She stamped out her cigarette, drained her coffee mug, and walked into her office just in time to hear one of her burner phones vibrating. A special communications app was lighting up in pulsating colors, and she opened it with a fingerprint. The text was from Antonio Sabini.
Distributions made.
Seiko straightened up as excitement ran through her body like a drug. The biometric key had been uploaded! The funds from The Red Flag Commerce and Development Company’s Global Fund were being dispersed to all of the newly created LLC’s. The money was handled entirely by artificial intelligence designed by people with whom she’d connected. The AI would create cryptocurrency accounts, fill those accounts, do five hundred thousand transactions in minutes, splitting the money, and regrouping it. Then it would come out the other end in whatever currency best served the recipient. With the continually changing global currency rates, the transactions would be virtually impossible to trace.
Her phone rang. It was Helmut Wagner.
“Miss Chiu, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Of course not, Herr Wagner, what can I do for you?”
“I just received an unexpected surprise.”
“Wonderful.”
“Do I need to know anything about these funds? Are they designated for anything in particular?”
“No. I’m just making sure that every team member knows how deeply appreciative I am. We’re taking this to a new level, and we’ll all share in the profits, together.”
“Loyalty and reward.”
“For life.”
They ended the call with their group’s pledge.
Over the next hour, Seiko kept receiving similar phone calls, but she knew it was time for her to focus on the most critical aspect of the whole project. Never before had a delivery been tried on such a mass scale. There was a reason. Without AI, it would have been impossible. She needed to oversee this next operation personally.
Bruce was set up in the house rented by the Russians. He was standing in the master bedroom and looking out the back window at the long pier that extended from the backyard out into the ocean water. Tank was on the opposite side of the home. He was standing in the kitchen, looking out the front window. Both operators had retrieved their full kits from the Scout II and had searched the house for any clues. There were no cell phones, passports, or any other kind of identification, but they did find the rental receipt. The house had been rented by Textilations LLC, a company specializing in modern threads that allowed clothes to be “more than just things that are worn,” according to their website. Bruce forwarded the information to Bora.
While the two operators had the house buttoned-down, Trey was walking up to the Ocracoke Airport terminal. It was a small three-story building, the third floor being mostly a control tower that looked like it had been a lighthouse in its previous life. Stately, and elegantly Victorian, it had a broad front porch, dark green roof shingles and painted pale yellow siding, anchoring its rustic and relaxed beach-side feel. He opened the front door and did a quick scan of the lobby. Nobody was around. To his right were a few round wooden tables surrounded by ladderback chairs and a couple of vending machines on the far wall. To his left, were more comfortable rattan chairs with little side stands beside each one. Straight ahead of him, at the bottom left side of the stairs, was a small reception counter. The walls were graced with paintings of the beach, fishing boats, and black and white still shots of days gone by.
Stone was no stranger to these little airports. He’d studied them extensively for a tracking mission he’d had several years ago when a known Iranian terrorist had entered the country and was trying to disappear into the Midwest. He’d learned that American airspace is divided into twenty-one zones, and each one of those is divided into sectors. Within each zone are portions of territory that are about fifty miles in diameter, called TRACON airspaces. The Terminal Radar Approach Control can have several airports within its range, each having its own five-mile radius.
Most smaller airports, like this one, had air traffic control towers that were staffed by employees of private companies contracted by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA would pay for the costs of the controllers, with the companies typically paying the balance of operating costs. By doing that, the airfields could cut costs by almost 80%. These “contract towers” are usually run by people who have previous military air traffic control experience or are retired FAA controllers. With over 50,000 planes in the skies over the United States every day, these people all had a big responsibility.
Pilots of small aircraft often fly by sight only. And although these pilots are not required by the FAA to file flight plans and are not serviced by the mainstream air traffic control system, local towers still appreciate knowing what they’re doing. The flying of aircraft through the various airspace divisions is much like basketball players moving through a zone defense. As an aircraft travels through a given airspace zone, it’s monitored by the one or more air traffic controllers responsible for that division who give instructions to the pilot. As the plane exits that airspace division, and enters another, the air traffic controller passes it off to the controllers responsible for the new airspace division.
