Chain Reaction

Douglas was known for his explosive temper and lack of caution under pressure. It had gotten him into trouble on a number of occasions.

This time it got him more.

“No,” Rafferty yelled, realizing what was about to happen.

Douglas had taken only a few steps, raising his fists, when the MP-5 crackled. The burst was short, sending a volley of steel-jacketed 9 mm slugs into Douglas’s torso. The force of the burst stopped him in his tracks as the bullets cored into his lean body, shattering ribs and tearing through his heart and lungs. Douglas took a step back, eyes suddenly wide with shock. He lost coordination and dropped to the ground, clutching at his punctured chest. He squirmed in short movements before his body shut down. Blood trickled from his slack mouth.

“People never learn,” the shooter said.

Rafferty was frozen, staring between his dead partner and the man who had just murdered him.

The two men who had opened the container appeared, hauling a battered metal box between them. It looked like a well-used tool box. They placed it on the ground.

“That was all we wanted,” the shooter said. “Nothing else.”

“What?”

The shooter grinned. “Bloody hell. You had no idea.” He kicked at the box. “Diamonds. Contraband from the mines up north. You’ve been hauling millions in uncut stones. Put on board your train to be picked up by us. We snatch the box and fly away. By the time the cops show up there’s nothing to find.”

Rafferty felt a chill invade his body. There would be nothing for the police to go on because the only witnesses wouldn’t be able to point a finger. He looked beyond the strip of road. At the wide and empty blue sky and realized it would be the last time he saw it.

“Bloody shame, mate, but that’s the way it goes.”

The MP-5 crackled a second time. Rafferty felt the first impact as the burst of 9-mm slugs entered his body, then he was falling. He hit the ground on his back, eyes seeing the bright day fade into darkness. Then nothing.

“Let’s go, boys,” the shooter said.

The metal box was picked up and the hit team retreated to the idling helicopter. It rose quickly, circling the scene once before it cut off to the west. It flew steadily to its destination where it eventually touched down and the metal box was transferred to a waiting SUV. The team quickly changed into civilian clothing. The pilot took the helicopter back into the air, quickly vanishing from sight.

With practiced coordination the team quickly stripped down their weapons and placed them in a large canvas bag. A deep hole was dug and the weapons buried, along with the clothing they had worn during the hijack. All signs of the buried equipment were obliterated once the hole was refilled. The rear of the SUV was loaded with luggage and cameras all part of the team’s cover as a group of traveling tourists. The metal box was placed underneath the bags.

When everything had been organized, one of the team took the wheel and the SUV was turned around and made its way to the main route back along the highway.

Their destination lay just over two-thousand miles away at the coastal town of Port Hedland. For the next twenty-four hours the team would take turns at the wheel, stopping only for refueling and refreshments. The highway meandered through an empty landscape, with few outposts. Planning had established the places where gas could be obtained. Similarly, every food stop had been marked on the map they carried.

They reached Port Hedland twenty minutes after the anticipated arrival time, midmorning, and parked near the harbor.

Phil Durrant, the team leader, looked out over the water. He spotted the ship he was looking for and pointed it out to his people.

“All ready and waiting for us,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Our boy should be waiting in the café just along the way. Let’s do this.”

The driver backed the SUV into the parking spot next to the café, alongside an older, open-backed and paint-faded Australian-made Holden 4x4. The café’s blue-and-white structure had wide windows overlooking the harbor, and as he climbed out of the SUV Durrant spotted their contact sitting at one of the booths. He leaned back inside the SUV. “Let’s go.”

Durrant turned and made his way into the café, leaving his team to handle the quiet transfer of the metal box into the 4x4, next to the clutter of tools and marine equipment. Durrant made silent contact with the waiting man who would take over the next stage of the delivery.

With the transfer complete the crew entered the café, where they joined Durrant at his table. None of them spoke to the contact man. Durrant and his team ordered food and drink. The contact man finished his own meal before paying at the counter and leaving the café. He climbed into his truck and drove away from the café.

The guy’s name was Karl. None of the men had ever met him, and identification was made from the photo image that Durrant had received over his cell phone. Committing the face to his memory Durrant had erased the photo.

All Durrant knew was that they were associates of the Hegre organization.

* * *

KARL DROVE DOWN the road, turning into the marine yard after showing his ID to the security guard at the gate. He was known as a regular in his position as a maintenance man working for one of the companies that serviced seagoing vessels using the Port Hedland facility. After a couple of minutes talking to the security guard, Karl drove on, along the dockside. He parked and hauled a couple of toolboxes from the back of his vehicle. One of the boxes contained the stolen diamonds that had been transported two thousand miles across the country by Durrant and his team.

As he made his way to one of the berthed ships, Karl acknowledged passing associates. He walked up a short gangway that allowed entry to the ship through an open cargo hatch, nodding to the crewman standing just inside.

“Just coming to fit that faulty pressure valve before you push off.”

The man nodded. “You know where to go.”

