Black Pawn (Michael Cailen Book 1)

by Mel LeBrun

  The man didn't reply. He lay on the floor writhing in pain, humiliated that he had been overtaken by a woman. His ego was just as sore as his genitals.

  “Vlad is on his way here right now. What do you think he would do if he found you screwing around instead of guarding your post?” Dmitri continued yelling at him in Russian. “You didn't even hear me come in! And where is Yuri?!”

  “I sent him to patrol the perimeter.” He coughed the words out.

  “A lot of good that did! Go find him!” Dmitri grabbed him by his hair and threw him out of the room. After he was gone, Dmitri turned to Jessica. “Put your clothes on,” he said then looked down at the floor.

  She wasted no time getting dressed. She stood nervously rubbing her arms, not knowing what to expect.

  “My boss is on his way.” He looked up at her. “It would be better for you to tell me where the drive is before he arrived.”

  She shook her head. “I don't know where it is.”

  He studied her for a minute. “I don't believe you, and neither will my boss. Where is it?”

  “I don't know,” she said again, louder this time.

  He grabbed her by the neck and pushed her against the wall, nearly lifting her off the ground. “Where is it?” His tone was much more forceful.

  She clutched at his hand in vain.

  “I don't know,” she repeated fearfully.

  With a groan of frustration he released her. He appeared upset, shaking his head as he left.

  Jessica sat on the bed. Her face stung and felt like it was burning. Her hands shook. She started thinking about escaping. She decided even if she got killed trying to escape, it would be better than the fate she would suffer at the hands of her captors.

  DMITRI STOOD just outside the warehouse as Milovich and his bodyguard drove up. Another car followed with two more men. One carried a small cosmetic bag. They were greeted by Dmitri and entered the warehouse. The two men from the second car started chatting with the guards already there. Milovich's bodyguard never left his side.

  “I don't suppose she has told you where the drive is?” Milovich asked Dmitri.

  He shook his head. “She says she doesn't know where it is.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  Dmitri shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Do you think it could still be in the apartment?”

  “I searched everywhere. If they hid it, they hid it very well.”

  Milovich nodded. “Well, even if she doesn't know. It will be fun.” An evil smile crossed his lips as he walked alongside Dmitri. He turned back to his men chatting with the guards. “What do I pay you for? Get over here!”

  JESSICA HAD been trying to listen to what was going on outside her door. She stepped back when she heard the door opening. She nearly fainted in fear when she saw Milovich's giant bodyguard in the doorway. While dressed in a nice suit, the lifeless look in his eyes and the scars on his face and neck made him look terrifying. He grabbed her arm and yanked her from the room.

  She glanced at the six other men standing around watching her. The bodyguard brought her to a chair and sat her down. Dmitri was by a table, mixing something in a tiny metal container. One of the men stepped forward. The best dressed out of everyone, she figured he was in charge. She looked back at Dmitri. He was holding a lighter under the cup. She started to get an idea of what was about to happen. She swallowed hard and her breathing became more rapid.

  “Miss Nickoli,” Milovich addressed her. “Do you know who I am?”

  She shook her head as she watched Dmitri pull a syringe from the bag on the table and filled it with whatever was in the cup. She looked back at Milovich.

  “Well, I guess that's not important is it?” He smiled. His smile looked sincere and disarming, but with all the other thugs standing around and with what she just witnessed Dmitri doing, she wasn't feeling any more relaxed than she was a second ago. “What is important is the location of the flash drive.” His smile vanished, and she saw a cold and ruthless man standing before her.

  She started to panic as Dmitri turned around, placing the syringe on the table. Frantically, she looked for some way to escape.

  “Just tell me where it is, and you can go.” He smiled again.

  “I don't know where it is.”

  “Where do you think it is? You must have some idea.” He was still smiling.

  “I don't know.”

  Milovich sighed, but didn't seem upset. It was more like a sigh of contentment than of frustration. “Are you familiar with heroin Miss Nickoli?”

