Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (12 page)

Chapter 25

Two hours later, Perry had made the
arduous trek back to the canyon where his FBI colleagues had previously been ambushed.
The fly-ridden corpses had been visited by vermin during the night and their
noses and fingertips were gnawed away. He scratched nervously at his temple,
staring at the bloated remains of the former agents and feeling like Ritter’s
bitch in some scheme that he was too deep to extricate himself from. He thought
his role would only be providing inside intel and occasional computer data, not
an accomplice in the demise of such finely trained men.
Fucking Ritter.
Sitting in his lofty perch delegating orders.

He took a deep breath, running through his
cover story for the hundredth time before he radioed back to headquarters. His sunbaked
fingertips were cracked and sore. He looked down at his hands, wondering what
had happened to the man he was twenty-four hours ago, then his mind shifted to
his lacerated face.
Fucking
Mitch. He’s the reason this all went
south. My part would’ve already been over if that woman hadn’t shown up at his
place. How the hell is he woven into this nightmare?

He pulled out his radio and called Ryker,
noticing a few drops of blood staining his vest from busting Drake’s nose
mingled with his own facial injuries. He dabbed his fingers in the wet sand and
scoured off the mess.

“What do you mean the trail went cold?” said
the bureau chief.

“The flash floods last night wiped the
area clean. I’ve been running on empty all day.”

“Stay put. I’ll send a helo out to get you
and your team.”

He took a deep breath. “Just me. The rest
of my guys—they…they…” He paused and counted to three in his head for greater
drama. “They’re dead. It was Mitch, he was the shooter.”

“Holy Christ! What do you mean Mitch? He gunned
them down, all of them? Why would he do that?”

“The guy’s gone off the reservation. He
and this woman must be into some heavy shit.”

“I can’t believe it. Mitch is a stand-up
guy from what I know. Are you sure?”

“I was there, sir. We identified ourselves
and then he burned them all down right before my eyes. I barely made it out
myself.”

Ryker was silent, then cleared his throat.
“Alright, alright…I, uhm…look, just hunker down where you are and I’ll have a
team inbound within thirty minutes.”

***

An hour later Perry was sitting in the
briefing room with Ryker, recounting his story and poring over the file on Mira
Sanchez. The bodies of the three downed agents had been flown- out with him and
were in the coroner’s office two blocks away. Ryker had pulled up the computer
images of Sanchez that were pinged off the facial recognition program. It
showed her at a gas station in the town of Cave Creek, eighteen miles south of
the ranch.

“So, who were these mercenaries that were
pursuing them—did you get a look at any of those guys?”

“No, they must have pulled out of the area
after we moved in, although Mitch caught one in a mantrap and executed him. The
guy’s throat was slit from ear to ear.” Perry simulated the motion with his
thumb across his own neck.

Perry lowered his head, massaging his forehead
and speaking in a low voice. “After he mowed down my team and disappeared, I
followed him for a little while but knew that he may have more trail deterrents
in place. I got caught in the storm that rolled through and had to hunker down
in place for the night. That’s why I went dark for a while.”

Ryker studied Perry’s face for a moment
and then picked up the black-and-white photograph of Sanchez, tossing it on the
table beside her work dossier from Aeneid.

“I just don’t get it. Mitch teams up with
her and then goes on the lam, taking out our guys. I don’t know the man well
but it just doesn’t seem like him.”

“Then why’s he on the run if he’s not
guilty? Mitch has been bought. He’s got no family, no wife, nothing in his life
to keep him honorable. They must have some prior relationship and are involved
in the recent corporate espionage that went down at that private contracting
firm in the email you sent.”

Perry stood up, resting his knuckles on
the table. “If there isn’t anything else, I just want to get cleaned up and
have a few minutes to myself.”

Ryker stopped him at the door, standing in
the entry. “You know Mitch better than anyone else here. I want you to get with
the rest of the tac-team in the conference room when you’re done and see what
you can contribute to his whereabouts—and Perry, I want him brought back
alive.”

