Torching the Crimson Flag Read online

  “Three people, not everyone.”

  “Still. News is getting around that you’re harassing people.”

  “I haven’t been, but we’re seventeen minutes away, and when I get there, it won’t just be harassment. I have talented operatives here that are getting ready to create a serious storm.”

  “David, we …”

  “Do you remember Belgrade? We stormed your Consulate and raised hell because of the American you were holding there. You’re still cleaning up the damage.”

  “David. Please …”

  “Or Moldova?”

  “Dav…”

  “Istanbul?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Grow a pair!” Hirsch shouted. “Tell your people to stop screwing around. They’re worried about what Iris might talk about? They have no idea. He could bury all of you, and you know that!”

  “I don’t think …”

  “Sokolov! I’m not asking you. I’m telling you that when we get there, we’re prepared to create a mess. Fast. Think explosions. Think gunfire. Think press releases that detail the Russian involvement in the kidnapping of a top D.C. official. We’d be happy to show Fox News our videos of the van driving from a street of bloodied American agents directly to the Russian Embassy. We’ll also point out how the vehicle has not exited the property.”

  Silence. David figured this call was being monitored. He wasn’t just talking to Sokolov. Of the team of people listening in, there was one person who mattered, not a kingpin in the regime, of course, but someone calling the shots here. And Hirsch had just gotten that person’s attention.

  “David, you wouldn’t do that.”

  “How do you think I got involved in this, Alexei? You think I saw it online somewhere over my morning coffee? I’m authorized to do whatever the hell I want. We are eleven minutes away. When we pull up to the gates, they’d better open. I don’t even want to roll down my window and say, ‘Privet!’” With that, Hirsch touched the red end call icon.

  “That was nice, David,” Bruce snickered.

  “Diplomatic,” added Tank.

  “I’m too old to meet at a corner coffee shop and play cloak and dagger with a honey trap. What kind of weapons do we have?”

  “I grabbed our assault kits,” said the ex-marine. “We’re ready to rain down trouble.”

  “Yeah. They won’t let us in with all of that.”

  Tank looked at Fox and David, a little confused. “I thought you said we weren’t going to breach the embassy.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  “But do they really think you’re crazy enough to do it.”

  “Yes. They do.”

  “Can I ask what happened at those nations you mentioned?”

  “Let’s save the stories for cigars and cognac. I’ll tell you this, though. We set the prisoners free. And we didn’t do it quietly. There was such a diplomatic mess for them to clean up that they are still trying to repair relationships with the media that covered it all up for them.”

  “We’ll get there in three minutes. What’s the plan?” asked Fox.

  Tala looked at her son, sleeping peacefully. What a beautiful work of art, he was. Every once in a while, his nose would twitch when he breathed in. It made her smile. He had gotten his raven black hair and thick black eyebrows from his Italian side. She was claiming his nose, although it was probably a tossup. But the ears were hers, for sure. They stuck out a little further than ears on most people. Growing up, she’d always been self-conscious about her ears and grew long hair to hide them under. She gently stroked his head and whispered, “I love you, Matteo.”

  She peeled off her work dress, removed her makeup with some wipes, washed her face, and stood in front of her mirror, staring. For all of the difficulties she’d weathered in her young life, she’d managed to keep her beauty intact. There was something about her that men liked. She could make her eyes happy dance if she wanted to. But she could see where age was starting to show in lines by her eyes and creases around her lips. She brushed out her long brown hair and examined the tips. It was almost time to get an inch taken off the ends. Brushing her teeth, she thought about the day. It was something her mom had taught her before she’d overdosed.

  “Come, Babae,” she’d say, shortening the Tagalog word for daughter. “Tell me two things you’re thank for from today.”

  Today, Tala Cruz was thankful for a well-paying fat pig that she hoped she’d never see again, and she was thankful for Alvin Garcia, a taxi driver who, once again, waived what he would have normally charged a customer because he decided to go home after dropping her off. He’d said it was, “on his way anyway,” but he always said that. He was one of the good guys. Every Wednesday night, he’d wait for her in his car – wanting to make sure she got home alright.

  She lay down on her mat on the floor, next to her son, and pulled the thin blanket over them both. Their apartment had one main room that was their living room, bedroom, kitchen, laundry room, and playroom all in one. In the back corner was a second room – a closet-sized fully-tiled bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. They hung their clothes from a long galvanized steel pipe that Tala had found lying on the side of the road. She’d attached it to the ceiling using a strong rope and some u-bolts. As her body began to rest finally and her mind slowed its spinning, she fell asleep.

  At first, she thought it was a nightmare. She smelled a foul odor of moldy sweat, bourbon breath, and underarms that may have never met deodorant. Then she heard the inappropriate language. Swearing. Rage. Someone was yanking her son away from her. Someone else was standing on her legs. Cruz fought to kick them but couldn’t move. The struggle became more real, more physical. She squeezed her son tighter. Then, she rotated her core as hard as she could, and the person on her legs tumbled off. It was dark. She strained to see what was happening.

  “Hello, Tala. I’ve been looking for you!”

