Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter 1

Seven Months Later

Casa Grande, Arizona

FBI Agent Mitch Kearns was finishing
teaching the last segment of a three-day fieldcourse in mantracking to
law-enforcement personnel in the desert training facility used by the Casa Grande
Police Department south of Phoenix. It had been a sweltering weekend of
advanced training in reading field signs, deciphering crime scene footprints,
and pursuing the instructors over rugged terrain.

Mitch had learned his trade initially
growing up on a ranch in southern Arizona. Later, as a combat tracker in the 1
^st
Special Forces, he refined his tracking skills in Afghanistan and Africa on a
daily basis running counter-insurgency operations. Now, he relished time in the
field, especially working with other agencies. He always leapt at the
opportunity to teach and had an utter disdain for office work. This had kept
him from rising up through the ranks during his six years on the FBI’s
hostage-rescue team (HRT) and he was content to stay in field operations.

The crow’s feet around his eyes were
pronounced for someone who was only thirty-four, and he looked ten years older,
with the heavy stress lines etched into his face. Some of that was caused by a
lifetime in the elements, the rest was the residue that came from his scorched
soul. He was burnt out, a spent cartridge. The effects of eight years of combat
missions had eroded away the sleeve on his humanity. He had joined the FBI on a
friend’s referral but he had no love of the job other than when he was tracking
fugitives in the field or teaching. Mitch easily passed the qualifications and
exams for entry, his background in special operations having allowed him to
progress to his present position. However, he clung to a black-and-white moral code
that didn’t mesh well with the modern world. He’d accepted the job because the
work was familiar but he had a hard time swallowing the civilian justice system
which often found the accused embroiled for years in court battles ending in a
sentence that hardly reflected the crime, something that, a century earlier,
would have been dealt with at the end of a braided rawhide rope swinging from a
cottonwood tree in some lonely canyon.

It seemed like every agency training
session was about new safety protocols, fugitives’ rights, Homeland Security
regulations, or federal budget constraints. The rules of engagement had changed
and he thought he knew what it must have been like for the cowboys of old once
cars entered the western landscape. Mitch often got write-ups at work about his
appearance, which usually consisted of a five-day scruff and non-regulation cowboy
boots. However, his exemplary conduct in the field had caused his supervisors
to provide some leniency.

Though his career choices had meant a
chaotic lifestyle, often working absurd shifts in all manner of conditions, the
last thing he wanted at present was any kind of drastic change. His daily
regime in both his personal and professional life was rigidly maintained. He
sought to control every aspect of his world down to the tiniest detail, even to
the extent of having the timer on his toaster at home calibrated so his morning
breakfast of waffles was perfectly browned in one minute, twenty-seven seconds.

Though he had always been a stickler for
detail, his life had been less restrictive prior to a year ago on a dreadful
day in November when his wife of eleven years filed for a divorce. Too much
time deployed or spent on field assignments had whittled away their fragile
relationship. When he had finally committed to spending more time at home, they
both found that their lives had become so separate over the years that there
was little that they had left in common. Mitch was eager to work things out but
Becky needed more stability and fewer broken promises. The dissolution was done
without dispute but Mitch felt like the fabric of his world had been
permanently torn, his life spiraling out of control. He poured himself into his
work, taking on more training assignments and extra shifts or filling in at his
friend’s ranch on the city limits where he currently resided.

Mitch hovered over the three-man tracking
team and observed their progress during the final culmination exercise. His
eyes narrowed as he examined the faint boot prints in the sand that his
co-instructor, Perry Kovac, had laid down earlier.

“You’ve picked up all the signs during the
last mile of tracking but there’s one thing you may have overlooked,” he said,
squatting down beside the three police officers whose dusty gear bore testament
to the last few days in the backcountry. The men scrutinized the trail through
the sand and cacti that they had just spent the morning covering then they discussed
the visual evidence they’d catalogued. Each of them looked at Mitch with
puzzled expressions.

Mitch tilted his chin up, sniffing at the
air. “Notice anything?”

The men followed in unison, inhaling the
scents coming off the creosote bushes and mesquite trees. The youngest officer
craned his head towards the nearest overhanging mesquite branch. “Something
smells putrid—it’s very faint but it’s there.”

