Damage Control

by Amy J. Fetzer

  “Are you saying this kidnapping was a mistake?”

  “Had to be,” Mills said. “They asked for codes, over and over. It was the only English I heard. After being hooked up to a battery, I gave the calibration codes, but that wasn’t good enough.” He passed a hand over the back of his head, gentler on the burns and cuts. “Guys. I’m small potatoes, and any codes I have are useless except to get into my bank accounts. And they’re empty till I get paid for the sonar.”

  He was right about the funds. D1 was here on conscience alone. “Why do you think the target was your wife?”

  “She was the intelligence in the family. For three years, she monitored satellite transmissions in the North Atlantic. Eastern Europe.”

  Russia, China, definitely Chechnya, he thought and could pinpoint about a dozen listening stations, but that wasn’t current. Yet the posts were the same. A remote location free of interference, minimally stocked, high security, in small confines as the techs listened for those key words. About as exciting as a submarine sonar technician, depending on the clearance level.

  “Anything she could get at—if she could remember an old authorization code, which she can’t—would be outdated,” Mills said, looking confused. “She just gathered, no analyzing. The right codes would get you into the archives, except you’d have to access the storage server.”

  “And that would be where?” God, he dreaded this, hoping the kidnapping was simple, uncomplicated greed.

  Mills looked a little shocked by the question. “Langley. It was a CIA listening post.”

  Sebastian glanced at the team. They were all thinking the same thing. If Mills’s wife was CIA, former or otherwise, then why weren’t they here with them? He swung around to stare directly at Beckham.

  The major stared back. “Not connected.”

  Sebastian didn’t believe it. The spy network was a powerful entity and he’d been on the receiving end of personal agendas run amok before. “Transmissions are Delta classified.”

  Beckham glanced at the team, then settled back, talking with his eyes closed. “Yes, and the U.S. along with about a dozen other countries intercept millions all over the world. We listen, they listen.” He shrugged. “If it wasn’t anything substantial, it was relayed to the correct agency.”

  Bullshit. Sebastian didn’t trust Beckham’s word any more than he trusted the CIA. “You owe us, Beckham,” he warned. “Don’t think I won’t call in this marker.”

  Beckham scoffed to himself, eyes still closed. “You can try.”

  Sebastian glanced, caught Max and Riley scowling at Beckham. He waved it off. A pot of gumbo they didn’t need to taste, he thought and got comfortable as the chopper swept farther into Georgia, heading for the landing strip surrounded by her troops. Got to love those guys. They were the first to help them, which was more than he could say about the United States. Yet he couldn’t take his gaze off Mills as Logan injected him and checked his other wounds.

  A kidnapping mistake. Not hardly. Not with troops and a MiG climbing up their ass. The kidnappers had transported Mills from Greece to Chechnya without raising a single flag. If it weren’t for Safia and some Chechen rebels, they’d have never located the little geek. Information on this simply did not exist. A tight, small network, he reasoned, yet with the Russians, the possibilities he could immediately list were staggering. The least was selling weapons to unfriendlies like Iran. There was power behind this, enough that they’d risked returning to assure the trail was obliterated.

  Enough to get a MiG in the air in seconds.

  Yet as far as he could tell, for all the destruction that just rained down on them, the kidnappers didn’t gain a damn thing.

  Two hours later, Sebastian was reasonably warm in the conference room at a Georgian military base in Tskhinvali. A dented metal tray with a bottle of vodka and glasses rested on the long table, untouched. Beckham was glaringly absent.

  Sam and Viva had their heads together on a ratty sofa; Logan leaned against the corner wall, on the phone. A few feet away at a small desk, Riley was finishing his summary for D-1’s records. Max tapped him, handing him a wrapped sandwich, and Sebastian wondered where he’d found food.

  “Oh, you have skills, buddy.” He ate, inching closer to the heater blasting warmth into the room.