  She didn't answer. She was preparing herself to make a run for it and hope for the best.

  “Tolerance builds quickly and addiction can be very hard to overcome.” He was still smiling and more and more it was giving her the creeps. “Withdrawal can be quite insufferable, and sometimes deadly. Tell me where the drive is and you won't have to learn that from personal experience.” The smile was gone again.

  She couldn't stay there any longer. She had to try to get away. Most of the men were gathered off to her right. She saw an opening to her left. She shot up from her chair and slipped right past the group of men before they had time to react. They all went after her. She didn't manage to open the door before one of Milovich's men caught up to her.

  It took two men to drag her back kicking and screaming. They tried to sit her in the chair, but she fought so hard they ended up having to wrestle her to the ground. A third man came to assist. They held her down and extended her arm as she screamed and pleaded with them not to do it. Dmitri tied a tourniquet around her upper arm and in seconds it was over. Her body went limp and the men stepped away.

  Milovich stood over her, smiling. “Soon, you will be begging for it.”

  She tried to focus her eyes, but they just wanted to close. She fought to stay awake. Her whole body relaxed and then she was unconscious.

  Milovich didn't look happy. He turned to Dmitri. “How much did you give her?”

  Dmitri looked surprised. “I only gave her a little.”

  He looked back at Jessica. “Is she still alive?”

  Dmitri knelt down and checked her pulse. “Yes, she's still alive.”

  “Good. Don't go breaking my toys, Dmitri.”

  Dmitri stood up. “No sir.”

  “Besides, we might need her to get the drive back from Cailen.”

  Dmitri looked like he had just seen a ghost.

  “Is something wrong?” Milovich asked.

  “No.” Dmitri smiled. “Nothing.”

  Chapter 46

  Around 1:45 p.m., Michael, Martin and Josh arrived outside the second address on the list. Martin parked down the street, and they all looked up at the apartment building.

  “4F ... I'm going to assume is on the fourth floor,” Michael ascertained. “I'll go in alone. Maybe there will be something in his apartment that will tell me if he's our guy.”

  “Be careful, Michael,” Josh cautioned.

  “He's a pencil pusher. I don't think you need to worry about me.”

  No one could argue with his logic. He grabbed a black baseball cap before leaving the truck. There were sure to be cameras in the building and he wanted to be able to hide his face.

  The elevator stopped at the fourth floor. As Michael strolled down the hallway, he took note of the letters on the doors. 4F should be the sixth door on the right, he figured. He heard a door opening down the hall. It was 4F. He continued walking nonchalantly. The man exiting the apartment turned to lock the door. He glanced briefly at Michael then continued to lock his door. He pulled the key out, but then froze. Michael kept walking at the same pace. The man looked at him again only this time with a mixture of fear and disbelief. The keys slipped from his trembling hands and dropped to the floor. Immediately, he bolted for the stairs. Michael was in pursuit.

  RICK HAD gone home for a late lunch and was just leaving to head back to work. He glanced at the man coming down the hall and thought to himself how much he looked like Michael.
When he looked back, to his horror it was Michael. Instinct took over and he tried to run. He made it to the stairwell and even made it down half a flight of stairs before Michael caught up to him.

  Grabbing him by the shirt, Michael pressed his gun into Rick's gut. “Let's not do anything rash, okay?”

  Rick nodded fearfully.

  “I'd love to see your apartment,” Michael smiled.

  Once inside, Michael encouraged Rick to take a seat on the couch. Rick was having a major feeling of deja vu.

  “So we've established that you know who I am,” Michael started off. “And I know who you are, Rick. Now that the introductions are out of the way, how about you tell me where they're holding Jessica before I blow your brains out.”

  “Oh, God.” Rick's whole body trembled. “I don't know where she is.”

  “That's not good enough, Rick.” Michael stepped forward aiming the gun at his head.

