Counter-Strike (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Novel Book 2) (5 page)

Chapter 8

After arriving in Vienna on the Gideon company
jet, Dev had arranged for a Mercedes Benz SUV to be waiting at the airport so
she and Mitch could immediately head to Yin’s location. She didn’t want to
bring an arsenal of weapons with them in case they had to quickly ditch their
gear and flee the estate so she opted for two HK pistols, spare mags, and suppressors.

An hour and a half later, Mitch drove the
rented black SUV along a narrow road until it emerged at the edge of the forest
and a large field. Two hundred yards ahead was a three-story estate where Yin
was supposed to be located based upon the plates of a stolen Land Rover Dev had
been tracking. The spacious grounds looked to be well-maintained under the
moonlight and the opulent home was nestled amongst a backdrop of groomed spruce
trees. There was a single light on in the first-floor window, casting a soft
glow onto the eerie scene of lifeless figures sprinkled around the lawn.

“This looks like the place,” said Dev,
peering through a night vision device at the grassy area near the side
entrance. “I count six men down and a disabled vehicle—quite a party they had
here.”

Mitch approached cautiously in their SUV,
pulling to the right of the Audi. He and Dev quickly exited, their pistols in
hand.

Dev studied the scene, noting the precise
headshots of the deceased and the large caliber entry wounds which had
splintered a few of the skulls.
There appear to be two different groups of
men with some being Caucasian and the others dark-skinned, possibly Filipino.
If I was able to track Yin down then others can do the same. Just a shame they
got here first.

She and Mitch did a quick sweep of the
inside, finding another dead body in a third-floor bedroom. Then they retraced
their steps and scanned the grounds once more. She saw Mitch kneeling down near
a muddy swath of exposed ground beside the door.

“Got something?” she said.

“Mmm…just an unusual boot pattern—the
tread is different from the rest.” He pointed to the zig-zag pattern etched in
the soil. “This reminds me of my old jungle survival boots. I used to refer to
these as Charlie Brown boots because of that design with the Z-pattern.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “Who the hell
is Charlie Brown?”

“It’s an American cartoon with Snoopy,
Pig-Pen, and…” He stopped, shaking his head. “Never mind. It’s hard to
explain.”

Dev rolled her eyes. “So, aside from that
fascinating insight, what can you tell from the tracks?” She watched Mitch as
he got up and followed the boot prints down the driveway with his redbeam
flashlight, stopping abruptly at a thick patch of brush not far from the
treeline.

“Looks like he got in another vehicle and
headed off to the north.” Mitch backtracked towards the estate and examined the
bodies again. He squatted beside one of the men who looked Malaysian. Mitch
shined his flashlight on the face and then down at the hands. “You’re a long
way from home, son.” He noticed a tattoo near the wrist. Sliding up the black
sleeve, he saw a red-and-green tiger on the inner forearm. He bit his lower lip
in faint recognition, trying to recall where he’d seen the image before.

Dev retreated back to their SUV and turned
on her tablet, typing furiously while Mitch got inside and started the engine.

“The only thing of significance in that
direction is the Munich Airport about an hour away from here.”

“She gets on a flight there then we lose
her for good,” said Mitch, backing up the vehicle and following the road out in
the other direction past a small garage. “Only question is: who are the ones
who want her head on a platter—other than me that is?” Then he grew silent,
focusing on the rutted road and wondering if his friend was still alive and what
his connection was to this confusing trail of international breadcrumbs.

Chapter 9

The unmarked helicopter landed in a
cleared field, swirling a micro-tornado of snow and spruce needles amidst the
waiting vehicle that stood at the forest’s edge. Crenna stepped out and
crouch-walked to the brown delivery truck where his field agent Olivia Tandy
was waiting.

Climbing inside, he looked in wonderment
at the shabby interior then into the nervous eyes of his subordinate. Tandy was
a capable agent but she was not a Von Harut and that was always Crenna’s gold
standard for comparing an agent’s relative usefulness.

“There are only eight vehicles on the
entire island and this was the best one,” she said with a forced grin.

“It’ll do. Just take me to the survivor
you said had escaped.”

