“I needed to speak to Rafiq on a family matter,” Lyons said. “Now that he appears to have gone AWOL, it gets serious.”
“It isn’t like him,” Maddy said. “I mean, Rafiq isn’t what you’d call a geek. In fact he’s great to have around. But he’s really serious about his studies, and he’s never late for class.”
“Rafiq would drag himself to class even if he was sick,” Brad said.
“If either of you have any thoughts on where he might be, please let Agent Benning know,” Prescott said.
“When was the last time you saw Rafiq?”
“Friday afternoon after our last class. He was driving off campus with this girl he’s been seeing for the past few weeks.” Maddy gave a knowing smile. “I guess he’s pretty taken with her.”
“You know her?”
“Only from meeting her when she was with Rafiq. It was easy to see how he felt about her. I mean, yeah, she’s pretty and all that, but…”
“But?”
“Out of his class,” Brad said. “We all figured she was a bit older. More experienced. Rafiq laughed when we told him.”
“She isn’t attending the college then?”
“No,” Maddy said. “She has a job in a local bookstore. She met Rafiq at a beach party. Come to think about it, she just kind of turned up and attached herself to him. Rafiq was flattered by all the attention, but she seemed like a nice girl. We were all glad for him. I mean, he spends so much time at his studies it was nice to see him having some fun.”
Lyons’s face remained impassive, but he was already experiencing a slight unease.
“Okay. So the last time you saw him, Rafiq and this girl were driving off campus together?”
Brad nodded. “Yeah. They were in his SUV.”
“Write down details of the vehicle,” Lyons said. “Make and model. License. This girl. What’s her name?”
“Callie Jefferson.”
“I’ll need the name of the bookstore where she works.”
“Agent Benning, do you think something has happened to them?” Maddy said. “I mean, with them not showing up?”
“Right now I’m just covering everything I can. The more information I have, the easier it will be to locate them.”
“I hope so.”
“Any idea where they might have gone?”
“All Rafiq talked about last week was this trip they were going on. Up country somewhere. He was pretty cagey about it. The more we asked, the less he said. I guess he didn’t want to give too much away in case anyone followed and caught them…well, you know.”
“I know,” Lyons said. He slid a couple of printed cards from his pocket and handed one each to Maddy and Brad. “If you think of anything that might be helpful give me a call.”
WHILE MADDY and Brad wrote out the details he needed, Lyons stepped aside and called Stony Man on his cell phone, connecting with Brognola and relating what information he had.
“Just a feeling,” he said, “but this vanishing act is a little too convenient. I could be wrong and maybe they decided to stay away for a little extra fun and games, but the way everyone talks about Rafiq, he isn’t the kind to skip class.”
“This is all we need,” Brognola said. “The mission is barely off the ground and we’ve already lost an asset.”
Prescott passed over the written data and Lyons dictated the information to Brognola.
“Aaron can run this through the system,” the big Fed said. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Get him to check out this girl. Something doesn’t sit right.”
THE GUY BEHIND the bookstore counter was middle-aged but still insisted on dressing in jeans and a long flowered shirt. Multiple layers of beads hung around his neck, and his graying blond hair was worn in an untidy ponytail. When he stepped around the counter Lyons saw he had won his own silent wager. The man was wearing open sandals.
“Callie? Yeah, I was wondering why she hadn’t turned in today. It’s not like her. I know she hasn’t been here long, but she’s always on time. Good worker, too. Popular with the customers.” He grinned. “Not surprising with her looks.”
“So the last time you saw her was Friday?”
“She finished early.”
“She say anything about where she might have been going? Who she might be seeing?”
“Uh-uh. Just said she’d see me Monday. Hey, you think something’s happened?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”
CALLIE JEFFERSON’S small, rented apartment offered Lyons nothing. He checked it thoroughly. Apart from the cheap furniture, there was nothing to suggest anyone had even been living there. Callie had not put her stamp on the place. There were no clothes, no jewelry. No personal possessions of any kind.
