Shadow Warrior

by Scott, Trevor

  “Seriously? Innsbruck?” Jake asked.

  “Not headquartered there,” Sabine corrected. “But with a franchise there.”

  Jake shrugged. “Would you get to the point?”

  Sabine nodded. “Of course. One of the officers was Anica Senka.”

  Now Jake knew why he might be interested. “I’ve known Anica since she was a young girl.”

  “That’s what I was made to believe,” Sabine said, before a long pause. Finally, she said, “Anica is missing.”

  Jake sat forward in his chair. “Missing? How?”

  “Because of her Serbian background, she was working undercover to infiltrate this group.”

  Serbs? Damn! Jake had dealt with these folks in the past, and it had nearly gotten him killed. “Continue.”

  “She got in a shoot-out with someone on the Innbrucke Bridge,” Sabine said. “The Serb she was meeting was killed, but we think Anica ended up in the river.”

  “Were you monitoring her communications?” Jake asked.

  “Of course. But there was a problem with her comm. It was raining very hard that night. It probably shorted out.”

  Not likely, Jake thought. Most of those units worked underwater. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find Anica,” Sabine said.

  “What makes you think I can find her if the entire Austrian Polizei can’t do so?”

  “Good question. My boss in Vienna has told us to suspend our search.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was a Europol operation.”

  “But she works for Austrian Polizei,” Jake reminded her.

  “Technically she was on loan to them.”

  Something wasn’t working for Jake. “This is bullshit. It sounds like the Polizei is abandoning one of its own.”

  A grimace spread across Sabine’s face. “My hands are tied. I am doing the best I can.”

  Okay, now Jake had an idea. She had been forced to stand down. “Does your boss know you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. As you know, Tirol doesn’t always agree with Vienna.”

  That was an understatement. “So, I will be alone on this endeavor,” Jake said.

  “I can’t officially sanction you to do anything,” Sabine agreed.

  Jake didn’t need anything from them. “As long as your people stay out of my way, that’s all I can ask. But I’ll need to speak with the other officer she was working with that night.”

  “He doesn’t know much,” Sabine said. Then she pulled out a jump drive from inside her jacket and placed it on the coffee table. “Everything we know is on that.”

  Jake slid the jump drive closer to him. “Have you been to her apartment?”

  “Of course.” She got up to leave. “Her apartment has a keypad entry. The code is on the jump drive as well.”

  “Other than my relationship with Anica, why me?” Jake asked.

  “You helped her in the past,” Sabine said. “I’m hoping you will help her again.”

  Sabine headed toward the door and Jake followed her to let her out.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Jake said.

  The Austrian nodded her head and left.

  Jake turned to Sirena, who had kept quiet for the entire visit. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “She’s not telling you everything,” Sirena said.

  He laughed. “That was obvious. What else?”

  “How do you know this young Anica?”

  “It’s a long story. But essentially, when her parents died in the Balkan War, Anica was sent to Innsbruck to live with a distant relative. This man abused her mentally and physically. When he tried to make sexual advances, she came to me. She lived in the building next to mine along the Inn River. I had a little discussion with her relative.”

  “I’ll bet,” Sirena said with a smirk.

  “Then I got her placed with one of my friends in the Austrian Polizei,” he said.

  “It sounds like you might have saved her life.”

  “I don’t know about that. I saw a young child in need and I did what I could to help her. We’ve kept in touch over the years, but not much in the past two years.”

  “Well, you’ve been kind of busy moving from Italy to Iceland to The Azores.”

  That was no excuse, he knew. But too often life got in the way of old relationships.

  “Are you coming with me?” he asked her.

  Sirena put her hands on her hips and said, “This place is beautiful, Jake, but quaint gets old after a few months. I’m in.”

  “All right. Get packed and ready to move out. See if you can get Carlos Gomez to lend us his jet.” Jake headed toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I left a line in the water.” He left and ran down to the ocean to retrieve his rod and reel, hoping a large fish had not pulled it into the sea.

  3

  Innsbruck, Austria

  Thanks to the use of the jet owned by Spanish billionaire Carlos Gomez, Jake and Sirena were able to travel from The Azores to Austria without having to go through normal airport security, which allowed them to bring their handguns.

  As Monday evening approached, Jake and Sirena walked from their downtown hotel along the river to the Innbrucke Bridge near The Golden Roof. Once on the bridge, Jake stopped about midway across and turned back toward the old town of the city. Lights lit the buildings with a bright sepia, but he remembered Sabine Bauer say that it had been raining hard the night Anica was forced into the river.

  “What are you thinking?” Sirena asked.

  “I’m thinking that Anica should have never agreed to a meeting here,” he said.

  “She didn’t. The Polizei report said the meeting was in the Golden Roof square.”

  “I know. But that had obviously changed. For some reason, they walked out here.”

  She leaned against the thick metal railing and considered the river. “The water is really high. Could she have simply drowned?”

