Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14)

by Mathis, Loren

  “I’ve got a big favor to ask you man. You’ve heard about Richard Henning’s shooting a couple days ago, right?”

  “Yeah, something about some people in all black rode up to him on a sidewalk and opened up a few rounds of a clip into him, right? He’s really got some epic bad luck by being shot to death after having been rescued in a covert op by our team earlier.”

  “Yeah, incredibly piss poor luck. But it’s more likely that he was on someone’s death list, and luck has nothing to do with it. Anyway, I have sort of a situation that has come up, in regards to Henning’s shooting, and I need you to look into some things for me.” Of all the people in the world, Joshua trusted both Will and Malcolm with his life. He knew that anything he asked of him, Malcolm would do it if possible—and vice versa.

  “Yeah, you know I’m down, Pope. What’s the situation?”

  “Well Vicki—”

  “Whoa. Wait. Hold on man. Time out. You’re talking about Victoria Sanchez? The same Victoria Sanchez who crushed your heart and left you to bleed out on the kitchen floor, a year ago?”

  “Yeah. The one and the same. Glad you remembered, man,” Joshua said dryly. Of all his friends, Malcolm did have something of a flair for the dramatic. But Joshua couldn’t blame him for his incredulity about this. Will and he had basically picked a very much broken Joshua up of the floor—figuratively at least—and had helped him to repair himself and get through what was one of the worst periods of his life.

  “Look,” Joshua continued, “she’s in trouble and she needs my help. She was interviewing Henning when he got shot the other day.”

  Malcolm let out a loud whistle before replying, “No shit. Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s okay. She’s taking a shower now and—”

  “Wait she’s there with you now? Umm hello, ‘Danger, danger Will Robinson!’ Look Pope, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Can’t you help her you know … from a distance?”

  Joshua chose to ignore his friend’s remark. “Look, she came to me for help. Her apartment has been broken into since the shooting. You know that there is a rumor going around that this recent gang style execution of Henning was ordered by the same terrorist group that kidnapped him.”

  “Do you think that’s true? If so, Victoria is in some deep shit if it’s a terrorist group that is threatening her.”

  Joshua’s guts twisted inside out at his friend’s observation. “Yeah. But it doesn’t fit. Unless I’m missing something here, if it had been someone from a local cell of the Haqqai network who thought that Vicki saw something that she shouldn’t have, they would have waited until she got back to her apartment and then executed her. They wouldn’t have just left after grabbing her computer.”

  “True. Well, what do you think is going on?”

  “Damn if I know. But I have to find out soon. Can you check into a few things for me?”

  “Of course, man. You know that I have your back.”

  “You still have some contacts in Pakistan and Afghanistan right? “

  “Yeah, I know a few operatives who are still active in the region.”

  “See what you can shake loose in regards to whether or not Victoria’s been identified as a target. If not, then Richard Henning probably has someone else who wants him dead and who is currently flying under the radar,” Joshua said grimly.

  “Sure, no problem, man. I’m on it. I’ll get back to you when I get that info. Are you on leave?”

  “Yeah, just for a few days.”

  “All right, be careful.”

  Joshua hung up the phone, powered up his laptop, and turned on the television. The cable news station was currently talking about the attack on Henning and his death a few hours after the attack. The female news anchor was talking to a law enforcement contributor about the unidentified individuals who rode away on a black motorcycle just after the shooting took place. The station then cut to a visual of the former Congressman with his wife and daughter at a past Christmas dinner. Joshua turned the volume down and sat down on the couch with his laptop.

  Riiiiiinnnnnnnnnngggg.

  “Hello,” he said, answering his cell phone.

  “Hey big brother,” his sister’s excited, high-pitched voice filled his ear. Joshua smiled. Emmani had always been a bundle of energy, and even her hectic career as a pediatric nurse hadn’t managed to alter that.

