Assuming Matt wouldn’t call unless he had to.
John’s eyes shifted slightly. The flat screen’s camera caught both Matt and Honor seated at the table. They were in a small screen in the lower right-hand corner.
“Dr. Thomas.” Midnight gave a solemn nod. “I never got a chance to thank you for what you did for Suzanne’s father.” He gave a wintry smile. “Old geezer’s really nice and I’m fond of him, even though he loves French novels.”
Matt kept an eye on Honor. Midnight could be really intimidating even when making small talk. But she just nodded. “Mr. Huntington.”
Midnight winced a little. “John will do.”
Which was actually a big deal. Midnight didn’t let too many people call him by his first name. Only those inside his circle.
He shifted his gaze back to Matt and sipped from a black mug. “Okay Matt, what is this about? Do you have new intel on who tried to grab Dr. Thomas?”
“Honor,” she said.
“Honor.” Midnight sipped again. “Are you closer to figuring out what’s going on? Luke told me there was some new intel but he didn’t say what. Said he’d be giving a full report later this morning.”
“Yeah. Turns out Simon Thomas, Honor’s father, might be involved.”
John wasn’t much for double takes or big expressions of surprise, but his eyes narrowed. “In what way?”
This part was Honor’s story to tell. Matt nodded at her.
“I was given a drug which wiped out my memory but I am starting to remember some events before I was abducted. My father keeps an office here in Portland. He hadn’t been answering his phone so I went there to see if I could get in touch with him through the company computer. While there I was abducted by two men who were wearing ski masks, so I couldn’t identify them. They also destroyed the security footage except for a couple of frames Felicity managed to isolate.”
“Felicity.” A genuine smile crossed Midnight’s austere features. Women tended to react to those rare smiles, which made him seem human and less forbidding. But Honor’s expression didn’t change. “She always comes through.”
“Yes, sir.”
“John.”
“John. The frames she isolated showed a tattoo. A tattoo that Matt identified as a Russian tattoo.”
“A Bratski Krug symbol,” he explained and John Huntington nodded.
“It turns out that an old nemesis of Matt, a former CIA officer, seems to be involved. A Lee Chamness. He lent my father money and I think my father was afraid of him.”
At hearing the name John came to a point, like a hunting dog, even more alert and frankly, even scarier.
“Lee Chamness,” he said, a very slight southern accent in there.
“Yessir. John.” Honor was certain that all of this was intimately connected to this man, who apparently spread misery and pain wherever he went. “He’s mixed up in something nefarious and I think he’s trying or will be trying to pin it on my father.” She drew in a deep indignant breath. “Which is insane. My father is the most honorable man on the face of the earth and would never —”
John Huntington held up a huge hand and she cut herself off.
“I have no doubt about that, Honor. And I know what Lee Chamness is like. We all do. He is the scum of the earth and would stop at nothing for money. So I understand that your father is the owner of a small shipping line.”
Honor nodded.
John’s gaze shifted slightly to Matt. “I guess we’re talking about a big shipment of heroin.”
“That’s what we thought, sir. But no.” Matt turned to Honor.
“It’s what would make sense. Matt told me that Chamness had an arrangement with an Afghan warlord — the one with a taste for little boys — and that he was in prime poppy country, so we all just assumed heroin. But then Matt said something about the boys he’d rescued being bald. And, well, though extreme stress can of course cause alopecia, it would be highly unusual for twelve boys to all suffer from it.”
John nodded his head, unsure where she was going with this.
“Then I asked Matt if he had photos of the boys and he did. And all of them had the same signs. Alopecia, burns on the skin, the skin sloughing off, emaciation. Matt told me that they also suffered from vomiting and bled from the eyes.”
“Poor kids threw up all the way to Kabul,” Matt said. “We thought they’d been given spoiled food.”
“And they died, all of them.”
“In the space of a week.” Matt’s mouth tightened. “Nothing the doctors could do. I could barely follow what was going on because I was in the brig, awaiting court-martial.”
