“That raises a question,” Bolan said. “The SCAR personnel I’ve encountered have been only too happy to shoot first. How can Twain be running this outfit on American soil? They’d be guilty of mass murder time and time again.”
“The same way Twain’s managed to steer clear of government operatives and stay out of custody,” Price said. “He’s very smart. The company itself has been very low-profile until recently. We’ve managed to trace some of SCAR’s clients, and they run the gamut. Basically, anyone with enough money to afford hired muscle, and enough enemies to need a private army, has used SCAR from time to time, but they’ve managed to stay free of incidents. The company itself has no overt ties to Twain, of course. We had to dig that up, and some of the things Aaron did to bring it to light are pretty far from legal.”
“So there would have been no reason in particular to go after SCAR before now,” Bolan said. “What’s changed? All of a sudden they’re operating on a slash-and-burn policy, staging fully armed groups of paramilitary soldiers to engage in violent acts of treason abroad. That’s no small change.”
“No,” Price said. “Which means something big is happening.”
“Trofimov,” Bolan said. “The link is there. Twain is working for Trofimov, who in turn is following his agenda toward whatever his ultimate goal is supposed to be. It makes sense. If he’s behind the military murders, and the protests, and the assassinations hiding behind the protests, it all comes together. He’s ramping up his activities, taking bigger risks, going for bigger body counts. It can’t just be coincidence that this supposed massacre has fallen into his lap, upping his ratings while it hurts U.S. military interests.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m tempted to go straight for Trofimov’s throat,” Bolan said, “but Twain’s just as big a piece of the puzzle, and if I don’t try to take him where we know he’ll be, I may not get another chance. Trofimov can wait a bit longer.”
“Hal and the Man would appreciate it if you found whatever there was to find before you cut a path through him,” Price said.
“I know,” Bolan said, “and I intend to. The roots of this conspiracy go deeper than we thought. Trofimov is a violent sociopath who hates America. He’s got a private army working for him, and it looks very much like he’s tried to send that force in active opposition to the military interests of this nation. That alone earns him a bullet. But there’s more here. I can feel it. I have to know, so I can stamp this out for good, every part of it.”
“Understood, Striker,” Price said. “Are you ready for the rest of the bad news?”
Bolan paused. “There’s more?”
“We have an analysis on the tech you recovered from Cedar Rapids,” she said. “Striker, have you heard of Warlock?”
“It’s an IED protection system, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Price said. “Warlock is a jamming system that blocks nonmilitary frequencies. It’s used to protect vehicles from roadside bombs. As you know, the typical improvised explosive device is detonated by a wireless signal, often generated by a wireless phone. Warlock prevents those signals from getting through, creating a safe zone around the device. Mounted in a vehicle, it generates this jamming field and protects the personnel in that vehicle. Since the implementation of Warlock in Iraq, there has been a significant decrease in casualties caused by IEDs targeting our convoys and patrols.”
“The transmitters in Cedar Rapids were for use in roadside bombs?” Bolan said.
“They’re radio-frequency triggers,” Price said, “which could be used to detonate any explosive device, yes. But these are special. Unlike the types of explosive devices that Warlock and similar systems protect against, these modulated-frequency triggers cannot be blocked through conventional means. Striker, these are tailor-made terrorist devices. Imagine what would happen if these made it into the hands of insurgents in, say, Baghdad. Convoys we thought were protected would start to get hit again, and there would be little we could do about it.”
“It would be a major blow to our military interests, in other words,” Bolan said. “Not to mention making us look helpless.”
“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“Trofimov’s goals are becoming very clear to me,” Bolan said. “The metal samples?”
“Still under analysis,” Price said.
“Let me know when you get confirmation,” Bolan said. “I have a theory.”
“Will do,” Price said.
“All right,” Bolan said, reaching down to shoulder his duffel bag with one hand. “I’ll pick up Agent Delaney.”
“Good hunting, Striker,” Price said.
