Counter-Strike (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Novel Book 2) Read online

  Mitch slowed the vehicle as he neared the first terminal, his eyes trolling along the pedestrians milling along the baggage area.

  “So we’ve got a name, a face, and a location but how the hell are we supposed to locate her amidst this jumble?” he said.

  “Well, she is Chinese so that helps, right?” said Dev with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  Mitch drove to the next terminal and continued his visual stalk of the passengers who were checking their bags and entering the building. Habitually, he found himself glancing down at people’s footwear and their gait patterns, reminding himself that he wasn’t in the backcountry. His blood pressure would be lower if he were, as he couldn’t stand the nauseating effects that large crowds had upon him.

  While he was scanning through the throngs of people, he saw a dark-skinned man walk across the footpath in front of his SUV. He walked with a sense of purpose, his left arm moving more fluidly than his right, which seemed velcroed to his side. In Mitch’s experience that meant he was concealing something under his jacket. The man was wearing jeans and a casual gray suitcoat. The pants had faint soil stains on the knees. It was the boots that stood out though—the black jungle survival type with the miniscule side vents that allowed for water drainage. Mitch had a well-worn pair himself from his days of working in joint special ops assignments with Colombian Special Forces and they all had the same unique tread pattern.

  He watched the man beeline for the main entrance, pausing slightly and canting his head away as two policemen walked by.

  “I don’t see Yin but there’s someone else who might be worth following.” He abruptly pulled over, squeezing between two taxis, and then hopped out of the vehicle. Dev hurried to catch up as they entered the terminal and angled to the right, with Mitch scanning past the bobbing heads for the slender figure who was deftly weaving through the frenetic horde. He reminded himself that his HK pistol might have to be quickly ditched in a trash bin if he drew the attention of security. It wasn’t like his past life a few months ago where he carried the weight of the FBI and could pursue a potential threat without recourse. Blades or hand-to-hand are the new rules of engagement, it seems.

  “Who are you after?” said Dev, trotting to stay beside him.

  “Eleven o’clock. Lanky dude with dark skin who moves like a wolf.”

  “What about him?” she said after pinpointing the figure.

  “Not sure but something doesn’t add up and in my book intuition is a big part of tracking someone. I think he’s our Charlie Brown—the guy whose tracks I saw at the estate.”

  An elevator door opened to the left, sending a wave of people into the human river that Mitch and Dev were wading through. He had to pause and make his way through the tangle. When it had cleared, the mysterious man was gone.

  Mitch kept pivoting and studying the entrances and escalators. “Dammit.” He turned and grabbed Dev’s arm. “You head upstairs and see if you can locate him from there. I’ll stay down here and keep pushing ahead.”

  Just after they split up, with Dev ascending on the escalator, Mitch looked to his left—straight into the face of Jessica Yin.

  Chapter 11

  A hulking figure who seemed to be accompanying Yin peeled off to her right and melted into the crowd. Mitch watched him for a second, not certain if he was actually with the woman, but made sure he had gained some distance before getting closer to Yin. The woman glanced down at her phone long enough for Mitch to file into the flow of people behind her as they headed down a walkway leading to international flights. He could see the security checkpoint ahead and knew he had to reach her before then.

  Mitch’s heart raced when he realized Dev had the tranquilizer. Looks like we’ll have to go old-school, which is usually the best way anyhow.

  He reached in his pocket and quickly texted Dev that he had spotted Yin near a chapel and a coffee kiosk. He replaced his phone with a small fixed blade, inverting it and keeping it concealed against his wrist and jacket. He quietly pushed his way through the crowd and moved in alongside Yin, slicing the tip of his blade through the thin fabric of her nylon jacket until it pressed against her ribs.

  “Ms. Yin, please accompany me to the right unless you want your innards spilled onto the floor.”

  She slowed her gait as he pressed the tip into her yielding flesh. “If I have to ask again, that pretty little sweater of yours is gonna be permanently stained red.”

  Yin followed him to the side, the two walking in unison as Mitch kept an eye on her hands while glancing up at the security guards in the distance. He angled her off to a small chapel situated next to the food court.

  Shoving her inside, he saw that there was a young man kneeling at the altar. The man turned abruptly and looked at Mitch, who was scowling. “We could use some time alone. My wife has a terminal illness and needs comforting.”

  The man hastily withdrew, closing the narrow double-doors behind him. Mitch sensed Jessica trying to pivot to lessen the pressure on the blade so she could strike at him. He slammed her head into the wall and repositioned the knife near her carotid.

  “We’re overdue on a chat about Bob Schueller and since I’m pressed for time and have no compunction about spilling blood in a chapel, you better begin talking before I start slicing.”

  Her lip was bleeding and she began crying. “Please, mister, why are you doing this? Just take my purse and leave me alone.” He told her to move her hands up high on the wall and stand still.

  Mitch twisted the tip into her neck, causing a rivulet of blood to run down her collarbone. She winced and then stopped sobbing, her voice deepening. “You fuck, you’ll pay for that.”

  “That’s a damn pretty face to carve up.”

  “Schueller’s yesterday’s news. What you really want to know is what I obtained from a frumpy old fuck like him,” she said with a crooked smile while letting out a laugh.

