The Reluctant Warrior (Warriors Series Book 2) Page 5

  Werner, his artificial intelligence engine, brought all these together and came up with various hypotheses. His analysts then took the hypotheses and correlated those with the humint and created the finished product – the most sought-after intel that had made Broker the best known intelligence trader.

  The Pentagon and the National Security Agency had tried to buy Werner several times. Broker wasn’t selling.

  After a nap, Broker called a couple of numbers late in the morning.

  ‘This had better be good,’ growled a voice from the first number he called. Bear – six foot five and as wide as a barnyard door, all of it hard muscle, and sporting a thick beard, which was why he was called that – was never a morning person when he was in between assignments. Bear and his partner, Chloe, specialized in close body protection. Amongst other things.

  ‘And a good morning to you too.’ Broker smiled.

  ‘Hell, man, you know me by now.’ Bear yawned hugely, looking out at the sun bathing Los Angeles. ‘How’s the chatter business?’

  ‘Still pays my bills. What are you guys up to now? Chloe around?’

  ‘She’s gone for her 10K run. You know how she is with her running and walking. I’ve told her many times that the Good Lord let man invent wheels for a reason.’

  Broker chuckled. Bear was as fit as any top operative, but never saw the point in not taking it easy when he could. Chloe, a physical contrast to Bear with her petite, dark-haired frame, ran a 10K on days she took it easy.

  Afghanistan was where they had met, the heat and the mountains providing a backdrop to their wordless romance.

  Born an army brat, Chloe Sundstrom had moved from base to base all over the world, and had seen her father retire as an E-8 in the 101st Airborne. A single child, she was treated as an adult by her parents at a very early age, and Master Sergeant Sundstrom’s ‘No sweat, no cake’ motto in life, became hers too.

  Joining the army was a natural choice for her, and determined to see active duty, she was also hell-bent on going farther than her dad. That determination drove her through college ROTC with a scholarship, through Airborne School at Fort Benning, and the 82nd Airborne got a newly minted Second Lieutenant.

  Operation Allied Force in Kosovo was Chloe’s first major deployment, when the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was sent to the Albanian Kosovan border to support NATO’s bombing of the Serbian forces in the Former Yugoslav Republic.

  The battalion later became the first ground force to go in the Balkans. Army women weren’t supposed to be deployed in combat roles… in reality they got in the thick of action just as male soldiers did; it just wasn’t public knowledge. Chloe was a battle-hardened veteran by the time the 82nd’s soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom. Afghanistan was a country ravaged by decades of war, a land where tribes frequently fought each other, a land where hope struggled to survive.

  It was also a land of great beauty, dotted with villages where time moved much slower. Chloe fell in love with the towering stillness of the Hindu Kush Mountains first, and the rest of the land won her over.

  It was the country where she fell in love.

  The Special Operations teams from the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) were stationed in the same base as hers, and it was hard to miss Sergeant Bozo (Bear) Parvizi.

  The Special Forces teams tended to keep to themselves and carried an aura around them. Bear didn’t need auras. With his height and presence, Bear just was. He had noticed Chloe, her liquid ease in the heat of Afghanistan, her cool glances when their gazes met, a magnet in the mess hall.

  They spent their entire time in that hot spot without uttering a word to each other, but had a heightened awareness when the other was in proximity. Chloe had tracked Bear down when they both left the army – it wasn’t difficult, since Bear was searching for her too – and the mute romance found its voice.

  Bear was the middle child in a family of five and had to compete harder for attention from his parents than his other siblings. In a family that was loud and raucous, Bear was different. He was an introvert and had no interest in joining the family business in Saint Paul. The family ran a wildly successful take-away business, the only one in the city that combined Persian and Italian cuisine. Bear’s dad was of Persian origin; his mother of Italian descent.

  While his brothers manned the counter, took orders, helped in the kitchen, or drove through the town, delivering, Bear dreamt of wider spaces, of places where he was accepted for who he was.

