Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter 13

Mitch and Dev sprinted from tree to tree,
covering a hundred yards at a time. This gapping burst allowed them to cover
sufficient ground quickly and protected them from the injuries associated with
running long-distance over rocky terrain with cumbersome packs. Having studied
penitentiary escapes, he found that most convicts face-planted in the first two
hundred yards and sustained a fractured tibia or sprained ankle, thus ending
their flight. He trained guys in his own Special Forces unit to do an initial hundred-yard
dash to cover, take a breath and then assess the route ahead before continuing.
Tossing in a few sprints in the opposite direction from your dominant step
would also contribute to eluding pursuers as eighty-five percent of people are
right-handed and will eventually arc in that direction when walking
long-distance.

After several rounds of bolting to cover
and analyzing the landscape, they arrived at the edge of the mesa. They had to
drop down into a shallow canyon and then skirt up to the caves on the opposite
side. There were close to forty caves peppering the ridge across from them.
Mitch looked for the ones that had paths leading to the mesa above, which would
provide an escape route out.

“Why are we stopping, Agent Kearns?” said
Dev, who wasn’t showing any signs of being winded.

“It’s Mitch. I’m just searching for the
best way, unless you know a better route.”

She exhaled deeply and put her hands on
her hips. “I just want to get out of here and back to a city so I can finish
what I started. I need a fucking laptop in my hands, not a map.”

He motioned to her to follow him down off
the ridge along a faint deer trail. “Back at the ranch you said you had the
files that implicated Aeneid?”

“That won’t be enough. I need to open the file
and get further information on the attack. I didn’t have time to do that when I
was there making the copy other than seeing a few pertinent details. Without
that all I have are two guys emailing about some nebulous undertaking in the
Caspian Sea region.”

“This guy Ritter, what’s his story? How
did he come to be such a major player in this proposed attack?”

She clenched her jaw, taking a deep
breath. “That son of a bitch is a master raconteur like no other. He could talk
a bushman into buying hand warmers. The man had some inkling of military
service in Central America back in the day. He and some of his soldier of fortune
buddies pooled their resources and connections to start Aeneid, leveraging
their contacts in the defense industry. Eventually, Ritter bought out all of
his investors over the years until he retained full ownership. His
off-the-books mercenary agency provides private soldiers for hire to regimes
all over the globe.”

“That’s nothing new. The world of
ex-military contractors is a huge industry. Hell, I’ve had offers myself over
the years to run security details for dignitaries in other countries. The money
was enticing, like $750 a day plus my own vehicle and house.”

“So what stopped you?”

“Mmm…the work was too sketchy. I’ve had
friends that picked up those gigs and were rock-solid guys but they were asked
to cross the line on occasion, if you know what I mean, and that’s not a place
I wanted to go.”

“Yeah, well, Ritter has plenty of people
at his disposal who don’t share your outlook. Only now he and his cronies want
to expand their empire to the Caspian Sea.”

Mitch tilted his head up, sniffing the
air. “Smells like we’re near a cow watering hole.”

“Is that why you’re always sniffing the
air like a dog?”

“I wish I had my dog with me. He’d be a
good sense multiplier, not to mention being great company.” Mitch glanced at Dev,
noticing her irritated glance. “Not that you ain’t a blast. I mean, shit, this
is just what I wanted to do with my time off.”

“I didn’t see your dog back at the ranch.”

“Nah, he’s, uh…he’s with my ex-wife. She
thought it best to hang on to him with my being gone so much.”

She shook her head and smirked, making a
weak attempt at trying to lighten the mood with humor.

“What, you don’t think I’d be a good dog
owner?”

“No, just trying to imagine someone being
married to you.”

His expression grew serious. “I got the
right mind to leave your city-girl ass out here. You sought out my help,
remember—not the other way around. I was supposed to be enjoying some down
time. Before you came along, my life was just fine…just fine.”

He pushed past her, leading on through a
winding route over slickrock to conceal their tracks then dropping down into a
shallow basin that looked like a meteor had slammed into it thousands of years
ago. As they trekked during the remaining light of dusk, they stayed silent,
both of them embroiled in their thoughts and what the night would bring.

Chapter 14

With only a hint of light left in the
west, they followed the narrow ledge that skirted along the second row of
limestone caves until they reached the third level. Mitch scanned the dim
entrance ahead to make sure there were no rattlesnake surprises and then
crouched and walked inside. While the back recesses were dark, he could tell
from the auditory clues and passage of the wind that it only went back a short
distance. He squatted along one side of the entrance while Dev kneeled beside
the other.