  He felt his phone vibrating and knew that Dev was probably trying to contact him. “I’d like to know both, actually.” He struck Yin on the back of the head with the steel pommel of his knife. As she slid to the floor, the chapel doors opened and in walked Yin’s bodyguard Edward, his face red with rage as he rushed towards Mitch.

  Yin used the distraction to shift away from Mitch, delivering a leg sweep against his calf. Mitch lost his balance and fell backwards but used the momentum to ball up and roll to the side away from Yin’s next kick. He sprang up with his blade just in time to sidestep the massive brawler whose hands were nearly upon his neck. Mitch sliced the man across the right quadricep which caused his leg to buckle. The surly brute grunted and grabbed his leaking appendage. Yin started to bolt for the door but Mitch seized her coat and yanked her back.

  While Mitch tried to halt Yin’s escape without mortally wounding her, she spun with a vicious scream while delivering a right hook at Mitch’s face. He bobbed enough to miss the full blow but her knuckles grazed his cheek then slid off his ear. He parried the next punch and sent the toes of his boot into the side of her knee. Mitch began a downward slash with his blade, aiming at her deltoid but felt a sharp blow in his back as the injured man managed a weak punch to his kidneys.

  Dev rushed inside, quickly closing the door and running towards the hulking figure who was swinging at Mitch. Dev drove her boot into his chest, slamming him into some pews which folded under his weight like bowling pins. Edward came up with a large folding knife, the steel glinting in the fluorescent lighting. Dev dodged his feeble thrust, doing a disarm by grabbing the hand and violently turning the wrist back on itself. She heard the popping of ligaments as the knife fell to the floor. She had removed her own fixed blade from its appendix sheath and drove the pommel into the man’s temple twice until he slumped to the floor.

  While Mitch regained his hold on Yin, she deftly removed a wooden spike from her bun and drove it into Mitch’s forearm. His leather jacket lessened the impact but he still felt the slight sting of the tip pierce his skin. The surprise move was enough to cause
his grip to loosen on Yin’s jacket and she slid back, limp-trotting for the door, gliding into the crowd. Mitch glanced back at Dev and the unconscious figure on the ground then yanked open the handle and headed into the throng of people.

  He could see the unsteady gait of Yin ahead as she tried to weave amongst the crowd. She looked back at him then increased her stride, heading towards the escalators that led to a tram. Several police officers were making their way to the left, heading towards the chapel. He hoped that Dev had fled by now and he stopped by a magazine stand, lowering his ball cap slightly as the officers rushed past.

  When he looked up, Yin was gone. He paused and scanned the escalator, spying the dark-skinned man from earlier heading up then disappearing into the crowd. Mitch glanced to his right and left near the food vendors for any signs of Yin. He searched for a limping pattern then for her short crop of black hair. As he reached the escalator, he stepped off to the side beside a square-shaped recess lined with potted plants and some benches. Yin was sitting down, her head leaning against a small palm tree whose branches obscured the area. He moved towards her slowly and saw two round puncture wounds in the side of her head above the ear. There were no exit wounds, making him conclude they were .22 caliber rounds. He sat down beside Yin, examining the wounds again. Neat and clean with no mess. Probably a suppressed pistol at close range with an expanding bullet. Mitch rummaged through her pockets, trying to avoid drawing any attention to his actions as the crowd surged onto the escalator. He found her ticket, which indicated she was flying to Kuala Lumpur, then removed her cellphone and tucked it in his pocket.

  An elderly couple came into the sheltered grove and sat down across from Mitch. The woman was holding onto a cane as her portly husband helped her to the bench. Mitch just lowered his head and got up slowly, looking into Yin’s glassy eyes. As he pushed his way through the crowd, Mitch heard a scream come from the old woman followed by her pointing in his direction. He saw several police officers leaning over the second floor railing, their eyes scanning the throngs of people in his vicinity.

  Chapter 12

  Mitch ducked into the restroom, grabbing a trench coat that was folded on top of a suitcase beside a closed toilet stall. He flung his ball cap into the trash and tussled his hair then slid on the coat and pulled out his sunglasses. He’d been through enough urban evasion courses in the military and later apprehended enough fugitives in the city to know that if you can’t initially gain distance from your pursuers then you had to conceal yourself amongst them until an escape route presented itself.

  Once outside the bathroom, he blended into the flow of human traffic, stopping beside a wall-mounted row of TV screens. He pretended to search the incoming flight rosters but instead was scanning the emergency exit diagram on the wall. His plan was to continue following the crowd and make his way out of the main terminal. An evader had three choices: to stay put and blend into the masses, hoping the searchers would overlook you in their haste. That rarely worked with modern security cameras and given that more officers would be brought in to flood the search zone. The second alternative was to make an all-out sprint from the area of operation and hope that your stamina would hold up over several miles of parkour-like moves through the bowels of an unknown city. Mitch had apprehended plenty of thugs who employed this method and it never ended well for the fugitive, who usually wrenched an ankle hopping fences or succumbed to police dogs and helicopters. The third choice was to become a chameleon during the first few minutes of the escape. Blending in allowed you to assess your surroundings, look for the less risky egress routes, and most importantly, calm your nerves so you didn’t look guilty or have an awkward, panic-driven stride.

