Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14) (12 page)

Mark realized that Ericka was playing some sort of
mind game with him.  That’s what she had always liked to do.  He hadn’t given
her his new home address—hell, he hadn’t given her his
old
home address. 
Even though he’d attempted to get into contact with her earlier, she hadn’t
given him any indication that she wanted to talk to him
in person
. 

She’d tracked him down for a reason, other than
relaying sensitive information.  There were other ways to get the intel through
safe channels without having to contact him face-to-face.  She was up to
something for sure, but Mark didn’t know what.

****

Looking at Mark now, Colleen couldn’t help but
think of the last time she’d been with him.  Of all the men that she had been
with, Mark had been one of the best in the bedroom.  Really, he should have
written a “How To” book on the female orgasm—most men just didn’t even have a
clue in that regard.  Like most things about Mark, his looks were understated
as well. 

Mark didn’t have typical baby-faced male model
features, but he was a ruggedly handsome man.  He had a strong face and a
square jaw.  He had that gruff New Yorker accent befitting a man who had
proudly grown up in the Bronx.  The jagged, white scar on that split through
his left eyebrow and extended down an inch only served to amplify his dangerous
appearance. 

She knew from personal experience that he also had
a scar right above his left breast; it looked like a knife wound of some sort. 
He wasn’t very tall.  Mark stood at about only 5’9’’ or so.  But the confident
way that he carried himself made him appear larger than life.  He was very
muscular, with lean hips and a full eight-pack worth of abs.  Colleen also knew
from personal experience that he had very strong, capable hands. 

Perhaps in another life she would have tried to
make a relationship out of what they’d had.  He had been married when she first
met him.  He hadn’t attempted to hide that fact, either.  When they had last
been together, she had noticed that he had had the habit of absent-mindedly
rubbing the gold band on his left ring finger. 

Mark hadn’t made her any promises, and she hadn’t
made any promises to him either.  She hadn’t been looking for any type of
commitment from him.  Colleen hadn’t cared either way about his marital status
because she herself wasn’t much the staying type.  Tonight, however, she had
noticed that his ring finger was missing the wedding band.   

She shifted her position on the sofa to take in
her surroundings.  Mark’s house was the type of house that was bigger on the
inside than it seemed to be from the outside.  Three barstools stood at the
counter that separated the kitchen from the living space.  A warm shade of red
splashed the living room walls.  Overall, the home had a quaint, “lived-in” air
about it.  It was actually very surprising.  She had expected that Mark’s
living quarters would mirror his gruff personality and would be less inviting.

The sofa that she was sitting on was made of soft,
black leather.  Another sofa that had been pushed into an “L” shape beside it
was of the same fabric.  A large cedar bookcase sat in the corner nearest to
Colleen.  Mark really did have a vast and very impressive collection of books. 
She could see a few of the titles, which included the complete works of Plato
& Aristotle, “The Art of War,” “U.S. Army U.S. Marine Corps Counterinsurgency
Field Manual,” and “The History of Sea Power Upon History.”  

In addition to his reading materials, there were a
few oil paintings on the wall and a flat screen television.  The television
hung above the mantel of the decorative fireplace in the living room.  A couple
of photographs sat in frames on the mantel of the fireplace.  One of the photos
showed Mark and an older gentleman laughing on a sailboat.  In the other
photograph, Mark was standing with some of his military friends in full dress uniform. 

Turning her attention back around to Mark, she
studied his movements while he opened one of his kitchen cabinets to retrieve
two brown coffee mugs. 

“Sugar or cream?” Mark asked her, filling up the
two cups with the steaming hot liquid.

“Two sugars, but no cream,” she replied.  A few
seconds later, Mark walked from the kitchen to where Colleen sat on the sofa. 
He carefully placed her cup on one of the coasters on his coffee table. 

“Thanks,” Colleen said, looking from where Mark
had placed the coffee cup, up into his dark brown eyes.

