Torching the Crimson Flag

by Conrad Brasso

  Justin thought about that perspective. It was a holy moment. There’s no other way to explain it. It was spiritual.

  “And then when I said my vows to you. Everything in me was being just fully honest and vulnerable. I remember meaning every single word.”

  “And then our honeymoon night.”

  “That was crazy. It started out so romantically. We made passionate love to each other …”

  “And then my phone rang.”

  “That was surreal. Jun calling us and telling you that his sister had just been murdered.”

  “The next thing we knew, we were on a plane and headed into one of the most intense operations I’ve ever been a part of.”

  The couple sat in silence, each processing their own memories of the experience.

  “And now, we have six days left.” Just as Justin said those words, his phone started chirping. He instantly recognized the ringtone pattern of the secure app he’d developed. “It’s LaunchPad.”

  Bora’s eyes widened.

  “Should I answer?”

  “Yes! Of course.”

  He picked his phone up from off the table and entered the answer code. “Hello?”

  “Justin. It’s Leonard Stone.”

  There was something about the way that he’d said his name. Leonard Stone. It carried weight.

  “Hi, Dr. Stone. Is everything okay?”

  “Is Bora there?”

  “Sure. Let me put you on speakerphone. It’s just the two of us in our RV.”

  Over the next ten minutes, Leo updated the couple on everything that was going on. The abduction of Iris, the attack on Fox and Ashley, the connection to the Russian Embassy, and the Stone family’s approaching return.

  “So, will Fox survive?” Bora asked, devastated.

  “He’s in critical condition. At this point, we don’t know. Ashley expected the surgery to take six to eight hours. And then the next twenty-four hours will be of critical importance.”

  “What about Boyd?”

  “She’s been briefed on the situation, but I suggested she stay in Hawaii until we know which way this case will turn.”

  Justin was staring at Bora. He couldn’t believe this was happening again. “What would you like us to do, Dr. Stone?”

  There was a long pause on the other end. Then Leonard answered haltingly, “I’m not going to ask you to do anything. I just felt like you needed to know.”

  “Do you want us to come back?”

  “I’m not …” the man was breaking inside. Bora could feel it.

  “Dr. Stone, we have had a very refreshing time here. Emotionally, it’s been healing. Relationally, it’s been just what we were hoping. But I’m sensing that now you need us to come back. In Korean, we call it our noonchi. It’s an inner sense we have. An ability to listen and perceive the moods of others. You’d like us to come.”

  “I … I can’t ask you. I know how meaningful it’s been to be on your honeymoon, finally.”

  This time Bora was looking at Justin. He raised his head to make eye contact. In that moment, he saw that his wife wanted to help the team again. It was something he’d been unsure about. She’d experienced a lot of emotional trauma in the last operation as she uncovered what had happened to Jun’s sister and discovered the horrors of child trafficking. He wondered when she’d be ready. There was no doubt in his mind now. She wanted to get back to LaunchPad.

  “Dr. Stone,” Justin said. “I think we both appreciate you calling us. Very much. It couldn’t have been easy picking up the phone. We’re ready to come back and throw ourselves into whatever you need us to do.”

  “Thank you, Justin. And you too, Bora.”

  “We’ll pack up here, return the RV and get our car. I think it would be the fastest way of getting back to LP. All the flights are either around six in the morning or four in the afternoon. So it’s too late to catch those.”

  “I’ve already thought about that and reached out to a private charter company here in Baltimore. They said they had a Cessna Citation X that can bring you. When you pick up your car, drive straight to the airport. Remove any valuables and leave the car in long-term parking. We’ll figure out how to get it down here later.”

  “Yes, sir, Dr. Stone. When will the plane be at the airport?”

  “As soon as we hang up, I’ll call them. It should be there in two hours or less. I’ve instructed them to bring you directly to Martin State Airport, so you should be here in five hours or less.”

  “Okay. We’ll see you soon.”

  After they’d disconnected, the young married couple just looked at each other for a few minutes.

  “Honey, are you ready for this?” Justin asked.

  “I am,” Bora responded. “I feel like we could spend the rest of our lives on this island. It’s so beautiful. So relaxing and therapeutic.”

  “But?”

  “But it’s easy to forget about what’s happening in the real world, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And just hearing Leonard’s voice. He sounded tired. Like he needs help.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “Justin, I want to do this. I want to go back and help. We’ll always have each other, and we have our whole lives ahead of us.”

  “Alright, then.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m already thinking about the weapon configurations our team needs. I wonder what setup Boyd has with her in Hawaii. I’m going to text her to find out.”

  Bora laughed. “As soon as the phone rang, I knew you were shifting gears in that head of yours.” She paused. “With Leonard calling for a plane, what would have happened if we’d said, ‘No?’”

  “I think he would have respected and understood the decision. He’d have canceled the plan.”

  “I do, too.”

  “But I think he’s relieved that we’re coming.”

  Bora nodded.

