The Spy Devils

by Joe Goldberg

  He turned to see Peng, in a full panic, running toward the open door. In total fright and still taped to the chair, he stood up with enough force to break the hinges holding the chair seat to the back. Mmmmmmmmm came from his taped mouth. He stumbled toward the door on wobbly legs, which had not fully recovered from the gas. Behind him, pieces of the chair stuck to his body like Superman’s cape.

  What the fuck? Bridger thought as he watched the man try to run. It was a surreal moment he hadn’t anticipated.

  Then Demon shot Peng.

  Peng was thrust forward and landed prone in the doorway. A neat hole was in the chair behind his right shoulder.

  “Damn it, Demon! Damn it!” Bridger shouted as he knelt to check on Peng. “I told you not to kill him.”

  “He ain’t dead. I put it through his shoulder joint. That arm may not work for a while, if ever, but he won’t die from that. At least, I don’t think so.”

  Bridger wasn’t sure who he was more furious with—Demon for shooting Peng or Peng for running.

  Bridger stood.

  “Don’t. Die. You. Dumb. Son. Of. A. Bitch.” With each word, he raised his foot and stomped hard on Peng’s chair. Peng moaned with each blow. Blood started to pool.

  “See if you can stop him from bleeding out,” he said to Beast. “Everyone, start your exfiltration plans.”

  Each Spy Devil had a process in place to quickly leave wherever they were. The logistics were set up by the many travel agencies in the Spy Devil’s covert network. Each Spy Devil would move by different modes of transportation, in different directions and on different dates, in an alias, then true name.

  Bridger reached toward his ankle and pulled his knife from its holder. He pointed it at Bai and stepped to him, his eyes and face filled with rage.

  “Whoa there, Bridger. What are you doing? Remember Honduras,” Demon said.

  Bridger raised the knife, and in a swiping arc of his arm, cut Bai free from the chair. He grabbed him and yanked him to his feet, the blade now under the frightened man’s chin.

  “Let’s go,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  Bridger’s fury had him dragging Bai faster than his feet could move.

  “Is this Li Chu? Is this Li Chu? Is this Li Chu?” he asked, shoving Bai’s face toward the mangled contorted faces of his dead colleagues. Each time Bai shook his head no.

  On the last no, he spun Bai to face him. The violent left hook followed by a right uppercut to Bai’s face made him bite the end of his tongue off. His broken jaw was forced up. The already unconscious man hit the ground with a thump.

  Bridger felt the warm sun as he stood over the body. Bridger was shaking. He took a deep breath and looked around at the dead bodies of the Chinese assassination team.

  Li Chu had escaped. That was a mistake.

  Li Chu had somehow made it back to a safehouse apartment, where they had stashed a medical kit. He didn’t recall how he was able to patch his wounds, but he had. When finished, red stains smeared the sink, shower, and floor of the bathroom. Dark red rags and towels littered the floor.

  The mirror reflected a battered face he didn’t recognize. Swollen black and blue eyes. The blood he missed was dried in his hair and speckled on his face.

  What did I do wrong? How could this Bridger ruin my plan? Kill the rest of my men?

  Tugging a cap loosely over his bandaged head and ear, he closed the safe house door behind him and stepped out onto the streets of Taipei.

  Li Chu knew it was in the van—in the parking garage. He had to see it even though the dizziness had him close to fainting several times.

  He opened the driver’s door, and there it was. A black and red business card with an image of a three-pronged pitchfork. He didn’t have to turn it over to read the white block letters printed on the other side, but he did. It had been left for him.

  It read: GREETINGS FROM THE DEVIL.

  6

  The 12th at Augusta National

  West Texas Hill Country, USA

  Bridger slept as well as he had in months—which meant 7 a.m., an hour later than usual. He had been moving continually for two days. Twelve hours ago, he landed his Embraer Legacy 450 at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and piloted his Bell 505 helicopter to his west Texas Hill Country ranch.

  Thirty hours before that, the Devils had snatched the Dragon Fire assassins from the parking garage.

