Black Flag Rising: A James Jackson Thriller

by Jesse Russell

“Oh my! Please watch yourself. That doesn't sound good. Not good at all,” Andrei cautioned.

  “You know how it is over here. It has gotten much worse. And I needed the money for the trip,” Dumitru said.

  “Well, watch yourself and please let me know when you find something out, so we can plan on seeing you. I will tell Kim about all of this. She will be so glad you called. Please do your best to come! I have so much work here,” Andrei replied.

  “I'll keep you posted, Andrei. Talk to you soon,” Dumitru said.

  Just as he hung up, the doctor came in. “Dumitru, we need to have a little talk. Are you feeling up to it?”

  “I suppose,” he replied quietly.

  The doctor went on to tell him everything that had happened. How he had come to his apartment and they had brought him to the clinic. And how Valeria had given him the secret to saving him. He owed her his life.

  “But there are some things that are very disturbing and we need more information about what you know,” the doctor said.

  “I don't know much, doctor,” he stammered. What had he gotten himself into? He just wanted to get out of this place and to America.

  “I have two different detectives working on things. One in Turkey and the other in Ukraine. Grav, your boss, was here for a day as he had become exposed as well. He gave us the video and log information from the warehouse. Where and when did you come in contact with the people who brought the radiation device in to the area?” the doctor persisted.

  “I… uh… received a call a couple of days before the load came in,” he stammered.

  “Who did it come from?” the doctor asked.

  “Someone I met a couple of times at a pub. I barely know the man,” Dumitru said.

  “What did he ask you to do?”

  “He said his friend needed something put on a truck. The truck was scheduled to arrive at the warehouse in two days. It was to be leaving empty anyway. He wanted me to simply move it from one truck to another. I would make some money. I didn't ever think it would be anything bad or evil. And I needed the money.”

  “Dumitru, everyone needs money here. It is no crime to try and help yourself out. But if it involves terrorism, then you have a problem,” the doctor warned.

  “You haven't told the police, have you?” he asked.

  “Not the local police, yet. I was hoping you would come around, so I could get some information from you,” the doctor said.

  “So… what was it? The thing I moved?” Dumitru asked.

  “We still don't know. It has disappeared. But it was something powerful enough to nearly kill you and the other people who were around it,” the doctor said.

  “I had no idea, doctor. You must believe me,” he pleaded.

  “I do believe you, Dumitru. The police may not,” the doctor said.

  “Then we must not tell them. Please. I am begging you. I had no idea this was happening. I would have never done this thing otherwise. I almost died. Maybe I did die,” Dumitru begged.

  “Let's talk some more about this later. Now, please eat, drink, and get better,” the doctor said.

  “Doctor, do you think I will be well enough to fly to America in five days?” he asked.

  “Let's see how you are doing in the next twenty-four hours. Until then, please rest and recover.”

  “OK,” Dumitru sighed and closed his eyes.

  In Phoenix, Andrei was listening to Barry Yant on his way to work. He was doing his usual funny shtick and talking about the upcoming World Series, joking about the Angels and playing his fake applause during his snarky rips on Southern California beach dudes with his sidekick Michelle. They were really creative and the show made him laugh.

  “On a serious note here. There have been rumors floating around, off the record, that there may be some kind of attack here during the Series. Now, I don't want to freak anyone out, but I have some friends around here who are telling me things. So please be alert out there, folks. If you see or hear anything suspicious, let the authorities know.”

  And they broke for a commercial.

  He couldn't figure out why, but something was niggling his mind about this. He was feeling that there was some connection between what Dumitru had told him about radiation poisoning and this thing Barry Yant was saying.

  It was nagging at him. He let it go and pulled into the Super Pumper for some gas and a quick burrito breakfast.

  When he got back into his truck, Barry was going at it on the radio again. “If anyone knows anything, anything at all, here's my email at the station. Please let me know. I have lived here for thirty years and love this place more than almost anything. We all need to stand together to protect her,” his voice said through the speakers.

  Andrei thought about how much he had come to love this place too, and how it had saved his life. If he had stayed in Moldova, who knows what he would be doing? He would have never met Kim, and may have never come to know God. And how much he owed to The Valley of the Sun and America for giving him this wonderful new life.

  He paused for a moment, thinking, and came close to forgetting about it, but at the last second, he decided to shoot an email to Barry, leaving his phone number. It was probably nothing, but what the heck? He was sure he would not get back to him anyway. He was a busy radio guy. Who was Andrei that he would be interested in talking to him?

  Over at the studio, Barry was getting another cup of coffee on break when his phone dinged. He pulled it out and read the email. He responded that he would call him when he got off the air at eight.

  Andrei's phone dinged back with the message.

  He pulled it out and looked at the email. He was surprised. He thought, “He'll probably forget,” and drove off to his current job site.

  52

  Back in Payson, Ryan had been able to identify all ships leaving the Port of Izmir that day. There were twenty-three. He had all the ships' records and manifests, as well as next port scheduled stops. He was combing through the manifests to see if anything was unusual.

