Black Flagged Redux

by Steven Konkoly

  His cell phone rang, lifting the heavy blanket of unconsciousness and jarring him back into the world of the living. The phone continued to ring, and he slowly moved his hand over to the night stand, homing in on the light from his BlackBerry screen. He lifted the phone above his face, still lying flat on his back, and read the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number, but knew who it might be based on the foreign prefix.

  “Karl Berg,” he whispered.

  “You sound like shit, my friend,” a deep voice said in Russian.

  “I’m trying to catch a few hours of sleep, no thanks to you.”

  “I don’t sleep very well anymore. Old age, they say.”

  “Are you sure it’s not the nicotine coursing through your veins all day and night? What time is it there? Four in the morning? I thought old people slept in,” Berg said.

  “I decided to take an early morning walk. You know…to make sure I don’t have a fan club. I’m at a pay phone halfway across the city. I haven’t used one of these in years. Kind of reminds me of the old days.”

  “In the old days, all of the public phones were bugged,” Berg said.

  “They haven’t monitored these phones like that in years. Cell phones ruined it for them. Still, they electronically troll the lines for certain phrases. I hear they even do that in your country now.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. So, how did it all play out on your end? Will you be taking a trip down the lovely Moscow River?”

  “I don’t think so. Our insider removed any possible trace of her work. There will be a witch hunt soon enough, but we’ve been careful. Oddly enough, they think our Russian friend was responsible for his own abduction. They’re convinced that he defected with the help of your Special Forces team. Your team left quite a mess on the streets, which was impressive given what they were up against. We have twelve bodies to recover.”

  “Two of them are ours,” Berg said.

  “Interesting. I don’t think anyone here knows that. Twelve is the number I’m hearing. And how is the grand prize holding up? I assume he’ll be given political asylum and a nice townhouse in the Midwest?”

  “He didn’t survive the interrogation, but we managed to make a few connections with the information he provided. We’re working on them right now.”

  This wasn’t true, but the less Kaparov knew about the fate of Anatoly Reznikov the better. Less than a dozen people knew that Reznikov had survived the brutal interrogation outside of Stockholm. Petrovich and Farrington understood the implications of an active Russian bioweapons program and did their best to keep him alive while producing immediately actionable intelligence. Technically, they had killed him four times in thirteen minutes during the course of their interrogation, but the high tech equipment and medical staff somehow kept him alive. In this case, the ends justified the means.

  “I assume that my office will be the first to hear of any impending biological threats to the Russian Federation?”

  “Of course, though I didn’t realize your career needed a boost.”

  “It didn’t, but I can’t be outdone by one of my old adversaries. Congratulations, Deputy Assistant Director.”

  “I’m not even going to speculate on how you garnered that information. Thank you, Alexei, for everything. We’re on the right path to stopping this threat. Give me a call if you need to make a quick getaway.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I have a hefty pension coming my way and I plan on collecting it in rubles. Plus, I hear that smokers are discriminated against in your country.”

  “They most certainly are, though I’m sure we can find you a nice spot down south, where you can smoke all you want.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Well, I don’t want to steal away any more of your beauty sleep. I have a feeling the upcoming days are going to take a toll on your good looks.”

  “You aren’t kidding. Stay safe, my friend. I’ll be in touch,” he said and hung up on Kaparov.

  Berg was the only person who knew that Kaparov had provided the CIA with Reznikov’s address and he had no intention of ever exposing the Russian’s name or position. Berg had made this clear to Bauer and Manning from the start. He had made some questionable calls in the past, but he could never intentionally give up a fellow field agent. There were still a few rules he held inviolate. He placed the phone back on the nightstand and started to consider what Kaparov had said about the days ahead. Mercifully, he drifted off before any concrete thoughts formed, or he would have found himself staring at the barely visible ceiling for the next three hours.

  EPILOGUE

  Later that evening

  South 20th Street

  Newark, New Jersey

  Three figures hid toward the back of a crumbling driveway tucked between two duplex houses, keeping close watch on the driveway entrance and the adjacent backyards. They wore dark street clothes and black ski masks to blend into deep shadows. A few feet away on the decaying back porch of the battered two-story structure, a woman concentrated on picking the locks to a door that led directly into the first level apartment.

  Her mask was pulled to the top of her head, exposing a portion of her shoulder-length blonde hair. She tested the doorknob, which turned slightly, and whispered into the shadows next to the two-story deck. The three men guarding the area walked carefully up the deck’s rickety stairs and produced suppressed pistols. They silently entered the darkened apartment and split evenly into two groups. One group headed for the hallway leading to the bedrooms, and the other proceeded through the kitchen into the front room.

  If the two FBI agents assigned to watch the apartment had been awake, they would have witnessed several flashes rotating quickly through the windows of the ground floor apartment. Ever diligent, their surveillance equipment recorded the light show, along with close-up images of the four masked intruders behind the duplex.

  Deep in the backyard of the apartment, one of the men removed his ski mask within sight of the powerful night vision enhanced camera lens. The smart lens whirred as it made a few minor adjustments, allowing it to take focused pictures of each figure, while continuing to capture a wider framed video of the apartment. The surveillance camera clicked several times, causing the agent sleeping on the nearby couch to shift. Across the street, a tall black man tightened the straps on his backpack and disappeared with his group through the backyards.