“Thanks. Striker out.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The trip from Louis Armstrong International Airport had been the usual mess, but Gareth Twain didn’t care. He pulled his slouch cap down low over his eyes and did his best to ignore the noise and the chatter of the taxi driver. He’d have enough crap to deal with once he got to the office. There was no point borrowing trouble until then.
He’d caught hell from Trofimov, of course, for leaving. Bad enough that the Russian’s hobby of knocking over funerals had taken a turn for the worse, with the death of one of the Kwoks. But then word had reached him that the Cedar Rapids plant had been knocked over, and with it several of his erstwhile employees.
That was bad.
This bad news was followed by an urgent call from Little Rock. The training center had been raided, and he’d lost a fair number of men—both the veterans running the place and the new class of trainees.
That was worse.
It was as he’d feared. The operation was compromised, and the people working them over seemed to know just where to find them, just where to hit them. He was at a loss to explain it. They’d always been so careful; their computer networks were certified hackerproof, and there were multiple levels of redundancy protecting the true identity of SCAR’s ownership. There was no direct connection between the assembly plant and the training center, except for the fact that SCAR operatives worked in or protected both sites. Even that fact was protected by a few companies-within-companies on the books. Still, Gareth Twain had never believed in coincidence or luck. It was time to put out the cat and lock the doors, as his mom used to say.
Trofimov had given him hell over that, too. First the Russian hadn’t wanted to meet; he’d considered it a waste of his precious time to have to stop and confer with the hired help. Of course, only Twain was, technically, a hireling. Mak Wei was another sort of fellow entirely. Twain understood the broad strokes of the link between Mak and Trofimov, of course. You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to get it. Still, something about Mak made him nervous. He accepted the “security personnel” Mak sent him because Trofimov ordered him to do so, and paid a premium for Twain’s cooperation in the matter. That didn’t mean Twain trusted those fishes any further than he could throw the inscrutable lot of them, however. He was happy to use them to bolster his guns, yeah, but he wasn’t about to put any of them in positions of authority. They were all expendable, as far as he was concerned.
There were a damned lot of them, though, and it had made possible the sheer enormity of the SCAR-backed operations Trofimov was paying Twain for.
No, what worried Twain about Mak Wei was that he hadn’t invited Mak to the meeting, and to his knowledge, Trofimov hadn’t called the Chinese operative, either. Mak had simply shown up when Twain did. That meant the Chinese were monitoring Twain, or Trofimov, or both of them, and the Irishman simply didn’t like the idea of being under that magnifying lens. It made him think he was about to be burned.
His headquarters in New Orleans was the last line of defense for his organization, which was scattered throughout the country for good reason. There was no specific need for some of the facilities to be located where they were, rather than centralized, except that keeping them so far apart and operating them remotely gave Twain yet another level of plausible deniability. It also meant that, if someth
ing went wrong—as was only too clearly the case now—he could be hundreds of miles away, in a position to deny everything should it ever come to actual questioning, and poised to flee the country if it came down to that.
His false identities weren’t likely to hold up to much in the way of direct interrogation. So far they had held. He’d had a near moment there, at the airport, when he thought he’d finally made a mistake in flying commercially. There had been some looks exchanged among the screeners he hadn’t liked, staring at their terminal and then at him. It had been nothing after all, though, and they’d let him pass. Still, that had worried him quite a bit. It might be time to retire the name under which he currently traveled, pay his usual source for a new passport and a new lease on life.
He dropped his gear bag inside the doorway to his private office, sighed and made his way to the washroom through the small access corridor behind his desk. There, he gave himself a long, hard look in the mirror, splashed water on his face and shook himself like a dog.
Something was wrong and he couldn’t get the sense of it. He couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding. Someone just walked over your grave, he thought. That’s what Mom used to say. And that was the feeling he had now. It was a bone-deep dread, a cold uneasiness that had coiled in his chest and wouldn’t let go. He kept thinking about all the times he’d faced death and survived, all the lives he’d taken without a second thought. It wasn’t that he felt guilt, now. Not Gareth Twain, not ever. But there were times when he wondered if it wasn’t all a big game, and he was bound to end up owing somebody, somewhere, somehow, for all those dead. Usually he pushed the thought away, on those rare times when he got to thinking too much about it. Took a woman or a drink, or a job in which to lose himself.
