Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1)

Dead in Their Tracks

A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Novel

By JT Sawyer

Copyright

Copyright
February 2015 by JT Sawyer

No
part of this book may be transmitted in any form whether electronic, recording,
mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without written permission of the
publisher.

This
is a work of fiction and the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,
incidents, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Preface

Turkmenistan

Black clouds moved across the moon
overlooking the seaside estate on the leeward side of Turkmenistan off the
Caspian Sea, providing cover for the woman darting along the knee-high stone
wall lining the courtyard of the three-story mansion. Thick leaves accumulated
on the cobblestones indicated that there had been little upkeep of the grounds,
giving the outward appearance that the place was unoccupied.

Devorah Leitner’s sleek figure floated
across the narrow walkway that led to a side door, her MP-5 submachine gun kept
at low-ready. Her handler, an older man named Anatoly, was behind her with his
rifle covering the high ground on the left. A four-man team nestled in the
shrubs twenty yards to the rear covered her approach and had already silently
sniped the two rooftop sentries. Dev’s fingers were still sore from the one-hundred-foot
climb up the cliff face they had to perform to breach the estate grounds. Their
Zodiac boats were tethered below and would provide their exodus back to an
island seven miles away.

Dev knelt down before an oaken door and
removed a set of lockpicking tools from her vest pocket, working the mechanism.
She whispered over her shoulder, speaking in Hebrew. “Ten seconds.”

“Once we’re inside, I’ll take the corridor
to the right and prepare to let our men in from the other side while you head
to the utility room and shut down the power,” said the older man in a stern voice.

She tried to hide her irritated smirk. Dev
knew the plan intimately and didn’t need any reminders. She finished
manipulating the lock and then slowly opened the vault-like door, its rusty
hinges groaning as it moved inward. Dev flipped on her small flashlight and the
two warriors proceeded inside, stepping silently on the hand-hewn stone flooring
that led into the safe house.

It had been four years since she began
working for Anatoly’s company, Gideon, which specialized in rescuing kidnap and
ransom victims. The K & R industry had burgeoned in recent years and
Anatoly’s former occupation as a high-level Mossad agent working for Israeli
Intelligence and Special Operations had provided him with an endless list of
employment opportunities from families who had exhausted the usual diplomatic
routes to freeing their loved ones. In this case, they were after an American
businessman who had been abducted three weeks earlier while working on
negotiations between the Turkmenistan government and a U.S. corporation. At
least that’s what the man’s family had told them. While Gideon had done its
best to uncover the entire abduction story, Dev knew that hostages were often kidnapped
for reasons other than mere dollars.

This was her first long-range assignment
with Anatoly and she sought only to perform her job efficiently and rescue the
victim. Any thoughts of winning her handler’s approval were secondary. At least
that’s what she tried to tell herself. Anatoly was a three-decade veteran of
such high-risk black ops and she held him in utter reverence. She had perfected
her skills through constant application on missions abroad but now she felt
like a gymnast atop a balance beam before an immense crowd.

Dev secreted herself against the wood-paneled
walls until she came to the first intersection. Peering around the left side,
she saw a door twenty feet ahead. According to the crude intel they’d gathered
on the estate, the circuit breaker was in a utility room across from the
kitchen. The plan was to eliminate the power grid while Anatoly and his other
shooters swept into the back room and secured the hostage.
This scheme
sounded good on paper back in the briefing room two days ago but Murphy’s Law
always seems to rear its ugly head when it wants. I hope this is a hasty snatch-and-grab.

He tapped her on the shoulder and
indicated his departure down the pathway to the right. She saw him trot into
the shadows and disappear. The dim passageway felt more claustrophobic now that
she was alone. Clutching her weapon,
Dev took a deep breath while
sliding along the wall towards her objective.

Nearing the utility room door, she
squelched her ear-mic once to indicate her forthcoming actions. She huffed out
a sigh, irritated that there was a heavy padlock securing the entrance. Dev
slung her rifle and inspected the bulky contraption. She reached into her vest
for her lockpicking tools again. As she hunched over, Dev felt the cold
sensation of a pistol barrel pressing into the back of her neck.

“Back up and show me your hands,” said a
voice in Arabic.

Dev turned and stared up at the tall figure
towering over her.  His thick beard obscured his face, giving him an
otherworldly appearance.
He waved the HK pistol at her, yelling while
reaching up for the two-way radio attached to his breast pocket. Dev swiftly
drove her right hand up over the top of his pistol while she sidestepped,
wrenching his weapon hand back until she heard his wrist ligaments pop. He
winced, releasing the pistol, but then struck her with a left cross along her
cheek. Dev recoiled into the wall, dropping the HK and ducking from another
incoming blow from the man’s gargantuan fist. There wasn’t time to grab her own
weapons and she slammed him in the upper quad with her instep then backhanded
him across the side of his neck. This slowed him for a second but only enraged
him further. He rushed forward in a linebacker tackle, shoving her into the
wall with such force that she felt her ribs compress. Dev drove her fingers
into the soft cartilage beside his trachea and then grabbed him by the hair,
slamming his head down into her upcoming knee. He shuffled back and reached
into his cargo pocket for a collapsible baton then flailed it wildly at her
head. His first strike connected with the side of her arm which she’d raised up
to protect her ribs. As he repositioned for another swing, she rushed in before
he could deliver and drove her fingers into his left eye. He shrieked and
backpedaled while Dev slammed her boot into his groin followed by an elbow
strike across his face. She knocked the baton from his hand with a downward
hammerstrike then retrieved it and slammed the brute across his forehead with
all her might. He went limp against the wall, sliding to the stone floor.
Damn,
he was a beast. That should take the fight out of him for a few hours.
Though
the reality of deadly combat was present in each mission, she tried to avoid it
if possible and knew he no longer posed a threat.

