Covert Network (A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series Book 14)

by Trevor Scott

  “What do you think?” Jake asked in a low whisper.

  Sirena glanced first at Esteban, who was peering through small binoculars, and then to Jake. “It looks like some kind of self-contained commune.”

  “The massive garden?” Jake asked.

  “Right,” she said. “And the water collection and backup generators.”

  Esteban chimed in, “But I don’t see any security.”

  “Except for the perimeter fence and the locked front gate,” Jake said. “The question has to be: Are they trying to keep people out? Or, are they trying to keep people in?”

  “Good question,” Sirena said.

  “The advantage we have is their lack of communication,” Jake said. “What do you think, Esteban?”

  “I think I am glad I retired,” Esteban said. “Also, I need a cigarette and another drink.”

  There was no way that Jake could rely on this man for anything. As far as he was concerned, the man had done his job. He had gotten them all the intel available and helped them find the camp. Time to set him free. “Are you feeling all right to drive?”

  Esteban turned to Jake. “Why?”

  “Because I need a contact to cover our asses if the wrong shit goes down,” Jake explained.

  “Like what?” The Peruvian looked confused.

  Sirena smiled and gave a slight chuckle. “You’ve just met Jake.” She finished her thoughts in Spanish very quickly.

  Jake was able to understand some of that, and it sounded like Sirena was explaining what Jake was trying to convey to the man. They would need someone in authority to clean up any potential mess.

  “So,” Esteban said. “You want me to leave?”

  Jake pulled out his hotel door card and stretched his hand out to Esteban. “Just temporarily. I have a special weapon in my hotel room.” Jake told the man his hotel and the room number. “We really need that weapon. Just in case. You understand.”

  The Peruvian pulled out an old .38 caliber six-shot revolver from inside his jacket. “I can help with this.”

  “No,” Jake said. “This is a long rifle with enough ammo to take out this whole compound.”

  “Why did you not bring it with us to begin with?” Esteban asked.

  Good question. “I thought this would be only a recon mission tonight. But now I realize we must move tonight.”

  Esteban took the key card from Jake. “What does this weapon look like?”

  Jake laughed. “You can’t miss it. I left it on the bed. The ammo is in a large duffle bag.”

  The Peruvian nodded. “It will take me about an hour or more to go there and back.”

  “All right. We’ll just hold down the fort. Maybe get a little shut eye until you return.”

  Esteban checked his watch. “It might be an hour and a half.”

  “No problem,” Jake said. “We still have at least five hours of darkness.”

  The Peruvian got to his feet and shuffled back down to the car.

  Jake glanced at the compound with the binoculars.

  “You are a bad man, Jake Adams,” Sirena said.

  He turned to her. “What?”

  “You just sent that man to retrieve your dirty underwear and a weapon that doesn’t exist.”

  Jake shrugged. “I might have just saved his life.”

  “He’s dying, Jake.”

  “So. I don’t need to hasten his departure. Are you ready to go?”

  Sirena looked concerned, an expression she rarely conveyed. “You want to try to take this compound with just the two of us? We could just call in the local policia. Or at least ask for Agency help.”

  “We could,” Jake said. “But what I didn’t tell you in front of our Peruvian friend is that Tiffany Larsen should be landing in Lima any moment.”

  “How did she get free?”

  He explained what Kurt had told him on the phone. “It is what it is now. We don’t go in with what we wished we had, we go in with what we have.”

  She nodded. “I agree.”

  “Besides, if your friend is in there she can help us.”

  “Two or maybe three against how many?”

  “No way of knowing,” Jake said. “But there are three SUVs and a van down there. That means at least four drivers, along with others.”

  “That’s crazy.” She hesitated and then added, “No, that’s typical Jake Adams. We each have just two handguns and extra magazines.”

  Jake saw the Peruvian’s car pull out and head back down toward the main road.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked.

  He took out the papers that Esteban had given them and turned his back to the camp below. With a small pen light, Jake pointed out how they would infiltrate the compound. Based on the location of the cameras they had identified and the lights in the camp, they drew up a way to move through the enclosure without being discovered.

  “What if they have motion sensors?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to assume they do. Which is why we cut the power to the main buildings first, including the backup generators.”

  “The sensors and cameras will be on backup battery power.”

  “True,” Jake said. “But they will know they’re being infiltrated without being able to see us.”

  “We can’t see them either,” she said. “Not without night vision goggles.”

  Jake turned off his flashlight and waited a moment. “Our eyes will adjust. There’s a half moon.”

  “And cloud cover.”

  Based on the intel from Esteban, there was a back gate that the military had used for deliveries and later on for prisoner transport. But the thing that bothered Jake the most was the fact that there were no guards roaming the compound. What if this was nothing more than a modern-day commune of hippies trying to escape governments and authority. Not likely, Jake thought. He doubted that the Peruvian government would allow that. However, with enough money spread around, a human trafficking operation was possible.

