Blindsided (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Novel Book 4)

by JT Sawyer

  Cavel was old school and would print out the photos of his intended victim, placing them throughout his two-bedroom loft in Tel Aviv while penciling in details about the person’s life, daily schedule, and habits.

  Uri’s longest-standing right-hand man was known to others in the organization only as Cavel, a name he had chosen after beginning his new life in Israel. His real name was Stanislau Kopotski. Originally from Poland, he had once served as a member of Gromm, that country’s Special Forces, before being dishonorably discharged for using a fire-heated section of rebar to extract a confession from a captive in Iraq during joint operations with British forces.

  His service record and skill set came up on Uri Belkin’s radar shortly after the Mossad agent struck out on his own. Though the Polish newspapers would later indicate that the fire in the prison van claimed all of the transported convicts enroute to Gdansk, Uri’s snatch team plucked Cavel out of the flaming vehicle in time to expedite his escape from the country. Uri gave the frazzled soldier an ultimatum: join his new outfit of mercenaries or end up as shark fodder in the Baltic Sea. Six years later, Cavel had worked his way up the ranks of the small band of elite operators and claimed his place through loyal service as Uri’s primary assassin.

  He was the ideal man to serve as Uri’s field lieutenant. He was forty-two but looked ten years younger. With his unremarkable looks and fluency in several languages, he looked like any other European businessman when he traveled. His broad glasses served to cover most of a comma-shaped scar below his right eye socket where he had received a nasty gash in one of many knife duels for money that he engaged in when in Africa.

  Cavel leaned forward and cracked open the glovebox with his right hand, removing a small metal tin. Prying off the crumpled lid, he delicately pulled out two white amphetamine pills, courtesy of a synthetic drug designer in Copenhagen that made them specifically to match Cavel’s metabolic needs. He swallowed them dry then turned on the radio, flipping to a CD of Chopin. The opposing force of tranquil music soon combined with the raging drugs in his bloodstream to create an unequaled mental tug-of-war which further caused his heart to race. Familiar images that bordered on near sexual delight filled his head as he envisioned walking calmly into the hall where the orchestra was playing the soothing symphony. Then he methodically began executing the performers, watching the oak-planked flooring turning crimson, the sound of each band instrument fading until only his heart could be heard beating. Then he turned and faced the conductor, who smiled and bowed at the waist.

  Cavel’s attention flitted back to the present as he saw the sign for the highway to Tel Aviv. He focused upon the white lines of the pavement ahead as he stroked the well-worn handle of his curved blade in his beltline and the song track ended. His pulse quickened as he waited for the next symphony to begin and his blade hand twitched at the coming splendor of his performance in the twisted alcove of his soul.

  Chapter 32

  Southwest Egypt, Thirty-Eight Miles from the Libyan Border

  The monotonous sand dunes before Mitch stretched out for a half mile and ended at a small airstrip. An MD-500 Defender helicopter was situated at the far end near two tawny shipping containers. Surrounding the entire setting was an ocean of sand for miles in every direction.

  For the past two hours they had been hidden amidst a cluster of low boulders which ran across the ridgeline like some arthritic backbone jutting from the earth. They had left their jeep six miles back where the dirt road ended and walked overland to avoid creating a dust-trail from the tires which would be seen for miles.

  Mitch adjusted the focus on the 10x50 binoculars, the lenses of which were covered with a thin layer of nylon stockings to eliminate glare. “Looks like two men outside on patrol and a pretty nifty little satellite dish atop the container to the right,” Mitch said, whispering to Petra and Von, who were lying prone in the sand beside him, scanning the same scene.

  “This is the place then,” said Petra. “The com-link I traced from Romania provided me with these coordinates. Nothing to locate on any map but this is a hastily assembled black site by the looks of it.”

  “Those containers were probably air-lifted from a site offshore. They’ve got support—but from where?” said Von.