  “Hey Little Bit. How are things going down there in Texas?” Little Bit was a nickname that had been bestowed upon Emmani when she was born. Their mother had been in her early forties (so older than normal) when she became pregnant with her second child. The pregnancy had been a very difficult one for her. As a result, Emmani had been born about a month premature, and she had remained slightly underweight throughout much of her childhood.

  “Great. The little ones make sure that I never have a dull moment. I’ve been working some killer shifts lately, but I’m going to take some vacation time next month. That’s actually why I’m calling. Do you mind if I come and stay with you in sunny San Diego for a week?”

  “Of course you can come and stay. I’d love that. When were you thinking about visiting?”

  “Cool. I’m going to take some time off from work at the end of May. Do you know if you’ll still be stateside then?

  “I’m not sure, yet. I’m actually on a short leave right now. If I get called out on a long-term overseas assignment I’ll get in contact with you to let you know the dates of my absence. So how are things going with you and the lawyer guy?” The last time that Emmani had called Joshua, she had been gushing about this new guy that she was dating, about how “different” and “mature” he was compared to her past few boyfriends.

  “Ugh,” Emmani scoffed. “Don’t get me started on Jason. He turned out to be a real asswaffle.”

  “Oh yeah? Is there anything that I need to handle for you?”

  “Nah. He was just your everyday, average jerk. Nothing that I could not deal with myself. So anyway, how are you doing big brother?”

  “I’m doing just fine. I’m on leave for a couple of days.”

  “I hope that you are actually taking it easy on your vacation. You should do something fun.”

  “Josh.”

  He glanced up from the sofa and saw that Vicki was standing before him in an Emory University T-shirt and a pair of shorts—clearly, these were her nightclothes. Her dark brown hair was still dripping wet from the shower, hanging down to her waist. Joshua had to pry his gaze from Victoria’s chest because he could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra. God help him.

  “Hello, Joshua? Is someone there with you?”

  His sister’s voice pulled his attention back to the phone. “Yeah, I have company. I’ll call you back tomorrow,” Joshua promised before hanging up. Emmani had still been in mid-sentence when he hung up, asking him if it was “someone special.”

  After he ended his relationship with Victoria, Emmani had been very vocal in sharing her opinion about the whole situation with him. Her opinion had actually surprised him. Even though she had gotten along well with Victoria, Emmani had agreed with both Will and Malcolm—that Joshua should just move on.

  Looking back up at Vicki’s face he saw that she had also taken out her contacts and was wearing the rectangular glasses that she had always hated, but that Joshua had loved. Joshua had always found glasses on women to be sexy. And Victoria was no exception. To him, glasses were just one more item of apparel to take off.

  “Hey Vicki, did you find everything okay?”

  “Yeah I did, thanks,” she said, sitting down on the sofa next to him. “Joshua, do you think that my mother is okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t told her anything about what’s going on. Do you think that anyone would try to hurt her?”

  Joshua stared into Victoria’s worried brown eyes, and he knew at that very moment that he was a goner. Actually, truth be told was probably a goner as soon as he answered her phone call. “I’m really no
t sure. I don’t know what we’re dealing with here, yet. I don’t even know who we are dealing with. So anything is possible. Your mother lives in New York still, right?”

  “Yes. Should I call her and let her know?”

  “Yeah, that would be a good idea. It’s probably not necessary, but I’ll call in a few favors tomorrow morning and see if I can get her a protection detail for the time being. You know what they say, better safe than sorry. I have some ex-military friends located in the Northeast that should be able to help,” he said.

  “Really? You would do that for me?” Victoria asked, unable to hide the bit of wonder in her voice.

  Joshua laughed. It couldn’t really have been described as a joyful laugh. “Yeah Victoria, I would. I’m surprised that you still don’t realize that by now.”

  Victoria looked at him and smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She moved to touch his hand. “Thank you, Josh. I really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, sure. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ve missed you, you know,” Victoria whispered, looking into his eyes.