“Excellent. I took some sardines and
smeared a little on the branch above your head.” Mitch stood up, the sun
backlighting his wiry six-foot-two frame. “Remember to use all of your senses
when tracking a fugitive, not just what your eyes can locate. Your life may
depend on it one day. If a subject is a smoker, has a particular ethnic diet,
has spent the night around a campfire, or just has the B.O. of a road-killed
badger, then it can tip you off to their presence where no tracks can otherwise
be found.”

Mitch put his fingers up to his lips and
emitted a high-pitched whistle to alert the other teams to regroup at his
location. When the rest of the tracking students arrived, he reiterated the
lesson in scent awareness to the twelve other men and women. While he finished
his summary of the weekend’s topics, Perry came up alongside him with a handful
of course certificates as they all squatted under the shade of some nearby Palo
Verde trees. After the training wrapped up, the instructors gave hearty
handshakes to each member and then began packing up their teaching materials.

Mitch and Perry had known each other for
the past two years while working at the FBI’s Phoenix Division. Mitch had begun
there shortly after joining the bureau and his hard-won combat experience was
quickly put to use on HRT and joint U.S./Mexico operations. Perry had worked as
an undercover narcotics cop in El Paso, Texas before transferring to the FBI.
Perry decided a relocation north would be a good career move to start over away
from the seedy border towns he frequented in his line of work. Both men were
skilled trackers but Mitch was the more seasoned field operator, always
spending time in the wilds on his days off or volunteering with search-and-rescue.

Where Mitch was content to ride out the
next few years in his current role in the field, Perry’s ambition was to become
regional director of all the bureaus in the Southwest.

“You headed back to the office or home?”
said Perry.

“Home for sure. I’ve been going at it now
for nine days straight and just want to lie in the hammock out back for a day
or two. What about you?”

“I’m in the doghouse right now with my
wife. She thinks there’s something goin’ on between me and the office manager
on the first floor—you know, Rachel.”

Mitch raised his eyebrows. “Well, is
there?”

Perry shrugged his shoulders, emitting a
slight grin. “Look, it’s not like I’m a player. Rachel and I hooked up one time
when the old lady was out of town.”

“Dude, what the hell? You’re married to a
lovely woman and you’re screwing around behind her back. That’s just bad karma
that’s gonna smack you in the face some day.”

“It was one time, bro. It’s not like it’s
going to happen again. Besides, we can’t all be monks like you.” Perry patted
him on the shoulder. “And what’s this ‘karma’ shit—you going New Age on me?”

Mitch sighed and ran his hand along the
back of his neck, wanting to change the subject. He had heard a few rumors
about Perry’s after-hours interests from other colleagues but it never
interfered with his conduct on the job so he disregarded it.

“Heard anything about the bureau chief job
in Phoenix yet?” Mitch said.

“It’s still on the backburner. Nothing’s
opened up—not with this new interim chief in from the East Coast. This is my
third attempt and I’m getting pretty restless—read
pissed off
—about all
the red tape.

“Yeah, Evan Ryker—he’s a real dilettante.
Prefers to interact with his staff via the keyboard rather than in person. I
think I’ve spoken with the dude three times in the past month and yet he walks
by my desk every time I’m at the office. Plus, I don’t have much to say about a
guy who wants more funds allocated for the cyber division than for field
agents.”

“Ah, men like us, and especially you, are
fucking dinosaurs, bro. One day soon, we’ll be replaced by drones.”

“There’s never going to be a substitute
for sweaty grunts on the ground.”

“Speak for yourself, man. I showered this
morning and put on deodorant. You’re the one who kept the female students at
bay.”

Mitch chuckled. “A man oughta smell like a
man.” He nodded at Perry as they headed towards their vehicles. Mitch tossed
his gear bag in the back of his weathered jeep and did a final sweep of the
shade structure where they had conducted the lecture portions of the course.

The men bid farewell and drove off in
their respective directions. Since his divorce, Mitch had taken up residence in
an old bunkhouse on a friend’s ranch on the cusp of the city limits. It was a
small cattle operation north of Phoenix and had the rustic feel of the place he
had grown up at while only being a forty-minute drive to work. With all of the
ranch hands attending a rodeo in Prescott, Mitch would have the place to
himself.
No emails, no cellphone service, and no staff meetings. Just the
sound of the canyon wrens and the wind.
He felt his shoulders ease back
into the seat as he contemplated the next few days of rest amidst the solitude.