  Jake and Sirena picked up their small satchels and wandered down the hillside toward the back gate. Since there was no indication of an armed adversary, they kept their guns holstered for now.

  The back gate was chained and padlocked. If it were not for the razor wire over the top, they could have simply climbed over. Sirena picked the lock while Jake kept watch for anything out of the ordinary. It took Sirena less than two minutes to get the lock open. Damn near a lifetime while standing in the open at a gate.

  Once they got through the gate, Jake strung the chain back through but didn’t close the lock.

  Now they quietly slipped toward a building on their right, coming up alongside the back where there was no camera coverage. Jake’s eyes had adjusted by now to the darkness. He glanced at Sirena and saw only determination now. That was the old Sirena he knew. Once she was in the shit, she was all business.

  Jake checked his watch, where the hands were illuminated. He raised five fingers and pointed toward the back of the buildings, meaning to give him five minutes to cut the generators. Jake would tell her through his comm when he was done, and Sirena would then cut the main power.

  He hurried off on his own through the darkness around the back of the buildings. There was no central backup generator system, only three individual units attached to the largest buildings. Jake had a feeling these had to be the most important structures. Otherwise they wouldn’t have AC and backup power. He didn’t just turn off the generators. He cut the main power leading to the units with his knife.

  When he finished with the last unit, he signaled Sirena to cut the power. She did this almost immediately, cutting the lights along the perimeter fence and the AC units. Now the compound was quiet. Almost too quiet, Jake thought.

  The plan was to wait for at least one minute after the power was cut to make sure they didn’t have some other backup power system—perhaps a solar system with batteries. Jake didn’t think that was likely, though, since they had seen no solar panels on the roofs. No, this place was more o
ld school.

  Jake hunkered down and waited by the last generator, seeing if someone would come to check on it. He didn’t have to wait long, though.

  First, he saw a dark figure exit a side door of the middle building. When he clicked on his flashlight, Jake could see that it was a man fully clothed in khakis and a military-style T-shirt.

  Scooting back around the corner, Jake waited as the light came closer, the man’s boots crunching through small rocks. As the man rounded the corner, Jake swiftly put the man in a sleeper hold, his flashlight falling to the ground. The muscular man struggled in Jake’s grasp, but was not able to scream out for help. Jake kept his head tight against the man’s shoulders so the guy couldn’t head butt him. Slowly his squirming came to a halt and he drifted off to sleep. Once the guy was out, Jake zip-tied that man’s hands and feet. With his knife he cut off a piece of the man’s shirt and shoved it into the guy’s mouth. Subdued now, Jake checked the man for weapons and communications. No comm. But he did carry a Walther P99 in 9mm, with one extra magazine. Jake confiscated that, shoving the semi-auto handgun and extra magazine into his small bag. Now he knew which building contained the armed folks at this camp. The middle building. Getting on his comm quietly, Jake told Sirena the building he would move into. She acknowledged and said she would try the first building, the closest to the back gate.

  Moving with great stealth, Jake moved along the side of the building. But he stopped dead in his tracks when the compound suddenly got lighter. He looked up to the sky and saw that the clouds had drifted and exposed the half moon. Now he was stuck.

  29

  Maria Vega had not been able to sleep since arriving at the camp. Sure, she had slept some in the past couple of days, but that was mostly intermittent rest, not full REM sleep. This evening was no different. After the meeting in the Great Hall and lights out, she had simply rested on her back staring up at the ceiling tiles.

  Although the windows were painted black, there were still cracks in the swirling paint that allowed light into their sleeping quarters. Just before lights out she had finally found one of the young college students from Spain and taken from the bar in Buenos Aires. But Maria had not yet told her she was with the Spanish government and had come there to liberate her and the rest of the girls. For now, she could not even ask about the fate of her college friend. That would have to come with time.

  Less than an hour ago the last sobs from various girls finally subsided and they had all gone to sleep.

  So, lying awake and her mind reeling out of control, Maria was surprised when the air conditioning shut down. That happened all the time, though, since the AC would reach the programmed temperature and shut down. But this time the shutdown had happened at the same time as the outside lights that seeped through the painted windows also turning off.

  Maria sat up in bed and considered her options. With the power down and the lights off, could she finally escape this place?

  She quietly got down from her top bunk and slid on her scrub bottoms. Then she found her shoes and put those on as well, her eyes scanning the room for anyone else who might be awake. But she saw nobody stirring.

  Now she stepped softly toward the front entrance of their dormitory. She knew that her captors locked the door from the outside, because she had complained that in case of a fire they needed to be able to escape. The guards simply smiled. They didn’t care if all of them died in this old building. Yet, Maria also knew that if anything went down, the girls could escape through the windows.

  Just as she got to the door, she heard someone outside and she moved to the side where the door would swing in, waiting for her time to attack.

  •

  When Jake gave Sirena the signal to cut the power, she had been waiting at the junction box to cut the wire. She couldn’t simply hit the breaker switch for the main power, she had to cut the line to the junction box, which would take an electrician a long time to repair.

