Renegade (2013), page 23
part #2 of Called To Serve Series
Heath wasn’t quite certain what the image had been. It looked like maybe it had been a flower, but scar tissue from some kind of burn had distorted it.
“This rose indicates the guy used to be part of some Russian Mafia group.”
Hauser took a step closer and peered at the tattoo. “You’re sure that’s a rose?”
“Was a rose. Yeah. I’m sure. Probably his first tattoo. They usually get a rose when they’re accepted into one of the gangs.”
“What’s the significance of the rose?”
“Don’t know. Never asked.”
That statement indicated that Pike knew someone either in the police or in a Russian gang. Given a guess between the two, Heath was pretty certain it was the latter. He felt a little guilty about making generalizations, but he couldn’t help it. Pike was a curiosity, made so because the man didn’t fit into the corps in many ways yet kept coming back activation after activation.
Then there was the violence that Pike seemed to thrive on. Heath had never met another man so inured to the atrocities on the battlefield. No matter how bad things got, Pike seemed to roll right through them.
Back in the law offices, Heath had run a background check on the man, something he’d never done on another Marine under his command. The results had been less than spectacular, and the cool, calm warrior Heath had seen on the battlefield didn’t match up with the paper tiger in the report.
Pike never sought out the company of others. He didn’t walk away from fellow Marines, but he didn’t look for companionship. Except evidently something was in play between Pike and the corpsman Julie Meadows. Heath made a mental note to follow up on that when he had the chance.
Pike continued. “Guy got kicked out of the Mafia, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“Somebody tried to burn away the rose tattoo. The criminal gangs do that when someone betrays them. Guy’s lucky he didn’t get a bullet between the eyes before Captain Zarif parked one there.”
“So he’s ex-Mafia.”
Pike nodded. “That would be my guess. Whoever went after that tattoo used acid. Had to hurt.” He pointed at a cathedral inked onto the man’s stomach. “People think when they see a church on a Russian criminal that it has some kind of religious significance.”
“I gather it does not.”
“No sir.” Pike pointed to the spires above the structure. “Tells you how many years the guy has served on lockdown. This guy’s got six, so he’s been in prison for six years.”
“Then I’d further suppose that the crucifix on this man’s chest doesn’t signify any religious preference either.” Drawn by the story, Hauser had moved in closer. Heath had moved up as well.
“No. A crucifix means the guy was a thief.”
“That’s how he betrayed his gang? He stole from them?”
Pike shook his head. “Thief was this guy’s occupation in the gang.” He pointed to a smaller tattoo on the dead man’s side. It was of a Madonna and child. “The image of the Virgin Mary means that he’d been a thief since he was young. Probably since he was a kid.”
Heath used a stylus to add notes to those he’d already written down.
“Can you tell me anything else about this man’s history?” Hauser glanced at Pike.
Pointing to the stars tattooed on the man’s knees, Pike nodded. “These mean that this guy wouldn’t kneel to anyone. Wouldn’t take any crap.” He indicated the stars on the man’s shoulders. “Those mean that he was a captain. A leader in his crew.”
“I see. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
Stepping away from the body, Pike shook his head. “No sir. The tats are all from a culture you’d have to be part of. I get some of it, but not everything you see there.”
“You mean the Russian culture?”
“I mean part of this guy’s crew. They tend to make up their own languages, their own symbols. Some of the bigger tats, like those I showed you, translate across the board for the Mafia, but not all of them. That’s why the police agencies have trouble figuring them out.”
Hauser thought for a moment. “We have a Russian criminal who was kicked out of his own gang and who was also working with suspected al Qaeda sympathizers. Do we know what he was doing with those people?”
Heath fielded the question, knowing Hauser intended it for him since he’d been heading up the investigation so far. “The machine shop was churning out IEDs and other explosives.”
“Good thing we shut that down, then.”
“Yes sir. Gunney Towers and Corporal Shaw have been inventorying the premises. They’ve found a significant amount of Russian ordnance.”
“Well then, we know what the Russian was probably doing there, don’t we?”
“Yes sir.”
“But we don’t know why Captain Zarif took it upon himself to shoot this man.”
Pike folded his arms across his broad chest. “We don’t know what Zarif and his boys took out of this guy’s pockets either.”
“Do we know that anything was taken?” Hauser looked at Heath.
Heath shook his head. “No sir. Neither Pike nor Cho saw anything taken from the dead man’s pockets.”
The captain grimaced. “Seems to be a lot we don’t know.”
“Yeah.”
Hauser swung his attention to Pike. “Good job today, Private. You’re dismissed.”
“Yes sir.” Distracted, Pike started to walk away, then remembered he was in the presence of an officer. He fired off a salute and headed out of the building.
“What’s going on with Pike?” Heath sat in the small office he’d been assigned. Gunney Towers and Bekah sat across the desk with their field reports in their hands. Empty food cartons stood in organized stacks awaiting removal. Dinner had been a working meal.
Outside the building, on the other side of the windows that were hung with Kevlar armor to block potential snipers, night had fallen. Heath could see the darkness through the small cracks around the windows.