  That was a possibility, he knew. But he had to believe she was still alive. “I don’t think so. She carries two phones—one for work and her private smart phone. The work phone shut down the night Anica went missing.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour after going into the river, which is why the Polizei could not track her,” Jake said.

  “They must know about her private line.”

  “They do. But the Austrian government has rules. And those rules don’t allow for tracking of personal phones without a court order.”

  “And they can’t get that under these circumstances?”

  Jake turned to Sirena and smiled. “Why do you think Sabine came to me? She knows I don’t have to comply with Austrian law.”

  “Not to mention that your benefactor, Carlos Gomez, happens to run one of the largest cell phone communications companies in Europe.”

  “That helps.”

  She touched the leather on his sleeve. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

  “I need you to think big picture,” he said. “Where would a young woman go after almost getting killed?”

  “First, you tell me why you think she didn’t drown in the river.”

  Jake shrugged. “Her private phone has come back on line a couple of times in the past week.”

  Sirena looked confused. “Why would she make that mistake?”

  “It’s no mistake. I think she’s leaving us bread crumbs.”

  “She can’t possibly know you’re looking for her.”

  “No. But she might believe someone else is. Someone she trusts. Let’s go to her apartment.”

  Anica Senka lived just six blocks away on the left bank of the Inn River, a few blocks in from the water. Her apartment was in a three-story walk-up. The first story was occupied by a small bar, which looked almost empty from the street. Anica lived on the third floor with a view of the mountains to the south of the city.

  Jake expected to find crime-scene tape across her door, b
ut there was none of that. Although the building was old, the doors and locks had been upgraded.

  He punched in the four-digit code to the lock and lowered the lever. Just as Jake was about to shove the door inward, he heard a noise, which caused him to draw his Glock. Sirena did the same.

  Shoving the door inward, Jake hit the light and swept his gun until he locked on a target—a young man with a flashlight.

  “Put your hands on the back of your head,” Jake said in German.

  The young man in his early thirties did as Jake instructed. Then he said in English, “You are Jake Adams.”

  “No, I’m Schinderhannes. Who are you?”

  “Polizei Officer Johann Gruber. My identification is in my inside jacket pocket.”

  Jake kept his gun on the man while Sirena came around him and reached inside the man’s jacket until she found his badge and a Glock on his right hip. Officer Gruber looked like a poster child for the Arian ideal. His blond hair was cropped short on the sides, but the strip of hair on the top was a bit longer, held tight with enough product to hold up in a stiff breeze.

  She checked the man’s credentials and nodded to Jake.

  “Where did you learn your English?” Jake asked. “It’s almost perfect.”

  “Almost?” Johann asked.

  “Well, you have some Texas inflections.”

  Johann smiled. “I was an exchange officer for a year in Dallas. Plus, I watch a lot of old American westerns.”

  Sirena handed the man his ID and gun.

  But Jake still had his gun trained on the man. “Why are you here in Anica’s apartment?”

  “We were partners,” Johann said.

  Jake already knew this, since he had read Anica’s service file. “Partners don’t normally have access to apartments. Unless you were more than just partners.”

  Glancing about the apartment, Jake could see that someone had destroyed the place looking for something. Maybe looking for anything. The only thing they didn’t do was rip the stuffing out of her furniture.

  “Could you please put the gun away, Mister Adams. You’re making me nervous.”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “Two reasons. Anica told me about you. How you had saved her as a child. And second, my boss, Sabine Bauer, said you would be coming here.”

  “So, why wait in the darkness?”

  “I’m sorry about that. I was resting on her sofa when I heard footsteps in the hallway.”

  “And you assumed it was me and not the bad guys?” Jake asked. “That could have gotten you killed.”

  “I made a choice,” Johann said. “If it was you and I had drawn my service weapon, you might have shot me, thinking I was a bad guy. If you happened to be a bad guy, I would have had to draw my weapon and hope to beat the man to the draw.”

  “You have been watching too many westerns,” Jake reasoned.

  Sirena chimed in, “He has a point.”

  Jake put his gun back in the holster under his left arm inside his leather jacket. “What do you know about Anica’s disappearance?”

  “I was with her that night. Monitoring her comm from my car a few blocks away.”

  “Then you led her into a trap,” Jake said callously.

  “No, sir,” Johann said. “Her comm failed. I tried to tell her not to leave our target area in the square, but she obviously didn’t hear me.”

  “Did you move in?”

  Johann let out a heavy breath of air, shaking his head. “I did. But the shooting started before I got there.”

  “You saw the car?” Jake asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t get a license number. But I called it in to our headquarters.”

  “You didn’t follow the car?”

  “No. I had a choice to make. Follow the car or help Anica. I chose to help my partner.”

  Okay, maybe this young Polizei officer wasn’t a total tool. He had made the same choice Jake would have made under those circumstances. “All right. So, you get to the scene and find a dead man. Anica’s contact.”

  “Yes, sir.” Johann closed his eyes slightly, as if remembering the events of that evening. Then he said, “At the time, I wasn’t even sure that Anica had gone into the river. In retrospect, I thought she could have been kidnapped by those in the car. I questioned my decision to not follow the car.”

