Counter-Strike (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Novel Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter 15

Mitch took the taxi for two miles, texting
Dev about his location and hoping she’d made it out safely. He had the driver
drop him off near the downtown section of Munich, near a busy intersection of
outdoor cafes and bars. He rounded the bend of the street corner and canted his
head up like the other tourists, who were inspecting the architecture of an old
church on the corner.

He felt his cellphone vibrate and scanned
the text, pressing his cupped hands around the screen to reduce the light signature
on his face as he read Dev’s message:
Two minutes out. Lavoy Ave and Tenth
St.

He shoved the phone back in his jacket and
then checked the sidewalks ahead again. Feeling confident he wasn’t being
tailed, he slipped out into the night pedestrian traffic and continued walking
north for four blocks. He stopped at a streetside café and feigned reading the
menu tacked on the wall while scanning the street to the east. A few seconds
later, he saw a black SUV approaching, the streetlight shining through the
windshield, revealing Dev’s face. Mitch casually looked around him again then
made his way across the street.

As he climbed inside and shut the door,
Dev continued driving straight for another block then made a series of right
turns to make sure she wasn’t being followed before resuming their route out of
Munich.

“I’ve arranged for the company jet to meet
us in Zurich which is only about 80 kilometers from here.” She leaned back in
her seat, relaxing her shoulders slightly. “What did you learn from our little
encounter back there with Yin?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot, other than the
dead mercenary with the tiger tattoo on his forearm—that’s one I’ve seen
before. It took me a while to recall but it belongs to a group of guerrilla
fighters out of Sumatra.”

“That’s not much of a breadcrumb to go on.
Anything else? I don’t have any solid contacts in that region so we’d be taking
a stab in the dark trying to trace any connections with her and your friend.”

Mitch was fidgeting with Yin’s phone but
it only contained one number that was encrypted. “So far all we’ve got are
those dead bodies at the estate, a Chinese courier with bad-ass fighting skills,”
he paused to rub his sore forearm where Yin had stabbed him, “and her useless
cellphone.”

He rolled up his jacket sleeve and
inspected the tiny puncture wound. “By the plane ticket in her jacket she was
headed to Kuala Lumpur.”

“What I’d like to know is who gave Yin a
lead concussion back at the airport.”

“I’ve been wondering the same. That was no
street thug who dispatched her. Anyone with close-range pistol skills who can
nab a target in a crowded airport and then sneak away into the shadows—that’s
probably the same dude who left all that nice lawn display of shattered bodies
back at the estate.”

“He’s a high-end merc then—someone with
skills like you and I possess—but who’s his puppet master?”

“They’ve got considerable funding to be
able to insert into a country with a hit team, weapons, and probably all the
fake credentials to not draw attention at the airport. People like that are
either working for a crime syndicate—say Chinese Triad for instance, given
Yin’s appearance and the Oriental-looking guy I saw at the airport—or…”

“Or clandestine ops sanctioned by some
government or a shadow faction within a government,” said Dev.

“Yeah, I’d say we’re going up against some
heavy hitters.”

Dev pulled her shoulders back. “Then it’ll
be an even match.”

Mitch stared out the window at the passing
cars and then up at the moon, which hung like a pearl in the obsidian sky. The
only clue he had to move forward was written on Yin’s airline ticket. “I know
someone who lives in Kuala Lumpur. An old SF colleague of mine, Marco. He’d be
a place to start, anyway, though it’s been a while since I’ve seen his surly
mug.” Mitch dragged out the last sentence with a hint of disdain.

“Is he a trusted friend?”

“Let’s just say he’s a solid guy when he’s
on the job. After hours, he’s a fight magnet and a dirty son of a bitch.”

“He double-cross you? Because I can think
of better company to keep.”

“We were in a dive in Manila once after a
deployment and he was hitting on another dude’s lady, this marine who had a
pretty impressive enemy kill record from what we knew as young soldiers.” Mitch
sighed and twisted his head up, stretching his neck. “Let’s just say my jaw
still hurts from that night.” He shoved Yin’s phone back in his jacket. “Look,
Dev, you’ve already gone beyond the call of duty coming out here with me. I
don’t need you getting into a compromising position with your board or sticking
your neck out any further for me.”