  “If this thing is that bad, they would make sure nothing was logged in a manifest about it. What if it was intercepted out at sea and reloaded onto another ship?” There were many possibilities. He called everyone in and showed them what he had.

  He went into to the TOR and pulled up EarthSat images for that date and zoomed in on all ships leaving Izmir. He tracked them all out into the Mediterranean.

  At around 15:00 hours, they noticed a smaller ship approaching one of the larger ships, about two hundred miles west in the Mediterranean.

  He kept forwarding through images. They stayed together for approximately one hour, then separated. The larger one stayed its course, and the other one headed south.

  “How in the world can you find all this?” asked George.

  “George, the kid can find anything,” Adam said.

  “Can you zoom in closer and take a look at better images?” Jackson asked.

  “Let me try.”

  He hit several tabs on the Sat controls and started drilling things down tighter. They were starting to make out the bridges on both ships. They started seeing small dots of men out on the decks. He went back to the point where they’d first joined up.

  “This is as tight as I can get it and still see without distortion.”

  They saw a covered and belted-down item on what looked to be a pallet. There was a crane and hook close by the item, and the crew on the smaller ship appeared to be standing on the side rail and looking over at them.

  As he forwarded through images, you could see it being lifted off with a large boom arm, swinging out over to the smaller craft. It set down and the crane arm had come back. The men on the smaller ship were standing looking at it. The next image showed them lying prone on their faces.

  “It looks like they are praying or something,” Ryan said.

  “Well, that answers that,” Tom said.

  “Can you track where it goes from there?” asked Adam.

  “Let me try,” Ryan
said.

  “OK. Let's let him work. We have some major things to prepare for.”

  “Let us know when you figure out where they’re headed,” Jackson said.

  They walked out into the main room to discuss what to do next.

  “Let me back at that goon in the basement. He has to know more than he has said. I can guaran-damn-tee he knows what and how they are getting this here,” George said.

  They debated among themselves and finally agreed it wouldn't matter. They were out of time, and if anyone could glean anything, it would be George.

  “Good, glad you are coming to your senses. Only two requests then: one, you leave me the hell alone to do what I do; and two, I need a phone book. The thicker, the better.”

  Tom said he thought they had a Valley Yellow pages and went into the office. He found an older one in a closet, came back out, and handed it to George.

  “This will work fine. Alrighty, boys, let's go. Time to let my fingers do the walking,” he winked.

  They got the goon into the survival room again, and he looked around, sweating profusely.

  He smelled like he had soiled himself.

  “Oh, good God, man! Did your diapers leak?” George said as he shook his head in disgust. “Will someone get me a set of ear plugs?”

  Brad went into the armory and brought out a large jug of orange foam ear plugs, used for range shooting.

  George reached in and grabbed two out and shoved them in his nostrils.

  They all saw the trick and did the same.

  “There. Now he can shit himself silly and we won't be bothered a bit,” George said. “You'd be amazed at all the tricks I have, fellas.”

  George walked over to the table and sat down in front of him. Both WiFi cams were glowing green, so everything was being recorded.

  George set the phone book on the table and started in.

  “Let's try this one more time. Are you ready to talk some more?”

  “What else do you want? I told you everything, Kaffir!” he spat out.

  “Great. Hold on a minute.”

  George picked up the huge yellow page book, pulled back and hit him as hard as he could, flat side on his face. The goon wheezed out and slumped forward.

  “You ready to cooperate now?” he shouted at him.

  He turned and looked at the team.

  “This is the best little lie detector ever made, boys.” George crowed.

  “And if this asshole decides to get uppity or develop lockjaw after I give him the full treatment, we can always dump him out in the woods and make it look like an accident. The javelina will take care of what’s left of him.”

  They all shook their heads as he turned back around, grinning from ear to ear.

  “So, Boris Baddenov. Natasha isn’t coming to save you. How about we start again? What is coming in here and how is arriving?” George shouted.

  He was not responding. Tom checked his pulse. It was very weak. “I don’t know, guys. He’s not doing real well.”

  53

  Ryan had tracked the ship all the way across the northern coast of Africa and through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was tracking on a southwestern course when it became covered up by a huge Atlantic storm.

  He searched forward and back in time. No luck.

  “Damn!” he shouted and banged his fist on the desk. “How do you lose a ship in the middle of the ocean?”

  Once the storm cleared out, there were far too many ships moving, and he had no idea where the thing had come out from under the clouds. He looked for over an hour. There was no sign of it.

  Resigned that he had lost it for good, he decided to go back and scan records across the southern Mediterranean for anything related to radiation. He landed on a news report from the small island of Malta, directly south of Italy.

  Three crewmen had been dropped off at a clinic, very ill. They had been stripped of all IDs and they were too sick to talk. The report said it appeared to be radiation poisoning. They assumed a boat had brought them in, but it had never docked. They had been brought in by a small dingy and the men that had brought them in had disappeared. One had already died, and the other two were reported gravely ill.

