Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Series Boxed Set, Volumes 1-3: Dead in Their Tracks, Counter-Strike, The Kill List

by JT Sawyer

  “It’ll do. Just take me to the survivor you said had escaped.”

  She looked at the unmarked helicopter and at the lone pilot inside, giving a surprised look at Crenna, who only ignored her. Tandy manipulated the manual stick and descended the road that led to the cabin which had formerly served as Kyle’s operations center.

  “Our hazmat containment team indicated that the region is free of the airborne contaminants and the woman that survived has already been cleared by our medical staff.”

  “Good. How many people do you still have on site?”

  “One of our agents is with the woman at the cabin and the others have already departed.”

  “After we’re through here, the proper European authorities will be notified and this place will be a fuckin’ zoo with all the bioweapons researchers.”

  “How did we get intel on this attack ahead of the virology teams with the Swedish military?” Tandy said as she brought the truck to a halt at the rear of the cabin.

  “A source notified me directly. That’s what boots on the ground in the war on terror is all about, Tandy.”

  They got out of the vehicle and trudged through the ankle-deep snow, Crenna shaking his lace-up Oxford shoes in irritation as they reached the porch. He glanced around the area and noticed the silence draped over the forest and the lack of recent tracks in the snow.

  “Have you debriefed the woman yet?” he said, reaching for the bronze handle of the door.

  “Yes, she described the nature of the biological attack and indicated that there were five men who rented this cabin during the past two days. She’s in shock at the loss of her friends so I wouldn’t expect coherent sentences.”

  Once they were inside, Crenna pulled up a chair and sat beside the gray-haired woman. Her arthritic fingers were trembling and her face was expressionless. His demeanor softened and he spoke with her like she was a beloved aunt, caressing her furrowed hand and looking into her tear-riddled eyes as she recounted the horrific events in broken English. Tandy and the other agent, a lean man named Rawlins, stood in the other room within earshot.

  Fifteen minutes later, Crenna stood up and moved towards his two field agents, nodding for them to join him in the back room. “Poor woman has been through hell. Not much she could provide about the men in this cabin who must have initiated the attack though she said one had a large scar by his right eye.”

  “C4 was clearly used on the community building below from the residue and the blast pattern,” said Rawlins, who had a bookish demeanor. “The hazmat teams indicated there were probably portable aerosol devices that dispersed the pathogen through air ducts based upon what we gleaned from the survivor.”

  “Where’s the body you found in here that you mentioned when we spoke on the phone this morning?” said Crenna, looking at Tandy.

  “He’s in the small bedroom next to the kitchen.” Tandy led him over to the dead man on the wooden bunk bed. His bullet-shattered skull was cloaked with a bath towel that was saturated with a circular bloodstain. Crenna stood beside the corpse, noticing that the right sleeve had been pulled up, revealing a red-and-green tattoo of a tiger on the inner forearm.

  “Looks Filipino or maybe Indonesian,” said Tandy, who was standing with her arms folded. “I took a photo of the design but haven’t sent it back to our lab yet.”

  Crenna’s eyes remained riveted to the tattoo as he registered her words. “Not Filipino.” He lifted the crusty towel and peered at the man’s face, his stare holding for a long moment. He instantly recognized the tattoo from a mercenary group based out of Indonesia. He had used them several times years ago when he and Redstrom, a then young agent under his tutelage, were running drug interdiction raids. They were trying to disrupt supply lines to thwart funding for an upcoming coup the U.S. didn’t want to unfold. A calling card from Redstrom—has to be—he was never so sloppy. That son of a bitch thinks he can slide the rug out from under me using my former contacts.

  “Must’ve been a pistol at close range, I’m guessing, given how intact his head is.”

  Crenna was silent but nodded in agreement. Then he took a deep breath and straightened up, turning towards her. “And who else has seen this?”

  “Just myself, Rawlins, and the woman.”

  “The woman,” sighed Crenna, whose lips went flat. “Pity—such a horrible thing to come upon after what she saw down below.” He motioned with his outstretched hand for them to leave the room.