  A bright student, he crushed high school, and just as his parents harbored ambitions of him being a doctor or a lawyer, he broke the news to them that he’d joined University of Minnesota’s ROTC course.

  They spent months bitterly arguing with him, trying to get him to consider other career choices, but Bear was adamant.

  Bear’s relationship with his family never recovered, and at his annual commissioning ceremony, he was the only graduate who had no family attending. Bear swallowed his disappointment, squared his shoulders, and 2nd Lieutenant Bozo Parvizi made the army his family.

  ‘And no, we aren’t doing anything. A few jobs have come up but weren’t interesting enough. You got something for us?’ Bear asked with a hopeful note in his voice.

  ‘Someone has reached out to me. Might be nothing, might be something. Stay loose.’ Broker gave him some more details and then hung up.

  The second number that Broker called rang for a long time before being picked up.

  ‘What?’ barked a voice.

  Broker looked at his phone for a moment. Phone manners. He blamed the Internet for their death.

  ‘That cost me a five-pounder, so get on with it,’ growled the voice without waiting for Broker’s acknowledgement.

  ‘Where are you guys?’ Broker finally got a word in.

  ‘Broker? Hell, why didn’t you say so. Your number didn’t show.’ The voice lightened.

  Broker rolled his eyes. Before he could answer, he heard another voice in the background shouting.

  ‘Rog, what the fuck are you doing there? You can talk to your girlfriend all day later. Come over here and help me,’ said the voice irritatedly.

  ‘It’s Broker,’ Roger shouted back.

  There was a pause, and then the voice shouted back, ‘Does he have work for us?’

  ‘Bwana asks if you have work for us,’ Roger dutifully reported back to Broker.

  Broker laughed. ‘I heard. Not yet but maybe soon. Where are you guys?’

  Roger ignored him and called out, ‘Nope, he says maybe soon.’

  ‘Well, then, hang up and get over here.’ Bwana’s voice rose again.

  ‘Hell, you’re doing fine without me. Let me talk to Broker,’ Roger replied back.

  ‘Why am I not surprised? The black guy ends up on the shit detail always,’ grumbled Bwana, his voice fading away as he got back to whatever he was doing.

  ‘We’re down south, near the Mexican border, our side of it.’ Roger got back to Broker. ‘We were in Mexico a few weeks back, on a job for their government, and since that finished, we’ve been on a fishing holiday, drifting our way upwards. How’re you doing, and where are Bear and Chloe?’

  ‘I’m good, and they’re in L.A. They too are between assignments. Listen, do you have anything lined up?’

  ‘Nope. You know how we hate hard work! We might start looking out for some work once we reach the Midwest, but for now, we’re good.’

  ‘Fab. I might have something for you shortly. There is something bubbling away, and it might come to a boil soon.’

  Roger turned serious. ‘Broker, you just have to say the word and we’ll drop whatever we’re doing and turn up. Shooting, if necessary.’

  ‘Yup, I know. Stay cool,’ Broker replied and hung up.

  Broker leant back in his chair in satisfaction. He had his team.

  Clare had set up the Agency to take on the deepest black assignments that no other intelligence or defense agency would undertake. T
aking down terrorist cells, tracking down stolen nuclear warheads, infiltrating intelligence agencies of rogue nations, rescuing high-value hostages, and sanctioned assassinations… the assignments were varied and were all deniable.

  To maintain deniability and anonymity, she wanted an elite team who was comfortable with living and working in the shadows. She had come across Zebadiah Carter because she knew his sister, Cassandra, who had been her roomie at Bryn Mawr. She’d been intrigued when Cass had casually mentioned her brother as being some kind of Special Ops superman, and when she’d read his file – which only a handful of people had access to – she’d been impressed.

  Zeb Carter had quit the Special Forces and was a private military contractor. A mercenary for those who didn’t believe in political correctness.

  Zeb was a merc with a difference. He took on only those assignments that fit his tight moral code, and one of those codes was nothing against the national interest. The other was no war on women and children.

