by Brent Towns
Thurston said, “Don’t be late, Knocker. I’m not coming around to your place to drag you naked out of bed.”
“You been looking through my window again, General?” He laughed as he turned away.
“Get out of here.”
The air outside was cooling rapidly, and the night was expected to be quite chilly. The parking lot was reasonably well-lit, but there were shadowy patches throughout it.
Knocker pushed the door open and walked down the concrete steps and out into the lot. Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he moved in the direction of his truck, which was parked at the far end.
He stopped, leaning his head to the left as he squinted to sharpen his eyesight and focused on the shadow lurking by his vehicle. “Oi, scouser, what the fuck you think you’re doing?”
A man stepped into the open, the streetlamp bathing him in light. “Hey, Knocker. Long time no see.”
The former SAS man frowned. He could see the face and knew it, but from where? Then it came to him. Mosul, Iraq. He was the SAS sniper who’d killed the kid, that he’d crash-tackled on the Chinook. “What do you want?” Knocker asked, unable to remember his name.
“Is that the way to greet an old friend?”
“We aren’t friends, cock. Never were.”
The man shrugged. “Oh, well, I guess you’re still the same daft cow you were then.”
Alarms were going off in Knocker’s head. Something was wrong, and the situation had a stench like week-old roadkill. He reached behind his back and wrapped his hand around the butt of his SIG Sauer M17.
There was movement to Knocker’s right, and a second man emerged. So, this was their game; it was an ambush. “Whatever you blokes have planned, you might want to think again.”
“We were told to say hello before we killed you,” the first man said.
Knocker frowned. “By who?”
“The Ghost.”
“The Ghost?” Knocker asked, confused. “The crazy fucker all the intelligence agencies are chasing? That Ghost?”
“That’s him.”
“Well, stuff me. Old Knocker’s become famous.”
The M17 came out from behind Knocker’s back and fired twice. Both rounds hit the first man in the chest, killing him instantly. The man on Knocker’s right started to bring his gun up into a firing position, but the former SAS man was still on edge from the training that afternoon, and his movements were fast and fluid.
The next two shots blew one hole in the man’s chest and another in his throat. He went down clutching the spurting wound, trying to stanch the flow.
Keeping his handgun centered on the shooter who was still alive, Knocker strode forward. He stood over the dying man and shot him again. Threat neutralized.
Going through their pockets, he found a motel key and two Texas driver's licenses—no doubt fakes. Both men had died armed with Glock 19s.
A crowd began to gather, and next he knew, Kane and Thurston were beside him. “What happened?” the general asked.
“These two knobs tried to ambush me.”
Gwen pushed her way through the gathering crush and went to the first man. Knocker said, “You’re wasting your time.”
She ignored him and checked anyway.
The rest of the team arrived and began moving the onlookers back, preparing some space for the inevitable arrival of the police. Kane said, “You know these guys, Knocker?”
He nodded. “One of them. From Mosul. But that was a lifetime ago.”
“Why would they want to kill you?” Thurston asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he replied, leaving out the piece of information about The Ghost.
“Get your story straight,” Thurston said. “It looks like it’ll be a long night.”
Langley, Virginia
“I swear, I’ll never get used to driving this damned desk,” CIA Director Alex Joseph growled.
“You’ve been in the job five minutes, Joe,” General Hank Jones said to his friend. “Give it time.”
Both men had been career armed services until recently. Alex Joseph had been appointed Director of the Central Intelligence Agency after the last one to hold the position was terminated with extreme prejudice. Hank Jones, on the other hand, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
“All this damned paperwork, Hank. Drives me up the damn wall.”
“It’s no more than what you were doing before, Joe. Run with it. The President made a good choice when she picked you.”
“We’ll see,” the gray-haired director said.
Jones sat in a large chair across the desk from his friend. He had served in Vietnam back in the day as a member of the 75th Rangers. A big man in his late sixties, many people who saw him thought he was a Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. look-alike.
“Care to tell me what the meeting is about, Joe?” Jones asked.
“I will fill you in when Mary arrives.”
About to say more, the general stopped and turned to look as the door opened and Thurston and Knocker entered. “Sorry we’re late, Admiral. Traffic was a bitch.”
“You can drop the ‘admiral’ bullshit, Mary. I’m not that man anymore. As the job reminds me every day.”
“Yes, sir.” She looked at Jones. “General.”
“Hello, Mary. You’re looking well.”
“Feeling good, sir.”
Joseph stared at Knocker. “What about you, son? Recovered?”
“Ready and willing, sir.”
“We’ll see. Take a seat, and we’ll get started.”
Joseph fingered a folder that sat on the hardwood desk in front of him. He stared at Knocker and said, “I asked for you, Jensen, because of your experience.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need a man to go into Mosul. It has to be someone I can trust. The mission is making contact with an agent we have there who has been monitoring a very small pocket of Jihadists who may be starting a recruitment drive.”
“Why can’t you just bring him out?” Knocker asked.