  It looked like there was a violent earthquake happening only under Rick with the magnitude of his shaking. “I didn't even know they had her.” He closed his eyes and turned away from the gun. Michael almost felt sorry for him. He looked like he might wet his pants.

  “How did they find us, Rick?” Michael asked calmly with the gun still pointed at his head.

  Rick began to cry.

  Michael sighed and rolled his eyes. “Keep it together, Rick. How did they find us?”

  Rick just sat there sobbing.

  “Am I safe in assuming it's because of you?” Michael couldn't tell if Rick was nodding his head or just convulsing. “Then how am I supposed to believe you don't know where she is?”

  Michael lowered his gun hoping it might calm Rick down. He was nearly hysterical.

  “Please,” Rick whimpered as he slid off the couch onto his knees.

  Michael wasn't sure what to expect. Was he going to grovel for his life? Rick started reaching a hand under the couch cushion, and Michael quickly aimed the gun back at his head. “Don't move!”

  Rick put his hands up, blubbering something and pointing to the couch.

  Figuring Rick wanted to show him something under the cushion, he kept his gun trained on his head with one hand and lifted the cushion with the other. There was a large manilla envelope. Michael dumped the contents out onto the coffee table. Pictures of a little girl who couldn't be older than six or seven. Rick cried harder when he saw the pictures. He picked one up in his hands and held it.

  Rick was on the verge of a mental breakdown. The stress of working for Morgan, the Russian mob and fearing for his daughter's safety as well as his own was near enough to put him in the hospital. Not to mention the things he was forced to do. With Michael now at his door, it was too much.

  Michael grabbed a box of tissues off the kitchen counter and handed them to Rick. “You want to tell me about the girl?”

  Rick blew his nose and wiped his eyes. He looked at the picture of his little girl playing at the park and smiled. “She's my daughter.” He touched her face in the picture. His smile suddenly vanished and he looked distraught again. “If I don't do what they say, they'll hurt my baby.” He started sobbing again.

  Michael sighed. He allowed himself to feel a touch of pity for him. “How old is she?” he asked.

  “Six.”

  “So those pictures are recent. You've been working for Morgan for years, why threaten you now? What changed?”

  “I'm not working for Morgan any more. I'm working for Vlad Milovich.” Rick said his name with a tone of intense hatred.

  “Morgan's out of the loop?”

  Rick nodded.

  “They don't trust him?”

  Rick shook his head.

  “How did you get involved in this?”

  Rick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “About five years ago, I was really in trouble. I've always liked to gamble. But after my daughter was born, money was tight. I still gambled though. And I lost. And money got tighter. So I'd gamble some more to try and make up my losses. And I'd lose more. I started borrowing from loan sharks and I gambled, hoping to get lucky. My wife left me when my daughter was only a year old. It was because of the gambling. I couldn't stop and she needed to take care of our child. I was gambling away all our money. She couldn't even buy food.” Rick took a deep breath and shook his head.

  “Eventually the loan sharks came looking for their money. I didn't have it. I started to fear for my life. I confided in Morgan one day about what was happening. I was a mess and he kept asking me what was wrong. So I told him. The next day he said he had a solution to my problem if I was interested. I was so desperate I would've done anything.”

  Rick ran his hands down over his face.

  “He said he could wipe out my debt, but it would mean doing some side jobs for him. And I would have to keep it a secret. I was just so thrilled to get the debt off my back, I didn't bother to ask questions. It didn't take long for me to find out who I was really working for. But at that point, it was too late.”

  Michael sat in the chair next to the sofa. He took a deep breath as he looked at Rick still sitting on the floor with the picture of his daughter. “Tell me what you know. What happened in China? Why are you trying to kill me?”

  Rick nodded. “Edward Morgan works for Vlad Milovich. I don't know when that relationship started, but it was before me, that's for sure. I'm kept in the dark about a lot of things. Morgan just orders me around like a dog most of the time. A lot I find out on my own.” He took a deep breath. “China.”