“Sure.” Perry just smirked then lowered
his head. “I thought I knew the man. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe all of his
demons finally caught up with him.”

Ryker watched Perry disappear around the
corner and then walked back inside the debriefing room. He stared at the image
of Sanchez while picking up the phone beside him. He dialed the D.C. office and
requested the international activities division. He entered his security code
and badge ID.

“This is Bureau Chief Evan Ryker. I want
to request an Interpol search on Mira Sanchez along with any correlation
between her and FBI Agent Mitchell Kearns. We’ve not found anything on our
internal databases on the woman and need to cast our net wider.”

The agent on the other end indicated that
she would get back to him within two hours, after which he hung up and resumed
poring over the map of Arizona on his laptop.

Chapter 26

Anatoly drove the white SUV for another
fifteen miles north, pulling off at a remote exit in the desert. Below the
overpass was a white delivery van. Inside were two more of Anatoly’s men. The
man in the driver’s seat, who had a trim beard, was tall enough to have to
scrunch to sit comfortably. The other was younger and built like a linebacker. Mitch
and Dev transferred into the vehicle while Anatoly grabbed his gear and rifle
from the SUV.

“You got a clean cellphone I can use?”
Mitch said to Anatoly. The older man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled
out an encrypted Smartphone, passing it over.

As they resumed their trip north in one vehicle,
Mitch dialed in Ryker’s number at the FBI office in Phoenix. When the man
picked up, Mitch didn’t wait to do an overview of the past twenty-four hours,
but instead cut to the chase. “This is Mitch. Perry has no doubt told you his
side of the story by now.”

“He said you’re the shooter and took out
his men. Mitch—what the hell is going on? Did you know this woman is on the
FBI’s Top Ten list?”

How’s that possible? It takes time and a
dozen bureau protocols to get bumped to the top of the list from nowhere.
“Perry is a traitor.
His goons killed our men and he probably led them right into the trap. He’s
feeding you false intel to hide his involvement with the Aeneid Corporation, which
is planning a major attack inside our borders.”

“What? What proof do you have?”

Mitch looked over at Dev, knowing she was
the only link to his innocence and the story he was conveying. It was his word
against Perry’s, only Mitch was on the run, confirming his guilt with each
passing mile. “When I have something more solid I’ll call you,” he said, the
words feeling sticky in his mouth.

Mitch hung up, handing the phone back to
Anatoly. He felt his stomach coiling in knots. His colleague was setting him up
and with resources at his disposal that Mitch no longer had. He was alone, cut off
except for the people beside him in the vehicles, whose motives he wasn’t
entirely clear about.

Mitch stared straight ahead at the miles
of blacktop that spun by in a blur, barely noticing the desert terrain around
him. “What evidence do you have, exactly?” he said to Dev. “We’re not going to
be able to stay in evasion mode for long. I know how these federal manhunts
work, remember?”

“When we stop at our next location, I’ll
show you,” she said. “Just stick it out with us, Mitch.”

An hour and a half later, they arrived at
a cabin in the mountains west of Flagstaff. It was located six miles down a
secondary road and was a two-story structure made of ponderosa pine surrounded
by miles of national forest.

Out of habit, Mitch scanned the ground for
tracks as they got out. He could see that the place probably hadn’t been used
in weeks and the leaf litter on the driveway didn’t show any signs of
disturbance. 

“A friend of yours own this?” said Mitch.

“Nah, Airbnb—great resource for travelers
who want to stay anonymous,” said Anatoly with a smile as they walked up to the
wrap-around porch.

Mitch yanked on the pewter door handle and
found it locked. “You’re not gonna stay anonymous if you have to meet the owner
for the keys or break in.”

“The cyber division of my company, small
though it is, developed an invasive software used for surveillance of civilian
businesses that we sometimes need in our line of work. It tells us when places
like Airbnb rentals are vacant, correlated to their calendar listings and the
owner’s personal Facebook pages of when they will be out of town—it’s amazing
what people will post to the world about their daily whereabouts.”