  With all the technology out there these days, the ocean was still a huge place, and a ship could get lost easily before anyone had gotten the wiser. The police force there was probably tiny and had no means of tracking a ship anyway.

  “We know this is definitely the one,” he thought.

  He would come back later and track the movement of the larger one, too. At this point, it didn't matter. The load was gone.

  Adam came up to check on Ryan and walked into the office for an update.

  “I lost it, man.”

  “What do you mean you lost it?” he asked.

  “It went under a storm system and I lost it in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Damn!” he said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Ryan said.

  “Can you track its course back before the storm and get an idea of the direction it might have been headed?”

  “Let me try.” They ran the images back prior to the storm, when they could still see it in the Atlantic. They took out a ruler. They held it over the screen and pointed it on the track it appeared to be heading. It ran due southwest, south of Cuba, and ending up right at Panama. Depending on charting and alterations, that could mean anywhere from Cancun south. Panama was directly in the center.

  “If they ran it to Panama, they could bring it through the canal and up the Pacific side into Baja or Puerto Peñasco through the Sea of Cortez,” Adam said.

  “My parents used to take us down there when we were kids,” Ryan said.

  “A lot of Valley people go down there for vacation. It's only three hours south. Makes sense. That has to be the way. They wouldn't risk putting it on land in Mexico or Central America and driving a couple of thousand miles when they could take it through the canal and almost directly up into the state,” Adam said.

  “Even under the best of conditions, that drive would take days. And bad conditions and banditos run rampant. They would want it out at sea as long as possible to avoid notice. I have seen many people and contraband come up from this way. It's a well-known and lightly-patrolled entry. The locals down there make bank for looking the other way. Plus, if the cartels and Moon Gods are involved, they've already taken care of all prying eyes with cash or threats.”

  54

  At the West Valley Islamic Center, a meeting was taking place.

  The meeting was being held in a room just off the main building, hidden behind a false wall that was known about by only a handful of people. The local Imam suspected they were infiltrated, and he was correct. There were still some smart and decent law professionals around these parts.

  “Allah, may his name be praised, has a rich and wonderful future for each of you brave martyrs!” he was saying to the group of young men gathered in the room. “In one day, you will forever change the world for his great name, and the new caliphate will begin right here on this infidel soil! You will be martyrs forever in heaven. Your families will be most honored in the new caliphate! They will be respected and treated as those most high, and they raised you for this very reason!”

  They all nodded their heads and murmured in agreement, all except for Ahmed. He was going through the motions, but he knew in his heart that they were doing something terribly wrong. The Imam and the older men there were not doing this thing, only the young men. That made him mad at the hypocrisy.

  He had agreed to attend this place at the request of his father, but he liked his Western friends and life. He had nothing in common with the others in the room, preferring pop music, sports, and girls, to studying the Koran and spending time learning why he should hate everyone who was not Muslim.

  The old man certainly looked the part with his long, scraggly, gray beard and skullcap.

  The Imam continued. “You will be given final instructions in only one day. From that mo
ment on, you will not leave this place. You will be purified from this evil infidel land and kept safe here in Allah's house.”

  Ahmed knew they were recruited for something large, but they had yet to give them any real details. These people were smart. They didn't leave any room for a slip of the tongue or for chickening out.

  “Therefore, you will all come back here tomorrow. You will act as if nothing is happening. Do not worry about your friends or family. Where you going is more important! I need not tell you about the delights of the flesh that Allah has waiting for you when you arrive as an honored martyr in heaven!

  “Allah will give you all the gifts of your heart and body. You will never remember your life here. It is written as so. Now, my warriors, do not speak to anyone about what you are about to do. No one. If you do, you will be cast out of heaven and sent to the very pit of hell! You will all come here and do this thing for Allah. You will receive your final instructions tomorrow morning.

  “I have received confirmation that the package we await to finish our great mission is close. I am getting relays straight from the home of the caliphate at ISIL! Now that they are accomplishing great things in the Levant, the rest of the infidel world will fall!” he crowed.

  He looked around in a near manic state at the group.

  “All of you will have played the key role in this final destruction. Your lives will be honored forever! Both here and in Allah's heaven to come!”

  All the boys were buzzing with excitement, except Ahmed. They were only in their teens. Ahmed was sixteen. Why would they be giving up their lives for this murdering old lunatic?

  He had never bought into any of this jihadi crap. He only went to the mosque because his father was a big shot in the ranks of the local Muslim community and had demanded it. His father had convinced the mullah to train Ahmed up as a proper young jihadi, to get the West out of him.

  In the beginning, it was daily Koran memorization, and harsh correction if he didn't answer properly. Eventually, he had convinced them that he was getting with the program, just to get them off his back. But the Imam never believed he was a true warrior. Nevertheless, he took him in on this project at the request of his father.