“I teach English. Here in Taiwan.”
“English? Why do we need to learn English?”
“Uhhh . . . so you can compete with China? I help you guys compete with China.”
The woman went to Charlie’s dead body and said, “This man is bleeding!”
The Tracker ignored her, saying, “So you are responsible for the death coming.”
Confused, the man said, “Death? What are you talking about?”
The Tracker raised the pistol and the drunk’s muddled brain failed to understand what was happening, but the woman did. She shrieked, and he whipped his gun toward her. The pistol barked again, cutting off the scream like someone had flipped a radio switch.
The man stumbled backwards at the death of his girlfriend, and the Tracker swung the pistol to him.
Chapter 51
Unlike my former boss, Kurt Hale, George Wolffe listened to my report without any verbal explosions, only raising an eyebrow at some of the more serious results. I was impressed, because if it had been me on the other end, I would have wanted to fly to Australia and kick my own ass.
I’d sent a short SITREP earlier, but with the time difference, I knew it wouldn’t make it to Wolffe’s desk until he arrived, and I hadn’t wanted him to read it without me being able to explain, so I had requested another VTC. At 6 a.m. his time—10 p.m. mine in Australia—I was told he was available. I’d dialed up and given him the damage. When I finished, he exhaled and said, “So you know for sure Dunkin is dead?”
“Yes. It was reported on the news tonight, along with the other bodies. The entire zoo operation was a shitshow.”
He leaned back and said, “Why? What went wrong?”
“Sir, it was honestly my mistake. The Chinese suckered me with the thumb drive red herring. I thought they really wanted it, but I now think they simply wanted Dunkin and knew just asking him to show up was a nonstarter. Even so, we had it covered. Dunkin failed to follow instructions. We don’t know why. He was given explicit parameters, one of which was not to enter any conveyance alone with the target. He did so. He left his security and entered a cable car by himself. There was nothing we could do at that point.”
“And the others that died? Why was there a shootout? Why didn’t the security just leave? Are you blown? Did they target you? It concerns me.”
“No, sir. We aren’t blown. Jennifer followed the men who killed him, looking for a link for further exploration. It wasn’t wise, but they didn’t know who she was. They didn’t target her, she targeted them.”
I struggled to maintain my composure at this point, the pain of Dunkin’s loss biting deep, because I had been the one to send him to his death. I made it seem like a clinical report, but I really, really wanted to find the man who had ordered the hit and skin him alive.
We’d rescued Nicole and taken a sizable toll against the enemy ourselves, but we hadn’t found the owner of the so-called import/export company or his girlfriend. Mr. Chen Ju-Long. That man was at the root of both the mission and Dunkin’s death, and while I’d wanted to protect U.S. national interests before, now I wanted to make him pay personally.
And that was something I was good at.
Wolffe said, “What about the girl? Nicole? She’s a breach.”
“Yes, sir, she’s a potential breach, but I think we can contain it. She has no idea who we are.”
“How did she get involved in this?”
I started to stretch the truth a little. “When we’d originally interdicted the men against Dunkin, he’d been separated from his girlfriend, and he’d lost contact with her. We just assumed she’d gone back home, but upon conducting the Alpha mission against the target house, we learned that they’d taken her, holding her hostage as leverage against Dunkin. They forced our hand. Instead of a controlled exploitation of the target house, we had to conduct an in-extremis Omega mission.”
He squinted his eyes and said, “How did you not know she was being held? Did Dunkin not try to call her? What was the leverage if they never told him they had her?”
I felt the heat through the video connection. I said, “Sir, I can’t explain what they were planning. I can only tell you what I found. Maybe we short-circuited the plan, I don’t know.”
He said, “This is going to be a hard sell today. Especially since you got nothing out of the house, and lost Dunkin in the process.”
And that set me off, causing me to lose my composure. “You can tell those fucks on the Oversight Council they can kiss my ass. I didn’t ‘lose’ Dunkin, like he wandered away in a store. He’s dead. Gone. That’s all that matters here.”
I shook my head and said, “Jesus, if they get mad because we saved a girl’s life but didn’t get something they can use against China in the process, then tell them they can get on a plane and put their own asses in the breach.”
He said, “Okay, okay, calm down. I agree. I’ll handle it. You think extracting her to the U.S. is the way to go?”
In my written SITREP I’d requested an exfiltration flight for Nicole, just like we would do if we’d captured a terrorist, only she’d get to ride up front drinking champagne, instead of in the back, tied up with a hood on. Right now, she was in our hotel, getting babysat by Veep with the television off.
I said, “Yes, sir, extraction isn’t perfect, but it’s the best course of action. I didn’t tell her about Dunkin. She’s overwhelmed as it is, and only knows she was rescued by some American force. I told her she’s now privy to a secret operation that Dunkin is working, and needs to cooperate for her own protection. She’s agreed. Getting her out of here until this is over is the best way to plug the breach. We can deal with the fallout later. I know it won’t be pretty, but it’s the best solution right now.”
“Okay, I’ll divert a Taskforce bird from Indonesia. It’s doing nothing but wasting per diem on the beach anyway supporting Johnny’s team. It’ll be there before dawn. What about the threat? Did you get any more leads? Tell me you have something.”
I stretched the truth again, saying, “We have nothing on Jake Shu, other than he was supposed to go to Cairns. We might have something on Chen Ju-Long, but I won’t know for a couple of hours.”
“Jake Shu is still a ghost from our end. No digital trace. What do you have on Chen?”
“Nothing yet. The team’s sifting through what we got from the house.”
Which was true, but our sensitive site exploitation of the target house had delivered absolutely nothing. The place was clean, their tradecraft pristine. We might get something from biometrics from the men we’d killed, but I doubted it would go further than Chen’s import/export “company.”
He looked at his watch and said, “Keep working it. Let me know before you go off half-cocked again.”
I said, “Sir—” and he cut me off, saying, “Yeah, yeah. You had no idea the girl was there. Look, I’m sorry about Dunkin. I truly am, but don’t let it affect your ability to operate. China is the threat, not the assholes they’re using. Get me a lead, not a bunch of dead bodies.”
And I realized he knew I was stretching the truth, but also that he was good with it. He was reminding me not to go off on a killing spree, like I had last year in Brazil after Kurt Hale had been killed. The problem was it wasn’t me this time.