“Nonsense, this is what Gideon is supposed
to be about. Besides, if I don’t have the approval of the board for my actions
then I know for certain I have my father’s blessing on this one, trust me. He
would’ve dropped what he was doing for you too.”

“Well, I appreciate that but you’ve got a
company to think about and don’t need any further entanglements with something
that could have such nebulous international ties.”

“Mitch, in the field is where I should be,
not doing Skype conferences and employee meetings. To be honest, I can’t stand
being in my corporate office.”

She continued glancing in the rearview
mirror, checking for anyone tailing them. “Petra and David, my two brethren who
were with us in Arizona last fall, are coming off an assignment in India and
can rendezvous with us in KL. This is going to take more than the two of us, I
suspect.”

“Ever think what it’d be like if we did
normal things together like friends are supposed to do instead of these little
escape and evade outings?” Mitch said.

Dev smirked. “Is that what we are—just
friends?”

“Yeah, well, if you ever had more than
three minutes of time off each week, maybe I’d be able to take you out for a
proper dinner date.”

Dev looked in the rearview mirror and then
feigned a gasp. “You mean you don’t like my mother’s cooking? You really are a
cowboy—too used to biscuits and gravy.”

“Don’t even bring your mom into this—I
like her and her fine meals. It’s her daughter that’s giving me a run for my
money.”

“I’ll tell you what, when we get a break,
I will permit you to take me out for a real dinner and I’ll even leave my work
cellphone at home for a few hours.”

“You’ll ‘permit me,’ oh please, it’s more
like ‘you will accompany me.’”

She shook her head while containing a
grin. “And you should know I’m very particular about where we go to eat.”

“Geez, this is quite a tab I’m gonna be
running up. Looks like I’ll have to skip taking you to a burger joint and shoot
for something fancy.”

She lowered her chin and smiled, keeping
her vision on the road ahead. “I might just
permit
you to do that.”

Chapter 16

“I had to decommission the target. She was
at risk of getting away. Her plane ticket indicated Kuala Lumpur,” said Von
into his cellphone as he exited the Munich Airport. “There were some other
players involved too but I didn’t get to make their acquaintance, though I
managed to snap a photo of the man from a distance with my phone.”

“How many—what did they look like?” barked
Crenna.

“Just two. A man in his mid-thirties,
European or American by the looks of it and a woman of tan complexion who moved
like a cat.”

“Shit, did they have any contact with
Yin?”

“Yeah, but not for long. It looked like
she had just escaped from them when I put her down.”

He could hear Crenna’s labored breathing
in his earpiece in between sentences. “Send me the photo of the man and I’ll
see what I can turn up on him.”

“Will do.”

“Where are you now?”

“Still in Munich.”

“I need you on the next flight out to
Kuala Lumpur to track down any leads Yin may have had there. She must certainly
have an accomplice there.”

“Or she was just fleeing there after
selling any intel she had. What makes you suspect an accomplice?”

There was a slight pause before Crenna
replied. “Potential accomplice is what I meant. We just need to be sure that
any loose threads are tied off.”

Von stopped walking and took in a deep
breath; he had thought he would be done being Crenna’s errand boy. “I thought
things would be wrapped up once the package was disposed of. Surely the professor
must be dead by now. Have there been any demands or contact from his supposed
captors?”

“He still has to be in play somehow based
upon some things I recently uncovered in Europe. Yin was just one tentacle of
this beast. Head to Kuala Lumpur and await further instructions. If you should locate
Schueller, dispatch him and retrieve any data that you can.”

Von tucked his phone away and scanned
behind him and then along the street.
Why kill a valued DOD researcher like
Schueller? Nothing in the old man’s files indicates he’d be the type to go
rogue. Yin I understand but this guy?
Von rubbed the back of his
low-cropped hair.
What’s Crenna not telling me this time around?

Chapter 17

Dev was staring at the plethora of tiny
islands below that were peppered throughout the Andaman Sea near the coast of
Thailand. In forty minutes they would be landing in Kuala Lumpur and she
wondered what would await them in this next leg of the trip.

