Deep Cover (A Brady Hawk Novel Book 2) Page 8

  Demby looked at her. “Dr. Ackerman, it’s so kind of you to join us.”

  “This isn’t a social call. We need to get these men free.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible. It’s too late for them. We’re going to detonate the mine, give them a merciful ending.”

  “Like hell you are,” she said before whistling toward the boys and pointing toward a portion of the mine. “Start working right here.” She turned to Hawk. “You, come with me.”

  Hawk followed her closely. “You really think we can save these men by simply pulling out a few beams and pushing over some boulders?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re sure going to try.”

  Hawk rolled up his sleeves and yanked a beam out of the rubble. He rushed to another pile of debris and pushed a large rock out of the way with his feet. A few moments later, an opening large enough for a man to escape through appeared. Two arms popped out of the hole.

  “Help me!” the man called.

  Hawk grabbed the man’s arms and lifted him out.

  Solomon rushed toward him before stopping short. The man wasn’t his father. Instead, another young boy leapt into the arms of the man they’d just rescued.

  Hawk took in the bittersweet scene. For a moment, it whisked him back in time to when he worked in the Peace Corps, giving him the satisfaction of what it felt like to help others yet the emptiness of not being able to help everyone.

  A firm punch to his bicep snapped him out of his trance.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Martin,” Ackerman said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Hawk stooped down and noticed a small black cinch sack being pushed through a tight opening between two large support beams.

  “Help me!” a man said with a gravely and raspy voice. “Take this. Just get me out.”

  Hawk took the bag and tossed it up and down for a moment to see how much it weighed. “What’s your name?”

  “Amad,” the man answered. “I know it’s a lot of money, but I don’t care. I want to see my family again. Just get me out of here so I can be with my family again.”

  Hawk knew the protocol: talk about the person’s family, keep them awake and alert, don’t let them lose consciousness. But knowing what to do and actually achieving the desired result were two different things, ideas that didn’t always materialize like people hoped.

  Hawk glanced at Solomon standing near several other men who’d been rescued. He looked lost, hopeless. Hawk reached down and pulled up a stone, determined not to let Solomon live the rest of his life with that despondent look on his face.

  CHAPTER 19

  ONCE HE ARRIVED HOME, Blunt wasted no time in retreating to his study and pouring himself a glass of scotch. It’d been a long day, one he wished to forget quickly. But as much as he wanted to erase it from his memory, he couldn’t.

  He settled into his favorite chair and threw his head back, exhaling and hoping for a better tomorrow.

  It can’t be any worse than today, can it?

  Just as he’d started to unwind, his encrypted phone rang.

  What is it now?

  He got up and wandered over to his desk, ripping out the charging cord from the phone.

  He recognized the number. It was Thor's.

  “Yeah,” Blunt answered.

  “I’m calling you with an update.”

  “What happened? Is it done? I’m watching the news and haven’t seen a thing.”

  “No,” Thor snapped. “Your intel was wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that I found Jepsen, identified him, posed as a hotel employee delivering room service to him, slipped him the drug—and he died of a heart attack hours later.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “It wasn’t Jepsen.”

  Blunt took another much-needed long pull on his drink. “What do you mean, it wasn’t Jepsen?”

  “Whoever had a heart attack was a body double for Jepsen.” Thor took a deep breath and exhaled. “It was almost as if he was surgically altered to look like him.”

  “You were sure it was him?”

  “Sure as I’ve ever been.”

  “So how do you know it wasn’t?”

  “When I returned to the kitchen, I heard one of the other employees talking about how he’d just come back from the Prime Minister’s room. Someone either tipped them off or knew of our operation in advance.”

  “So, what’s going on now?”

  “Jepsen’s cavalcade just left for his speech that he’s scheduled to make here in Vienna in a couple of hours. They’re having some kind of breakfast for diplomats before he speaks. What do you want me to do?”

  Blunt finished off his glass of scotch and got up to pour himself another.

  “Senator?”

  “Just hang tight. I’ll be in touch.”

  Blunt hung up and slammed his phone down on his desk. He drained the entire glass of scotch before slinging it across the room and letting out a string of expletives.

  Without hesitating, he shuffled toward his window and drew the blinds.

  He was wrong.

  His day could—and did—get much worse.

  CHAPTER 20

  DEMBY BENT OVER next to Dr. Ackerman and watched as she worked frantically to pull the rubble away from one of the mine’s openings. He admired her determination and grit, even if it annoyed.

  “Dr. Ackerman, I think I told you it’s too late. You need to back off,” he said.

  She stopped for a moment, wiping the sweat from her brow with her forearm. “Tell that kid right there that we’re too late,” she said, gesturing toward Solomon. “We just reunited him with his father. And if you had it your way, we would’ve just made him join the vast number of children on this continent who are fatherless for legitimate reasons.”

  Demby inhaled a long breath as he watched his doctor ignore his directives.

  “Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” Demby said.

  “No, you were crystal clear,” Ackerman said, refusing to look up as she continued working. “But I always respond to cries for help over threats. So you can either help me free some of these men or you can get out of my way.”

