Swords Of Exodus Part 29

It all came back to that girl and her secrets again. "Don't sell yourself short. That was a bad op from the very beginning, but you accomplished your objective in the face of impossible odds. By rights, none of us should've gotten out of that h.e.l.lhole alive."

"By rights, I shouldn't have been in charge there in the first place," Ling said. "But there was no choice. My team was in Mexico and there simply wasn't anyone else available. We lacked the means to get to her on our own."

"So you hired us. Decker was an a.s.s. How were you able to convince my old boss to go along with it?" Adrian Decker had been the operations manager and CEO of Vanguard Strategic Solutions International. After the fiasco in Mexico, the UN had wanted to put him on trial at the Hague for war crimes. He got out of it, though. Decker always had a way out.

Ling raised her eyebrows. "You don't know? Michael, Adrian Decker had done work for Exodus before. Several times. We don't like to outsource work but we do build working relationships with outsiders. He was certainly receptive to our propositions."

"He was always receptive to money."

"Indeed, but he was discreet and reliable, and his personnel were the best that could be hired for any price. In any case," Ling said, "You know the rest. You were there. It all went to h.e.l.l. I lost good men."

"So did we."

Ling nodded. "After that, I was given missions that weren't direct action. Support missions of different sorts. Things where a large strike team was not required. Personnel rotated in and out of my sword as necessary. Only Shen and Antoine stayed with me, by their own choice."

"Did Exodus punish you for Mexico? Like that was your fault! You did everything humanly possible, and don't you ever let any a.s.shole that wasn't there tell you any different."

"That's very sweet of you, Michael, but it wasn't like that. My confidence had been shaken. I had been shaken, to the core. I thought of leaving the order, but Antoine talked me out of it. So I was a.s.signed to what you might call lower stress operations until they . . . and I . . . felt I was ready. The mission to retrieve you was my first serious combat operation since Cancun."

"Well, you pulled it off like a boss," I said encouragingly. "I'm here, ain't I?"

Ling actually laughed. I was glad to make her smile. "As you say. To be honest, I find I do better at the kinds of missions I've been doing. Espionage and intelligence seem to suit me better than door-kicking, as you might put it."

"There were a lot of times, over the years when I wanted to quit," I said. "Vanguard, I mean. After every big deployment I'd swear to myself that I was done, that I was going to go back to the States and get a real job and become a respectable citizen. See how well that worked out for me. I ended up a security guard in Las Vegas. I almost left, though. A few years back I managed to get my pilot's license, and I had an in to transfer to the aviation support division of Vanguard. Flight pay was about the same as the special duty pay I got on the Switchblade teams and there was a whole lot less death."

"Why didn't you transfer, then, and become a pilot?"

I thought for a moment. "Tailor. Skunky. My teammates. Ramirez, my team leader. He was a good guy. Despite how terrible the work was sometimes, I loved working for him. I didn't want to leave my team. Like you said, they were my family. And also . . ." I trailed off for a moment, looking up into the cloudy sky.

"I don't know how else to live," I said. "This sort of thing is familiar. Comfortable, even, in some crazy way. Standing over this burn barrel in the a.s.s-end of Siberia feels like it makes more sense for me than working in a cubicle somewhere."

Ling put a hand on my arm. "Is that why you came here with me?" She had a worried look on her face. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pressured you . . ."

I didn't let her finish apologizing. "No, no, it's not like that. This feels right. I have my misgivings, but . . . I don't know. Ariel said this is where I'm supposed to be. I don't believe in fate, but I really feel like I'm supposed to be here. This sort of thing is what I was born to do. And I might actually get to do some good this time. A lot of the s.h.i.t we used to do was morally ambiguous, at best. I've done things I'm not proud of. It sounds stupid, but maybe I can make up for it here. Use my skills to help people for once."

"It's why I stay on, you know," Ling said. "What we do is ugly business, but it's necessary. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm glad to see that you've stopped running from who you are. I saw this in you in Mexico. And when I saw you risk your life to protect Ariel, I knew that you were also a good man. Don't doubt yourself anymore, Michael."

Ling very subtly moved a little closer to me. I didn't say anything else, not wanting to ruin a perfect, quiet moment of tranquility before the storm.

Chapter 18: Lotus Blossom.

LORENZO.

2.7 kilometers from Sala Jihan's compound March 25th "Spring . . . my a.s.s," I muttered through chattering teeth.

It was d.a.m.n cold. Mind-numbing, break-your-fingers-ff, shatter-your-teeth, f.u.c.king-kill-you-dead cold. There was no wind, and the night sky was brilliantly clear, displaying unbelievable billions of stars, but somehow the stillness and clarity made it even colder. All I wanted to do was huddle in my parka and pray to get on with this.