  “Why don’t you two get her ready to leave on the helo. I just want to do a final sweep of the cabin for anything we might have missed.”

  Tandy and Rawlins went back into the living room while Crenna lagged behind, removing his Sig 229 pistol from his waist holster and silently attaching the suppressor. A second later, Rawlins’ cervical region was pierced by a single round, causing him to slump sideways onto Tandy, who fell under the weight. The next round sliced through the old woman’s temple, her head flopping backwards like a tetherball. Tandy was squirming out from under the dead weight of her colleague and shouting at Crenna, who stepped on her hand as she reached for her pistol.

  “What are you doing? Are you insane?” she screamed.

  “This is nothing personal. You’re a good agent.” He levelled the pistol at her forehead as she continued writhing and punching his leg with her free hand. She leaned back towards the fireplace to grab an iron poker but it was just out of reach.

  “Please, for God’s sake, I have a daughter.”

  “I’ll see to it she’s taken care of,” he said, pulling the trigger.

  The waft of smoke discharging from the barrel of his weapon mingled with the coppery odor of blood from Tandy’s head that was sprayed onto the warm fireplace. Crenna waited for the nausea to approach but nothing happened, it rarely did anymore. His hands didn’t even shake. Like the other necessary killings he’d undertaken during his one-man mop-up missions over the years, he knew this had to be done. He felt justified although he wished the Swedish woman could’ve been spared.

  He tucked his pistol into his waistline then went into the kitchen and opened the gas stove, turning up all the knobs. Crenna tossed some crumpled newspaper on the hot coals in the fireplace near Tandy’s still figure. He scurried out the back door and hopped inside the truck, spinning it around towards the direction of the landing strip. As he headed up the hill and parked the vehicle at the treeline, he heard the explosion in the distance.

  Climbing into the helo, he wiped the snow flecks off his shoes, noticing a few droplets of blood which he blotted out with his thumb. He pulled out his cellphone, making sure to keep the screen obscured by his wool overcoat. He glanced down at the text which he’d received earlier that morning. I look forward to when we can meet again—someday soon. In the meantime, here’s a taste of things to come, Kyle. There was a set of GPS coordinates for the Swedish island of Faro below the words.

  Crenna bit his lower lip then hit the delete button. He took a deep breath, the moisture from his nose floating upward like silver phantoms in the semi-cold cockpit. Have to contain this—get to him quickly before this fucking gets further out of hand. Crenna reflected on his nearly thirty-year career in clandestine affairs with different government agencies. How he’d sacrificed three marriages and lost touch with his kids over the years. Then came the day a few years ago when even the job itself had lost its luster. He’d been so idealistic when he was younger, the world so much more delineated between black and white. I was a true patriot, giving everything for my country. No—I am a true patriot still. Kyle is the piece of shit who wants to unravel all of my work, the agency’s fine work. He’s the traitorous bitch I thought he was when I leaked word to the Chinese. Crenna looked out at the snow-covered forest in the distance as the helicopter sped along the coast back towards Stockholm. He mulled over his options. He had planned to retire in one more year and use his considerable funds to retreat to an estate he’d had built in Belize, far from the brutal winters of the East Coast. His latest wife wo
uldn’t mind as long as she could get away on frequent vacations. Then he thought about the go-bag he kept in his office and the other in a secure compartment in his Cadillac Escalade. He had all the essentials for starting over if he had to disappear quickly—passports, money, credit cards, and an encrypted cellphone with the link to his Cayman Island account. Years working counter-intelligence had taught him what it takes to disappear permanently off the grid. Looking out at the frozen forest below, he grew angry at the thought of having to evade the law. He knew Kyle would be happy to see his career get incinerated if his treason was exposed. Fuck him, I’m not about to go dark and live on the run. I’ll find him first and put an end to his miserable existence. Nobody crosses me.

