“What happens to him?” Marko asked, against Brujic’s duct tape muffled screams.
“He goes into the pit with the rest of them, after Nenad’s crew works him over,” he replied and turned to the platoon leader.
“Give him the special treatment, reserved exclusively for the Kosovar whore queens…and get rid of that shit over there. What the fuck are you keeping them around for?” he demanded, pointing at the huddled women and children sitting off to the side, under armed guard.
“We wanted to save a few of them for you and your men,” Nenad replied.
“Get rid of them, and get out of here. I want this wrapped up in thirty minutes.”
“Grab your rifle, and hop in the rear vehicle. You smell like donkey shit,” Radovan uttered, still glaring at Brujic’s battered, duct-taped face.
Marko ran off to grab his gear. When he returned, Radovan and his entourage were already on their way to the Range Rovers, forcing him to sprint to catch up with them. Radovan glanced at him.
“Sniper, eh? Any good?” he said.
Nenad stood a few feet away and answered the question for Marko.
“One of the best I’ve seen in a while. Don’t embarrass us, Resja,” he said and slapped Marko on the back.
They exchanged momentary glances, and Marko nodded before climbing into the back seat of the rear SUV. The rich smell of leather penetrated the stench he had choked on for the entire three-day field operation, easing him into the vehicles luxurious interior.
“Fuck, man. You do smell like shit. Crack the windows,” the man directly in front of Marko in the passenger seat said.
“Bojan,” the burly guard next to Marko said, extending his hand.
“Thanks. Marko. What’s going to happen to them?” he said.
“Your buddies in front of the pit?” Bojan asked. “They’re going into the pit…where they belong.”
Marko stared out of the window at Sava, who looked slightly relaxed, despite the fact that they hadn’t been allowed to face away from the pit. He was glad that the Range Rover’s tinted windows hid his face. If Sava locked eyes with him for even a moment, the boy would know that he was as good as dead. He just hoped they made it quick for him. His thoughts of Sava faded, and the SUV started slowly moving away from the center of the village. He had to start planning phase two of his operation.
Marko had just passed the most critical test for any covert field operative. What the psychologists and psychiatrists involved in Black Flag’s mental readiness division program called a “permanent trust point,” or PTP. They had told his training class that most operatives will never reach a “permanent trust point” with any of the organizations they are attempting to penetrate, and of those operatives who do, even fewer will survive the circumstances surrounding it. Once an operative survives their unique PTP, they will achieve the next level of security and access within their organization. This term was reserved for significant, high-level penetration, and Radovan Grahovac’s personal security detail was only a few tiers away from Srecko Hadzic, his ultimate goal. From an operational perspective, Marko had passed with flying colors. From General Sanderson’s point-of-view, he had far exceeded all expectations.
Purchase Black Flagged
Excerpt from The Jakarta Pandemic
A novel by Steven Konkoly
Prologue
Alex checked his watch for the tenth time in less than twenty minutes. 5:50 PM.
Where are they?
He had started to lose his patience early, which came as no surprise. He had been lying under the McCarthy’s play set for nearly an hour, as a vicious Nor’easter dumped thick waves of snow on him. This would be enough to test anyone’s patience…and physical limits.
He lowered his night vision scope for a moment and rubbed his eyes. Now, even the green image in the scope added to his discomfort. He just hoped that Charlie was keeping a better watch over the stretch of ground that defined the ambush site.
He’d better be, or they could stumble right through here undetected.
Alex had doubts about spotting them with his night vision scope. The near absence of ambient light, combined with a blinding snowstorm, continued to degrade the already grainy image formed by the inexpensive first generation night scope.
He twisted open the green ceramic thermo, and poured the last of the hot tea prepared for him by Kate. He sipped the steaming tea from the thermos cap and placed the cap down next to the rifle in front of him and took another look through the night vision. He could still see the Hayes’ house, but the image was even grainier. He knew the batteries were not the issue; he’d just changed them. Soon enough, he’d have to rely solely on Charlie to spot them in time to spring a coordinated ambush. If not, he’d have to take the three men down himself, which wasn’t optimal, but was still well within his range of capabilities. He didn’t want to think about what could happen if they slipped by him. Nothing would stand between these psychopaths and his family.