“Hello?” he called out. There was no answer. Spying a hallway, he correctly guessed that it led to a staircase. He bounded up a level, calling out as he climbed, “Hello? Anyone here? Hello?”
A voice responded from the third level, in the little control tower. Trey couldn’t quite make out what had been said, so he presumed it was authorization to keep going. When he got to the landing platform on the third floor, there was a man at a stand-up desk, facing the runway. He was fixated on the computer screens in front of him and hadn’t realized Trey was standing behind him. He had on a pair of khaki pants, belted with a brown leather belt that held his radio communications and his phone. A muted aloha shirt printed with mint green Hibiscus leaves that covered a sky-blue background was neatly tucked into his waistline.
“Hi there!”
The guy jumped and whirled around, “What are you doing here? I said we’re closed.”
Trey held his hands up in front of his chest in surrender, “Hey, I’m sorry. I couldn’t make out what you were saying, so I figured I had a green light.”
“You don’t,” the controller snapped rudely. “You’re not allowed to be up here, man. Federal regulations. Besides that, no planes are allowed to take off or land after 6:00 PM or before 6:00 AM.”
Trey nodded his head. “I have a quick question.”
“It can wait. Go downstairs.”
“The Russians that are renting a house in town. Did they fly in through here?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”
Trey immediately sensed danger. A closet door burst open, and two men charged towards him! Both of them had sidearms in holsters on their waist. With a roar, they raced towards him. He ducked down, slithered between them, and sprang up, just in time to whirl around and plant a kick in the lower back of one of them. The man grunted as he absorbed the blow and stumbled forward. The other guy caught his balance, turned, and tried to draw his gun. But, Trey leaped forward and smashed the palm of his hand into the guy’s face, grabbing the hostile’s hair with his other hand and yanking his body in front of him. His partner had pulled out his weapon and stupidly fired into the chest of his friend. Trey lifted the shot body and drove it right into the guy with the gun. The two men fell heavily to the floor. The man with the aloha shirt snatched a coffee mug off the desk in front of him and whipped it at Trey. He was able to block it with his forearm. It was followed up with what would have been a mean right hook, but Stone sidestepped it and grabbed the guy’s wrist, using his own momentum to pull him into a devastating knee kick to the abdomen. The guy doubled over, and Trey followed with an elbow to the back of his neck. Crawling out from under his bloodied partner, the guy with the gun fired off a shot, but Stone had anticipated it and deftly moved to his left. As he did, he snake
d his gun out from behind his back and fired off a headshot, but it missed. His opponent had rolled to his right and sprang to his feet. His hand was covered in blood, and as he raised his weapon to fire again, it slid out and fell to the floor and slid towards Trey. The controller had recovered enough to also get to his feet and rushed the agent. Trey didn’t miss this time. He landed a headshot into the guy who’d lost his gun, then spun around and pistol whipped the man with the aloha shirt on the side of his head. He fell to the ground and then tried to stand up but was too wobbly.
“Don’t do it,” Stone said, seeing the guy glance at the gun on the floor at Trey’s feet. “Even if you made it, blood’s funny. It’s slippery and sticky all at the same time.”
The man knelt there. Glaring. “You’re dead anyway. There’s no way you get out of this building alive.”
“How many of you are there?”
Rubbing the back of his neck, the guy answered, “More than you can handle.”
“You know who I am?”
“No. But you’re part of the little team that’s come to rescue the great Nathan Harris. Am I right?”
Trey nodded.
“We saw your chopper. You think three people are enough?”
“These three are. Plenty.” As he said that, he heard a noise on the stairwell.
“Everything alright up there, boss?” a man’s voice rang out.
