Bolan wouldn’t do that, of course, but Octavios would not know the soldier’s personal code. It didn’t hurt for him to have a healthy fear of his chaperone. The Greek sat in the passenger seat and then looked stricken.
“This seat is covered in blood,” he said, disgusted.
“Be glad it’s not yours, because that’s what they were looking to do to you.”
“I understood as much when they started shooting out the trunk with an elephant gun,” Octavios stated as the solder got in behind the wheel.
“Good.” Bolan put the Mercedes in Reverse and managed to get it back on the road. Once there, he spun the wheel and sped away from the approaching police sirens. The sedan was badly damaged, but in much better condition than the Chevy.
Bolan thumbed the single contact in his encrypted smartphone and put the device to his ear. Barbara Price answered.
“We read you,” was all she said.
“This is Striker,” Bolan said, using his mission code name. “Change of plans. Our ride is wrecked. I’ll need new wheels, a resupply, and I’m going to have some requests for heavy artillery.”
“Understood,” Price replied. She didn’t sound worried. At least, she wouldn’t sound worried to anyone who had not known her for years. “How mobile are you, Striker?”
“Barely. Can you route me somewhere in the vicinity?”
“I have a location standing by,” she said. “Sending it to your phone now. Message us the specifics of your supply needs and I’ll make sure a courier reaches you.”
“Affirmative,” Bolan said. “Thanks. Striker out.”
He pulled the phone away from his head and an address immediately flashed across the screen via the Farm’s encrypted message system. This was followed by GPS routing to the location. Bolan glanced at the map grid long enough to memorize the route. He tucked the phone away and glanced at his passenger.
Octavios was glaring. “It is not enough that you almost get me shot,” he said. “Now you must text and drive?”
Bolan’s eyes narrowed.
Octavios’s face split in a wide grin. He began to laugh. Beaming, he slapped the door on his side, as if he’d just told Bolan the world’s best joke.
“I miss something?” Bolan finally said.
“Nothing,” Octavios told him, struggling to get the words out through his laughter. “It is just that...at least my death will not be boring, Cooper. I have you to thank for that.”
Chapter Three
Toronto Safehouse
“Is this really necessary?” Octavios grumbled.
“Yeah,” Bolan replied.
The Greek pulled at the handcuffs securing him to an exposed radiator pipe in the “guest” bedroom of the safehouse. Bolan had chosen this converted anteroom off the front porch for Octavios because it served his immediate purposes. The windows were small and the room was relatively cramped. While the tall man tugged experimentally at the cuff on his right wrist, Bolan pulled up Octavios’s polo shirt to examine the device implanted in the man’s chest.
“You’re awfully forward,” the data terrorist complained.
“Quiet.” Bolan poked at the wires. “The inflammation is worse than it was this morning.” He put a palm on Octavios’s forehead.
“I do wish you would stop touching me.”
“Shut up. You’re running a fever. That’s going to be a problem.”
“Because you intend to keep me alive long enough for your government to affix jumper cables to my—”
“Yes,” Bolan said. “Do you have any allergies to penicillin, anything like that?”
“Not to my knowledge. Am I to take this as a good-cop ploy to gain my cooperation? A demonstration of faux caring on your behalf? Is this the part where you tell me you are really my friend?”
“No,” Bolan countered. “My job is to keep you alive until we reach our destination. But I need you to understand something, Octavios. You’re a threat to my country. If I can’t keep you alive, the only other option is to make sure you don’t go free.” He pulled the Greek’s shirt back down and went to sit on the edge of the guest-room bed. Taking out his secure phone, he began typing a list of supplies he needed the Farm to courier to him. He added “antibiotics” to the list.
“Then your mission is no different than the many others who want to kill or capture me,” Octavios stated. “Such as the gunmen today. There will be others, you know.”
“I’m aware.”
“I am a threat to a great many countries,” the Greek said. “And to any entity, any private individual, any person in power or of prestige, who fears the truth.”
“And you don’t care who gets hurt.”
“If a man is capable of being hurt by the truth,” Octavios declared, “then I say, hurt him.”
“So when Codex Freedom released the names of covert CIA operatives to the internet, you don’t see a problem there?” Bolan challenged. “You bear no responsibility for the lives you endangered?”
“Cooper, I refuse to believe you are that naïve. Shall we discuss, for that matter, who you really are?”
“Come again?”
“Please,” Octavios said. He made an attempt to get comfortable, seated on the floor, his back to the radiator, his right arm hanging from the handcuffs. “You’ve just engaged in open warfare on the streets of peaceful Toronto. The gunplay in which you engaged would be notable even on the mean streets of your own nation.”
“I don’t need a lecture on American violence,” Bolan said, “from a man whose hands are bloody with it.”
“You are mistaken,” Octavios told him. “You think I wash my hands of the consequences of my actions. You think I believe the data speaks for itself. That I release it to the world and accept no responsibility for the consequences.”
“Isn’t that what Codex Freedom is?” Bolan asked. “Don’t you claim just that?”
