by Jack Hardin
Kathleen’s GPS had stopped issuing a signal just ahead. Twenty feet beyond that was an open air entrance to the market that brought in foot traffic from Sofokleous Street. I went a little farther and stopped. Four vendors were set up in the immediate area, each specializing in a specific type of product: leather keychains and wallets, glass blown art, glazed pottery, and brass replicas of ancient artifacts. Closer to the street, two food merchants with portable grills sold kabobs, baklava, taramasalata, and dolmades, all of it filling the air with an enticing smell of well-seasoned meat and cooked spices. A slow glance around confirmed what the general had told me; there were no cameras in the immediate vicinity.
Camera footage, cell phone records, and GPS have their places. Strides in technological advances over the last three decades had superseded all the inventions in the entire history of mankind. It was mind blowing when you thought about it. Thirty years ago, publicly available internet, smartphones, Kindles, and streaming movies did not exist. All of that was still the stuff of sci-fi.
And yet, even with all the innovation in technology, sometimes doing a job right meant hitting the pavement, looking someone in the eye, and reading their body language as they answer your questions. Investigators in the past were called gumshoes for a reason. They weren’t parked behind a desk, but were on the streets, looking, watching, asking, and analyzing.
I took out my phone and approached the lady selling the blown glass.
“Hello,” she said. “Do you see anything you like?”
“Actually, I’m looking for someone,” I navigated to the pictures app on my phone and pulled up a clear image of Kathleen. “She was in this area of the market yesterday afternoon. This was the last place she was seen.” I turned the phone around and held it out to her.
A pair of reading glasses dangled from a chain on her neck. She set them on the end of her nose, studied the image, then shook her head. “No. I do not remember her. Of course, many people come through here every day.”
“Is it busier in the afternoon?” I asked.
“Very much, yes. The mornings, they are the slower time. Tourists get off the cruise ships and start to make their way here by lunchtime. From then until maybe five o’clock it is very busy.”
“Thank you.”
“You cannot find her? Is she your wife?” A coy look came into her eye. “Maybe she finds a strong Grecian man, eh?”
“She’s my boss,” I said. “She was kidnapped.”
The mirth evaporated from her face. “I am sorry. You said she was here yesterday? Are you sure?”
“Very.”
“Come.” She motioned for me to follow her to the next stall, where a slim, gray-haired man sat on a stool pecking at his phone. “Kendar! Kendar, stand up!” she insisted. “Look at this.” She grabbed his forearm and hauled him to his feet.
The man bristled with irritation. “What, Lydia? I am busy.”
“You have not been busy in thirty years, old man. Look, this gentleman here, his friend has gone missing. An American lady.” Lydia held out her hand to me, indicating that I should give her the phone. No sooner had I held it out than she snatched it and showed the man the picture. “She was here in the market yesterday.”
He took the phone, held it out in front of his face, and squinted. After several seconds, he frowned, rubbed his chin, and then shook his head. Then he paused, and I watched as his eyes lit up with recognition.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she was here yesterday.” He glanced at the image a final time and then looked at me, nodding. “I remember. She was interested in that.” His shop was exclusively dedicated to handmade wooden carvings. The images ranged from ancient Greek buildings to intricately shaped cutting boards and chess sets with pieces resembling characters from Greek tragedies and poems. Kendar stepped to a shelf and plucked up a wooden flask. “Here.” He held it out to me. I took it, examined it, and gave it back. “She wanted me to sell it for forty,” he scoffed. “But I told her I could not go below fifty. These flasks, they take much time to carve and to shape.”
“Do you remember about what time she came through?”
He rubbed a palm across his chin. “Ah… four o’clock? Perhaps four-thirty. But I cannot be sure.”
The latter matched the time when Kathleen’s phone stopped issuing a signal. “Did you notice anything unusual after she left? Or did you happen to see her leave the market?”
His eyes widened slightly, as if he was just considering what his neighboring merchant had told him. “She has gone missing?”
“Yes,” I said. “Not long after she left here.”
“Ah….” He shook his head. “I did not see anything. She left here and continued toward the exit. Another customer was interested in one of my chess boards. I spoke with him for several minutes, and when he left, I did notice your friend leaving through the exit with her friends. She got into a car with them.”
The back of my neck prickled. “I’m sorry. What friends?”
He frowned. “I do not know. I assume they were her friends. It was two men.”
“They weren’t her friends,” I said. “What did they look like?”
“I am not sure. I only saw them briefly. Naturally, I had no reason to think something was not proper.”
“The men, were they small, large?”
“Normal size. A little shorter than you. They were wearing jeans and… what do you call… the jacket—a nice jacket. Like a suit.”
“A blazer?”
“Yes. Yes. They were each wearing blazers.”
“What kind of car did they get into?”
“I’m sorry. I could not say. It was dark colored. A taxi, perhaps. Or perhaps not.”
“Your boss,” the lady said, “you are sure she was taken against her will?”
“Yes. She was expected to return to her cruise ship and never showed.”