  “I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to.”

  Ackerman kept flinging debris away from the opening. “I haven’t forgotten anything. I wish I could say the same for you. You seem to have forgotten your humanity.”

  “That’s enough. I’m going to need you stop and instruct the rest of the people here to follow your lead.”

  “Good luck with that. The people who are here aren’t following me; they’re just being human. And I wish you’d follow their lead.”

  Demby grabbed her bicep and jerked her up until she was face to face with him.

  “Call them off now—or I’ll start detonating the charges we’ve set all around this mine.”

  She withdrew, shaking free from his grip the moment he relaxed. Briefly eyeing him, she decided to call his bluff. “Not even you could withstand the fallout from a move like that. You’d be dead before morning. Besides, you certainly wouldn’t risk killing the only doctor in four hundred kilometers who could save your life if something happened to you.”

  Demby watched her turn her back and walk away. One of his men took a few steps in her direction before Demby called him off. “Just leave her.” Then he shouted to Ackerman. “You have three hours—then,” he said, lowering his voice, “boom.”

  He watched as she frantically organized teams. One of the men with her caught Demby’s eye. He’d never seen the man.

  “Who is that?” Demby asked Ibrahim.

  Ibrahim watched the man hoist a large beam off a pile of rubble and shove it aside.

  “I think he’s some taxidermist from New Zealand just here for the hunting.”

  “So, he just comes to my mine and starts shoving boulders aside and freeing people?”

  “Maybe he met Dr. Ackerman and she asked him to come along.”

>   “I thought she said nobody was following her.”

  Demby watched in silence for several more minutes as Hawk continued to move debris in machine-like fashion and efficiency.

  “Does that guy ever get tired?” Demby asked. He hadn’t noticed Dr. Ackerman slip up behind him.

  “That’s not just a guy,” Ackerman snapped. “That’s a real man.”

  Demby shooed her away with the back of his hand and waited until she was working on another section of the mine thirty meters away.

  “Ibrahim, I want to meet that man,” Demby said. “When this is all over, bring him to me. We need to talk.”

  CHAPTER 21

  UNSATISFIED WITH HER INABILITY to find any shred of video evidence that Senator Blunt was even at the National Mall, she tried to think outside the norms of her CIA training. With access to virtually every camera available, if Blunt had been somewhere, he would’ve shown up in at least one of the cameras—unless all the cameras had been hacked. And if all the cameras had been hacked, there would be a digital footprint that she could use to trace back to its origin point.

  She pounded away on her computer for the better part of an hour as she tried to discover anything else about this video camera takeover. Hitting roadblock after roadblock, she realized she needed help. And she knew just who to call.

  Fifteen minutes later in a small coffee shop off Massachusetts Avenue, Alex sat across a table from Kyle Kuhlman, or K-Squared as he preferred to be called. He had other aliases for his more nefarious online work, the kind that Alex’s assignment required.

  “Th-this is going to cost you,” Kuhlman said as he looked at her handwritten note detailing the task.

  “Money won’t be an issue,” she said.

  “Who said anything about money? I just said it was going to cost you; I didn’t say what it was going to cost you,” Kuhlman said, speaking faster with each sentence. “You need to pay attention here, Agent Duncan. There are a lot of moving parts, many moving parts. And you’re going to need me to do this. Do you understand? You’re going to need me to do this. There’s hardly a hacker alive who could execute this for you, especially since it’s a special government request.” He finally took a breath. “So, it’s going to cost you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Kuhlman opened his laptop and typed furiously on the keyboard, ignoring her question.

  Alex wasn’t amused.

  “I see you’ve been working on your interpersonal skills, like looking people in the eye and paying attention to what they’re saying.” She slammed his laptop down.

  He clasped his hands together and slowly looked up at her. “I find such exercises a waste of time, especially when I can get what I want through other means.”

  Alex narrowed her eyes. “And what is it exactly that you want, this thing that’s going to cost me?”

  “I want a date with you.”

  Alex emphatically shook her head. “Absolutely not. I couldn’t imagine sitting in your apartment and playing video games all night with all your online friends. Not gonna do it.”

  “Hey now,” Kuhlman said. “Give me a little credit here. Not all my dates end up like that. We can do lots of fun things that don’t involve any computers or smart phones. Maybe go watch the Nationals play or catch a show downtown. Or maybe we can hang out at the National Archives, your favorite place to meet up with prospective suitors.”

  “Hey—what are you talking about? How do you know—?”

  “K-Squared knows all, sees all. When are you going to learn that?”

  Alex sighed. “Fine. I’ll go on one date with you.” She pointed at the instructions he’d set on the table. “Now, find out who’s behind this for me. I’ll give you two hours.”

  “Two hours? You’re loco, girl. I can’t crack this in two hours.”

  “What’s the matter, K-Squared?” she chided. “Have you lost your magic touch?”

  He glared at her. “Two hours. I’ll have everything you want and more.”

  Alex got up and exited the coffee shop. As she was turning onto the sidewalk, she bumped into a woman.

  “Sorry,” Alex mumbled, but the woman didn’t stop, pushing her way past Alex and scurrying down the sidewalk.