Chapter 2

Two Days Earlier

Aeneid Corporation, Anaheim,
California

As Dev Leitner stepped out into the warm
night air of the parking garage adjacent to the Aeneid Corporation, she saw the
glint of a blade as it nearly grazed her right cheek. Another step closer and
she would have suffered a grave knife wound to her face. Something primal in
her instincts had been aroused a micro-second earlier, causing goosebumps to
roll over her neck and alerting her to danger. She had learned long ago never
to ignore such signals.

As she dropped her shoulder bag and
backpedaled on an angle off to the side of her blue Camry, she caught the image
of cold steel coming from a tall man in a blue shirt. Unconsciously, she
parried the blow using her right forearm, driving the man’s knife hand down and
then viciously slamming her fist sideways into his neck muscles. She heard the man
gasp for air, giving her an opening to step forward and smash her foot into his
groin. He buckled but managed to still flail his blade out at her in a
desperate attempt to keep her at bay. The tip of the tactical knife caught her
on the underside of her forearm but she hardly noticed the pain from the
superficial incision, instead focusing on the man’s eyes, which bore the look
of a fierce predator and not the crazed meth-head she initially took him for.

She glanced down at her shoulder bag. In
any other case she would have bolted and left the perpetrator to her belongings
but this was too valuable. Her entire life was inside there, though it seemed
it was also now in her own hands.

Dev knew it was unlikely anyone in the
area would come to her aid as it was ten o’clock at night and she had already seen
to the security cameras in the garage being disabled.

She could see the exposed butt of a
Beretta pistol bulging out from the thin man’s beltline. Dev’s thoughts quickly
returned to the offensive and her years of Krav Maga training sprang to the
forefront as the attacker rushed forward in a partial stagger, slashing wildly,
his formerly refined movements diminished from his injuries.

She angled off to his right, blocking the
knife hand again with another parry while smashing her heel down across the top
of his instep. The attacker crumpled, going down on one leg while she drove her
elbow into his face, sending him to the asphalt. She retrieved the blade from
the ground beside him and kneeled by his head, the tip of the edged weapon
pressing against his carotid while she removed the pistol from his waist.

As the man lay groaning, he muttered in
between breaths, “We found the software mole you installed. Did you really
think you could steal data from the mainframe without getting caught? You’re
done for.”

“It’s your boss who’s finished,” she said
while inspecting the tiny surface wound on her forearm.

Dev stood up, moving out of reach of the
man while she pulled the slide of the Beretta back to perform a partial chamber
check and scan for a round inside. She glanced around for any other assailants
while flipping the safety of the pistol off and pointing the weapon at the
grumbling figure on the pavement.

Dev looked down at the man, studying his
chiseled face which resembled that of a groomed professional soldier like she
had grown accustomed to seeing at her workplace. Aeneid was one of the largest
defense contractors in the U.S. and provided their small army of trained mercenaries
to third-world governments around the globe though few in the public knew that.
For seven months, she had labored undercover at Aeneid to gather the critical
intel on the nefarious business undertakings of the company’s CEO, Nelson
Ritter.
The thought of spending another second in this den of insanity is
going to cause me to retch. This assignment was way more than I bargained for. I
need to get the hell out of here.

She glanced down at her leather shoulder
bag and then resumed her attention at the sound of an approaching vehicle, its
tires screeching in the street below. “Shit, they’re onto me this fast,” she
yelled, rushing to grab her bag while keeping the pistol trained upon the
injured man, whose mouth was gurgling out blood with each word.

“You can’t get away from him. His eyes are
everywhere. You know that,” he said in a bronchial voice. His face became ashen
as he struggled to suck in a breath and finally went unconscious.

Dev could hear the vehicle closing as it
rounded the last bend in the avenue below the parking structure. She leaned
over the man and combed through his pockets, removing a flip phone and a
billfold with fifty-dollar bills secured in a gold clip. She stood up and
scanned the exit doors.

