DARK HEARTED (The COIL Series)

by Telbat, D. I.

  "And you're going to Berlin?"

  "I'm calling it Operation Rahab. After six months of searching, I believe we're ready to move. The more I learn about Xacsin, the more he scares me. I need you to dig up everything that you can on this castle."

  "You're certain he's working with or for Abaddon?"

  "Somehow, yes. Our Romanian contact used to communicate with Abaddon when she was young, so she was able to confirm this much. She sent me Xacsin's name specifically. Others that we've crossed paths with in the past who worked with Abaddon were willing to delve into satanic means to accomplish their agendas. We can only pray that our boys are not too—"

  "You don't need to say anything more, Corban."

  "Right. Well, from what we've learned in the past, the one we know as Abaddon gives his followers directives. I'm meeting with CIA Deputy Director Buchanen to find out what he knows about Xacsin. Then Operation Rahab will commence."

  Chloe studied his face, so expressionless, and yet so full of spy secrets, but she had learned how to read him.

  "What aren't you telling me? What's concerning you beyond the obvious?"

  Stalling, he avoided her eyes and went to the window, standing there with his hands in his pockets.

  "It's not good, Chloe."

  She closed her eyes and mouthed a silent prayer.

  "What is it?"

  "A…naked man stumbled into a North German town yesterday. He died before anyone could communicate with him. Not that he could communicate, anyway. Someone had cut out his tongue."

  "How'd he die? Exposure? They're having a tough winter there."

  "Partly from exposure, but mostly, he died from about two dozen experiments performed on his body, everything from minor lobotomies to nerve transplants. Rupert Mach, Berlin's COIL director, was able to get into the investigation from the start. He says they identified the man as Taath Merari, a Jewish student from Berlin. Been missing for eighteen months."

  "Xacsin did this, I know it. It's his signature. He's been suspected of mutilations and torture before. This was only yesterday, though? How'd we hear about it so fast and connect it to Xacsin? Rupert knows what we know?"

  Corban faced Chloe.

  "No, I haven't told Rupert anything. The poor Taath boy had a piece of fabric with my name on it."

  "Your name?"

  "Right. Written…in blood. Rupert rushed a test on a hunch. It was Nathan's blood."

  "Okay." Chloe's bottom lip trembled. "This means Nathan didn't die in London. That he is one of the two still alive. I mean, he wrote his own blood on the piece of fabric, right?"

  "Perhaps. But we know that someone died in London. So it's down to Toad or Milk now."

  Chloe nodded sadly, but was still relieved that it seemed that Nathan hadn't died. All of the men were special to COIL, but Chloe knew that Nathan had always been closer to Corban than the others were. Nathan was not just the commander of the best extraction team COIL had, he was also an emboldened Christian leader.

  "Yes, you said that either Toad or Milk lost too much blood to survive in London. We can only imagine what Taath's escape from the castle has done to the compound's security. Corban, we need to act now! Please tell me you've sent someone in already…"

  "Of course," Corban assured. "I did the minute I heard the name Xacsin from our contact who's familiar with the Abaddon types."

  "Why won't you let me go, Corban? I want this as bad as you."

  "Involve yourself all you want," Corban permitted, "just do it from here."

  "No wonder you've been pulling night shifts." Chloe sighed softly. "Did you watch the interview last night?"

  "Oh. No. Sorry. Janice gave me the highlights, though."

  "Do you want to yell at me? I should've known that reporter would ambush me like that."

  "I think you handled that June woman fine, the way I hear it, Chloe—until the end."

  "The inclusion of her in an op. I panicked, Corban! I was ready for everything she threw at me until that. The opportunity to prove ourselves was all I could think of, but I regretted it the next minute. I'm sorry."

  "This isn't a dictatorship, Chloe. I don't have to agree with everything. Maybe it'll work out."

  "So you don't want me to step into the waiting room and tell her it's all off?"

  "What? She's here?"

  "Yeah. June says she doesn't want us to set up anything special just for her. She wants in on a genuine op."

  "Boy, she has no idea what she's asking. What are her intentions?"

