Torching the Crimson Flag Read online

  “How many of them were there?” asked Leo.

  “Four.”

  “Professionals?”

  “Probably. They were pretty good. They had the right strategy, and if I hadn't known that area of the island so well, they probably would’ve got us. Fortunately, we made it to a tree line where we had the high ground, and I was able to take them out. One of them flanked us, but my uncle warned me just in time, and I shot him too.”

  “Did they have any identification?”

  “Nothing. There was nothing on their persons, not even a phone, and the car had absolutely no information in it. I collected their weapons and took them to a friend of mine at the police department in Kona. I can trust him. He’ll process the prints, if there are any, and do a ballistics test to see if their weapons are registered anywhere or have been involved in a previous crime. I'm not holding my breath, though.”

  “Any idea where they were from? Did you hear them speaking to each other or anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Caucasians?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your uncle okay?”

  “He's shaken, but he'll be alright. His truck got destroyed, and I feel bad about that. He loved that thing. The wheels are shredded, and they shot it up.”

  “Where are you now?” asked Bao Zhen.

  “Honokohau Harbor, in Kona. I'm on my uncle's boat. I think it's the safest place right now.”

  “Okay,” Leo agreed. “That sounds like a good place to lay low.”

  “I have a contact putting together a kit for me with everything Justin recommended. That guy is scary with how on-point he is.”

  “Who is your contact?”

  “Military. Instructor at Pohakuloa.”

  “That’s good.”

  Leonard took some time to debrief Boyd and catch her up on everything. Then he said, “It looks like my instinct to keep you in Hawaii was right. I'm pretty sure that you’ll be heading over to Honolulu sometime over the next few days. Take a day to regroup and clear your mind of what you've just been through. Then be ready to go over there.”

  “Do you want me in Honolulu after I get my kit?”

  “No. I think it would be better for you to stay on the boat. It sounds like a safe place. Ideally, it would be good for you to sail to Honolulu when you get the call. Would your uncle's boat make it?”

  “No problem, if the weather in the channel is okay.”

  “Okay. Plan on that.”

  “Alright.”

  “Boyd, watch your back. We haven't figured out what's going on here. But obviously, you and Fox were both targets, and that concerns us.”

  The team had just ended the call when they saw Ashley and Sarah emerge from the medical clinic. Everybody spilled out of the conference room to hurry over to them. The two doctors looked completely exhausted.

  “Well?” asked Leo as when everything had calmed down. “What’s his status?”

  Ashley walked over to the center of the warehouse, where there were some chairs, desks, and hanging flat screens. Normally that was the area that Saara worked from. She had to sit down. Saara sat down next to her, and Justin and Bora grabbed extra chairs from the conference room for everyone else.

  “Sorry, I have to sit down.”

  “No problem,” Michi said encouragingly.

  “That was very intense surgery,” began Ashley. “After this, I think I want him to have a desk job for the next hundred years.” She looked up at Dr. Stone, “I’m joking … kind of.”

  “I can't imagine what you've just been through,” Leo responded.

  “It wasn't easy.” Suddenly, overwhelmed by the emotion she broke down sobbing uncontrollably.

  Jasmine ran over to her and wrapped her in a big hug.

  Seeing that she wasn't going to be able to answer Leonard’s original question, Saara responded. “The next twenty-four hours are critical. But Ashley is an incredible surgeon. Absolutely incredible. The first thing she had to repair was the damage to his blood vessels. It was extensive, but she did an amazing job. After that, she had to work on repairing the bone damage. There were more fragments than I’ve ever seen. The bullet had completely fractured his femur and chipped his tibia. She was able to remove all of the fragments and repair as much of the lacerated tissue that she could. It was extensive.”

  Ashley had pulled herself together. “I think he's going to be okay,” she said sniffling. “At this point, it's all about making sure there’s no infection, and things start to heal properly. He just needs to rest, you know? I remember working with a surgeon at Johns Hopkins. He was a Christian. He always said to me that we were like car mechanics. We just put the parts together, but God has to do the healing. I have to admit, I did my share of praying during that surgery. I don't think I've talked to God that much in my life. Do you think he was listening?”

  “I hope so,” Bora answered.

  “Can we see Fox?” asked Michi.

  “I think it would be okay. Just go in and out very quietly. He’s sedated and needs to sleep.”

  “I'm sure you are starving!” Lin Lin said. “Would you like me to make some ramen noodles? We don't have much else. Bao Zhen and I are going to go grocery shopping in a few minutes.”

  “Yes, please!”

  Saara reassured Lin Lin, “Anything sounds good right now. Thank you.”

  “It's going to be a long road to recovery, isn't it?” Dr. Stone thought out loud.

  Ashley nodded. “If everything goes well, he could be walking again without a cast or crutches in six to eight weeks. But it could be as long as a year before he recovers fully.”

  “Knowing Fox, I'm sure he’ll be completely dedicated to recovery,” Justin commented. “The hardest part will probably be forcing him not to do too much too early.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you plan on monitoring him?" Leonard asked.