As long as I see them before they’re right on top of me I’ll be fine.
Alex swigged the rest of the warm tea and replaced the lid. He tucked the thermos into his backpack and checked his rifle again. Looking through the Aimpoint scope, he saw that the red dot still glowed brightly in the center of the sight. He pulled back on the AR-15’s charging handle and ejected the bullet loaded in the chamber, leaving the brass cartridge in the snow where two other bullets lay. He’d ejected one bullet every half hour to ensure that the freezing temperatures had not affected the weapon’s mechanical action. A malfunction tonight would spell disaster.
He suffered a sudden, violent, and insuppressible full body shiver, which rendered him useless for a few seconds. He couldn’t last out here all night, and he knew it. He looked through the night vision scope again, and the green image confirmed that he was still alone. Staring through the scope, he wondered how it was possible for things to have spiraled so far out of control.
So far gone, in fact, that he now found himself lying under a neighbor’s play set in a blizzard, eagerly waiting to kill. He never thought twice about doing this in Iraq. It was his mission. He didn’t really have any problem with it here either, and he could rationalize this act on several levels. He had to do it: for the good of the neighborhood, and probably society in general, but most importantly…for the immediate safety of his family.
And in the end, that was all that really counted for Alex.
Arrival
Chapter 1
Friday, November 2, 2013
Alex was jarred awake by a loud pulsing vibration. He squinted in the darkness and labored to turn his head toward the source of the persistent buzzing sound.
Shit, my iPhone.
The phone’s display illuminated a half empty glass of water on the nightstand. He watched, still helpless as the phone moved closer to the edge with each vibration. Breaking through the murk of a broken sleep cycle, he reached for the phone to check the caller ID. Maine Medical Center. A jolt of adrenaline shot through his body, and Alex headed out of the bedroom to the hallway.
“Alex Fletcher,” he answered in a whisper.
“Oh…Alex. It’s Dr. Wright. I thought I’d get your voicemail.”
Dr. Wright was the head of the Maine Medical Center’s Infectious Disease Department.
“No problem, Dr. Wright. I usually don’t keep my phone on the nightstand. Just happened to end up there tonight,” he said, closing the door to the master bedroom.
“I’m glad you’re awake, Alex. I’m fairly confident we’ve seen our first cases of the new pandemic flu tonight. Cases started rolling into the ERs early this evening.”
“You said ‘ERs’. More than one?”
“Yes. Three cases at Maine Med. Two came from Westbrook and one from Falmouth. And one case at Mercy, patient walked over from somewhere in the west end. I also have a confirmed case at Maine General in Augusta and possible cases at Eastern Maine Med up in Bangor.”
“Confirmed as what?”
> “Confirmed as nothing I’ve ever seen before. That’s why I think we’re dealing with this new virus out of Hong Kong,” Dr. Wright said.
“That’s more than six cases. How did this pop up here first and not Boston? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Boston has been hit with several dozen cases, possibly more.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t see anything on the news or on any of the websites. We’ve been keeping an eye on this,” Alex said.
“I don’t know what to tell you, but I know for a fact that Boston has been slammed. A friend of mine at Mass General called to tell me to get ready. He said that area hospitals in Boston saw dozens of cases trickle in overnight Wednesday, with more showing up as the day progressed. Several dozen more by the time I talked to him.”
“Why didn’t the media catch this yet?” he asked.
“Well, between you and me, and I don’t have to remind you that this entire conversation never happened—”
“Of course. Absolutely, Dr. Wright,” Alex said instantly.
