Gates of Dawn (A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series Book 12)

by Trevor Scott

  Then Jake heard an echo and felt someone pulling on his left arm. He rolled over to his back and aimed his gun upward. Then he noticed the slide on his gun was back. He was out of rounds in that magazine. Even more importantly, it was Zaiga pulling on him.

  She helped him to his feet. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Jake shook his head. Before answering, he found a full magazine in his pocket and replaced that with the spent one in his gun. “I think so. Where is Sofia?”

  Zaiga shifted her head toward the church. “Checking on identification. Where’s the third man?”

  “I put him to sleep back there,” Jake said, pointing his thumb behind him.

  “I’ll check on him,” she said.

  “No. We’ll check on him.”

  The two of them rounded the corner of the closest stanchion and entered the covered passageway. When they got to the spot where Jake left the man asleep, he wasn’t there.

  “He was right here,” Jake said. “It was the man from Riga. The one with the wool cap.”

  Zaiga pulled out a small LED light and swept the light around the area. Finally, she found the man’s gun against the far wall. She picked up the gun and said, “It’s a Glock.” She shoved it into her pocket. Then she put the light on Jake and her expression changed. “You’re bleeding.”

  Jake felt the side of his head and immediately felt the wound. It wasn’t deep. It felt more like an abrasion. “It must have been a ricochet or a piece of stone.”

  Suddenly, Sofia ran over to them. By now sirens were echoing through the night and seemed to be getting closer.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Sofia said.

  “What about the men?” Zaiga asked.

  “They’re dead. No identification. Let’s go. We must move.”

  They had planned for this possibility. The three of them would cut through the corner of the church, which led to a narrow passageway that would take them into a pedestrian corridor of the Old Town. Jake guessed it would take time for the police to find the shooting location. There was no way they could pinpoint with any accuracy or witnesses where the men had been shot. That would give them sufficient time to escape.

  Once they got to a safer area just a few blocks from their own hotel, Jake pulled up and said, “Zaiga. You’re going to have to do something about your phone.”

  She pulled it from her pocket and almost threw it into a trash can.

  “Wait,” Jake said. “Just remove the battery.”

  Zaiga did that and then put her phone back into her pocket. “Now what?”

  Jake found the phone he had gotten from the man he put to sleep. “I got this off the guy.” He held the phone along the edge. “We can check for prints and the call record.”

  Sofia shook her head. “Prints maybe. But that’s a local prepaid phone.”

  Jake turned it on and checked over the call history. There was only one number called at least a dozen times. He memorized that number. Then he dropped the phone to the ground and smashed it with his foot. He picked up the remains and threw them into the garbage can.

  Turning to the women, Jake said, “All right. Now I’m ready.”

  “For what?” Zaiga asked.

  “Back to the hotel. I need to wash my head and we need to pick up our bags.” He turned to Sofia. “How secure is your place?”

  “My apartment?” Sofia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Very secure building a few blocks from Cathedral Square.”

  “Isn’t that your dead drop area?” Jake asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I need you to ask for your meeting with Pavel,” he said.

  Sofia looked confused. “After what just happened?”

  “Because of what just happened. You can tell Pavel that his men tried to kill you. You had no choice but to shoot back.”

  “But he will know that I was with Zaiga.”

  “That’s all right,” Jake said. “He has to know that you two know each other, considering your past in the Olympics.”

  Sofia nodded and Zaiga shrugged agreement.

  Jake guessed this Pavel Tursunov had a file on every intelligence officer in the Baltics. Everyone but Jake. He wasn’t surprised that the Russians were using old methods of contact with agents. With the NSA and other organizations intercepting electronic communications, Jake would do the same. Luckily for him, he had inside knowledge of NSA tactics and the ability to contact those he needed through encrypted communications.

  •

  Anthony Paitrick was secure in his hotel room when he got a call from Linus Sutkus, the Lithuanian Intelligence Chief. He wasn’t entirely sure if he believed what the head of VSD was telling him, but he had to take it seriously. The man sent him an attached file with a short video clip, which was interesting but not really enlightening. Once he got off the line with the Lithuanian, he called the Agency director of operations. But that man told him to call the CIA Director himself to brief him.

  As Paitrick waited on the line for the director, he thought about the summit coming up in two days. If Sutkus was right, then the Russians were on the move.

  “Yeah, are you there?” the CIA director asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you have?”

  “According to our Lithuanian counterparts, there was a shootout in Vilnius within the last hour or so.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “Two Russians were found dead. The VSD believes they were contract agents for the SVR.”

  “Passports?”

  “No identification,” Paitrick said. “But their prints were taken at the Belarus checkpoint east of here two weeks ago.”

  “How do they know they’re working with the SVR?”

  “As you know, Belarus is not a Schengen country. Their fingerprints linked up with Russian passports. But they believe those passports are also fake.”

  There was a delay on the other end of the line, as if the director was speaking with someone else in the room. Then Bradford came back on the line and said, “Have you met with Jake Adams yet in Vilnius?”

