Torching the Crimson Flag Read online

  Back at the house, they hung their prize in the garage, and Carter cracked a cold Steinlager beer while she watched her cousin, joined by his dad and brothers to do the butchering. She liked hunting with him because of his skill at this part of the process. They’d use nearly every part of the pig, saving the choicest cuts to cook kalua-style, with lots of sea salt and liquid smoke, producing the delicious shredded pork Hawaii was famous for.

  She loved coming home. She’d been on Kona-side of the island for several days to visit with her uncle. He owned a fishing boat and took her out every day. They’d pull in mahi mahi and ono, just a few of the plentiful game-fish that tourists from around the world flew in to catch. On the last day, she was lucky enough to catch her favorite fish of them all. Yellowfin tuna or ahi. For her, it was the Kobe beef of the ocean. Then she visited more ohana on the Kohala Coast. Her family on the north side loved the ocean, of course, but felt at home in the back-country. Luscious forests, waterfalls, pools and hardened lava tubes were their playground and she felt just as home there as on the water.

  “Hey! Cuz.”

  Boyd looked over. “Sorry, Kupa’a.” He’d caught her just staring off into the distance.

  “What you thinking about, so hard?”

  “It’s good to be home, you know?”

  He nodded, pretending to understand. Never having left the island, he could only imagine what it would be like to come home. But why leave when everyone from around the world came to the islands? “Whatch-you been doin’?”

  “Just stuff.”

  “Missions?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Still saving the world, huh?”

  She shook her head. “Not the world. Just a few good people.”

  Off the island, Boyd Carter was a legendary operator. Many spec-ops teams in different branches told stories of her, often elevating them to an almost mythical status. She’d been a celebrated member of the extraordinary 5th Special Forces Group, 1st Battalion, Delta Company – an elite American Tier 1 Special Operations Force, within the United States Armed Forces, located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The U.S. government always kept them armed with the latest weapons systems and equipment and instructed them in the finest field and combat tactics in the world. Sometimes they were referred to as Ghosts, for their ability to slip into situations and resolve them, without being detected.

  In addition to all of that, she was an expert in Krav Maga, a form of fighting that was created for and perfected by the IDF’s special units and reconnaissance brigades. It’s exceptionally efficient, brutal, and famous for neutralizing threats through aggressively attacking and defending at the same time. Like many systems of martial arts, levels are identified by various colors of belts – black being the highest. While many of her childhood friends in Hawaii spent afternoons getting high and hanging out at the beach, she’d decided to train her body with a retired Mossad agent. Boyd Carter was a black belt by the time she was fifteen. She’d even pioneered various additions to the training that made her a lethal killing machine. So it wasn’t just among American military that she was well known, rumors of her abilities permeated the ranks of the Mossad and the halls of Shin Bet.

  She watched her cousin as he skillfully prepared the meat. There was certainly something to be said about sticking with the simple life. Part of her would’ve loved to have done that. But once she got a whiff of the evil in this world, she just couldn’t lounge in paradise. She was wired differently, somehow. At sixteen, she’d left life on the lava rock and moved to Northern Virginia to discover who could best use her skills.

  “Hey, cuz. I saw one movie. Military-kind. They said the reason they serve is to protect the guys next to them. You know. Friendship. Not so much the higher calling. Know what I mean? That true?”

  Boyd looked up, seeing the sky starting to change colors as the sun prepared to bathe the island in gold before it sunk into the ocean. “Probably. For a lot of people. Intense experiences fuse people together. But for me, it’s always been about the mission. At least it used to be.” She shrugged. “I don’t know Kupa’a. I’ve usually been a lone operator. But the people I’m hanging with now are pretty tight. Hawaii’s the only place I’ve ever had ohana, but …”

  “Nah. It’s good to have that wherever you are. Gotta have a family around you, right?”

  “I guess so. I’m learning that.”

  Trey’s father was Dr. Leonard Stone. He was the strategic thinker at LaunchPad. Usually, not too far from him, was his best friend, David Hirsch. The two had met as students at a research institute at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. The Ivy League school was founded in 1865, long before their time, by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White. In mission, it was supposed to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics to the sciences, and from the theoretical to the applied. In its recent reality, a large percentage of students graduated into lifelong alcoholism, majoring in partying and minoring in substance abuse.

  Hirsch swam upstream from the crowd at school, though. He learned to moderate his drinking while specializing in what he called a social major – with an English Lit minor.

  Lenny, on the other hand, would’ve made the founders proud. He graduated two years early, was ushered through high levels of national security training in Virginia Beach, and floated into the Pacific Ocean on a nuclear submarine as a U.S. Navy intel officer. From there, the talented twenty-one-year-old had helped coordinate strategic offenses and create sophisticated codes for inter-military coordination between the United States and her allies.

  Submariners are notorious for long periods of service and, unbeknownst to him, while he was at sea, his girlfriend had given birth to his son and died a short time later of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. David was unable to communicate with a submarine that was nearly a half-mile underwater, running covert missions. So he fulfilled a promise he’d made to the dying girl and adopted her son. He raised the boy in Philadelphia, where he’d bought an old building and turned it into an iconic cigar bar, appropriately named David’s. When Lenny was dutifully back on American soil, Hirsch finally told him about his boy, Trey. A year later, the elder Stone legally adopted his son and raised him as a single dad, not far from his best friend.