  Sometimes, I just love this town.

  When Alex arrived at the Metro station, she reached into her jacket pocket for her pass.

  Huh? What’s this?

  She pulled out her pass along with an envelope addressed to her: Agent Duncan.

  Alex waited to open it until she returned her office. Inside the envelope, she found a small photograph depicting Senator Blunt along with a handful of men and women, none of whom Alex recognized immediately. She flipped the picture over. Scrawled on the back was a short message, a pair of questions: “Who are these people, and what is Blunt doing with them?”

  They could’ve been any number of groups the Texas senator met with on a regular basis: lobbyists or donors from the banking industry, oil industry, cattle industry, National Rifle Association, or a farmers’ special interest group. But Alex figured whoever was asking her that question also knew she had access to facial recognition software and the most robust database in the world. So, she played along.

  Alex uploaded the photo to her computer and started the program. Of the eight figures in the photo, Blunt was identified first, almost immediately. Returning to her work, Alex decided to rely upon the software’s alert system to let her know when a match was found. More than an hour later, still no more matches.

  While she waited, she searched for footage of her outside the coffee shop. She needed to know whom the woman was who’d slipped this into her pocket when they collided. But that search, too, was to no avail. A large brimmed hat and oversized sunglasses ensured that the woman’s identity remained hidden.

  She checked the program again. Still nothing. After a couple of hours, the program’s search finally ended, unable to even get a partial match.

  No longer was the two-part question just written on the back of a photo.

  Now, both the question and the image were seared into her brain.

  CHAPTER 22

  HAWK CHECKED HIS KNIFE and tightened the ankle-mounted sheath on his right leg. As a Navy Seal, he’d learned that preparation was the key to survival in any situation. Although he wasn’t anticipating any conflict yet, he wasn’t naive. Spreading the word around that he could handle such transactions meant that piece of information would reach the right people, the same people who were also quite dangerous.

  After breakfast, he met up again outside with his guide, Ethan Jacobs. Visser leaned against Jacobs’s vehicle without his previous two companions.

  “Where’s Soto and Perryman?” Hawk asked, rubbing his back, which was still sore from excavating all the miners the night before. Despite his initial disappointment, he’d eventually reunited Solomon with his father and satisfied his urge to help others in tangible ways.

  Visser rubbed his eyes as if he were trying to wake up.

  “Rough night, Visser?” Hawked asked.

  A faint smile spread across Visser’s lips. “You could say that. It’s the same reason why Soto and Perryman aren’t here.”

  “And it’s a good thing, too,” Jacobs said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have room for another last-minute addition to our hunting party today.”

  “And who might that be?” Hawk inquired.

  “Musa Demby, who runs the Sefadu Holdings mine, and his friend, Ibrahim,” Jacobs replied.

  “I think I met him last night.”

  Jacob’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Where at?”

  “At his mine after it collapsed. We rescued over a dozen men.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll have plenty to talk about then.”

  The roar of a Range Rover engine climbing up the hill toward them could be heard as Jacobs finished talking.

  “Seems like our last two guests have arrived,” Jacobs said.

  Visser remained propped against Jacobs’ v
ehicle, silent through the conversation about their two new hunting partners. “I call shotgun.”

  Jacobs turned toward Visser. “I’m afraid Mr. Demby will be sitting in the front seat.”

  Hawk winked at Visser. “It’s okay. I’ll let you sit in the middle.”

  Demby’s vehicle skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust. He and Ibrahim climbed out.

  “Looks like it’s my lucky day,” Demby said with a wide grin as he walked toward Jacobs.

  “What do you mean?” Jacobs asked as he shook Demby’s hand and then gave him a hug.

  “I get to go hunting with a hero,” Demby said, gesturing toward Hawk. “Mr. Martin saved many lives last night at my mine. The least I can do is cover his costs for today.”

  Hawk shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Demby, but I appreciate the gesture. I’m just doing what any man would’ve done.”

  “I guess I’m not any man,” Demby deadpanned. He then broke into a smile. “But I don’t believe that for a second. You, on the other hand, are a very special man. What you did at my mine was amazing.”

  Hawk furrowed his brow. “I was just trying to help. But what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be there today? That was quite a traumatic event.”

  Demby laughed. “I gave the workers who’d been trapped a few days off. The rest of the employees had better double their production. A great reward will be given to them if they reach the goals I set for them.”

  “Such a generous man.”

  Demby eyed Hawk. “That’s not something people say about me very often, though I’m quite certain that your words belie the meaning behind your comment.”

  Hawk held out both hands and shrugged. “I’m a straight shooter, Mr. Demby. Take my comments at face value. I never meant anything underhanded by that.”

  “Very well then,” Demby said before he turned toward Hawk. “Shall we go shoot an elephant today?”

  ***

  DESPITE JACOBS’S DEFT SKILLS as a guide, he couldn’t make Africa’s most sought after trophy animals appear out of thin air. He went to all of his go-to locations and waited—but nothing. They even ventured into several areas that were ill advised due to the recent Ebola outbreak and still came up empty.