“Because he is part of the cell. He managed to get recruited and is now embedded with them.”
Knocker stared at him curiously and shook his head. “No, there’s something else. Something you’re not telling me.”
Joseph opened the folder and slid a picture across the desk. “This is our man. We’ve not heard from him in over a week.”
“A week?” Knocker asked, raising his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, Admiral, but he’s fucked. If he’s been dark for a week, then it’s all over. We might as well head back to HQ now.”
Thurston put a hand on Knocker’s arm. “Just hear him out, Ray.”
“All right.”
“It may well be that his cover has been blown and they’ve taken him out. We can’t be sure. What we do know is that he was close to giving us an ID on a high-value target.”
“Which HVT might that be?” Knocker asked.
“The Ghost.”
Knocker’s blood ran cold. Had the occurrence of the previous night been a coincidence? He shook his head. “Before you go any further, there’s something you should know.”
Once he had related the story, Thurston clenched her jaw and said, “We’ll talk about this later.”
The look on her face told him she was angry, and frankly, he didn’t blame her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You say you knew one of the shooters?” Jones asked, speaking for the first time since the briefing had started.
Knocker nodded. “We had a history.”
“What kind of history?”
“The kind that saw me punch the shit out of him.”
“I see.”
“So, it wasn’t a grudge that was behind it, then?” Joseph asked.
“No, sir. He mentioned that The Ghost said to say hello.”
“It would seem The Ghost knows you, or of you, leastways,” Jones said. “Someone you pissed off, maybe?”
“I have pissed a lot of people off over the years,” Knocker said. “On both sides of the fence
.”
“Anyone specific spring to mind?”
“No, sir.”
Joseph’s stare hardened. “This is the closest we’ve been to this madman in a long while, Jensen. Will you do it?”
Knocker thought for a while before he answered. “Yes, sir. I’ll go. I’m guessing I’ll not have any backup while I’m there?”
“Help will be over two hundred miles away, son. If you need it, however, you’ll have a number to call. Just don’t expect it to be there at the drop of a hat.”
Thurston said, “Don’t feel like you have to do this, Knocker.”
She gazed at the other men. Joseph nodded. “The choice is yours. This is not an order. If you don’t want to do it, just say no.”
“I’ll go, sir. Ma’am. This guy came after me, and I want to find out why.”
Chapter 2
Shali, Chechnya
The two DEA operatives were hiding in a rundown building on a debris-strewn third floor that overlooked the meeting place. Intelligence said their target was meeting a second party at four that afternoon. Mike Brand looked at his watch and muttered a low curse. “This ain’t happening today, Chuck. It’s almost five.”
Lying beside him, dark-haired Chuck Tyler kept the binoculars trained on the target area as though they were glued to his eyes. “Patience, Mike, patience.”
“We’ve been in position for hours.” The fair-haired Brand was not known for his patience.
“We’ll give it another thirty minutes and then pack up,” Tyler told his partner. “How’s that sound?”
“All right.”
Before ten minutes had passed, they had movement.
The first to arrive was a dark Range Rover with such deep tint on the windows that it was impossible to make out whoever was inside. It pulled into the parking lot of the abandoned factory opposite and just sat there idling and waiting. Then came a Mercedes. Like the Range Rover, every glass surface was dark. It too stopped in the lot, opposite the other vehicle.
Doors opened, and four people alighted from each. Six of those were armed and set up a small perimeter around the other two. “Get some pictures, Mike,” Tyler said to his partner.
Brand was ahead of that curve, and the pictures were starting to flow.
Tyler focused on the two primary targets below. One they already knew: Kenji Ishida, head of the Ishida-gumi Yakuza syndicate. While not the largest in Japan, it was one of the fastest growing.
The two DEA men weren’t sure about the identity of the other new arrival. She was female; the headscarf and shapely figure gave that away. The dark glasses helped conceal her identity. Brand took numerous pictures of her so the analysts could check their computers with the latest facial recognition software to figure out who she was.
The two talked for a moment before turning to their men, sending them to their vehicles for different reasons. The woman approached Ishida and shook hands with him, then they turned to watch Ishida’s man return with what looked like a compact notebook computer. He set it on the hood of the Mercedes and typed something. Ishida and the woman watched, and once it was complete, she turned back to her man.
“I guess that was the money transaction,” Tyler said. “Now for the drugs.”
“Why would the head of a Yakuza syndicate be buying drugs, Chuck? He supplies the shit all over the world.”
The answer became clear when it was dragged from the rear seat of the Range Rover.
“Shit,” Tyler hissed. “Make sure you get this.”
A hooded figure was shoved toward the Yakuza boss, then the hood was removed to reveal a man of Asian descent. The prisoner blinked when he saw who was standing before him. In that short space of time, Kenji Ishida drew a handgun and placed it against the prisoner’s head. The woman stepped aside, and Ishida pulled the trigger.
“Fuck,” Tyler growled. “Tell me you got that.”
