Читать книгу Decision Point - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

Bolan sat on the bed, looking through the intelligence that Brognola had sent to his handheld computer. What they had so far was pretty minimal. Heather Daniels had been en route to Port Blair on a supply ship with a bunch of other missionaries, and they’d left out of Singapore. But there was a lot of water between those two points and hundreds of places to hide. He replayed the audio from the call.

Daniels’s voice didn’t waver as she spoke, but the tension in her tone spoke volumes as the fear behind the words resonated from the recording. The man who made the ransom demand, on the other hand, didn’t sound rattled or tense at all. He was direct and matter-of-fact and the forceful slap had likely come from someone else, not the man speaking. He also wondered what the audio techs might be able to pick up from the background once they’d had time to dissect the whole recording. Bolan checked the time and decided that Brognola was likely still at his office.

He picked up his phone and dialed the number from memory.

“It’s me,” he said when the big Fed answered.

“Let me turn on the scrambler. Done. Have you had a chance to review everything we’ve got so far?”

“I have,” Bolan said. “It’s not much to go on. Once we have everything that we need, Heather Daniels is likely to be dead if she isn’t already.”

“Agreed, but we’re working on it. We have come up with a theory that might fit.”

“Let’s hear it,” Bolan said.

“We’ve got an intelligence report on the region that mentions rumors that the KP Branch of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil have reformed in that part of the world.”

“The LTTE?” he mused. KP Branch was the group’s nickname, taken from the initials of its top operative, Kumaran Pathmanathan. “I thought the Sri Lankan government had finally put an end to those guys.”

“That’s the common belief,” he said. “But this group, calling themselves the Ocean Tigers, is operating a lot more like a military than a bunch of pirates. They’re organized, efficient and deadly. Their tactics are way too familiar.”

Bolan considered the information briefly. “It fits,” he agreed. “Do you have anything else on them?”

“Nothing concrete, but if this is the LTTE back in action, then you’re heading into a hell of a hot zone. They’ve always been the real deal, and if this is a reformation of the KP Branch, there’s even more going on beneath the surface than just piracy.”

“Interesting,” Bolan said. “What do we know about this KP Branch?”

“They were pretty secretive and mostly dealt with weapons smuggling, explosives and dual-use technology. They wreaked havoc in that part of the world for a long time, and destabilizing the government was their specialty. Supposedly they went out of business when their leader was arrested. It’s the dual-use tech that worries me.”

“What do you think they might be after? Civilian stuff with military applications?”

“That’s the most likely scenario,” Brognola said. “So maybe someone stepped into the role of leader and is taking them in this new direction. We just don’t know precisely what that direction is or who the man running the organization might be, but I do know that they can be formidable and if they are setting their sights on political captives their appetite has gotten a little bigger.”

“At least it’s a place to start,” Bolan said. “Do you have anything else for me?”

“One thing,” he said. “But I’m reluctant to mention it, since I know you’re already reluctant. It’s about the woman, Agent Michelle Peterson.”

“What about her?”

“She wasn’t lying when she said she did field ops for the CIA and the NSA, but she ended up getting pulled from the field toward the end of President Daniels’s last term. It was only his intervention that got her a spot on his personal detail.”

“Why was she pulled?” Bolan asked.

“She had a mission go bad. Really bad. She was working a case in Libya and was taken. They held her and tortured her for two months. When she finally got out of there, it was six months before she could walk again. They wanted to retire her, but the President intervened and she ended up assigned to him. According to her file, she was diagnosed with severe PTSD.”

“That’s not all that surprising, considering what happened to her,” Bolan said. “Not many people can live through a situation like that without problems.”

“That’s true,” Brognola said. “But I wanted you to know. Despite the fact that he’s no longer in office, President Daniels has an enormous amount of influence with the current administration, and he and this woman are obviously close. And she might be unstable. If something goes wrong, it could come back and bite us right on the ass. I tried to talk him into letting you go this alone, but he wants someone who is interested in his daughter’s safety and will make it a priority. He knows that any other operative will put the mission first and he wants to make certain that his daughter isn’t collateral damage. He can talk a big game about her not being the objective, but I guarantee that she is Agent Peterson’s objective.”

Bolan sighed. “We’ll just have to hope she’s tough enough to handle it,” he said. “I prefer to work alone, but the President insisted, so I’ll just have to make the best of it. I can always find a convenient place to stick her if she becomes too big of a problem and then deal with Daniels later.”

“It’s your mission, Striker, but taking her into the field might be a good way to get yourself—or her—killed. I’ve never been willing to lose an operative to satisfy the politicians, even the President.”

“I appreciate the heads-up and I’ll let you know if things are becoming problematic. You’ll get back to me with any additional intelligence? We need to get moving on this quickly if Heather has any chance of coming out of this at all.”

“I should have more for you in a few hours,” he said.

“Thanks, Hal. We’ll talk soon.”

Bolan clicked End on his cell phone and flipped back through the file one more time. There were things he would need in country and even more than usual if he couldn’t convince Peterson to stay in the States and provide support. He knew she wouldn’t, just as she likely knew he’d try anyway.