She’s not coming back, Lyons decided.
Making his way downstairs, Lyons met up again with the manager of the apartment building. The man had let Lyons into the apartment earlier.
“Any luck?” the guy asked.
“No. I’m guessing she’s skipped town. Nothing there except the furniture.”
“She paid up front for three months. Cash.”
“Looks like you made on the deal,” Lyons told him.
The manager spread his hands. “She was a good tenant.”
LYONS SAT IN HIS CAR working on his next move. He would never have admitted to anyone, but at that moment he hadn’t a clue how he was going to move forward. He needed somewhere to start. But where?
He spotted the diner across the street. It was directly in line with the apartment building.
What the hell, Lyons figured. It was as good a place as any, and he could do with a coffee. So he started the car and swung it across the street, pulling up outside the diner. He went inside and chose an empty stool at the counter.
“Black coffee,” he said when the server approached.
“Saw you come out of the apartment building,” the guy said. “You don’t strike me as the type to stay there.”
Lyons saw the man as a talker, and his cop instincts came into play. He pulled out his badge holder and showed the guy.
“I’m looking for someone who could be a missing person. Maybe you knew her.”
“Woman, huh?”
“She had an apartment across the street. Callie Jefferson.”
“Callie? Yeah. She comes in here every morning for breakfast. You say she’s missing?”
“She went away on Friday for the weekend. Hasn’t shown up since.”
“Hope nothing’s happened. She’s a nice girl. Wish I could help. Like I said, she use to come in for breakfast every day. Could set my clock by her. Always at 8:20. She’d order her meal, then go make her daily phone call.”
“Call?” Lyons swung around on his stool and stared at the pay phone on the other side of the diner.
“That’s it.”
“Long or short call?”
“Couple of minutes is all. Then she’d have her breakfast and leave,” the server replied.
“Did she ever say who she was calling? I mean, weren’t you curious?”
The guy grinned self-consciously. “Yeah. Sure I was. Callie must have noticed, so one day she told me it was her mother. Said she called her every day because her mother liked to know she was okay.”
Lyons crossed to the pay phone. He took out a notebook and pen and wrote down the company name and the phone’s number. Then he called Stony Man from his cell phone and asked to speak to Aaron Kurtzman, the Farm’s resident computer genius.
“If I give you the pay phone number and company, can you trace calls made from it?”
“Be even more helpful if you can give me dates.”
“Hold on,” Lyons said. He returned to the counter. “How far back do these calls go?”
“Three weeks I’d say. Not much longer.”
“Always the same time?” A nod. “Go back two weeks max. Calls made every morning at 8:30.”
“Might take a little time, but we’ll pin it down for you. Any
thing else?” Kurtzman queried.
“Check out a Callie Jefferson.”
“You got it.”
Lyons broke the connection.
“I’ll have my coffee now,” he said, and picked up his mug.
“That information help?”
“Hope so.”
“She was a nice young woman,” the guy said, wandering off to top up his coffeepot. “Be a shame if anything happened to her.”
AN HOUR LATER Lyons’s cell phone rang. He had already left the diner and had parked up away from town, waiting impatiently for his return call, resisting the temptation to contact Kurtzman himself.
“Up until two days before your subject went missing, all her calls were to a landline in Los Angeles,” Kurtzman said without preamble. “After that, her calls went to a cell. We had to go chasing the signal because after the first contact the cell was obviously on the move. Turns out the end user had a sat phone. Once we pinned down the band frequency it was easier to track. It appears that the user was on a definite run, headed out of L.A. The user settled in a spot somewhere north of where you are now.”
“I need that location. Something odd going down here.”
“I’ll send you a text. If you plan to go looking for your missing pair, get yourself some big wheels. Rough country up there.”
“If anything else comes up…”
“I know the drill.”