  Leonard hung up the phone and sat alone in the glass-walled conference room inside LaunchPad. Bora and Justin were an amazing couple. He was truly thankful for their willingness to come down. In his mind, he was mapping out what they could do when the door to the warehouse opened. Michiko Imada walked in. He sprang to his feet and hurried out to meet her.

  “Hi, Dr. Stone. How is Fox?”

  He filled her in and then asked, “What were you able to collect?”

  “Actually, more than I expected,” she answered, lifting off her backpack. The weapons she’d collected spilled on the ground.

  “Are those the guns they used?”

  “Yes, I thought we might be able to pull prints off of them, and if we’re really lucky, we might be able to track their registration.”

  “Great job, Michi,” Leonard said, scooping them up and heading over to the kitchen table. “Bora and Justin are going to be here in about five hours. He can figure out if the weapons give us any information. What else did you find?”

  She walked over to him and put her backpack on the table. “I have two phones and DNA swabs from all three shooters.”

  “Saara will have to take a crack at the phones when Fox’s surgery is over. I’ll wait until David reaches out to me, and then I’ll ask where to send the bloodwork.”

  “Also, I have these,” she said, pulling out the rental car receipts.

  “You didn’t leave much for the cops to follow up with, did you,” Leo said, chuckling.

  “I figured that if we wanted to pass on an anonymous tip to them later, we could,” Michi answered, handing him the papers.

  “Good idea.” He looked down. “I need my reading glasses. What do they say?”

  Michi stood beside him and looked over at the documents. “Carousel Shipping, LLC. They rented the car under a company name.”

  “Is there a signature?”

  “It’s a scribble of some sort. Nothing that we can decipher.”

  “Call Bora and see if she can hotspot her laptop off of Justin’s satphone. It would need to be a very secu
re setup. If she can’t, then tell her not to snoop. But if she can, ask her to find out more about this company while they’re on their flight.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m exhausted, Michiko. I need to lay down for a few hours. When Trey and his family get here, please wake me up. They should be here in about four hours.”

  “Yes, Dr. Stone. What would you like me to do in the meantime?”

  “I’ll leave my phone with you. If David calls, pick it up and get a sitrep. If you need to wake me, go ahead.”

  “I’ll get a situation report from him. Anything else?”

  “You might want to check in on Saara and Ashley to see if they need anything. My guess is that they could desperately use some water and maybe some protein bars.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Other than that, you can rest, too, if you’d like.”

  “I think I’ll take a shower and then relax. But I’ll stay up until Trey gets here.”

  “Sounds good,” Leonard said, yawning. “I’m going to go lay down.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tank quietly walked forward and opened the door to the janitor’s closet. It was bigger than he’d expected, more like a storage room than a closet. He slipped inside and looked around. Nobody was there. He wasn’t sure whether to wait for someone or return to Sokolov’s office. Deciding to head back up the staircase, he stepped back into the hallway. A movement caught his eye, and he whirled around just in time to see men racing up to him. It was the three guys he’d seen under the tree earlier.

  “Who are you?” growled the one who had been taking their pictures. He looked to be from Southeast Asia somewhere.

  “Just a janitor, my friend. No need to panic.”

  They didn’t buy his answer. One of them whipped out a knife and sprang towards Tank. The agent deftly stepped to the side and kneed the hostile in the solar plexus while simultaneously capturing the guy’s knife wrist with his left hand. As he used the man’s momentum to twist it, he heard the popping sound of the palmar carpal ligament stretching and breaking. He spun the hostile’s body around and used his right hand to push the guy’s body in front of him as a shield. It was perfectly timed. The hostile absorbed a crushing income fist in his face from the second assailant. When Tank heard the nose bone splintering, he knew the first guy was out of commission. The hostile crumbled to all fours with blood squirting from his nose as his knife fell harmlessly to the ground. The other two men rushed Tank at the same time like bar-fight brawlers.

  One of them took a wild swing, and Tank blocked it with his left hand while devastating the guy’s ribs with a right fist. Concurrently, his right leg whipped out and kicked the second attacker between his legs. Tank knew he hadn’t done enough. The Lakota native quickly grabbed the back of his head and heavily slammed his face into his rising knee. It was an excruciating blow. He was out.

  The remaining hostile pulled out a deadly double-edged karambit from a sheath on his side. The small curved Indonesian blade was originally weaponized among the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra. It was designed to resemble a Tiger’s claw and could be used to slice, hook-into, or stab a person. Tatanka Ptecila knew it was menacingly deadly in the hands of a person who’d been properly trained to use it. He focused. This guy seemed to be the most serious fighter of the three of them.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Tank asked.

  The man spat at him and then began crouching and standing while shifting from side to side. “Let’s go!” he hissed angrily.

  He lunged forward at Tank with a backhand slash. The agent took a step back, and the blade sailed passed his throat. But the hostile was quick. He came with an upward thrust that Tank blocked with his forehand and grabbed the guy's wrist. He whipped the hostile’s arm up in the air and got the blade out of his way. Then he threw a punch at the man’s shoulder. He wasn’t fast enough. The hostile sprang backward as Tanks fist caught nothing but air. Using his momentum, he whipped his right leg up, trying to land a kick, but the man used his non -knife hand to block it. The blade came arcing through the air towards Tank’s thigh. The agent used all of his might to push the assailant away. He stumbled backward but recovered his balance. The two men faced each other again, like starting the next round.