  “I’ll take the medical clinic’s laptop to my room. Any alerts or alarms will sound through there, and I'm sure I’ll hear them. I don't know how well I’ll sleep, but I definitely need to get horizontal after I eat.”

  “Me too,” Saara agreed.

  Lin Lin was already cooking in the kitchen, and Bao Zhen was helping her mom.

  “Okay, everyone,” Stone instructed, “If you want to go see him, then now is the time. Justin, why don't you go first so that you can get back to covering Blue Team?”

  “Copy that.”

  “Let’s meet back in the conference room in fifteen minutes.”

  “Fox is out of surgery!” David announced to everybody in the helicopter. “Leo says that everything went well, and he’s beginning the road to recovery.”

  “That’s great news!” shouted Trey from the back. The guys fist-bumped each other.

  “Alright,” Bruce said. “We’re all locked and loaded, so let’s look at the satellite imagery Justin just sent us and figure out our approach. POTUS has authorized lethal force, so we are weapons free. This is a very hot VIP extraction. We go in, get IRIS, and get out. Anybody gets in our way, we eliminate them with prejudice. That simple.”

  “Are we going to have overwatch?”

  “Justin’s working on it. He said he can get visual for us, but he’s not sure about thermal.”

  “Copy that,” Tank said. “He’d be identifying targets that are out of our line of sight because our night vision goggles have thermal anyway, right?”

  “Correct,” Trey answered.

  “Okay. I’ve been looking at this, and it's not going to be easy. There's one dirt road in, and that's also the only road out. It’s a long driveway flanked by forest. Looks to be half a mile. Most likely, they’ll be guarding it, so we’d be like fish in a barrel if we approach from the road. The piggy building is the only structure on the property. You can see that the place is surrounded by thick trees on the north, the west, and the east. The thinner tree line is to the south. I think we could make it through, from there. Outside of that forested area, there's no
shortage of fields for landing the chopper. So, we just want the land far enough away where they can't hear us. I suggest on the east side of Wheat Swamp Road. Northeast of our target. Right here,” Bruce said, pointing out the location on his tablet.

  Trey nodded, and so did Tank.

  “We’ll get down from the chopper and set up an immediate formation until it’s back in the air and gone. Then we’ll move forward in a wedge formation. I’ll take point. Tank, you’ll be to my left and Trey, you’ll be to my right. Fifteen feet apart. We’ll cross Wheat Swamp Road and quickly move southwest, through the fields until we get to that tree line. Every fifty feet, we’ll get down and scout in front of us. When we reach the trees, we’ll tighten up. Five feet apart. Any questions so far? Feedback?”

  Both men shook their heads.

  “Notice there’s a farmhouse just south of where we’re crossing the road. Hopefully, they’re all in bed. The wind is blowing from the north, so dogs might catch our scent. We want to get past that house as soon as possible. It’s going to be about a hundred feet south of us looks like.”

  “What are your thoughts on taking the building?” Trey asked.

  “Entering the structure will be after we’ve cleared the trees around it. Tank, that’ll be our job. Trey, you to cover the entrance of the building. Once we start shooting, if anyone comes out, you take care of them. If you have time, feel free to take anybody else out, too, but we can’t have anybody escaping the building. Open for feedback.”

  “You have the M203, right?”

  “The grenade launcher? Yeah.”

  “You could shoot it over the trees and hit somewhere on this dirt road. It’d be a pretty big bang.”

  “As a distraction?”

  “Trap. They’ll all think we’re coming from that direction.”

  Bruce knew what Trey was doing. This is how they worked best. He’d present a plan, Trey would challenge the ideas or throw in other suggestions, and in the end, they’d have something solid. For the next fifteen minutes, all three got involved, brainstorming, and picking concepts apart. When they were all silent, they knew they had come up with a good strategy. Now they just needed to do what every soldier hated doing. Wait.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The club was mostly empty, and things wouldn’t start jamming again until the evening. Tala had been escorted to the room where all of the girls stayed. It was large and had office dividers that petitioned off their sleeping areas. Usually, there were ten to fifteen women sleeping there. Right now, there were six. The rest must have been out in the market or were with clients.

  “I will be by to see you later,” Makato Mitsumuri growled. “Your first client will be tonight.”

  After he had left, Tala recognized that she didn't know any of the ladies in the room. They were all a little bit younger than her and must have come during the four years that she was gone. They obviously weren’t excited to see her. Most of them didn’t even look at her.

  “Where’s my bed?" she asked the nearest one to her.

  “Over there. In the far corner.”

  “My name is Tala.”

  “Mary Jane.”

  Cruz went over to her mat on the floor and sat down, pulling her knees up against her chest. She tenderly touched her cheek, where she had been slapped. It was very painful. She hadn't looked in a mirror, but she was sure that it was swollen and bruised. She would be expected to cover it up well before work tonight.

  Four of the girls got up off their mats and came over to Tala.

  “Are you the one that escaped?” one of them asked, glaring at her.

  She nodded.

  “We’ve heard about you.”

  “Why did you do that?” another demanded. “Did you know that it got a lot of people in trouble?”

  “No. I didn’t.” Tala answered, suddenly understanding their anger.