EARLY NEXT DAY Lyons was on the road in his new rental. He had returned to the agency and traded his car for a late-model SUV capable of handling the roughest terrain. The Ford Expedition’s powerful 5.4 liter engine would give Lyons the power he needed, and the 6-speed transmission would enable him to cover any ground conditions once he was off road. The SUV was equipped with a DVD touch-screen satellite navigation system, another bonus for the Able Team leader. He was able to tap in the coordinates Kurtzman had sent in a text to his cell phone, giving him a direct route to follow.
He made good time. Two hours’ steady driving and he was turning off the main highway onto a narrow road. Lyons scanned the timbered hills as he pushed up the higher slopes. He spotted the odd isolated lodge, smaller cabins, the gleam of water from small lakes. Even they vanished the farther he drove, noticing that the road had become a vehicle-wide dirt track. The forest closed in around him.
Lyons slowed, then stopped, checking his GPS. The readout told him he was less than two miles from his destination. Before he moved out on foot Lyons dressed accordingly. He stripped off his civilian clothing and pulled on combat trousers and boots. A multipocketed hunter’s vest went over a short-sleeved cotton shirt, to house speed loaders for his .357 Magnum Colt Python and clips for his Uzi. The Python was in a high-ride holster on his right hip, and a sheathed Cold Steel Tanto knife was on his left.
Right now Carl Lyons was operating on instinct, something about the setup refusing to sit comfortably. He accepted he had little hard evidence to back his gut feeling, but he couldn’t shake his bad feeling.
Fully armed, he exited the Ford, pausing to make a quick call to Stony Man and update them on his progress. He laid out the facts in short sentences, asked if they had anything for him.
Stony Man’s mission controller, Barbara Price, relayed the information to Lyons.
“Callie Jefferson is a false name. Okay, we came up with a number of women with that name but they all check out. Your Callie doesn’t.”
“Okay, here are my thoughts. A false identity. Callie shows up near the college and makes friends with young Rafiq so that she can lure him away from college and friends when the time is right. She chooses a weekend so that by the time his disappearance is noticed she has him free and clear.” Lyons considered his next move. He also fell back on his former career as a street cop. “Do something for me. Have Hal get in touch with local law enforcement. Have them sweep Callie’s rented room for fingerprints. They might fall lucky and get something they can use to pick up on her real identity. If they get a hit, pass me the data.”
“Get back to you on that, Carl. Hold on. Aaron has passed me something. He got a name for the subscriber of the landline Callie Jefferson kept calling. The guy’s name is Greg Marino. We’re running a search on his background.”
“Okay. Keep me updated.”
“Hey, good luck, Carl.”
Lyons smiled briefly. Luck was something he needed right now.
THE EX-LAPD DETECTIVE had fixed the location in his mind and he approached unseen and unheard, finally crouching in the heavy undergrowth with his target in sight—a slope-roofed timber cabin, with a porch running the length of the front wall. The roof overhung the porch. An area around the building had been clear cut at some earlier time, though some grass and weeds had started to grow back. Parked in front of the cabin were two vehicles, a powerful-looking 4x4, black, with dark tinted windows, and beside it was an SUV that was the same model and color as the one belonging to Rafiq Mahoud.
Lyons spent some time observing the cabin and the surrounding area. His instincts warned him not to make any hasty moves. He had to establish opposition strength before he initiated any action. The last thing he needed was for some concealed guard to come barreling out of the woods targeting Lyons’s back. That said, he also needed to confirm Rafiq’s presence inside the cabin.
Alive or dead.
Playing a hunch, Lyons decided the kidnappers were more likely to keep Rafiq alive in case they needed his physical presence to convince his father that the youth was unharmed. If they had wanted him dead, a drive-by shooting would have solved that problem quickly. Rafiq was a bargaining chip that could be instrumental in persuading Sharif Mahoud not to participate in the peace talks.
Before he moved again, Lyons took out his cell phone and switched it off. As he zipped the phone back in his pocket, Lyons scanned the area around the cabin. Apart from the section that had been cleared around the building, the landscape was timber-and-underbrush heavy. He was going to have ample cover. He understood it meant the opposition would have the same advantage.