  Mitch was squinting into his eyepieces. “Notice how the footprints in the sand only extend out around fifty yards in each direction and then stop abruptly. They must have perimeter alarms buried in the ground after that.”

  “Those can be disabled remotely if the frequency can be located,” said Petra, sliding back a few feet and reaching for the black ruggedized laptop in his backpack.

  “Question is—how many more guys are inside?” said Von.

  “We used setups just like this when I was in Iraq,” said Mitch. “One building was the comms and intel center and the one beside without the windows housed the food, water, and fuel for the generators that powered all the hardware.”

  Mitch craned his head upward, focusing his vision upon a trash heap in between the buildings. “Looks like a few dozen gallon jugs of water and empty fuel canisters. There can’t be too many guys at this outpost. The water consumption alone in this heat would require way more than what they have there.”

  “Unless they’ve only been here a short time,” said Von.

  “This op required some considerable planning, not to mention getting this little base set up off the radar,” said Petra, who was busy typing on his keyboard.

  “Look at that helo,” said Mitch. “The landing skids are covered in sand. From what I recall from the weather report I studied yesterday, there hasn’t been any significant wind in the region for the past week to cause that.” Mitch pulled the binoculars back and rubbed a bead of sweat from his forehead. “These guys have had their boots on the ground here for a while.”

  “So, we’ve got the two sentries outside and then, let’s say, two to four more guys inside,” said Von.

  “If only Petra could dial up Gideon and retrieve some real-time thermal imaging,” said Mitch.

  “Yeah, I kinda miss all of our proprietary technology right now. This is like fieldcraft stuff from a decade ago that I’m doing but…” He paused, swirling his index finger around on the laptop’s mousepad and then sighing. “The remote sensor alarms they have in the ground also appear to be a few years old so this just might work out.” He spun the laptop screen towards them and removed his mottled tan hat to cast shade upon the screen. “There are eighteen sensors spread around the compound in a square,” he said, pointing to the illuminated red images.

  “Can you disable them completely?” said Von.

  “Say when.”

  Mitch glanced down at his watch. “Nightfall is in three hours and it’s going to be a new moon. We’ll roll in then when we can use the night-vision goggles that Von so graciously supplied us with, courtesy of his employers, who have their tentacles in every friggin’ nation in this region.”

  Von nodded, his lips turning into a grin as he nudged Mitch with his elbow. “What do you mean—our government doesn’t have any involvement in the affairs of North Africa. We officially pulled out of these parts decades ago.”

  Mitch chuckled, resting on one elbow while he cast a glance back at the compound. “Yeah, you’d make a good politician one day, standing at the podium before a group of reporters spinning a good yarn.”

  “Ouch,” murmured Von while looking over at Petra. “Does he treat all his friends this way?”

  Petra continued his decoding work on the laptop and only paused momentarily to raise his eyebrows. “Mitch is a man of few words, which is unusual for you gabby Americans. So, if he jabs at you, he either despises you or is thinking of welcoming you into his inner circle.”

  “Pfff,” muttered Mitch. “Petra the psychology major over here. Now you’re sounding like Dev, who always acts likes she knows what I’m thinking.”

  Petra stopped typing and looked up at him. Mitch’s eyes seemed placid for a moment and then he let out a str
ained exhale. His grip tightened on the binoculars as his eyes returned to a predatory gaze, taking in the compound in the distance.

  “Yeah, I’m worried about her too,” said Petra. He glanced up at the sun, which hung like a searing orange plate in the cobalt sky. “Soon, we’ll have some answers and then hopefully be on our way back to Israel. Time to get our lives back.”

  Mitch tried to focus upon the images through his binoculars but only saw Dev’s face. He wondered where she was and how they would ever untangle this web of deceit that seemed to weave through every fiber of their world.