  “Yeah. It’s probably better for both of us if we don’t start reminiscing about the past. You’re just here because you need my help. And I’m happy to provide that. We’re still friends, right? So, anyway, it’s after midnight. You should head on to bed we have a lot of things to check off our list for tomorrow.”

  “You’re right. Goodnight Josh,” Victoria said. She stood up and then leaned down to kiss him on his cheek before heading to the guest bedroom and closing the door.

  “Shit,” Joshua mumbled to himself. Yeah, he was definitely in trouble.

  Chapter Fourteen

  January 25, 2012

  Sokol, Russia

  T

  o the outside world, Dimitriv Arshavin was a successful businessman. He drove a fancy black Maserati, had a different blonde model for every day of the week, and a 15,000 square foot stone mansion in Moscow that sat on twenty acres of land.

  He was a moderately handsome man, with black hair and dark blue eyes. To all extents and purposes, he had “made it”—he was living the good life. Walking down the street in his designer tailored suits, he could have been any successful, talented business owner.

  However, what many people were not aware of was the type of industry that Dimitriv was involved in.

  The Russian criminal underworld had inducted Dimitriv into their circle at the tender age of eleven. He had first honed his skills with various crimes ranging from petty theft to arson. He’d moved on to intimidation, extortion, and murder in short shrift. It would be correct to say that Dimitriv had graduated at the top of his class from the School of Hard Knocks.

  His father had been a small-town pimp and his mother one of his father’s prostitutes, who died of AIDS when Dimitriv had only been ten years old. Even at the age of ten, he didn’t remember ever having cried for the loss of his mother. He hadn’t shed a single tear.

  She had been a prostitute and drug addict. A nobody in Dimitriv’s opinion. A shell of a person who wasn’t worth the time or energy to cry over.

  Dimitriv had been thirteen years old when he’d killed his first man.

  At a time when the biggest worry for most boys his age had been about asking their favorite crush out to the movies, Dimitriv had been concerned about murder. About making sure that he had the silencer on correctly, and that his aim was steady so that he only had to pull the trigger once—one trigger pull to the back of the head.

  Dimitriv had just walked up to the guy, who had stupidly been walking alone at night, and unleashed a single round from a clip into the back of his head. He hadn’t even seen it coming. The execution had been quite genius actually. What grown man would have been afraid of a thin, short twelve-year-old child? What the poor SOB hadn’t realized was that even children could be taught to kill.

  The man had made the lethal mistake of pissing off the wrong people, and had made it onto quite a lengthy hit list for one of the gangs in Russia’s well-developed criminal underground. To this day, Dimitriv didn’t even know the man’s name. His bosses at the time hadn’t told Dimitriv the man’s name, and he had never asked for it. It had never been important. But he had memorized the man’s photograph before making the hit. He could still recall every crevice and shadow of that man’s face.

  Dimitriv was now an underboss of that very same organization: the King’s Triad.

  It was quite possible that he was a man who was beyond redemption. Now at thirty-seven-years of age, he was as cold-hearted of a motherfucker as you could ever have the misfortune to meet. But being a cold motherfucker was pretty much a necessity for the type of work that Dimitriv was involved in.

  Currently, his group’s biggest criminal enterprises were the narcotics trade and prostitution. Dimitriv had put in his dues and he was now one of the top leaders of his organization. In the mid-1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian mafia saw a rebirth in leaders such as Vladimir Yasevich and Antonin Elson. Dimitriv was determined that his name would go down as one of the great Russian mob leaders.

  Right now, however, his organization had something of a cash flow problem. To put it simply, there wasn’t enough cash flowing into their operations. His group had the drug trade and prostitution arenas locked down in southeast Russia. But Dimitriv saw an opportunity for expansion into the heroin market in other countries.