John’s jaws moved as if he were chewing on something really nasty.
Honor leaned forward. “But that’s not natural. However badly treated they’d been, it is unlikely all the kids would have died, all around the same time. No, it was something else.”
John frowned. “What?”
“I think they were suffering from radiation sickness. They were poisoned by radiation. Once you see the photos, it can’t be anything else. Those kids were exposed to a strong source of radioactive material. I would bet anything on it.”
John’s face became tight, almost frightening. “So you think —”
“I think that someone — probably this man Lee Chamness — is using one of my father’s ships to land radioactive material at the port of Los Angeles. My father’s ships have a special exemption that he rarely invokes. A B-43 exemption, which means the ships can basically land without any customs inspections. And a lot of his ships have a Ro-Ro function. The goods are stowed in big trucks that are lashed down and when the ship lands, they simply drive the trucks off. Mr. Huntington — John. I feel — we feel — that there might be a radioactive shipment, or a dirty bomb, coming into the United States.”
John’s face turned to stone. “God. We’re going to have to notify NEST.”
Matt turned to her. “NEST is the agency that deals with radioactive material. Nuclear Emergency Special Team. Though we’d have to be sure that we’re talking about radioactivity. We can’t be calling NEST out for what might turn out to be a heroin shipment.”
“Do you have any men or equipment in the Hindu Kush, John?” Honor asked.
He paused a moment and shook his head. “No. We had a team providing close protection to a WHO team last month, but right now …” he stopped, clearly running through files in his head. Finally he shook his head. “Nope. By the time we get people there, it’ll be too late.”
Matt spoke up. “John, a friend of mine works for Jacob Black. They’re working right in that area. Maybe they could send a sniffer drone. If there is a source of strong radioactivity, it would have to be in the caves. That’s where the kids would have been exposed. I don’t know what could be there, but it would be in a cave, not out in the open.”
“Okay. Good call. I’m calling Jake right now. Stand by.”
John Huntington winked off.
Wow. He was calling Jacob Black. The founder and owner of one of the largest security companies in the world, Black Inc. The company had iconic black towers in many American cities and in capitals around the world, instantly recognizable. They operated mainly abroad and though they worked mostly under cover, they’d been responsible for some major hostage rescues.
The screen came to life and there he was.
Honor had only seen newspaper photos, which didn’t show the vitality and intelligence. Even through a screen and thousands of miles away, he was a formidable presence. In the background was a dusty street of dun-colored buildings, a deep blue cloudless sky and mountains in the far distance.
Jacob Black himself was dressed in black, with a black baseball cap, long black hair held back at the nape. He had a long narrow face with sharp features, black eyes, black eyebrows and a scruffy black beard. Not a hipster beard, but the kind you get from not shaving for days.
He’d been walking down a crowded street as he switched on but stopped, ducking into a do
orway. Behind him, Honor could see two guys stop when he stopped. They positioned themselves with their backs to him, facing outward.
Bodyguards.
“Matt,” Jacob Black said.
Honor was intimidated but Matt definitely wasn’t. He didn’t bother apologizing for disturbing him. “Jake. We have a situation.”
“A minute.” Jacob Black murmured something to his bodyguards and a tank-like vehicle rolled up. Nothing was visible of the inside through the dark-tinted windows. The vehicle had three doors in the side. Black got into the back door, the two bodyguards got into the vehicle via the middle door. When Black pulled his door closed all noises of the outside world disappeared. It was like he’d stepped into a bunker.
The image was no longer coming from a cellphone but from some camera or screen that was somehow affixed at face level.
“Okay. We’re secure. Shoot.”
Matt put his arm around Honor, squeezed lightly. Which she understood was both a claim and a character reference. “Jake, meet Honor Thomas. Dr. Honor Thomas. She’s an emergency physician here in a hospital in Portland.”
If Jacob Black was curious as to why Matt initiated a call from halfway around the world to introduce her, he gave no signs. He gave a courteous nod. “Doctor.”
