Counter-Strike (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Novel Book 2) (7 page)

Chapter 12

Mitch ducked into the restroom, grabbing a
trench coat that was folded on top of a suitcase beside a closed toilet stall.
He flung his ball cap into the trash and tussled his hair then slid on the coat
and pulled out his sunglasses. He’d been through enough urban evasion courses
in the military and later apprehended enough fugitives in the city to know that
if you can’t initially gain distance from your pursuers then you had to conceal
yourself amongst them until an escape route presented itself.

Once outside the bathroom, he blended into
the flow of human traffic, stopping beside a wall-mounted row of TV screens. He
pretended to search the incoming flight rosters but instead was scanning the
emergency exit diagram on the wall. His plan was to continue following the
crowd and make his way out of the main terminal. An evader had three choices:
to stay put and blend into the masses, hoping the searchers would overlook you
in their haste. That rarely worked with modern security cameras and given that
more officers would be brought in to flood the search zone. The second
alternative was to make an all-out sprint from the area of operation and hope
that your stamina would hold up over several miles of parkour-like moves
through the bowels of an unknown city. Mitch had apprehended plenty of thugs
who employed this method and it never ended well for the fugitive, who usually
wrenched an ankle hopping fences or succumbed to police dogs and helicopters.
The third choice was to become a chameleon during the first few minutes of the
escape. Blending in allowed you to assess your surroundings, look for the less
risky egress routes, and most importantly, calm your nerves so you didn’t look
guilty or have an awkward, panic-driven stride.

He and his special operations unit had
once undertaken an urban survival and evasion course that saw each man getting
dropped in Boston with only $5 in their pocket while having to make it back
alone to Fort Bragg within 48 hours without any outside assistance. Nine out of
ten guys made the timeline through adaption and improvisational skills. In Mitch’s
case, he knew that the best way to disappear in the city and gain intel about
your surroundings was to blend in with the homeless. There he obtained a
different set of clothes, learned where the police were most concentrated, and discovered
where the local shelters were located so he could obtain a free meal. Other
unit members not in evasion mode were practicing their surveillance skills and
were on the lookout for Mitch and his men. If you dared to call a family member
for help or money, as one scheming soldier did, you were booted from the
program.

After spending time acquiring a new look, he
ducked into a tourist hostel and use their free internet service, where he
searched for Craigslist postings for traveling indie bands that were in need of
loafers—unpaid workers to travel with them on tour and help with setup and
takedown. Mitch was in his mid-twenties and had a scruffy enough appearance
that when combined with his new wardrobe and a forced slouch, would allow him
to not get singled out as military. He used an anonymous email to contact a
prospective group, and that night, he was able to hitch a ride on a band’s
refurbished school bus to their gig in Raleigh-Durham, which put him only sixty
miles away from Fort Bragg. Craigslist and similar sites provided a wealth of
online evasion tools for remaining low-profile and permitted him to stay off
the public transportation systems, which would have been monitored.

There were two assignments along the route
back. One was to construct an improvised weapon and the other was to sneak in and
out of the Amtrak train station in Newark to obtain page 337 out of the Yellow
Pages in a phone booth without being spotted. He made a modified stick-weapon by
using a folded newspaper that he had filled with several short sections of
rebar obtained from a construction site he came across after leaving the
homeless encampment. One of his unit buddies would trump them all with his
clever use of a child’s squirt gun he’d found in a park and later filled with
bleach obtained from a janitor’s cart at a downtown soup kitchen.

His thoughts returned to the distant exit
to the right. It was the least congested and he knew he’d have to move fast
before the area was shut down as the officers tried to narrow their search
corridors. Mitch made his way next to a single woman who was pushing a
stroller. He stayed a foot behind her with each step. As he neared the door, he
moved up and held it for her as they all walked to the curb together. He looked
over his shoulder towards the entrance and saw two policemen heading his way.
Mitch strode down the sidewalk and crossed a pedestrian walkway, heading
towards a row of taxis then sliding inside the first one that was vacant.  

Mitch had the driver take him two miles
into the heart of Munich and drop him near the downtown area. After he exited
the taxi, he walked along the streets, blending in with the other tourists and
mulling over Yin’s bizarre ending.
Who the hell did she have on her trail?
Was it that guy from the estate? He must’ve been the shooter who took her out.
He thought about the carnage he had witnessed around the estate and the
skillful execution of Yin.
Someone is in a hurry to cover their tracks, but
who? This has to be larger than Yin and even Bob.
He needed answers—answers
to her death, her dubious connections, and the whereabouts of his friend. With
Yin out of the picture, he felt his chances of ever getting those questions
resolved evaporating like the chill of his breath in the night air.