"I got here in January," Phillips replied, with that typical, abnormally-high morale, Exodus can-do att.i.tude. "This is nothing."

"Yeah. Remember when we had that big storm last month? Dude. Now that was cold," Roland radded. "We were way up the mountain trying to survey the compound with telescopes and-"

"And there was like this . . . ice tornado. It was awesome." Phillips made a twirling motion with his hands.

"Well, until Rasheed froze his toe off."

"Yeah, broke it right off."

Both of the young Americans laughed. Even though it was dark inside the ice cave, my eyes were adjusted well enough to see Anders regarding the two like they were dimwits. Shen was squatting at the cave mouth, rubbing his hands together and occasionally blowing on them to keep the circulation up, as enigmatic as ever. He had his gloves off so that he could better operate the thermal camera. Luckily it was plastic, so the odds of him freezing his skin to the machine were relatively low.

Shen had only recently arrived. His usual partner, Antoine, was not exactly built for stealth, and would be on one of the choppers. Shen hadn't fully acclimatized to the alt.i.tude yet, but he was in such good shape that it didn't seem to affect him nearly as bad as it had hit me when I had first gotten here.

The five of us were inside a rock indentation, surrounded by fat, shiny icicles. There was a faint touch of wood smoke and yak in the air, drifting up the canyon from the nearby bunch of yurts. The cl.u.s.ter of fur dwellings was far too small to be considered a village, but it was something, and the nomads that made it their home seemed comfortable enough through our thermal and night-vision devices.

All of us were dressed for warmth, in state-of-the-art camouflage parkas and face masks. We looked like a mottled pile of white lumps. Even our weapons had been spray painted or wrapped with white tape. But despite the fancy gear, we were still freezing. The sudden drop in temperature had been unexpected. We probably should've huddled together for warmth, but every one of us was too stubborn or proud to do that.

"Hey, Lorenzo, you know Valentine?" Phillips asked.

"Sadly . . . What about him?"

"Is it true he single-handedly fought off like a hundred soldiers in Mexico?"

Ling had said Valentine had developed a bit of a rep with Exodus. "h.e.l.l if I know. Valentine's just another a.s.shole with mental problems and a gun."

"Oh . . ." Phillips sounded disappointed.

"He'll fit in great with Exodus. Anything yet, Shen?" I was ready to get this show on the road. Worst case scenario, the mark would decide that it was too d.a.m.n cold and just stay in bed. Then we would have to abort the mission and try again next week. Shen shook his head. A mist of ice particles fell from his hood as he did so, and it hung suspended in the small window of light from the thermal cam. "s.h.i.t. He's probably not going to come."

"He'll be here," Anders stated.

"It's a little cold for romance," I replied, annoyed, but knowing that overall, Kat's plan was a pretty good one, and she had been laying the groundwork for months.

"You haven't seen this girl . . . "

"Whatever." I still had a hard time picturing one of Jihan's minor business functionaries leaving the comfort of the compound once a week for a clandestine meeting with some nomad's daughter, especially when Jihan had a bunch of slave girls available. Kat had a.s.sured me that there was more to it than that, and that the young functionary was actually in love, and had plans of running away with the girl. The functionaries weren't slaves. They were the business people that kept Jihan's finances in order while he was busy being creepy in the bottom of a missile silo.

The young businessman had met the nomad's daughter in town. It was love at first sight, and though Jihan's people were not allowed to leave the compound unescorted, this one had found a way. He had been meeting the girl once a week for the last few months. It was a forbidden love, and if Jihan found out, the young man was toast. However, once a week he risked it anyway. Of course he did. Kat had picked the girl herself, and trained her to be irresistible, a cla.s.sic Juliet sting.

We were some distance from the compound, but the lights from the walls could be seen reflecting off of the mountain snow above us, giving the place a slight pink glow. The canyon we were watching led directly to the base of the fort. The climb was virtually impossible, but the mark had found a way back and forth, and tonight we intended to exploit it.

Provided he actually showed up.

Roland stirred as something buzzed inside his parka, and he had to struggle through multiple zippers to access his tac vest. There was a flicker of light as he opened the sat phone and studied the message.

"Ibrahim?" Phillips asked.

"No. My girlfriend sent me a text message." He laughed as he read it. "She's back in the States. She thinks I'm doing an internship with Toyota." He pulled off one heavy glove so he could type with his thumb. "Hang on."

Anders reached over and unceremoniously grabbed the phone. The giant pointed a ma.s.sive finger at Roland's face and wagged it condescendingly, before tossing the phone back to Roland. Anders was a singularly humorless individual. Roland shoved the phone back into his coat and sulked.