  The confiscated weapons were turned over to the Georgians as well as a copy of his video to their intelligence. While they hadn’t done more than provide airspace and a safe haven, without it, there was no rescue. Vince Mills would be dead. In the rear of the stark room, Sebastian finished off the sandwich and enjoyed the sight of Vince, clean, treated, and in a wheelchair, surrounded by his family. His youngest, Lily, had given Sebastian one of the sweetest hugs for keeping his promise, and he decided, yeah, it was all worth it. But it wasn’t over.

  “Ya know what I think?” Max mulled aloud. “I think the guards were executed by their boss. Maybe two, three hours before we got there. The ones at the farm? Their tracks came from the prison. Bad guys would have gone after them if we didn’t.”

  Sebastian had a lot of deaths on his conscience, but not those. “They were covering the trail. But the guards weren’t the kidnappers, they were hired guns. Did you notice the tats?”

  “I didn’t look that close.”

  “Russian prison tattoos on the knuckles. So everyone knows and you never forget. One on the throat,” he gestured behind his ear, “was krasnaya mafiya. Forget which region, though.”

  Max’s feature tightened. “You’re saying the soldiers weren’t Russian Army.”

  “At one time maybe.”

  “What I don’t get is why stick around to watch it go off? The bad guys were near enough to haul ass when it didn’t.”

  “Assurances.” And thank Freon spray for delaying the charge, Sebastian thought, because even he couldn’t disarm fast enough to beat that clock. “The timer rigged to the phone battery feels like a show of arrogance. We tracked it, but the bomb had a secondary power source. There wouldn’t have been anything left to sift.” He smiled when Lily pushed aside her older brother, nearly knocking him on his rear.

  “They have the sonar,” Max said.

  Sebastian still wondered about that. Riley had questioned Mills about the design and learned it needed codes to calibrate. Faced with his death, he gave them up because it wasn’t worth keeping them secret. His government contract was with the U.S. Navy, but not deep classified. Mills could build another, and Sebastian would bet that in a year or two, it’d sell to salvage and treasure hunters across the globe. Before the kidnapping, Mills had settled his family in a hotel and was to fly to England, deliver the sonar, and return to his vacation. They took him outside the hotel in front of his kids. Anna Mills had pulled some old CIA strings, he realized now, and got smacked by the State Department. They didn’t believe it was anything beyond kidnapping a foreigner for money, and stepped out of the picture when the kidnappers failed to show. That’s when Dragon One stepped in. Local police and the embassy in Greece were too slow for Anna Mills. But one telling factor about all this was the lack of news media coverage, not even a hint.

  Suddenly the door opened and Vasili Something-he-couldn’t-pronounce, the Georgian Ministry of Defense attaché, entered first, holding the door wide. Safia marched in, pulling off her earphones and crossing the room. Behind her was a slender man in an Italian suit.

  “He’s got government flunky written all over him,” Sebastian said quietly. Riley left his chair and went to his wife. Logan moved in, closing his phone. Viva and Sam joined them.

  “They’ve taken it all,” Safia said.

  His gaze flicked to the Suit. “Company?”

  She shook her head. “Department of Defense. They confiscated everything we have. We’ll be lucky to get take off with our clothes and the damn chopper now.” She plowed her fingers through her hair. “He says they’re yanking our international business license, and that’s it, we’re off the map.” She leaned into Riley. “Just when I thought I wa
s done with these people.”

  Sebastian’s first concern was their debt to the Georgians. “They take the intel we gave Vasili?”

  “No, I don’t think they know about it,” she said quietly. “But they have ours.”

  Over her head, Sebastian watched the Suit talk with Mills, smile kindly, welcoming him. Mills was pleased with whatever the guy said, but Vasili looked embarrassed, like a punished child. He didn’t doubt that the Suit threatened withdrawal of U.S. support in their fight against Russia if he didn’t cooperate. Political bastards didn’t need to be in this now. Not when they turned their backs after the failed ransom drop. Sebastian had the sneaking suspicion they’d just been used.

  Then Suit crossed to them and Dragon One closed ranks.

  “You don’t have any authority to shut us down,” Sebastian said.

  Suit gave a derisive smirk. “National security says otherwise. American military killing Russian troops in Chechnya? Even your clout at the Pentagon won’t help you out of this.”