“Honor’s father runs Quest Line Shipping,” Matt said.
“Okay.” Black’s gaze grew a little sharper.
Matt looked down at her. “Honey …”
He wanted her to take it from there. Okay. Honor was used to making reports to powerful men. And Jacob Black seemed as friendly as such a rich and powerful man could be, not hostile in any way. She’d briefed plenty of hostile men, particularly from insurance companies.
“My father has not been seen in public for over two weeks. Twelve days ago I was abducted from an office Quest Line Shipping has in Portland. I was drugged and kept unconscious, so I have few memories. But I was kept captive for six days. I suspect this has to do with a new partner of my father’s, Lee Chamness.” Black gave a minute response. “You know him?”
“Yeah. And all of us in the SpecOps community know what he did to Matt. If he’s involved in something bad, I’m not surprised.”
“We suspect — we suspected that Chamness and others abducted my father so he could facilitate a big shipment of heroin. My father’s shipping line has a B-43 exemption.”
“No inspections,” Black murmured.
“That’s right. And there’s Lee Chamness’s connection to Al Rashid, whose compound is right in the middle of poppy fields. It was a reasonable assumption to make.”
Honor took a breath, looked to Matt. She didn’t need his support but she had it anyway. Everything in him — from his body language to his expression — spoke of unwavering support. And something else.
She settled more closely against his shoulder and looked back at the screen image of Jacob Black on the wall. She never thought she’d ever be speaking with Jacob Black, but there he was, intently listening to her.
“Matt told me that all the children he rescued died soon after. And he mentioned that they’d all gone bald. Baldness can be some people’s reaction to extreme stress — the horror of being shackled playthings for a brutal overlord, for example — but not all of them would lose their hair. When I saw photographs of the kids, they showed clear signs of radiation poisoning. Alopecia, burns. All of them.”
Black’s face tightened noticeably when she said ‘radiation’. Anyone would be frightened at the term. But soldiers knew what the consequences would be because they’d trained for it. Something they’d thought about in depth.
“That’s bad.” Black looked down at something in his hand, off screen. “Thoughts, Matt?”
“I remember rumors from operators who’d been around in the 80s that the Soviets had been planning some kind of last ditch operation in Afghanistan. Some thought that maybe they’d use a nuke but what is there to nuke there?”
“Not necessarily a nuclear bomb,” Honor said. She was thinking it through as she spoke. “I have no idea what the Soviet Union was planning, they pulled out of Afghanistan when I was two years old. But in general, one could use radioactivity in ways other than a bomb. Or even a dirty bomb. If you were really vindictive, you could use radioactive salts to salt the earth, make it completely uninhabitable for generations. Or poison waterways or wells.”
“The Soviet Union was already crumbling.” Matt was nodding his head slowly. “There’d have been plenty of radioactive material out of Chernobyl, which was three years earlier, in 1986. They could have driven the radioactive material into Afghanistan and stowed it in caves.”
“The karez,” Black said. “They’ve been digging tunnels in the mountains since the days of Alexander the Great. They could have hidden the radioactive material in the caves. Bin Laden was in the caves for years.”
“He wouldn’t have found the radioactive material.” Matt leaned forward, taking her with him. “If he had, New York would be a wasteland.”
“It must have been the kids who found the material.” Honor could see it. Kids, clambering in and out of caves and tunnels, doing what kids have done since time began. Only they explored the wrong cave.
“And then Chamness.” Matt’s hand tightened almost painfully on her shoulder. “Chamness found it and found a reason to placate a barbarian warlord.”
She could hardly believe it. “And bring it to the States. I can barely wrap my head around that. But it’s the only thing that makes sense.” She turned to the screen. “Mr. Black, I believe you’re in the area, is there a way you can test for radioactivity?”
“I was thinking the same thing.” He glanced again downward, either at a cell or a laptop. “But there are thousands of caves in that area. I don’t have that kind of manpower and I don’t have permission to deploy a platoon of operators.”