“Where are we?” she said, casting her eyes
wide upon the eerie blue-gray landscape below for any signs of movement.

“Henderson Flats region, I believe. This
area of the Sonoran Desert has ridge after ridge of honeycombed caves like
this. We should be safe here for a while.”

He cleared his throat and glanced over at
her face in the faint light. “You started telling me some things back at the
ranch and on our little nature hike. You wanna finish that conversation and
fill me in on what the fuck is going on?”

She finished the last of her water and sat
silently as if she hadn’t heard his request.

He turned and gave her a penetrating look.
“I’d like some answers on how your father is involved in this and your
background. By the way you handle yourself and what you’ve described doing at
Aeneid, I’d say that came from more than weekend outings twice a year with your
old man.”

“I was just a rank-and-file soldier who
did four years of military service and then got into the cyber security field
afterwards with several different civilian corporations.”

Mitch looked over at her, motioning with
his hands to continue. “And…”

She stared at the rising moon and then
leaned back against the smooth limestone cave, finally relaxing her shoulders.
“When my father returned from training what must have been your unit here in
the States, he and some of his old colleagues from the Mossad started their own
agency.” She rolled her boot over a twig on the ground, snapping it in half.
“My mother was furious that I developed an interest in his tradecraft. It put a
real strain on our relationship as she always wanted me to get a regular job in
the civilian world that didn’t involve guns or fighting.”

She rubbed her hand along the back of her
neck. “My father put me, like any new recruit, through the same rigorous
training that he had endured in Mossad—all except the assassination part, for
which I am grateful. I am not cut out for that kind of work—killing someone in
cold blood. However, I was good at the undercover aspect and negotiating with
captors along with knowing a few things about computers.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like his training
paid off. You’re still alive.” He paused and then sat down across from her.

“My father’s company employs former
Mossad, SAS, and other ex-special ops personnel. In addition to field
operations, we also have our own cyber security division and a proprietary
malware that can force pairing with another computer to read its information.
That’s how I was able to get past Aeneid’s firewall.”

“What led you to suspect Aeneid in the
first place?”

Dev folded her arms across her chest. “We
rescued a subject in Turkmenistan who had been captured by rebels that had
attacked an oil rig in the Caspian Sea. He was connected with a group of
American businessmen sent there to broker a deal on a gas pipeline that would
run from the Caspian Sea to Europe, effectively cutting Iran out of the supply.
His family had contacted us after he was abducted and all the usual diplomatic
channels were exhausted.”

She ran her shirt sleeve over her forehead
wiping away a sweat-riddled layer of grit while she continued. “The mission
went as planned. We successfully freed the captive but he was a destroyed man;
his captors had peeled his psyche back too far. He began spilling out details
about a deal involving Assistant Secretary of Defense Thomas Monroe and
Aeneid’s ties to the Caspian Sea pipeline. We were on our way back to the
United States the next day with him, thinking his memory would become more
lucid once he had time to recuperate and get therapy. Only someone intercepted
him after the hand-off to your state department.”

Mitch’s mouth was agape. “Thomas Monroe
from the Pentagon is knee-deep in this shit-show?”

“It would seem so. All we had was this
hostage’s loosely woven tale but once we began looking into Nelson Ritter, it
was clear his company had provided mercenaries to various dictatorships in
Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. That’s where I came in, going
undercover at Aeneid.”

She clasped her knees to her chest while
letting out a sigh. “The data file I intercepted implicated a group of Iranians
in the U.S. who were going to launch a series of lone-wolf attacks using
weapons obtained from Aeneid. Weapons that are slated to arrive in the next
forty-eight hours. But where? And when is the attack supposed to occur—those
are the things that have kept me awake these past few nights.”

Mitch scooped up some sand and let it
filter between his calloused fingers then tossed the rest against the rock wall
as his face turned grim. He thought about how his world had just made an abrupt
turn, like a vehicle that had spun out on an icy bridge and tumbled into frigid
waters. He’d had enough of covert operations when he was in the Special Forces
and had worked hard to set up his life in a job that allowed him to use his
specialized skills but that provided more clarity of purpose and
accountability. Now, he was on the run and there was a traitor in his own FBI
field office—but who? The effects of the heat and the day’s events were causing
his head to throb. All he was certain of was that his career and reputation had
the potential to be swept away in the fierce current that washed up at his door
with Dev’s arrival. It was like his old life was sucking him back in and
Anatoly was the fisherman at the reel. He needed to get out of the wilderness
and get some answers. If he could locate the mole then he could possibly work
from the inside to help thwart Aeneid’s plans if there was time. Though, Mitch mused,
if the assistant sec-def was involved in this fantastical story then who else
was on his payroll?