  She had sounded him out about working with her, and it was Zeb who’d suggested that they create a team of elite agents who were all mercenaries, but whose first allegiance was to the Agency. She had left Zeb to build the team, knowing that he would not only handpick the best from the best, but also those who shared his moral code.

  Zeb came back to her with the profiles of Broker, Bear, Chloe, Bwana and Roger – all of them ex- Special Forces and in Broker’s case, ex-Ranger – and the Agency was in business. Zeb was their leader, and Broker his right-hand man. She had once laughingly referred to them as her Warriors.

  The name stuck.

  Broker picked up the tail easily the next day. They were a two-man tag team who alternated every couple of blocks as Broker strolled down Fifth Avenue toward Lower Manhattan. They were good, but they stayed on him a bit too long before alternating. Broker’s radar pinged in the second block, and he casually slipped on a pair of shades.

  These weren’t ordinary shades.

  Broker had taken a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator shades and had outfitted them with the tiniest pinhole cameras looking rearward. The cameras projected tiny images on the inner lenses, images that the eyes could read easily. The cameras projected in either video or still mode by flicking a tiny switch on the hinge of the shades.

  Broker made the operatives easily once he reached East Thirty-Fifth Street. He ambled into a café and nursed his caffeine fix as he thought. They were well dressed, but not expensively dressed so not from a hotshot security company and neither were they from rent-a-cop. He went through the assignments on his plate currently, and whilst all of them carried a significant risk, he didn’t think any of those assignments had led to these tails. They could be onto him because someone was interested in knowing why he’d met the National Security Advisor, but Broker was reasonably sure who these tails were and why they were following him.

  He walked out of the café and looked in the direction of the tails. One of them was reading a newspaper, or pretending to read, in front of a salon, and the other wasn’t visible. Broker was sure he was hanging well back, maybe as far back as Thirty-Eighth Street, the two in radio communication constantly. Broker went back into the café, picked up his half-finished drink, and walked in the direction of the tail. He approached the tail and made eye contact and held it till the tail looked away. Broker noticed the barely discernible tensing in his body. The tail pulled the newspaper closer to his face and pretended to read. Broker stopped about ten feet away, leaned against a lamppost, and sipped his drink, keeping his eye on the tail.

  He knew what would happen next, and sure enough, the tail half turned away from him, and Broker saw his lips move. Calling out to his counterpart and control, no doubt.

  The black Suburban came by twenty minutes later. It rolled up a few feet from Broker, and a figure stepped out, followed by a couple of others behind him from the rear.

  Broker knew him well.

  Deputy Director of the FBI, Isakson.

  Chapter 9

  The two tails were FBI agents put on him by Isakson, Broker guessed. He kept quiet and let Isakson approach him.

  ‘We meet again, Broker,’ Isakson greeted him.

  ‘The General said you would call, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t. When nothing came from you in the last couple of days, I had to act, and hence these two.’ He indicated the two agents.

  ‘You realize they were tailing you noticeably so that you could spot them,’ Isakson continued after a slight pause when Broker still kept silent.

  ‘What do you want?’ Broker asked him finally after Isakson had run out of what passed for small talk, for him.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘We have talked. All of five seconds. Five seconds too much. We’re done now.’

  ‘Broker, we need your help. I wouldn’t have reached out via the National Security Advisor if it wasn’t important.’

  ‘Say your piece.’

  ‘Not here. Let’s go to Federal Plaza.’

  Broker thought about it for a moment and gave a short nod. He got into the second row of seats, and the agent sitting there moved to the rear, joining the other two. It was a silent ride back, and Broker made no attempt to break the uncomfortable silence.

  It was Isakson who had requested this; it was he who had to make all the moves.

  Broker turned down Isakson’s offer of a coffee when they reached Federal Plaza and sat silently in an expansive office bearing Isakson’s full title on the door, waiting for Isakson to get to it. Isakson took his time, helping himself to a drink from an expensive-looking coffee maker. My tax dollars at work, Broker thought silently.

  ‘How have you been?’ Isakson asked him politely when he had seated himself.

