather. “It’s a beautiful day here.” Mirza
lowered his paper and watched as a fit Asian woman walked past with a pug. The
little animal was wheezing as it pulled frantically at its leash.