  This wasn’t completely new territory; his group had dabbled in the drug trade before. There were close to three million heroin addicts in Russia and Dimitriv’s group was already supplying a large percentage of those addicts. However, now an excellent opportunity had landed right in Dimitriv’s lap so to speak. He had made contacts that had access to an original heroin source: Afghanistan poppy farms.

  With the punishing weather and arid climate in Afghanistan, it was difficult for farmers to make a living by trying to cultivate legitimate crops. This difficulty was fueled by extreme poverty and domestic instability. With his new connections in Afghanistan, he would be able to get initial access to a prime grade of opium before it was even cut, processed, and packaged for distribution.

  Dimitriv had learned a long time ago never to underestimate the lengths that people would go to in order to survive. When your family of four is facing elimination due to poverty and starvation, certain actions to prevent or alleviate that suffering suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. Contributing to the narcotics trade was the lesser of the two evils if the other evil was to watch your family waste away to nothing. Therefore, Dimitriv was quite confident that the supply from Afghanistan wasn’t going to be abating anytime soon.

  Anyone who had been paying attention knew that Afghanistan had been the main producer of heroin and cannabis—and had been for at least the past two decades. In recent years, Afghan heroin production had increased at a rapid rate, and the country had become the biggest supplier of heroin to Europe. Afghanistan opium exportation had now developed into a $4 billion business, and Dimitriv badly wanted a piece of that action.

  Dimitriv’s aspirations went beyond the European market, however. He wanted some of the U.S. market as well. The tricky part of the arrangement was to get the supply into the United States. Dimitriv and his group didn’t really need the U.S. Feds riding their asses.

  His new contact was guaranteeing access to largely untouched markets within the United States—which after Europe was one of the biggest “importers” of illegal drugs in the world. This arrangement was poised to be a guaranteed moneymaker, though obviously it wasn’t without risk to his organization.

  Dimitriv trusted his new associates about as far as he could throw them, which wasn’t very far. One of his trusted acquaintances, Saverin Tarasov, had introduced him to some “businessmen” who wanted to talk to Dimitriv about a new business proposition. The men had been cleared by Dimitriv’s security personnel before he even agreed to meet with them. Of the two men, he trusted Dr. Adil the most. Malook was purportedly a cleric, but Dimitriv got a
bad vibe from the man. Dimitriv had never much been one that embraced religious ideologies.

  Ordinarily, he would have stopped the meeting right then once he got a bad feeling about any of the men he was going to do business with. However, the proposition that the two proposed was just too tempting to resist.

  On Dimitriv’s part, his organization only had to agree to an exchange of weapons and protection for a portion of some of the heroin product coming out of Afghanistan that would be flowing into European and U.S. markets. Exchanging weapons was a small price to pay to get in on the type of action that Adil and Malook were proposing.

  Previously, Dimitriv’s group had purchased already processed, lower-grade heroin for distribution from local suppliers. This new working relationship would drastically reduce the price that Dimitriv’s organization would have to pay for the product by cutting out the middleman, and the product itself would be of a higher quality than their current batch.

  He was meeting today to discuss the finer details of the protection outfit that he was providing for the new laboratory that his group had helped open up on Sokol. The new laboratory was located in the back quadrant of land owned by a legitimate pharmaceutical company, Nava Drug Corp. Well, at least the company was legitimate on paper.

  It was a small facility, but bigger than what Dimitriv was used to for opium processing. Dimitriv had twenty of his own men guarding the building. Ten were outside guards and ten were “inside” guards. The purpose of the “inside” guards was to make sure that the product didn’t just up and walk away with the workers. Today, he was meeting with the head of the security.

  The first new shipment would arrive within the next few days and it would be cut, processed, and ready for distribution within two weeks time. They were going to be using the same transport company and channels that were currently used by Nava Drug Corp in order to bring the product into the United States.

  “How many security personnel do we have on schedule for when the first shipment comes in at the end of the week?” Dimitriv asked Andrei, one of his right hand men, as the two men stood on the third floor landing of the production facility, watching the factory workers below on the second floor.