Relentless Read online

  Outside El Paso

  Cara kicked and thrashed as they dragged her hooded form from the back of the van. She felt her foot catch one of her abductors and heard him curse. A fist crashed into her stomach, and the air whooshed from her lungs, exploding around the foul gag in her mouth.

  Cara’s body went limp, and the men either side of her almost dropped her to the ground. Boots crunched on gravel and more voices reached her ears. Cara listened. What were they? European? She needed to get the hood off somehow to see. She’d had it on since being taken off the street soon after she’d hung up from the call to Reaper.

  After the initial flurry of violence, her resistance, them punching, Cara had lost track of her position and what direction they had traveled. One thing she was sure of, they weren’t in Mexico.

  Before she knew what was happening, the hood was torn roughly from her head, revealing a bruised left cheek and a thin line of dried blood emanating from the corner of her mouth beneath the gag. She had sustained the injuries while being abducted from the street after she’d shot the man they had left behind.

  Blinking to allow her eyes to adjust to the sun’s glare, Cara growled like a caged animal. A large man with a black beard came into view. He reached out with his right hand and wrapped strong fingers around the struggling woman’s throat. The intense pressure ceased her movements immediately.

  “You have already killed one of my men today. If you keep this up, I will snap your neck like a twig. Understand?”

  Cara nodded.

  “Good. Get her on the plane.”

  The men on either side of her started to push her clumsily towards a Gulfstream G600. Cara glanced about, attempting to make out any familiar landmark which might indicate where she was. Somewhere outside of El Paso at an old airfield. But there were plenty of those.

  They forced her up the steps and in through the door, then through the cabin until she reached a three-seat lounge towards the back of the plane. One of the seats was occupied by a man. Cara glanced at him, noticing that although he was expensively dressed, his face bore similar markings to hers.

  The big man with the beard came to the rear of the plane and removed Cara’s gag. She stared at him and asked, “Where are you taking me?”

  His gaze lingered upon her as though he was considering telling her. Then, “You will find that out when we arrive.”

  “Fucking asshole,” the man in the opposite seat hissed in accented English.

  The bearded man’s left hand flashed out and crashed against the prisoner’s cheek, silencing him.

  “Who are you?” Cara asked him, changing tack.

  “I am Sander.”

  “Can’t you at least tell me where you are taking me?”

  The airtight door at the front of the plane was closed and latched. Sander smiled and said, “Buckle up; we are about to take off.”

  He turned away from her and crossed to another sofa on the other side of the plane and sat, buckling himself in, waiting for the plane to start moving.

  The two Pratt and Whitney turbofan engines came to life with a whine, each capable of hurling the jet along the runway with approximately fifteen and a half thousand pounds of thrust. After a few minutes, the plane began to move and taxied towards the single runway. At six thousand feet, the runway came in just over the required distance for the jet to be able to take off.

  Looking out the small window, Cara saw the dry landscape slide by, and in the distance, there was a rundown building with a control tower attached to the top of it. She frowned. Golden Field. It had to be. It had been named after Chuck Golden, a World War Two vet who’d been awarded the Congressional Medal after Peleliu. It had been shut down some ten years before, but obviously, the runway was still usable.

  The Gulfstream reached the end of the tarmac and turned. It remained stationary while the pilot pushed the throttles forward all the way. The engines climbed to a screech, and then the brakes were released. Cara felt herself being forced back in her seat as the plane picked up speed. The nose of the Gulfstream rose, followed by the rear wheels as they left the ground.

  Team Reaper HQ

  El Paso

  The first breakthrough came an hour after the team arrived back from across the border. Swift had been doing all he could to narrow down what had happened. Then he got a hit on the picture of the dead guy that Traynor had taken.

  The dead guy’s name was Evert Alting. He was a Belgian national who at one stage in his life had been Belgian SFG. Next, Swift tried to see if the name came up on any flight manifests over the past month but drew a blank. However, his search through Interpol came back interesting. It seemed that Interpol had him marked as being a low-level employee of one Dorian Janssen.

  Then for the next hour, Swift used his skills to find others who flew under the Janssen banner and ran them through facial recognition amongst the many security cameras around El Paso.

  He came up with two more. A big man named Sander and another called Filip Claasen. Both men were also former Belgian SFG. Swift did another search trying to match faces with aliases, but still, nothing popped. He widened the search and came up with Sander and Alting in New York. Still with nothing indicating how they’d got into the country, but there was something else interesting. About the same time that they were there, Pavli Cano, the Albanian Organized Crime boss disappeared and his hitter, Lazani was killed on the street outside of his apartment building. Witnesses said that he was last seen being forced into a van after Lazani had been shot on the sidewalk.

  Slowly a picture was starting to form, and Swift didn’t like it.

  He knew that they had to have come in somewhere, so he searched Janssen and came up with a privately-owned Gulfstream. A few more searches and it all came together. Time to talk to the boss.

  He found Thurston in her office, talking to Kane and Rosanna. Looking up at Swift, she said, “What is it?”

  “I’ve got something you’ll all want to see.”

  “Cara?” Kane asked.

  “It could be. It’s a theory.”

