“It was a favor for Hawk.”
He broke into a sarcastic laugh. “So, not only is love blind, it’s also stupid. If you have any questions, come ask me.”
“Apparently he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted.”
“And did he ask you to do this for him?”
Alex turned her gaze toward the window and remained silent.
“That’s what I thought. He at least has enough respect for you that he wouldn’t ask you to embark on such a frivolous endeavor.”
“It’s not fair what’s been done to him, you know. Lying to anyone is never a good way to earn a person’s trust.”
“Neither is sneaking around behind someone’s back. But that didn’t stop you, did it? Please, spare me the moral high ground.”
“I’m relentless, Senator. That’s why you hired me.”
“No, I hired you because I believe you’re damn good at what you do, which is operating behind the scenes. I also happen to believe in second chances, especially for people who are committed to the mission. And part of Firestorm’s mission is to make sure that nobody knows what we’re doing. You jeopardized that today.”
“Sorry, sir. That wasn’t my intent.”
Blunt took a deep breath. “So, why’d they cut you loose?”
“Leverage, sir. It’s always good to have a little leverage.”
“Don’t I know that.” He smiled big. “Nope, I’m still glad I hired you. Now get outta here before anyone else sees you. I’ve got a meeting to get to. General Johnson has the details of your next assignment with Hawk ready.”
Alex nodded and exited the room.
Blunt wondered how long it would be before Coker began surveilling him. Blunt would have to be more careful than ever before. But he was pleased to know that at least one of his operatives had some dirt on the Director that he might have to use in the future—if it ever came to that.
***
BLUNT BOARDED THE METRO BLUE LINE bound for the Capitol Heights stop. During his time in Washington, he’d scouted out every subway station and found one specific bench that wasn’t covered by surveillance cameras. The camera directly above the bench didn’t pan directly down, while the nearest camera situated about twenty meters away on each side was shielded from the bench by strategically placed fixtures that displayed the Metro map as well as advertisements. When Blunt first found it, he wondered if some spook created this blind spot for the express purpose of passing intel. Or it could’ve just been a design flaw. Without any major incidents ever occurring at Capitol Heights, Blunt doubted anyone ever questioned the slight gap in video coverage.
Not that he would ever complain about it. He’d been passing and receiving valuable information on that bench for several years and would loath searching for another safe location should some security head identify the cameras’ blind spot.
Blunt stepped onto the subway platform and watched his contact make a dead drop in plain sight. A copy of The Washington Post was neatly folded on the end of the bench, and the newspaper remained there after the man stood up and hustled onto the train. As Blunt walked toward the bench, another man sat down and snatched up the paper. He whipped it open and began reading it.
Though the man didn’t appear to be affiliated with any government agency based on his attire, Blunt would have to wait. Any move toward the man might look suspicious if anybody was watching, though Blunt doubted it.
Blunt tried to mitigate any tails by maintaining random visits to the station along with various methods of drops. Sometimes the drops were notes affixed to the bottom of a bench; other times it was a written on a sheet of paper in plain sight that could only be read with a black light. Then there was the classic newspaper drop. The only constant Blunt ever held was his regular visits to the Library of Congress. And when those messages necessitated more immediate action, he’d make his way to Capitol Heights.
After checking the monitors for when the next train was arriving, Blunt realized he had three minutes to get his hands on that newspaper before the man on the bench possibly vanished onto a train with it. He couldn’t afford to chase down a random stranger and take his paper from him. But he couldn’t afford to let the man take it either. Thinking quickly, Blunt scanned the station and identified a box with copies of The Washington Post near the entrance. He hustled toward it, glancing between his immediate path toward the box, his mystery man, and the monitor updating what time the train was due to arrive.
Blunt dug into his pockets for six quarters and mumbled to himself about the ridiculous price of single copies of newspapers. At one quarter short, his plan was falling apart. After checking the monitor again, he realized he had one minute left to get a paper and dash back down to the bench and attempt the swap. He started to panic and bashed the coin release button with the side of his fist.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and spun around.
Blunt laid eyes on a man who sported a scraggly beard, unkempt hair, and tattered clothing. With a black plastic bag flung over his right shoulder, the man held out a newspaper in his left hand.
“Mister, you can have my paper,” he said with a toothy grin. “Ain’t much in there these days, and it certainly ain’t worth beatin’ a machine for it. But if you’re that determined, I suppose there’s still something you might find in there that’ll interest you.”
Blunt took the paper and thanked the man before jamming five quarters into his hand. “Have a good day.”
The train brakes echoed as they screeched down the tunnel. Blunt saw the word “arriving” flashing on the monitor and wasted no more time in hustling back toward his bench. All the people on the platform crowded near the edge, awaiting the train to stop and the doors to slide open.
Fighting against the crowd, Blunt’s manners decreased as his panic increased.
The man with the paper was no longer on the bench—and nowhere nearby.
Blunt stood up on the bench and tried to look for the man over the crowd. His dark pea coat looked like the one worn by dozens of other men milling around on the platform. He then started to look for the man with a paper tucked beneath his arm.