She looked at the unmarked helicopter and
at the lone pilot inside, giving a surprised look at Crenna, who only ignored
her. Tandy manipulated the manual stick and descended the road that led to the
cabin which had formerly served as Kyle’s operations center.

“The hazmat containment team indicated
that the region is free of the airborne contaminants and the woman that
survived has already been cleared by our medical staff.”

“Good. How many people do you still have
on site?”

“One of our agents is with the woman at
the cabin and the others have already departed.”

“After we’re through here, the proper
European authorities will be notified and this place will be a fuckin’ zoo with
all the bioweapons researchers.”

“How did we get intel on this biological
attack ahead of the virology teams with the Swedish military?” Tandy said as
she brought the truck to a halt at the rear of the cabin.

“A source notified me directly. That’s
what boots on the ground in the war on terror is all about, Tandy.”

They got out of the vehicle and trudged
through the ankle-deep snow, Crenna shaking his lace-up Oxford shoes in irritation
as they reached the porch. He glanced around the area and noticed the silence
draped over the forest and the lack of recent tracks in the snow.

“Have you debriefed the woman yet?” he
said, reaching for the bronze handle of the door.

“Yes, she described the nature of the
biological attack and indicated that there were five men who rented this cabin
during the past two days. She’s in shock at the loss of her friends so I
wouldn’t expect coherent sentences.”

Once they were inside, Crenna pulled up a
chair and sat beside the gray-haired woman with arthritic fingers that were
trembling. His demeanor softened and he spoke with her like she was a beloved
aunt, caressing her furrowed hand and looking into her tear-riddled eyes as she
recounted the horrific events in broken English. Tandy and the other agent, a lean
man named Rawlins, stood in the other room within earshot.

Fifteen minutes later, Crenna stood up and
moved towards his two field agents, nodding for them to join him in the back
room. “Poor woman has been through hell. Not much she could provide about the
men in this cabin who must have initiated the attack though she said one had a
large scar by his right eye.”

“C4 was clearly used on the community
building below from the residue and the blast pattern,” said Rawlins, who had a
bookish demeanor. “The hazmat teams indicated there were probably portable
aerosol devices that dispersed the pathogen through air ducts based upon what
we gleaned from the survivor.”

“Where’s the body you found in here that
you mentioned when we spoke on the phone this morning?” said Crenna, looking at
Tandy.

“He’s in the small bedroom next to the
kitchen.” Tandy led him over to the dead man on the wooden bunk bed. His
bullet-shattered skull was cloaked with a bath towel that was saturated with a
circular bloodstain. Crenna stood beside the corpse, noticing that the right
sleeve had been pulled up, revealing a red-and-green tattoo of a tiger on the
inner forearm.

“Looks Filipino or maybe Indonesian,” said
Tandy, who was standing with her arms folded.

Crenna’s eyes remained riveted to the
tattoo as he registered her words.  “Not Filipino.” He lifted the crusty towel
and peered at the man’s face, his stare holding for a long moment. He instantly
recognized the tattoo from a mercenary group based out of Indonesia. He had
used them several times years ago when he and Redstrom, a then young agent
under his tutelage, were running drug interdiction raids. They were trying to
disrupt supply lines to thwart funding for an upcoming coup the U.S. didn’t
want to unfold.
A calling card from Redstrom
—
has to be
—
he was
never so sloppy. That son of a bitch thinks he can slide the rug out from under
me using my former contacts.

“Must’ve been a pistol at close range, I’m
guessing, given how intact his head is.”

Crenna was silent but nodded in agreement.
Then he took a deep breath and straightened up, turning towards her. “And who
else has seen this?”

“Just myself, Rawlins, and the woman.”

“The woman,” sighed Crenna, whose lips
went flat. “Pity—such a horrible thing to come upon after what she saw down
below.” He motioned with his outstretched hand for them to leave the room.

“Why don’t you two get her ready to leave
on the helo. I just want to do a final sweep of the cabin for anything we might
have missed.”