  Chapter 33

  Dev spent most of the afternoon sifting through the contents of the concealed room. The air was stagnant and smelled like an ashtray. Unusual—my father didn’t smoke. There was a small stack of papers with hand-scribbled notes showing Uri’s arrival and departure times in Sierra Leone along with hundreds of surveillance photos of Uri in various villages and more of him directing workers at a mining camp in the desert. The dates ranged from one to six years ago.

  Shuffling through the papers, she discovered a laptop whose darkened screen was still up. The keypads were partially melted, the buttons fused together like puzzle pieces. There was a single USB cable protruding from the side, its end charred. Pulling on it, she felt something snag from behind. Reaching her hand around a stack of rolled topographic maps, she felt a small object nestled against the wall. Dev removed the cable from the laptop and held up the last black box, staring at the flashing red light on the side which indicated it was still attempting to upload to the computer.

  She thought back to the hurricane that had devastated the region nearly a year ago and the cruel fate that had prevented the transmission of the JPG files that Anatoly had thought he sent after hastily leaving here to help Dev in the U.S. Murphy’s Law always fucking gets in the way when you least expect it. There are always forces beyond our control, but why did it have to be then?

  Dev stood motionless for an hour, analyzing the array of photos tacked to the drywall. The last and most recent batch from fourteen months ago were the most revealing. They showed Uri and a group of his men loading what looked like large canvas tubes into a cave. The coordinates indicated it was roughly a mile from the former mining camp near the coastline.

  She examined the photographs again, pressing one particular photograph closer to her face and straining to make out something amidst the canvas bundles before the cusp of the cave entrance, her eyes growing wider with each glance. “Oh, my dear father—is that who I think it is?”

  Chapter 34

  Egypt

  With two more hours until sunset, the three men waited on the other side of a large cluster of north-facing boulders where the shade was plentiful. They had retreated a mile away from their intended target and each man was doing weapons checks in between hydrating and dipping into the crude version of MREs that Von had provided.

  Von looked at Mitch, who was busy field-stripping his pistol. “Do you ever miss being in the service?”

  “I miss the people, not the work,” said Mitch. “I would go anywhere and endure any hardship if I had my buds beside me. As for the missions, those became too driven by political sentiment back in DC and not by what needed to be done on the ground.”

  “That’s nothing new,” said Petra. “Every conflict even going back to Rome has been shaped by the heavy hand of the ruler and his cronies in office.”

  “Yeah, except with our involvement in the Middle East, it’s never been about winning but about creating precarious bridges that hold just long enough to jam another nebulous foreign policy down that country’s throat.”

  Mitch took off a boot and shook out a marble-sized pebble, then momentarily stopped to rub the heel of his foot. “I can tell you this, one thing I do miss is the weathered old-timers who knew how to conduct a war because they’d been on the battlefield so many times. The old sergeant majors I worked under, now those guys were the dudes to ask advice on how to win—or hell, damn near anything else.” He drove his knuckles into his sole. “I remember I knew this old-timer who was a decorated vet from Vietnam and had been in close to thirty years. Didn’t say much but when he did, you digested every morsel that his tobacco-stained lips flapped out.” Mitch’s voice deepened while he tugged his boot back in place. “‘Teeth and feet, son—always remember to take care of your teeth and feet in this man’s army and you’ll go far.’”

  Petra nodded in agreement. “Agreed—your feet are your life. Having some good boots and babying them is the only way you’re gonna get to be old-timers in this business.”

  “Next, I suppose you two are going to tell me about the importance of lotion for your hands,” Von said with a grin.

  “You frickin’ agency guys—what do you know about grunt work and sweating it out in the elements for weeks on end,” said Mitch. “Aren’t you guys all recruited fresh out of college—law school, if I remember correctly.”

  “Cornell Law School to be exact,” said Von. “At least that’s where I was recruited during my final year.”

  “The agency always likes smooth talkers with great negotiation skills,” said Mitch. “Me, I went straight from my uncle’s ranch to the army then worked my way up from there.” Mitch frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “Hell, while I was completing the Special Forces qualification course, you were probably sipping on a vanilla latte in the university library while eyeballin’ all the co-eds in their tight yoga pants.”