Bekah looked up. Fatigue hollowed her eyes. “Nothing that I’m aware of. Why? What have you noticed?”
Heath shifted in his chair. “He seems distant.”
“Pike keeps himself distant. He never fully integrates with the unit.”
“I know.” Heath rubbed his stubbled chin and stifled a tired yawn. “But he seems more pulled back than ever.”
Towers shrugged. “Man’s quiet waters. Runs deep, and you ain’t gonna see nothing till he’s ready to show it to you.” He paused. “Thought he got a little stressed yesterday when we were doing cleanup after that action in the street.”
“Stressed?” That caught Heath’s attention instantly. He’d never seen Pike stressed.
“Yeah.” Towers pulled out a package of Doublemint gum and offered it around. Heath took a stick to help keep himself awake. Bekah passed. “One of the other Marines made a comment that Pike didn’t like. Thought Pike was gonna hit him for a minute; then he cooled back down.”
“That’s not the first time Pike has had to wade through something like that.”
“No, it’s not. First time I seen it bother him, though. Thing that bothered him most was the boy.”
Heath remembered the dead children he’d helped take from the street. The work had been brutal and hard. Seeing people reduced to bloody and charred hunks of meat took a lot out of a soldier. Especially when those pieces had once been children. In an instant, a soldier could see years of innocence that would never be spent.
“Dead kids hurt.”
“Kid wasn’t dead, though. When Pike found him, he was alive. Still is. But the corpsmen just about had to pry that kid outta Pike’s arms.” Towers chewed his gum. “I seen Marines go through trauma like that before, but I never seen Pike like that.”
“You talk to Pike about it?”
Towers leaned back in his chair. “Tried. He wouldn’t have none of it. Went back to being Pike, closemouthed and surly. I got the message. Left him alone.”
Someone knocked on the door; then it opened and a private shoved his head into the room. “Lieutenant Bridger?”
“Yes, Private?”
“Captain Hauser says you should get to the communications center ASAP.”
Heath stowed his iPad, pulled on his armor, and hooked his helmet up from the floor by the chin strap. Towers and Bekah followed him.
Television reporter Jonathan Sebastian stood in front of a stone wall. He looked worse for wear, but he seemed healthy enough.
Heath stood at the back of the crowd in the communications center, taking it all in and dialing down the feeling that thrummed inside him—the need to do something. This was the CIA’s show at present, but he knew the Marines would be sent in soon. They always were. He wanted to know as much as he could before that happened.
The broadcast was coming in over a link the Marines had to the Kandahar channels. CIA Special Agent in Charge Gerald Benton stood to one side of the large screen that carried the television station. Like Sebastian, Benton looked tired.
“So far we are still alive.” On the monitor, Sebastian gestured to his left.
The camera view tracked in that direction and focused on three men huddled on the floor. A moment passed as the cameraman cycled through the magnification and stripped away the fuzzy softness till the image was clear. Bearded and fatigued, the prisoners sat at the back of the cave. Faded bruises showed on their faces, and one of the men had his arm and hand heavily bandaged.
Another monitor showed the faces of the three missing CIA agents from the agency’s files. It only took Heath the space of a drawn breath to verify the three men with Sebastian were the CIA agents taken by Yaqub in Pakistan.
Sebastian spoke calmly, but tension tightened his voice. “I am told that our good health will continue as long as our captor is certain he has the attention of the United States military and the Kandahar government. This presentation is designed to open a dialogue.”
The camera shifted back to Sebastian, who unrolled the newspaper he was holding. The cameraman zoomed in on the paper and brought it into sharp focus, centering on the date.
“The paper is to prove that we are still alive.”
Several computer operators in the room worked frenziedly at their stations. Another CIA agent walked through the cyber team.
“C’mon, guys. Get me that signal. It’s not originating at the Kandahar station. It’s coming from somewhere else. Find it.”
One of the technicians, a young woman whose fingers flew across the keyboard, read screen after screen of numbers faster than Heath could follow. “It’s coming from outside the city. Up in the Safed Koh mountains.”
The agent crewing the cyber effort wheeled on her, sliding into place to peer over her shoulder. “That’s a lot of open area, Agent. Narrow that.”
“I’m working on it.”
Grid after grid flashed onto the computer screen, flipping into place and magnifying the mountainous terrain. Heath felt himself tensing up as he watched the search even though he didn’t know what was taking place. He knew that men’s lives hung in the balance. If the CIA could narrow the search enough, Charlie Company could get fire teams into the area and put boots on the ground. They’d have a chance to bring those hostages home safely.
“I have been told that negotiations will begin soon.” Sebastian rolled the paper up and held it in a fist. “I am hopeful that we will all get out of this alive.”
The broadcast suddenly ended and the screen went black.
“No!” The female CIA operative leaned more closely over her keyboard, and her fingers almost became a blur as she typed. As impressive as her speed was, though, the images on the screen stopped cycling and sat over the same area.
Judging from what he could see, Heath knew the area was too large to be a viable target for a search and rescue operation. They’d been stymied.