  He removed his phone again and texted an unmarked number that was on speed-dial, alerting an off-the-books group of European mercenaries he had used in the past. He instructed them to meet in nine hours at a location he’d text them shortly.

  When he was finished, he leaned over towards the pilot and shouted above the rotor wash, “Take me to Copenhagen instead. I need to arrange for additional air transportation from there.”

  Chapter 10

  Mitch drove through the pitch-black forest until they reached the highway then followed the road to Munich. Jessica Yin had been flagged through Dev’s facial recognition program as having just passed over the Austrian border twenty minutes earlier in her Land Rover.

  “The route she’s on will take her right to the airport. She must have passed on whatever intel she obtained from Bob and is planning to disappear again,” he said, clutching the wheel tightly with both hands, his mind focused on more than the white lines on the freeway.

  Dev retrieved a small black case from her shoulder bag and flipped open the lid. Inside was a syringe which was pre-loaded with a single vial of yellow fluid. The entire device was stout, with a blunt needle on the end that resembled an epi-pen. She lifted it out and shook the needle, examining the fluid container to make sure it hadn’t been affected by the cold or the cabin pressure in the plane on their flight over.

  “So how’s that shit work again?” said Mitch, who’d snuck a glance at her.

  “You don’t know about the joys of sodium pentothal? I thought you went through interrogation training at SERE school?”

  “In my day, that consisted of just getting slapped around a lot and hosed down with ice water while hanging upside down in your cell. No drugs were needed.”

  “Ah, American interrogators always like such corporal punishment when extracting information from subjects when a few CCs of something like this stuff will really save you from getting bruised knuckles.”

  “I’d like to pretend I didn’t hear that latter comment and focus on remembering that you have a sweet side to you.”

  She smirked and put the syringe back in its case. “This setup was designed for sticking a subject in a crowded place. It goes right through the jacket or jeans so there’s no need to restrain the person first. We call it stab-and-go. Then you wait about thirty seconds until the subject gets woozy and you sweep in and grab ’em.”

  “I prefer just waiting outside in the parking lot and sucker-punching the bastard. That way you can see the oh-shit look in their eyes when they fall backwards while they realize their destiny caught up with them.” He cleared his throat and looked at the syringe case again. “But that’ll work just as well if it ensures getting my hands on this woman.”

  Dev pulled up the image of Jessica Yin on her cellphone and studied her features again. “Our facial recognition program surreptitiously inserts itself into local security cameras around the world depending on the nation and how far we want to risk reaching out. It only functions for a few minutes at a time so we don’t leave behind a digital trail and it’s provided the location of where Yin disembarked from her SUV near the airport. The rest is up to us. I’m sending her photo to your phone in case we get separated.”

  “Her face is already seared into my head but thanks.” He looked at Dev and then up at the overhead sign on the highway for the airport. “Your software program sounds like the realm of the darknet to me. You sure you want to dip into those waters with a high-profile company like yours?”

  “Aww, are you looking out for me again? That’s sweet.”

  “Come on, Dev, you know what I’m talking about. That’s not something a legit business wants to get tied up with however good your end intentions are.”

  “My father had access to some of the finest minds in cyber-security and created this program strictly for cases deemed critical. It’s not something I ever use except on rare occasions like this.” She paused and looked out at a 747 angled skyward in its ascent. “To stay alive in the world of counter-espionage that goes with the K & R industry, we’ve had to expand our capabilities beyond what I’m comfortable with at times. Another reason why I don’t always see eye-to-eye with my board of directors.”

  Mitch slowed the vehicle as he neared the first terminal, his eyes trolling along the pedestrians milling along the baggage area.

  “So we’ve got a name, a face, and a location but how the hell are we supposed to locate her amidst this jumble?” he said.

  “Well, she is Chinese so that helps, right?” said Dev with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  Mitch drove to the next terminal and continued his visual stalk of the passengers who were checking their bags and entering the building. Habitually, he found himself glancing down at people’s footwear and their gait patterns, reminding himself that he wasn’t in the backcountry. His blood pressure would be lower if he were, as he couldn’t stand the nauseating effects that large crowds had upon him.