There he is!
The doors opened, and a handful of passengers disembarked. The crowd hardly waited until the doorways were clear before they pressed forward as one, shoehorning their way into the train. The man Blunt was targeting stood just inside the door, the paper still tightly snug beneath his arm. Blunt didn’t think he could reach the man in time, though he figured his desperation might actually benefit him.
Standing a few meters away, Blunt broke into a sprint. The doors started to close, but not fast enough. Blunt managed to slip between them, crashing into the man. Several people lost their balance, including Blunt’s target. The man also lost his grip on his paper.
Blunt knelt down and rose up with a paper in his hand. “I believe this is yours.”
“Thanks, but watch where you’re going next time,” the man muttered.
“Will do,” Blunt said before diverting his eyes.
At the next station, Blunt got off and went to the restroom, locking the door behind him. Having successfully switched newspapers with the man, Blunt pulled out the paper originally intended for him. He turned to the crossword puzzle, opened his decryption app on his phone, and started to decipher the message.
Then he gasped when he read the target’s name.
CHAPTER 9
THREE DAYS AFTER MEETING with Colton, Hawk stepped off a plane at Lungi International Airport in Sierra Leone. His legend as a well-known taxidermist from New Zealand swung into full effect the moment he approached customs. With a strong accent, Hawk didn’t even give the customs agent reason for pause.
“What’s your business here?” the agent asked.
He fed the agent what he needed to hear. “I’m here doing volunteer work for a conservationist group.”
The agent stamped the passport.
“Have a nice visit,” he said as he waved Hawk through.
&nb
sp; Hawk stared at his passport. Oliver Martin, twenty-six-years of age, six foot two, brown hair, blue eyes, born in Christchurch, New Zealand. He shrugged. Everything but the name and town were correct.
Three hours later, he secured his car rental—a Toyota Forerunner—and was bumping along the Lunsar-Makeni Highway toward Yokodu, a small village just outside Koidu in the Kono district. Kono was known for its diamond-rich mines. But its location just two hours northwest of the Liberian border made it a prime location to sneak diamonds out of Sierra Leone and into the diamond smuggling capital of the world.
Hawk’s final destination was Joubert Safaris, an off-the-books South African outfitter that officially shuttered its business during the Ebola outbreak and had recently re-opened for more unofficial business. With the government urging citizens not to eat bush meat, the bay duiker population surged in some parts of the country. They had reportedly begun roaming the streets and were becoming a nuisance in some of the smaller villages, and Joubert Safaris secured unofficial permission to round up several dozen and hand them over to conservation groups to be dissected and studied.
Only Hawk wasn’t presenting himself as a conservationist to anyone else. From here on out, he was Oliver Martin, Kiwi taxidermist and hunting enthusiast.
After an hour of rumbling along Sierra Leone’s poor excuse of a highway, he called Alex on his satellite phone. The six-hour time difference meant she might be in a better mood than when he’d called her from the Middle East.
“You do realize I was just about to leave for my lunch break?” Alex said once she answered the phone.
Hawk chuckled. “I purposely waited to call you. Better to get you now than in the morning before you’ve pumped coffee into your veins.”
“Perhaps—but I’ll only be slightly more pleasant now. Keeping me from my lunch is a move that might backfire on you.”
Hawk turned on his headlights and eased onto the gas. “Well, I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to let you know I’ve arrived and am on my way to the destination.”
“Excellent. I’ll make a note of your progress.” She paused for a moment. “As a matter of fact, I think I have you on our satellite feed. Are you driving a light-colored Toyota Forerunner?”
“That’d be me, though so is the rest of the country.”
“Unless the rest of the country has already been tagged with GPS tracking devices that match your identifier, I think it’s a safe bet I’m looking at you.”
“Excellent. You can watch me screw everything up on a slight eight-second delay.”
“That’s hardly a delay at all.”
“Long enough to win a bull riding competition.”
“Well, at least I’ll know where to send the team to retrieve your dead body once you fall off a bull.”
“Actually, I called for another reason.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I heard you got caught trying to sneak into The Vault at CIA headquarters.”
“Who told you that?”
“Blunt, but that’s not important. What is important is why you did it—and please tell me you didn’t do it for me.”
“So you’re okay with me lying to you?”
“Come on, Alex. This isn’t funny. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me regarding my father, but I don’t want this to be something that jeopardizes your own future. It’s not worth it. I’ve survived this long without knowing all the intimate details about who he is; I’m sure a few more years won’t be the death of me. However, it might be the death of your career.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t find much on your father.”
“Actually, that makes me feel worse.” He paused. “Did you find anything?”
“An empty folder with Franklin Foster’s name on the tab. For whatever reason, someone at the CIA thought it best to remove the files altogether. The folder is likely the only trace of him ever existing at the agency.”
“Did they know what you were after?”
“I doubt it. Believe it or not, The Vault is one of the few places that doesn’t have surveillance cameras inside. They had to play their hunches because I didn’t tell them anything.”
“How’d you get out?”
“It always helps to have leverage on the Director.”