“Far from it. You’ve been sold a bill of goods by your media. By your own government. Don’t be shocked. Every single person alive is fed a constant stream of propaganda. It infects popular culture. It dominates and dictates your news. It informs your government’s foreign and domestic policies. No one is immune.”
“Except you, of course,” Bolan said. “You and the zealots who work with you.”
“Has it not occurred to you to wonder about my aims?” Octavios asked. “Do you think I want this device in my chest?”
“I think your type loves playing the martyr. I’ve met countless versions of you, Octavios. Every single one of you is convinced you alone understand what’s true. You’ve decided to inflict your version of that truth on the public at large. You don’t care who gets hurt. You don’t care who gets killed. You have your self-righteous cause, and it’s what makes you special. Without it, you’d dry up and blow away.”
“You misjudge me, Cooper,” Octavios said. “That is not the man I am. And I am very aware of the lives taken by my quest to expose the truth. I understand the cost. But then, that’s what bothers you, isn’t it? The cost?”
Bolan eyed the Greek. He took his knife from his waistband and snapped open the blade. Octavios looked, for a moment, like he thought he’d made a mistake. Perhaps he thought Bolan was going to snap and cut his throat. The soldier took a diamond sharpening rod from his war bag and began repairing the slightly damaged edge of the OTF knife. Prying open the trunk of the Chevy had left some nicks in the blade.
“Is this the part where you psychoanalyze me?”
“Touché,” Octavios said. “But please, Cooper. Is that really your name?” He waited for Bolan to answer, but when the soldier said nothing, he went on. “I know governments. I know bureaucrats. I have seen the cables they transmit when they believe no one is looking. I have seen their private emails. Messages to their lovers. To prostitutes. To enemies. To friends. I know what they hide.
“I have not held
on to this information, nor used it to blackmail those in power. And I could have. The sex trafficking ring that Codex Freedom exposed to the internet resulted in the arrests of many people in power. Celebrities and politicians alike. Or at least, it would have...had the powers that be not ‘suicided’ a certain wealthy facilitator, the man at the center of the ring.”
“And you think that makes up for the people you’ve gotten killed,” Bolan said.
“Nothing makes up for deaths,” Octavios replied. “Nothing makes up for abuses of power. Don’t you see, Cooper? The only way to disinfect the rot is to expose it to the light. Secrets, Cooper. The world has too many of them. Private secrets. Government secrets. Secrets among allies. Secrets among foes. I fight for a world without secrets. A world where the truth is known. People will die. They are collateral damage in a war for the truth. But that new world, that truthful world, will be a better place.”
“And no doubt you’ll be well taken care of in it.”
“Bah,” Octavios said. “Do you think I do this to enrich myself? I have already said I could have blackmailed countless power brokers. With what I know of your Hollywood celebrities alone, I could amass an illicit fortune. Instead, I am a wanted man with a battery-powered modem stuck to my sternum. I am hunted by government assassins. My assets, those I could not hide, have been seized. My family wants nothing to do with me, and I avoid them for their own safety. Do you think any man would choose this life?”
“You’d be surprised,” Bolan said.
“I suppose I would, at that. Tell me, Cooper. What manner of government bureaucrat, even a law-enforcement officer, is prepared to wage war on a city street?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Of course you do,” the Greek admonished. “We both know you are not some functionary. You’re not a policeman, looking forward to his pension, trying to stay out of trouble and remain unscathed at the end of his shift. Are you an assassin?”
“Not on your life.”
“I did not think so. I have known assassins, Cooper. One encounters all types in the data business. You do not strike me as a wanton murderer. But your eyes, Cooper. You have a killer’s eyes.”
“I’ve seen death,” Bolan conceded.
“You trade in death,” Octavios observed. “Tell me I am wrong. I saw the results of your handiwork today. Most men would be gibbering wrecks after something like that. You were not even out of breath.”
“Then maybe you should be careful about who you poke with a stick,” Bolan said.
“I am doing nothing of the sort. I am merely trying to explain to you—a man who holds me prisoner, a man who holds my fate in his hands—that I am not a monster. I am accustomed to being portrayed as one.”
“Codex Freedom. Tell me how well adjusted its members are. Explain to me all about how they’re not monsters. I’ve seen the files, Octavios. I know who we’re dealing with.”
“One works with the tools at hand,” the Greek said. “You, of all people, understand this. Tell me I am wrong.”
“Go to sleep,” Bolan told him. “We’ll be leaving before dawn.”
“Not in that wrecked Mercedes, I hope.”
“Heated seats,” Bolan quipped. “Power everything. What’s not to like?”
“Now you are trying to be funny. It doesn’t suit you. How am I to sleep handcuffed to the radiator?”
“Try.”
“You could at least move me to the bed.”
“Nothing to cuff you to,” Bolan said. The bed in the room was a simple mattress on top of a folding spring-lattice platform, the kind of thing a person could buy online and have delivered. The Farm had access to a network of safehouses throughout the world. The locations were short on extras. “Besides,” Bolan added, “I’m sleeping there. Now shut up. I have a roll of duct tape with your name on it if you can’t be quiet.”
Octavios, to his credit, said nothing more.
Bolan switched off the lights and remained standing for several minutes, waiting for his eyes to adjust. In the darkness, Octavios looked up at him.