Soft sound caught his attention, but it was nothing more than a breeze rustling its way through the foliage above his head, disturbing the branches of the clustered trees.
Lyons knew his next moves would draw him closer to the cabin and its occupants once he had established the whereabouts of any perimeter guards. There was no easy way to do it, so the sooner he completed his recon…
The presence materialized without sound or scent. Carl Lyons was no beginner at the game. His combat experience with Able Team had developed his skills to a high degree, but this time even those skills were no match for whoever came up behind him. Something swept down in the periphery of his vision and then he felt the solid slam of a heavy blow across his skull that pushed him into enveloping pain then darkness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The rescue chopper arrived a few minutes over the two hours Pearson had predicted. The sight of the cumbersome transport chopper dropping from the sky was a welcome one for Bolan and Mahoud. They scrambled on board and the pilot lifted off.
Bolan dropped to the deck, putting his rifle aside and watched as Mahoud did the same. The ride wasn’t exactly comfortable but neither of them cared. Both gave in to the sudden surge of exhaustion sweeping over them and offered no resistance.
The Executioner didn’t sleep. His mind was still active and he found it hard to let go. So much had happened since his initial departure from the military base. His chief thought revolved around the undeniable fact that the mission had been compromised all the way down the line. The opposition had been walking almost in tandem with Bolan and Mahoud. There at every turn. Someone was desperate to have Mahoud silenced.
He glanced across at Mahoud. The man looked to be asleep but his lips were moving gently in a silent prayer, hands clasped together at his raised knees.
As soon as they touched down at the base Bolan went looking for Pearson, to request a communications hookup. Pearson took him to the communications center and Bolan was given
the use of a satellite phone. Left alone the soldier punched in the code and number that would eventually link him, via the orbiting bird and several cutouts, to Stony Man Farm.
“Striker,” Brognola said abruptly, “where the hell have you been? This mission is all over the place. You vanish. Carl has gone off the grid, as well. Can’t get a damn word from him. Just don’t tell me you went and lost Mahoud.”
“I have him. A little bruised around the edges, but he’s alive.”
Brognola’s response was a disapproving grunt. A moment later Barbara Price came on the line.
“Hey, Striker, good to hear from you. I get the feeling it hasn’t been a walk in the park.”
“Not exactly. And it isn’t over yet. Tell me about Ironman.”
“He went looking for Rafiq Mahoud. When he got to the college, the kid had already been missing a couple of days. He was supposed to have gone off for the weekend with his girlfriend. Only neither of them came back. Carl did some good old-fashioned police work and found out the girlfriend wasn’t as sweet as she made out to be. She’d been making phone calls to a guy who turns out to be involved with certain suspect characters, and the name she gave Rafiq was a fake. Aaron managed to track phone calls and pin down a location. The last we heard from Carl was that he had found the location. After that his cell phone went dead and we haven’t heard anything from him since.”
“I won’t pass that to Mahoud for the moment. The last thing he needs to know is that his son may be missing.”
“You have his wife and daughters to bring out?”
“That’s next. He gave me the location. Mahoud will stay here under military protection until I bring the family back. Do something for me.”
“Go ahead.”
Bolan gave Price a quick rundown on the problems he had encountered, emphasizing his suspicions security could have been compromised regarding Mahoud.
“Get Bear to run some deep checks on anyone and everyone. The President and Mahoud are supposed to be the only ones privy to certain details about the extract, but I’m not so sure. The opposition picked up on us too easily. I’m getting vibes telling me there are more interested parties being fielded than we figured earlier. Check it out. Here’s something else for Aaron to look at. A piece of equipment.” Bolan recited the make and model of the Codan transceiver he had brought back with him. He read off the serial number. “I took this off one of the Taliban gunners hunting for Mahoud. Someone is supplying these guys with brand-new equipment. It might give us something if we could pin down where it came from.”
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