Chapter 13

Kyle swigged down the last of his brandy
and then stared out the window of the jet as it flew south of India towards
Malaysia. The string of tropical islands below resembled emerald eyes gazing
skyward. In another hour, he’d land in Kuala Lumpur and then be picked up by
helicopter to finish the last leg of his long journey.

He returned his gaze to the laptop and
scanned Schueller’s data. Everything was unfolding according to the timeline
which should have given him cause to relax somewhat. However, he hadn’t heard
back from Jessica and there was no indication that she had boarded her flight
in Vienna.

Since the loss of his wife nearly three
years ago, Kyle hadn’t sought out the company of women or even shown the
slightest interest in their presence—until Jessica emerged back into his world.
He had found her to be an excellent operative in their time in Beijing but the
necessary distance of her surveillance work had kept him from getting to know
her well though he had entrusted his life to her there for so long that he
never questioned her loyalty. Her cat-like demeanor and sultry air awoke
something in him. Jessica seemed as ruthless and controlling as he was and she
had a wounded vulnerability behind her steely eyes that he understood. He kept
any glimmer of feelings for her at bay during sexual encounters and reminded
himself that having a conscience in his business was a liability he would never
allow himself again. She was just another asset—a great one with amazing skills
and silky legs but still just a tool in his arsenal.

With Schueller’s assistance, coerced or
otherwise, Kyle would be able to complete a refined version of the bioweapon
he’d formulated for the Swedish experiment. The original sample was obtained
from a hidden cache site in Beijing when he’d stolen some vials before his
capture. This provided him with the base organic strain from which he was
hoping, with Schueller’s involvement, he could either create a more refined
aerosolized form or an injectable version that would infect a person and spread
via close contact. He’d kept some of the Chinese samples as leverage, never
dreaming he’d need to use it one day. Soon, he’d have enough of the pathogen to
unleash on Jakarta on January 18, two days from now. This time, he planned to
have a modified virus with an incubation period of 48 hours, allowing for
greater transmission once passengers reached their destination cities around
the world.

Kyle pulled out a folding map from his
laptop case. He still preferred the old hard copies over a digital image. It allowed
him to scrawl handwritten notes, draw diagrams, and even the occasional smiley
face on target cities. His gaze zoomed in on the expanded version of Jakarta
where he focused upon the international airport.
Fifty thousand travelers a
day who will be carrying more than their luggage aboard the planes.

The date would be historic not only for
the thousands that would be infected at the airport but for the global
ramifications. The President of the United States was arriving shortly for a
ceremony celebrating the signing of the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Accompanying him would be fourteen member countries who were signing the pact
which would enable the U.S. to design the rules of international trade in Southeast
Asia for the next century, squeezing China out from dominating commerce in the
region. The member states, which included Japan, Canada, Chile, Singapore,
Malaysia, and Australia to name a few, would retain control of over fifty percent
of the global economy. Even if the virus was contained on the Indonesian mainland
and his plans for global dispersal were disrupted, managing the outbreak would
foster severe disruptions in trade in Southeast Asia along with the considerable
investment required to formulate a vaccine. Just a single canister would grind
everything to a halt in this region and have a devastating ripple effect felt
by every nation, especially the superpowers of China and the U.S.

Kyle marveled at the scope of the plan and
knew it would further impact foreign relations with China. With the release of
a virus on the Indonesian mainland, the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be
postponed while the nations grappled with the arrival of the virus and the
resulting crippled economy that would send shockwaves throughout the world for
years to come. A pandemic would reshape societies as infrastructure collapsed
and services broke down.
Too many worthless people on this planet anyway,
particularly in Washington. Nature should have culled the population long ago
but we keep interfering, keeping the weak alive and the powers that be in
place.

Kyle leaned over and tapped his fingers on
the seven-foot rectangular metal crate strapped to the floor beside him. There
was a faint sound emanating from inside—a garbled voice of someone in distress.
He caressed the stainless-steel edges. “Soon, soon. Be patient just a little
longer.”

His phone rang and he picked it up,
hearing the pensive voice of his business associate, Anton Tokarev. The man’s
heavy Russian accent pierced through Kyle’s ear as he inquired about the
operation.

“We are still looking at a minimum
forty-eight-hour timeline once I get things underway back at the lab,” said
Kyle.

“Good, the last of the supply crates you
requested should arrive the day after tomorrow. They’ll be brought in by boat
so we don’t draw too much attention to the area with any more helicopter
flights.”

“But no later than that. I need those
dispersal devices and timers.”

“Yes, yes, my friend. Everything is taken
care of. After this is over, we should meet again on my yacht and discuss phase
two in more detail.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Anton.
Success in life only happens one step at a time and we have a few more stairs
to climb.”