Every Exodus team was a little bit different. My experience had been with Ling and her highly formal men. Zack Roland and Nathan Scott Phillips didn't really seem to fit that mold. They were attached to my group tonight because they were both supposed to be very good at this kind of infiltration mission, and they always worked together. Both of the Exodus operatives were in their mid-twenties. Roland was dark haired, and Jill said that he looked like the kid from High School Musical, which I hadn't seen, while Phillips was blond, stocky, and perpetually jovial.

"Hey, Shen. I thought you Exodus types were all fanatical and intense. Where'd you find these two?" I wasn't worried about being quiet, since if the mark showed up, he would glow on thermal as soon as he entered the canyon. Plus talking made me not think about the onset of hypothermia. Shen shrugged.

"Brazil," Phillips said.

"We were mission companions," Roland followed.

"Mormon missionaries."

"You know. White shirts. Ties. Name tags."

"Then we ran into some soldiers for a drug cartel. They raided an Amazon village we had been teaching in. And we weren't going to stand for that."

"I thought you guys didn't go for violence," Anders said.

"No, those are Quakers. We're awesome at violence," Phillips said.

"Yeah, we met Ibrahim when Exodus wasted those slavers. After we finished up our two years, we joined up, been on board ever since."

Both of the young men made fists, and knocked their knuckles together, scattering snow. "Heck, yeah!"

I nodded as if this made perfect sense. The Lorenzos were Mormon, and Gideon Lorenzo had been extremely devout. Bob had been a missionary himself, and had gone to Russia, or so I'd been told since that had happened after I'd run off. Exodus seemed to be made up of a bunch of religious types, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and Other. Ling had been wearing an Orthodox cross. I was surrounded by religious nuts. Personally, I didn't know if there was a G.o.d, but I was pretty sure there was a Devil. Me and him were old acquaintances. Anders glanced at me and shrugged. Apparently he was also a member of the Church of Moral Ambivalence and Whatever's Convenient.

"Contact." We all perked up at Shen's voice. I was glad to see that the s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around ceased immediately. Everyone was totally still. "Individual entering the canyon. Heading toward the village."

Unable to make out anyone in the darkness, I slid forward and hunched down behind Shen's view screen. A single blob of white trudged through the hip deep snow. The man positively glowed with heat compared to the frozen black backdrop, a halo of waste heat from exertion escaping his coat and leaving a trail behind him. He was heading toward the nomad's yurts.

Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned. That's true love for you.

"I've got him," I stated as I slid my night vision monocular over one eye and tightened the strap around the top of my head. My head began to freeze as soon as I dropped my hood. The world turned into brilliant green pixels as the lens settled into place. I quickly cinched the hood back up. I studied the other four in the green light. They were intense and ready. "You know the plan. Proceed on my signal. Roland, contact Ibrahim and tell him we're on."

The other four nodded. The great raid had just begun.

It took me longer than expected to traverse the snowfield leading to the yurts. I had hoped to take down the mark outside the village, but the snow was deep, and I kept stepping on hard bits that immediately cracked and plunged me down to my hips. I had to be careful, as noise seemed to travel forever across the stillness. My target was not bothering to conceal his movement, and I could hear him sliding, crashing, and grunting from a hundred meters away.

I could have just shot him from here, but I wanted to talk first. He had an accomplice that lowered a rope so he could secretly reenter the compound. I wanted to find out if there was a code word or something of that nature. Then I could shoot him.

There was no pity for this man. He worked for a force of pure evil, and right now that force was my opposition. Even the three good men behind me-and Anders-would have no mercy on him because of who he worked for. In fact, they would have even less pity than Anders. The fact that the functionary was out here because he was being manipulated by Katarina was just too d.a.m.ned bad for him.

It took me too long to catch up. The snow was packed hard closer to the dwellings by constant stamping of the animals and the residents. He was now on more solid footing, and made really good time to the closest yurt. There was a flash of light as the fur door was opened briefly and a shape moved inside. The smell of spices and perfume hit a moment later.

Gliding up outside the entry, I listened, but couldn't hear anything. The fabric walls were surprisingly good at sound dampening. I waited five more minutes for him to get comfortable. There were no sounds from the other yurts, since people that work this hard to survive go to sleep early. I stuffed my night vision set back into my coat. It was handy, but that strap around the back of my head gave me a headache. Luckily there were no dogs barking an alert. Since it had been a long winter, they had probably gotten eaten. Even if the nomads knew I was here, they too were being paid by Kat not to get involved. Montalban money was also the reason they were settled at this particular point, rather than at a lower alt.i.tude where life would be a lot less miserable.

The girl didn't know when we would take the mark. Kat told her only what she needed to know, and even then probably half of the information she'd bee given was false. So even if she talked too much, nothing would come back to incriminate the Exchange. She just knew that during one of these weekly meetings, somebody was going to pay her boyfriend a visit and she wasn't supposed to do anything about it, other than collect her bonus money.