Dev took in a deep breath and then another,
her head swiveling to their right. “Is that cedar?”

“Close—it’s juniper. The two trees look
and smell a lot alike but we don’t have any true cedars in Arizona,” Mitch said
laconically, pointing to a cluster of junipers on the slopes beside them as his
head still swam with the details of Dev’s story.

“When my father was on leave at home, he
and I would always spend the evening after dinner sitting in the small grove of
cedar trees in our backyard. That fragrance is always so comforting to me.”

Dev picked up a broken twig and snapped it
in half, smelling the bark. She tucked it in her shirt pocket and then looked
over at him. “So where do we go from here?”

“We need to make our way overland towards the
interstate. From there, we’ll hopefully have cell reception and we can use your
phone to call my bureau chief and fill him in on the intel you’ve uncovered.”

“Assuming he’s not on Aeneid’s payroll,”
said Dev.

Mitch hissed out a breath. “Ryker, ah, shit—maybe.
He’s a pretty unimpressive guy—like a houseplant that talks. Crimony, who knows
if he is—this whole thing is fucked up.”

Mitch did a scan of the distant horizon
and then shook his head. “Unfortunately for us, we’re in a region where there
are few cell towers, though I never used to mind that until now.”

He arched back, staring out beyond the lip
of the cave at the sky. “It looks like those dark monsoon clouds to the north
are going to be dumping on us soon. Normally, we’d want to stay put in such weather
but that rain will provide good concealment for our passage and obscure our tracks
along the mesa above.”

She sighed and looked at him. “I’m afraid
we’re Velcroed to each other until we can find a way out of this region.”

Mitch glanced up, studying the contours of
the moon that stood like a cloaked orb over the silent valley below. Being cut off
from the outside world made him feel like he could be back in Afghanistan on a
long-range mission that no one knew about. There wouldn’t be any combat search-and-rescue
choppers flying over the horizon. They were completely cut off with a team of
ruthless mercenaries on their trail. Interstate 17 was still another twenty
miles away with some of the most treacherous terrain in Arizona between them
and their destination. If they were to make it there by sunrise, they’d have to
push the limits of endurance in a brutal landscape. He was sure his pursuers
would be equipped with night-vision or infra-red devices and potentially even
drones. Would it be enough to overcome the technology working against them on
the other end? He wasn’t sure any longer and his mind reflected back on the
guerrilla tactics used by the Apaches in this same region over a century ago,
when manpower ruled and modern technology was non-existent.

As if sensing his thoughts, Dev stood up
beside him. “Even if we dispatch the teams pursuing us, we can’t remove the
greater threat orbiting the sky miles above our heads which can track our every
move with satellites. They’ll just keep sending in more teams to this location.
I’m probably preaching to the choir but time and distance are our greatest
allies. We need to get out from under the radar as fast as possible.”

He clenched his fists and took a deep
breath then grabbed his rifle. He could hear the strength of Anatoly flowing
through her words and wondered for a minute if he was in the presence of his
old mentor.

“Let me work my voodoo out here and give
these guys a chase they won’t live to talk about. After that, you can guide us
through the keyboard wilderness.”

The soil had changed from the fine sugar
sand they had been hiking in the arroyo to a clay-limestone base with a fine
surface of talcum-like dust. Mitch was intimately aware of the nuances of each
surface and what the likelihood was of having tracks retained in the different
soils. Some, like the type they were on now, would blow away with the first
gust of wind, eroding any tread details but retaining the foot outline in the
compressed impression beneath. The key to counter-tracking was all in route selection:
choose a path that had plenty of rocks, logs, or hard surfaces to avoid leaving
tracks in the first place. As he walked, he unconsciously maneuvered around the
softer areas, opting for sandstone slabs that would provide concealment of
their passage without burning up too much time deviating from their route.

Mitch tore into a pouch of emergency chow
from his pack, choking down the dry tablets that tasted like chalk. “Damn, I
can see why they’re called survival rations.” He offered a handful to Dev but
she waved them away.

“You need to keep up your energy level.”

“Vomiting after eating that won’t help.”

“Fair enough.”

“Besides, I ran in an adventure race last
month and did the entire thing on very little food. I will be fine.”

Mitch just raised his eyebrows while
gagging down the last tablet of chocolate putrescence, then neatly folded the
foil packet and tucked it into his vest pocket.