She watched Mark stand before her.  He stood
there, holding his coffee mug in one hand as he stared back down at her.  He
looked uncomfortable; as if he had to make sure that he stayed on his tiptoes
around her.  He’d tightly pressed his lips together and his left hand was
lightly skimming across his lower lip. 

After hesitating for a brief moment, he sat down
beside her on the leather couch.  She noticed that he had situated himself as
far to the left of her as possible, but without giving up his view of the
manila folder that she had placed on his table.

Colleen picked up the beige envelope and opened it
under Mark’s hawkish eye.  Opening the packet, she pulled out a stack of photos
and laid them out in front of her on his coffee table.  She took a sip of the
piping, hot coffee and then pointed to one of the photographs on the table.

“Do you recognize this man?” she asked.  Mark
leaned in to get a closer look at the man to whom Colleen was pointing her
finger. 

The photograph was of Richard Henning and an
unidentified man who appeared to be in his late forties to early-fifties.  The
man was pale-skinned, tall, and thin.  He was also wearing round, wire-rimmed
glasses.

“No, I have never seen him before,” Mark replied. 
“Should I know him?”

“Well, meet Dr. Saverin Tarasov.  Dr. Tarasov is a
renowned chemist who has worked for a company called Nava Drug Corp for the
past five years.  The drug company is based out of Russia, and they run a
pretty lucrative business operation by manufacturing medications for the
treatment of cancer and heart disease.”  Colleen stopped speaking and took
another sip of the strong coffee.

“Where and when was this photo taken?”

“The photo was taken in Afghanistan during
Henning’s recent goodwill tour.”

“Okay . . . so this chemist for a Russian
pharmaceutical company is an acquaintance of Henning.  So what?  It’s not much
of a stretch that Henning would know prominent men in the international
pharmaceutical industry.  As a Congressman he has taken on the promotion of
international health initiatives as part of his platform for a potential
re-election bid.”

Colleen glanced at him and shook her head.  “Dr.
Tarasov is not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Russian chemist, Mark.  For
the past two years his activities have been closely monitored by the CIA and
NSA, FSB, MI5, and Mossad, among other international intelligence agencies,”
she replied.

“So, he is a pretty popular guy then.  Why all of
the attention?”

“Well.  Dr. Tarasov is originally from Albania, but
he and his family lived in Bosnia for quite awhile.  Do you remember the subway
attack ten years ago, shortly after 9/11, in a Bosnian subway where ricin
powder was released in the air via a mist?”

“Yeah, sure I remember.  It was horrible. 
Twenty-five subway passengers died.  It was one of the worst reported incidents
of bioterrorism during that period in the region.  Are you saying that Tarasov
had something to do with that?”

“No, I’m not saying that.  However, Tarasov’s
five-year-old daughter and his second wife, who was a pregnant elementary
school teacher at the time, were both passengers on the subway during the
attack.  Unfortunately, they were on the casualty list.  His daughter died
immediately.  His wife, however, lingered in a coma for two weeks before later
succumbing from the injuries that she sustained due to her exposure to the
toxin.”

“Damn.  That’s a horrible way to lose your
family,” Mark said.

Ricin was a particularly nasty neurotoxin
developed from the castor oil plant.  Even a small dosage of the powder could
kill an adult human if the toxin was inhaled or administered directly into the
body system.  Even those victims who managed to survive their exposure were
likely to have long-term organ damage, blindness, or severe scarring of the
skin.

“Yes, well don’t feel completely sorry for him. 
He didn’t exactly turn the other cheek,” Colleen continued.  “Two years after
the attack, seven members of the group that had publicly taken responsibility
for the subway attack were shot and killed while at a wedding party of one of
the members of the group.”

“Yeah, well you could probably reason that they
deserved the punishment they got,” Mark replied, his lips tightened in a grim
straight line.

“Yeah, you very well could.  However, the carnage
just didn’t stop there.  Not only were those seven men executed, but everyone
at the entire venue was killed.  All in all sixty-people, men, women, and
children—three generations of two families—wiped out in just a few minutes. 
Talk about overkill.”

