He gazed up at the dark sky. The stars were bright and the moon shone in the cloudless sky. Lindon quietly cursed Carón for not calling sooner. He put on an olive colored jacket over his vest as the temperature began to drop.
The tradesmen knew Jim Loaking as Carón.
Jim was the only member of the team who spoke to the tradesmen directly, making him one of the most important members of the Dino Logging team. He was sat in the meeting room on the 62nd floor of the Sagaris building in Toronto. Jim stared out at the setting sun; he was with a team trying to decide what to do next. Lunch had been hours ago, so he suggested a quick break to order some food.
“Get one of the kids on the 61st to fetch it,” he told his secretary. She listed the orders and emailed them to Thomas Rard downstairs.
Dino Logging Brothers Co. had been running for 83 years. Their profits for each of the last seventeen tax years had been over one hundred million Canadian dollars. The head office was split over two floors. Those working on legitimate logging projects were downstairs, whereas the real money was made upstairs. Some loggers and administrators had asked questions about how the company turned a profit, and unlike many other logging companies they managed to work continuously all year round no matter how few land patches they had on the books or how bad the economy was.
Dino Logging Brothers Co. had survived three recessions and two logging shortages and stood firm against opposition from developing parts of the world that could log twice as much at half the price that they could in the forests of Canada. Those who asked questions rarely got answers. The company’s split meant that the ‘upper floor work’, as it had come to be known, always took priority. It didn’t matter what they were doing on the 61st floor. If the people upstairs asked you to do something, you did it. The legitimate workers of the company were either laborers out in the forest logging or middle management and administrators. Workers who questioned how the company was doing so well were made to feel stupid and small until they stopped asking questions. “The big boys do the thinking and you do the logging,” and “Yeah, they only made $127 million last year, I’m sure the big boys don’t know what they’re doing,” were the favourite replies.
Everyone on floor 62 knew the success of Dino Logging Brothers Co. was not down to their logging. The company made sure those on 62 kept what they knew to themselves. Law enforcement and government agencies never asked questions of Dino Logging Brothers Co. Their accounts were always filed on time, every cent of tax paid and large profits always shown as overseas investments and logging sales. As long as the tax was paid, no one came sniffing around and that’s just how Dino Brothers liked it.
The head office in Toronto sprawled over floors 61 and 62 of a high rise in downtown. The building gleamed in the orange horizon sun as day turned to night. The dark glass exterior and curved shape of the building made it a contemporary beauty. Floor 61 was cleanly designed and modern but escaped the trap of appearing cold. Plants were strategically located and pictures of forests broke up the vast whiteness of the hallways. Offices were in subtle shades of light colors depending on the preference of the manager and desks were either black metal or mahogany wood. Any employee could access floor 61at any time.
At the end of every month a large amount of receipts would drop down from the head accountant on floor 62, Peter Van Tomulson. He was feared by the whole of 61. He was 6’3’’, at least forty pounds overweight and constantly angry. He would strut across floor 61’s middle walkway on the last day of every month and hand over millions of dollars worth of additional profit to the accounts department.
Questions were rarely asked and very unlikely to be answered. The last person who dared was Dan Aldridge. He was sharply told to do his job and not ask such prying questions. “Do your job and keep your mouth shut if you want to keep it,” was the finishing remark. Dan was fired three weeks later. He took the case to court, but it was dismissed in under an hour. Dino Brothers lawyers were nearly as ruthless as the mercenaries.
A clearance card was needed to access floor 62. People up there didn’t mingle or speak much past “good morning” and “see you tomorrow” to the 61s. Floor 62 was where Dino Logging Brothers Co. was a hive of activity - contracts came in from all over the world for illegitimate work and operatives could be dispatched within 12 hours if needed.
The price varied depending on what sort of job was ordered: capture, reconnaissance, rescue and, on rare occasions - assassination. They all carried different fees. Then the complexity of the job would be considered, along with how many operatives would need to be used and that’s when the final price was generated. Few clients ever argued over price, because they were wealthy and needed the job done. Almost every client remained anonymous and was referred to by number or if they were a frequent client they were given an account manager and referred to as either bronze, silver or gold followed by a number. A gold client could insist on particular tradesmen either by name or ask for agents who had been used in previous jobs, as they were always sent a brief upon payment of a mission.
Jim Loaking walked back into the meeting room, which had eight large leather swivel chairs around a large mahogany table that was oval shaped and hand carved. No one sat at the head of the table.
“I need to call the men. Do we have anything further from the client?” Jim asked, as he sat down. His secretary knocked on the door before anyone could answer. “Dinner!” she called out, then disappeared.
“They need him alive. He’s no good dead to them and I don’t want this client pissed off. He’s a gold, y’know,” Alex Watland replied. Alex was short, slightly overweight and mildly tempered. He dealt with client contact of gold and silver members, but only during a mission.
“Yes, I know - Gold 714 - you’ve told us twice in the last hour,” Jim replied sharply.
“Can’t we just scrap the current mission and re-launch another team in a few weeks, when we have more information?” said a woman in the corner of the meeting room.
