Torching the Crimson Flag

by Conrad Brasso

  He paused as Jasmine brought him a cup of tea. “Thank you,” he said nodding. “I think that's where their plan started going differently for my captors. There was a lot of yelling and panicking on board. Eventually, they came up with the idea that I thought was kind of silly. One of the other guys with me jumped out of the boat as a decoy, I guess. His name was Chen. He was the guy that connected with me the most. Someone was following us on a boat, and that had them all freaked out. I think the idea was for Chen to jump in the water and make the boat behind us think it was me. They thought it worked, but then you guys showed up.”

  “What were they going to do if the decoy worked?”

  “I don't know, honestly. Sasha told me that the Chinese were going to hand me over to the Russians again, and they were going to try and extract information from me. I think that's what the chair was for in the semi-truck trailer. But because we had to escape from there, the Russians never got a chance to get what they wanted.”

  Leonard continued to ask the questions, knowing they didn't have much time. “Dr. Harris, do you have any idea why the Chinese were involved? What did they want with you?”

  Nathan paused for a minute, wondering whether or not he could trust this group. In the end, he decided that since several of them risked their lives for him, he owed them the rest of the story. “When I was in the truck trailer, it was a little weird. They recorded me saying some things, scanned my hand and fingertips, did some kind of vein biometric scanning, too. And then Sasha uploaded everything. She told me I was a biometric key.”

  “A biometric key,” Dr. Stone repeated. He looked at Saara and then at Justin. “A key to unlock what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why were you the key?”

  “Apparently, because I was the most protected person on the planet.”

  “Of course!” Justin exclaimed. “It’s quite brilliant actually. They had probably collected your biometric information for several years. And they knew nobody was going to steal the key because that would’ve been fairly impossible to do.”

  “Sasha said they've been planning it for years. Yes. You're right.”

  “They needed to kidnap you because the whole key depended on proof of life.”

  “But what were you unlocking?” asked Bruce.

  “I don’t know.”

  David asked, “You said that Sasha uploaded the biometric information?”

  “Yes. Right away. On the trailer. She’d just finished when we had to run.”

  “What time was that? Trey? When did you breach the trailor?”

  Agent Stone looked at his watch. “Just over ten hours ago, I think, if I remember right.”

  Bruce grimaced, remembering and looking at his watch. “Yeah. That’s when I got shot in the chest.”

  Leonard didn’t want the conversation going any further. Not in front of Nathan. But it was very obvious to him and the LaunchPad team that had just met with Jennifer Wu, exactly what Harris, or rather his unique personal physical attributes, had unlocked. An artificial intelligence distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of evil people.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  It had been about thirty minutes since David, Jasmine, and Tank had left LaunchPad to escort Nathan Harris into Secret Service custody.

  Trey, Bruce, and Leonard were sitting around the kitchen table, going over every detail of the upcoming interrogations they were going to perform. It was clear that the three people they’d collected were involved in Nathan’s kidnapping, but what they didn’t know was how closely they were connected to Red Flag. It was vital that they find out.

  Justin and Saara had plugged in the phones retrieved by the team in North Carolina, and while they were waiting for them to process, they were completely engrossed in trying to figure out how to get any help to the team in Honolulu.

  Bora was sitting in the conference room with Bao Zhen, and Lin Lin Ma with her eyebrows furrowed. Something wasn’t adding up, and she was having a hard time figuring out what it was. “I just keep going over everything in my head.”

  “What's bothering you?” Bao Zhen asked.

  “I'm a little shocked at how much money was in the Global Fund. I know there were a lot of companies involved in contributing, but that's a staggering amount of money. Half a billion dollars? I wonder if Jennifer can rank the companies for us in both profitability and the amount they put into the shared investment.”

  She was just about to send off a text when she received on from Jennifer. “Oh! Speaking off … she just texted me.” Bora took a second to read it to the others, “Sorry. Couldn’t talk about this to the group. 236898632 LLC. Proceed with caution.”

  “Those numbers … “ Lin Lin commented, writing them down. “They are made up of the luckiest numbers in the first ten numbers. In China, we have lucky numbers and unlucky ones, kind of like the number 13 in the West. If I were to write down, from zero to nine, the lucky numbers in Chinese numerology, they would be 2,3,6,8,9.”

  Bao Zehn observed, “So the pattern just reverses, making nine the central number.”

  “Yes.”

  “Um … I just entered it into my search, and my browser just crashed,” said Bora. She stepped outside the conference room and called her husband.

  “Whatever you do, don’t try it again.” He stepped outside the room and called Saara.

  After she’d been briefed, she left the conference room to get something from her office. She came back and sat down with a tablet none of the other members had seen before. It was in a hard-shelled case and needed a palm print to open. “This is the most secure device in our facility. And it’s always linked to the deep web.” She tapped in the company name. And her face clouded. “Bao Zhen or Lin LIn, you need to read this, it's all in Chinese characters,” she said with her Finnish accent. “You may use this tablet, but when you’re done, just shut the case. It will automatically shred the record of whatever you’ve been researching. Then bring it back to me right away. I keep it in a special location.”

