Torching the Crimson Flag

by Conrad Brasso

  “That’s great.”

  “Well … yes and no. I’ll just give you the Cliff Notes version. They left Falling Creek, North Carolina, and loaded into a semi-truck. I’m sending you the video footage now.”

  “A semi-truck?”

  “Yes, sir. A Freightliner.”

  “Okay. Why do you sound hesitant?”

  “I can track them along Highway 70. But as they hit New Bern, we lose track of them.”

  Leonard was already texting David and the team was on the move.

  Justin had pulled up a map. “Okay, I’m seeing the Coastal Carolina Regional Airport. There’s a harbor across Neuse River. Both of those could be drop-off points. The river leads into Pamlico Sound.”

  “Right,” Leo confirmed. “Three thousand miles of water, separated from the ocean by the Outer Banks. This is becoming a needle in several different haystacks. Where did we lose them Dusti?” he asked as Justin downloaded the footage from her and sent it to the table to roll it.

  “There’s a big church called Temple Church on Kingdom Way.”

  “We see it.”

  “Do you have live satellite footage?”

  “No ma’am. Just a map.”

  “Okay, hold on.” A few seconds later, she said, “I just emailed you a link. Someone above my paygrade gave me access to it after Leonard’s call to whomever he called.”

  Justin clicked on it and shared the screen with the table. “What’s are we looking at?”

  “It’s a truckers convention. There are over a hundred trucks in the church parking lot and on their property. Not only that, but you see the Twin Rivers YMCA next to it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I see it,” Justin said. “About a hundred more trucks there.”

  “And then the Lawson Creek Park just southeast of it?

  “More trucks.”

  “Freightliner makes up forty percent of the semi-truck market share,” Bora reported. “But there’s an even bigger problem. It has to do with tracking the truck. The GPS transponder is in the cab. Not on the trailers.”

  “Are you kidding?” Leo asked. “They only track the cab and not the trailers?”

  “Apparently, that’s starting to change, but for the most part, yes.”

  Justin looked at his wife and nodded. “So the team that took Iris could’ve switched the cab out and kept the same trailer. Now, we don’t know where to look.”

  “It’s kind of like a giant shell game without knowing which one the pea is under,” said Dusti.

  “And it might not be a Freightliner now. They could have switched out with a Peterbilt. We’re just looking for a white trailer.” He looked an interactive shipping map that Bora had just pulled up and slid onto the conference room table. “It looks like 98% of the trailers are white.”

  Leonard had already stepped outside to call a friend at the F.B.I. They needed to put roadblocks up on US-70, as well as on US-17 and NC-55.

  “Thanks, Dusti,” Justin said. “Again, you’re amazing, and we really appreciate your helping us out.”

  “Anytime.”

  “Wait!” Bora said suddenly. “Can we see if any trucks are leaving the convention?”

  “What do you mean?” Miss Taylor asked.

  “Something like a fish swimming upstream against all the other fish swimming downstream.”

  “I see what you mean. Let me see if I can find anything.”

  Justin’s phone shook. He looked down at the screen. “Blue Team just arrived in New Bern,” he said to Bora. “They’re wondering where to set down.”

  Leonard Stone walked in. “Did you see David’s text?”

  “Just got it.”

  “Where should they land?”

  Justin was prepared. “Two options. There’s a school off Trent Boulevard called the Epiphany School of Global Studies. Or just across the highway from that is an empty wooded lot that’s for sale. There’s a clearing in a grove of trees that would be perfect. The chopper would be completely hidden from the road.”

  “Let’s tell them the second option. Text it to David right away.”

  As soon as he said that, comms in the conference room sprang to life.

  “Blue Team to LP,” Bruce was calling out, sounding like he’d been on repeat for the last ten minutes.

  “Come in, Blue Team. This is LP. Over.”

  “Hey, just in time,” Trey said, sounding relieved.

  Justin looked down at the screen-table. Live satellite footage appeared on it with a white dot in the middle labeled “Blue Team.” He looked through the glass wall of the conference center and saw Saara sitting at her desk. She turned around and gave him a thumbs-up with a smile.

  “Sorry, guys. We just got back online. Do you see all the trucks?”

  “Copy that. We see them. I’d say around four hundred altogether.”

  “That’s where our target is in the back of one of those semi-truck trailers. Just west of you is an empty lot off Trent Road. Across from a strip mall called Trent Village Drive.”

  “Got it!” David confirmed.

  Leonard had walked out of the conference room and was on the phone. He hurried back in.

  “Blue Team, someone will meet you in the parking lot of the strip mall across from where you’re landing. He’ll be giving you the keys to a 2004 BMW X3. Don’t trash it, if possible. It’s a rental from Alamo. Get back with us when you’ve secured the vehicle.”

  “Copy that!” Bruce acknowledged.

  “Do we have any ideas?” asked Leonard, ending the call and facing the Parks.

  “Bora?” It was Dusti.

  “Yes, Dusti! Sorry, we got distracted. Did you find anything?”

  “No, I didn’t. I rolled the footage back over an hour and looked for any squirters, but every truck that arrived ended up staying.”