  That next morning in central Taipei, a suspicious SUV was discovered on the lawn across the street from the Presidential Office Building, the baroque-style palace built during the Japanese colonial period on the island during the early 1900s. Covered live on national television, special operations and anti-terror units from the Taiwan Military, Taipei Police, and National Security Bureau, Taiwan’s principal intelligence organization surrounded the area and evacuated nearby buildings.

  Two unidentified men, who appeared unconscious, were shown being removed from the SUV. Later on that day, at press briefings, Taiwan officials declared that the men found inside secured with duct tape were Chinese intelligence assassins. They showed pictures and videos as proof and called for United Nations investigations.

  Now, back home for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Bridger was ready to extinguish the last flame of Dragon Fire.

  Bridger’s sanctuary was once known as River Ridge Ranch, named for the river and tributaries that crisscrossed the acres of pasture, brush, woods, and flat to rolling to hilly terrain. Located somewhere between Austin and El Paso, the ranch served previously as a recreational hunting, hiking, riding, and fishing corporate retreat. Access to the location was only by a private dead-end road or by air.

  Previously used as a lodge, the 6,200-square-foot main house had eight bedrooms, five baths, a workout room, a modern open kitchen, bars, vaulted ceilings, and a five-car garage all surrounded by a spectacular 360-degree view of west-central Texas. Other structures on the land included an equestrian center, stables, corral, barns, wilderness cabins, plane hangar, and runway. There were stocked ponds. River frontage. Livestock and wildlife of all kinds.

  It was his 2,698 acres of leave me the fuck alone that he renamed Abaddon—a biblical term for "Place of Destruction.”

  It had been nine years since the newly-formed boutique investment bank Hubbard Park Investments of New York and its founder Trowbridge Hall bought the property. Trowbridge Hall, aka Bridger, made it his base of operations. An untraceable series of dummy and cutout corporations purchased the ranch for a little more than three million dollars. With aftermarket upgrades—communications, landscaping, security—the total came close to seven million dollars.

  After some brief stretching to shock his jet-lagged muscles back to life, Bridger took a deep breath in, then slowly out. He caught the smell of eggs, beans, and tortillas.

  When he walked into the huge kitchen, he saw Luciana standing in her stained Dallas Cowboys apron, looking at several steaming pots on the industrial-sized stove.

  Luciana and her husband Luis were a somewhere-in-their-fifties couple. Luis worked outside and managed the large ranch staff. Luciana took care of the house and cooked. They were an honest, hard-working, courteous, and loyal couple. And once Bridger had vetted and tested them, he told them his secret. They were two of a small group of “civilians” who knew what else investment banker Trowbridge “Trow” Hall did for a living.

  They were paid well for keeping the ranch functioning and his secret to themselves.

  Luis and Luciana had adopted Bridger as a replacement for their seventeen-year-old son. He was lost years ago—the result of being on the wrong street in Laredo at the wrong time when some biker gangs decided to have a shoot-out. Mr. Trow, as they liked to call him, in some ways adopted the couple as a new set of parents.

  “Mr. Trow! You are awake,” she said with a broad smile through full lips. She dropped a towel and hugged him, and then kissed him on his cheeks.

  “Yes, tha-anks, Luciana,” Bridger sputtered out as she released him.
“Smells good in here.”

  Her face wrinkled, and her lips curled. Walking to a pot, she picked up the towel, took the lid off the pot, picked up a spoon, and took a taste. Her face wrinkled more.

  “No good,” she declared, her head shaking.

  “I am sure it is delicious,” Bridger laughed. It was good to be…home. “I will be downstairs.”

  “I have food for you,” she said with a slightly disappointed look on her face.

  “Later, I promise.”

  He turned and walked down a hall and entered a well-equipped workout room. He moved to a panel on the wall and flipped it open. He simultaneously placed his hand on a glass pad as he let the biometric reader scan his face. A section of the wall popped open with a click.