  She and Justin left to resume their work.

  For the next five minutes, the two ladies read through everything, and as they did, Lin Lin Ma’s hands started to quiver. “Oh, my God.”

  Bao Zhen was concerned. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  “I know what this is.” Lin Lin Ma exclaimed quietly. “We are in perilous territory. I think we need everyone to gather in the conference room.”

  Bora hurried out to gather the team.

  When they’d all sat down, Leonard spoke first. “Okay. We’re here. Lin Lin, we need to start the interrogations, so please, just give us the broad strokes.”

  Ma looked at him, her eyes indicating that she was in a different place, almost like she hadn’t heard, then she started to proceed. “Do you know how the Chinese can create everything we buy, so cheaply?”

  “Sure. They use cheap labor. Their labor costs are extremely low,” Justin answered.

  “They aren’t low. They are free.”

  Nobody understood what she meant.

  “Free, how?” Leo asked.

  “The Chinese know that one of the few places the West will never see is inside their prison system. So they have built hundreds of factories inside its walls. They use prisoners for slave labor.”

  The mood was dark, as people began to realize what she was saying.

  “Prisoners are awakened at 5:00 A.M. to loud chants being blasted through the sound system telling them how great the government is. They eat a meager breakfast and then are sent to their jobs where they work without a break until 11:00 P.M. Sometimes even later. Then they are fed a bowl of soup and sent to their cells.”

  “My God,” Bora said. “Seven days a week?”

  Lin Lin nodded. “Many prisoners die in the system. And that’s when the government goes on tours to secure more prisoners.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Saara.

  “They’ll go into areas of religious influence and arrest as many a
s they can find. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus … anyone that has a faith. But usually, they focus on Christians the most.”

  “Why?”

  “They have a good work ethic.”

  “How do you know all of this, Mom?” Bao Zhen asked.

  “When I first started as a translator in China, I worked for the department of Spiritual Warfare.”

  “That’s right! I forgot. You mean that this was already in operation back then?”

  “It was in the planning stages. Most of you have no idea how patient China is. They will sacrifice fifty years of American dominance for a thousand years of Chinese reign. When I was working with them, I learned that the buildings and system were being designed, and there was a lot of very meticulous work being done in a way that would avoid international attention.”

  “But who buys the products?” asked Trey, who had been quiet up until this point.

  “All the name brands, big box stores … everybody.”

  “Are you telling me that major brand names are purchasing goods from prison factories?”

  “If you research it, all of them will staunchly deny it. They will share videos of the factories they’ve visited and talk about quality assurance and that they care about working conditions in China. It’s all a lie.”

  “But how can they get away with it?”

  “Bruce, would you mind taking off your shirt? I’ll show you.”

  Agent Locke stood up, grunted and then groaned, but got it off.

  “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” Lin Lin said. “I wouldn’t have …”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m fine,” Locke said, smiling. “I’m fine.”

  Everyone was a little surprised. Bruce’s chest was black and blue. It looked like a giant bruise.

  “I’m okay, everybody. I took a shot to the chest earlier. My vest did its job. It’ll just look ugly for a few days.”

  “No ribs are broken?” Bora asked, dubiously.

  “Nothing that won’t heal up with time. Please. Lin Lin, go on. I’m fine.”

  She held up the shirt. “This is made from a combination of threads. The threads are sewn together to make the fabric. The fabric is then sewn again into the pattern or design of the shirt, right?”

  Everyone was tracking.

  “When some of our big box stores send out buyers, those buyers inspect everything to make sure that the product isn’t from within the Chinese prison system. And they are assured that the product isn’t. But all they see is the last part of the chain. Sometimes they buy from a company that just puts the tag on. Everything else is done in the prison factories. Then they report to their investors that they know for a fact, the product they bought is not from prison labor, when in fact, they just bought the tag. The rest of the garment was made with slave labor.”

  “Certainly, there are people who expose this kind of corruption, right?” Bruce asked, receiving his shirt back. “Journalists? Nonprofits? People who have escaped?”

  “Some have tried. But there are billions of dollars at stake. Their voice often gets drowned out in mockery and ridicule from most of the mainstream media.”

  “So, Lin Lin. What is this company that Jennifer sent us?”

  “The parent company of Red Flag.”

  “What?” Dr. Stone asked, stunned.

  There were a few seconds of silence as everyone looked at each other.

  “Does Seiko Chiu own 236898632?”

  Lin Lin shook her head, grimly. “From what this website is saying, it’s an entity that is much, much bigger.”

  “What is this site?”

  “It’s anonymous, but goes into a lot of detail.”

  “Are the Triads very involved in these prison factories?”