  “Okay, thanks!”

  The conference room team was lost in thought. Then Justin broke the silence. “I thought about license plates, but semi-truck drivers don’t have to have one on their trailer. Just on their cab.”

  “How do you find a needle in a haystack?” Leonard asked, finally.

  “Burn it down?” Bora suggested.

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Michiko Imada was using her time on the Gulfstream G650 wisely and studying for her upcoming roll. A master of disguises, she knew that it was the details that were important. As she was starting to formulate a plan, she started receiving dozens of image files on her phone from Justin. They were of two male siblings who were obviously someone’s children. The pictures went all the way back to when both kids were babies. When they were all sent, Justin added a short text message:

  Your kids. Ake and Bono.

  Michi had to smile. Akebono was a famous American-born sumo wrestler who had become famous in Japan. Born in Waimanalo, Hawaii, he grew up to be one of the tallest and heaviest wrestlers in history. He rose all the way to Yokozuna rank and won a total of eleven tournament championships before retiring at the age of thirty-one.

  The next image files that came were from a house in Japan somewhere. It was beautiful. Right on the ocean. Then there were some shots of an apartment in New York City and a few from Hong Kong. These were the places where she lived with her kids until the children were ready to move to Hawaii. Her husband was the CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical group. And she was from the Hashimoto family – the global phenom in the manufacturing of disposable hygiene products.

  She went back over her back backstory. It had to be ironclad.

  Her family had recently moved to the island of Oahu and her biggest concern, of course, was the education of her beautiful children. They had heard wonderful things about Punahou School and of particular interest to her was their air riflery program and golf classes for children. Her two sons were exceptional marksmen and had aspirations about going to the Olympics. But she wanted to meet with a board member, preferably someone who’d already had children graduate from the school and go on to university. Before
they would enroll their children, and of course, the money was no issue, they had a few concerns. One of the biggest, and it had both her and her husband deeply impassioned, was any financial needs that the Punahou School might have. The Hashimoto family was known as being charitable, and they were so fascinated on the fact that Punahou had been founded in 1841 as a school for the children of missionaries serving throughout the Pacific region. It had the amazing historical distinction of being the first school west of the Rocky Mountains and east of Asia, to offer English classes.

  As Michi memorized the details of her story, how she’d met her husband, her favorite thing about New York City, whether they are renting or buying a property, or the birthdays of her two sons, she got an email on her phone. Ms. Linda Wagner, from the Punahou School Board and the wife of Helmut Wagner, would “be delighted to meet her.”

  Justin and Leo were in the conference room coordinating with Blue Team. Saara was at her desk, monitoring the overwatch and working on reverse tracking the GPS information from off the phones from the cemetery. Bora was back in the lounge room that she’d been using and was starting to research what happened to Ivan the Joke, when she got a message from Jennifer Wu, in Hong Kong.

  Reflection Models, LLC

  Clearly, Wu didn’t want to have a conversation at the moment, so Bora texted a thank you and started looking into the company. The first thing she noticed was the clean, modern website. Six photographers from five different nations displayed work with some of the world’s most successful companies. Their gallery portfolio was sensational and featured high-quality images, bursting with emotion and excitement. As she clicked through it, the next thing she noticed was the models. There were twenty-five of them, beautifully featured, and most of them were children and young women. The website boasted about shoots in exotic locations around the world.

  She looked at a ten or eleven-year-old boy. He had platinum-blond hair that was spiked in every direction, loyal peacock-blue eyes, and a mischievous lift around his lips. In his hand, he held a tube of Spiko, a hair-glue product that was guaranteed to make the hair on any kids’ head stand from morning until night. In the blurry background were some kids playing soccer.

  The next image that she pulled up was of a young girl. Bora guessed that she was under the age of eight. She was sitting cross-legged on a sidewalk, had a big smile on her face, and was gazing into the sky. Her jeans and white shirt gave her an all-American-girl vibe. It was an ad for the big pair of bright red headphones that were perched on her head.

  “What am I missing here?” wondered Bora.

  She checked out a few more pictures but didn't see anything overly suspicious, so she decided to check their veracity. To her surprise, she wasn't able to find any of the models modeling for the product on any official product page. She went to the Spiko website and searched all of their images. There was no blond model like the boy from Reflection Models, LLC. As a matter of fact, she couldn’t find the boy’s image on any other online site.

  She tried twenty-five models and couldn't find any of them doing advertisements for the companies they represented other than the ones on the modeling website. Bora decided to take a different route. She logged in to a business registration database and saw that the company had a PO Box in Delaware, but there was very little other information.

  “Why did you send this to me, Jennifer?” she muttered to herself.

  Suddenly Bora had an idea. She moved the faces of the twenty-five models onto a gig drive, and when they had downloaded, she took them over to Saara.

  “Can you help me with something real quick?”

  “Sure,” the Finn answered.

  “Can you see if these faces generate a hit on facial recognition software?”

  “Sure.”

  Bora thought it would take a while and was surprised to hear Saara call her name before she’d even gotten back to the lounge room she was using.

  “You have hits.”