  Cruz froze. She knew the sickeningly demonic voice. It was her former pimp. A god-awful human being that ruled with an iron fist and crushed decenters. At some point, he’d run with the Japanese Yakuza in Shinjuku, and they’d taught him to lead, mafia-style. He abused everyone ruthlessly. Sometimes verbally, sometimes physically, sometimes sexually, and in rare cases like with Tala – all three. On many nights, after she’d serviced a client, Makato Mitsumuri would beat and rape her within inches of her life. Mako, as the girls called him, had a predator’s philosophy: terrorize the girls so they would be too afraid to fight back. She grimaced as he violently seized her arm and lifted her onto her feet with his left hand. A blinding flashlight turned on.

  Cruz continued to twist, to struggle away from his grip. “Let me go!!” she screamed with an ear-piercing shriek.

  Mako’s right hand came sweeping across her face with a thunderous slap that almost knocked her out. She went sprawling across the floor.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” the man raged as he walked over and yanked her up by her hair. “You still owe me money!”

  “I don’t!” she sobbed, replying with desperation. “Mako, I paid you back every penny. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “You’re wrong,” he growled. “I own you.”

  Matteo started screaming with the kind of feverish pitch that only a four-year-old possesses. Off in the distance, a dog barked.

  “Shut the kid up!” Mako roared.

  Now Tala’s eyes were wide open, and even with the blinding light, she counted five men. Two of them grabbed her son, and the one on the right started wrapping him in duct tape. He started with the boy’s mouth. The other two men gripped her arms and held her in place so she could face her former pimp.

  “Do you think that you can just run away, Cruz? My number one woman? Since you left, two other girls have gotten the idea that they could leave. I’ve dealt with them. Now I’m going to deal with you. Every day you’ve missed is money I’m going to collect.”

  “Nooooo!”

  “Oh yes. I’m
going to make sure you pay every centimos. And if you don’t, I’ll sell your boy.”

  “Don’t! Please!” she pleaded. “Look at him. He is innocent. He’s innocent, Mako! Please!! Leave my boy alone!!”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Calgary International Airport is a mid-sized operation by international standards, but the fourth largest in the nation of Canada. It has four runways, two terminal buildings, and five concourses for passengers. The Stone family had returned the Jeep they rented, passed through customs and immigration, gone through airport security, and boarded their Delta Airlines flight that routed them through a short stopover in Minneapolis.

  “Sir, please turn off your phone or put it airplane mode,” the flight attendant said sternly, looking at Trey.

  Agent Stone nodded and tucked his phone under his leg while she walked off. Then he promptly pulled it back out to read the message that had just come in on a secure comms app Justin had loaded onto all the LaunchPad phones. His eyebrows furrowed as he passed the phone to Bao Zhen.

  “What is it, Trey,” Lin Lin Ma leaning forward and asking worriedly from her window seat.

  “Fox.”

  Jasmine was sitting across the aisle from her dad with her head bopping up and down to the music she had flowing through her earbuds, and her eyes closed.

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “He got shot in the leg. I don’t know all the details, but someone followed them all the way from D.C.”

  Ma looked horrified. “Is he okay?”

  “According to dad, he’s not doing well. The bullet entered his leg, ricocheted off his femur, and fragmented it. One of those pieces sliced his femoral artery, so he lost a lot of blood. There’s extensive tissue damage and burned muscle.”

  “Oh no!” Lin Lin exclaimed.

  Trey’s wife turned to him. “Which hospital is he in?”

  Agent Stone swallowed hard. “Ashley is working on him at LaunchPad.”

  All three of them sat in silence, recognizing what a difficult moment this was for the young surgeon who called Trey her big brother.

  “Saara is assisting.”

  “Sir?” the flight attendant asked, her eyebrows arching accusingly.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry,” Trey apologized, taking his phone back from Bao Zhen and turning it to airplane mode. Maybe if he’d been military personnel in uniform, he’d have gotten some slack. But that’s the thing about being a clandestine operative. There’s no boarding the plane before other group numbers are called, no public thanks for hard-earned service to the country, and no perks from patriotic businesses. He thought of Ashley. She was very special to him. He remembered coming back from his training school in Japan and discovering that David had taken in another person. She was smart, funny, and damaged from grief, having just lost both of her parents. But Hirsch did what he did best. He stood her up on her feet, challenged her to work hard, and find meaning. One time his “sister” had told him that David sat her down and lectured her.

  “Your parents are gone,” he’d said, standing behind her as she’d been looking at her face in the mirror. “It’s horrible and unfair. But you’re alive. Ashely, you are alive! And life is shining brightly ahead of you if you choose to see it. If you keep looking back, it will swallow you whole.”

  David had known what he was talking about. He’d lost his wife and knew what “finding meaning” did for a person. He’d found his. It was to do everything he could to stand in the way of people who wanted to attack America.

  The plane had taken off and leveled out when Bao Zhen tapped her husband on the arm. “Trey?”

  He nodded.

  “Who was following them?”

  “I don’t think anybody knows yet.”

  “How would the shooters have known who Fox and Ashley were?”

  Agent Stone shook his head. “I don’t know, dear.”

  “Did the assassins get away?”

  “No. Michi showed up and took them out.”