  The two agents would rise early and review the digital playback from the camera, eventually catching the only unusual thing they had ever seen at this location. So far, the stakeout had proven to be as boring and mind-numbing as every other. They had been told that more agents would arrive at some point tomorrow morning to bolster each watch section. This news had been the only interesting development in the five months they had been assigned to the stakeout rotation. They weren’t told why more agents had been assigned, but everyone had heard rumors about a coordinated effort between the Newark and New York Police Departments to map out Muslim neighborhoods in the Tri-State area. With three mosques within walking distance, the West Side neighborhood definitely qualified for extra attention.

  The End

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  www.stevenkonkoly.com

  Steven Konkoly is the author of The Jakarta Pandemic and Black Flagged.

  A bonus excerpt from the Black Flagged series and an excerpt from The Jakarta Pandemic immediately follow:

  Black Flagged series bonus excerpt

  The Jakarta Pandemic excerpt

  Don’t forget to check out excerpts from Russell Blake’s exciting new releases. As I mentioned in the acknowledgments (if you read them), this author can wrap you into a story. King of Swords was the first debut in his Assassin series and is an unforgettable addition to the genre.:

  King of Swords excerpt

  The Voynich Cypher excerpt


  Bonus excerpt from Black Flagged series

  A quick note about this bonus excerpt…

  When I started Black Flagged Redux, I had a very different concept for the storyline. I had envisioned telling Jessica and Daniel’s story from the beginning, alternating between the two characters in Serbia, with flashbacks to their initial training and flash forwards to the life you experienced in the final version of the story. Based on some very solid advice, I decided to stick with a more linear progression of the series. At some point, I’ll get back into Daniel and Jessica’s history with a book. With that in mind, this was the original beginning to Book Two of the Black Flagged Series. In case you’ve forgotten, Marko Resja and Daniel Petrovich are one and the same. Enjoy.

  Foothills of Divjaka, Republic of Kosovo

  August 1998

  Marko Resja stood a few meters away from the raised dirt road, swatting flies away from his grimy, sweat-covered face. August drew stifling heat and oppressive humidity to the Balkan Peninsula, which couldn’t have been timed worse for the Yugoslav offensive. The heat seemed to incite the flies, which needed little encouragement in these hills. He wondered if these insects could sense their role in the impending tragedy. It would certainly explain their increased activity.

  He raised his twenty-year-old M-76 sniper rifle and stared through the scope, scanning the road as far as was practical. He was assigned to watch the most likely western approach for Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) vehicles and shared the duty with another relatively new member of Hadzic’s Panthers. Satisfied that nothing threatened to approach from the outskirts of Divjaka, he lowered the rifle and shrugged at his partner, who spoke into a cheap plastic handheld radio.

  Sava looked back at him and rolled his eyes, alternately wiping his forehead and slapping flies away from his ears. His dark green camouflage uniform looked filthy, crusted with light brown mud up to his thighs, and large sweat stains formed odd circular shapes under his armpits and across his chest. The only thing clean about Sava was his assault rifle, which was slung over his left shoulder, freeing him to perform the occasional radio checkin and chain smoke cigarettes. Sava’s face disappeared in a cloud of tobacco smoke and reappeared sporting a grin. His teeth stood out through the thin layer of unevenly applied green and black camouflage.

  The camouflage greasepaint had nearly worn away over the past three days, as their unit moved through the hills mopping up “suspected” bands of KLA resistance. Apparently, “suspected” had always been a loose term among the Panthers, but since yesterday’s gruesome discovery in Klecka, the designation was now applied to any of the ethnic Albanian Kosovars found in the hills.

  Regular Yugoslavian security forces captured the KLA stronghold in Klecka and were led to a crematorium by a young man who claimed to have been forced to participate in atrocities against kidnapped Serbians. Evidence of scorched human remains was found in a makeshift crematorium, and several trenches filled with badly decomposing bodies were uncovered in a nearby orchard. Word of the discovery spread like wildfire through Serbian units in the foothills, and Marko’s platoon was roused from a deep sleep at three in the morning to prepare for an urgent operation.

  Several armored vehicles arrived in the camp shortly thereafter and provided transportation to the outskirts of Divjaka, where a mortar team set up in a clearing to the west. Half of the thirty-man platoon drove to the eastern road on the other side of the village, along with a few of the M-80 armored personnel carriers. The entire platoon’s focus was a cluster of homes and structures in northern Divjaka, isolated from the main town, and accessible by two roads, which were now blocked by a heavily armed Serbian paramilitary force.

  They loitered in the western tree line until a crimson sun started to creep over the eastern hills of the tight valley, and fingers of deep orange light caught the tops of the trees around them. He could only imagine the terror spreading through the homes in front of them as residents helplessly listened to the distant rumble of idling engines beyond their sight, and waited.

