Hunting Ghosts

by Brent Towns

  Before he knew it, weapons were pointed at him, ready to fire. Knocker looked at the shooters. “You cocks are having a laugh, aren’t you? You won’t kill me. Your boss would do the same to you.”

  “Put the guns down,” Grayson told them. “Before someone gets hurt.”

  The men lowered their weapons, and Knocker straightened. He sensed the movement behind him but had no time to turn and meet the threat. Lights flashed and he dropped to his knees, his ears ringing. Knocker shook his head to try to rid it of the fuzzy feeling, but his attacker wasn’t done with him yet. Another swipe and he fell forward, unconscious.

  Grayson winced. “Was that really necessary?”

  The man who’d struck Knocker glared at her from behind the face-covering before signaling to another of the shooters to give him a hand. As they dragged Knocker away, the man in the suit said, “Shall we conclude our business?”

  “What’s going to happen to him?” she asked, a little annoyed by the situation.

  “What do you care?”

  The man’s insolence rubbed Grayson the wrong way, and she thought that had things been a little clearer, she’d have shot him in the face. “I was curious.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Grayson opened the laptop in front of her and hit a couple of keys. She then turned it and pushed it toward the man. “All you need to do is put your account number in.”

  The man smiled mirthlessly, took a small electronic device from his pocket, and plugged it in. “Just in case.”

  Two minutes later, the transaction was done.

  The man bowed. “Thank you for your service. I’m sure our master will reach out again should he have further need of you.”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  The man returned to the vehicle he’d arrived in. The shooters did the same. Once they were gone, Grayson was about to call her perimeter in when Flint’s voice came over the comms. “We’ve got movement, ma’am. I’m thinking ten to twenty shooters. Looks like our friend wants to end our business arrangement permanently.”

  She looked down the street, which was suddenly eerily deserted. “Where are they, Mister Flint?” Grayson’s voice was calm, controlled.

  “They’re everywhere.”

  “All right, fall back to the vehicles. Quickly.”

  No sooner had the words passed her lips than the first burst of gunfire echoed down the street. “Everyone move,” Grayson snapped, drawing her hidden SIG Sauer P226. Her bodyguards formed a defensive ring around her, and they moved down the street toward the SUVs. A shooter appeared in front of them, and Miller fired twice. The man fell to the dirty street, his weapon spilling from his grip. Beside Miller, Collins fired his weapon, and another shooter died.

  By then, they had reached the SUVs, and Grayson climbed into the back.

  More killers appeared as the three bodyguards followed their boss into the vehicle. Rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the armored exterior. Flint and the operations team reached them, all of them firing their M6 carbines at unseen threats. Once they’d climbed into the lead vehicle, Grayson’s comms lit up. “There’s a lot of the bastards, ma’am. What do you want to do? They’re setting up roadblocks to the east and west of us. I don’t think we’re supposed to leave.”

  Grayson asked, “Are you still on-station?”

  For a moment one might have thought she was talking to Flint, but another voice came back through her earpiece. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Light the fuckers up.”

  “On the way.”

  Overhead, watching their every move, was an armed Chinese-made CH-4 Rainbow UAV. Under the wings, attached to six hardpoints, were air-to-ground missiles that were about to be unleashed upon the attackers below. Grayson said, “Hit a roadblock before you expend all your ordnance, understood?”

  “Roger that.”

  The first explosion rocked the vehicles they sat in; it was that close. A pall of dust rose down the street, evidence of the missile strike. Another rocked the immediate surroundings and Grayson said, “Get us out of here, Mister Miller.”

  The two SUVs shot forward, bullets striking their exterior. In the rear seat, the woman known as Nemesis watched as another missile came in and exploded violently to the north of them. A voice said, “Roadblock north of you is clear, ma’am.”

  “Thank you. Is there any sign of the two vehicles that left the rendezvous point?”

  “They are traveling south, ma’am. They were joined by another two.”

  “Follow them for as long as you can. I want to know where they go.”

  Miller turned in his seat and asked, “Where to, boss?”

  “Back to the plane. I want to be in the air inside the hour.”

  “Are we going after him?”

  “I can think of fifty million reasons why we should, can’t you?”

  Nemesis and her team were in the air when her ISR team reached out. “When we had to call time, ma’am, they were still headed south. My guess would be either South Sudan or Eritrea. I would rule out Ethiopia.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think that is an option.”

  “If you had to go with your best guess, what would it be?”

  “South Sudan.”

  “All right, let’s get some people in there and see what we can find out.”

  “Right away. You might want to check your encrypted emails, ma’am. Another job has just come through.”

  Grayson grabbed her laptop and opened it. She punched in a code, then a second to access her emails. There was one new message. Opening it, she read it twice and once finished, reached beside her for a set of headphones and put them on. Into the bar mic, she said, “Flint, I want to see you.”

  A minute or so later, he sat beside her. “What is it?”

  “Another job.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “Europe.”

  “Do we know the client?”

  “Gustaw Marek.”