Dev was trembling, the adrenaline pulsing
through her veins as she tried to catch her breath. She rubbed her sore arm,
making sure nothing was broken but feeling the dull throb where a severe
contusion was forming. She took a hard swallow and scanned the hallway in
either direction. Dev retrieved her lockpicking tools from the ground and then paused,
glancing down at the unconscious guard. She leaned over and went through his
pockets, finding a set of keys. Dev removed the suppressed Glock from her leg
holster and walked back to the utility room door.

“What’s happening—what is your status?” She
could hear the edge in Anatoly’s voice in her ear.

“Just met with some resistance. The power
will be disabled shortly. Wait for my squelch.”

She slowly opened the padlock and swung
the door inward. The cinder-block room was lined with slate-gray metal cabinets
that housed the central fuses for the building. Dev scanned the panel to locate
the main terminal. After squelching her walkie-talkie three times, she flipped
the red control switch. The humming of the circuit breaker box ceased and the
room went dark. Moments later, the sound of flash-bang grenades and the cadence
of rifle double-taps emitted from the corridor behind her. She retreated from
the room, stepping over the inanimate figure on the ground, and made her way to
the back room where the captive was supposed to be located.

Rounding the corner, she paused to make
sure no bullets were flying in her direction. The staccato of gunfire ceased
and she heard the comforting sounds of her colleagues shouting in Hebrew that
the room was secure. Dev sprinted down the hallway and entered the haze of
gunsmoke. The overwhelming odor of sweat and urine permeated the stagnant air
and she held her sleeve up over her nose. Anatoly’s men were fanned out along
the room, inspecting the four dead abductors who were clad in black fatigues
and bore Middle Eastern complexions.

Dev pushed through the fog of smoke, moving
past a wheelchair whose leather restraints were saturated with dried blood. Her
boots crunched over some broken teeth on the ground and she kicked aside a pair
of tarnished pliers. As the haze dissipated through the open door, the
flashlights revealed the outline of the cavernous room.

God, I hope he’s still alive,
Dev thought.
Though
being in here with these disgusting pigs for three weeks, there may not be much
of a human being remaining in him.

With the horrific images of past victims
running like a reel though her head, she knew that many hostages remained
hidden from their rescuers, thinking they were another hallucination from their
drug-induced stupor, or they were in such a catatonic state that any sense of
hope had been purged from their traumatized psyche.

“Mr. Janson—Neal Janson—we are here to
rescue you,” she whispered tenderly, trying to sound non-threatening. Her
flashlight scanned the furthest recesses of the chamber, past a soiled mattress
to where the silhouette of a stooped figure sat.

The frail man was scrunched in a ball in
the corner like part of him had melted into the fissures of the damp bricks.
Dev moved up to him slowly, knowing he would either remain paralyzed from shock
or he would lash out at her, thinking she was another abductor. The sounds of
the other men in the room went silent in her head as she focused on the despondent
figure before her. Part of his left ear was missing, the edges jagged in
appearance like it had been sawed off rather than cleanly severed. Cigar burn
marks dotted his neck and forearms and his anemic skin color made him stand out
even in the dark recess.

She reholstered her pistol and placed her
outstretched hands in front of her as she knelt a few feet before him.

“Mr. Janson, we are here to get you out.
My name is Devorah. Your family sent us.”

The man slightly twisted his head, his one
good eye staring at her while the other remained closed from the heavy bruising
which encircled his right socket. His cracked lips parted, revealing his
blackened gums.

“They can’t hurt you anymore,” she said,
pointing to the scene behind her. “We are going to get you back home. Can you
walk?”

Janson nodded while tears streamed down
his cheeks. He shuffled forward, resting his grimy fingers upon her knee and
weeping. She held his hand and nodded back towards one of the men near the
entrance.

Petra, a wiry operator, came up beside her
and the two of them helped the feeble man to his feet. “We need to get some
distance from this place while we can,” said Petra.

Dev nodded in response and she helped walk
Janson to another operator near the entrance. After the injured man was
escorted out, Dev scanned the room one last time for any items of value then
retraced her steps down the hallway. As she came to the intersection near the
utility room, Anatoly came up beside her, giving a slight nod of disapproval.

“What?” she said, her eyebrows raised.

He moved his pistol towards the
unconscious man slumped on the floor. Anatoly fired a round into the large
figure’s head, spraying the concrete floor a wine color.

“I told you before, we don’t leave loose
ends—someone that can possibly put a face to our work.”

“He went down hard—I saw to it. He
wouldn’t have come to for a long time.”

Anatoly shook his head, lowering his
pistol. “This is why there is a sliver of doubt in me—doubt that you can take
the reins of my company one day.”

“I’ve passed all of your training,
exceeding even some of the former Mossad operatives you have. Just because I
won’t execute someone—that man couldn’t have even made out our faces in here,
it’s so dark.”

“There is no margin for error.”

They turned to walk away and she grabbed
his arm. “You don’t treat the others who work for you with nearly the same
scrutiny. I asked you long ago to see me as just another one of your staff—without
any special treatment.”

The man placed his weathered hand up to
her face, brushing a lock of black hair off her cheek. “You, Devorah—you bring
me so much joy and so much worry—my only daughter.”