“Certainly not! How would I explain that to the client?” Alex blurted in a much higher pitch than usual.
“OK, fine. But they either need to accept the intel we have from the ground, pay an additional fee for the extra work and let our men get on with it, or they can scrap it. In 30 minutes I’m telling these guys to go home,” Jim said firmly.
“They are going to call back with a decision. We are asking for more than double the original fee.” Alex spoke directly to Jim.
The rest of the people in the room made themselves busy looking at laptops or checking phones. Jim’s secretary wheeled in bags of Chinese food and the mood in the room changed, as everyone passed around napkins and chopsticks to one another.
Kirt Soloman was the account manager of Gold 714. Kirt managed just over 80 accounts and didn’t allow Alex to contact his clients unless the bosses insisted; they regularly argued over who would contact the client and Kirt usually won. He had just celebrated his forty-third birthday and was trying to hold on to some form of hairline, as the edges had receded over halfway to the back of his head and the top was growing thin. A stressful work life was to blame in his view.
“OK, shall we have fifteen minutes to eat and then Alex and I will get an answer,” Kirt said.
“Yeah, sounds good to me,” Jim answered, clamping a spring roll with his chopsticks.
Chapter 2
Lindon sat in a gazebo, ruing the day he had heard the name Warren Jackson.
Dino Brothers were meant to call at 4pm local time with further instructions. Lindon was tired and his eyelids began to sting - the result of no sleep for twenty-seven hours. August had been spent in the southern hemisphere, where the winter was not kind. Lindon’s contract had been to work with the three men from Dino to capture Warren Jackson, and it should have taken no more than a week.
The brief on Warren was thin. Lindon flipped it over while he waited for the damned phone to ring. He had looked over the file seven or eight times in the last week alone and was bor
ed with it. Warren was a black male, believed to be of Nigerian descent. His nationality was listed as American, 5’10’’, athletic build, short hair, thirty-one years old. His occupation was listed as an analyst for Grenham Secure, a financial asset company.
Warren should have been an easy target. He was in Brazil on business and kidnapping was not uncommon in Sao Paulo. Although less common to hear about kidnapping of black men. Mainly because white wealthy men looked like gringos in Brazil - they dressed in designer clothes and had pale skin that made them stand out from Brazilians. Darker skin tones varied a lot in Brazil and Warren did not wear expensive clothing so he would not have stood out to locals without speaking to them in his pronounced American accent.
Even so the police would find out an American had been kidnapped. They wouldn’t care much what race he was. An American was an American to them and they would be unlikely to do much more than alert the embassy and ask a few questions at the hotel.
The job should have been easy, but Warren never walked alone. He was always picked up by a driver and escorted to his room and to his meetings.
The night of the planned kidnap Liam tried to walk through the hotel, but a receptionist had asked for his room key. He explained he was there to visit a friend and did not have a key but knew where he was going. The receptionist had asked what room and he said 92. No one could work out why he had been honest and not just said another room; perhaps fear of picking a room that the receptionist knew was empty. Liam spoke with an American accent so doubted the receptionist would think much of two American men meeting each other at a hotel. He hoped she would assume they were buddies.
The receptionist had allowed Liam to pass, but when he reached the fourth floor a stocky man was waiting. He shouted at Liam, “WHO ARE YOU?”
Liam barged past the man. “None of your business. Now get out my way”.
They scuffled in the hallway. Liam knocked the man unconscious after wrestling with him on the floor for a minute. He had put up a good fight and was difficult for Liam to get a good hold on. When Liam eventually arrived at room 92 Warren was gone. The door was open and it appeared Warren had grabbed his bag and ran as there was little left behind. Lindon had watched from across the street when Seth and Liam came running out. The four of them had been on his tail ever since.
Five weeks had passed. They initially went into the countryside of Brazil. Warren had switched cars at least three times. The four had followed him in two cars and got in close range in the town of Ourinhos, roughly 150 miles outside Sao Paulo but locals were unhelpful. They were close to him again as he closed in on the town of Cascavel near the Paraguay border. This is where they realized he was not alone. They were ambushed at the main road into the town, and a gunfight ensued. Only Liam was hit, a flesh wound.
The four had then stolen a parked up pickup truck outside a rest stop and headed for Paraguay. The intelligence they had been handed by Cáron said Warren was in the city of Asuncion and looking to fly to Columbia.
Four weeks after Lindon had first looked at the file of Warren Jackson and he was in Columbia, over 100 miles east of Bogota. The past week had been spent out in the remote location where local ‘tradesmen’ had given them supplies and the gazebo they were using as a base. Warren was lying low, local helpers had seen him appear on CCTV in Bogota twice in the last week but the cameras were poor and so they couldn’t be sure it was him. Whoever Warren Jackson was, Lindon and the team had underestimated him. No one usually cared why the target was a target, but after five weeks Lindon cared.
The guy had such a normal bio, who was he to have all these connections?
Alex and Jim walked back into the conference room together, lightheartedly talking about sports.