  The mortar tubes announced the break of dawn across the valley, firing a volley of 82mm high explosive shells at the closest grouping of structures visible along the road. The shells sailed in a high arc and took an eternity to find earth again. When gravity returned them, the ground behind one of the houses erupted skyward in a light brown cloud, followed by another geyser of dirt from the road. The sharp crunch of the impacts washed through the men, giving rise to a few cheers. Marko felt relieved that the rounds had missed the homes.

  The mortar attack lasted five minutes, as the mortar crew haphazardly sent several more salvos into the village, adjusting their aim to “walk” the shells through the entire length of the community. Luckily for the inhabitants, the mortar team never focused on the buildings. Only once did they see a shell make a direct hit, as large wooden chunks of a red roof flew skyward, joining the dust cloud. This led to a chorus of cheers from the men around him, which he pretended to eagerly join. He felt relieved that the mortar attack had done so little damage, but his solace would be short lived.

  Without ceremony, the mortar teams disassembled their equipment and loaded it into the troop compartment of one of the M-80s. The entire detachment of regular army vehicles sped away, leaving his squad with their own odd assortment of AUZ jeeps. The ride over had been a “treat” for the Panthers, who would be left behind at Divjaka to do the day’s dirty work, and had distracted most of them from the fact that they weren’t in the company of regular Yugoslav infantry. Marko noted this as soon as the army convoy arrived at their encampment and dreaded their destination. He knew this would be a difficult day. He truly had no idea how bad it would get, or how important the day would turn out to be for him.

  Nenad Sojic, the platoon’s de facto leader, spoke to his radio operator, a lean, darker-skinned Serb named Goran, and waved the squad over. Through the radio handset, Goran relayed Sojic’s orders to the men positioned on the eastern approach to the village and took a deep drag on his cigarette. Without ceremony, Sojic told them that they would search house to house for KLA insurgents and weapons caches. Once a house was searched, the inhabitants would be sent to a centralized location for further questioning. Even the most naive members of the platoon knew what that meant.

  They walked through the dew-covered fields down the road toward the simple concrete houses. Cool mountain valley air penetrated their thin uniforms, and most of the men still wore the black wool watch caps they had donned while shivering in the middle of the night. The caps would be ditched by mid-morning as temperatures reached unbearable highs. The jeeps roared to life behind them and soon met up with the soldiers on foot.

  When they reached the first set of homes, Marko and Sava were detached to serve as pickets at the western edge of the village. They were tasked to observe the same road the armored personnel carriers used to hastily separate themselves from Marko’s paramilitary comrades and report any incoming vehicles. They both quickly turned their attention to the road as doors were forced open and the screaming started. He concentrated on the empty road, as the rest of the squad and the vehicles moved down the road, pushing hesitant villagers ahead of them. Neither of them wanted to look back and acknowledge what was happening.

  Marko’s thoughts shifted back into the present, as he tracked a crow flying through the air from the west. The large black bird landed on a crude wooden fence several yards back from the road, joining the several dozen already quietly arrayed along the fence. More crows were perched hidden among the nearby trees. They weren’t intimidated by the soldiers’ presence in Divjaka. They had as much right to be here as the flies, and they were here for the same reason.

  “They know something we don’t,” Sava remarked, dragging on his cigarette.

  The man had smoked nonstop since they left a Belgrade primary school soccer field three days ago, and he suspected that the young northern Serb must be close to exhausting his supply of cigarettes. All of them must be running low. Marko carried a pack of
cheap Serbian smokes to fit in, but he generally never indulged, unless offered. He had always despised the habit, but his trainers at The Ranch had made it clear that he would smoke. Everyone smoked in Serbia, at least casually. He’d grown accustomed to the taste, and no longer minded the acrid smell of tobacco smoke in cramped spaces. Still, the habit did nothing for him, except help him blend into his environment.

  Sava grinned nervously, and Marko wondered what he was thinking. He didn’t look or sound too eager to head deeper into the village. He was young and didn’t have the same brutal edge that was common among Hadzic’s veteran Panthers. This thought brought another concern back into focus. His platoon was comprised of too many newbies, several of which had been swapped into the platoon just after last night’s dinner. He was new to the Panther organization and had only been deployed to the field in a large scale operation twice before, but this structure stuck him as odd.

  Hadzic’s field units typically overflowed with hardened paramilitary veterans of the Bosnia conflict, or former Yugoslav military. The process for integration of new recruits was brutal and discouraged most naive youth. Still, they had no shortage of volunteers, and in times of war, the training camps swelled with eager recruits, pushed through to augment roles left behind by combat hungry veterans. This platoon brimmed with newbies, and that concerned him, though he had no idea why.

  His concentration was shattered by the sudden crack of automatic weapons fire, as hundreds of crows scattered, briefly drowning out the sound of the guns. Like the crows, Sava reacted instinctively and threw himself onto the ground next to the slightly raised dirt road. He flinched, but stood impassively in the middle of the road, as the volume of gunfire diminished, finally ending with an occasional crackle. He hadn’t felt or heard the familiar snap or hiss of bullets passing near him, so he kept his composure. He knew exactly what had happened and turned his head lazily towards the center of the village. Occasional, single pistol shots started to fill the air, and Sava rose to his feet to rejoin him on the road.