  "She's a conspiracy theorist and she wants dirt. I've checked her other reports. Her goal is to prove COIL as an illegitimate covert organization."

  "Because I don't have the time to put kid gloves on for her, she'll get what she wants and more than she bargained for," Corban mused.

  "Just try to keep her alive. I'll make sure she signs a waiver."

  "Do that. And tell her to be here tomorrow morning with an overnight bag only."

  "A one night op?"

  "I've never heard of a one night op. I'm saying that's all she's bringing. If she wants to play reality TV, she'll take no more than the rest of us."

  "So, you're already off to Germany? Operation Rahab?"

  "Yeah, and I'm not coming home until I have some bodies—our boys, dead or alive."

  #######

  Juan "Scooter" Blanco had requested to be a part of the operation that would free Toad, Milk, and his friend, Nathan, from whoever had taken them in London. But now, the short muscled operative for COIL wasn't so sure he had what it took. Feeling like the bionic man, Scooter raised his arm over his head and winced as he painfully rotated his new joint. The doctors had rebuilt his shoulder after he had taken a round in the armpit while escaping the Fhatl Lasam Prison in Malaysia during the last op. Since he was still on the mend, he wondered why Corban had pulled him from his physical therapy.

  Scooter studied a slip of paper as his boat was piloted down the Dnieper River in Kiev, a city of two million in north-central Ukraine. The paper had an address on it. He wasn't too thrilled about the treasure hunt Corban had sent him on, but Scooter hoped Nathan was at the end of the trail. Milk and Toad were like brothers to Scooter, and he cared for them greatly, but he'd known Nathan longer than anyone else in his life, even longer than he'd known his own wife. The two men had been the most decorated Marine sniper team before they had left the military as Christians. Scooter had even grown a thick mustache to memorialize his missing friend, but it was nothing like Nathan's wild handlebar.

  The boat bumped against the side of the river's cement containment wall. The driver rattled off a couple sentences in Ukrainian and pointed to the south. Scooter paid him a handful of hryvnias and climbed out of the boat. Stretching his shoulder again, he wondered if he should've brought his sling. No, he decided. He hated the sling. It made him feel weak.

  After several operations in the Marines across the Middle East, Scooter spoke Arabic pretty well. That language didn't help him now, though; he didn't speak a lick of the languages of the half-dozen countries he'd visited over the past week. Even when he was an active field agent with the Flash and Bang Team, he hadn't traveled this much. And all the cloak and dagger stuff seemed so mundane and tiring, even useless.

  First, he'd gone to Serbia a week ago. Then delivered a package to the COIL office in Berlin. Norway had been next, and then a package to the Czech Republic. But why had he been in Greece yesterday? Oh, yeah—to get the address for here.

  Maybe Corban was touring him around Europe to check him out—to test him to see if he was up to the challenges ahead. Could he be counted on after a near fatal injury and six months of down time? Scooter ran his fingers over his fresh crew cut. Yeah, he was back. Just a little tired and edgy, but he was back.

  Gazing to the south at an industrial-class neighborhood, Scooter hoped that this was the last stop. He walked nearly a mile before he came to the block that housed the address on his paper.

  From across the street, Scooter wat
ched the house he was about to approach. Traps were everywhere, too many for one man to see. Corban had told him to trust nothing, for nothing was as it seemed. He'd shaken a dozen tails in the past week alone, so he knew Corban wasn't only being paranoid. COIL had real enemies. Scooter didn't have a clue who those enemies were most of the time, and he rarely spoke the languages to ask them. As a short Mexican, he stood out more often than not, but he tried to pass as a Spaniard or an Italian when he could get away with it.

  The house before him was a brownstone, sharing walls with two other narrow, tall residences. The region had a troubled past, but unlike the neighborhoods across the river, these houses appeared to be relatively untouched by the last century's wars and communist rule.

  Three stories high, the house appeared to be normal at first glance, but he knew better, so he sought out the subtle details about which Corban had warned him. A camera on the light pole to his right. The lens was pointed at the front door. A man swept the cracked sidewalk to his left, but he had on combat boots. Combat boots? It was a dead giveaway. Seeing as it was barely afternoon, the man should've been at work. But he was at home sweeping his sidewalk wearing combat boots. Farther down the street, a woman held a toddler on her hip as she hung clothes with her free hand on a short clothesline.

