An hour later Karl left the ship and carried his toolboxes with him as he returned to his pickup. The toolboxes went into the back. Karl drove off the dock and picked up the road into Port Hedland.
In town he parked and sat behind the wheel as he made a quick phone call. When his contact picked up, he delivered the arranged confirmation.
“New pressure valve fitted.”
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER the ship left the harbor and headed out to sea. It was heading for Hong Kong and the harbor at Kowloon. When it docked a few days later, the consignment of diamonds was left in the locker while the ship was unloaded and the crew went ashore for a break. The crewman assigned to handle the diamonds would soon leave the ship and deliver them to the arranged place farther along the dock—a local fish cannery owned in part by Hegre, a legitimate business conglomerate that had a flourishing criminal element.
Lise Delaware received news of the imminent delivery. From Kowloon the satchel would be sent to Hegre’s agent in the Philippines. Once the deal had been completed and the money passed to Hegre the next part of the process would be negotiated and arrangements would be made for the contracted merchandise to get under way.
CHAPTER TWO
Washington, D.C.
Special Agent in Charge Drake Duncan stood at the window of his office in the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building. A gray drizzle of rain drifted past the glass. Dark clouds were coming in over the city. The weather matched Duncan’s mood.
He was in charge of the task force investigating the Hegre organization. It was still causing the FBI man sleepless nights. Since becoming involved in the virus investigation a while back, when he had first realized the reclusive nature of Hegre, Duncan had accepted that even the combined resources of the agency were having problems. Now, months following the original investigation, the FBI was seeing only scraps of information. Leads had taken them in a hopeful direction, only to fade away to nothing. He was beginning to understand just how complex the criminal group was. From what had come to light during the virus affair—the involvement of an FBI agent who had been bought off and the existence of a member of the CDC in Atlanta who had handed Hegre samples of the smallpox—Duncan had accepted he was combating a criminal conspiracy with a far-reaching network of contacts. Hegre bought and paid for the best help it could find. And it was obvious the organization was not held back by moral concerns. Hegre was in the business of making money. It didn’t make judgments on the consequences of its operations as long as it profited. It operated on a simple, cold blooded premise: if a venture made money Hegre was interested. Right now Duncan had a problem on his hands, which was the reason for the call he was making to the one man who could help him.
Matt Cooper.
Duncan was the first to accept that Cooper’s direct involvement in the Hegre-North Korea operation had resulted in the curtailing of the incident. Despite Cooper not being part of the FBI, or any agency Duncan knew about, the man obviously had top-ranking backup. And if it hadn’t been for the man’s selfless resistance, more people would have died and the lethal strain of adapted smallpox could have resulted in countless deaths.
SAC Drake Duncan was a dedicated agent, who had the strength of the FBI to back him. Yet here he was calling on a man who worked by a set of rules far beyond the FBI’s agenda. He was doing it because an agent was dead, another missing and Duncan was placed in the position of not trusting the people around him. It was a sad, but undeniable fact.
Hegre had breached the FBI previously. Duncan had the nagging feeling that might have happened again, because the dead agent—Ray Talbot—had been operating under deep cover, his actions sanctioned by Duncan himself, with very few people aware of the fact.
The FBI worked on a mandate of loyalty, with each and every agent sworn to uphold the law and deliver unbiased and corruption-free service. On the other side of the coin was human frailty, the probability that certain individuals could fall into the dark side of life. It had happened over the years, luckily on a small scale, but no organization was immune.
Duncan had built his team by handpicking each member. Yet even that did not preclude someone slipping inside who had a less-than-honest mandate. Ray Talbot had been working in the field under the charge of Duncan’s most trusted—and in this case there was no chance of any suspicion—team leader. Special Agent Sarah Mitchell, early thirties, was a young woman who had come up through the ranks as a Duncan protégée. Smart and capable, she had sailed through FBI training and once in the field had exhibited a natural resourcefulness in her work. Intuitive, she saw things that others might easily miss, and she picked up on the minutia of operating procedure with ease. She also had a willful nature that sometimes got the better of her. Not deliberately smart-mouthed, she could exchange banter with the best, and on more than one occasion her eagerness almost got the better of her.
Duncan found her refreshing. He would have willingly put himself on the line for her, knowing that in any situation she would always have his back. In terms of the physicality of FBI work she was hard to beat. Her marksmanship, with a variety of weapons, was always at the top of the score card.
He had put her in charge of the current phase of the Hegre investigation. She had taken a keen interest in the matter, to the point that Duncan had to remind her to treat it like any operation. He understood her frustration. Sarah Mitchell hated being beaten and no matter how sophisticated Hegre appeared to be, to Mitchell it was simply another criminal organization and as such she channeled her energy toward bringing it down. SAC Duncan had laid out her assignment, then given her free rein to run the operation on her own, with his overall supervision.