  Hirsch still owned the bar, and right now, he was sitting in a corner table, firing up a mild Toro-shaped Davidoff Aniversario Series cigar. Through the decades, his establishment had secretively become a backroom for political deals and compromises, a place where business contracts were worked out, and sophisticated intellectuals philosophized over quality scotch while puffing on over-priced tobacco.

  “Why am I here?” Leonard asked his friend, walking up to him and sitting down at his table. “What’s with all the secrecy?”

  “I’m not sure. I just got a text to be at this table at 11:30 AM. It said to include you.”

  “Good thing I was headed this way anyway.”

  Leo, as people liked to call him, saw that his friend had provided a whiskey for him, so he picked it up and took a sip, relishing the complex flavors. “Reminds me of the old days—paper messages hidden in salt shakers. Cassettes taped under benches in the park. A secret rendezvous in a smoky bar.” He fingered the top of his glass. “Now everything is digital.”

  David nodded.

  “How’s Jun working out? He’s not here right now?”

  Jun Park had been in desperate straits after his sister was murdered in L.A. David helped him by moving him to the East Coast and giving him a job at his bar.

  “He’s doing great. Works really hard. Reliable.” Hirsch exhaled a cloud from his Davidoff cigar. “He’s still studying on his days-off. Getting that Business Management degree online.”

  “Good for him.” Leonard paused for a second. “Is that Tank over there in the corner?”

  “I asked him to come, too. Just to keep an eye on us.”

  Tatanka Ptecila was a full-blooded member of the Lakota tribe and the latest addition to the Launch
Pad team. He was good with guns and knives and possessed the courage of a small army. But it was his uncanny ability to track people that had gotten him a reputation. Some people called it his spidey senses, but Dr. Stone attributed it to his genetics. Legends had been passed down from generation to generation among the Lakota people of scouts in his lineage who had saved many a village in times of inter-tribal battles. Leonard knew that Tank had family members who had served in every modern war, providing valuable intel on the field.

  “That must be our guy,” commented Leo.

  David followed his gaze to the front door. A handsome African American man had entered the bar. Hirsch guessed that he was in his late thirties, and it was obvious to everyone that his dark suit did a poor job of hiding a body that spent hundreds of hours in the weight room. “FBI?”

  Leo shook his head. “His aviators are too expensive.”

  “Secret Service.”

  Trey’s dad nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  The man spotted the two of them and walked over.

  Trey’s dad and David both stood.

  “Gabriel.”

  “David. This is Leo.”

  The three men sat in the corner as Tank shifted slightly in his chair to see better. He pulled a copy of the New York Times from his messenger bag and pretended to read.

  “Thanks for coming,” Gabriel said, “We couldn’t send anything that would leave a digital trace. I left my cell phone in my office.”

  “We?”

  “The White House.”

  “Secret Service,” Leo said, smirking at David.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s so important?”

  “I was told you’d understand,” Gabriel said, reaching into his coat pocket.

  Tank looked up from his book with a hard stare, but seeing David subtly shake his head, the big Lakota looked back at his newspaper.

  “Here you go,” the man in the suit said, handing Leonard a white piece of paper the size of a yellow sticky-note.

  Dr. Stone unfolded it and read the short message:

  Iris has been taken.

  Trey’s dad read it a second time, as the impact of the wording began to sink in. Iris was the Greek goddess of communication who used to bring Hera’s messages to humanity. Now, of course, she’s plastered on cheap trinkets and sold for pennies in Grecian tourist shops. Her name is also the code name for the most protected person in the United States.

  Leonard turned the piece of paper upside down and slid it across the table to his friend so that David could read it, too. “When?”

  “Three hours ago.”

  “Could be disastrous.”

  “POTUS said you could activate a team and solve the problem, discreetly.”

  “Tell the President Of The United States that our team is on a much-needed vacation.”

  Neither Leonard nor David was very excited about the current administration. Most Americans weren’t. Tucker Webb won the election based on his ideas for a free economy, not a free market economy. Just a world where everything is free. Debt-laden university students loved the concept and campaigned tirelessly for their whiney leader. Of course, now that he was in office, he couldn’t deliver on a damned thing.

  “How is it that you know about all this?” David asked.

  “I was responsible for Iris. But at the last minute, my son had an ear infection, and I had to take him to the doctor. Otherwise, I’d be one of the six guys killed when he got snatched. I wouldn’t have made a difference. They were surgical and brutal.”

  Leonard watched three college-aged guys walk in and thread their way through the tables to the bar. “We don't have the resources for a search party.”

  “You don’t need to hunt him down. We know where he is.”

  David and Leo were both taken aback.

  “Come again?” asked Hirsch.

  “It’s Washington D.C. Cameras are everywhere, and we’ve secured all the footage. Plus, Iris had a tracking device. It’s been deactivated now, though.”

  “So, where is he?”

