Torching the Crimson Flag

by Conrad Brasso

  The White House translator felt something well up in him that he never knew was in there. Starting in his gut, it worked its way up. It wasn’t just the effect of movies like “The Patriot.” And it was more than just every time he heard the national anthem or saw an American win gold at the Olympics. What he was feeling was deep-seated conviction. There was good and evil. He’d seen it in meetings with the presidents he’d served. He knew what America stood for: it was the land of the free and the home of the brave. And the concept of freedom was a threat to a lot of people.

  “I pick sides.”

  “And whose side are you on?”

  Before he could answer, he caught a glimpse of multiple splashes in the water just to the right of the boat. Then, the guy who never spoke started yelling. Nathan was shocked. The language coming out of his mouth wasn’t Mandarin. It wasn’t an Asian language at all. As this was registering, he saw the guy’s body jerk. Blood started spurting out of his chest. He stumbled forward, trying to catch himself. But suddenly, as the boat accelerated, he toppled backward into the ocean. The splashes had been from bullets. Trey had missed into the water on his first few shots, but then nailed the target. Using tracer ammo, made it easier to correct his aim, but Trey still had to deal with downwash from the helicopter rotors and the surge of ocean waves.

  Sasha screamed.

  The captain whirled around to see what was going on, but suddenly his head disappeared in a cloud of red mist, blown off by multiple rounds from an automatic weapon. His body collapsed to the deck. The boat was still powering forward, but with nobody at the helm, it began drifting into a steep turn. Nathan dashed forward as Sasha continued to scream.

  “What the hell is happening?” she shouted.

  Nathan grabbed the throttle and eased it back all the way, slowing the vessel down. The engines suddenly stopped their roar and fell to a low hum, and with the noise suddenly reduced, the sound of a helicopter filled the air!

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The light was fading into dusk, and it was getting harder to see. Rather than try to get them down, Tank figured it’d be easier for him to climb up. He didn’t want to waste precious minutes. He pulled a desk out of the office Trey had been sheltering in during the gunfight in the airport terminal, then he stuck a bench on top of the desk and a wooden ladderback chair on top of the bench. Climbing his makeshift platform, he was able to get his head above the floor level of the third floor. He unclipped a tactical flashlight from off its hip case and turned it on. It lit up the Russians like the featured act in a circus tent. They were lying in the corner, opposite the hole he’d just popped through. He tossed his kit up first and then hoisted himself onto the third-floor controller room. They’d clearly spent some time trying to break free of the industrial-strength zip ties that the LaunchPad team member used. Ivan’s wrists were bleeding, and it even looked like they’d tried to gnaw through each other’s restraints.

  “These ties are pretty good, aren’t they? Here,” Tank said. “Hold out your arms.”

  Ivan struggled to sit up, but he did. He stretched them, expecting to be cut free. Instead, Lakota whipped another tie out from his pocket, and quickly zip tied the Russian’s arms above the elbows, pulling it so tight it almost popped his shoulders out of their sockets. The hostile writhed on his back and spat in air.

  “I’ll kill you,” he snarled.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. I understand you’re brothers. You look to be in your late twenties, so I’m guessing your parents are still alive, or at least one of them might be. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to answer me. Otherwise, your parents are going to have one less son. I’d hate for them to lose both of you. That’s a lot of grief … unless they don’t care, of course. That could be.”

  “We’re not going to tell you a thing.”

  Tank walked over to his kit and pulling out his favorite knife. “This is called a spear-tipped blade,” he commented, looking at it. “German steel. See this handle? Slip-proof grip. The end, here, is hard enough to shatter thick glass.” He turned to look at them both. “I’ve shattered a skull with this. It was brutal. Don’t really want to do it again. But, I’ll do whatever it takes.” He took a few steps towards them. “Is being the big tough-guy worth it? You really want to take one for the team?”