  “We were told that several guards were punished. And almost all of the women were replaced. According to Mako, you poisoned their minds.”

  “I got pregnant.”

  Obviously, none of the girls had heard that part of the story.

  “He said I needed to get an abortion,” she added, remembering the moment. “He told me he didn’t want his girls getting fat, he hated stretch marks, and he wasn’t running a club nursery.”

  “Before Mako, my pimp wanted me to get pregnant,” one of the women said to Tala. “He wanted to use my child to control me. But I got an abortion without him knowing about it.”

  “Did you have a boy or a girl?" demanded Mary Jane, looking at Tala, suspiciously.

  “A boy. He’s beautiful.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Four.”

  “Why isn't he here with you?”

  “Makato said he has to stay at his house,” she spat out bitterly.

  The girls looked at each other wide-eyed. All of them understood what a horrible and dangerous situation Matteo was in.

  “Do you know where he lives?" asked Tala.

  All of them shook their heads.

  “Will you try to escape again?" asked Mary Jane.

  “ No,” Cruz lied. “How could I think of escaping? He’s holding my son as a hostage against me. He told me that if I try to escape, he will kill Matteo. I don't want anything to happen to him.” She didn’t know any of the women here, and no doubt some of them would report every word she was saying back to Mako. Emotion started to swell up from her gut. She began to cry again.

  “How did you get the bruise on your cheek?” one of the others asked.

  “How do you think?” Tala responded. She was getting tired of their questions. “How do you get bruises on your cheeks?”

  As she said that, the door to the room opened. Mako came walking in, accompanied by two of his thugs. He slammed the door and stomped over to her.

  “You got a message on your hook-up app,” he said handing her phone to her.

  Tala pushed down her emotions and rubbed the tears out of her eyes so she could see the screen clearly. She was surprised he hadn’t deleted it. He probably hoped that she would use it to bring in new business. Money was money, after all.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Do you know him?” he snarled.

  Tala shook her head.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, more menacingly.

  What happened next, only took seconds. But later, when she would replay it in her head over and over, it seemed to happen in slow motion. She remembers the distrust and fury in Mako’s face. He was reaching down towards her and Tala was sure he was going to pull her up by her throat and beat her in front of all the other girls. That would have been typical. Any opportunity to beat one of his workers was important to him. If they were scared of being abused again, they would do whatever he told them to do.

  As he was reaching down, the door crashed over. It didn’t just open. It was completely smashed. Three men dressed in black combat fatigues glided in with their guns raised. And just like that, Makato Mitsumuri’s head exploded. Tala saw it happen before she heard the sound of discharging gun fire.

  The two thugs whirled around. One of them whipped out a knife, but his head exploded, too. The other security guard fell on his knees and started pleading for his life. One of the attackers stood beside him, pointing his gun at the thug’s head. The other, knelt down and covered the door.

  “Tala Cruz?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Tala! Where are you?”

  She fearfully raised her hand.

  The guy who had been calling her came over. “Stand up.”

  He was Asian, but not Pilipino. Maybe Japanese or Chinese, Cruz guessed. She stood up, trembling.

  Bang! Bang!

  The guy covering the door had taken out two more of Mako’s crew. Their bodies thumped as they crumpled to the floor. All of the women had backed against the wall. Some of them were crying and others were screaming.

  He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a
photo, and looked at it. Then he peered at her. “Got her!” he reported to the others. “Where’s the boy?”

  It took her a second to process what he was saying. The other thug was still pleading for his life.

  “Tala!”

  She snapped back into the moment.

  “Where’s the boy?”

  “My son?” she stammered. “I don’t know. Mako took him. I don’t know where he is.”

  Bang!

  Another thug was dropped.

  The team leader walked over to the blubbering man, still crying and begging for his life. “Where’s the boy?”

  The man realized this was his opportunity. Mako was dead. There was nothing he could do to him now. “I’ll show you. Please don’t kill me. Please. Please don’t kill me. I’ll show you,” he begged.

  The team leader turned to Cruz. “Tala! Come. Bring your things.”

  “I don’t have any things,” she said, confused. “Just my phone.”

  He walked over to her and grabbed her by the arm. Not roughly, but firmly. “Look at me.”

  She did.

  “You do exactly what I say.”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  The guard who had been covering the door, crouch-walked out of the room checking for any other security personnel who might be foolish enough to shoot at them. There were none. What few people had been around, drained out when the gunfire started.

  The man led them through the back hallways and out into the club. He crossed the floor to a staircase. “He’s up there. In Mako’s office.”

  “Alone?”

  The man nodded.

  “Wait here.”

  Two of the combat team went upstairs while the team leader stayed with Tala and the blubbering guard. They came down with Matteo.

  “Mommy!” he shrieked, hurrying down the rest of the stairs and jumping into his mother’s arms.

  “Matteo!” she sighed, relieved. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded.

  The leader looked at the thug. “You can go.”

  He didn’t need the words repeated. The sniffling man scrambled out of the club like a scurrying rabbit.

  “We need to go,” the leader said to Tala.