But just now, he couldn’t see it working. He couldn’t see it helping. He just couldn’t shake the feeling, and it was making him uneasy. He splashed more water on his face, sliding his fingers from his scalp to his chin. Maybe he should get out. Maybe he should run. Maybe the clock, for him, was running a bit tight. Yeah?
Bollocks, all of it.
He’d worked hard to get where he was. He’d be damned if he’d let the bastards get the better of him now. Maybe, just maybe, he thought to himself, rubbing his face with one hand as he looked in the mirror, I should get some plastic surgery, change my face completely.
It was an option. He knew a doctor, someone he used for discreet repair of gunshot wounds and other reportable injuries, who might be able to recommend someone equally discreet. That translated to a doctor with license problems, or some other issue hanging over him. It was hard, Twain thought, to get quality medical care when you were an internationally wanted fugitive. He laughed out loud at his own joke, the sound a harsh bark that echoed off the tiles of the small washroom.
He flicked off the light switch and walked out into the office. This six-story building in New Orleans, within a long walk of Bourbon Street, was his last bolthole. With things coming apart, it was necessary to retreat here, to take stock, to figure out what actions he’d need to take. He’d resigned himself to the fact that he would need to blow his cover, and that SCAR’s carefully protected veneer of legality would be blown to hell. That would have happened eventually as part of the plan. He’d put the company together as part of Trofimov’s long-term scheme, with Trofimov’s financing and with Mak Wei’s troops to get the ranks up to snuff. They’d had to get American equipment for the big dodge he was to run in-country in Afghanistan, yeah, but until then most of his gear was provided by the Chinese. Some of that was of varying national origin, probably because Mak Wei still believed he was hiding his country’s involvement in all this. Twain thought that laughable.
He’d overheard enough between Trofimov and Mak Wei to know that Mak’s people had, more than once, tried to run covert military operations on American soil. That was the source of Mak’s hesitation, and the reason the man had gone all fearful when Twain had described the gun-down at the funeral. He’d fed them that line of pox about the mob just to see if they’d bite, to draw out Mak. The Chinese could never resist proving he was right, even at the expense of tipping his hand, and Twain hadn’t been disappointed by his reaction during the meeting.
No, Twain thought, it was all snowballing faster than originally planned, and that meant he was going to have to pull up stakes and get the hell out of North America sooner than he’d thought. That, too, had always been part of the plan. He’d figured to spend a little time in South Africa, see if there was still some security work to be done there. Maybe take a bit of a rest in Capetown, where he knew a fine young thing. He wondered if Linda was still single and, if she wasn’t, if she’d sleep with him anyway. It was likely. He’d managed to blow through town every couple of years for a while now. She had always made it worth his while.
He smiled at the thought. His office was Spartan, boasting only a plain wooden desk, a liquor cabinet, a television mounted on the wall and a laptop plugged in and charging on a side table. Ignoring the computer, Twain went to the liquor cabinet, took out a glass and a bottle of gin and poured himself a healthy swallow.
Nasty stuff, gin, but he’d developed the taste a decade ago while hiding out in a squalid London flat. He hadn’t been able to shake it since.
Swishing the liquor around in his mouth, Twain sat behind the desk. From the top right-hand drawer he withdrew his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. He’d left it in the office rather than trusting it to check through his luggage when he’d first left to see Trofimov. While it was still theoretically possible to travel by plane in the company of a firearm, there were too many things that could go wrong, and bringing attention to himself was the most basic of them.
Being separated from the weapon gave him the sweats. Its weight was comforting in his hand. He popped the magazine and pulled the slide back to verify that the chamber was empty. Then he reinserted the magazine and chambered a round.
“Good to have you back, baby,” he said out loud. He took another long gulp from his glass of gin.