Chapter 14

Inky black, vibrations under his body, the
muffled sound of his breath, and the rough edge of the zip-tie cutting into the
flesh around his wrist—these were the things rushing through Bob Schueller’s
groggy mind as he awoke from sedation.

His eyelids fluttered as he forced them
open but there was nothing to grasp onto in the darkness. He tried to probe the
depths of his surroundings but no data returned, like a satellite that has been
ripped from orbit and is hurtling into an unfathomable galaxy. His ears tried
to compensate, stabbing through the stillness which was only interrupted by his
garbled exhales that resembled a patient on life-support. For a second, he
wondered if he was in a coma, in some kind of induced hypothermia but then he
felt the sweat that had formed between his shoulder blades and the cushioning
underneath him, his cotton shirt sticking to his frame.

A vibration followed, rocking his entire
body and then the surface beneath him as if he was in a torpedo shaft being
propelled forward, followed by a sudden drop. His heart raced and his raspy
exhalations increased. He tried to move but the sides were too narrow and his
knees couldn’t even flex. Sitting up only resulted in his forehead impacting
the low ceiling and he fell back to his prone position. He tried smashing the foot
section but only got out a slight heel tap on what sounded like a metal surface.
He elbowed the sides around him and noticed they had the ring of thick steel. He
began shouting then screaming then finally smacking his head side to side and
thrashing, the zip-ties reminding him that their density was greater than his
soft flesh. Settling back, he felt another surge of gravity, his stomach
dropping and the entire structure angling up so his feet were higher than his
head by a foot or more. He was still, trying to pace his breathing and calm his
racing mind before panic consumed him. For the first time, he felt a band
around the back of his head and noticed it ran past his cheeks and attached to
the plastic mask covering his airway. He concentrated on the echo of his
exhales, feeling the warm moisture flooding against his nose and mouth with
each breath.

His head was pounding and his thoughts
turned to Heathrow Airport—walking up the muggy runway, the smell of the food
vendors near the new arrival area, and the blonde-haired woman.
That woman
—
the
one with that velvety hair who was so talkative.
He remembered their
conversation in the café and then escorting her to the parking garage. His
stomach still felt bruised from the savage gut punch he received from one of
the surly goons who was lying in wait by the limousine. He recalled very little
after that and surmised that he must have been drugged from the glass of water
the woman gave him during their drive away from the airport.

He tapped his shoe heel on the metal
surface again and noted its hollow ring.
Oxygen container. They obviously
want me alive.
He brushed his elbows against the walls.
Now I know what
it must have felt like to be one of those poor white rats in my laboratory.
Another drop in gravity, like he had jumped from a diving board, then the rush
of his stomach coiling up, followed by the structure around him levelling out.

What the hell is going on? Where are they
taking me and who the fuck are ‘they’
?
Christ
—
is this connected with
my research
—
with the agency? Those bastards told me it was all on the
drawing board and only being war-gamed within their walls. Did someone get a
hold of my data? Is anyone from the agency or State Department even looking for
me?
He thought of his wife Margo, who would be worried sick, then of his
kids and granddaughter. Finally, his thoughts turned to Mitch Kearns, who he’d
always joked he’d call if life was ever hanging in the balance. If only he
could contact him now!

He felt a vein in his neck throbbing from
the implications. He forced himself to calm his breathing again and remain
motionless even though every shred of every fiber in his body wanted to burst
through his inky cocoon. During what he surmised was another two hours, he felt
the metal structure begin to rattle and the head section become higher, like he
was going into a slow dive. Then the shaking increased, his body vibrating and
his ears popping while his heart felt like it was in his throat. A few minutes
later, he levelled out again and then the motion stopped. Silence. Stillness.
Then there was white-hot light stabbing through the right edge of the lid above
as it creaked open. Schueller squinted, turning his head sideways, the sunlight
hitting him like a sledgehammer. A shadow followed, allowing a respite from the
intensity. He looked up into the soulless eyes of a young man, a large scar marring
his upper cheek.   

“Good morning, Professor. I hope the
flight was not too turbulent for you in this tight space. I was told you’d be
out for a few more hours.” The man spoke with an American accent.

Schueller sat up, craning his neck around
as a wave of humidity swept over him. A flock of cockatoos flew overhead and he
saw an emerald treeline surrounding the primitive airstrip that had been hacked
out of the jungle. The scar-faced man leaned over and deftly flipped open a
folding knife, slicing through his zip-ties in a fluid motion then just as
quickly closing the blade and repositioning it in his pocket.

The man was wearing a gypsum-colored
jacket and pleated slacks. He extended a hand and helped Schueller out of the
coffin-like container. “Please forgive the rocky introduction. We’ve not met
before but we probably know a lot of the same people at Langley. And I can most
certainly assure you we have much to discuss regarding your research.”