  Then Sirena had gone to the barracks the farthest from the front entrance to the camp and closest to the back gate they had breached to enter.

  Her choice of buildings had been right, she reasoned, when she saw that the door was locked shut by two simple slide bolts.

  She considered drawing her gun from her hip, but dismissed the idea outright. These had to be the girls. The prisoners. Sirena couldn’t shoot one of them by mistake.

  Now that she had quietly slid the bolts open, she pulled down on the door lever and slowly pushed the door inward.

  Gently she stepped inside and turned to the breathing she heard inside the long, narrow barracks.

  Suddenly, she felt movement behind her. She swiveled and stepped out of range. But more strikes came flying at her. In the darkness it was nearly impossible to see anything in the room other than flashes of dark shadows moving toward her.

  Sirena landed a kick as her attacker came at her and she heard the dark figure groan in pain. Then, in the heat of the fight, she could here Jake asking her if she was all right. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.

  Luckily when a leg went up and hit her with a roundhouse kick, Sirena caught the leg and lifted up, sending her attacker to the floor with a heavy crash.

  Now with the attacker down, Sirena jumped on top of the dark figure. When she went to push the torso down, she felt larger breasts and knew then that it was a woman.

  “I’m here to help you,” Sirena said in Spanish.

  The woman struggled under her, but suddenly stopped when she heard Sirena speak.

  “Sirena?” the woman asked.

  “Maria?” Sirena asked.

  The fight immediately turned from a struggle to an embrace, with both women sitting up on the rough floor.

  “How did you find me?” Maria asked softly.

  “Never mind. We need to get you out of here. How many men are there?”

  “Less than ten. But what do you mean we? I hope you brought some friends. They are heavily armed.”

  Sirena hugged her friend once more, kissing her on the right cheek. Then she whispered, “We might have to leave the others until we can get help.”

  “No. We all must get out.”

  “This is bigger than just this one camp, Maria.”

  “I had a feeling.”

  “Is Gerhard Beck here?”

  “You know of him?”

  “A little,” Sirena said.

  “These girls are being used and sold as sex slaves,” Maria said. “We cannot leave them behind. But we might have a bigger problem.”

  “What is that?”

  “The girls who have been here for a while have been brainwashed by Beck. They believe they are meant to be here. That it is their fate and destiny.”

  “I don’t believe in that kind of destiny, Maria.”

  “I tell you this only because some will not want to leave,” Maria said.

  Sirena got to her feet and helped the Spanish intel officer up as well. She could see and hear some of the women stirring in their bunks. Some whispered to those next to them. Then a couple came toward Sirena, their movements hesitant and uncertain.

  They started to ask questions and Sirena could pick up various differences in their language. These girls were from all over South America. She guessed many were those she had discovered as missing persons.

  Just as Sirena was about to confront the young girls, a shot rang out from somewhere outside. Then a salvo of shots echoed through the night.

  30

  The first sign that something wasn’t right in Gerhard Beck’s utopian camp was when he heard a light knock on his door. Disoriented, he glanced around his small bedroom and noticed the lights from his clock radio were off.

  “What is it?” Beck asked, his voice brusque.

  His second in command opened his door and glanced around, visible only by the use of his small LED flashlight. “Sir, we have a power failure.”

  Beck sat up and swung his legs to the floor. “Why haven’t the backup generators kicked in?”
>
  “I’ve sent a man to find out. He should report back shortly.”

  Beck was marginally concerned. The power grid in Peru was notoriously unreliable, which is why they had tried to become more self-sufficient with the generators. Now all they needed was a vast array of solar panels pulling power to walls of batteries.

  He got dressed slowly, throwing on his khakis and an olive-drab T-shirt. As he tied his boots onto his feet, he asked, “Any word from our guest?”

  “No, sir. But, as you know, we only turn on our SAT phone when we call out. So, they have no way of contacting us. Would you like me to call our men at the airport?”

  Beck checked his wrist watch and realized their contact would have landed a while ago. “No. Stay silent for now.” He thought about the power failure and said, “Have you checked the security cameras?”

  “No, sir. They are not manned at night. With the power outage. . .”

  “They work on battery backup for at least a half hour,” Beck reminded his man. Then he got up and went to his desk to retrieve his laptop. He quickly logged on and pulled up the security cameras.

  “The cameras are not like the newer models,” his man said. “They won’t pick up good video.”

  Beck ignored his man and toggled through the camera feeds. Finally, he saw something out of the ordinary. “Who is that man? Is he one of your men?”

  The second in command glanced over Beck’s shoulder and tried to get a better view. “I can’t tell, sir. But I don’t believe so. He is dressed in all black clothes.”

  “And he has a gun in his right hand,” Beck said.

  Then the figure was about to enter the building when a man burst out and fired one shot. Beck and his man both startled. There was a flash on the screen, followed by the report in real time just outside the front of their building. The shot must have missed the dark figure, because he shot a number of times and the man at the front door crashed to the threshold.