Karl nodded and continued on his way into the ship. He took a companionway that led belowdecks. Just before he reached the engine room he diverted and walked into the ship’s maintenance store. The guy in charge, known to Karl, took the stolen toolbox and vanished from sight behind the metal racks of parts where he opened the box, removed the heavy leather satchel holding the diamonds and placed it in a large metal locker. He returned to where Karl was waiting and handed back the toolbox, now considerably lighter. He had the replacement pressure valve ready, and Karl took it with him and left.

An hour later Karl left the ship and carried his toolboxes with him as he returned to his pickup. The toolboxes went into the back. Karl drove off the dock and picked up the road into Port Hedland.

In town he parked and sat behind the wheel as he made a quick phone call. When his contact picked up, he delivered the arranged confirmation.

“New pressure valve fitted.”

* * *

TWO HOURS LATER the ship left the harbor and headed out to sea. It was heading for Hong Kong and the harbor at Kowloon. When it docked a few days later, the consignment of diamonds was left in the locker while the ship was unloaded and the crew went ashore for a break. The crewman assigned to handle the diamonds would soon leave the ship and deliver them to the arranged place farther along the dock—a local fish cannery owned in part by Hegre, a legitimate business conglomerate that had a flourishing criminal element.

Lise Delaware received news of the imminent delivery. From Kowloon the satchel would be sent to Hegre’s agent in the Philippines. Once the deal had been completed and the money passed to Hegre the next part of the process would be negotiated and arrangements would be made for the contracted merchandise to get under way.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_08dd1aa3-1f58-56c7-8670-fd2cfc049df8)

Washington, D.C.

Special Agent in Charge Drake Duncan stood at the window of his office in the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building. A gray drizzle of rain drifted past the glass. Dark clouds were coming in over the city. The weather matched Duncan’s mood.

He was in charge of the task force investigating the Hegre organization. It was still causing the FBI man sleepless nights. Since becoming involved in the virus investigation a while back, when he had first realized the reclusive nature of Hegre, Duncan had accepted that even the combined resources of the agency were having problems. Now, months following the original investigation, the FBI was seeing only scraps of information. Leads had taken them in a hopeful direction, only to fade away to nothing. He was beginning to understand just how complex the criminal group was. From what had come to light during the virus affair—the involvement of an FBI agent who had been bought off and the existence of a member of the CDC in Atlanta who had handed Hegre samples of the smallpox—Duncan had accepted he was combating a criminal conspiracy with a far-reaching network of contacts. Hegre bought and paid for the best help it could find. And it was obvious the organization was not held back by moral concerns. Hegre was in the business of making money. It didn’t make judgments on the consequences of its operations as long as it profited. It operated on a simple, cold blooded premise: if a venture made money Hegre was interested. Right now Duncan had a problem on his hands, which was the reason for the call he was making to the one man who could help him.

Matt Cooper.

Duncan was the first to accept that Cooper’s direct involvement in the Hegre-North Korea operation had resulted in the curtailing of the incident. Despite Cooper not being part of the FBI, or any agency Duncan knew about, the man obviously had top-ranking backup. And if it hadn’t been for the man’s selfless resistance, more people would have died and the lethal strain of adapted smallpox could have resulted in countless deaths.

SAC Drake Duncan was a dedicated agent, who had the strength of the FBI to back him. Yet here he was calling on a man who worked by a set of rules far beyond the FBI’s agenda. He was doing it because an agent was dead, another missing and Duncan was placed in the position of not trusting the people around him. It was a sad, but undeniable fact.

Hegre had breached the FBI previously. Duncan had the nagging feeling that might have happened again, because the dead agent—Ray Talbot—had been operating under deep cover, his actions sanctioned by Duncan himself, with very few people aware of the fact.

The FBI worked on a mandate of loyalty, with each and every agent sworn to uphold the law and deliver unbiased and corruption-free service. On the other side of the coin was human frailty, the probability that certain individuals could fall into the dark side of life. It had happened over the years, luckily on a small scale, but no organization was immune.

Duncan had built his team by handpicking each member. Yet even that did not preclude someone slipping inside who had a less-than-honest mandate. Ray Talbot had been working in the field under the charge of Duncan’s most trusted—and in this case there was no chance of any suspicion—team leader. Special Agent Sarah Mitchell, early thirties, was a young woman who had come up through the ranks as a Duncan protégée. Smart and capable, she had sailed through FBI training and once in the field had exhibited a natural resourcefulness in her work. Intuitive, she saw things that others might easily miss, and she picked up on the minutia of operating procedure with ease. She also had a willful nature that sometimes got the better of her. Not deliberately smart-mouthed, she could exchange banter with the best, and on more than one occasion her eagerness almost got the better of her.

Duncan found her refreshing. He would have willingly put himself on the line for her, knowing that in any situation she would always have his back. In terms of the physicality of FBI work she was hard to beat. Her marksmanship, with a variety of weapons, was always at the top of the score card.

He had put her in charge of the current phase of the Hegre investigation. She had taken a keen interest in the matter, to the point that Duncan had to remind her to treat it like any operation. He understood her frustration. Sarah Mitchell hated being beaten and no matter how sophisticated Hegre appeared to be, to Mitchell it was simply another criminal organization and as such she channeled her energy toward bringing it down. SAC Duncan had laid out her assignment, then given her free rein to run the operation on her own, with his overall supervision.