Finally, tired of freezing, I decided to enter. I figured five minutes was plenty of time for the two of them to start playing Rogue Businessman and the Nomad's Daughter. It a.s.sumed that the rules to that would be similar to Heidi and the Storm Trooper. They should be plenty distracted by now. I unslung my Remington ACR, checked the Aimpoint sight, and used the attached sound suppressor to part the airlock-like fur entrance. There was one layer, a small spot of dead air, and then a second layer.

"Going in," I said into my neck microphone.

"Go," said Anders' voice in my ear.

Pausing, listening, no response, I pushed through the thick furs and into the dwelling. Slinking in low, quiet as I could be, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the firelight. The interior of the yurt was actually much warmer and comfier than expected. In fact, the heat differential was almost painful. The mark's fur coat was discarded on the floor. The two occupants had their backs to me, and they were speaking quietly, sitting crosslegged on blankets, staring into the fire, which was not exactly the scene I had expected.

He was maybe twenty-five, definitely Han Chinese. Anders' had been right about the girl. There was no way he was going to stay away. She was beautiful, probably in her late teens. They were holding hands. Either she was as superb an actor as Katarina, all dopey and moon-eyed, or the two really were in love.

So now I needed to go beat some information out the guy, then kill him.

Some days I hate my job.

The furs absorbed any noise my boots might have made as I stalked closer. With my head tilted slightly to favor my good ear, I could hear them clearly now.

"Come away with me. Please," he said, the tone of his voice was desperate.

"I can't. My people are here, my family. Your home, so far away, as if on the other side of world." Her Cantonese was rough. He must have been tutoring her.

"We must leave soon. The Pale Man is evil. You know what he'll do to me if he finds out about us," he pleaded. I thought of the grinning skull faces propped up on stakes on the railway into The Crossroads. I'm sure the functionary had seen that kind of thing a few times.

"I know . . . He has hurt my people before, taken many of us away. But this is my home. I am afraid."

"I'll protect you. I promise," he vowed with the intensity that only the young and stupid can muster.

Judging by how badly the functionary flinched, the metal end of my Silencero sound suppressor must have been staggeringly cold against the base of his neck. "You're in no position to promise anything, kid. Don't you f.u.c.king move." My Cantonese was pretty rough too, but I think I got the point across. And to think that Jill said I was bad at communicating.

The girl squealed, leapt to her feet, but tripped on the blankets that she had wrapped around her legs, and fell back down. She rolled over and scrambled on her hands and knees back to the far wall of the dwelling. The functionary didn't move. He knew d.a.m.n good and well what the cold metal lump resting on his spine was.

"So Jihan knows . . . " he said with resignation, the breath leaving his lungs in one long, painful sigh. Slowly, he turned so he could see me. I kept the gun on him the whole time, until he was staring at my mask. I reached back with my left hand and pulled it down. His eyes widened in surprise. "But you're not one of Jihan's men . . . who are you? Bandit! Leave her be. She has nothing. I'm the one you want. Do what you will with me, but please don't harm the girl. I can-"

I put my left hand back on my gun's vertical foregrip, then stabbed the whole gun forward, ramming him in the face hard enough to chip a couple of teeth. "Will you shut up all ready?" He stumbled back and raised his hands to his b.l.o.o.d.y lips. I turned my attention to the girl. She had gotten over her initial shock, and was apparently glad to see that I wasn't a scar-faced slave-soldier. "It's time."

"What?" he mumbled through his hands, glancing between me and his girlfriend. I reached into my coat, pulled out the rubber-banded stack of currency from the Montalban Exchange and tossed it to her.

She caught it in one hand, and immediately used her thumb to fan through the bills to make sure they were all large denominations. "About time," she responded. "Now my family can leave frozen s.h.i.thole." She stood to leave. "Do what you have to. Tell Mrs. Katarina thanks for money."

"But . . . but . . . Lotus Blossom?" The functionary began to cry. "What . . . what are you doing?" He got up and stumbled toward her, pleading.

Now she was angry. "My people taken away to be slaves by your boss. You think I could love you? Stupid. I was paid to love you. You die now. Serve you right." She paused long enough to face him, look him squarely in the eye, and then kick him squarely in the b.a.l.l.s. It was d.a.m.n hard too, like she was kicking a field goal. He doubled over. "Goodbye!"

You can't really slam a fur door, but she somehow managed to. "That sucks," I said cheerfully as I shoved him to the ground. "Now let's talk."

"You're an American?" The functionary responded in English. He moaned for what seemed like forever, then started to cry. "Just kill me. I have no reason to live." His English was better than my Cantonese.