  “What changed your mind?” Jake asked.

  “We found blood on the railing,” Johann explained.

  “Anica was injured?”

  “No. It was her contact’s blood. She must have touched him after he was shot. We also found blood on the back end of a car she hid behind as she shot at the killers.”

  This all made some sense. It wasn’t the way Jake would have liked it to go down, especially the outcome of his young friend having to jump into the river to escape. But then a thought came to him. “Why didn’t you have more backup?”

  Johann now seemed a bit rattled. “This was a Europol operation. Our local Polizei office had nothing to do with it.”

  Jake now saw something in this young Polizei officer that he had not seen to this point. Johann Gruber had not just been Anica’s partner, he had true feelings for Jake’s young friend. And his involvement in her disappearance was eating him up inside. Jake had been there before himself.

  “All right,” Jake said. “What have you found of interest here? Did you destroy her place?”

  Johann smiled. “It’s what I didn’t find. A few items are missing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Her passport, her Europol identification, and a small bag with clothes.”

  “What about her Polizei ID?” Sirena asked.

  “That was here,” Johann said. “Our people took it on their first visit.”

  “Why take her Europol ID?” Sirena asked.

  Jake took this. “Because she thought she might need it beyond Austria. Tell me more about your investigation into the Serbs.”

  Johann didn’t get a chance to explain the investigation, as Jake got a text on his phone. He almost ignored it, but decided to see what it was. Not many had his number. Not even Anica had his private number. At least not until arriving in Innsbruck, when Jake sent her a couple of texts to her private phone.

  Looking at his screen it simply said, ‘Get out, Uncle Jake!’ This came from an unknown number, but it could have been only one person. Only Anica Senka called him Uncle Jake.

  “We have to go,” Jake said sternly.

  The three of them left and locked up Anica’s apartment before heading downstairs. Jake kept his eyes open for anything unusual. Somehow, Anica knew they were in her apartment. She had to be close.

  They got to the sidewalk in front of the bar and Jake grasped the young Polizei officer’s arm. “Are you still on this Serbian connection?”

  Johann said, “Of course.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  Nodding, Johann said, “An Audi a block away.”

  “We could use a ride to our hotel.”

  “Certainly.”

  As they walked toward the Audi parked under trees up the block, Jake was the first to notice the car driving too slow up the street. He zipped down his leather jacket and placed his hand on his Glock.

  Glancing at Sirena, she also noticed the car and had her hand inside her purse ready to draw her weapon.

  “Get ready, Johann,” Jake said.

  Stopping, Johann said, “For what.”

  Not having time to explain, Jake swept the legs out from the Austrian and drew his gun simultaneously once he noticed the windows come down on the car and the barrels appear. Then Jake went into a crouched shooting position.

  Sirena was the first to shoot, peppering the car with a salvo of shots. Then Jake starting firing just as the flashes came from the car windows.

  Next came chaos, as both sides continued to fire their guns. Seconds later, the car sped away and turned right at the first corner.

  Jake checked on Johann, who was in shock on the sidewalk. He
had not even drawn his weapon.

  “Everyone alright?” Jake asked, reaching his hand down to Johann.

  “What the hell just happened?” Johann asked, getting a hand from Jake and wiping off his jeans.

  Sirena put her gun back in her purse.

  “This is normally a quiet Tirol city,” Johann said. “Now we have two drive-by shootings in a week. That’s crazy.”

  Jake reflected on some of the incidents he had experienced in this city, and he knew that Johann was partially correct. Violence like this was rare, but seemed to be on the increase across Europe.

  “We had an old saying in the Air Force,” Jake said. “You caught the most flak when you were directly over the target.”

  “What is flak?” Johann asked.

  “In this case, it’s bullets. We’re on to something. Let’s go. I know a few Serbs in this town who might know what we’re looking for.”

  “What are we looking for?” Johann wanted to know.

  “Exactly.”

  “But we must wait for the Polizei to arrive,” Johann pled.

  Sirens could be heard in the distance now.

  “No. You drive and I’ll text Sabine and explain what happened.”

  They piled into the Austrian’s Audi and he pulled out.

  4

  There was no Little Serbia or Balkan section of Innsbruck, but there was a district on the east side of town near the main train station where many of the more recent immigrants seemed to congregate. Although the city was normally sedate, Jake knew about the recent trouble with immigrants perpetrating rape like it was a perfectly acceptable practice. The Austrian people, along with the government, had reached a tipping point. Finally, they had started to take a hard look at allowing people into Austria.

  Jake had lived along the Inn River in Innsbruck for many years after leaving the CIA, so he knew the city quite well. He had also dealt with the Serbs in the past, especially while dealing with the Anica Senka incident years ago.

  One of the more influential Serbs in town ran a Balkan restaurant two blocks from the Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof. A passenger train pulled slowly out of the main train station now as Jake walked down the street toward the restaurant. He had left Sirena and Johann in the car with instructions to call Sabine Bauer to explain what had happened with the shooting.