  “And look at us now,” said Von. “Here we are, kneeling in the same sand in some shitrag of a country that neither of us wants to be in, waiting to pull the trigger on another group of bad guys.” He waved his hand in the air while creaking out a slight grin. “You sure you got out of the service?”

  Before Mitch could respond he suddenly swiveled his head to the right, his eyes scanning the region as a high-pitched cackle resounded off the jagged boulder fields.

  Von leaned forward on an elbow and whispered, “Hyenas.”

  “You kiddin’ me?” said Mitch. “I didn’t think they were this far up in Africa.”

  “Most people associate them with the lions of the Serengeti in the eastern part of the continent but we have quite a few lurking around Tunisia, Algeria, and western Egypt. Sometimes, near the more isolated villages out here, they snag somebody’s dog at night—or kid.”

  “I hate hyenas,” said Petra, who was stroking the grip of his rifle with his thumb. “Too many ops in Africa—we always seemed to get harassed by those fuckers.”

  “Hyenas, wow,” said Mitch, rubbing his chin and scanning the distant hills. “Sure wouldn’t mind seeing what their tracks look like.”

  Von moved up into a kneeling position and looked over at Mitch. “You will if we linger here too long. We should get a move on it, don’t you think.”

  When the sun slid below the horizon, Mitch and the others gathered up their packs and weapons from the makeshift layup position amongst the tawny boulders. Von had provided them each with suppressed AK-47s, Glock 17s, breaching explosives, and night-vision goggles. Everything was third generation or older. This was typical of covert ops so no obvious U.S. hardware would be left behind in the event of a botched mission or any fatalities.

  Though it wouldn’t have been unusual for Von to be working across the other side of the country, he wasn’t sure yet what cover story he’d fashion if things went awry. He knew he was putting his career at risk but felt a greater alliance to Mitch for saving his life in Malaysia last winter.

  While some of Von’s colleagues embraced a moral elasticity and only adhered to a personal code when the situation demanded it, Von felt indebted to Mitch. He was intrigued by someone who put his friends above anything else. Von had learned to trust no one in his line of work and had been a loner most of his life, so watching someone like Mitch, whose unshifting motives were driven by loyalty to his tribe instead of adherence to a nebulous political agenda, was a refreshing jolt to his weary soul. Most senior CIA officers he knew sp
ecialized more in checking tick marks on a ledger than on the actual success of a mission. He despised the suit-clad careerists who were willing to send LPGs, or Lower Pay Graders as the joke went, into the field to do a mission rather than get their own hands dirty for fear of potential blowback that could sink their job. The LPGs were more than willing to go into the trenches for the sake of advancement and rarely questioned their orders. Another reason why Von preferred to work alone, though he found himself surprisingly at ease with the role he was currently undertaking with these two men, whom he’d learned to appreciate all over again from when they last worked together.

  The three of them donned their gear and slipped into the undulating flow of sand dunes that ran parallel to the east of the enemy encampment. In the absence of moonlight, the cloudless sky was bursting with stars. Their stark desert landscape had cooled off thirty degrees since sundown and their world was painted green by their night-vision goggles. Only the faint sound of the crunching granules of sand beneath their boots and their controlled exhales could be heard amidst the faint cacophony of distant hyenas in the distance.

  When they reached the forty-yard mark from where the ground alarms were located, Mitch raised his hand in a fist for the group to halt. Petra kneeled down and opened the laptop, its screen dimmed to the lowest setting. He looked up at Mitch and waited. Mitch and Von scanned the grounds beside the helicopter and the two shipping containers then Mitch gave the thumbs-up sign to Petra.

  Upon disabling the alarms, Petra sprang up, leaving his laptop behind, and followed in the tracks of the two men. “Now it’s up to you boys to take out the cameras mounted on the containers,” he whispered.