The Warrior (Warriors Series Book 1) Read online

  ‘Holt and I were in ’Stan together.’ Afghanistan, ’Stan to those who’d served there. ‘Many years and many bodies back. He was our commander. We were deployed at FOB Sharana. We lost so many men there. Not a day passed when we didn’t have a rocket attack, an IED explosion, snipers…everything that was devised to kill American soldiers was deployed there.

  ‘This was in the days when fighting with the Taliban was at its peak and parlaying with the locals wasn’t done. We spent the days patrolling and the nights afraid to sleep. Over a period of time, a strange bond developed between him and me. I did a lot of scouting, and he relied on my intel. He had excellent tactical skills, lacked an emotional core, but I knew – we all knew – if anyone could get most of us out of Sharana alive, it was him.

  ‘We didn’t like each other, but he respected my abilities, and I respected his.

  ‘Very often he and I patrolled together, and it was in the second year that we started patrolling a small village far from our base. There was nothing there; to call it a village was being generous. Maybe not more than thirty people lived there, goat herders and their women and children in a few huts.

  ‘Holt used to disappear into that village and asked me to keep guard and patrol outside it. I didn’t give much thought to this, since I figured he was just being friendly with the locals and getting information.

  ‘During the day, the men used to take their goats away for grazing, leaving the women and children behind. One day it took him too long to recon, so I went into the village to look for him. Everything seemed normal, some women cooking, a few kids playing around. Those huts were basic, just mud walls, a roof and a hole for a door and another hole for a window.

  ‘Holt emerged from the last hut as I was approaching it, and blew his stack when he spotted me. He screamed at me for leaving my patrol and putting us at risk. I was only half listening, because through the hole in the hut I could see a woman getting dressed. I realized what Holt had been up to.

  ‘Back at the unit I talked with the others. It turned out they knew. But they suspected he was raping the women. All the women in that village.’

  Kelly takes a long pull of his drink. His thousand-yard stare looks out at the bar but sees the hills and brush of Sharana.

  ‘Those were different days. The political climate was different. They were the enemy, and we had to kill them. No one said a word to Holt because he was our commander.

  ‘A month later we had a sniper attack. Sumbitch took out three of our men. Holt went into a rage. He increased the patrols, triangulated the sniper’s location and tried to track him. But it’s a huge country, and those sumbitches just become invisible.

  ‘In the evening, Holt went to the village, rounded up two women and shot them. Just like that. Not a word said, nothing. Grabbed them by the arm, took them to a wall, and shot them. And as if that wasn’t enough, he shot a kid, maybe five, six years old. Bam, bam, bam. Over.

  ‘He then turned his gun on some of the men approaching him; they fell back. And he trained his gun on me.

  ‘This all happened in less than a minute. My brain was still processing it all when I see this gun barrel on me.

  ‘He finally lowered it and walked away. Not a word was said at camp the next few days. A rumor spread that the village was sheltering that sniper and they had to be taught a lesson.

  ‘We were raw guys, eighteen, nineteen years old. Green to the gills and shit scared. We didn’t have the balls to complain to the higher-ups about Holt. I left ’Stan a few months later. I heard Holt had moved around a bit, but slowly lost track of him. Guilt ate away at me the initial few years, and then I started rationalizing the events, and then time did its thing.

  ‘To this day, I have no idea how he thought, what motivated him. He was an unpredictable sumbitch.’ He wags his finger in Zeb’s face. ‘Remember that. Unpredictable. That’s what makes him dangerous. Assuming you’re hunting him.’

  Sounds of the bar fill the silence.

  ‘I don’t know much about him. He wasn’t very open about himself. I know he had a mother somewhere in Jersey, and he mentioned her more than a couple of times. That’s all that I can give you. I don’t know if this helps you, but it helps me.’

  ‘Are you sure about the mother?’ asks Zeb.

  ‘Hell, this was some years back, and my memory isn’t what it was. But yes, he did mention a mother in Jersey.’

  Zeb doesn’t remember any kin mentioned in Holt’s dossier. This could be something Broker and he could use.