“We have been instructed by the state health department to report all cases directly to them so they can coordinate resources and notify federal health agencies. I assume that direction filtered down from DHS. They also asked us not to notify the media, in order to avoid a panic. I can understand part of that logic, but if you ask me, I think they’re trying to keep this under wraps because they’re not prepared. Unfortunately, this is the only direction we’ve received so far from the state or feds. Or maybe that’s a good thing for now. Aside from rushing us more useless avian flu detection kits, nothing else has been done. Alex, I have to let you go. I have a long night ahead of me.”
“Sorry to hold you up. Thank you for the call, Dr. Wright. I really appreciate the heads up, seriously. The preliminary case fatality rates in Asia look high.”
“Yeah, we’re not taking any chances. This is different than the Avian Flu, which was bad enough. It makes the Swine Flu look like a common cold. And thanks for making a trip over here yesterday, especially considering the fact that the state’s anti-viral stockpiles will fall under federal control if the flu spirals out of control. Your samples will really come in handy.”
“Could you use some more? We’ve been instructed to keep our distribution of TerraFlu to a minimum, but I have no problem hooking you guys up. Really.”
“I’ll take whatever you can give me at this point, but I don’t want you to get in trouble with Biosphere, Alex.”
“I’m not worried about them. What time works for you tomorrow? My schedule is pretty clear, so I can make a trip over any time.”
“How about 12:45? I plan to be back from the hospital at that point. My first patient is at one. We could take care of it then,” Dr. Wright said.
“Works for me. See you at 12:45. Good luck tonight,” Alex said and waited for a reply, but the line was already dead.
He headed back into the bedroom and looked over at Kate, who was soundly asleep. He walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. She barely moved.
He left the bedroom and walked to his home office, activated his computer, and checked the Boston Globe and Boston Herald. Still nothing.
He checked the International Scientific Pandemic Awareness Collaborative (ISPAC) website and navigated to their pandemic activity map. The map had changed dramatically since he’d last seen it and was now interactively linked to Google Earth.
Color coded symbols represented reported flu locations, and when you passed the mouse over one of the new icons, basic information appeared in a text box, which could be further expanded for more detailed information. Light blue: cases of interest, Yellow: initial outbreak, Orange: small scale outbreak, Red: medium sized outbreak, Violet: large scale outbreak.
He zoomed in on North America.
Cases in Canada, Mexico, Central America…wait, wait, look at this, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. He looked at the East Coast and saw no colored icons. Alex adjusted the map to focus on southern California and placed the cursor over the yellow Los Angeles icon.
“Los Angeles. Population 4,089,245. Isolated outbreaks. 190+ cases reported. Uncontained. Isolated outbreaks among ethnic Asian populations.”
In a separate desktop window, he navigated to the Los Angeles Times homepage. He looked for the California/Local section. Here we go. He found an article and began to read:
Hong Kong Flu Hits Asian Community.
Cedars Sinai confirms at least a dozen cases of Hong Kong Flu. Mainly confined to Asian community. UCLA Medical Center confirms several cases. Mainly Asian community. East LA Doctor’s Hospital sees its first cases late in the evening on October 31. Community leaders decry nearly one day delay in reporting cases to the public. Employee at Cedars Sinai contacts Los Angeles Times with information about suspected flu cases. Cases were being kept isolated from other patients and under a tight information seal. Times reporters launched an immediate investigation into all area hospitals, uncovering several dozen more cases.”
Looks like a cover up.
Alex put the cursor over the yellow San Francisco icon. “San Francisco. Population 853,758. Isolated outbreaks. 100+ cases reported. Uncontained. Isolated outbreaks among ethnic Asian populations.”
He then moved the cursor south to San Diego and placed it over the yellow icon.
He changed the view to China and saw that dozens of southern coastal cities were shaded either orange or red; Hong Kong and the surrounding areas were shaded violet. He passed the mouse over one of these areas.
“Greater Guangzhou city. Population 12,100,000. Massive outbreak. 8,000+ reported cases. Uncontained. Containment efforts focused on Guangdong Province.”