  “The Gustaw Marek? The Polish Defense Minister who disappeared a while back after his drug empire was brought down by—”

  “Yes, the very one.” She cut him off, needing to hear no more.

  “Are we going to meet him?” Flint asked.

  “Miller and I will. I may take one more with us. You take the rest of the team back to the island. Find out where that asshole went so I can collect on his head.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Samokov, Macedonia

  The village of Samokov is nestled in a small but lush valley with large hills on either side. The village itself is long and narrow and is situated in the municipality of Makedonski Brod, North Macedonia.

  It was here that Grayson and her two-man escort found Gustaw Marek, who now lived in exile in a very large and lavish white house with a team of twelve mercenaries hired from various European countries that made up his personal bodyguard.

  Time had not treated him well. The former Polish minister’s graying hair was now white, his shoulders rounded with the weight of grief he still felt from the death of his son. Added to that was bitterness, a deep-rooted hatred for the ones responsible for everything he’d lost. It was time to make them pay.

  “I want them all dead,” he growled, his eyes sparkling with anger. By “them”, he meant Team Reaper and everyone else at the Worldwide Drug Initiative.

  “That is a tough ask, Mister Marek,” Grayson said.

  His eyes narrowed. “I have money.”

  “How much, Mister Marek? Something like this will not come cheap. I’ve experienced firsthand what they are capable of.”

  Marek climbed out of his leather lounge and walked to a large bulletproof window that afforded him a view of the valley and its greenery. “How does fifty million sound?”

  Grayson took a deep breath. That much money in the Cabal’s coffers would go a long way toward putting it back together again. To do that, she needed money, lots of it. Besides, it was no fun being a one-person Cabal. The more money she had, the more peo
ple were likely to come out of the shadows and join her. “Do you have that much, Mister Marek?”

  “I have three times that much. Do you want the job or not?”

  “I’ll take it. However, I want half the money up front. If you’re not willing to pay that, we can’t do business.”

  “Twenty-five million seems an awfully steep upfront payment. What if you fail?”

  “Then you and I are each out twenty-five million dollars.”

  “I guess it’s a risk I’m going to have to take.”

  “Good. You’ll hear from me when the job is done. One way or the other.”

  Marek’s face turned into a mask of hatred. “Make sure they know who is responsible, do you hear? Make sure they know!”

  Somewhere in South Sudan

  Knocker’s head still hurt where the bastards had put him to sleep. He made a mental note to find out which one was responsible and feed him his bollocks. The heat inside wherever they were keeping him was almost unbearable. His hands were still tied, and the hood they had put over his head was still in place. The one thing he did know about his captors was that they all spoke good old UK English.

  Knocker figured he was locked in a tin shed. The heat and the noises filtering through from outside told him that, plus the sound the door had made when they’d locked him in. He’d asked them a number of questions, but no one had answered. They’d then left him to wait.

  He tried his bonds again but got nowhere. They were starting to go numb from the pressure of the plastic flexicuffs.

  The door opened, scraping the ground as it was pulled back. Two men entered and dragged the former SAS man to his feet. “Hey, you guys want to get rid of these flexicuffs?”

  They shoved him forward, and he staggered into the corrugated iron wall. Knocker grunted. “I guess that means no.”

  The hands grabbed him again, this time guiding him through the opening and out into the hot African sun.

  “Where are we going?” he asked and received another forceful push from behind. He staggered and went to his knees, only to be dragged up and shoved roughly forward again.

  “You know, if you keep pushing me around, it’s going to take us forever to get wherever it is we’re going, right?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” one of the men snapped.

  “I would,” Knocker said, “but it’s hard to have a conversation that way.”

  One of the men hit him in the kidneys, which elicited a grunt of pain. From between clenched teeth, the former SAS man snarled, “Fucking sissy.”

  The ground beneath Knocker’s boots felt hard-packed, so he figured he was being guided across some kind of parade square. He heard someone speaking from a distance and frowned as he tried to make out the language. Then it came to him; it was Lokoya. They’d taken him to South Sudan.

  The men escorted him to a hut built from sticks, mud, and grass. It had once been a small village but had been taken over by the terrorists who had moved the resident villagers out. Now it was a training camp for The Ghost’s men.

  Once Knocker was inside the hut, they removed his hood and forced him to sit on the hard-packed earth floor.

  Knocker looked around the dark interior until he picked out the lone figure seated near the far wall. The figure—a man—looked up. Knocker blinked and cocked his head to one side. “You? You’re the fool who paid ten million for me? You’re The Ghost?”

  “Welcome to South Sudan,” said Lieutenant Dan Best with a smile.

  Knocker couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You’re still alive. I can’t believe it.”

  “No thanks to you,” Best said, the bitterness in his voice more than evident.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “What could you say? You left me to the mercy of the Islamic Caliphate.”

  “They obviously didn’t kill you.”

  Best grunted. “They made me the man I am today.”

  “A murdering wanker?”

  “I have you to thank for that. For everything I went through.”

  “Well, say thanks, and I’ll be on my way,” Knocker told him.