  “Seriously?” Bora asked, jogging back Saara’s desk. “On who?”

  “I’m just going in order, but look at this first one, for instance,” answered Tuurig.

  She pulled up the blond boy, advertising for Spiko, and began to read the results.

  “Sigge Nyberg. Interpol reported him missing from his home in Sweden, four years ago. This second one is for Carolien VanderBerg. She went missing in Amsterdam three years ago. Vanessa Smith, from Astoria, Oregon. She was taken four years ago, too. Dusa Murchin and Luliana Rosioru were taken two years ago from Moldova.”

  For the next twenty minutes, they traced almost every person on the gig drive to missing kids reports from around the world. It looked like the first one was five years ago. But some of the children on the site were recently abducted – in the past year – and a few others of the faces couldn’t be identified because they weren’t in the database.

  “Where did you get these pictures?”

  “Jennifer Wu sent me the name of a company to research. They’re all from there.”

  Saara looked shocked. “Really? What was the company?”

  “Reflection Models, LLC. From their website, they look legitimate.”

  “What happens if you want to book one?”

  “Book a model? I have no idea. Should we try?”

  “Definitely.”

  Alexei Sokolov sat in his office lounge chair, puffing on his pipe. Next to him was the black leather briefcase he’d carried for years. He was famous in the embassy for always having it with him. It was vintage, he knew. But he was old-school, too. He thought about this new crop of political enemies for the President of the Russian Federation. They were different, somehow. They cared nothing for the art of the fight, only for the result. Even though they had no diplomatic experience or understanding of the historic approaches to life that would always keep the United States apart from their enemies, they felt entitled to everything, even the highest office of the land. He tapped on his phone and brought up some music on his Bluetooth speaker. “The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 846: I. Prelude.”

  Alexei remembered when he first came to work at the embassy in the United States. He’d always held innocuous titles, and that first year was no different: Secretary to the Assistant Deputy of Culture. A few years later, it changed to Assistant Chief Community Liaison Officer. Next, it became the Vice President of International Partnerships, followed by Vice-Manager for American Interaction, and then a Deployment Instructor. Finally, it had been changed to Senior Embassy Manager – the position he had now.

  He’d always been politically savvy, but after twenty-seven years, it was starting to take a toll. Sokolov admitted that he didn’t understand how this new generation fought. All they wanted to do was destroy and replace. And the world was changing, too. America was changing. It was becoming more unpredictable, less homogenous.

  After all of the crafting, handshakes, backroom deals, and spying, here he sat. He knew exactly what his enemies wanted him to do. The new idealists were loyal to Viktor Goncharov and either wanted Sokolov to go back to Russia or get the hell out of their way. He resented the fact that they might win. It was hard for him to believe. The moment in time he knew would come someday, was, in fact, here: his last night in his office in the great American capital of Washington D.C. The transfer order had surprised him. He’d thought he might just get severely demoted or maybe brought back to Moscow in chains of some sort. It was a golden opportunity for the Russian president to use him as a scapegoat of some sort. He was encouraged that at least the leader of his nation still wanted to keep him around. But he knew that he was being put out to pasture. Working in Liberia was a way of reassigning him, but doing it knowing that Alexei wouldn’t last long. He’d voluntarily go back to Russia and retire.

  He puffed on his pipe and thought about how he’d operated. Certainly, Alexei had worked with a certain pride about his job, whatever the title was. He saw himself as a representative of the Russian nation in the United States
, and more importantly, a dependable ally for the president. But he also saw himself as a friend to America. There were times when the American government needed certain things from Russia. And to be honest, there were times when the Russians needed very specific things from the Americans. He remembered when a highly trained American operative went off the reservation. He had been covertly inserted into the Soviet Union, but something wasn't right in his head. He started threatening civilians, and the United States was nervous for many reasons. They were afraid that he would start killing innocent people, and they were also afraid that he would spill state secrets. A very delicate meeting was set up in David's Cigar Bar. He was proud of the fact that the Americans trusted him to be able to negotiate a solution. Or there was the time when the Russians embarrassingly had one of their spy satellites fall into Lake Tahoe. Again meeting at David's, the Americans were able to work out an equitable agreement. The Russians had to allow the U.S. to copy the secret footage that the satellite had acquired, but they also understood the machine had cost millions of dollars to create, and losing all of it would be a tough hit. So they copied the data and returned the satellite. Most people weren't aware that these kinds of diplomacies happened all the time. This new generation had no clue about the kind of dance it took to make nation-states work together when it was absolutely required.

  He looked at his watch. The transfer was going to happen very soon. It was time for him to go.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tecnomar yachts have always been sporty-looking with dynamic exteriors and modern, intelligent interior designs. The Salacia V was no exception. In ancient Roman mythology, the ship’s namesake had been the girl Neptune loved, the goddess of salt water. When the powerful god had first proposed to her, she’d been in love with another. Hiding in the Atlantic Ocean to preserve her virginity, she only changed her mind when Neptune sent one of his dolphins to persuade her of his covenant love. The god was so happy that she finally agreed to marriage, that he awarded the dolphin a separate place in the heavens, forming a constellation called Delphinus.