  Bridger descended a few carpeted steps and entered into his control room. The air was crisp and fresh, as air conditioning and filtration systems kept constant circulation in the space. He flipped a switch, and a dozen LCD screens attached to the two walls to his left and right powered to life. Stacked behind a glass wall opposite the door were racks of servers. In the middle of the room was a circular desk with several computer workstations on top. Recliners faced the LCD monitors mounted to the walls.

  Bridger sat and logged into a secure cloud storage file-sharing server. The files from his production company, Atlas Multimedia, of Bend, Oregon, were waiting for his review.

  “The Death of the Dragons” was the fifth in a series of YouTube news segments documenting the capture of the MSS assassins by the mysterious Spy Devils. It showed tired-looking men with red eyes sitting around a table confessing to being assassins and the recent footage of the Taiwanese para-military storming a vehicle outside the Presidential Palace.

  The segment ended with a black graphic with red letters that displayed “Greetings from the Spy Devils.”

  Bridger sent a coded signal that the file was ready. In fifteen minutes, the material was sent to numerous secure management systems. They were posted and re-posted to the other popular Spy Devil social media outlets—Facebook, Vimeo, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, LINE, VKontakte, and dozens of regional networks.

  Bridger sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck to hold up his still tired head. Soon the story would be picked up by more traditional news media—and intelligence services—worldwide. It would trend on Twitter in less than an hour.

  Bridger had perfected the art of pointing the omnipresent eye of social media on foreign intel operations, drug cartels, human traffickers, and the rest of worst his Spy Devils operated against. It was crippling. Unstoppable. Viral. It caused more long-term pain than any bomb or bullet. Exposure and shame may not kill, but it was close enough for Bridger.

  It worked. Dozens of targets around the world were no longer in operation.

  The Spy Devils were famous and feared.

  After securing the control room door, he began his workout routine with an hour of Krav Maga and hitting the Muay Thai bag.

  After a shower, he fired up the UTV and drove to his shooting range. Pistol, rifle, and shotgun maneuvers on a 20-target course. Glock-19. AR-15. Remington Versa Max shotgun first, then the Benelli M4.

  After an hour, he was satisfied enough with his progress to move to his real passion.

  The reclusive Trowbridge Hall had hired the world’s best golf course architects and green’s keepers—under strict non-disclosure agreements—to build exact replicas of some of the most difficult par-3 holes in the world. Tucked away in the middle of Abaddon, they molded the terrain and used the river and ponds to reconstruct the 12th at Augusta National. The 17th at TPC Sawgrass. The 7th at Pebble Beach and a half dozen more.

  He just wanted to have a place to go—in his rare free time—to do something he enjoyed. Golf provided the skill and discipline to maintain the focus and strategy he used to construct his complex espionage operations.

  Bridger had hit his first tee shot on his replica 12th hole at Augusta National over the green into the azaleas. A challenging second shot was next. Too hard, and the ball would scoot across the green into another sand trap, or worse, the pond. Too short, double bogey was a definite possibility. He needed to identify, plan, and execute the precise shot immediately.

  Then three electronic chirps interrupted Jimmy Buffet’s “One Particular Harbor” playing on his earbuds. He ignored them.

  He knew who it was. Only one person called this number.

  With determination, he stood over the ball to complete this shot. He knew it was a mistake. His concentration was blown, and he rushed his swing. He topped the ball. It scalded through the trap, across the green, and into the pond.

  Three more chirps. Then three more.

  Sighing, he dropped the club.

  His shoulders sagged in defeat as he sat down on the fresh green grass and clicked the button to connect the call with the last person on the planet he wanted to talk to.

  “Am I catching you at a bad time?” May Currier asked.

  “I’m on the 12th at Augusta National.”

  “I am glad you have time to play with your toys.”

  “Hello to you too, May. Can I call you back?” he said, knowing that it was hopeless.

  “We both know the answer to that question,” she said.

  “Then I guess I have the time.”

  “You need to get to Serbia—right away.”

  “Serbia? You’re kidding, right?”

  Silence was her response.

  “Serbia? Why? No, don’t tell me. Serge.”