  Ivan’s brother was thinking about it, Tank could tell. From that response, he’d also just learned that they both spoke English. So he decided to go a little bit further. “You guys have girlfriends at home?” He judged the response. “Oh, wow!” he grinned. “You both have girlfriends at home? I bet they’re niiiiice! Russian girls, huh? Or did you get better-looking ones from the Ukraine?”

  No answer.

  “Speaking of the team, you know you’re the only ones left alive, right? Everybody’s dead. The guys on the path to the beach. The ones in the parking lot. On the runway. The group renting the house on the water.” He looked over at the bodies in the room. “These guys are definitely dead. This guy in the aloha shirt local or one of yours?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Oh! The good news. We got the White House translator.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Well, you’re right. Technically we haven’t completely secured him. We’ve killed everyone on his boat except for him. And I think there’s another person alive. Sasha? Is that her name?”

  Ivan’s eyes narrowed, just ever so slightly.

  “We’re boarding the boat now.”

  They knew he was telling the truth. But it didn’t seem to inspire them. It just created more layers of resistance.

  “Answer one question, and we’re done. I’ll leave. Who’s paying you?”

  “We’re crowd-funded,” Ivan answered with a smirk.

  “Funny guy. That’s gold. Crowd-funded, huh?” Tank put his knife in his left hand, knelt beside the humorous Russian, and very deliberately smacked him hard across the face with his right.

  Ivan thrashed around, desperate to rub his smarting face and raring to punch back.

  Tank grabbed Ivan’s brother and dragged him over to the hole in the floor. He clutched the guy’s shirt at the shoulders and lowered him down, so he was standing on the table. The material ripped, but it slowed him down just enough to break his fall. The guy straightened up when he realized he was standing. Tank jogged over and got his kit. He tossed it down onto the floor below and jumped through the hole, landing on the opposite side of the desk from Ivan’s standing brother. Throwing the hostile over his shoulder, he snagged his kit with his other hand and went back to the office where he’d seen another ladderback chair.

  Jennifer Wu was sitting inside a micro-apartment just off Tai Wai Station. The tiny abode was slightly smaller than a parking stall at Trader Joe’s but probably renting for close to a million dollars a year. Hong Kong real estate is the priciest per square foot in the world, and much of the money goes straight to the government. They lease land to developers through an auction process where the highest bidder gets to spend billions of dollars to win their bid. Often, residents in these types of buildings are stacked on top of each other, like guinea pigs in shoe boxes piled up in a bedroom closet. At this point, Wu didn’t care. The only thing she was focused on was tracing financials. She had three screens on the table in front of her, and they were all hooked up to a MacBook Pro that she could unplug and dash off with if she had to. All of her data was also being backed up to an external SSD drive that she could grab and stash in her bra if she really had to run and leave everything behind.

  She decided to start with what she knew. The Red Flag Commerce and Development Company had interests all over the world. Online they were a website that traded goods for money just like many others. And although they claimed to specialize in art, the truth was that they had worked deals with other shipping companies allowing them to ship almost anything.

  When Seiko Chiu lost her siblings in an “unfortunate” car bombing in New Delhi, Wu was asked by Boyd to follow
all the financials. The Chiu family had accounts that needed to be liquidated before Interpol could track them down. And whomever their money guy was, did it brilliantly. He had moved everything into cryptocurrency accounts and expertly shuffled the deck before distributing the money to various random LLCs that he’d set up. It had the effect of placing a sign on the original account saying, “Account empty. Nothing to see here. Move along.” There were even some articles that were carefully placed in financial media outlets, saying that the family wasn’t worth nearly as much as people had thought. But he had made a mistake, and it was that mistake that Jennifer had caught. He was too perfect. Everything had been done in exact amounts. The money that went into the laundry machine matched the money coming out, penny for penny. It took a lot of work to figure out, with all the different exchange rates and fees, but once Jennifer figured out the formula and cracked the algorithm, she was able to trace it all. She hadn’t worked alone. An ex-boyfriend of hers was a talented programmer and was able to help her out. He hadn’t been aware that what he was working on was for one of the elite operational teams in the United States. He thought he was helping Wu get a promotion.

