The industrial hospital wasn’t exactly inviting-looking. Surrounded by the neon glitz of Taipei, it had a depressing facade. But the smiles Knight got from the women he passed on the sidewalk as he approached the front entrance were enough to lift any male hospital visitor’s spirits. Of course, in Taiwan they could be working women, but it was still mid-afternoon, so he doubted it. Ten feet from the concrete staircase leading up to the double-door entrance, he saw a stunning woman. She turned, met his eyes and smiled.
As he returned the woman’s smile, he noted that hers had frozen and become forced. The woman, dressed in a dark gray power suit, turned fully toward him. He noted her open jacket and the two items attached to her belt.
A badge.
And a gun.
With one hand the woman drew her sidearm.
With the other she spoke into a radio Knight hadn’t noticed before.
TWENTY-SIX
Asino, Siberia
THE DISTINCT SMELL of a cow pasture rolled over the open hill and wafted past Rook. Despite being a distasteful odor to many people, it reminded Rook of his home in New Hampshire, where he grew up down the road from a cow farm. He couldn’t see the farm itself, but the smell and distant cattle calls placed the farm somewhere on the other side of the green grassy rise to his left. To the right was a forest of pine and birch trees that was home to bears, reindeer, and, judging from the continuous buzz of chain saws, a thriving forestry business. The odors, combined with the cool mid-morning air, felt invigorating.
As Rook, dressed as a local in dirty work pants and a thick gray wool sweater, walked down the road toward town, his team followed along in the forest, wading through a sea of bright green ferns. Fortunately, the three targets lived on the outskirts of town, in a home that backed up to the forest. Rook would approach from the road, posing as a local in need of car assistance. When he was invited in to use the phone, he would drug the group and his team would abscond with them, each pair carrying one of the two women and one man—all that remained of the Chulym people. A truck hidden two miles away in the forest would transport the group to an airfield where a small plane, operated by a local CIA operative, waited to whisk them (with two landings to refuel) to neighboring Georgia, where a much faster transport would take them to the United States.
It was one of the more complicated and slower extraction plans Rook had seen, but that was to be expected when kidnapping three people from a country that wasn’t exactly on hugging terms with the United States. Quiet and careful was preferred to loud and fast in this case.
A sign ahead, written in Russian, read, “Thank you for visiting Asino. Population 28,000.” Rook quickened his pace, knowing the turn onto his targets’ street was only a mile ahead. He wanted to get this over with and the long trek home started.
The trees on the side of the road shifted under a breeze. A fallen tree caught in the grip of a second squeaked loudly as entwined limbs rubbed against each other. The sudden foreign noise returned Rook’s attention to what he could hear and he noticed something had changed. The cows had fallen silent. Perhaps feeding? But the distant whine of chain saws had quieted as well.
Kafer’s voice filled his ear. “Rook, RP-One here. Do you he—”
Rook muted his earbud as the sound for which Kafer had broken radio silence for struck his ears. Still distant, the deep bass staccato was easily identifiable as not one but several approaching helicopters.
Big ones.
TWENTY-SEVEN
El Calvario, Colombia
UNDER THE COVER of darkness, Queen and her team of operators watched the small mountainside town of El Calvario through night vision goggles. Few lights remained on and many of those bore the telltale flicker of television sets. The town was at rest. And when they woke in the morning, two of them would be missing. But despite the town’s quiet demeanor, it bore the scars of a violent past, most recently as the epicenter for a magnitude 5.9 earthquake in 2008. Six people had died. Hundreds more were injured. But the buildings in town took the brunt of the damage. Those that had collapsed remained so and many others, including the tall yellow church, had cracked walls or bent frames.
The two men—the last speakers of Tinigua—had been citizens of El Calvario since they were born. The first, Edmundo Forero, was born sixty-nine years previous and was the oldest resident in town. The second man, Tavio Cortes, born sixty-four years ago, had been a neighbor of Edmundo’s, and as a result picked up the language that he and his mother spoke. The language that now only the two of them knew.
The challenge for Queen and her team was that despite being close friends, Edmundo and Tavio now lived on opposite sides of town, which wasn’t just a matter of horizontal distance, but also vertical. El Calvario’s main drag rose straight up the mountainside at an amazingly steep angle. The obvious choice was to split the team in two, taking both men at the same time. But Queen had seen more than a few bullet holes in buildings and knew the area had seen some violent unrest. Despite the gross exaggerations about Colombia being a haven for terrorists and drug runners, these elements
Queen’s team moved as one. Like a black-clad anaconda stalking its prey in the darkness, they moved in a fast single-file line, weaving through the tight alleys between the turquoise and white homes. They gathered beneath the tall stilts supporting their target’s back porch. While three men kept watch below the porch, two more followed Queen up the stairs.
Queen, along with QP-One and -Two, huddled by the back door for a moment while she picked the lock. Once inside, she drew a tranquilizer gun and moved through the home, heading for the living room where the TV flickered. Just as she hoped, Edmundo lay asleep in a reclined chair, a beer in one hand, a cigarette burned to the nub in the other.
“Bastard is lucky to still be alive,” QP-Two said.
Queen took aim and shot him in the chest. The old man’s eyes launched open, wrinkling the flat, leathery brown skin of his forehead. He stood, saw their black masks and night vision goggles, and before he had time to fully register what he’d seen, fell face forward into Queen’s arms. She handed him to QP-One and -Two, who carried him outside and down the steps to where the others still waited.
As Queen walked down the steps, she activated her throat microphone and spoke. “Queen here. Edmundo Forero is ours. En route to second target.”
“Copy that, Queen,” came the voice of Dominick Boucher, who was sitting in for Deep Blue until he was able to free himself from the media shit storm.
“Out,” she said before disconnecting. With a quick hand signal she motioned for the team to move and they were off again, working their way through the town with Edmundo in tow. As hoped, the old man’s light frame combined with the downward climb allowed them to move just as quickly.
Reaching the bottom of the hill, they stopped at the edge of the main street. Tavio’s home, and their LZ, lay on the other side. But before they could make a move, a loud car engine roared at the top of the street. It was followed by the squeal of braking tires and the shouts of men. While the team fell back, Queen chanced a look up the mountain road and saw three jeeps, large machine guns mounted on each, and fifteen armed men flooding into Edmundo’s home.
Ducking into the shadows, she activated her throat mic again. “Mission has been compromised. Local authorities were tipped off.”
She didn’t wait for a reply before switching off and prepping her UMP submachine gun. She suspected they