Both she and the old man offered their apologies. I thanked them and continued toward the exit where the food vendors were serving a short line of customers. After waiting for them to receive their food and clear away, I passed Kathleen’s picture around. When the vendors were unable to offer anything helpful, I passed beneath the building’s high brick arch and stepped onto the sidewalk.
Sofokleous Street was a hive of activity. Mopeds cut in and out of traffic in an unspecified cadence, all of them managing to avoid a near collision every couple of seconds. Car and trucks vied for inches, horns blared, and delivery trucks were parked hard against the curb, their drivers unloading cargo for merchants in the market.
A taxi came to an abrupt halt in the center lane and a moustached man leaned out the window. “You need a ride?” he called out. I waved him off. He shrugged his indifference and shot down the street as a temporary gap opened up.
A slow glance up and down the street didn’t reveal any more cameras. If the shopkeeper I spoke with was right, then Kathleen had been sufficiently motivated by two men to get into a car not five feet from where I was standing. And then they had vanished, leaving no trace, no hint of a thread to follow. Whoever they were, they had known where the cameras were and had been careful to avoid being caught on film.
Anxiety crept through my veins.
During my time with the 503rd MP Battalion, I had worked closely with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, functioning as an information liaison between my office and theirs. I had witnessed every kind of violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, cases that would make your hair stand on end and your blood boil. And during these last few years with Homeland’s Federal Investigative Directorate, I had worked nearly every case imaginable: murders, kidnappings, forced labor camps in the jungles of South America, attempted assassinations, corruption—you name it. But this one… This one was absolutely personal. And it still didn’t feel real. Kathleen had been snatched out of the heart of Athens in broad daylight. She wasn’t lying on the sundeck of her cruise ship, working on her tan. She wasn’t in her office back home reviewing case file
s and answering emails. She was gone, vanished, and here I was standing in the very spot where she was last seen with no further leads and no clue where to go next.
It was maddening, and the only thing I could think to do was to go back to the base and play hardball with the general. If he thought he could keep holding back information relevant to the case, he had another thing coming. I had Jonathan Watts’s personal cell number. One brief conversation with him and he would be on the phone with our ambassador, informing him that we didn’t trust Diakos and would be making other arrangements to coordinate the flow of information.
I was working through my options, assessing my next move, when a man stopped on the sidewalk not two feet from me. He wore black jeans and a leather bomber jacket that was a little overkill given the warm climate. His eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses, and his face was covered in dark stubble. He lit a cigarette, took a long drag on it, and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. The breeze blew it back into my face, and I nearly choked. I started down the street when the man spoke in a thick Southern drawl: Georgia or Alabama, if I had to guess.
“Agent Savage? How goes it?”
I stopped and turned around. He blew out another cloud of smoke, and I held my breath as it passed over me. I assessed him afresh. Instead of a tourist in need of fashion advice, I now saw a capable individual suffering from too much machismo. That only fit a couple profiles. “You from Langley?” I asked.
He chuckled. “They wish.”
I sized him up again. Bravado streamed off him like radiation emanating from a broken reactor. “The Unit then.”
“Bingo, brotha.”
The Unit was the most recent moniker given to the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta. The public knew it best as Delta Force, but the organization's formal name was a revolving door. Internally, it was known as the Combat Applications Group (CAG), "The Unit," or within JSOC, as Task Force Green. The group’s name seemed to change as often as the flavor of the month.
The operator flicked a piece of ash off the end of his cigarette. “As I understand it, your boss’s boss called my boss and asked me to loop you in on our efforts to find your boss.” He stuck the cigarette between his lips and extended his hand. “Boomer Jackson. They call me Boomer.”
We shook. I decided to throw him a curveball. “Thanks for the offer,” I said, “but I was just going back to the base to meet with General Diakos. He’s got a good handle on everything so far. I’ll let you know if we need your help.”
He raised his chin and eyed me. “That’s a joke, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s a joke.”
“Okay... ‘cause that Diakos, he’s a bag plug of tobacco. Worked with his team on an op last year in Macedonia. He’s got to be the one to run the show. I don’t take too well to guys like that.”
“Where’s your team?” I asked.
“About six klicks behind you. You want to get out of here?”
“My car is in the parking garage. But if I had to guess, I’d say your ride is probably a lot cooler than mine.”
He gave me a toothy smile. “It is.”
Chapter Four
Boomer Jackson drove like he smoked, obnoxious and without concern for anyone around him. He weaved in and out of traffic, the bright green Hummer cutting around slow-moving vehicles and punching forward across every available stretch of open pavement. It didn’t bother me. What might seem reckless driving to some was just a healthy way of blowing off steam. As part of a Tier 1 Special Mission Unit, Delta operators were tasked with missions in some of the hardest places on the planet. They came face to face with evil regularly, dealing with horrors that most of the world never had to think about. The military would have secured such a flashy, obnoxious vehicle to help their operators decompress.
“How long has your team been in country?” I asked.
Boomer floored the gas, and the Hummer lurched around a flatbed truck loaded with live chickens. “Three hours. We were heading for home after coming off an op in Syria, and they diverted us here. Guess my wife’s gonna have to wait for some lovin’ until we find your boss.”