  As she started working on the current project, she discovered a lot of similarities. It looked like the same Financial mind that had run the cleanup operation from the siblings on their trip to India, was now running all the financials for Red Flag. One of the first companies she traced was an investment fund called the R.F. Global Fund. For almost a decade, this fund had been investing in artificial intelligence. They were partnered with a company called SmartGrey Shielding Technologies, LLC, located in Silicon Valley. SmartGrey, in turn, was the parent company to almost thirty other companies that did business under a variety of different names.

  For another five hours, Jennifer worked nonstop, knowing that her time on this computer was limited. Suddenly, she drew a quick, startled breath. She stared at her screen. She knew she had just made a huge breakthrough. Immediately she deleted everything from the computer, grabbed the SSD drive, and tucked it in her bra, and unplugged everything. It was time to connect with LaunchPad.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  David, switched off the controllable spotlight, flashed the rotating anticollision lights to say good-bye, and the UH-1 Iroquois leaned to the left and flew away. He was headed over to the Ocracoke Island Airport to refuel and check on Tank. Bruce had thrown the dead boat captain out of his way and was running the Doral back to Silver Lake.

  Trey was in the back of the boat, securing Sasha in zip ties. He didn’t make them tight enough to dig into her skin as he had with the brothers in the airport control room. Instead, he used three, putting one around each wrist and then linking them together.

  Nathan was sitting on the u-shaped bench that ran around the back of the Doral, beside Agent Stone, opposite Sasha. Thoughts swirled through his head. He was trying to ignore the blood beside him from the guy that got shot and fell off the boat, and he knew that he’d be debriefed soon. But organizing his thoughts wasn’t easy. The theater in his brain started re-enacting everything he’d just been through. There was the attack outside his home. The sounds of the guns, the motorcycles, the gurgling vocal noises of dying men, and the smell of gun powder mixed with discharged bodily fluids were all still vivid in his mind. He could have never predicted what was going to follow. From getting the GPS dug out of his wrist and the hours of darkness under a hood, to being transferred from vehicle to vehicle and deprived of food. Suddenly, he smelled the rancid smell of old pig shit as he recalled meeting Sasha for the first time, waking up in the back of the semi trailer, and seeing that awful chair being loaded into it. As he thought about it, he realized that chair was probably going to be used later, if it wasn’t for the team of men who were on the boat with him now. The smell of his own puke wafted up from the boat’s head as the Doral surged forward, cutting through the waves with urgency. Dr. Harris put his head down and unexpectedly started to shake and sob uncontrollably.

  Trey had secured Sasha and was staring straight ahead, thinking of what could be next. He turned to the translator and realized he’d been so focused on clearing the boat and securing Sasha that he hadn’t really done justice to the target. Stone wrapped his left arm around Nathan’s shoulders, giving him a hug. “Dr. Harris, you’re safe now. We’re going to get you the hell out of here.”

  Nathan couldn’t even answer. His sobs were coming in waves.

  “L.P. to Vegas.”

  Bruce touched his comms, “You’ll have to speak up; there’s a lot of noise.”

  “We recommend that you do not go back to the harbor. Too many people there. Beach the boat by the lifeguard stand. Local P.D. will light the way.”

  Agent Locke turned to his right and saw blue and red flashing lights on the shore. He adjusted the heading and motored straight ahead.As they approached, Bruce saw men and women in uniform were standing in the water with flashlights to direct them in. A cop car had driven down to the asphalt path from the parking lot to the edge of the beach sand. He pulled the boat forward until the hull gently nudged into the sand. Trey tossed them the ropes from the boat, and they held onto them, keeping it in place.

  One of the guys surprised him when he shouted out, “Hey, Bruce!”

  It was Cory, the lifeguard.

  ”Cut the engine. I'm coming up!”

  Bruce turned the ignition off, and the big blond lifeguard scrambled out of the water onto the swim deck at the stern.

  “I got the boat. Just do what you need to do, man.”