Bolan wasn’t a sexist. He’d met any number of women capable of doing good work in the field. It was never a question in his mind of capability, except on an individual level, and it had nothing to do with gender. But in his experience, a woman in the field could be distracting, and in a situation that was personal—as it was in this case—a person was less likely to make objective decisions and that almost always ended badly. Bolan knew that he personally operated most effectively when he worked solo, pulling support from individuals in the area who could serve as resources to the needs of the mission at that particular moment, rather than dealing with the complexities of a partner or a full team.

He pulled out his laptop and booted the system. After going through the installed security protocols, including thumbprint and retinal scans, he opened his contacts folder and began to search through them. One name came to the top of the list, but Bolan almost groaned aloud at the thought of dealing with this man. Still, Bashir Faizal, for all his flaws, was as good as money could buy and in this case, it might not cost him anything.

Bolan picked up his phone and began to dial. Bashir’s resource phone, as he called it, required a password. When Bolan heard the tones he dialed the password and waited as the call rerouted. He got an answer after two rings.

“This is Bashir.”

“Hello, Bashir. Matt Cooper.”

“Ah…my old friend! Long time. Who can I help you blow up today?”

“Well, I hadn’t planned on blowing up that drug boat, but who would have thought they booby-trapped their own stash?”

Faizal laughed. “I told you they would,” he said. “Remember?”

“I remember,” he said dryly. “Are you ever going to let it go?”

“Same old Cooper, no sense of humor for these things,” he said. “All right, I’ll let it go for now. How can I help you? I still owe you for saving my life.”

“You owe me twice, as I recall,” Bolan said.

“You only risked yourself one time for me, my friend. The other time you were saving your own skin and I got to tag along.”

“Fair enough. I’m putting together an op in that part of the world, somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, if my intelligence holds up. Hostage rescue.”

“The Bay is bad news, Cooper. The word is that the Ocean Tigers are prowling those waters these days and they aren’t like normal pirates.”

“Who are the Ocean Tigers?”

“I don’t really know who they are—no one does—but I do know that they are a patch of bad that you don’t want to get pricked by.”

“Are they the kidnapping kind?”

“They have ransomed some. But if it’s them, then you may just as well save yourself the trouble of coming. Decent pirates treat their prisoners like they would treasure, because this is how they make their money. The Tigers, they only ransom a handful of their prisoners, and then they still play games, making people pay and pay. The rest they toy with, making demands no one can meet, then executing them as some kind of political statement. Military and law enforcement ignore them because they’re too dangerous to tangle with and have too much money. Not like the Somali pirates at all.”

“Hence the need for an operation, Bashir. I’m going in before they have an opportunity to execute this particular hostage.”

“Does this one hold state secrets or something? Diplomat’s daughter?”

“Bashir, I’m about to change the operation target to you.”

“Fine, fine, what do you need?” he asked. “If it’s not too outrageous, you’ll get it.”

“I’ll get everything I need because your life—twice—has to be worth at least that,” he growled.

Faizal laughed again, and agreed to get him whatever he needed.

Bolan ran through his list and hung up the phone with Faizal before he could ask him more questions. He picked up Daniels’s picture and ran his finger along the side of it again. He couldn’t put his finger on why this mission was nagging at him until he thought about how much Peterson cared about the young woman. He sighed as he put the picture down.

Emotions got a person killed; he’d seen it time and again. He pulled his Desert Eagle out of its holster, popped out the clip and worked the slide, ejecting the bullet from the chamber. As the bullet popped into the air, he reached out and snatched it, smiling.

Maybe he was just fast enough to save them all.

THE POUNDING ON THE DOOR came earlier than Bolan had expected. He glanced at the glowing lights of the clock brightly telling him that it was a mere 4:30 a.m. He rolled off the bed and didn’t bother putting on a shirt to go with blue Navy SEAL sweatpants. He glanced through the peephole, but knew before he looked that it would be Peterson. She was motivated, he’d give her that, and he wondered if she’d slept at all.

He pulled open the door, the bright light from the hallway spilling into his dark hotel room.

“It’s about time, Colonel Stone,” she said as she marched past him and into his room. “Though I expected a military man like yourself to be dressed and ready to roll by this hour.”

He smiled at the Secret Service light outfit. Black slacks, black dress boots with a two-inch heel and a dark blue long-sleeved shirt. He had yet to meet a Secret Service agent who didn’t look proper all of the time, and he couldn’t help but notice that she filled out her clothes in all the right places.

Bolan ran a hand through his hair and walked over to the coffeemaker in his room. He could hear her pacing behind him and smiled to himself as he filled the reservoir and pressed the start button.

“We don’t really have time to mess around,” Peterson said.

“Are there armed gunmen coming down the hall?” he asked quietly.

“No.”

“Bomb in the building and it’s about to go off?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“Then we have time for coffee,” he said.