No one spoke of anything to do with the mission or the contract unless they were in an office or meeting room, and everyone who needed to be there was present. Attitudes toward each other were schizophrenic at times, walking in laughing and smiling then screaming in anger at each other for twenty minutes in an office only to walk out and everything change. Sports conversations and talk of new cars or houses started up again; the company liked this way of working and everyone agreed it worked.
Jim sat down and immediately asked Alex, “OK, what have we got?”
“They have transferred us the money,” Alex answered.
“Have they given us any additional information?” Jim asked.
“Yes” Alex replied.
“OK, what?” There was a pause. Jim crossed his arms and asked, “C’mon what did they say?”
“So this guy, Warren Jackson, he is an analyst but there’s more,” Alex said.
“Yeah! Are we meant to be surprised… c’mon,” Jim said. Everyone was looking directly at Alex. He cleared his throat and talked slowly.
“So he does work for Grenham Secure and he is an analyst but he’s not a stock or financial analyst. He’s a risk analyst and works in security coding. The company was contracted by the US government.”
“OK, so what does this have to do with his capture?” Jim asked. Alex rubbed his tired eyes.
“The client, Gold 714, Kirt and I have known unofficially for a while that they are a ghost agency. Grenham Security doesn’t really exist, they’re an arm of the US government,” Alex explained.
“So?” Jim shrugged. Kirt stood up to speak.
“The main thing is they don’t want him killed. They only want him captured. His file doesn’t say it but he was military for eight years.”
“So what now?” Jim asked.
“Satellite tracking and government ground agents have given over information to us. I will forward it to you and you can let the team on the ground know. They have forty-eight hours before the mission is classified a failure,” Kirt said.
Casper Waldridge was a senior partner in Dino Logging. He had been sat quietly throughout the meetings. “We’ve not failed a mission in over thirty years,” he said in a startled voice.
“I know sir, and we don’t intend for this one to fail,” Alex replied.
“Good. I want reports on this every six hours starting now, understood?” Casper insisted, rubbing his chin. Mumbles and groans echoed in the room.
Casper was one of three people in the company classed as overseers. They were the equivalent of Chief Operating Officers and did little but make sure everything ran smoothly and offered advice and experience. Casper was sixty-four years old but didn’t look over fifty-five. He was 6’2’’, thin with grey stubble that he thought made him look trendier than he was. Unfortunately no one shared his enthusiasm for facial hair, including his wife. Casper got up to leave.
“I expect the first report at 6am tomorrow” Casper declared.
Hands waved and Jim answered for the group. “It will be with you at six, sir.”
The pressure was now on. Jim stared at his reflection in the dark wooden table. He looked as though he had aged by five years in five minutes.
Jim left the meeting room and went straight to his office, he picked up the phone and dialed the tradesmen. Lindon answered.
“Lindon, is that you?”
“Carón?”
“Yes”
“Gold 714”
“Yes”
“How shall we proceed”?
“Anthony will receive a secure message”
“OK”
“I’ve turned the timer on”
“Good”
“You have forty-eight hours”
“OK”
All the sensitive information would now be sent over SecureNet, an encrypted messaging service used on the dark web. Lindon and the team waited. Whilst they did Lindon thought about Cáron and wondered what his real name was. Cáron sounded French but his accent didn’t match a Frenchman. Lindon was unlikely to ever find out. The message arrived.
Chapter 3
Warren Jackson picked up the phone in his hotel room and spoke to the front desk.
The person who answered didn’t speak English very well and
Warren’s Spanish was poor. She had a thick Columbian accent. “Wait please,” she said, and retrieved her colleague from the kitchen who spoke English.
Warren waited; all he wanted to do was order lunch. All of his meals had been provided via room service for the past six days. They knocked and left the food outside for him to collect. Warren scanned the outside world through his window. He was growing tired of being holed up in his room. The TV had some English shows but he was too distracted to concentrate and spent most of his time staring out of the window, trying to spot people that looked as if they didn’t belong.
“Yes sir, Mr Warren, how can I help?” said Victor, the head of front desk.
“Lunch order, please.”
“OK, what would you like?”
“The chef cooked a cheese omelette yesterday, it’s not on the menu but he did a good job, any chance of another?”
“I’m sorry, Mr Pasquez the head chef is off today, we have our two other chefs today.”
“OK, let me get the Sudado de Pollo, with two bottles of water.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s the chicken with rice in sauce, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“OK, nothing else, please knock and leave the food outside the door.”
“No problem Mr. Warren.”
Warren hung up and sat on the end of his bed. He adjusted the air conditioner then walked over to the window and continued to stare at the road below.
Forty-five minutes passed and Warren heard a knock at the door. He moved towards his gun and waited for forty-five seconds, then slowly moved to the door, gun in hand. He peered through the spy hole but couldn’t see anyone. He placed one hand on the door handle and the other on his colt magnum .45 and quickly pulled the door half open. His food sat on a service dolly. One bottle of water each side of a plate and cutlery at the top. His head fired left and right, no one was there. He exhaled then took the food tray into his room.
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