“How about drones?” Matt suggested. “Send in a fleet of drones. I think the DOD mapped the entrances to the caves in that area. You’d have all the coordinates. How many sniffer drones do you have?”
“I’ve got plenty of drones and even sniffer drones, but they’re programmed to detect explosives and drugs. We have a special contract with the DEA. But not radioactivity.”
Both men were silent for a moment.
“Are you near a hospital complex?” Honor asked. “Or a clinic?”
Black nodded. “There’s a UN hospital complex thirty clicks away.”
“They are bound to have an X-ray department and radiology. And they will have plenty of dosimeters. Grab as many dosimeters as you can and attach them to your drones. It’s a crude solution, but I think it would work. Hospitals have hundreds of dosimeters.”
“By yesterday would be good,” Matt added. “We can’t call NEST until we have actionable intel and the first ship that could be a contender is due to land tomorrow.”
“On it,” Jacob Black said and the screen went dark.
“So,” Honor said, turning to Matt. “When do we leave for LA?”
“I’m leaving for LA in an hour. You’re staying here,” he said, starting to get up.
Honor grabbed his sweater, making him sit down again. “Wrong. I’m coming too.”
He looked appalled. “I thought we were in agreement.” He shook his head. “No way.”
Honor stood up. “Way.”
In a Cessna Citation, en route to Los Angeles
There was an impromptu strategy session at the airfield and it was late afternoon before they could take off for Los Angeles.
Matt still didn’t understand how it happened that Honor was with him in the ASI jet. She simply didn’t take no for an answer. He’d even made arrangements for Joe Harris and Jack Delvaux to take turns keeping watch over her at the Grange and Isabel, Joe’s wife, had offered to come up and keep her company.
It was all arranged. And then the arrangements went to shit.
He’d argued while she packed a small bag of Isabel’s clothes, after asking her permission. He’d argued while
they made their way up to the surface. He’d started ranting while they were on the helo pad waiting for the helo to take them to a small military airfield, and he’d started foaming at the mouth when they got to the airfield and the Citation was waiting for them.
The idea of her in Los Angeles made him a little crazy. Okay, a lot crazy.
He’d listed, over and over again, why this was a bad idea and she seemed to take his arguments in serious consideration, then rejected them.
Turned out that you didn’t get through medical school and then work in the ER by being a pushover.
My dad is in danger. I want to be close by in case something happens to him. She kept saying that, over and over, and well, shit. Matt could understand.
So while they argued as she packed and went topside with him and got into the helo and then the plane, deep down Matt knew it was a losing battle.
They were sitting in the Citation’s very comfortable leather seats, next to each other and he was holding her hand. While he was touching her, she was safe so he made sure he kept touching her.
“I want you to stay in the safe house,” he repeated for the billionth time.
“Absolutely.” Honor was the voice of reason. “I will stay in the safe house until you find my dad and stop whatever it is that madman Chamness is doing. But I’ll be close by if my dad needs help.”
“Not a madman.” Matt was clear on that point. “He’s not crazy, he’s just bad. He knows exactly what he’s doing and he’ll have it all organized. And whether it is heroin or radioactive materials, he will have a solid plan in place and it’s guaranteed to earn him a shitload of money. Probably retiring-forever-to-Bali money.”
“Bali’s overrated,” she said pensively, then looked up at him and winked.
Oh God, he couldn’t lose this woman, he simply couldn’t. He’d just found her. How could he have possibly known that he kept it light with other women not because he wasn’t made for settling down but because they weren’t Honor Thomas?
She was everything he never even knew he wanted. Needed. Smart and kind and unfussy. Bossy, when it came to health issues. Certainly, she gave her father grief about his unhealthy habits, which she did because she obviously loved him. So far she hadn’t given Matt any grief because he sort of already had a healthy lifestyle. Except she hadn’t seen him when he was immersed in a job and then it was a diet of cheeseburgers and fries and pizza. Man, when she found that out …
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 21