“You have dirt on Coker?”
“Something like that.”
Hawk laughed. “You’ve got guts, Alex. I’ll give that to you.”
“Without them, I’d be nowhere in this business.”
“I hope they serve us well on this mission.”
“They will.” She sighed. “But I didn’t leave headquarters empty handed.”
“Did you use the magic trick I taught you?”
“Actually, it came in handy in acquiring a cell phone after they caught me.”
“This I’ve got to hear.”
“I’d love to talk more, but I’ve got a meeting with General Johnson in ten minutes that I need to prepare for.”
“Okay, fine. Leave me hanging.”
“I will forward you the entire itinerary for your trip so if you go dark, you have everything you need and won’t have to compromise your mission.”
“Roger that.”
“But Hawk,” she said, “I do have something we need to talk about.”
“I’m listening.”
“No, this isn’t the kind of thing we need to talk about over the phone. We’ll talk about it when you get back.”
“So, you’re giving me something to live for? Trying to make sure I don’t act foolishly during this mission?”
“You can take it however you like. But you’re gonna want to hear it.”
“Don’t worry—I’m already looking forward to it.”
Hawk hung up and stared up through his windshield at the first stars of the evening twinkling on the horizon. He needed to stay focused on the mission, but he couldn’t help but wonder what Alex had learned.
CHAPTER 10
MUSA DEMBY PEERED through his scope at the target set up two hundred meters away. He always thought it was ridiculous that anyone ever shot at a piece of paper with a circular target highlighted with a bullseye. “There’s no single point that’s a bullseye,” he often said, scoffing at his aides. “Bullseye is when you hit your target—and he dies.”
He steadied his hand and his breathing. The target he saw through his scope was that of an armed dummy perched in a tree. His spotter would confirm if he hit it or not.
Slowly, Demby squeezed the trigger—crack! He’d barely moved, keeping his eye trained on his mark. He didn’t need his lackey to tell him if he hit the target after he watched the dummy tumble to the ground.
“Direct hit!” Demby’s lackey said as he jumped into the air. “Excellent shooting!”
Demby slapped the aide in the side of the head. “Even a water buffalo in Kenya could’ve seen the target fall out of the tree.”
“Sorry, sir,” the lackey said.
“Go set him back up,” Demby said in his choppy English accent. “You’ve got five minutes before I start shooting again.”
The lackey raced toward the tree, grabbed the dummy target, and reset it. But Demby didn’t wait five minutes. He barely waited three before he fired again, hitting the target in the head and sending it back toward the ground. The aide pivoted and rushed back toward the it—but he didn’t get far.
Demby snickered as he squeezed off another shot, this one exploding in the back of the lackey’s head. He turned toward the rest of the handful of men who’d joined him. “So, who wants to replace the target now?”
No one budged.
A grin spread across Demby’s face. “No worries. I can barely see anything now anyway. Let’s call it a day.” He rubbed the head of a young boy toting a rifle next to him. “What do you say?”
The boy, who barely looked a day over ten years old, looked up at Demby and flashed a faint smile.
Demby slung his rifle over his shoulder and marched toward the three vehicl
es waiting near the road just off the small clearing. The drive back to Koidu wouldn’t take long, and it’d give him time to contemplate how he was going to deal with the most challenging problem he’d faced in a while: getting his product to clients.
From every visible standard, Demby ran a legitimate diamond export corporation. Sefadu Holdings, located in Koidu, was founded when many of the multinational mining operations pulled out, leaving several mines abandoned overnight. The companies cited reasons for their sudden departure: civil unrest, Ebola outbreak, and inability to recruit competent staff to Sierra Leone. But all the locals knew the truth: The mines had been stripped. With nothing much of value remaining, the companies didn’t want to continue hemorrhaging money.
But Demby was managing one of mines for a Belgian firm and lied to management about the lack of diamonds in one of the open-pits he oversaw. He’d begun pocketing some of the diamonds and had amassed a healthy bank account in the process. Desperate to get a higher yield, the company used block caving to extend the life of their surface mines by sending them underground. However, it wasn’t enough to sustain operations. When the firm decided to pull out, Demby made them a paltry offer for the land rights and equipment, but it was far more than they could earn if they dismantled everything and returned it to Belgium. So they agreed to his proposal and Sefadu Holdings began operations.
Demby was careful not to announce an ore discovery too soon. And when he did, he made sure it sounded modest. His shrewd business dealings ensured that he didn’t bring scrutiny on himself from his former employers and that he could quietly create a black market on the side that might be far more profitable. To industry observers, Sefadu Holdings looked like a struggling mining operation. Meanwhile, Demby was cashing in on his calculated efforts to create a small empire. In less than two years, he’d gone from being an underpaid employee to the de facto King of Koidu.
When Demby and his convoy arrived at The Errant Apostrophe’s, a bar run by an aspiring British writer, they crammed into their usual booth in the back. A thatched roof was all that separated patrons from the natural surroundings as the pub was built in the foothills of the Tingi Mountains.
Deep Cover (A Brady Hawk Novel Book 2) Page 4