  He and his special operations unit had once undertaken an urban survival and evasion course that saw each man getting dropped in Boston with only $5 in their pocket while having to make it back alone to Fort Bragg within 48 hours without any outside assistance. Nine out of ten guys made the timeline through adaption and improvisational skills. In Mitch’s case, he knew that the best way to disappear in the city and gain intel about your surroundings was to blend in with the homeless. There he obtained a different set of clothes, learned where the police were most concentrated, and discovered where the local shelters were located so he could obtain a free meal. Other unit members not in evasion mode were practicing their surveillance skills and were on the lookout for Mitch and his men. If you dared to call a family member for help or money, as one scheming soldier did, you were booted from the program.

  After spending time acquiring a new look, he ducked into a tourist hostel and use their free internet service, where he searched for Craigslist postings for traveling indie bands that were in need of loafers—unpaid workers to travel with them on tour and help with setup and takedown. Mitch was in his mid-twenties and had a scruffy enough appearance that when combined with his new wardrobe and a forced slouch, would allow him to not get singled out as military. He used an anonymous email to contact a prospective group, and that night, he was able to hitch a ride on a band’s refurbished school bus to their gig in Raleigh-Durham, which put him only sixty miles away from Fort Bragg. Craigslist and similar sites provided a wealth of online evasion tools for remaining low-profile and permitted him to stay off the public transportation systems, which would have been monitored.

  There were two assignments along the route back. One was to construct an improvised weapon and the other was to sneak in and out of the Amtrak train station in Newark to obtain page 337 out of the Yellow Pages in a phone booth without being spotted. He made a modified stick-weapon by using a folded newspaper that he had filled with several short sections of rebar obtained from a construction site he came across after leaving the homeless encampment. One of his unit buddies would trump them all with his clever use of a child’s squirt gun he’d found in a park and later filled with bleach obtained from a janitor’s cart at a downtown soup kitchen.

  His thoughts returned to the distant exit to the right. It was the least congested and he knew he’d have to move fast before the area was shut down as the officers tried to narrow their search corridors. Mitch made his way next to a single woman who was pushing a stroller. He stayed a foot behind her with each step. As he neared the door, he moved up and held it for her as they all walked to the curb together. He looked over his shoulder towards the entrance and saw two policemen heading his way. Mitch strode down the sidewalk and crossed a pedestrian walkway, heading towards a row of taxis then sliding inside the first one that was vacant.

  Mitch had the driver take him two miles into the heart of Munich and drop him near the downtown area. After he exited the taxi, he walked along the streets, blending in with the other tourists and mulling over Yin’s bizarre ending. Who the hell did she have on her trail? Was it that guy from the estate? He must’ve been the shooter who took her out. He thought about the carnage he had witnessed around the estate and the skillful execution of Yin. Someone is in a hurry to cover their tracks, but who? This has to be larger than Yin and even Bob. He needed answers—answers to her death, her dubious connections, and the whereabouts of his friend. With Yin out of the picture, he felt his chances of ever getting those questions resolved evaporating like the chill of his breath in the night air.

  Chapter 13

  Kyle swigged down the last of his brandy and then stared out the window of the jet as it flew south of India towards Malaysia. The string of tropical islands below resembled emerald eyes gazing skyward. In another hour, he’d land in Kuala Lumpur and then be picked up by helicopter to finish the last leg of his long journey.

  He returned his gaze to the laptop and scanned Schueller’s data. Everything was unfolding according to the timeline which should have given him cause to relax somewhat. However, he hadn’t heard back from Jessica and there was no indication that she had boarded her flight in Vienna.

  Since the loss of his wife nearly three years ago, Kyle hadn’t sought out the company of women or even shown the slightest interest in
their presence—until Jessica emerged back into his world. He had found her to be an excellent operative in their time in Beijing but the necessary distance of her surveillance work had kept him from getting to know her well though he had entrusted his life to her there for so long that he never questioned her loyalty. Her cat-like demeanor and sultry air awoke something in him. Jessica seemed as ruthless and controlling as he was and she had a wounded vulnerability behind her steely eyes that he understood. He kept any glimmer of feelings for her at bay during sexual encounters and reminded himself that having a conscience in his business was a liability he would never allow himself again. She was just another asset—a great one with amazing skills and silky legs but still just a tool in his arsenal.

  With Schueller’s assistance, coerced or otherwise, Kyle would be able to complete a refined version of the bioweapon he’d formulated for the Swedish experiment. The original sample was obtained from a hidden cache site in Beijing when he’d stolen some vials before his capture. This provided him with the base organic strain from which he was hoping, with Schueller’s involvement, he could either create a more refined aerosolized form or an injectable version that would infect a person and spread via close contact. He’d kept some of the Chinese samples as leverage, never dreaming he’d need to use it one day. Soon, he’d have enough of the pathogen to unleash on Jakarta on January 18, two days from now. This time, he planned to have a modified virus with an incubation period of 48 hours, allowing for greater transmission once passengers reached their destination cities around the world.