  “The details are in the Dropbox. Get it done. Oh, and happy birthday, son.”

  She terminated the connection.

  He stood and stretched. Soaking in the warmth of the day, he reached into his pocket for a ball to replace the one he hit into the pond. Instead, he pulled out a worn brass stem ball marker. It was the size of a quarter. Blue block letters on a white background surrounded a blue crest. OLD COURSE AT ST ANDREWS. Bridger rubbed the smooth metal between his fingers like he had done a thousand times.

  The marker was a gift from his father. He died suddenly a few weeks later. Bridger was seven.

  He stuffed it deep into his pocket.

  7

  Find the Devil

  Taipei, Taiwan

  As day turned to twilight, the silver Audi stopped at a corner of the Taiwan National Police Agency building's rectangular inner courtyard. The tan buildings with red tile roofs occupied an entire city block of downtown Taipei. Rows of manicured trees surrounding crammed small parking lots and full-sized basketball courts were perfectly spaced around the perimeter.

  Li Chu was not concerned about getting access to the highly restricted area.

  He did have a concern about his appearance. He painfully replaced the bloodied bandages that covered his ruined ear with smaller, darker dressings. Makeup covered some of the bruises, but if someone approached him and asked, he planned to break their neck.

  He had the power of the Ministry of State Security at his disposal. The MSS had long ago penetrated all levels of the government of Chinese Taipei. A call from his superior, Minister Chen, to one of the dozens of Taiwanese government officials on the MSS payroll cleared his path of guards and security systems.

  The day after his two captured Dragon Fire men disappeared at the hands of the Spy Devils, they reappeared, as he dreaded, taped and drugged in an SUV in the center of Taipei. It was a public spectacle carried live on television and sent out on the internet, just like his previous encounters with the Spy Devils. It was an operational public shaming disaster.

  So, he was forced once more to limit the damage.

  Wearing a National Police Assistant Director-General's dress uniform, Li Chu moved with the smug arrogance of certitude befitting a high-ranking officer. Bands of gold braid above the symbol of a golden bird decorated a hat balanced just above his head wounds. The shirt was gray. The tie was blue. Four gold buttons ran up his jacket. A large square of blue, red, and yellow service ribbons dom
inated the left breast pocket. On his lapels, gold emblems signified his superior rank.

  Late working staff crisscrossed the courtyard, but no one noticed or challenged him.

  Li Chu was average height for a Chinese male at about five feet six inches tall. His hair was straight and trimmed close in the manner of a military officer. No facial hair. Dark eyes. Flat face. Small nose. Wide cheekbones. The stockiness, lighter skin, and thinner eyes of tens of millions of Chinese. He could blend in anywhere.

  He moved under the green trees toward the secluded corner of the yard, where a light on the building ahead illuminated steps leading down to an unmarked security door. He descended the steps, reached for the handle, and pulled it open. As expected, it was unlocked.

  It made a metal-on-metal screech as he swung it open and entered onto the landing of a concrete stairwell. The air was heavy with the mixed scent of age and fresh paint. Orienting himself through the dim yellow glow given off by the single light by the door, he saw five flights of stairs going up and at least five more going down. He went down.

  At the bottom, he came to another security door. It was also unlocked. He opened it—this time silently—and stepped into the end of a long white-and-gray corridor that echoed with the hum of machinery. The hall felt like a fumigated icebox compared to the cool of the stairs. Caged industrial lighting dotted the ceiling. Dozens of closed steel doors were on both sides, spaced every ten feet.

  Li Chu saw a guardroom and security cameras fixed above the guardroom door pointing in his direction on the far end of the hall. The room, normally occupied by three heavily armed National Police officers, was empty. The cameras were turned off.

  His steps clicked off the concrete walls like a metronome. The sounds kept rhythm with his slightly elevated pulse. At the bottom of his tense stomach was the faint churning of acid like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Despite his steady temperament and tendency to demand perfection, he refused to be viewed as a robotic killer following chronically under-qualified and corrupt Chinese leadership orders.