  Broker waved him away impatiently, but still didn’t say anything.

  ‘I know what you think of me, and if I was in your shoes, I’d probably think the same. But I couldn’t have acted any differently in those circumstances,’ Isakson said, referring to the hostage situation in which Zeb was killed.

  Broker took a deep breath and interrupted Isakson. ‘Let’s not go there. You have fifteen minutes to tell me what you want to tell me. You’d better make best use of those fifteen minutes.’

  If Isakson had kept Zeb and Broker in the loop and worked with them, as Holt was sucking up to the FBI, the rescue attempt would have turned out differently; Zeb would still be alive. But Isakson did everything by the book and didn’t see life any other way.

  A dull flush spread across Isakson’s face, but he held his temper.

  ‘We suspect a traitor in the FBI, and we need your help in finding him or her,’ he said bluntly.

  Broker leant back in his seat and allowed it to sink in. ‘And why do you think you have one?’

  Isakson laughed humorlessly. ‘Broker, we’re not as incompetent as you make us out to be. We can connect the dots when operations get sabotaged, or when a tightly controlled takedown returns empty-handed because the assholes got wind of it.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Let me start at the beginning.

  ‘The crime scene in New York has changed for the better over the last couple of decades. As you might well know, it peaked in the early nineties and then has been reducing each year. Not many people believe that crime is so low and seek various explanations when they see the statistics. The simple reason is better policing, better procedures and systems, such as the adoption of CompStat – a management process for improved policing – have led to crime reducing over the years.’

  He paused to stand up and walk around in his office. Broker noticed it was bare. No family photographs, no awards, no photos with important people, no posters, no slogans, nothing. There was just one creased poster on a wall – Sherpa Tenzing Norqay atop Mount Everest, the date printed at the bottom: twenty-ninth of May in nineteen fifty-three.

  ‘Organized crime,’ continued Isakson, ‘also declined. There were many Mafia prosecutions in the late nineties. The clashes between the Bloods and the Latin Kings dimin
ished. Everything was good. And then, five years back, a new gang turned up.

  ‘The thing with gangs is that most of them are based on some ethnic affiliation or some shared story. Bloods in New York had their origins on Rikers Island. Latin Kings have mostly Hispanic members.

  ‘This new gang has no ethnic affiliation. They have black members, white, Hispanic, East European, Asian… The shared story they have in common is military service. Many of their members have served in the US armed forces, South American forces, or NATO forces. Many are mercenaries who have seen action in Africa or Europe or the Middle East… obviously these guys are not your Pentagon four-star material. They are the dregs, the scum, court-martialed bastards. Several of them are deserters, some discharged from their forces under a cloud.’

  ‘You’re talking about 5Clubs, aren’t you?’

  Isakson nodded grimly and leaned against the window overlooking the street below, thick glass separating sound and silence.

  ‘Their service experience gives them an advantage over every other New York gang. Organization and discipline. These guys just cut through the other gangs like a warm knife through butter and took over a sizeable part of the city in just five years. Oh, and they’re ruthless too. One Latin Kings’ chapter had its entire management wiped out one evening… their heads were adorning the gate of one of their offices.

  ‘Small businesses are acquired overnight. If a garage owner defies them, his wife and daughter are raped in front of him. And then shot. The hapless owner is left alive. As you can imagine, they’re in every conceivable illegal trade. Drugs, girls, gambling, protection, human trafficking… you name it, this gang owns a significant piece of it.

  ‘And that’s not all. Their genius lies in their invisibility. When you mention gang, Joe New Yorker immediately thinks of the Mafia or Latin Kings or Bloods… this gang has managed to stay out of the mainstream consciousness, yet they are the single, most organized, successful gang in the city today. They have managed to stay invisible by doing their dirty business most professionally. Even the ruthlessness hasn’t captured the public because they relied on us – the FBI, the NYPD – to hush up the gory details. And the fuckers were right about that. Why would we want to make public that organized crime, on a downward trend for so many years, has shot up again?’