  “No, sir. We just got here earlier today.”

  “We’ll make sure he contacts you.”

  “I could call him directly,” Paitrick said.

  “That won’t work. Only a couple of people have his number. It’s untraceable and encrypted.”

  “Aren’t all phones traceable?”

  “Normally. But his phone is programmed for our covert operatives. GPS is scrambled and sent all over the world, bouncing off cell towers and satellite downlinks.”

  “I’m sure the NSA can track him,” Paitrick said.

  “Not yet. And I hear they’re not happy about it.”

  This Jake Adams must have had some pull to get his hands on this type of technology. “Sir, before we go, back to the dead Russians. The locals believe one of their own was involved with the shootings. They have a video near the university just after the shootout. It’s very dark and blurry, but I think the man in the video is Jake Adams.”

  “You didn’t mention that to the Lithuanians, right?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Jake is a damn good asset. If he killed the Russians, he had no choice. Just like the men in Riga.”

  “I understand. Adams seems to leave a trail of bodies wherever he goes.” Paitrick hesitated and continued, “At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “You’ve met the man,” Bradford said. “He’s very intense.”

  That was an understatement. “I’ll wait for a call from Adams.”

  “You have a security briefing at ten tomorrow morning,” Bradford said. “I’ll try to get Jake to that meeting.”

  They both cut their call and Paitrick shook his head. This director was more involved at this level than any he had experienced over the years. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

  •

  Jake and the two intelligence officers got to Sofia’s apartment after leaving a message at t
he dead drop in Cathedral Square telling the Russians she wanted a meeting. It was important. They were using a simple encryption code for their message. Anyone with any intelligence experience would be able to decipher the code once they determined the key, but to the average person who might find the note, it would be nonsense.

  He had taken a shower first, cleaning the wound to the right side of his head. Once he got the wound cleaned he saw that he had probably been hit by a piece of the stone walkway knocked loose by a bullet. Sofia had put some anti-bacterial cream on the wound and held it together with a couple of butterfly bandages. But Jake guessed he would be able to remove those by morning. His mind reeled back to a time when he had been shot in the head in Italy—grazed really—and his ex-girlfriend, Toni, Karl’s biological mother, had patched up his head.

  Sofia Sepp had a small one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of an old apartment building which pre-dated the Soviet occupation and World War II. The Lithuanian had gone into her bedroom to change into yoga pants and a T-shirt, while Zaiga took a shower. Her place was sparsely attired with minimal leather furniture and a few small end tables. Her coffee table was a repurposed door sitting on cement blocks. She had a couple of plants that were nearly dead.

  Sofia came from her bedroom, grabbed a beer from the small refrigerator, and then sat down on the sofa across from Jake sipping her beer.

  Jake was already on his second one.

  “That was a little intense,” Sofia said. “We’re not used to that here in Lithuania.”

  “Shoot ‘em ups?” Jake asked.

  She drank from her beer and nodded her head simultaneously.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I will be,” she said. “It’s not like the Russians gave us any choice.”

  That was true. But taking a life was never easy. Jake had a feeling this would eventually hit Sofia like a ton of bricks on her chest. “Was this your first time to kill someone?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes seemed to be tearing up. “You seem to be unaffected by this.”

  “It bothers me, Sofia. But I’ve been doing this for a long time. The weight of taking a life can paralyze you if you let it consume you. You must train your mind to realize the impact of the alternative.”

  “That’s all I can think about,” she said with sad reticence.

  Jake heard the shower stop and his mind drifted to the thought of Zaiga naked in the other room. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about other women, but old habits were hard to change.

  He picked up his beer and reached across to Sofia, who finally clicked her bottle against his. “Prosit.”

  “I sveikata,” she said.

  “I sveikata,” Jake repeated.

  “Very good. Cheers.”

  Zaiga came out wearing a pair of bike shorts and a T-shirt, both a little too tight for her, exposing her very nice body. “Are you two getting a bit ahead of the game?” She found a beer in the refrigerator, opened it, and then came into the living room area and sat in the chair next to Jake.

  “Sofia was just teaching me a little Lithuanian,” he said.

  “Dirty words?” Zaiga asked.

  “Not yet,” Sofia said. “We don’t know each other that well.”

  “I slept with him last night,” Zaiga said. “But he would not make love to me.”

  “In my defense,” Jake said, “there was a drunk Russian in the next bed snoring and farting.”

  “True enough,” Zaiga agreed. “But for the record, I was still available.”

  Sofia smiled and said, “Maybe you weren’t enough woman, Zaiga. Maybe Jake would like two.”

  “All right. Now you’re just fucking with me,” Jake said. But he really wasn’t sure if that was the case. There was something about near-death experiences that enhanced the libido. Now his mind drifted to his pregnant girlfriend, Alexandra, in Calabria, Italy. She would probably cut off the boys with the thoughts running through his mind right now.

  Jake did his best to clear his mind of everything but the case at hand, which seemed to be getting more intense at each moment. What in the hell were the Russians up to now? Either there were a number of rogue SVR officers, or the whole damn Russian leadership had gone off the reservation.

