“Our contact in Velesta, Hawk McMillan, has gotten back to me with coordinates that could lead us to the missing explosive device. We know the illegal shipments were dropped by the CIA in crates into Macedonia. The good news is that the device is still in one of those crates, meaning, Dilaver hasn’t seen it or sold it yet. The bad news is, someone is deliberately robbing Dilaver whenever his shipments are on the road and he’s getting low in funds. That means he’ll be desperate to sell quickly and is antsy to get to his caches, which squeezes our time frame even more.”
“Who’s robbing Dilaver?” Sullivan asked. “Not that I don’t approve, but I thought he was the big shot in that area. Isn’t everyone either paying him or in his pocket?”
“Apparently, someone started to take advantage of Dilaver’s short holiday in Asia,” Jed said.
That was when the drug lord had tried to do business with the Triads and failed miserably, with some inside tinkering from Jed personally. Then, with the help of a team of SEALs doing most of the damage, COS Command had successfully shut down one of the veins that fed the heart of the illegal drug industries in that region.
Jed liked how things were going. The joint venture with the SEALs had paid off handsomely so far, enabling them to play some power games with different illegal arms dealers while looking for the missing explosive device. “Hawk told me that our Croat warlord came home to millions lost from these highway robberies. What with our taking his cache in Asia, I’d say that Dilaver is feeling the pain in his pocketbook.”
Sullivan snorted. “Good. I wish we could be like the SEALs and just blow scum like him away,” he said.
“We don’t like to do things the easy way,” Armando remarked.
“There’s no easy way to kill cancer, Chang,” Heath said. “You zap one cell and it keeps dividing elsewhere. The only way is to infect it from the inside.”
Jed nodded. That was their way. Unlike the SEALs, who were trained to search and destroy, COS Commandos were conditioned inthe Virus Program to attack like an organism. They specialized in targeting a system from within, sometimes using the enemy’s own strengths to destroy it. In the case of Dilaver, with his army of mercenaries and regional warlords, their task had been to find out his strange connection to the CIA and how he came to be on the receiving end of special weapon drops. Then COMCEN could use this knowledge to trap bigger prey. Special ops, such as the SEALs, were usually not interested in insidious warfare. Which was fine with Jed; they all had their own battle zones.
“Hawk must get closer to Dilaver soon,” Heath continued. “No one gets close to those caches of weapons unless he’s in Dilaver’s trusted circle.”
“He’s already been on a trip with Dilaver, so that’s the first step,” Jed told them and clicked on the remote to show an aerial map. “The coordinates show a large area. Several shipments, well hidden in rough mountainous terrain. Finding the exact location will take some time and with Dilaver’s army of mercenaries lying in wait at checkpoints, we can’t send in too large a search party.”
“It’s strange to be on the outside, Jed, letting some other group have the action,” Sullivan said. “What’s our job at this point? Take a team in there to search for the caches?”
“Sometimes it’s good to study how others tackle a certain problem,” Heath commented. “Look at our GEM division. If they’d taken on this stage, they’d handle the situation differently.”
Jed nodded again. “Of course they would handle the operation from an entirely different angle. I’ve already pointed out the impracticality of using our female assets, especially with the time factor. We’re dealing with a man who uses and sells young girls. It’d be very difficult to get him to confide in a woman about weapons. So inserting Hawk McMillan into Dilaver’s stronghold is the best option. It frees us for the rest of Phase Three, which we’ll run through right now to make sure we’re all on the same page. We have a lot on our plates what with what has happened in D.C.”
Ever since their team had initiated Phase Three and successfully managed to corner the CIA moles, the rats—so to speak—had been scattering back to their holes. Which was what they’d wanted. COMCEN’s agenda was to follow each trail and infiltrate so they could find out more about this extensive network of spies who had been poisoning the system for so long.
It had taken them a long time to get to this point and Jed could feel a breakthrough coming. Finally—finally—after all these years, he would be able to crush a few enemies that had cost the lives of his friends.
“Admiral Madison is doing a great job there too, making sure that the Intelligence Committee investigates all the suspicious cases from the last ten years,” Flyboy said.
“Yes, having met that man a few times, I think he should run for office,” Sullivan added.
“Are you crazy, dude? That’s the end of life as he knows it. He can forget about finding out traitors and getting to the bottom of this mess we’re in. We don’t need him running around making promises he won’t keep.” Flyboy scratched his nose with his pen. “No, we want him just as he is.”
“True.” Sullivan leaned back. “So I gather I keep on doing what I’ve been doing, putting together the missing weapons puzzle, right? Jed?”
Jed blinked. Part of him had been listening to the conversation, but a part of him was busy registering that strange prickly sensation at the base of his neck. He’d felt it before—when he was looking down at Cummings’ body. What the hell was it?
He looked at his team. Everyone was at ease, throwing out ideas and speculations in their usual informal style. They were a tightly knit group. If anything was wrong, these men would all feel it. No, this feeling was uniquely his.
Sullivan was gazing back at him questioningly, waiting for his reply. They were used to his short pauses, so his little silence hadn’t been noticed. He caught Armando’s speculative gaze. Except by one. Armando was looking at him too closely. Did he have the same odd feeling too?
Jed double-clicked the remote. “Quick update. The missing weapons are showing up at odd places. The explosive device is in Macedonia. We just retrieved the SEED in Germany. What do you have for us at your end, Sullivan?”
Sullivan and Shahrukh were their weaponry and battle experts. Sullivan had connections with the West and Shahrukh, the East. The two of them worked well together, and in spite of very different demeanors, they had become very close friends, so much so that they were mocked as the twins at COMCEN.
Sullivan grinned and turned to Shahrukh. “Wait till they hear what we have.”
Shahrukh responded with a mere lift of his dark eyebrow.
“First, we’ll simplify each missing element,” Sullivan said, counting off with his fingers. “An explosive device, practically undetectable. A decoder, one that’s being designed by quantum scientists. The entire design of our newest flight simulator. A captured and still missing spy plane. That’s just the big list. Shahrukh?”
“With some help from T, we’ve traced certain monetary movements through off-shore accounts belonging to some of our suspects,” Shahrukh obligingly continued, his soft accent more pronounced than usual, betraying a little bit of his excitement. “We matched dates and events. There’s an emerging pattern.”
“Former KGB handlers and their leftover moles in different agencies,” Sullivan interrupted triumphantly.