“I got it,” Brand said in a low voice. “But somebody sure screwed up. This was supposed to be a drug exchange.”
“Let’s get out of here. We need to find out who that woman is.”
Worldwide Drug Initiative, El Paso, Texas
When Thurston got back to the WDI HQ, she called Kane and Luis Ferrero into her office to explain what was happening. Kane wasn’t thrilled about being an operator down with the possibility of an operation starting but he’d deal with it.
Ferrero took it in his stride. The former DEA agent, who was in his late forties, was the man who’d put the original team together. Then Thurston was installed in the position, leaving Ferrero in charge of operations.
“Do we know how long he will be gone?” Ferrero asked.
“No idea,” Thurston replied.
“I suppose we can run operations with a four-person team. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Good,” the general said. “I’m glad you feel that way because something came across my desk I think might need looking into.”
She pushed a folder across her worksurface toward Ferrero, who leaned down and flicked it open. The first page was a picture of Kenji Ishida. Ferrero looked questioningly at Thurston.
She said, “There is a picture below it.”
Ferrero moved the picture and saw another of a woman. It was grainy, but it was unmistakably a female. “Who is she?”
“We don’t know.”
“You want us to find out?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Kane reached out and moved around some of the items in the folder. He came across two more photos. One was of a man being taken from the back of a Range Rover. The other was of Ishida shooting him.
Thurston said, “The DEA had people on the ground surveilling Kenji because there was a rumor of a big drug deal going down. Instead, this was what they witnessed.”
“Where were these taken, ma’am?” Kane asked.
“In Chechnya.”
“The guy Kenji shot must have been mighty important for him to travel that distance to get there.”
“Or the woman who handed him over doesn’t like traveling,” Ferrero theorized.
“Who is the guy?” Kane asked.
“Ryuu Kita,” Thurston supplied. “Finding that out was easy. He disappeared two years ago with a million of Yakuza money. He was formerly Kenji Ishida’s accountant.”
“No wonder he put his lights out. You don’t cross the Yakuza and get away with it.”
Thurston nodded. “I had Slick do some digging for me. I called him from the plane just after I left Washington. Kenji did indeed fly out from Japan for the meeting. The woman, on the other hand, is a ghost.”
“There’s a lot of that going around lately,” Kane muttered.
“Slick tried to track her using satellites that were in the area, along with anything else that could give us a picture of her movements but came up empty-handed.”
Ferrero frowned. “Nothing? The guy is an electronic genius, and he has nothing?”
“The satellite feed was jammed, same with everything else. It was all down for an hour.”
“I still find it hard to believe Slick came up empty-handed,” Ferrero said.
“Intelligence agency background?” Kane asked.
“It’s possible,” Thurston said. “However, I’ve still got Slick digging around the dark side, trying to find something.”
“What do you want us to do?” Kane asked Thurston.
“You’ve got the easy job.”
Kane grimaced. “Whatever you’re about to hand us, I’m sure it’ll be anything but.”
“Let’s say there’s a good chance we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
Both men stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate.
“You’ll abduct Kenji Ishida so he can be questioned, and in the meantime, with a little luck, he’ll give us information on the woman.”
“Where are we supposed to grab him from?”
“That’s the best part. Break out the longboards, Reaper. You’re off to Hawaii.”
&n
bsp; “Gather around,” Kane said, looking at his team.
As the team members moved closer, they stared at him in anticipation. “We’re about to go operational.”
“What shithole this time?” Axe asked.
“You’ll like this one, Axe,” Kane said with a grin. “We’re headed to Hawaii.”
The operator’s mouth split into a huge smile. “Sun, sand, and babes. My kind of shithole.”
Cara elbowed him in the ribs. “What happened to the good doctor, Casanova?”
Axe eyed her as though she was stupid, and he shouldn’t need to explain the situation. “I’m still seeing her. Doesn’t mean I can’t look, though.”
“We going one man down?” Brick asked, glancing at Cara. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Kane said, “Knocker is otherwise occupied doing something for the CIA.”
“Do we know what?”
“Need to know.”
“What are we doing in Hawaii, Reaper?” Cara asked, bringing the focus back to their op.
“Kenji Ishida. We’re going to abduct him for the DEA.”
“Wow, going after a Yakuza boss! That’s next-level.”
Standing silently among them was a person who hadn’t spoken since hearing about the mission. Kane looked at Carlos Arenas. A former member of the assault team, the one-time Mexican Special Forces commander was now their mission planner. His experience was unrivaled. “What say you, Carlos?”
He nodded slowly. “It can be done. A lot of planning will be needed.”
“Something you’re good at.”
Carlos began speaking slowly as if he were thinking out loud. “He’ll need to be grabbed and taken off the island the same day. Preferably within an hour of him being taken.”
“We can do that.”
“The hardest part will be not knowing his itinerary.”
Kane smiled. “That’s the beauty of it. We don’t need to. We know where he’s staying.”
“Get me the details, and I’ll have something for you by the time we land.”
“You’re coming?”