  Thurston nodded. “OK. We’ll meet in the briefing room. I’ll get everyone together in five minutes.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Swift left, and Thurston turned her gaze to Rosanna. “As you see, there is never a dull moment. Will you at least consider my offer?”

  Rosanna nodded. “I will think about it. But I am a Mexican citizen. If I was to come and work for you, how would we get past that?”

  Thurston smiled. “I know a man.”

  The doctor nodded. “I do not shoot guns. I will not even touch one.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  Again, another nod.

  “What do you think, Reaper?”

  “I think that the addition to the team would be beneficial, Ma’am.”

  “I agree. Come and sit in on the briefing, Rosanna. You’ll get an idea on how we operate.”

  The doctor glanced sideways at Kane. “I’ve seen how one part of you operates.”

  “Now, you can see how the rest of us do it.”

  Team Reaper HQ

  Briefing Room

  Once the team was gathered, Thurston handed the floor over to Swift so he could do his thing. He tapped a key on his laptop computer, revealing a picture of the dead man Traynor had snapped with another beside it of when Alting was still alive.

  “Who are we looking at, Slick?” Thurston asked.

  “This is Evert Alting. He’s former Belgian SFG, but as you can see, he’s as dead as a dodo. Thanks, we think, to Cara.”

  “Can you be sure of that?” Ferrero asked.

  “No, sir. It’s just a guess.”

  Ferrero nodded.

  Swift continued, “I did the usual searches and came up with these two men. Sander Aakster and Filip Claasen. Both ex-SFG. Aakster is the good-looking guy who resembles Axe.”

  “You mean; looks like a puckered asshole with fur around it?” Brooke Reynolds asked.

  The muffl
ed chuckle in the room was punctuated with an indignant, “That’s just cruel, that is. I’m bleeding.”

  “All right, knock it off,” Thurston said. “Continue, Slick.”

  “All three of these men were picked up on cameras throughout El Paso over the past three days. Previously, they sprang up in New York. This was about the same time as Pavli Cano was taken from the street outside his apartment block, and his enforcer Halil Lazani was shot on the street when it happened.”

  “Isn’t Cano the Albanian organized crime boss?” Traynor asked.

  Swift nodded.

  Kane leaned forward on his seat. “Are you saying that the abductions of Cano and Cara are connected?”

  “It looks that way, although I don’t have hard evidence.”

  “What do you have?”

  “I did a search through Interpol, and each one of these guys is known to them. The interesting part was that they all work for Dorian Janssen.”

  “Shit!” Kane hissed. “This is some kind of revenge bullshit, isn’t it? It was Janssen’s brother that Cara killed in Wilmington, and it was Cano’s crew that attacked the warehouse.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Well, let’s get out there and find the bastards,” Axe growled.

  “That would be a waste of time,” Swift told them.

  “Why?” Thurston inquired.

  “I tried to find something that might point to how they got into the country. At first, I came up with nothing. Then once I broadened my search parameters, I found a Gulfstream belonging to Janssen. That is how they got into the country.”

  He hit another key on his computer, and a satellite image appeared showing an airfield. Swift moved closer to the screen and pointed to something white at the center of the screen. “This is it, here. The picture was taken four hours ago.”

  “Where is that?” Kane asked.

  “Golden Field, outside of El Paso.”

  “Why do I feel there is a big but coming?” Ferrero asked.

  The screen changed. “This was taken thirty minutes ago.”

  The picture was clear, no plane.

  “It’s gone,” Arenas said.

  Swift nodded. “Yes.”

  Kane came to his feet and looked at Thurston. “Ma’am, it seems pretty straight forward to me.”

  Thurston stared at the picture. “It would seem to be too much of a coincidence.”

  “We need to get spun up,” Kane urged.

  “What we need is confirmation,” the general told him.

  “We can’t just sit here and do nothing, Ma’am,” Kane said testily. “We did that once, and it cost a man his life.”

  “Do you have any idea how much it costs to get this team to Europe?” Thurston asked calmly. “If I pull the trigger on this, and believe me I’d rather do nothing else, and she’s not there, it’s my ass in a sling for making the wrong call. The first thing I’ll be asked when I front a Senate inquiry is, why didn’t you wait for confirmation?”

  “That’s bullshit, Ma’am,” Kane growled.

  “Kane!” Ferrero snapped.

  Thurston said, “I agree. But if she has been taken to Belgium by Janssen, it is for a reason. Otherwise, she’d be dead beside the man on the street.” Her voice hardened. “Now, stand down. That’s an order.”

  Kane could tell by the look in her eyes that she wasn’t going to take any more. Not willing to push her further, he replied, “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “But just in case, I want everything ready to go. Reaper, you’re in charge of the armory. If we get a positive ID, I want everything to run smoothly so we can be wheels up at a moment’s notice. I’ll have the C-17 on standby. Everyone understand what they have to do?”

  They all nodded.

  “Traynor, you’ll be on standby as part of Reaper Team just in case they need you.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “You OK with that, Reaper?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Good, let’s get to it. Luis, can I have a word?”