“Syria? You didn’t happen to feed Assad any sniper rounds for breakfast, did you?”
“Don’t I wish. Nope, that little bastard is still alive and kickin’. They had us running a misinformation campaign against a Russian support group embedded in one of the major cities.”
More than any other special forces group, Delta operators functioned the most closely to spies. Integrating tactical spying, direct action and hostage rescue operations, and special reconnaissance, they often generated their own human intelligence, analyzed it, and then acted on it, all in one package. They remained one of the premier, and most secretive, door-kicking units in the world.
“Your accent,” I said. “Alabama?”
He huffed. “No, sir.”
“Georgia?”
“Macon born and raised. Played tight end for the Bulldogs in college and felt right at home when I joined the Army and went through basic at Benning.”
“How long have you been with the Unit?”
“Spent three years with the Rangers before moving in with Delta five years ago. It’s been Christmas every day since.” Boomer cut around a limo cruising at the posted speed limit. He sighed. “Listen, I’ll shoot you straight, Savage. I usually get my panties in a wad when the head shed tells us to accommodate someone from another team or another agency. But then I took a glance at your file. Looks like you did a few tours of the sandbox yourself. And some of the work you’ve done with Homeland is top notch. So here’s the deal. I can imagine that this one’s highly personal for you. And that means it’s personal for us. For this one, you’re part of the team. I want you to know that.”
“I appreciate that, Boomer. Does your troop have any leads yet?”
“Nothing that would keep mama in new shoes. How ‘bout you? Did you learn anything at the market or just walk away like me, wondering how a country could eat so many damn vegetables?”
“I got something. But it’s not actionable. Not yet, anyway.” I filled him in on what the old man at the market told me, how Kathleen had been forced into a car by two men. “He couldn’t offer any details.”
“Your Deputy Director, Watts. He seems to like you.”
“He’s brought me in on a couple missions this last year. And I saved his life in Rio a few days ago.”
“No crap. How’d that go down?”
“The head of a local drug cartel planned a revenge assassination because the DEA accidentally killed his wife during an op down there. The op was overseen by Homeland, and Watts was seen as the one ultimately responsible.”
“Let me guess. They ambushed his convoy.”
“Just north of downtown. They pinched his convoy in a construction zone and unleashed hell.”
“And you saved him?”
“I had help. But I managed to get him safely out of his SUV and into another that got him back to safety.”
“Damn, boy. So you’re like Homeland’s golden child right now. You could probably ask them for your own island and they’d give it to you.”
“Right now, I just want to find my boss.”
An exit ramp appeared, and Boomer took it off Motorway 6 and followed it around to the stop light. He turned right at the light and began a circuitous route through a decaying industrial park. Crumbling brick buildings still functioned as warehouses, and old cinder block structures were hemmed with loading docks with thistles and weeds pushing through.
“These used to be munitions factories during the Second World War,” Boomer said. “Zinc and lead from Oklahoma and Missouri were shipped out here, and the Allies made a hell of a lot of .30 ammo for the M1. After the war, I heard they were converted to clothing factories before being abandoned in the ’60s.” He turned around a stand of cypress and continued on where the crumbling road turned to dirt, passing between two buildings whose bricks had lost most of their mortar to decay and we
ather.
A loading bay opened up ahead of us where a scattering of weeds stood like stalks of corn. Boomer drove over them and parked beside a gray multi passenger van. A rusted door stood closed in front of us. I could just make out a worn stenciled logo in its center: HCI Logistics.
We got out of the Hummer, and the building’s door squeaked in protest as Boomer opened it. He held it open for me and called out as we walked in.
“Honey, I’m home!”
Our footsteps echoed deeply into the empty space. Two sodiums high in the rafters dimly lit our way to a curtained area glowing with floor lamps. I followed Boomer around a curtain where half a dozen tables were loaded with computer monitors and battle gear: rifles, loaded magazines, body armor, web kits, and hand guns. Two other men were among the gear, both wearing black cargo pants and light gray polos. One was watching a TV show on his phone while cleaning the barrel of a McMillan TAC-50 rifle. His unkempt beard and massive shoulders gave him a mountain man appearance. He wore a blue ball cap backward on his head, and a fresco of tattoos covered his left arm. The second operator was leaning back in a chair and staring at a wide screen monitor, his boots on the table in front of him and a wireless keyboard on his lap. He was clean shaven, his long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Yo!” Boomer called out. Both men looked over. “This here is Ryan Savage, with Homeland. I found him drowning in the ocean and thought he could use a hot meal.”
“What’s wrong with Diakos’s food?” the big man chuckled. “Not hot enough for you?”
Boomer raised a hand toward him. “Savage, meet Teapot. He’s recon and ordnance. And over here is Granger. When he’s not doing our laundry and talking to his mother, he’s decent enough with computers and comms.” Granger lifted his middle finger to Boomer and then raised a hand in greeting.
“Sorry to hear about your boss,” Teapot said. “If we have anything to do with it, she’ll be back home safe and sound in no time.