  “So you were watching. That how it goes now?” He folded his arms. “Americans in trouble and you sit your ass on the sidelines and throw money at it. Dragon One is private hire, civilians.”

  “I see highly trained U.S. military, mercenaries,” Suit clarified, “interfering with national security abroad.”

  “Bullshit. Your man was already there. Captive. Why?” Suit’s blank stare was too familiar, and he took a step closer. If he could shake information out of this lightweight, he’d have thrown him to the floor by now. “What’s the real threat here, cousin?”

  “You don’t need to know.” The Suit withdrew a black billfold and flipped it open. Office of the Secretary of Defense.

  He was wrong. It really was over.

  TWO

  Heilongjiang Province, Manchuria, China

  Midnight

  Olivia fixed the spring-loaded camming device in the crack and pulled the mechanism down, too aware that hanging on a cliff with the river below wasn’t exactly the best acoustics for silence. The SLCD gripped the rock. She’d come this far, she wasn’t taking chances without securing herself. Olivia looked below to the one-hundred-foot drop into the Songhua River. Bad move. She pressed her forehead to the cold rock, gripping her lines till the vertigo slid back.

  “You said you could do this,” she muttered as she threaded the loop and clipped, careful not to back-clip the carabiner, then tugged the rope tight. She reached for the fissure, fingers gripping, then she searched for footing. Ten feet maybe, and she’d be on the ruins. The shielded neon green digital on her wrist told her she’d already taken twenty minutes to reach the top. She hoped there were answers up there and she hoisted herself another foot, working her way slowly. The crescent moon gave off enough light to make this a little easier, especially with night vision goggles. She reached, slipped, then searched again, finally getting more footholds, and the last few feet went fast. On top, she shucked her gear pack, set up her escape, then headed toward the dig. She moved in short spurts, able to see pika and something slithery in the dark. NVGs rocked.

  She moved slowly down the stone steps chipped into the mountainside past the remnants of the palace watchtower barely discernible except for the north corner. The blocks were huge; limestone, she decided. The rain had eaten away at the tops. She hurried to the archaeological dig recently excavated and kept under wraps like most information from China. She paused to switch the lens to thermal imaging. It showed the hidden sensors, and as she neared, the goggles offered the blurred glow of a couple squads of Chinese troops antsy enough to shoot first, talk later.

  She switched back to NV, going still when she heard a rustle in the jungle to her left, then saw something slide over the edge of the ground and into the excavation. It reminded her of when her brother’s pet iguana escaped his tank and ended up in the bathtub—with Mom already in it. She followed the lizard thing, pacing lightly down the excavation steps and onto the wood platform that surrounded it. The dig was impressive, stretching three city blocks and only half revealed. Over all of it was a tarp harnessed with miles of scaffolding and shielding it from satellite. Or she wouldn’t be risking her neck right now. But she knew what the Chinese had and wished they’d just shared.

  She paused in a narrow corridor that went off in three directions, then headed toward her target, the carved sarcophagus on the platform in the center. The ruling khan of the region in the Manchu era was little known, an afterthought of history. No one expected to find anything significant. Obviously a lie or it wouldn’t be under tight security. Her path widened, a couple canisters illuminating the rows of tall urns flanked by stone warriors. They appeared to be cast from humans. Even facial creases showed. Creepy. She approached the stone tomb and terra-cotta soldiers loomed over her shoulder as she knelt along its head. The indentations of the carvings showed in curves and hollows.

  She snapped on a penlight and followed the row of characters and symbols. Her breath caught. It is here. Her heart pounded, the realization that she was looking at something no one had for a thousand years hitting her, and a giggle bubbled inside her. She swallowed it back. Focus. She brushed at the dirt, exposing the markings further, then slipped out two sealed bags. She removed frail paper and charcoal, then placed it over the carving and rubbed. With all our technology, this was the best we had for tactile imagery, she thought as she adjusted it for the next section. She folded it neatly, replaced the paper in watertight sleeves, then back inside her load-bearing vest. With a hand scanner, she swept the neon blue light over the length and width of the entire coffin, then she photographed it through the night vision goggles. One-stop spying, she thought and, just for fun, took a couple shots of the urns and warriors, but didn’t have time for much else. Stooped, she circled the coffin, its domed top chiseled with the likeness of the local khan who’d commissioned this shrine of a tomb. A little guy, she thought, and couldn’t resist running her gloved hand over the magnificent artwork, the intricately chiseled symbols. She knelt, examining one in particular, when she heard the echo of soft whispers, one deep, and she rushed along the walls of the dig site, heading for the steps carved into the dirt. Her neoprene boots kept her wrapped in silence as she slid along the wall, looking for some cover.