8,000 plus cases in one city? I thought there were only 26,000 altogether in China yesterday?
Alex passed the mouse over a few more cities in the area around Hong Kong and saw similar text fields. He quickly added up the other numbers, and calculated roughly 77,000 reported cases in southern China.
He zoomed out of China and settled on a world view. Colored dots appeared to sweep outward in a concentric wave from Southeast Asia. A solid perimeter of blue dots extended from Japan, through South Korea and Vladivostok, then reached across northern China and connected with Pakistan and India. India was covered in blue dots and yellow dots; orange icons appeared centered over several major cities within India. Oddly, Java Island contained no dots. He placed the cursor over Java.
“Java Island. Population 150,000,000. No reports.”
Something’s up over there.
Beyond Asia’s ring, blue-colored dots littered every continent, concentrated on nearly every major city. He almost wished he hadn’t seen the map. He felt his stomach churn as a wave of anxiety blanketed him. Still, he walked back to the bedroom and lay down next to Kate, feeling secure lying there with her. He closed his eyes and started breathing deeply in a futile attempt to induce sleep.
Purchase The Jakarta Pandemic
Excerpt from King of Swords
A novel by Russell Blake ©2011
King of Swords is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and real people, living or dead, is coincidental. Having said that, the backdrop and historical context of the novel is based in fact. The drug war in Mexico has been an ongoing confrontation between government forces and the ever-strengthening cartels – now the largest illegal drug trafficking network in the world, whose primary target market is the United States.
Thousands of police and soldiers have been killed over the last ten years, as the war has intensified due to a crackdown by pro-U.S. administrations. Cartel members slaughter one another by the thousands each year, as well as huge numbers of innocent bystanders. The brutality of the turf wars that are a constant and ongoing facet of the trade is stunning; well over a thousand children have been butchered during the last decade, as have countless family members of traffickers, killed in retribution or as a deterrent.
The last two Secretaries of the Interio
r for Mexico died in suspicious air crashes. The Mexican cartels are now the largest narcotics distribution entities in the world, with revenues that exceed those of many nation states. Roughly ten thousand people per year die as a direct result of cartel violence in Mexico.
The Sinaloa cartel is real. The Knights Templar cartel is also real, as is the Gulf cartel, the Tijuana cartel, and the Zeta cartel. New cartels pop up when the heads of the old groups die, and the names change with some frequency. The only constant is the bloodshed; the natural consequence of the economics of trafficking in an illegal substance that generates in excess of fifty billion dollars a year, wholesale, for the cartels in Mexico; a country where the average person makes a hundred and sixty dollars a month.
A Description of the Tarot Card, ‘The King of Swords’
In full regalia, the King of Swords sits proudly on his throne – with a long, upward-pointing, double-edged sword clutched in his right hand, and his left hand resting lightly on his lap. A ring adorns his left Saturn finger – representing power and commitment to responsibility. The King’s blue tunic symbolizes a desire for spiritual enlightenment; his purple cape symbolizes empathy, compassion and intellect. The backrest of his throne is embellished with butterflies, signifying transformation, and crescent moons orbit around an angel situated by his left ear, positioned, perhaps, to lend a delicate guidance. The backdrop of the sky has very few clouds, signifying pragmatic mental clarity. The trees dotting the landscape stand still, with not a rustle – reflecting the King of Swords’ stern judgment.
King of Swords Reversed
The reversed King of Swords depicts a man who is ruthless or excessively judgmental; when reversed, the King of Swords suggests the misuse of mental power, authority and drive. The reversed King of Swords can represent manipulation and persuasion in order to achieve selfish ends. He is a very intelligent character who likes to demonstrate to others his superiority, either verbally or through actions. It is best to be wary of this type of person because, although he may be charming and intelligent, he is remorseless and can do only harm. He has only his personal interests in mind and will do whatever necessary to achieve those interests, even if it means destroying others.
Black Flagged Redux Page 44