Dev ran along the pavement, bolting down
the stairwell two steps at a time. She flipped the Beretta safety back on and
tucked it into her appendix region under her jeans. Coming around the corner,
she saw another security officer headed towards her, thirty feet away. She spun
to the right but ran directly into the chest of another guard, a bearded goon
who grabbed her by the hair. “Not so fast, bitch.”

She drove her index finger into his eye,
causing him to reel back, then she swiftly delivered a low kick to his knee, hearing
the side of the patella crack. The man fell forward and she deftly removed his
pistol. All of the years of repetitive drills had saved her life and she was
grateful for the hard-earned skills her father had imparted to her growing up.
She turned to face the other guard, who had come to a halt eight feet before
her. They met with their weapons extended at each other’s faces.

“You didn’t disable all the cameras. We
have you stealing corporate files.” He looked down briefly at the disabled
guard, who was bawling. “And now two counts of assault.”

“Better make that three,” she said, firing
a round into his shoulder then peeling off to the left between two cars. The
two guards’ constant shrieking echoed off the concrete walls as she slunk away.
She stood in the shadows near the ground-level garage entrance and peered ahead
through the door as a white security van sped up the parking structure ramp. 

Dev waited until they were out of sight
and then sprinted across the street towards a bar. She made her way to the
restrooms and then made an abrupt turn for the rear exit door at the last
second. She crept along the vacant alley and slid down into a cement aqueduct
behind the storefronts, trotting for a half-mile along the trash-strewn
corridor until she arrived at an intersection below the highway. She paused and
pulled out her work phone. Dev removed the sim card and smashed it on a rock
with her boot heel. She activated the guard’s phone and scanned the last few
numbers. All of them indicated they were restricted except one whose numbers
showed in blue. The area code indicated Phoenix, Arizona. She committed this
one to memory, reciting the digits several times, then flung the device on the
ground.

Her mind raced and her pulse quickened
more so now than it had during the fight. She felt trapped, like there were
crosshairs upon her. She clutched the shoulder bag close to her and inspected
the critical contents: the palm-sized micro device she had used to force
pairing with Aeneid’s mainframe, the flash drive containing the data that
implicated Aeneid, and her forged identification documents were all present. Everything
for which she had put her life on the line for so long was safely in her
possession. Her work at Aeneid had provided the proof she needed about the
CEO’s involvement in multinational corporate espionage and a lone-wolf
terrorist attack that somehow involved the Iranians. Now she just had to
uncover the timeline and hopefully unravel this plot before it was unleashed.

She quickly ran through her list of
options, knowing she would be on the run, never able to return to her apartment
or former façade of a life. For the past seven months she had gone by the name
Mira Sanchez. Her dark Israeli complexion, multi-lingual skills, and raven hair
allowed her to blend into a variety of ethnic backgrounds. With her forged documents
and passport, she could slip by the eyes of the TSA and most database systems.
Her undercover assignment working in cyber security at Aeneid was connected
with an operation two years in the making and it had consumed her life. She’d
had no time for visiting the coast, sightseeing, or any of the other
pleasantries Americans enjoy when they come to L.A. The data files she had
acquired were all that was holding her here now.

Dev reached in her pocket and retrieved a
small encrypted cellphone. She’d carried it for months but this was the first
time she had need of it. She tapped on the only preloaded number on the menu. A
few seconds later the raspy voice of an older man answered, his Israeli accent
barely noticeable.

“I’ve been compromised here,” she said. “I
have the data. They’re planning a series of lone-wolf attacks with sleepers
around the Southwest but I don’t know when. There is a link to Phoenix that I
need to track down. There isn’t time to wait for you and your team to assemble
in the U.S. I need to move on this now.”

There was a pause and then the man spoke.
“I have someone in that city—an old associate that can be trusted. I will text
you his location. Once you get there, lay low and make contact with me in 48
hours.”

“Roger that.” As she went to hang up, she
heard the man’s voice soften in tone. “And stay safe—remember what I’ve taught
you, Devorah.”

She shoved the phone back in her pocket,
listening to the maddening swish of traffic above her and relishing the comforting
aroma of cedar trees which reminded her of home in Tel Aviv.
She inhaled
deeply, embracing the fragrance.
Time for a change of scenery
—
the
desert beckons, it seems. My mission is almost over
—
I hope
—
I
pray. Then I can return to my country and my parents once more.