He watched as she sat primly on the edge of the small love seat. He sat in the high-backed chair next to her and propped a foot up on the coffee table, rocked his head back and closed his eyes. He smiled again when she let out a long sigh.

“Listen, I hate to wake you, but I’ve got the information that we really need, and I can get us on a flight out of the country in an hour. I already have my cover documents and alternate identification. I just need to know if I’m getting cover documents for you, as well. And I have the latest intelligence from the State Department. But we have to hurry to make the flight.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes just yet.

“Yes, we do. I talked to the pilot on my way over. He wasn’t happy about being woken at this hour, but he owes me a favor.”

“I wasn’t talking about the flight. I have no doubt that you could have Marine One on top of this hotel in thirty minutes if you put your mind to it. I meant that you don’t hate waking me or you would have waited for the sun to rise before trying to save the world.”

She stared at him in disbelief. Her face flushed and she pulled together her purse and the stack of documents that she’d sat on the table.

“I told the President that I should go this mission alone. I should have just left without you last night…” she muttered.

Bolan reached out his hand, catching her by surprise, and pulled her back down to the love seat. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled her hand away.

“Hold on, Michelle, and take a deep breath. I haven’t seen your intel and whether you like it or not, I’m not going to go charging off into Malaysia until I’m certain of my target. That’s not the part of the world where going in unprepared will serve you. Why don’t we start with what you’ve got so far?”

She relaxed slightly and opened one of the file folders. “The local government there is still trying to get their legs after putting down the LTTE. With such a diverse population and the influences from India and the other Asian nations, they fight to hold on to what they have, so we don’t believe that there is any official government agency involved. They’d like that influx of cash, but aren’t prepared to have the Western world descend on their doorstep with this kind of action. The best lead we’ve got is a new pirating operation going by the name of the Ocean Tigers,” she began, but he cut her off.

“That’s our best lead, too, at the moment, but it’s not enough.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I spoke with some of my contacts. This Ocean Tigers group is hard-core and what I’m hearing is that if they are the ones that have Heather, it’s possible they’ll collect the ransom and kill her anyway. Worse, no one knows where their base of operations is located. The best resources in the area are hard-pressed to keep track of anything with the ever-changing political climate. For all we know it’s a dissenting faction of the government trying to wrest control and install a new leader. If we charge in there without knowing everything we can then we’re likely to get a lot of people killed, including us.”

She nodded, but didn’t show any other reaction to that news. Bolan was pleased that she didn’t respond and appeared to be taking the information in and processing it. Too much emotion in a situation like this would be deadly to them both and probably Daniels, too. If she couldn’t keep it together he would have to find a way to ditch her and go in alone. It was really his preferred method, anyway. It was tough enough to watch his own six without needing to watch someone else’s.

“You seem pretty gung ho to leave here, so where is it you intend to go?”

“Same as you do with any missing persons case—where she was last seen. Singapore. You’re shaking your head, you disagree? I don’t want the trail to get cold.”

“The trail is already cold. If that’s all we can come up with, then we could start out that broadly, but that’s like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. And Singapore is a cesspit. We’re doing some additional digging, and I want to see what that intelligence tells us. If it really is a branch of the LTTE, we’ll have a better chance of finding them if we can follow the money than we will just wandering around the Bay of Bengal and hoping we find the right island.”

“But you don’t know that the LTTE has anything to do with the Ocean Tigers,” she objected.

“I don’t know enough to think it is or isn’t anyone. I don’t have enough information to make a conclusion, but I’ve been doing this a lot of years and know to trust my gut. If their financials are barely there, then we know they don’t have the money for this kind of operation that the Ocean Tigers are running, and we’re dealing with another group. On the other hand, if their previous supporters are starting to shell out serious dough, we can look deeper.”

“According to the State Department, there are dozens of piracy operations running in that part of the world,” she admitted. “You’re right. We don’t want to end up in the wrong snake pit. Heather doesn’t have that kind of time and neither do we if these guys are planning more serious action.”

“Exactly,” he said. “We’ve got to be methodical about this or the whole mission will come crashing down around us. I know that time is critical for Heather, but the reality is we need to be more concerned about squashing any terror plots that they might be hatching.”

“Still, given how many groups there are, why are you focusing on this group?”

“This feels too well organized and finessed,” he said. “We already know that the Cayman account they want the money sent to is totally blind. A cover company for a cover for another cover, at least. Most of the groups working over there just aren’t set up that well and it doesn’t fit the typical pattern.”

“Agreed,” she finally said. “I just hate feeling this helpless. Heather is a…she’s a fine young woman. The thought of what might be happening to her turns my stomach. I know that the mission is more, but I want to get her back.”

“We’ll have to hope she’s got some of her father’s fight in her,” he said. “So, if you don’t mind, I’ll get dressed and we’ll go have some breakfast. We can review everything you’ve got and maybe by then I’ll have heard some more from Hal. Between us, maybe we can narrow things down a little.”

Bolan watched as skepticism, reluctance and finally acceptance crossed over her face.

“Okay, but I’m driving.”