“Shit.  So there’s evidence that Tarasov was
responsible?”

“Well, if there had been enough evidence to make a
case he would either have been executed or be behind bars right now.  There
were lots of rumors, of course, but nothing concrete enough that would make the
charges stick.  Witnesses were impossible to find.  Now, that is not to say
that there hadn’t been any.  They just hadn’t been fool enough to talk. 
Tarasov left Bosnia shortly after the killings and moved to Russia where he has
lived ever since.  He has one niece who he appears to be close to, and he has
sent her money to pay for her tuition bills.  His niece’s name is Natashka
Tarasov, and she is a student at Brevard College in New York.”

“Interesting.  But even if, for argument’s sake,
he took part in those killings, being a cold-hearted SOB doesn’t necessarily
make someone a terrorist.  What makes you or other members of the intelligence
community believe that he has anti-American terrorist ties?”

Colleen raised her eyebrow at this question. 
“Well for starters, the fact that he has been photographed with members of the
international terror network Al-Jaazeez.  And you know what they say: ‘I can
tell you who you are when you tell me who your friends are’.” 

She then shifted through the documents on the
table until she found the photograph that she was looking for.  “See here, this
photo was taken three years ago in Iran.  Dr. Tarasov was seen meeting with
three key members of the Al-Jaazeez terror group outside of a weapons
manufacturing facility.”

The Al-Jaazeez network was a notorious terrorist
organization that had been prominent during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. 
This organization’s original cell had first sprung out of a small village in
Ghor province in Afghanistan.

The group had conducted a series of suicide
bombings on local market places and at the U.S. military installation in Kabul
throughout 2003-2008.  Their attacks had resulted in the deaths of
approximately 550 U.S. military personnel and Afghan citizens.  

“Does the Al-Jaazeez network have any link to the
Haqqai group?”

“A tentative connection has emerged through the
contacts that I have been developing.  Dr. Tarasov has been consorting with
another big player, Dr. Haseem Adil, who has had past associations with the
Afghanistan-based Al-Jaazeez.  So far the only other link that has been
recovered that may lead to a specific connection with the Haqqai network is to
a small madrassa that Dr. Adil has made donations to that is located in
Miranshah, Pakistan.”

Madrassas were Islamic seminary schools that were
known to teach mostly Islamic subjects to male youths, which usually culminated
in their graduation from the school as religious clerics.  During the
US-Afghanistan war, there had been a serious focus on madrassas as being a key
area of concern.  Some terrorist groups used madrassas primarily as breeding
grounds to recruit and train future jihadists. 

Colleen knew that the overwhelming majority of
Afghan parents who sent their children to madrassas—sometimes across the border
in Pakistan—sent them there to obtain a proper education, but not to be
indoctrinated into extremist viewpoints. 

However, a small percentage of madrassas had the
reputation of recruiting young children to become suicide bombers or
jihadists.  Many pundits called this type of radicalization of young children,
brainwashing.  But that classification wasn’t entirely accurate.  Brainwashing
was more of a coercive persuasion that could occur in a relatively short
timeframe.  Instead, the extremist jihadist radicalization process was a slow
inculcation into extremist views, largely inspired by Al-Qaeda.

Colleen continued, “But the agents on the ground
in both Afghanistan and Pakistan are working overtime.  We do not have any
concrete information to support that the madrassa in Miranshah has been in any
untoward activities or has had any terrorist involvement.  My contacts in the
field are trying to uncover as much information about the school’s current
students and teachers of the school, clerics who have graduated from there, and
the financiers of the operation.  I should receive additional information about
the status of the school in the next seventy-two hours.”

Mark took his time reviewing the additional photos
and documents that she had brought with her.  Colleen helped herself to a
second cup of coffee while Mark perused the files.  It took about an hour
before he was able to read all of the material.

“You’re not the only one looking into this matter
you know,” Colleen said matter-of-factly.