  With lightning speed, the man faked with the blade in his right hand while whipping his left fist into Tank’s face. The agent saw it coming and bent backward, reacting just fast enough to escape the lethality, but not soon enough to avoid contact. He took a glancing blow on the side of his jaw. Again the hostile came with the karambit. This time, he lunged forward with his blade at a flat angle, hoping to whip across Tank’s chest, and slice through the flesh between his ribs. Tank leaped backwards and the swipe missed. The agent used his left hand to catch the hostile’s wrist as it went sailing past his chest. With his right hand, he reached forward and grasped the guy’s exposed shoulder, and, using the hostile’s own momentum, Tank slammed his body into the cement wall. Tank followed with a powerful left knee to the guy’s lumbar region. He heard something crack, and he delivered a punch to the back of his neck. He crumpled to the ground. The agent bent down and pried the karambit out of the hostile’s hand. It was a good weapon to have.

  Two of the men were out cold, and the third was still on all fours, trying not to choke on the blood that was coming through his nose and mouth. Tank decided not to finish him off. As much as possible, he didn’t want any killings on Russian soil. He quickly looked around the hallway and was relieved not to see any cameras. Maybe the rest of the rooms in this passageway weren’t classrooms after all. He resisted the temptation to scout the basement and decided he’d better get upstairs. Before he did, he took out his phone and snapped pictures of the men’s faces.

  Tank disappeared through the door, slipped into the other small hallway, opened the entrance to the secret staircase, and jogged up nine flights of stairs.

  While all of that was going on, David and Sokolov were sipping vodka and puffing on their preferred tools for tobacco delivery.

  “I remember first meeting you at your bar in Philly,” Alexei reminisced.

  David nodded. “It’s still one of the best places to forge relationships.”

  “So, you still have it?”

  Hirsch nodded. “When I’m not running around trying to straighten everything out in this world, I’m at home working at the bar.”

  “Who manages it when you’re not there?”

  “A guy that’s been with me for many years. Rocco. You’d probably remember him if you saw him. Then there’s a new guy I’ve taken in. He started training several months ago. He’s a good guy too.”

  “I’ve always thought it would be nice.”

  “To own a bar?”

  Sokolov nodded. “To have a place where people can meet and talk about serious things.”

  “Many a difference has been sorted out by just sitting down and communicating over a drink and tobacco.”

  “Yes,” the Russian paused. “David, there’s something I wanted to tell you in private. I’m thinking …”

  A loud knock at his office door interrupted them. It quickly repeated.

  Sokolov got up from his chair and hurried to the door. It was strange to have someone interrupt them at this time of the day. He cracked the door open. “Come in. Quickly. What are you doing here?”

  The man answered in Russian, looking very worried.

  Alexei turned around. “This is the man that was supposed to meet Tank. He said the hallway was guarded, and he couldn’t get to the broom closet.”

  David stood up, and just as he was about to answer, Tank came bursting through the stairwell door. He raced over to Sokolov and forced the man against the wall, placing the edge of the karambit blade on his throat.

  “Wait! Tank!” David ordered.

  “It was a trap, sir.”

  “No. It wasn’t. Put the blade down, now.”

  “I was ambushed by the three guys under the tree taki
ng our pictures.”

  “Tank! Back off!”

  Tatanka Ptecila released his grip and stepped back, glaring at the guy who had just come into the office and then back at Sokolov.

  “Come over here.”

  The agent obeyed.

  “This is the man you were supposed to meet in the basement. He just came into Alexei’s office.”

  Tank glowered at him suspiciously.

  “What happened?” Sokolov asked the other Russian. “Speak English.”

  “I went downstairs for the meeting, and the hallway was guarded by three men.”

  “Who?”

  “These guys,” Tank answered, pulling a picture up on his phone and handing it to David’s Russian contact.

  Alexei zoomed in on each face by spreading his forefinger and thumb on the screen.

  “You know them?” asked Hirsch.

  “These men are connected to Viktor Goncharov.”

  “The new guy running for president in Russia?”

  “Yes.” He looked at the other Russian. “Do you still have the evidence from the parking lot?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Give it to Tank.”

  The man stepped forward, reached into his pants pocket, and produced a USB flash drive.

  “Why didn’t you just hand that to us in the parking lot?” David queried.

  “There are cameras everywhere. Outside. Inside. And everything that has to do with me gets watched very carefully. The basement is the only place with no cameras.”

  “What are we going to find on there?”

  “Everything. This man works in the video security booth. He’s been very helpful to me. Back in the day, he would regularly doctor footage whenever I needed it. But now data is immediately uploaded to a central server, and everything is more complicated. Even this meeting is now raising red flags. You need to go my friends.”

  The younger Russian opened the door and walked out of the office, followed by Tank.

  David pulled Sokolov aside. “You were going to tell me something.”