  The voices neared, then suddenly stopped. She looked back over her shoulder and spotted a couple locked together like teenagers, mauling each other. They’ll set off the alarms, she thought and rushed up the steps, then slid into the bushes and waited, the night vision doing its thing in clear bright greens. The couple unlocked and rushed farther into the dig. Stop, stop, the sensors are near the statues… The alarm tripped and she groaned, then took off toward the water in a hard run. Behind her, she heard shouts. The place was waking up and she had to reach the cliff before the searchlights came on. She glanced back, the weight of the goggles straining her neck. The first floodlight shimmered to life and she looked away or be blinded. She booked, crawling under gnarled roots, then scrambled over stones that had once been the defense tower.

  She caught the scent of cigarette smoke and lurched back under the cover of bushes. An instant later, a hand clamped on her shoulder. Olivia rose in a spin, knocking his hand off, her foot smacking the soldier in the stomach. The guy staggered and she ran. The troop shouted and it was probably good she didn’t understand Chinese all that well. Because that sounded like stop or I’ll sho—a bullet chipped past her shoulder, the crack echoing. The exploding burn came a second later and she covered her arm as she veered, spotting her equipment up ahead. She yanked the NVGs to her throat, her arm screaming in protest as she pulled on her pack, then ducked under the matte black frame. She slipped her arms into the harness, then pulled it through her legs and secured the links. Pounding footsteps and shouts thrummed behind her. Another bullet plinked off a rock somewhere to her right as she lifted the frame, running, yet couldn’t help muttering “OhGodohGodohGod” as she jumped off the hundred-foot cliff. She did a free fall that drove panic through her bloo
d, the river nearing. Oh hell. She stretched and the black-winged paraglider caught the wind and sailed. For a few yards, she dangled from the harness, relieved, then she swung her legs back into the guide and adjusted the NVGs into place. Tears burned behind the night visions as she tugged lead lines, maneuvering the glider along the river. Her arm throbbed. Blood drained inside her sleeve. I’ll catch hell for that.

  A mile downriver, she spotted the foam of water when the boat engine started and the craft sped away from its cover on the shore. She was ahead of it and nosed down, aiming for the flat deck roof, and the man standing on it as she closed in. She released her legs and lowered. A foot above, she collapsed the compact wings, her feet touched, and Cruz lurched out to stop her momentum. They toppled a bit, hugging like dancers. Her hip hit the railing. The wind snapped at the nylon wings with the sound of a cracking whip, and she popped the harness clips. Cruz gathered the frame more carefully than she ever did as he took it below. Olivia covered her wound and looked back at the mountain, to the dig just beyond the cliffs. Like a halo, the sky glowed with light and she gave herself a mental pat on the back, then gingerly swung down off the roof and dropped onto the pilothouse deck. She pulled off the NVGs, then the black balaclava, and shook out her hair.

  The tall man at the helm glanced her way, nodded approvingly, then went back to driving the speedboat disguised as a fishing trawler.

  Cruz knelt near the wing frame, staring at his bloody hands, then to her. “You’re hit?”

  She uncovered the slice in her upper arm that ruined the skin suit. “Yeah, it doesn’t hurt much though.”

  “It will.” Cruz grabbed the medical kit and she let him push her into a seat. “We have people for this, you know.”

  “God, you’re a real killjoy. Wouldn’t you want to touch something a thousand years old?”

  “Not at the risk of a bullet in the back. You saw the troops. They were bored silly, itching for action.”