  ‘Do me a favor,’ he tells Kelly, ‘spread the word that I’m hunting Holt.’

  Kelly smiles grimly and nods.

  He settles the tab and watches Kelly amble away. ’Stan had a lot to answer for.

  He goes back to his dossiers when he is back at his apartment. Nope. No mother listed for Holt. No kin at all. He calls Broker and briefs him on the meeting. Broker says Holt doesn’t have any siblings, not on record anyway, and his father passed away a while back. That’s in the dossier. So his mother is the only surviving kin.

  Broker says he’ll get a list of Holts living in New Jersey who are fifty years old and above, since that will be approximately the age range for Holt’s mother . Broker has access to Social Security and DMV databases. Zeb doesn’t know if he hacks into them or has access to them through his network.

  Broker calls back in the evening with two hundred names and addresses fitting the approximate age profile for Holt’s mother in New Jersey.

  The next day Zeb starts calling each of those addresses. He is calling on behalf of the Department of Defense to inform them of increased pension benefits to the next of kin of veterans. That’s his cover. It never hurts to appeal to greed.

  After three hours of calling, he is just two-thirds down the list. So far none of the Holts are the one he’s looking for. Several of those Holts have kin in the armed forces, but none of them are Carsten Holt or anyone resembling him.

  He takes a break, strips down to loose, flowing trousers, and does his deep-breathing exercises. His living room is spacious, and its wooden flooring and high roof make it a good dojo-at-home.

  Once he completes his breathing exercises, he starts off with simple Kalaripayattu moves, progressing to more complex; his body seamlessly blends motion and stillness. Kalaripayattu is one of the oldest martial arts in the world and has its roots in the tiny state of Kerala in India. Zeb had been lucky to be taken under the wing of a seventy-year-old gurukkal, a teacher.

  Zeb showers after his training and gets back to his calling. It’s dusk by the time he has gone through all the names. He has had to go back and call a few of the names again since he didn’t get a person the first time he called. There are still about thirty names for whom he left voice mails.

  He opens a can of soup, warms it up, and eats it with garlic bread as he watches the city prepare itself for another night.

  He checks his phone later and finds a message from Cassandra. Connor is back from Africa and wants to meet with him. So does Rory.

  The next day, Zeb calls the remaining addresses, reaches most of them, has no luck with them, and leaves a voice mail for the remaining.

  He calls Broker to ask him if he has any update on Hardinger. Broker tells him he’s putting together a dossier and should be ready in a few days.

  Zeb heads out to Cassandra’s, and when he nears her mid-rise, he spots them. One of them is across the street reading a newspaper and seemingly casual but observing the entrance. The other has taken a leaf from Zeb’s book; he is slumped in the driver’s seat in a yellow cab, off-duty sign on, parked just short of the building. He’s wearing shades and holding a book in front of him, but Zeb can see that he’s also observing the entrance.

  They haven’t spotted him, if he is the one they are watching for. Zeb gets a cappuccino from a café and watches them. The one on the street is checking out anyone approaching the mid-rise, and the one in the cab is watching the forecourt of the mid-rise. They are wearing throat microph
ones and tiny colorless earpieces. The one on the street occasionally looks at the cabbie as they speak.

  After nearly an hour of study, Zeb decides to force their hands. He crosses the street in plain view of both and approaches the entrance of the building from the front of the cab. Out of the corner of his eye he can see cabbie tightening up and then consciously relaxing. Zeb goes up to the entrance of the mid-rise, reverses in one fluid motion, yanks open the passenger door of the cab, leans in, and strikes a pressure point behind the cabbie’s ear. The cabbie collapses against the wheel, out of service.

  The watcher across the street stares in disbelief. This is not in the script. This was supposed to be a routine surveillance operation to watch out for the mark and report in when he turned up. He and his colleague are experienced agents and have taken down their share of badasses before, but the utter ease with which the mark has taken out his colleague shocks him. He hasn’t seen anyone move so fast, changing from casual to lethal in a second. He calls his office and briefs them and is asked to check on his colleague but otherwise stay put, continue keeping a watch till others arrive.