Anatoly motioned to Petra, his
second-in-command, to pick the lock and deactivate the inside alarm.

“Most of the time, we just need a house
for a few hours or one night to hole up away from the city or near the staging
area of a target.”

Mitch saw Anatoly look around the edge of
the woods, noting the defensible slopes. “We need to lie low for a bit and
discuss our plans for the coming phase,” said the older man.

As the front door swung open, two of
Anatoly’s men swept inside, clearing the abode. Anatoly proceeded in, his hand
on his HK pistol, while glancing around at the glass-lined cabinets around the
kitchen. “This guy better have some rum or brandy in his coffers. The last
place we stayed at was some Mormon’s house in central Utah and all he had was
apple juice and spritzers.”

Given Anatoly’s reputation as a
professional assassin, Mitch was always amazed at the older man’s ability to go
from being a stone-faced killer to a grinning joker in a flash. He also knew
more filthy jokes than anyone Mitch had ever met, though those weren’t likely
to be part of the evening repertoire with Dev present. Then again, he thought,
maybe she’d inherited those traits too.

The interior of the cabin resembled a
luxury yacht more than a rustic abode. The cathedral ceiling had elk-antler
chandeliers hanging from them, highlighting the spacious living room beneath,
which was replete with leather couches positioned around a native-stone
fireplace.

“Geez, this joint looks like it should be
in Aspen, not Flagstaff,” said Mitch. “Must be those Californians who built
this for a third home thinking that my state is their backyard.”

***

That afternoon, they had a simple meal of
rice, beans, salsa, and tortillas along with some cognac Anatoly hunted down.
With the four men taking guard duty outside, Dev and her father sat around the
gas fireplace discussing the happenings at Aeneid interspersed with talk about
recent events in Israel. Mitch sat in a leather recliner and took in the banter
between father and daughter, his mind drifting back to his friend’s ranch,
where he’d shared many similar dinners around the open campfire.

Mitch saw a side of Anatoly that he had
never witnessed before. His usual stolid expression was replaced by a
tranquility and warmth as he spoke with Dev, his hand occasionally brushing
against her arm tenderly. Mitch had always felt a sense of reverence being in
the presence of such a seasoned warrior but now he was deeply moved by the
untenable connection between father and daughter that permeated the cabin.

Anatoly swigged down the last of his drink
then looked at Mitch. “You still look like a soldier—only it’s a job as a
government agent man, eh?”

Mitch gave Dev a sideways glance. “It was…until
yesterday when your daughter came a-knockin’.”

“She has a way of turning a person’s world
upside down, it seems.”

Dev smiled, her face even more radiant
than Mitch had noticed before.

“We should look over the files I obtained
from Aeneid,” she said, reaching into her soiled shoulder bag and retrieving
her laptop.

“So this is where you show me the
nefarious schematics for the attack and how we can thwart it, right?” said
Mitch, who moved over next to Dev on the couch as the three began eagerly
waiting for the device to power up.

He grew wide-eyed as he watched her insert
the flash drive.

“Relax,” she said, tapping her fingers on
a silver device with a small antenna. “I’ve got my computer routing our location
to six other locations around the globe so we’re safe. Just like you setting up
those dummy trails earlier. I had to wait until my father could provide this
gadget otherwise I would’ve tried to do this days ago.”

Dev clicked on the precious files she had
risked so much to obtain. A small red warning box popped up indicating the data
was inaccessible. She sighed and tried again only to have the same thing occur.
After a third attempt she examined the properties of the flash drive, her
eyebrows scrunching together as she slammed a fist on the table. “There’s a
phantom security firewall encrypting these files.”

“I thought you bypassed those when you
initially obtained the data,” said Anatoly.

“I did—two layers of software security had
to be breached. This must be something that was attached without my knowing as
a result of breaking through the other layers. It’s a ‘Remora’—a cloaked
firewall that is programmed to latch onto a file about to be hacked.” She ran
her fingers through her hair as her eyes widened. “This is cutting-edge
technology that only a few governments in the world use. How did Aeneid get a
hold of this?”