  Scooter started across the street, a careful eye on the man sweeping the sidewalk. Whoever lived in the house, he knew he'd be safe inside. Well, safer. Dangers were part of the job. The sweeping man didn't look his way, but Scooter tucked his hand into his jacket all the same. Feeling the hard plastic of the NL-2 machine pistol, he flipped the selector switch to fully automatic.

  Suddenly, bullets like killer bees whipped over his head. He didn't stop in the street to face his attacker. Like a rabbit, he ran and dove behind three garbage containers. It was the only cover available. The bullets pinged into the containers, some of those rounds passing through the first two bins. Fortunately, they were filled with garbage. The rounds from the opposing gun were silenced, therefore subsonic, which meant a small caliber, but still deadly.

  With two hundred fifty pellet-rounds in the NL-2, Scooter showed no hesitation. Holding the trigger down, he sprayed the sidewalk with pellets before he stood and spied his attacker. Surprisingly, the man with the broom and combat boots was scrambling for cover, with only the broom in his hands. Scooter redirected his fire at the woman who had abandoned the baby doll on her hip, as well as the clothesline, and now held a Russian automatic pistol. Shooting from a crouch, he peppered her with pellets until she slowly slumped, unconscious and without injury, onto the side of the street.

  Even with silenced weapons, they had made quite a bit of racket. Scooter eyed the neighborhood windows for a second attacker. He could see several closed curtains, neighbors probably wanting nothing to do with the wild gunman in the street who held a strange-looking weapon. They were sure to think the woman thirty yards away was dead, and her doll baby with her. Backing away, Scooter sidestepped up the brownstone's steps. Only then did he tuck his NL-2 back under his jacket.

  Knocking on the door, he waited anxiously, his eyes studying the street. Hearing no sirens, he realized that these were working class people, all too familiar with the old days of KGB raids and midnight arrests. They didn't trust the authorities any more than they trusted him, and that worked to Scooter's advantage. A bug tickled his ear. Rubbing his lobe, his fingers came away wet with blood. That's when he started to feel the sting of a bullet's graze.

  The door swung open suddenly. Scooter jumped around to face another possible attack. An elderly woman snapped Ukrainian at him and gestured for him to enter. He stepped inside. Old enough to be his grandmother, she closed the door and dropped a heavy bar across it from frame to frame.

  "Good you are careful!" she grunted. "Come!"

  She led him through another door that she also locked behind them, then into a small, darkened living room that smelled of sweet pipe tobacco. When she turned on a lamp, Scooter saw a man as old as she was, dozing in a soft chair, his head back with his smoldering pipe still between his lips. The woman pointed to a chair next to a giant cello case. As Scooter sat down, she took the old man's pipe and tapped it over an ashtray.

  The tapping brought the man from his slumber. Scooter guessed the two were in their late seventies. The man yawned, his eyes on Scooter, then he leaned forward.

  "You no look American."

  "I'm Mexican-American, born in California."

  "I know California." The man looked afar off. "Gold in California."

  "It's a golden state," Scooter agreed. "You ever been there?"

  "Nah. Much sex and roll and rock."

  "Yes, I suppose it's gone downhill over the years."

  "Trouble for you to come here?"

  "Some." Scooter opened his coat. "I was ready."

  "Ah. NL-2. One of my favorites."

  Scooter raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  "You know the series?"

  "Six hundred round a minute rate. Range: fifty meters. Two hundred fifty-round capacity. Who you think make them, da? They do not hang from the trees."

  "So, you're the one. I always wondered."

  "I rather make deadly guns, but…" The old man shrugged. "Your people pay well, so I make these toys for you. I am Lars Klistova. My wife, Monique, my pear—you say in America, da?"

  "Your peach, I suppose you mean."

  "Peach, pear, apple." He waved his hand. "Moni, show him the cello. It is why he comes."

  The old woman dragged the cello from between the chairs. Scooter started to rise to help her, but she slapped his hand away. She opened the cello case and strummed the beautiful instrument's strings.