  He crosses the street to the cab and peers in. His colleague is unconscious but seems to be unharmed in any other way. He stands undecided for a moment, looking around the entrance to the building and around the street. He doesn’t see the mark anywhere and thinks he has gone inside the building. He has lost sight of him.

  Zeb has ducked down behind a few cars parked behind the cab, run back and crossed the street to the other side. He’s now sitting in the same café in his former position. He has not made any efforts to hide himself and is in plain sight from the other side of the street. He knows what will happen now. What he doesn’t know is what happens next once the cavalry show up.

  They arrive half an hour later in a dark Lincoln and park behind the cab. By then, the cabbie has recovered and is chatting with the other watcher, no sign of any injury. A tall man steps out of the Lincoln’s passenger seat, followed by the driver, and the four of them have a meeting. The tall man, the leader, looks at the building and up and down the street as the watchers speak. He issues instructions as he continues to scan the area and breaks off mid-speech when he spots Zeb across the street.

  Zeb gives them a little wave and holds up his cappuccino.

  There is a flurry of frantic discussion among the four of them, and then they head across the street. Zeb smiles at the way they spread themselves out as they near him.

  ‘Have coffee, gentlemen, and rest your legs. I got tired just watching you.’ Zeb relaxes, sprawling in his chair.

  ‘FBI. Special Agent in Charge Isakson,’ the tall man introduces himself with a clipped, controlled voice, but Zeb can detect the anger beneath the tone. ‘I can have you arrested for assaulting a federal agent.’

  ‘Me? Who did I assault? I went to the assistance of your agent, who seemed to be suffering from a nervous breakdown. I didn’t touch him. As soon as I entered his cab, he fainted. I checked that he was okay and exited the cab. That’s assault now, according to the FBI?’

  Pressure-point unconsciousness sometimes plays havoc with short-term memory, and Zeb is banking that the driver doesn’t remember much of what went on in the cab.

  Isakson looks at his agent, who shrugs and looks embarrassed.

  ‘Why are you guys watching for me?’ Zeb asks.

  ‘We wanted to talk to you in private, but since you’ve forced this,’ Isakson says, ‘we want you to back off your investigation. We want you to keep your distance from Holt. We want your sidekick, Broker, to not come sniffing around our systems for Holt’s details. You have no idea what you’re getting involved with, the various connecting threads, so back off.

  ‘Remember, under the Patriot Act we have almost unlimited powers. Suspects have been known to disappear indefinitely under this Act. And if you think your sister’s connections will help you…she herself might come under the scrutiny of the Act,’ continues Isakson, on not receiving any response from Zeb.

  Zeb doesn’t say a single word, nor move a muscle, yet Isakson feels the cold menace hitting him at the mention of his sister. He uneasily realizes why his colleagues told him not to go extreme on Zeb. He can sense his team shifting, spreading out, and dimly knows that Zeb could take them all out in a few seconds without breaking a sweat.

  Isakson’s hand automatically moves toward the lapel of his jacket, toward his shoulder holster. His hand stops when Zeb straightens and wordlessly points towards the Lincoln.

  ‘Back off,’ Isakson repeats and strides away, followed by his colleagues. He discreetly wipes his brow as he approaches the Lincoln.

  Zeb watches them drive away. The warning is meaningless, and he has no intention of paying heed to it. Ever since leaving the Special Forces, he has done what he feels is right and has gone through people who opposed him.

  People like Isakson.

  Chapter 6

  Rory is at Cassandra’s apartment doing his homework when Zeb arrives. Rory bumps fists with him in passing and tells him, ‘You’re coming to dinner at our house. Aunt Cassie is, and so is Anne.’

  ‘Can I say no?’

  ‘Nope.’ Rory grins.

  Dinner is the usual cozy affair with Lauren and Anne bustling about serving great food. Anne is accompanied by her stockbroker boyfriend this time, a likeable guy exudes good humor.

  Rory tells them about how Zeb’s pitching practice has helped him get into his class’s baseball team.