  “It’s possible, yes.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Antonio Sabini was awake and enjoying his morning espresso on a balcony that overlooked the pristine waters of Lago di Como. He had decided to take a short vacation in the luxurious Grand Hotel Tremezzo. Located in the northern part of Italy, the palatial resort has welcomed noble, aristocratic, and bourgeois families for over a hundred years. Stunningly planted in the alps, it was just across the border from where he’d grown up in Lugano, Switzerland.

  He was about to check all of the accounts he’d been monitoring for the last few days to see if there were any issues when his phone rang with a number he didn’t recognize. He picked it up.

  “In two minutes, we will send you a number,” a computerized voice informed him. “Call it and demand that Sasha be released immediately. If you don’t do this, we will make Tala public.”

  The message kept repeating, louder and louder. Finally, in fear, he hung up.

  “LP to Hellcat.”

  Boyd answered. “Copy. Hellcat to LP.”

  “Gisō with you?”

  “Yes,” Michi replied to Justin.

  “We see your GPS coordinates but are unable to provide any overwatch. There’s nothing available right now.”

  “Copy that. We’re on our own.”

  “Your mission is to observe only.”

  “Come again?” Boyd asked, irately.

  “Observe only. I repeat. Do not engage.”

  “Sir, you don’t know what we’re looking at. We’ve just observed high value targets. All of them. In one place.”

  “Hellcat. I understand. Dogs are on their way. The only permission you have to engage is if the sheep scatter. Am I clear?”

  “Roger that. We understand. Out.”

  The United States Coast Guard is the only branch of military service that doesn’t belong to the Department of Defense. It’s officially under the Department of Homeland Security. Before the DHS came to be, the USCG came under the Department of Transportation. And before that, the Treasury Department ran it.

  The Coast Guard command that handles counter-terrorism and high-threat situations is called the Deployable Operations Group. They're an elite, quick reaction force whose teams handle maritime interdiction, force protection, nuclear-biological-chemical threats, counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, and anti-terrorism. Because the DOGS don’t belong to the Department of Defense, its units aren’t under the Special Operations Command. But Boyd knew for a fact, that the Navy opened their Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course to guardians, as did the other branches with their spec ops courses. Kurt Middleton-Fox was a living example of the result.

  “So, should we just stay in the car?” Michi asked.

  Boyd nodded. “Something most people don’t know—the Coast Guard owns every bit of coastline in America, fifteen feet in. It makes sense if you think about it. They can’t be sitting around getting permission from landowners for search and rescue missions.”

  “So in this case …”

  “In this case, they’ll be taking the tanker.”

  “But not the warehouse.”

  As she answered, the two observed some movement by the container ship.

  “What is that?” Boyd asked. She reached back in her bag for a pair of binoculars. “Shit! Michi! They’re unloading people from the boat …”

  “What?” Michi said, pulling out her phone and starting to film.

  “Start a video call with LaunchPad! Now!”

  Imada stopped filming, opened their secure app, and quickly called Justin. Fortunately, he was quick to answer and turn on his video camera.

  “Justin! Watch. Get Leo, now!”

  “We are looking at people coming off a container ship,” Boyd reporting as Michi shot the action. “And … oh … my … God! Those are children! They are little kids! We’re watching kids coming off the container ship, and they are being loaded into tour busses! My God! We’re looking at … maybe two hundred children? More? Being lined up on the pier to board these tour busses.”

  The first bus was filled up, but apparently, it was going to wait until they were all loaded.

  “Who do we call?” Michi asked. “The police?”

  “We were told not to trust anyo
ne.” Boyd pulled away from the binoculars and glanced to her left. “Look!”

  Standing outside the warehouse were all four of the high-value targets surrounded by their security. They were watching the event unfold.

  Michi panned the camera over to them.

  All of a sudden, three of the security guys started walking towards the Nissan Altima. At the same time, Boyd heard the busses start their diesel engines.

  She quickly turned on the car and switched on the high beam headlights. Knowing that it would only give them a few precious seconds, she reached into her bag and grabbed her Israeli-made Jericho 941 FB. It was easy to handle, exceptionally accurate, and extremely durable.

  Michi saw the security guys raising their weapons, and she dropped the phone on the floor, yelling, “We’re being attacked!”

  Boyd jumped out of the car and fired her weapon at the same time they fired theirs. But the intentions were different. They fired at the headlights, and Agent Carter mowed four of them down.

  The scene went from brightly lit to suddenly dark as the headlights were shredded. Two of the men dispersed, hustling the four kingpins back into the warehouse. The other security detail ducked behind their trucks in the parking lot.

  Michi had her favorite assault rifle, also made by the Israelis. The Tavor TAR-21 fitted with the MOR red dot laser scope was no joke. She opened her passenger door and used it as cover to move to the back of the vehicle. “Cover me!” she yelled.

  Boyd completely trusted her. There was no time for questions. She started firing methodically, laying down covering fire. As she did, Michi dashed across the parking lot of the auto repair center. It was a smart move. She was essentially dividing the target for the security detail. She ducked behind a large blue dumpster and started firing from her new position.