“Do you...sleep standing up, like some sort of farm animal?”
“I told you to go to sleep.”
“What are you doing, Cooper?”
“Proving a theory,” Bolan said. He went to the twin-size bed and eased onto it, sitting up. His Beretta was in its shoulder holster; his Desert Eagle on his hip. He still wore his war bag across his chest. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable way to grab a night’s sleep, sitting up and fully dressed, still wearing his combat boots.
“Your clothes give you away, incidentally,” Octavios said in the darkness. “Black cargo pants that might be BDUs. A jacket and black turtlenecked shirt tailored for utility. Boots that might as well be military-issue. You are wearing a uniform without the uniform, Cooper. You are some sort of soldier. Special Forces? National Security Agency? I will find out eventually. And when I do, the world will know the truth.”
“If you don’t stop talking,” Bolan said, “I’m going to knock you out with the butt of my gun. Then duct tape your mouth.”
Octavios made a scoffing noise but said nothing else.
Bolan, of course, had no intention of sleeping. He was indeed proving a point to himself. He theorized that this safehouse was anything but safe. There was something very shady about the fact that the North Koreans had acquired them immediately after they’d left the Canadian facility.
The simplest explanation was that the SSD operatives had staked out the location and then waited for Bolan to exit. But how would they have known which car to attack? The soldier had made sure to put Octavios in the trunk for that very reason. He would have been just one of several people coming and going from that location.
There was the possibility of leaks, yes. The SSD might have a connection on the inside who’d told them what day the Greek was scheduled to leave. But even the Canadians hadn’t known when, precisely, to expect Bolan. And unless the North Koreans had intended to attack every single car leaving the facility until they got one that happened to contain Octavios, that theory didn’t hold up.
Not only had they known which car to attack, but they’d known Octavios was concealed in the trunk. They’d deliberately targeted him for assassination. Had they merely been trying to take down Bolan, they wouldn’t have wasted bullets on the trunk of the car. Yes, they could have assumed Octavios was in the trunk, since the man wasn’t visible in the Chevy’s passenger compartment...but again, how could they have known which car to attack at all?
Just how good was North Korean intelligence? Matthew Cooper, and various men with Bolan’s face, going by different names, were probably in dossiers around the world. The soldier got around, and he had upset more than a few apple carts internationally. But it was still far too convenient a coincidence.
No, somebody had intel on Octavios’s whereabouts. They’d tracked him in some way. And if they’d been tracking him on the way out of the detention facility, they were still tracking him now.
Which was why Bolan was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He’d never expect Octavios to get a good night’s sleep handcuffed to a radiator. He was many things, but he wasn’t cruel. He simply needed the man out of the way for whatever was about to happen, so he’d secured him.
Now he was waiting for the hammer to fall.
What would be truly interesting, not to mention informative on this mission, would be to identify who it was that came for Octavios. There were multiple state actors interested in what happened to the hacker. North Korea might be content to watch the world burn, trusting that whatever came out would be worse for the United States and its allies than for its supreme leader. The big American wasn’t sure where some of the other individuals in his dossier came down. The Russians could break either way.
Over the years, Bolan had contended with the Russians countles
s times. Theirs was a particularly no-nonsense attitude. He’d faced Russian operatives ranging from sadistic to sympathetic, but one thing characterized them all: practicality. He imagined that they’d capture Octavios if it was reasonably convenient to do so, but they’d be content to force the issue by killing him. It would at least prevent him from any future attacks on their nation.
Then again, there was nothing to say that Codex Freedom would cease operations without Octavios. He might be the leader and the founder of the group, but according to Bolan’s dossier, it had a typical terrorist cell structure. That meant that components would operate independently of one another. Taking down one cell, even the leader, wouldn’t necessarily prevent the others from carrying out more data attacks and releases of sensitive information.
It was a wonder that Octavios hadn’t been assassinated before. The man had obviously known to take steps against that eventuality. You couldn’t go around making enemies of the most powerful nations in the world without expecting repercussions. But it wasn’t the huge nations like the United States that were the primary threat. Even the Russians, the Israelis, and other major powers were constrained by at least the veneer of law and regulation. All nations might eliminate certain threats, might engage in “black ops” and “wetwork”...but it was the smaller nations, nations like North Korea, that posed the most direct threat of action. They weren’t held back by the same considerations. They also didn’t care how they looked on the world stage.
North Korean operatives armed with automatic weapons on the streets of Toronto was another issue entirely. Bolan would detail the entire matter to Hal Brognola at the Farm when he was debriefed. Then the big Fed would take up the matter with State and with the Canadians. There would be fallout, for sure. The West might even levy more sanctions on the North Koreans. But the average person would never hear of it. All of these things happened behind the scenes.
Bolan was glad he didn’t have Brognola’s job. The Justice man handled the swamp that was Wonderland. Mack Bolan, meanwhile, dealt with the real world, with the direct action of bullets and their trajectories. He much preferred that sort of combat to the tooth-and-nail struggle in Washington. It was a wonder Brognola had managed in that mess for as long as he had.
Cyberthreat Page 3