The remote control for the television was on his desk. He switched the set on, chuckling when he realized he’d left it tuned to Trofimov’s network. The blond “anchor,” pretty enough he wouldn’t mind having a go, was reading some report or other while text crawled on the screen in a few different lines below her. Twain turned up the sound just as the report cut to the video footage of the massacre in Afghanistan.
Too right. They were buying it. Buying it by the truckload, too, from the look of it. That, at least, would keep the Russian happy. Trofimov had wailed that Twain was abandoning him just as things were getting sticky; the man just didn’t have a sense of priorities. When the heat came down, you went home and dug in. The Russian could do that in his office; he had plenty of armed men on hand, both Twain’s trained mercenaries and Mak Wei’s Chinese thugs. And it wasn’t so bad that the Russian was calling off the operation, Twain had pointed out—much to Trofimov’s ire. Leaving the man sputtering, Twain had caught the first available flight back to the Big Easy.
Little as he cared about anything, Twain had always liked New Orleans. He’d been in Egypt, briefly, when news of the hurricane came down, and he’d actually been sad to think the city had suffered so badly. The plucky Americans were rebuilding, though, and as it turned out, with the state in turmoil and the city itself still waterlogged, nobody’d given him a second thought when he bought his office building at a cut rate and started staging his operations from within. Hell, law enforcement in the city was so notoriously and famously corrupt, they’d practically called him to arrange for the appropriate bribes. That’s why he stayed, and that’s why his secret headquarters in New Orleans was the perfect spot in which to ride out the coming storm. Once he had some idea who was hitting them, and why, and how, he’d stick his head out and tend to business. Until then, Trofimov’s operation was under way and far enough along that it no longer needed Twain’s direct involvement. That meant Twain could focus on the important business of survival—not
that he wouldn’t have, anyway. The Russian was dreaming if he thought his money bought Twain’s self-sacrifice for Trofimov’s causes, ridiculous as they seemed to Twain.
There had always been an endgame. When the Russian had outlined just how extensively he intended to hit the United States military, and on as many fronts as he desired, Twain had thought him mad. Then the madman had thrown so much money at Twain that the Irishman had known him to be mad. Still the money poured in, and as Twain organized SCAR to support the extensive op, it had started to look truly possible. Of course, none of that would have been possible had the United States government itself not been corrupt. At least, certain parts of it.
As if prompted by his thoughts, the satellite phone on his desk began to buzz. The device was connected to an auxiliary antenna just outside his window. There were only a handful of people who would be calling him on that line. Trofimov was one, but unless his high-rise was burning down around his ears, he’d still be too annoyed to lower himself to calling his employee. Mak Wei was another, in theory, who had the number, but the man hadn’t spoken a word to Twain save for once: he’d arranged for a small private army of Chinese operatives to show up on Twain’s doorstep in New Orleans, told him they were assigned to him for the duration of Trofimov’s scheme and turned the phone off in Twain’s ear. Not even Twain’s dear old mother had this number, which meant it could be only one other person.
“Congressman,” he said, answering the phone. “It’s nice to be getting a call from you.”
“I told you, don’t call me that on an open line!” The man on the other end’s voice gritted.
“Heller,” Twain said, his voice hardening, “if you think this is an ‘open line,’ you’re stupider than ever I thought. The phone is untraceable. Unless you’re dumb enough to be calling me from your office?”
“Of course not,” Heller responded, managing to sound hurt, indignant and arrogant all at the same time. The Virginia congressman was a piece of work, that much was certain. He was, to Twain’s understanding, in Trofimov’s hip pocket—his wallet pocket, to be specific—and had been on the payroll for quite some time. David Heller held key spots on certain appropriations committees, but he also had contacts within the United States military. He was also rumored to have financial interests in certain manufacturers who made military equipment, such as trucks and Humvee parts, though that wasn’t something that could be proved. Twain imagined it was perfectly true. He and Trofimov had made a fine art of hiding their assets using nested holding companies and false identities. There was no reason the Virginia congressman couldn’t do the same, using his considerable government influence to line his own pockets over time.
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