The past week had brought nothing. Duncan sensed, from her emailed reports and his talks with her via phone, that Mitchell was becoming frustrated at the lack of progress. And as time went by Duncan himself started to experience concern. In part that was because of his suspicion there might be a Hegre mole within the unit. He was searching to uncover evidence that would expose the traitor, hating the thought that Mitchell and her team might be in harm’s way.
He avoided voicing his concern. The problem with unearthing an insider was the undeniable fact that bringing his thoughts into the open might simply play into the guilty person’s hands. At worst he might find himself talking to the traitor without knowing. It was one of those situations where unburdening himself might come back to bite him. He needed to move slowly, keep his wits about him, and not show his hand.
But now he needed a presence on the case, an independent presence not part of the FBI, but with a feel for Hegre and the ability to move in ways that weren’t possible for Duncan’s people. A man he could trust.
Matt Cooper was free of any inside influence, a man who could move through the morass of regulations as he homed in on the perpetrators.
Duncan’s personal cell phone connected and the voice he remembered from their last meeting came through.
“SAC Duncan, Cooper. Hal Brognola told me you could be reached at this number. Are you free to talk?”
“Yeah, he mentioned that you needed to reach me. You sound like a man with a problem, Duncan.”
“Damn right. And it’s the same problem that brought us together last time.”
“Hegre?”
“Yes.”
“They operating again?”
“You know we’ve been working on cracking their cover since the smallpox affair. And we’ve barely scratched the surface. Then we got a break. Not a massive one, but enough for me to send in part of my task force to check it out. Up in the Northwest. A couple of my people vanished. Now one of them has turned up dead, tortured before he was killed.”
“Sorry to hear that, Duncan.”
“The agent’s name was Ray Talbot. He was young and a real go-getter. His partner Jake Bermann has vanished. There are two other agents on the team, an
d they’re looking for him—my case agent Sarah Mitchell and the fourth member of the team, Joseph Brewster.”
“Lots of open country up there,” Bolan said. “It would be easy to get lost.”
“I received an email from Ray. It must have been caught up in some sort of server glitch because it was sent a couple of days ago, about when he vanished off the radar. So we lost any chance of getting to him before he died.”
“I’m guessing you haven’t told the rest of the team that he’s dead. There must be a reason.”
“You remember we had a leak during the smallpox operation?”
“And you identified him. Are you saying you might have another leak?”
“I’ll give you a clue, Cooper. This call is being made on my personal cell.”
“Understood.”
“You told me to contact you if there was a new lead. That’s what I’m doing. I need an outside source. Someone off the record and with the know-how to work on his own.”
“I’m listening.”
“I can send you the coordinates Ray Talbot attached to his email, a location in the area where he was investigating. I’ll pass it along to Mitchell, but give you the chance to reach the area first.” Duncan paused. “Cooper, I’m asking a lot for something that’s not strictly your responsibility, so if...”
“You lost people the first time round,” Bolan said. “Talbot now, and maybe your agent, Bermann. From what we understand about Hegre, those people have no respect for anyone in their way. They need to be stopped.”
“Use this number if you need to get through to me, Cooper.”
“I’ll let you know when I have something.”
CHAPTER THREE
FBI Agent Sarah Mitchell crossed the parking lot outside the diner, balancing two paper cups of coffee and a couple of sandwiches in her hands. Her partner, Agent Joseph Brewster, saw her and quickly climbed out of the Crown Victoria. He moved around the car to relieve her of the load.
“You always do things the hard way.”
“You noticed.”
“Funny lady.”
They climbed back inside the car, closing the doors against the rising chill.
“This is one cold place,” Brewster said. He glanced across at his partner. “You sure you didn’t specially ask for this assignment?”
Mitchell took her time drinking her coffee before she looked at him.
“Why would I do that, Joe?”
“I can think of one reason. You have a weird sense of humor, and landing me here in the back of beyond would fit that.”
“You think I’d put myself through all this just to get a laugh?”
Brewster placed his coffee in the cup holder and proceeded to unwrap his sandwich. He checked the filling, nodding when he found it was beef.
“If I was playing jokes,” Mitchell said, “would I have brought your favorite kind of sandwich?”
“I guess not.”
They had just completed their meal when Mitchell felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket. She took it out and checked the caller ID. She was disappointed it wasn’t from Ray Talbot, or his partner Jake Bermann. The call was from SAC Drake Duncan, her FBI superior.
“Sir?”
“You’re not going to like this, Mitchell.”
“Talbot?”
“He’s been found. It’s not good.”
Mitchell touched her partner on the arm.
“I’m putting you on speaker, sir.”
“Talbot has been found,” Duncan repeated for Brewster’s benefit.
“Not alive?”