Aloha shirt was about to answer when Stone took a quick step forward and punted him squarely in the jaw, getting all his weight into the kick. The hapless man’s mandible crumpled, the impact snapped his neck muscles past their limit, and the hyoid bone, just below his chin, gave way with a snap. He was out cold instantly.
“Boss?”
Agent Stone knew they’d see through the doorway as they came up the stairs. The bloody bodies on the floor would be in clear view! He darted to the closet and shut the door, correctly guessing what was next. The sound of a tin canister hit the floor and bounced along for a second before exploding in a deafening concussion of over 175 decibels of noise. Trey had tucked his gun under his arm and covered his ears. Even so, he was slightly disoriented, but he guessed the guy who threw it was, too. He focused on the handle, turned it, and cracked the door open, his gun back in his hand.
He’d figured there was more than one attacker, and he was right. He also knew that it’s impossible to look in two opposite directions at once. It’s what makes clearing a room so much more dangerous than in the movies. The first guy came in and looked to his left, not seeing anyone, he started firing his PP Bizon machine gun as he swept the room. Developed by Victor Kalashnikov, Trey recognized it right away. It was an essential weapon to both the Federal Security Service and Russia’s External Intelligence Service, the SVR. Trey shot him cleanly in the head.
Seeing what happened, the second guy came into the airport control room, facing to his right, and firing off the same kind of weapon. The flurry of bullets went right through the wooden walls of the tower but was about four feet too high. Trey was in the prone position with his body inside the closet, and only his head and arms visible. Stone shot the hostile in his chest before he realized the guy had body armor. The man absorbed the slug, and it was so powerful that it completely knocked him over. He fell hard, landing on top of the first hostile Trey had killed.
“Ivan!”
There was another guy on the stairs.
The man with the body armor rolled over. He lifted his weapon, but Stone blew it out of his hands. It was a marksman’s shot. The bullet glanced off the barrel, but the impact was enough to create severe damage to the gun. Nobody in their right mind would try to fire it.
“I’ve got my gun pointed at Ivan!” Trey barked.
“Don’t kill him! Please! He’s my brother.”
Ivan was rubbing his trigger hand and angrily sneering at Trey. He was pretty sure there were some broken bones in it.
“Nobody else has to die. But that’s up to you,” Stone said, enunciating clearly. “Slowly reach around the doorway and place your weapons on the floor. Then come crawling into the room with your head turned to your left. Crawl to your brother and lie on your stomach with your hands behind your back.”
A hand reached around the corner and placed an MP-443 Grach on the floor. It was a standard-issue weapon for the Russian military.
Chapter Forty-One
The 2002 Sunseeker Superhawk 50 was putting the triple Yanmar 420-horsepower diesel engines to the test. David and the boat’s captain were racing along at maximum speed down the Neuse River. They were just about to round Minnesott Beach point, and once they turned that corner, they’d have a clear view of the boat Harris was in.
“What’s that?” Justin exclaimed, staring at the flat screen above Saara’s head.
“Another boat,” she answered.
Coming from the opposite direction of David, was a third boat. Bigger than the others, and appearing slightly more cumbersome as a result, it was still cutting through the water fairly quickly and pointed towards Harris.
“Zoom in!” Leo urged.
Saara tapped on her keyboard, and the drone camera adjusted.
“It’s a Monk Trawler!” Justin said. “The lifeguard told Bruce a Monk Trawler came with the house the Russians were renting.”
Leo watched for a few seconds. “It’s an exchange.”
“What is?” Saara asked, not understanding.
“They’re going to hand Harris off to the Russians.”
Just as he said that the Doral started to slow down, and eventually, it came to a stop. The LaunchPad crew watched as a body was flung from the boat into the water.
“Who is that?” Leo demanded.
The camera zoomed in.
“It’s too hard to tell if that’s Harris,” Dr. Stone complained. “Is that the best resolution you can get?”
“Yes,” answered Saara.