  “Thanks, Cory,” Bruce said, nodding and shaking the lifeguard’s hand. He walked to the back of the boat. “How do you want to do this, Trey?”

  “Oh my God!!”

  Bruce turned around to see Cory’s shocked expression. “Sorry! I forgot to tell you. There’s a dead guy on the floor.”

  “Holy…”

  “It’s okay,” Locke interrupted. “He was a bad guy. Just take the boat back to Silver Lake and the Feds will handle everything.”

  “Sorry, Trey. You were saying?”

  “Let’s disembark off the bow,” he answered, grasping onto Sasha’s upper arm and pulling her to her feet.

  The water is shallowest there and we can probably stand,” Bruce led the way with Nathan following him. Sasha and Trey weren’t far behind. Once on the beach, the four of them were going to walk to the parking lot where the chopper had been when Gary was killed, but a Sheriff blocked their way.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  “I am,” Bruce said, straightening up.

  “The Feds are here in the parking lot. It’s a shitshow. I recommend you go down the beach. There’s a path there that leads to the airport. Get to the helicopter pad. That’s where your chopper will be refueling. Hopefully, you get out of here before you get mired in a pissing contest.”

  “Thank you, sir. We know the path.”

  The foursome turned to their left and proceeded to walk towards the entrance to the path.

  “You carrying?” Bruce asked Trey.

  “Yeah, I’m ready for whatever.”

  They all heard the boat firing up and roaring away from the beach. Cory was taking the watercraft back to the harbor.

  As they walked up the path, they could see the police barricade up ahead and to the right. Behind it, lined up along the side of the road that led to the beach entrance and out of town, was a sea of cars with blue lights flashing on them.

  “Wow. The local cops are holding the FBI off from the airport?” Trey commented, a little surprised.

  “We don’t have much time,” Bruce said, starting to jog. “Let’s hurry!”

  It was very dark now, and as the four got to the head of the trail, they stepped over the hostiles that Locke had taken out. Cutting to their left, and staying close to the bushes, they snuck through the parking lot. The smell of death was overpowering, and they all held their noses, except Sasha. Cops could be heard arguing with the Feds, behind them, and when Bruce glanced back
, he saw the local press was arriving, too. Straight through the lot, before getting to the runway, was the helicopter pad, on their left. Trey could see Tank and David were talking to a trio of people, all of whom had the look of pissed-off salespeople losing a deal.

  “Here they are!” David exclaimed. “Go ahead and get in,” he said to the arriving group.

  “Listen! You are not leaving this place. Not until everyone has been processed,” the tallest person said.

  Trey arrived and motioned for Sasha to follow Nathan and Bruce, “Get in.” He turned to Tank. Help them out. David, get into the chopper.” Then he turned to the three agents. “Are you the special agent in charge?” he asked the tall guy that had been talking.

  “I am. Special Agent Schweitzer.” He pointed to the guy on his right. “Agent Lee.” And then to the woman on his left. “Agent Morrow.”

  “Great to meet you. Believe me. You’ve got enough paperwork in this region to keep you occupied for years. We haven’t identified any bodies. Most of them are Russian, we think, but we can’t be sure. But can I talk to you for a minute, Special Agent Schweitzer?”

  The tall man nodded.

  “Alone?”

  Now he was suspicious. “Lee. Morrow. You both stay here.”

  He followed Trey across the parking lot and into the airport terminal.

  “I just wanted to brief you on what happened here,” Trey said, seriously, the flashing lights from the police barricade lighting up the room and reflecting off his face. “This is top secret stuff. Real black ops kind of material. Do you understand? If any of it leaks out, you’ll be on a desk in Omaha for the rest of your life.”

  “I understand.”

  Trey got a little closer to Schweitzer and then punched the guy in the jaw as hard as he could.

  The surprised agent’s eyes crossed, and then his body caved to the floor as he struggled to comprehend what just happened. Stone dragged him behind the counter. He looked around, trying to find something to tie the man up with. He opened a drawer and found a spool of fishing line. It would have to do.