“You already know the answer,” said Mitch.
“This company has deep pockets that are filled by someone high up in D.C. like
Monroe.”

“He’s right,” said Anatoly. “Monroe is the
foundation of this whole enterprise, though without access to that data file,
it will be hard to prove.”

“With your former government connections,
why not just hand this intel over to our agencies here?” said Mitch, looking at
Anatoly.

“‘Former connections’ are the key words
there, my friend. And spreading what would be looked upon as potential rumors
about a high-ranking DOD member involved in a terrorist attack—that would have
put an end to my ability to get eyes inside of Aeneid.”

“Sure this doesn’t also have something to
do with Israeli politics and their relations with Iran?”

Anatoly just gave him a sideways glance
and grumbled. “I’m never one to back away from action that would cripple Iran’s
supreme leader, but not something that would compromise my government’s
relations with the U.S. in the process.”

Mitch stared back at the laptop. “So where
can you decode these files?”

Dev looked at him then at her father. She
ran her hand through her thick mane of hair. “Aeneid is a sure bet. If we
access their server, we can find out the details of what’s about to unfold.”
She removed a small device from her shoulder bag and palmed it in her right
hand. It was the size of a TV remote with a side port and two blinking red
lights. The hi-tech gadget was something developed recently by Israeli
intelligence and enabled the user to surreptitiously force pairing with another
computer network within ten feet. It had allowed Dev to obtain the files days
before at Aeneid and now she dreaded the thought of having to use it once more
inside that wretched hive of lunatics.

“Surely they would’ve reconfigured their
plans by now knowing you have this intel,” said Mitch.

“The pipeline project in the Caspian Sea
is slated to begin next week—seven days from today—so they’re unlikely to have
altered things on their end, especially since they thought Devorah would be out
of the picture by now,” said Anatoly, resting a hand on his daughter’s
shoulder.

Dev leaned back to stretch then looked at
her watch. “If we’re heading to Anaheim then we shouldn’t delay.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Anatoly,
getting up. “I will talk with my men and go over the best routes there.” He
placed his empty glass on the table and suppressed a slight belch of pleasure
from his elixir.

Dev looked at her laptop screen in
frustration. “I never wanted to set foot inside Aeneid again. How did I miss
this?”

“The thought that you even made it as far
as you did there and got out is damn impressive,” said Mitch. He realized just
how close he was sitting next to her and he scooched back a few feet.

She glanced at his neckline and moved his
shirt collar. “Ooh, looks like you’ve got some nasty scrapes there from all the
bushwhacking we did.”

He tucked in his chin, straining his eyes
to the left to see. “It does feel like I was just in my first rodeo now that
you mention it.” He rolled his shoulders back, realizing how sore he was. She
got up and walked over to the kitchen sink, returning with a damp washcloth.

She began dabbing the lacerations, pulling
back his soiled collar slightly. “So you’re a combat medic too, in addition to
a spy and cyber-sleuth?” he said.

“Probably like you, I’ve had to become
proficient at a lot of skills over being expert at one or two.”

He looked at her, enjoying her touch but
also wanting to pull away. “I didn’t know Israeli women had such a caring side
to them. At least not the ones I’ve worked with in the past.”

“They don’t but there are a few exceptional
ones like me,” she said with a grin while looking at his face. He returned the
gaze, locking his eyes onto hers, then suddenly he grabbed the washcloth and stood
up. “I’m good now, thanks. I…I appreciate the kind gesture.”

Anatoly had re-entered, walking through
the living room, and hesitated briefly when he saw the interaction. His slight
smile faded as he informed them of their need to depart.

“The L.A. area is around six hundred miles
from here. We will pick up another vehicle in Barstow. You and Dev will drive
to the outskirts of Anaheim. My men and I will head to Aeneid near downtown.”

“The outskirts—what for?” said Mitch.

“I’ll explain as we head west. Sometimes
the best solution is also the least obvious one.”