  Everyone went about their business while Ferrero and the general moved off to one side. “I’m going to reach out to a few contacts to see what we can find out about Janssen and if there’s someone who can find out if Cara is on that damned plane. Keep an eye on Reaper. I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Axe.”

  “I’ll do that, Mary. He’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 6

  Antwerp, Belgium

  The flight to Antwerp took ten hours. Ten hours that felt like twice that long, sitting, wondering what was in store for her, and by the time the plane landed at a small airfield, Cara was exhausted physically and mentally. She was escorted from the plane, and once on the tarmac, noticed a black SAAB SUV waiting no further than twenty meters away in the darkness.

  As tired as she was, Cara’s training had her taking in her surroundings, trying to make out any distinguishing features. “Where are we?” she asked Sander.

  “Belgium.”

  “Why are we here?”

  There was a yelp from behind her, and Cara whirled about just in time to see Cano fall down the steps to the tarmac. Groaning, the Albanian was quickly yanked upright by his collar by Claasen who had been behind him on the steps.

  When the door of the SAAB opened, the interior light came on, and she noted the driver. A man of average height and build climbed out from the rear door. Cara figured him to be middle-aged. He was dressed in a suit and strode towards the plane with determined purpose.

  She watched him walk across to the Albanian and stand in front of him. A few words were spoken, and Cano seemed to pale somewhat. Then Cara watched on in horror as the man drew a sidearm and shot the Albanian in the head.

  Cara’s head jerked at the crash of the weapon, and then her heart raced as she considered the stark reality that she could be next. The shooter turned and stared in her direction before approaching, weapon still visible down at his side. He stopped just short, his gray eyes burning holes into her, making her swallow involuntarily.

  “My name is Dorian Janssen,” he said. “You killed my brother.”

  Then he raised the gun.

  The SAAB came to a halt on the gravel turnaround, and the motor was switched off. Opening the doors, Janssen and his men climbed out. Sander’s boots crunched on the gravel as he walked around behind the vehicle. He opened the rear door and reached in, pulling a bound and gagged Cara from the luggage area.

  Sander helped her stay erect, and once she’d found her feet, Cara again tried to pick out features in her surroundings. The house was huge. Cara guessed it was all paid for by Janssen’s drug empire. It was a classic double story affair with mullioned windows, and she could just make out two stone chimneys. The gardens and surrounds were thick, and she assumed lush. A flower bed beneath one of the windows was illuminated by the light shining through it, the blooms brightly-colored.

  “Get her in the house,” Janssen snapped. “Put her in the study and guard her. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Sander guided her up the front steps to the solid wood door. He opened it and shoved her through into an opulent foyer. It was brightly lit by a massive chandelier, which looked as though it needed a crane to keep it in place. A grand staircase was in front of her, and at the landing, one had a choice to turn left or right. The enforcer closed the door behind them and steered Cara towards another solid wood door; this one a darker color. Sander opened this one too, and once Cara was inside, he pushed her onto a leather lounge.

  Straight away, she noticed the thick plastic on the carpet. Her blood ran cold as she thought of many movies, she’d seen with the stuff on the floor right before someone died.

  Nervously, Cara jiggled her legs, waiting for Janssen to join them. Part of her wished he’d just killed her after she had gotten off the plane, instead of torturing her with the wait. He came into the room five minutes later, and she prepared herself for the inevitable. In the light, she could see him better. The graying hair, the lined face. She snappe
d, “Just kill me and get it over with, asshole.”

  His smile was cold, almost cruel. He stood there in silence, waiting, wanting to draw the tension out even further. In the end, Janssen said, “I’m not going to kill you. Not like you did my brother. No, I have something more special in store for you.”

  “Like what?” Cara snapped, more than a little relieved that she would remain alive for the foreseeable future.

  “My brother was everything to me. He was all the family that I had in this world. Now he is gone, and you are responsible.”

  “How do you know I was the one?”

  Cara realized that it was a dumb question, even before the words were out of her mouth. In this day and age, anything you needed to know was reasonably easy to find out.

  “Do I really need to answer that question?”

  “I guess not. So, what will happen now if you’re not going to kill me?”

  “In a couple of days, I will have a visitor. He is a dealer in the flesh. If he likes you, and we can come to an arrangement, then you will be sold to him. You see, I don’t want you dead. You cannot reflect on what you have done if you are this way. I want you to remember it every day—every waking moment. I want you to wish you were dead. When a stinking Belarussian worker is humping your brains out, I want you to know why.”

  At the sight of the crazy look in Janssen’s eyes, a cold shiver ran down Cara’s spine. The guy was seriously unhinged. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re insane,” she hissed. “Too much of your own product.”

  Janssen smiled coldly. “Maybe. I guess one day we’ll find out. Take her away and lock her in the room upstairs.”

  Cara’s stomach growled. She knew that if she were to get through this, it would require all her strength. “What about something to eat?”

  Her captor stared at her for a moment as he considered his answer. Then he nodded. “Find her something from the kitchen. Is there anything else?”

  “I suppose a beer is out of the question?”

  Janssen chuckled. “Sure, why not? Sander will take care of it for you.”