  “Should we be concerned?”

  Trey didn’t want to tell her how deeply uneasy he was. “I don’t know. I think we need to be cautious, and before we land, talk about an exit strategy. But right now, worrying about it won’t change anything.”

  Bao Zhen leaned her head back and looked up at the passenger air vents above her head. She knew her husband was right. Nothing changes when a person worries, but she couldn’t help herself. If this was a hit on a member of LaunchPad, they had to assume that they all were in imminent danger. Trey was miraculously able to compartmentalize and be in the moment, she wasn’t wired the same way.

  David didn’t know whether he’d wring Leonard’s neck when they returned to LaunchPad or thank his old friend for keeping him updated, but as they approached the embassy gates, he hated the fact that a message from Dr. Stone was distracting him. It was killing him not to be back at the base with Ashley as she struggled through operating on yet another gunshot fiancée in critical condition.

  Two embassy guards dutifully stepped out of their booth and walked up to the driver’s side of David’s Suzuki Samurai.

  “Passports please,” said the more senior of the officers politely.

  “Call Sokolov and tell him his VIP guests are here and don’t feel like giving you their passports.”

  “Passports, please.”

  David looked ahead. Part of him wanted to crash through the bar-gate and start yelling like a losing football coach. But, he calmly turned back to the guard. “Do you know who Sokolov is?”

  The impassive guard nodded.

  “Do you want to piss him off? Make the call.”

  “Passports, please.”

  Hirsch was about to pick up his phone and make the call himself when the phone in the guard booth rang loudly. A few seconds later, another guard came out of the hut and said something in Russian. The bar-gate lifted, and David drove forward, not looking at the guard, and rolling up his window as he passed the little group of security.

  “Leo gave me our passports before we left, you know,” Bruce said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah. I know. But, they look at the passport, and the next thing they want to do is search the vehicle. I was hoping to avoid that. You get in without showing your passport, they’re not going to search anything.”

  “It’s after 5:00 PM, isn’t it?”

  “Closer to six, why?”

  “There aren’t many cars around.”

  Tank spoke up from the back seat, “I noticed three men in plainclothes under the tree on the corner of this first building. One of them appeared to be looking at his phone, but the angle was a little off. He was taking our pictures.”

  “There you go,” David said with a smirk. “Maybe their facial recognition software will generate a hit.” He pulled the Samurai into the visitors' parking lot. “Have either of you worked an embassy beat before?”

  Bruce nodded. “One time. I had to sub in Turkey.”

  David opened his door. “Just keep your doors closed. We’ll wait here.”

  “Why’d you ask?”

  “Well, the one in Turkey is pretty small. But here, in big ones like this, it is a political minefield – a microcosm of the nation. Everybody is playing everyone else, it’s a cesspool of diplomatic back-biting and one-upmanship. Sokolov is like a battle-tested Kevlar vest, though. He’s taken a lot of shots but keeps getting up. He’s a master politician and has favor from the top in Moscow. The thing is, as much as we want to find Iris, the Russians need this thing to go away. Badly. If he can make it happen, he’ll get a big political feather in his presidential-butt-kissing hat.”

  As he was speaking, a tall, good-looking Russian strode out of the building they’d parked in front of. He looked to be in his early sixties and had clearly spent a lot of time babying his youthful-looking skin. His full head of blond hair had elegant streaks of gray that gently rose and fell as he stepped briskly to their jeep.

  “By the way,” David continued. “Russians don’t smile much and th
ey think you’re an imbecile if you do.”

  When the tall Embassy worker could make out the faces inside, he pointed at David. “Hirsch!” he said with a deeply resonant voice and his blue eyes sparkling. “Come, come, all of you. Welcome to Russia!”

  Bruce tried not to bristle. It was considered Russian territory after all, but it was in the United States. The three men climbed out of the Suzuki. Tank reached into the back seat and took out his black duffle bag.

  Fox raised his eyebrows, “You bringing that inside?”

  “You’re leaving yours out here?”

  Sokolov turned around to see what the delay was. “That’s a big purse,” he remarked snidely.

  “It has my forensics equipment inside,” Tank said level headedly.

  “You can leave it here. We’ll have some drinks first.”

  David shook his head. “We'd love to have drinks, but I’m afraid we’ll need to take a rain check.

  “No drinks? Really?”

  “No drinks. Not this time. Just take us straight to the van. We saw it go in the underground parking lot and we never saw it come out. I assume it’s still there?”

  “David, you know I can’t take you there.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s an area that’s for embassy personnel only.”

  Hirsh nodded calmly. “I completely understand,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “Listen, my friend. I’ll join you for that drink.” He turned to Bruce and Tank. “The two of you stay here in the Samurai. We won’t be long.”

  “David,” the Russian said calmly. “You don’t want to send one of your men to the van.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. That will get all of us in trouble.”

  Hirsch watched Sokolov carefully.

  “Bring them with us. I have lots to show you.”

  “I’d prefer for you and I to talk privately if you know what I mean,” David answered as if divulging a family secret.

  “Of course. I understand. But trust me, okay?”

  “I’ll stay here,” Bruce stated. “Right here. I promise. You go along, Tank.”