  “The Russian Embassy.”

  “Who deactivated his transponder?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “I’m sure the President has reached out to the Russians,” Leonard said.

  “They say he’s seeking asylum.”

  “Did they admit to taking him?”

  “No. According to them, he was delivered to their doorstep.”

  “By whom?” Hirsch demanded.

  “We don’t know, and they won’t tell us.” Gabriel turned to watch two shapely ladies gracefully leave their table and walk out of the bar. “By looking at the victim’s terrified face in the video footage, he wasn’t expecting them. There’s no way he planned it in advance.”

  “So, he wasn’t seeking asylum at the time he was taken?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I’m sure we’re not talking about walking into the Russian Embassy and getting him out,” Leonard said.

  Gabriel was silent.

  “It’s one of the most well-guarded embassies in our country and probably the world.”

  David sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “There’s no way we’re getting the team together for an invasion on Russian soil here in the United States. That sounds like a good way to end up in Guantanamo Bay or Siberia or somewhere even worse.”

  “We just want your team to help us think about how we can get him back.”

  “This is precisely why we have SOF Teams and a Pentagon full of brains.”

  “The Pentagon doesn’t know. Too many risks of leaks.” Gabriel stated flatly. Then he leaned forward and dropped his voice to a barely audible level. “When I was in North Korea, I got caught. It was terrifying. Every minute of it. I was brutally interrogated for over twenty days and then left to rot in a hellish prison.” He looked around to make sure nobody was in earshot. “But I got lucky. The press never found out about me. A CIA black ops team came and got me in the middle of the night, and the North Korean government was so embarrassed at how easy it was to extract me, that they never said a thing. Nobody ever knew I was there. When I was safely back on a U.S. military base, I was told that had the press found out I was stuck behind enemy lines, I would’ve never been liberated. I’d have had to stay in that miserable hell-hole until the U.S. worked it out diplomatically. That could have taken years.” He stood up. “POTUS wants you because a leak to the press would be disastrous and because he thinks you can get the job done.” He shrugged. “Look, I’m just the messenger. I was told to deliver the message and come back to base. Our window of time is closing with every minute.” He gave them a nod, turned around, and walked out.

  “I know why President Webb wants us,” David said thoughtfully.

  Leo turned to his friend.

  “This is a political nightmare, and he needs absolute deniability. There can’t be anything getting to the public about this, or his career is even more over then it already is.”

  “I’m thinking there might be another reason,” Dr. Stone said, clipping the rounded tip of his cigar with a cigar cutter. “He needs us to open back-channels.”

  David nodded. “Could be.”

  “You, in particular.”

  Dr. Stone lit his cigar, deep in thought. Gabriel Cain would never know the logistics and sniper cover it had taken to get him out of North Korea alive. It hadn’t exactly been an “easy” extraction.

  Chapter Three

  Justin Park and his wife Bora had been married for less than a year and were on their second honeymoon. Their first one, in New Zealand, was cut short because of an urgent call to return to LaunchPad. But after the incident was resolved, they decided to try again, this time closer to Maryland, on Prince Edward Island in Eastern Canada. Bora loved the idea of being in the same setting as the legendary book character, Anne Shirley, from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famous book, Anne of Green Gables. Justin was enjoying uninterrupted time with his wife and could see how the crisp,
clean air coming off the open ocean was slowly infusing her with much-needed mental therapy.

  Mrs. Park had a natural talent for investigative research and an ability to piece together trends and puzzles in a truly effective way. But the impact of sifting through child traffickers and realizing the evil they were capable of inflicting, had certainly taken its toll on her. Recently, she’d been struggling to sleep at night, would have occasional anxiety attacks, and had found herself shutting down emotionally. A few weeks by the sea in one of the most picturesque places on the planet had come at just the right time. Her sleep was more restful, and mental images of suffering children were being washed away by ocean waves, radiant greenery, and cheerily-painted lighthouses.

  Justin had a unique place on the LaunchPad team. He understood technology pretty well, but his special genius lay in assembling the tools an operator in the field might need to accomplish their mission. He worked with them to put together kits that contained everything from weaponry to wardrobe. His predictive brilliance had earned the respect of the entire team. Justin uniquely understood each team member's strengths so well that he could not only forecast what an agent might need but how they might think in the situations they were likely to face.

  Right now, though, Justin was in White Sands campground and sitting in a chair outside of their rented RV. Lost in thought, he was staring across Northumberland Strait, past Pictou Island, and to the shores of Nova Scotia.

  “You okay, honey?” Bora asked, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to him. “Here’s a lazy-morning coffee.”

  Pulling himself out of his imagination, Justin turned to look at her. “Thank you. Just what I needed.” He took a sip and then cradled the mug in his hands. “I was just thinking about how everybody is a child of someone. I know you want to have children someday. We’ve talked about that a few times. But I was just wondering about the mothers of children who are trafficked. Are they concerned about their child? Are they looking for them? Were they hoping their daughters and sons would find a better life?” He stopped. “I’m sorry, Bora. We came here to get away from the horrible things that happened recently. Here I am, bringing it all up again.”