  “What are you thinking, Jake?” Zaiga asked him.

  “I’m just trying to understand this situation,” he said.

  “We were just messing with you,” Sofia said. “We’re sorry.”

  Now he was a little disappointed. A man of a certain age doesn’t feel desired very often. “It’s not that,” Jake said. “It’s the Russians. They’re playing a dangerous game. Have you heard of the Fifth Column?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  “It’s a term from the Spanish Civil War, where the first four columns of troops are set to attack a city or country and the fifth column, made up of the enemy within, attack and distract to try to topple the state before a bullet is fired from outside. It’s a tactic that has been used since warfare began, but the term is newer.”

  “And you think that’s what is happening here in Vilnius?” Sofia asked.

  “I think the Russians are doing this throughout the Baltic States,” Jake reasoned. “They’re trying to collapse the system.”

  31

  Sometime in the middle of the night Jake got a text from Kurt Jenkins asking him to go to a security briefing at the headquarters of VSD, the State Security Department of the Republic of Lithuania. But he didn’t read the text until he got up around seven a.m. from his sleep on Sofia’s leather sofa. He quickly found out that Sofia Sepp had also gotten a text, but hers was not a request—it was an order. They all speculated that Zaiga would have gotten the same message if her phone had still been turned on.

  On the way to VSD headquarters, the three of them stopped off at a convenience store and found Zaiga a pre-paid cell phone. At least now they would be able to talk if they got separated. Jake tried to explain to the women what it was like before cell phones. People actually had to plan ahead to meet, even for drinks. Amazingly, everyone survived without constant contact with the internet and long distance friends. Jake wasn’t sure if the women believed him. It was as if he had just told them that Bigfoot was real and he had proof.

  They got to the security briefing right on time, and Jake could tell that Sofia’s boss was not a happy camper. Jake recognized many of the same people who had been at the briefing in Riga. But now there were many more in attendance. Then, as Jake leaned up against a back wall of the large conference room, he saw three familiar faces—Estonian officers Hans Vaino and Kadri Kask. . .and his son, Karl. That was unexpected.

  Jake got a quick uplifted chin and a smirk from his son, which he returned in kind. The kid had Jake’s ‘I don’t give a shit’ expression. It must have been an innate trait.

  Now the four major players entered the room and went directly to the front of the room, including Olev Tamm, General Director of Security Police of Estonia, Oskars Liepa, Latvian Intelligence Chief, and Linas Sutkus, Lithuanian Intelligence Chief. For some reason Jake thought of the Three Stooges. But then the fourth man, Anthony Paitrick, CIA chief of the Baltic States, wandered in and Jake had to change his assessment to the Marx Brothers. But a comedy act couldn’t be comprised of four straight men. Somebody had to bring levity.

  There were a number of preliminary statements in all three languages, and then everything switched to English, a common second language for all three Baltic States.

  The briefing started with maps of Vilnius and various logistical routes and secondary routes of travel for the presidents of Latvia and Estonia. The Lithuanian president would remain at the Presidential Palace from now until the end of the summit. Especially considering the events of the night before.

  That part of the briefing was next. A large LED screen displayed crime scene photographs of the two dead Russians. They mentioned that the shootout had to involve at least two or three more people, considering the spent brass. Also, blood was foun
d for a third victim. Jake suddenly felt a pain in the side of his head when he realized he had left some DNA behind. Good thing the Agency continued to scrub any database that could contain his prints or his DNA.

  The Lithuania chief got up and said, “Now we will hear from one of our officers about this. . .situation.” He stared right at Sofia and said, “Sofia.”

  Sofia had come into the room on her own and was standing alongside the wall on the left. She looked pissed off that she had been called up. As she got to the front of the room, she had whispered words with her boss.

  She introduced herself only by first name. Then she explained the events of the night before, leaving out a number of important details. But the basic facts were there, and the others in the room seemed almost impressed by her efforts. Jake guessed she was right when she said they didn’t get a lot of shootouts in Lithuania.

  She fielded a few questions, answering with simple details in a subdued manner. Sofia was not aggrandizing her part in the events as some would. She was a total professional. Jake was impressed. Of course she didn’t bring up the dead drop or her relationship with the Russian, Pavel Tursunov. He hoped she had held back that info from her boss as well. She had also not mentioned Jake at all, which was an added benefit.

  When she finished, she simply walked to the back of the conference room and stood between Jake and Zaiga.

  “How did I do?” Sofia whispered.

  Jake leaned in and said, “Nicely done. Always leave them wondering. Intelligence officers can be like high school girls looking for great gossip. Expect more questions in private.”

  The briefing now went into more details on how to provide security for the foreign presidents, who all had their own secret service type details working the actual close-in support. It would be the intelligence officers who would roam the perimeter and set up superior positions on the top of certain buildings, including the top snipers from each organization.

  While they talked, Anthony Paitrick moved down the room toward Jake. With a nod of his head, he motioned for Jake to follow him to the passageway.