“Did we get the location?” Benton walked from the front of the room to the computer stations.
“No.” The computer tech shook her head. “We didn’t. I’m sorry. I’ve narrowed the parameters, but not enough.”
Anger tightened Benton’s face, but he remained professional. “We’ll get it next time. Yaqub isn’t going to stop talking now that he knows he has our attention.” He turned and walked back to stand beside the screen. “I know you Marines are still working the streets, still gathering intel, and I know that some of your comrades were killed in today’s sweeps.”
Heath hadn’t lost any of his troops. He’d been fortunate.
“I want you to know that your sacrifices are appreciated. More than that, they’re needed. This isn’t just about those three hostages. This is about Zalmai Yaqub. We need to run him to ground and put him down . . . one way or another.”
Towers spoke softly at Heath’s side, putting into words what every Marine in that room was thinking. “Give us a target and we’ll get it done.”
Heath knew that they would . . . if they could. So far Zalmai Yaqub had remained one step ahead of them. And they still didn’t know what the man’s true game plan was.
29
“WHERE’S YOUR MIND?”
Puzzled, Pike swung his gaze from the booth where a crowd of Afghan National Police sat and looked across the table at Julie Meadows. They were seated at a local restaurant the Marines frequented when they were outside the zone.
The corpsman was easy on the eyes. He could tell she’d gone to some effort to make herself look presentable in the uniform, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. But Julie had pulled it off.
“What?” he asked.
She smiled at him and didn’t seem angry. Always a good sign. “Exactly. You’re somewhere else, Pike. Not here, not right now.”
Pike didn’t know why he’d agreed to another dinner. He didn’t need the company. In fact, most of the time he preferred his own company. “I didn’t know I wasn’t paying attention.”
“If I wasn’t as confident as I am in myself, that could hurt.”
“I’m not very good at this.”
“What? Eating dinner?”
“Eating dinner with someone.”
“You eat dinner with Marines all the time.”
“They don’t expect you to hold a conversation.”
“I didn’t know a conversation was going to be a problem.” Julie’s tone remained light, but Pike knew he was on dangerous ground.
“It’s not you. It’s me.”
She sat back from him a little, and he felt the distance between them widen.
“When I’m out in the field, I stay switched on. I always notice stuff.”
“Except for dinner partners.”
Pike ignored that and pointed his chin at the Afghan National Police gathering. “Over there.”
Julie sipped her water and casually glanced at the other table. Her eyes glinted and her mouth hardened. “Captain Zarif and his cronies.”
“Cronies?”
“You have another word?”
Pike was thinking they were more like a gang, not policemen, not anything as genteel as cronies. “I do, but I try not to use it around women.”
“Well, I feel relieved. At least you noticed that part, even if you weren’t keeping track of the conversation.”
“Yeah, it’s been tough to concentrate when I’m looking straight at the guy who killed the Russian prisoner I took into custody.” Pike focused on the other table. “So you’ve heard of Zarif. What do you know about him? And his . . . cronies?”
“Just rumors. None of ’em flattering. But sounds like the brass have their hands tied.”
“So they leave him in play?”
“Zarif is connected. Having him arrested would be an embarrassment to the Afghan National Police and the US military. I’ve also heard he can be counted on to monitor tango activity, that he has connections to more sources than a lot of his fellow policemen do.”
“I’m starting to wonder if it’s because he’s doing business with them.”
“It’s a case of the devil you know,” Julie said. “Looks like Zarif knows just how far to push things, and the Afghan National Police and the US military let him take it to the limit.”
Pike sipped his tea. “Could be that someone should take a closer look at Zarif.”
“You?”
Pike looked at her. “Could be.”
“Because he murdered the Russian?”
“That caught my attention. Zarif didn’t kill the Russian just to put points on the board. He was covering up something. Or taking advantage of the situation somehow.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. But I suspect that not all of the ordnance the Russian munitions dealers brought into the city has been found. I think that’s what Zarif is hiding.”
“You could tell someone.”
Pike shook his head. “If people are already looking the other way for this guy, he’s going to have to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar to change the status quo.”
Zarif glanced at his cell phone on the table, then picked it up, excused himself, and stepped away from the table to talk.
Pike watched the Afghan National Police captain. “He’s talking in Russian.”
Julie’s eyes narrowed. “You can hear him?”
“I can read his lips. You get raised in foster homes, it’s a skill you pick up. Like learning to read body language.”
“You were raised in foster care?”
Too late, Pike realized that he’d revealed more about himself than he’d intended to. He’d carefully kept the conversation loose, talking more about what was going on in Kandahar or the mechanic work he did with Monty in the garage back in Tulsa. “Yeah. It’s something I don’t talk about a lot.”
Thankfully, Julie left that alone.
After a moment, Zarif returned to his table, talked to the men there, then departed with a few of them in tow.
Pike looked at Julie. “I’m sorry, but I gotta go. To me, that conversation looked like business, and I need to find out what Zarif’s up to. If there are still munitions floating around out there, we need to nail those down.”