“No. The body is about thirty miles from your current position in a place called Treebone. Some locals found the body, which had been dumped in a creek.”
“You want us to check it out?”
“Yes. I want an FBI presence in place. I want you to find out what happened. One more thing, Mitchell. Just remember Bermann is still missing too. I’ll get back to you with details.”
“Leaving now, sir,” Brewster said.
He gunned the Crown Victoria, tires skidding against the loose gravel as he swung back onto the highway.
Neither of them spoke for the first few miles. They had been expecting Duncan’s news. Agents Talbot and Bermann had been missing for a few days, and it hadn’t been looking good. Ray Talbot had always been an independent type of guy, liable to go off without keeping his teammates informed. It was the way he had operated, and he had always brought in good results. Even so, receiving the news of his death had been a shock.
It was Mitchell who broke the silence. She leaned forward and slammed her clenched first on the dash.
“Damn, damn, damn. What the hell is going on, Joe? This is crazy. When Ray stopped checking in, I should have figured something was wrong”
“There’s no logic to it. They vanish, disappear for a few days then Talbot shows up dead.”
“Now I know Hegre has to be responsible for this.”
Mitchell felt Brewster’s eyes flick her way for a few seconds.
“Not that again,” he said.
“Yes. That again. We were getting too close.”
“Sarah, we have no real proof. It’s all...”
Mitchell rounded on him, her hazel eyes flashing with barely concealed anger. Frustration.
“What were you going to say, Joe? It’s all in my head? I’m imagining it?”
“I understand how you feel, Sarah, but we have to go with real proof. We’re FBI. Not freelance cowboys with guns.”
“And a dead agent is proof we’ve made waves. How many more before you believe?”
“Procedure,” Brewster said. “We’re supposed to get local invitations before we walk over their jurisdiction.”
Procedure.
It was word Brewster used a lot, something he pushed every time they came up against a problem.
Hell, Joe, I hope we never get in a tight spot and you won’t move if it goes against procedure, Mitchell thought.
SAC Duncan called her again just under an hour later.
“An email showed up on my computer. It was from Ray Talbot, dated almost two days ago. It had been delayed because of a server glitch...”
“Our system?”
“Unfortunately. Ray’s message got snarled up so it’s only just come through.”
“That leaves us at a disadvantage.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Duncan held back from telling Mitchell that he had delayed informing her until he had contacted Matt Cooper. Talbot had already been dead and Duncan wanted more feet on the ground. And he was still nervous concerning the possible leaks. Hence his call to the unofficial Matt Cooper.
“Is his message going to help, sir?”
“I’m downloading it to your cell, Agent Mitchell. I’ll let you make a decision. Your call on this, Sarah. But keep me in the loop.”
Mitchell sat back. A simple technical delay had held back Talbot’s email and now he was dead.
Had the delay been the reason he hadn’t survived? Unable to have his message picked up quickly. Had it been that simple?
Had Talbot died waiting for his FBI response?
A response that hadn’t come.
The thought sickened her, made her determined to find out what Talbot had been trying to pass along.
Her cell phone pinged. She opened the downloaded message and scanned Talbot’s email.
Info panned out. Have located Hegre base. North of town of Treebone. Am about to check it out. GPS location attached to this message. Talbot.
* * *
“Ray sent a location. He was going to check it out.”
“Just him and Bermann?” Brewster snapped. “Damn stupid move. He should have—”
/> “Christ, Joe, if you mention procedure again I’ll scream. Ray is dead. Jake is missing. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the rule book right now.”
“I—”
“Just drive, Joe. No talking. Just goddamn well drive.”
She threw her cell phone onto the dash in frustration, then tapped the GPS coordinates into the vehicle’s navigation system.
Her emotions were a mess. The Hegre investigation, missing agents and now Ray Talbot’s death. She knew her FBI training had taught her to maintain objectivity, but how could she not be affected by such things? The day she became that hardened she would hand in her badge and gun and walk away.
She stared out through the windshield, the road curving away in front of the speeding car. Tall trees edged the route on both sides and in the far distance the were hazy outlines of mountains under the blue sky. Mitchell felt the sting of tears, angry at her emotions, but just as sad at the loss of a young life.
They reached Treebone an hour later, Brewster driving through the isolated community.
“We’ll bring the locals in after we check out this location,” Mitchell stated. “See if we can locate Jake without sirens screaming and lights flashing.”
Twelve miles on the northern side of the town, the GPS informed them they were a half mile from their destination. The display on the screen indicated a right turn ahead.
“Keep going,” Mitchell said. They drove by the dirt road. After a quarter mile Mitchell told Brewster to pull off the road.
He pulled the Crown Victoria onto a fire road and nosed it into the timber, undergrowth rattling against the side of the car until Mitchell told him to stop.
She pulled out her Glock pistol, checked it and kept it in her hand as she opened her door.
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