Mitch leaned over her shoulder, staring at
the waters below. “Did you spot an old shipwreck down there? Seems like
something’s caught your interest.”

She sighed, slumping her shoulders back
into the seat. “So many quaint little islands that a person could just
disappear into and spend their days on the beach, not a care in the world.”

“Ah, a city girl like you—I’d give you a
week and you’d be aching for a mall,” he said with a nudge of his elbow.

She smirked and didn’t avert her eyes as
her mind wandered over the bewitching contours of the landscape below. Her face
was tense and she was sure it wasn’t from the sun streaming in through the
portal. Her whole body was rigid despite her best efforts at relaxing during
the long flight. She never wanted to be a CEO and run her father’s tentacled
organization; being responsible for so many lives coupled with week after week
in that corporate setting was bleeding her soul. She marveled at her father’s
ability to command so many facets of the business while keeping so many alpha
types in check.
But then he had been a guerilla fighter in the trenches for
decades so running a company with only egos to battle was probably a hell of a
lot easier.
How she wanted to talk to him again, walk through the cedars
around their old house and to get his counsel. She was glad to be away from her
duties for a while though the board of directors weren’t going to keep buying
her story about assisting a new client.

She needed a change in her mental
landscape and leaned over towards Mitch. “You miss them much?” said Dev. “Your
old unit buddies I mean.”

Mitch rubbed the whiskers on his chin.
“Yeah, sometimes. We all keep in touch via email. Whenever I travel, I’ll look
up one of them or vice-versa. There were about a dozen guys I knew well but I was
really only good buds with four of them. Like brothers—the Fantastic Four.”

“Was Marco one of them?”

“Mmm…no but he was a damn fine armorer and
knew more about ballistics than anyone I ever met. He’s a solid guy whom I
could always count on when the lead was flying. Plus, he owes me one after I
bailed him out of the slammer for a drunken fight with some squids—you know, navy
guys.”

“So, how did he come to live in Kuala
Lumpur?” Dev said, studying the rolling terrain outside her window.

“After he got out of the military, Marco
did a few stints as a private contractor in the Middle East, saving enough
money to buy a used plane. Said he could make a lot of loot taking rich
tourists out to remote beaches.” Mitch turned the ventilation fan over his head
up a notch.

“His first wife was Indonesian. He told me
he met her in a brothel in Thailand. She’s the one who introduced him to the
city during their ten-month marriage.”

“Sounds like a ‘solid’ guy alright.”

“Actually, he is in a firefight. He once
got shot in the knuckles by an AK round after disembarking a C-130 in
Afghanistan. He was walking off the loading ramp and some Taliban in the
foothills unleashed on his guys on the runway. Good ole Marco waved the plane
off and took to the boulders, refusing medical treatment for nine hours while
sending hate downrange to assure his men were safe.”

“I’ve known some warriors like that. They
are exactly the type of person you want on your side when things get rough but
they’re sometimes a menace to themselves in civilian life without a war to wage.”

Mitch leaned over, pressing his shoulder
against hers. “So, I know you’re a big girl and all, but be warned that Marco
has a roving eye—and sometimes roving hands.”

“Why, Mitchell Kearns, do I detect a vein
of chivalry in you?”

“Just watch yourself, though I’ll keep him
in line if he gets to be too much.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.” She closed the
shutter on the window and stared down the aisle. “So he’ll be obvious to find
amidst that throng of people in the city.”

“Marco—ah, yeah, let’s just say there are
some streets in Kuala Lumpur he can’t go down.”

“A habitual brawler who looks for trouble—great.”

“Not that so much as the guy’s as wide as
a rhino.” Mitch puffed out his chest as if he’d been inflated with helium.
“You’ll spot him from a hundred yards off. The Indonesians usually just part
when they see him coming. We used to joke in our unit that if we were ever
stranded on an island, Marco would be the first guy we’d sacrifice to extend
our rations.”

The pilot announced that he was taking the
jet in for its descent. Mitch pulled his seat forward and thought about his
days abroad with Marco and his other SF buddies. It seemed like a millennium
ago and he missed the camaraderie though his creaky knees from too many
airborne jumps sometimes reminded him that he wasn’t in his twenties any
longer.