  ‘All right, squirt,’ says Connor when Rory has finished, ‘it’s time for the adults to talk now.’

  Rory makes a face but goes to his room to play on his Xbox.

  ‘I got back from the Congo a few days ago,’ says Connor without preamble, ‘and I think it’s fair to say that over there feels like a different planet.

  ‘I visited ten mines in the east and southeast, many of them gold and diamond mines. The treatment of women and children is shocking. Child labor is the norm; women are raped regularly by the mining authorities and militia – and this is just in the Western-owned mines. Alchemy, Hardinger’s family company, owns three mines in the DRC, and I managed to visit all three of them and spoke extensively to the miners, the security guards, officers…all levels in the hierarchy.

  ‘I expected the workers to be treated differently there; I am not naïve and have been around the world, to the sweatshops of Asia, South America, and the factories in China. But in the Congo, the workers are as good as slaves. I saw miners being whipped, children being beaten, and women being stripped of their clothes. These incidents happened every day at all the mines I visited.’

  ‘How come you were able to wander freely in the mines and witness this?’ Anne’s boyfriend asks.

  ‘I had a very expensive cover story prepared for me by the paper. I went in as a buyer of ore and had the word put out that I wasn’t interested in how the mines were run. I had good backup, proof of funds, references, even my own security. So moving around the mines and seeing the operations openly wasn’t an issue.’

  He laughs. ‘I had state-of-the-art stuff for recording – pen cameras that took stills and video in high resolution, button-hole recorders, all those gizmos – so I could record everything. In the evenings I used to mingle with the workers and talk to them as if I was looking to improve their conditions, and they spoke openly about their treatment. I used that same ploy with the employees of the mines, security, everybody.

  ‘Hardinger’s mines were run no differently from the other mines I visited. Child labor in all the mines, exploitation of women, and rampant brutality on display. In fact, some of the miners said that the mine near Kivu was hijacked by Alchemy’s security company and thereafter claimed as Alchemy’s own mine.’

  He leans forward, his eyes glittering. ‘I picked up rumors that there’s an email trail between Hardinger and his mining officers about the mine hijacking and that he is aware of child labor. Imagine that. A high-profile senator, a fund-raiser for the President’s party, who i
s complicit in the use of child labor, piracy of mines, and might have even sanctioned them. If I can get a paper trail linking him to those activities, it will be the end of the good Senator.’

  Zeb is curious. ‘Why is Hardinger attracting all your attention? Surely all mines in the Congo, in fact, all mines in Africa, must be indulging in these activities. Why aren’t you going after all of them?’

  ‘A lot of companies are Canadian-owned. I’ll write about all Western-owned mines, but exposing Alchemy will have more impact, and that will, in turn, lead to more scrutiny of all the mines.

  ‘And I know you’re probably thinking that I’m going after Hardinger for the glory. There is that, I won’t deny it. However, if the threats I’ve received from Hardinger’s camp are any proof, then there is a smoking gun out there, and I aim to find it.

  ‘My initial series of articles will be on the state of mining in Africa, and I will send the exposé with the focus on Alchemy and Hardinger. That should give me enough time to get the paper trail.’

  ‘How serious are these threats?’ asks Anne.

  Connor shrugs. ‘You get this in my profession, especially if you’re going after someone high profile. There haven’t been any direct threats. There never are. Just veiled references from people in his camp – saying my life will be easier if I focus on other issues…that these stories impact family too.

  ‘There were a few anonymous calls asking me to drop my current story.’

  Lauren is shocked. ‘You never told me about those calls.’

  ‘What’s there to tell? They were anonymous calls. I used to get those when we were in Kentucky, remember?’

  ‘But you never wrote about anyone so powerful.’

  Connor snorts. ‘This is my profession. I can’t and won’t turn tail at the first threat.’

  ‘So, Major, what have you been up to since our last meeting?’ Anne asks, changing the subject.

  ‘Stopped three muggings, advised the Mayor on his security, and helped Matt Damon on some stunts for his movie,’ replies Zeb.