  “I’ll thank you all right, Jensen,” the terrorist growled. “I’ll thank you in front of the world.”

  Knocker gritted his teeth. “Just cut my fucking head off and get it over and done with.”

  Best struggled to his feet with the aid of a crutch and reached for a four-legged walking frame the former SAS man hadn’t noticed. It was then Knocker remembered that on their last meeting in Mosul, the Brit’s Achilles tendons had been severed on both legs. That was what had prompted Best to ask him to kill him. Knocker hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it and had left him behind, still breathing.

  Best struggled toward him and stopped a few feet short of the former SAS operator. “You’re not going to die fast, Jensen. Just like you wouldn’t kill me fast when I begged you to. Instead, you left me behind. But have no fear. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll beg for death, just like I did.”

  “You’re bloody insane.”

  “No, I’ve seen the light. Left behind by my own people, I did what I had to do to survive. And found the only person to help me through the worst of it and out the other side.”

  “Who? Your mother?” Knocker sneered. He’d rather die quickly than linger, hoping for rescue.

  Best looked over Knocker’s head and nodded. There was movement behind him, and he turned his head as a woman walked past him. She was thin, of average height, and wore pants and a tank top. A thin stiletto in a gold sheath rested on her right thigh.

  “This is Khazbika,” Best explained. “She’s from Chechnya. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. She nursed me back to health and gave me the strength I needed to go on.”

  “What does she do? Suck cock?” Knocker was willing to try anything at that moment. The last thing he wanted was to be heinously tortured over the coming days.

  Best smiled. “I see what you are doing, but it will not get you the quick death you desire.”

  The terrorist nodded at the woman.

  Khazbika stepped around behind Knocker and drew her stiletto. Before he could move, she plunged the razor-sharp blade into the top of his shoulder. It only entered about an inch and a half, grating on bone as it penetrated. The former SAS man cried out and his body stiffened. The knife withdrew and Knocker gasped for breath, heavy beads of sweat forming on his brow. “Fucking bitch. How about you wrap that pretty mouth of yours around my knob, and we’ll see if you’re any good at that?”

  The knife went in again, almost in the same place. Khazbika leaned down and put her mouth close to his ear. “If you want me, you only have to say so.”

  She bit his ear as the knife came free of his flesh, and he gasped again. The sweat flowed freely now, his shirt wetter than it had been when he was locked in the shed.

  Best smiled. “That will do, my dear.”

  Khazbika stepped back and put the knife away, but not before she wiped it on Knocker’s shirt. Best said, “Now we will leave you for a couple of days to let the wounds heal before we bring you back for more special treatment. Perhaps next time, we will pull out some of your fingernails. Nothing too bad. You see, I have no wish for you to die right away. I want it to last so I can enjoy your misery the way others enjoyed mine. Take him away.”

  The hood went back over Knocker’s head, and he was returned to the tin shed where he would bathe in the heat and suffer the misery of his pain. And this was just the beginning.

  Chapter 9

  Amapá State, Brazil

  Large water drops fell from the canopy of the rainforest. The torrential downpour had stopped about an hour before, leaving the team saturated to the skin. Axe walked point while Brick brought up the rear. The former’s voice came through the comms. “I hate frigging jungles. Especially the equatorial bastards.”

  “Did you say something, sweetheart?” Cara asked him as she wiped her brow just below the soaked bandana wrapped around her head. “D
o you need me to come up there and kiss it better for you?”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, ma’am.”

  “You’re right; your new girlfriend might not like it. You got that new tattoo yet?”

  Kane, walking second behind Axe, grinned to himself and waited for the comments to come. Axe had a habit of becoming too invested with his girls early on and was notorious for getting their names tattooed when he figured he was in love.

  “You must be running out of room, Axe,” Brick said. “You’ll have to start getting them put on your ass soon.”

  “Very funny,” he muttered into his comms.

  “You don’t have my name tattooed anywhere on your person, do you?” Cara asked.

  “Why would I have your name tattooed on my Johnson, ma’am?”

  “Now that is something I can’t unsee,” Cara said. She looked through the undergrowth and could see Kane’s shoulders trembling as he held himself back to keep from bursting out laughing.

  “She said ‘person’, you dick,” Brick growled, “not Johnson.”

  “Oh.”

  “Reaper One? Zero. Sitrep, over.”

  Kane pressed the transmit button on his comms. “Zero, this is Reaper One. We’re about five klicks from our target. ETA approximately twenty-one-hundred hours. Over.”

  “Good copy, Reaper One.”

  “What’s the latest intel, Zero, over?”

  “We’re still gathering it, Reaper One. Latest estimate is fifteen, that’s one-five, tangos on target.”

  “Roger that, Zero.”

  “We’ll have confirmation once you arrive on-site, over.”

  “Copy, Zero. Reaper One out.”

  The team had parachuted into the jungle six hours before. It had been a daylight jump, which made it easier for them to hit their small LZ. That was why they had been dropped the extra distance from their target.