  "This is a most difficult order," Monique explained. "We ruined two other cellos to find right housing. It is good?"

  Scooter narrowed his eyes. The right housing? What was he looking at? What did Corban want with a cello? The instrument was as tall as Scooter!

  "Yes, it's perfect," he admired, but he had to know more. "Show me."

  Monique reached around the side of the cello and clicked a switch. The top of the cello opened to expose two disassembled long rifles, their barrels parallel and crammed amongst a dozen ammunition boxes and magazines. Since he'd been a Marine sniper years ago, Scooter knew a long distance weapon when he saw one. Unable to stay in his chair, he knelt on the floor and ran his fingers over both rifles, their scopes, their lightweight carbon and aluminum fabrication. He touched one of the ammunition rounds. They were standard brass casings, twice as large as a .223 cartridge, but the noses of these cartridges were transparent plastic. Inside each nose were five, tightly grouped darts.

  "It is NL-X1, first generation," Lars explained. "First non-lethal sniper rifle I ever design. Four-by-twenty scope. See?"

  "I see."

  "Twelve round magazine. Bolt action. Special casing. One thousand yard range, no more. Each round carries five biodegradable darts with spread of five feet at maximum range. One hour of sleep, each dart. Water-soluble toxic silicon, only these are solid in original form."

  "Amazing. We've needed something like this. The NL-3 is good for shorter ranges, but this… How fast do the tranquilizers travel?"

  "Eighteen hundred of your feet a second. Our son tested. Very accurate."

  "The darts have a five-foot spread at one thousand meters, you said. What does that mean exactly?"

  "As the darts fly, they spread. You can take down two or three targets at once under the right circumstances."

  "Outstanding."

  "Yes, it is. I only wish I see it in action." Lars clucked his tongue.

  Carefully, Monique closed the cello's housing, then the case. The instrument was ready for transport through customs—to wherever Corban wanted Scooter to go next.

  **~~~**

  Chapter Eight

  It had been ten days since Alfred had posed as the Swiss downhill skier and delivered the package for an unknown employer. Now he was executing yet another assignment as
a freelance agent for the same employer. Whoever the man was, he had first asked if Alfred was a Christian, and only after Alfred responded to that encrypted email, was his assignment confirmed. This time, Alfred was simply asked if he was free for another mission. Alfred accepted, hoping the second mission was as enjoyable as skiing. However, when he received his orders, he saw it would require considerably more dedication and preparation.

  As a thirty-year-old Christian, and an operative for ten years, Alfred had to trust God to keep him and protect him. He prayed every morning for God's will to be done in his life and that God would use him to make a difference where it mattered most. If that meant that Alfred would have to give his life to save others, he was spiritually and mentally prepared—and trained—for that possibility.

  Now in north-central Germany, Alfred turned off the highway and drove east on a snow packed road. His four-wheel drive jeep was made for this terrain. He checked his mirrors. No headlights, but those at the castle were sure to know he would arrive tonight.

  Steering with one hand, he pulled up his sweater sleeve on his left arm. The fresh tattoo of a snake's head emerged just past his wrist. The snake's body coiled up his forearm, around his elbow, over his shoulder, and somewhere on his back was the other end of the snake—where a second head hissed. Green, orange, and black ink. Even if he could have the tattoo laser-removed after the assignment, he'd be scarred for life.

  The tattoo had taken eight hours to apply by an artist, or "slinger," in Berlin. He would never have used a local slinger, but this was one through the very agency who had given Alfred the assignment. Alfred wasn't sure which agency it was, but the assignment order itself gave an indication to their character:

  "Infiltrate Xacsin Castle. Alias: Snake, a well-known arsonist from Netherlands. Locate Christians and Jews to extract from captivity. Support team incoming. Secure sat-phone number below."

  Memorizing the phone number, Alfred then studied an included photograph of the front and back of a tattooed man with his shirt off. He had realized that he would have to duplicate the man's tattoo—the man known as Snake. Stealing someone's identity and going undercover was risky, but the real Snake in the photograph was lying on a steel table. Since the actual Snake was dead, it was one less thing Alfred had to worry about.