  He paused as if he were trying to gather his thoughts.

  “Milovich has a business arrangement with a drug lord, Bai Chen. I'm sure you already know, after 9/11 it became much harder to get drugs into the US. ” He looked at Michael. “Much harder. Increased security, more searches. Milovich said he could handle all the drug shipments if Chen could produce the goods. Milovich has Morgan using CIA resources to smuggle the drugs into the US.”

  “Must be a very lucrative business arrangement.”

  “It is,” Rick agreed.

  “So what happened?”

  Rick shook his head. “An agent came very close to uncovering Chen's production facility in Yunnan. Morgan tried to get him to stop investigating, but the agent wouldn't give up and went behind Morgan's back. The agent sent someone into China to talk to some villagers who might know where the facility was located exactly. Everyone panicked and the order was given to kill all the villagers. They couldn't let the production facility be discovered. It would set them back millions with the loss of production.”

  “Did the villagers even know where it was?”

  Rick looked down and shook his head. “I don't know. I don't think anyone knew for sure. But what's the lives of a hundred villagers out in the middle of nowhere compared to hundreds of millions of dollars? They didn't want to take the risk.”

  Michael clenched his jaw. “I guess Shaun and I weren't part of the plan.”

  “You certainly were not. Morgan arranged for one of our local contacts in China to hire some wanna-be mercenaries to execute the villagers.”

  “But then we ruined the party. Your contact snapped pictures of me and Shaun, you identified us and the game was on. Do I have it right?”

  Rick nodded while staring at the floor.

  “This processing facility, it doesn't show up on satellite photos?”

  “No. It's underground.”

  That explained the coordinates to nothing next to the village in Yunnan. It only looked like nothing because everything was below the surface.

  “How big is this place?”

  “Big.” Rick raised his eyebrows when he said it. “It's most definitely the largest processing facility in the whole region. You'd have to go to Afghanistan to find something larger.”

  “I guess they really don't want it found then.”

  “No, they don't,” Rick agreed.

  “What does White Knight and Black Pawn mean?”Michael wouldn't have thought it possible, but Rick looked even more nervous
at the mention of those words.

  “Spill it,” Michael demanded.

  Rick closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “White Knight was the name of the operation in China that would have uncovered the processing plant. The one Morgan was intent on stopping at all costs. Black Pawn is the code name for a rising drug lord with strong ties to Al-Qaeda who was marked for assassination.”

  “Who is he?”

  Rick looked up at Michael. “You.”

  Michael didn't even have to ask for further explanation. The look on his face said it all.

  “When the cover-up didn't go so well and they identified you, Morgan was very concerned that you would tell to your supervisors about what happened. He was desperate to stop you before you could have a chance to talk. He needed something done in a hurry and his usual guy wasn't available. We created a target and Morgan had me forge the intelligence and authorization papers. Everything was made to look highly classified, coming straight from the White House. With those kind of missions, you don't ask questions. You do it and pretend it didn't happen. An agent was assigned to take you out, thinking you were a threat to national security. The target was code named Black Pawn.”

  Michael was quiet for a few minutes. Rick wasn't sure what else to say.

  “I guess I'm glad I didn't kill the guy,” Michael finally spoke. “The men I did kill. Were they agents just following orders?”

  “After Black Pawn failed, Morgan didn't want to risk forging any more operations to get you. The agent who had been assigned started having doubts about the legitimacy of the mission. He was killed during a car jacking a few days later. It wasn't random. Morgan switched to hiring mercenaries.”

  After a moment of silence, Rick snickered.

  “What's so funny?” Michael asked.

  “Black Pawn.” Rick smirked. “Morgan chose it. He thought it would be poetic keeping with the chess theme. He saw you as expendable, not a real threat. Inconsequential.” Rick looked at Michael. “Now you have him in check.”

  Michael also found the thought rather amusing. He reveled in it for a few more seconds before getting down to business.

  “The Russians have Jessica. You're going to help me get her back.”