  While he was scanning through the throngs of people, he saw a dark-skinned man walk across the footpath in front of his SUV. He walked with a sense of purpose, his left arm moving more fluidly than his right, which seemed velcroed to his side. In Mitch’s experience that meant he was concealing something under his jacket. The man was wearing jeans and a casual gray suitcoat. The pants had faint soil stains on the knees. It was the boots that stood out though—the black jungle survival type with the miniscule side vents that allowed for water drainage. Mitch had a well-worn pair himself from his days of working in joint special ops assignments with Colombian Special Forces and they all had the same unique tread pattern.

  He watched the man beeline for the main entrance, pausing slightly and canting his head away as two policemen walked by.

  “I don’t see Yin but there’s someone else who might be worth following.” He abruptly pulled over, squeezing between two taxis, and then hopped out of the vehicle. Dev hurried to catch up as they entered the terminal and angled to the right, with Mitch scanning past the bobbing heads for the slender figure who was deftly weaving through the frenetic horde. He reminded himself that his HK pistol might have to be quickly ditched in a trash bin if he drew the attention of security. It wasn’t like his past life a few months ago where he carried the weight of the FBI and could pursue a potential threat without recourse. Blades or hand-to-hand are the new rules of engagement, it seems.

  “Who are you after?” said Dev, trotting to stay beside him.

  “Eleven o’clock. Lanky dude with dark skin who moves like a wolf.”

  “What about him?” she said after pinpointing the figure.

  “Not sure but something doesn’t add up and in my book intuition is a big part of tracking someone. I think he’s our Charlie Brown—the guy whose tracks I saw at the estate.”

  An elevator door opened to the left, sending a wave of people into the human river that Mitch and Dev were wading through. He had to pause and make his way through the tangle. When it had cleared, the mysterious man was gone.

  Mitch kept pivoting and studying the entrances and escalators. “Dammit.” He turned and grabbed Dev’s arm. “You head upstairs and see if you can locate him from there. I’ll stay down here and keep pushing ahead.”

  Just after they split up, with Dev ascending on the escalator, Mitch looke
d to his left—straight into the face of Jessica Yin.

  Chapter 11

  A hulking figure who seemed to be accompanying Yin peeled off to her right and melted into the crowd. Mitch watched him for a second, not certain if he was actually with the woman, but made sure he had gained some distance before getting closer to Yin. The woman glanced down at her phone long enough for Mitch to file into the flow of people behind her as they headed down a walkway leading to international flights. He could see the security checkpoint ahead and knew he had to reach her before then.

  Mitch’s heart raced when he realized Dev had the tranquilizer. Looks like we’ll have to go old-school, which is usually the best way anyhow.

  He reached in his pocket and quickly texted Dev that he had spotted Yin near a chapel and a coffee kiosk. He replaced his phone with a small fixed blade, inverting it and keeping it concealed against his wrist and jacket. He quietly pushed his way through the crowd and moved in alongside Yin, slicing the tip of his blade through the thin fabric of her nylon jacket until it pressed against her ribs.

  “Ms. Yin, please accompany me to the right unless you want your innards spilled onto the floor.”

  She slowed her gait as he pressed the tip into her yielding flesh. “If I have to ask again, that pretty little sweater of yours is gonna be permanently stained red.”

  Yin followed him to the side, the two walking in unison as Mitch kept an eye on her hands while glancing up at the security guards in the distance. He angled her off to a small chapel situated next to the food court.

  Shoving her inside, he saw that there was a young man kneeling at the altar. The man turned abruptly and looked at Mitch, who was scowling. “We could use some time alone. My wife has a terminal illness and needs comforting.”

  The man hastily withdrew, closing the narrow double-doors behind him. Mitch sensed Jessica trying to pivot to lessen the pressure on the blade so she could strike at him. He slammed her head into the wall and repositioned the knife near her carotid.