Tandy and Rawlins went back into the
living room while Crenna lagged behind, removing his Sig 229 pistol from his
waist holster and silently attaching the suppressor. A second later, Rawlins’ cervical
region was pierced by a single round, causing him to slump sideways onto Tandy,
who fell under the weight. The next round sliced through the old woman’s
temple, her head flopping backwards like a tetherball. Tandy was squirming out
from under the dead weight of her colleague and shouting at Crenna, who stepped
on her hand as she reached for her pistol.

“What are you doing? Are you insane?” she screamed.

“This is nothing personal. You’re a good
agent.” He levelled the pistol at her forehead as she continued writhing and
punching his leg with her free hand. She leaned back towards the fireplace to
grab an iron poker but it was just out of reach.

“Please, for God’s sake, I have a
daughter.”

“I’ll see to it she’s taken care of,” he
said, pulling the trigger.

The waft of smoke discharging from the
barrel of his weapon combined with the coppery odor of blood from Tandy’s head that
was sprayed onto the warm fireplace. Crenna waited for the nausea to approach
but nothing happened, it rarely did anymore. His hands didn’t even shake. Like
the other necessary killings he’d undertaken during his one-man mop-up missions
over the years, he knew this had to be done. He felt justified although he
wished the Swedish woman could’ve been spared.

He tucked his pistol into his waistline
then went into the kitchen and opened the gas stove, turning up all the knobs. Crenna
tossed some crumpled newspaper on the hot coals in the fireplace near Tandy’s
still figure. He scurried out the back door and hopped inside the truck,
spinning it around towards the direction of the landing strip. As he headed up
the hill and parked the vehicle at the treeline, he heard the explosion in the
distance.

Climbing into the helo, he wiped the snow
flecks off his shoes, noticing a few droplets of blood which he blotted out
with his thumb. He pulled out his cellphone, making sure to keep the screen
obscured by his wool overcoat. He glanced down at the text which he’d received
earlier that morning.
I look forward to when we can meet again
—
someday
soon. In the meantime, here’s a taste of things to come, Kyle.
  There was a
set of GPS coordinates for the Swedish island of Faro below the words.

Crenna bit his lower lip then hit the
delete button. He took a deep breath, the moisture from his nose floating
upward like silver phantoms in the semi-cold cockpit.
Have to contain this
—
get
to him quickly before this fucking gets further out of hand.
Crenna reflected
on his nearly thirty-year career in clandestine affairs with different
government agencies. How he’d sacrificed three marriages and lost touch with
his kids over the years. Then came the day a few years ago when even the job
itself had lost its luster. He’d been so idealistic when he was younger, the
world so much more delineated between black and white.
I was a true patriot,
giving everything for my country. No
—
I am a true patriot still. Kyle is
the piece of shit who wants to unravel all of my work, the agency’s fine work.
He’s the traitorous bitch I thought he was when I leaked word to the Chinese.
Crenna
looked out at the snow-covered forest in the distance as the helicopter sped
along the coast back towards Stockholm. He mulled over his options. He had
planned to retire in one more year and use his considerable funds to retreat to
an estate he’d had built in Belize, far from the brutal winters of the East
Coast. His latest wife wouldn’t mind as long as she could get away on frequent
vacations. Then he thought about the go-bag he kept in his office and the other
in a secure compartment in his Escalade. He had all the essentials for starting
over if he had to disappear quickly—passports, money, credit cards, and an
encrypted cellphone with the link to his Cayman Island account. Years working
counter-intelligence had taught him what it takes to disappear permanently off
the grid. Looking out at the frozen forest below, he grew angry at the thought
of having to evade the law. He knew Kyle, who would be happy to see his career
get incinerated if his treason were exposed
. Fuck him, I’m not about to go
dark and live on the run. I’ll find him first and put an end to his miserable
existence. Nobody crosses me.

He removed his phone again and texted an unmarked
number that was on speed-dial, alerting an off-the-books group of European
mercenaries he had used in the past. He instructed them to meet in four hours
at a location he’d text them shortly.

When he was finished, he leaned over
towards the pilot and shouted above the rotor wash, “Take me to Copenhagen
instead. I need to arrange for additional air transportation from there.”