“It has to be him,” Justin said, thinking out loud.
As he said that, the Doral fired back to life and took off, making a sweeping right turn. The guy in the water was thrashing around, trying to stay afloat in the wake. Just as the trawler was getting close to him, David’s boat came ripping around the corner. Hirsch had a pair of binoculars and was trying not to smash the bridge of his nose with them as the boat surged forward, slicing through the water. He immediately assessed the situation. The trawler was pulling up beside Harris, and he could see people on the boat helping him board. The Doral was banking steeply and racing off towards the island. Just then, the radio crackled.
“Hemlock to LP.”
“LP, go ahead,” Leo responded.
“I’ve got two Russians hog-tied in the airport control room and four dead.”
Everyone was stunned.
“Repeat last,” Justin said.
“Two captured and four dead.”
“Hemlock, we need immediate intel from those two,” Leonard said. “I’ll brief you on the questions to ask. Use whatever means necessary to extract it.”
“No time for that now. I count at least five hostiles parked in vehicles outside. Requesting thermal.”
“Copy that, we’re getting that for you now,” Leo said, seeing Saara spring into action. “You okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
Stone muted his comms and turned to Justin. “We need to get Bruce over to Trey right away.”
Park nodded and ran into the conference room to connect with Agent Locke.
Saara stared at Dr. Stone and also muted her comms. “How did we not know this? He’s been engaged?”
“That’s my son. He can function in a pack or as a lone wolf. But it sounds like he’s in a very dangerous situation.”
Justin came out of the conference room. “Bruce is Oscar Mike. He’ll take the Scout II. That leaves Tank by himself. I suggested he get out of the house and reposition himself underneath.”
“Good idea. We’re spread very thin.” Leo’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the text message from Hirsch. “The exchan
ge happened. David is in pursuit of the trawler.”
“Is that the right move?”
The three looked up at the action on the flat screen.
“Our primary target has to be the priority. As much as I’d hate it, if the Doral gets away, we’ll just have to hunt them down later.”
Saara unmuted her comms, “LP to Hemlock.”
“Loud and clear.”
“I’ve uploaded the thermal imaging to your tablet. It refreshes every five seconds, and I wouldn’t even depend on that. Your reception isn’t great.”
“Copy that. I’m looking at it.”
Leo and Justin unmuted.
“Doesn’t look good.”
“Hemlock, are you assuming all of those people are hostiles?” Leonard asked, in disbelief.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m counting sixteen?”
“Copy that. LP, search for long-range shooters and give me a heads up if you see one.”
Justin adjusted the drone footage to zoom in on the Russian’s house. “Hemlock, Vegas is Oscar Mike,” Justin announced, seeing Bruce starting to drive. “He’ll be approaching on the same path you did.”
“Roger that. Gotta go,” Trey responded.
Bruce had taken the opportunity at the house to charge his comms. He activated them as he was driving. “Vegas to LP. ETA five Mikes to the chopper.”
“Copy that, Vegas. Hemlock confirms sixteen hostiles in the airport parking lot. Proceed with caution.”
“Roger that.”
Bruce hit the gas. He needed to get there faster.
Mayor Landow was staring at the notification from his bank. “Deposit of $73,296.20 from Coconut Harbor Consultants, LLC?” he muttered to himself. At the same time, another notification slipped across his screen. He’d gotten an email from CHC, LLC. It congratulated all senior partners on a very lucrative quarter. Citing consulting contracts from five different nations and fourteen harbors, it promised more growth to come as well as possible commission bonuses for those partners who “went the extra mile to make CHC the world leader in harbormaster consulting.” The email came with an attachment. He touched it, and an Excel spreadsheet came up. It was extremely detailed and accounted for every consultation and payment. The mayor was stunned. Clearly, the paper trail was intricately created to appear legitimate. It was something he could hand to his accountant with a straight face and even pay taxes on if he felt like it, or at least find loopholes to pay as little as possible.
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