based in Brussels and covering the European beat.
New images came on screen, police mug shots from the look of them, the tip-off being the row of numbers being held under the subject's face. He looked about ten years younger but still very much the same, except that the crew-cut hair was a bit thicker and darker and the lumpish face slightly less saggy and jowly.
The operator said, 'He's Hermann Ost. German by birth, although he hasn't been in his home country for years, due to a number of outstanding warrants out on him for murder, attempted murder, numerous counts of violent assault, rape, illegal possession of firearms and explosives, gunrunning, racketeering and drug dealing.
'That's his criminal dossier in his homeland. He's also wanted in several other West European countries for similar offenses. But these crimes are only incidental to his main source of livelihood.
'Ost is a mercenary, a professional soldier for hire. His history is too long to go into now, but here are some of the highlights — or lowlights, depending on your point of view.
'He first enlisted in the German Army, serving for eight years and reaching the rank of top sergeant before being court-martialed and dishonorably discharged for striking an officer. Next he surfaced in Africa, serving in various mercenary legions in Rwanda and the Congo. He achieved a certain level of notoriety as part of an extermination unit working for Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. He followed that up with extensive action in the Blood Diamond conflicts in Sierra Leone.
'He headed an outfit protecting foreign oil field workers in Nigeria, until he was implicated in a scheme to kidnap and hold for ransom the same executives he was supposed to be guarding.
'Africa being too hot for him, he moved his theater of operations to the Balkans, where he worked for most of the nineties. Since then, he's plied his trade in Indonesia, Malaysia, and East Timor. Most recently, reported sightings have placed him in the Persian Gulf emirates and Lebanon.'
Memory returned to Jack with a rush. Now he knew why the potato-faced killer had seemed so familiar.
Before joining CTU, Jack had been a member of the U. S. Army's elite Delta Force. He'd participated in a number of actions carried out in the Balkans, where Christian Serbia and Croatia had warred with each other and made war on predominantly Muslim Bosnia. The conflict had produced mass atrocities, mass murder, and mass graves, leaving at least one hundred thousand dead.
With the European Union and United Nations paralyzed into impotency, the United States was able to act. At the height of the madness, the Serbian leadership under Milosevic made ready to escalate its program of 'ethnic cleansing' — that is, genocide — against thousands of Muslims in the borderlands. Not that the Serbs were any worse than their antagonists, just quicker off the mark to do to their foes what their foes planned to do to them.
Someone had to cool down the conflict before it escalated into the neighboring states of Albania, Macedonia, and beyond. Washington used Delta Force to put out the hottest fires, sending in secret teams to assassinate key Serbian warlords, decimate their militias, and destroy their arsenals. These were the blackest of black ops, covert missions that were kept secret even from allied NATO forces operating in the region as peacekeepers.
Bosnia, too, was not without its own clandestine backers. Legions of foreign fighters flocked to the area, militant Muslims recruited from throughout the Middle East, armed and financed by wealthy Saudis. Their numbers were augmented by professional soldiers who served for pay. Top pay.
Among them was Major Marc Vollard, a mercenary commander who organized and led a wickedly effective counterforce to the Serb militias.
One can't be too picky in wartime. On several occasions, Jack's Delta Force team had found it expedient to work in conjunction with Vollard, using his troops as auxiliaries for backup and support.
Once the Serbian fire had been damped down, however, Washington turned a hard eye on its erstwhile ally. Vollard was amoral, pragmatic, and ruthlessly efficient.
When the Serbs massacred a Bosnian village, he massacred two Serbian villages. By the standards of international law, he was as much of a war criminal as any who'd ever been dragged before a court of justice in the Hague.
One attribute of a successful mercenary is to know when to get out of town. His sixth sense for survival operating at full bore, Vollard abruptly ceased operations in the area and vanished, departing for parts unknown.
That suited Washington, which preferred that its temporary alliance of convenience with the mercenary major be filed and forgotten, never to see the light of day.
Jack told the operator, 'Let me talk to Cal Randolph.'
After a pause, Cal came on the line. 'What is it, Jack?'
Jack said, 'Now I remember where I've seen Ost before. Fifteen years ago, in the Balkans, he was a top noncom with Major Marc Vollard's mercenary legion. He was part of Vollard's leadership cadre, the inner circle who follows Vollard from hot spot to hot spot, serving as his core support system.'
Cal said, 'Interesting. I can see where Ost ties in with Dixie Lee, they're both gunrunners on the same political wavelength. But where do they fit in with a brainy Maoist shooter like Beatriz Ortiz? Or, for that matter, the Generalissimo, Beltran?'
Jack said, 'I don't know — yet — but I'll tell you this. If Ost is on the scene, Vollard can't be too far away.'
'We'll run a trace on Vollard and see what comes up,' Cal said. 'Oh, and Jack — one more thing.'
'Shoot.'
'Susan Keehan's compromised in this business — Topham's and Beauclerk's death ensured that. That doesn't mean that her uncle, Senator Keehan, can't do us a lot of damage if things go sour on this ransom deal.'
'We'll rig it so we don't make our move until the exchange is made, Cal. But it could go sour anyway, if Sears drops the ball or the kidnappers do something stupid.'
'Then CTU will be in the clear. Just so long as we have deniability.'
Jack said, 'We'll be careful.'
Cal said, 'Good. I'll get back to you as soon as we've got something on Vollard.' Cal signed off; the Center operator did likewise.
A sultry blast of wind blew up from the south, whipping up all kinds of dirt and chaff, sending old newspapers swirling and spinning in midair. A trash can was knocked over and blown into the street, where it rolled around on its side in several half circles before another booming gust came up, picked it up bodily, and tossed it ten feet farther down the road.
Jack and Pete looked at each other. Jack said, 'Storm's rising.'
14. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 P.M. AND 7 P.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Fear, real fear, is a physical thing, born not of the mind but of the body.
At its most extreme, it can cause death. Death by fright is no myth, but a reality, as the victim's heart bursts under supreme shock. A few notches down, it can induce paralysis or the loss of intimate bodily functions. Slightly lower on the scale, it can induce waves of nausea, cotton-dry mouth, loss of feeling in the extremities, and a drop in body temperature that is popularly known by the expression, 'blood runs cold.'
It was this last group of symptoms that now afflicted Felix Monatero as he sat at his desk in his showroom office, staring at the monitor screen of a laptop and not seeing it, his awareness limited to a sick-making body terror.
He'd just received a Triple-AAA urgent communique from Havana, a missive that was at a level so far above top secret that it could only be classified as cosmic.
His masters back on the home island were in a state of near-hysteria, one that could not be disguised by the officialese in which their urgent message was couched.
Decrypted, it boiled down to one frantic query: What is going on in New Orleans?
