Travis Starnes
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Extraction (John Taylor #8) - Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2021-10-01 13:02:06 +0000 UTCSomalia, 20 miles east of Berbera
“Scott, do you have that list of the bids,” Cameron Lambert asked, sticking his head over the edge of his cubicle.
“Not yet. We’re supposed to get the final list by this afternoon.”
“You’re kidding? We’re supposed to be delivering this thing next week and they’re yelling at me from upstairs that they need all the bids in now, so they can make the final decision by Friday. I can’t go back and tell them ‘hey, can you wait till tomorrow.’ What’s the holdup?”
“Something in IT. I knew it was a mistake to set up in the ass-end of nowhere, but no one listens to me.”
“Tell me about it. I’ll go and talk to the geeks and see if we can’t get this shit fixed.”
“Remember, you can’t …”
“I know, I know. I get need to know and security, but there’s a time and a place for it. If we can’t get any emails because they’re not told anything, then what’s the point?”
“Hey, I get it, but you know how it is. You signed up for this when you started working on K-Street.”
“Yeah, but I thought I’d get to actually work on K-Street, not some off-site compound wrapped up in security. All right, I’ll be back.”
Cameron pushed his uncomfortable office chair out of the way and wove his way through the small room packed with cubicles. When Cameron had first heard about this assignment, managing the sale of their newest product from a secret compound, he’d been excited. He’d imagined some non-descript warehouse in the streets of Detroit or something, coming in and out through a door with no sign each day, not being able to tell his neighbors where he worked. At least, that’s how it was in the movies.
Instead, he was eating, sleeping, and working in an eight-thousand square foot building, jammed in with fifteen other people, on the coast of Africa miles away from any other humans. They’d barely gotten the company to spring for an IT person, so a cook was completely out. All of their meals were frozen or from a can and heated up in a tiny little building in the corner of the compound, usually in a microwave. He’d lived better than this as a broke college student.
Stepping through the windowless little room and out into the bright African Sun, he blinked to clear his vision. At least it wasn’t melting hot. He’d been worried about that when he’d finally heard they were headed to Somalia, imagining scenes of barren desert or rocks or … something. Beyond seeing some action movie about the place a few years back, he hadn’t had any idea what Somalia was like. Considering all he’d seen since getting here was the airport, a ride in a tarp-covered truck, and this compound, he supposed he still didn’t, not really.
They were on the coast, though, which meant there was enough of a breeze to cool down the hottest part of the day. It felt closer to Florida than a desert, so it wasn’t all bad. Now, if they could just bring in some girls, it might not be completely miserable.
Cameron made his way across the cluttered compound to another small building that held their IT specialist and all of his equipment.
“Nash,” Cameron said, knocking on the door. “What’s going on with the internet? We can’t get any emails to send or receive and we’ve got some time-sensitive stuff we’re waiting on.”
“I know, and I’m working on it. The satellite hookups they sent us out here with are really outdated. I swear, they must have pulled this stuff from a mothballed warehouse somewhere, because I’ve set up some other remote locations before, and we always had up-to-date equipment. This stuff won’t hold a signal and has huge packet loss, which is why you’re having trouble with the messages.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Maybe. I know we need to have everything safe, but our system already has pretty good security. Why do we need to use this separate encrypted mail system? If we didn’t use it, I’d be able to work around the bad signal a lot easier.”
“I don’t know; we’re just doing what we’re told. I think they’re worried about a competitor getting details of the project before it goes public or something. We’re all dealing with the security bullshit on this. Trust me; I’d rather be back in D.C.”
“Tell me about it. Give me twenty more minutes and I should have it.”
“Try and make it faster if you can. This whole thing is time-sensitive and I don’t …”
A loud bang interrupted Cameron before he got the sentence out. He had just turned around, mouth agape at the smoking hole that had been the compound door, when he was flung back into the IT shed. For a moment, he lay on the floor, unable to catch his breath, trying to figure out what had happened.
It wasn’t until he put his hands on his chest that he realized he’d been shot, his fingers coming back red. That was when the pain started, his brain finally catching up with his body, telling him something had gone wrong. Looking down, Cameron could see a dark bloom spreading out across his white shirt. He tried to push himself up, but his legs weren’t responding, and he slid back down, his head smacking against a crate of cables.
He looked around in terror, finally making eye contact with Nash. He tried to call out, to ask for help, and nothing came out except a gurgle followed by a trickle of blood leaking out the side of his mouth. Cameron stared into Nash’s eyes, the sounds of gunfire and shouting fading out, the man’s terrified face slowly going fuzzy before everything faded to black.
****
Washington, D.C.
“That’s the last time I leave the country,” Taylor said, dropping two large suitcases just inside of the front door.
“Sometimes I swear you just like to complain,” Whitaker said, dodging around him and putting the bags she was carrying in the den.
Taylor sighed, pushing the bags against the wall so they weren’t in the way of the door. She’d been moody ever since they got up this morning, and had barely talked to him the entire flight back, mostly answering in mumbles or one-word snarky sentences when she did talk.
He knew she wasn’t angry at him, because she wasn’t the type to get passive-aggressive. She always told him exactly what she was mad about, often in very loud and blunt terms. He’d tried to ask her what was wrong, but she just said nothing and went back to ignoring him. He hadn’t said anything yet because it had been a long honeymoon, and maybe she was just tired.
“You’re back!” Kara said, running from down a hallway and throwing her arms around Whitaker.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“You sent me your itinerant, remember? I wanted to be here when you got back.”
“Itinerary,” Taylor corrected, leaning down and kissing her on the top of her head as he walked by.
“Yes, itinerary,” Kara said, letting go of Whitaker and grabbing Taylor in a hug before he could walk away. “How was England?”
“Rainy,” Taylor said, hugging her back.
“See, all he wants to do is complain,” Whitaker said, walking into the kitchen.
Kara gave him a look as to say, ‘did something happen?’
He gave her a ‘don’t worry about it’ look in response.
Kara shrugged and said, “He has reputation to maintain. Like the brown bear, he must remind you he’s got teeth or you will think he’s cuddly and not take him seriously.”
“Cuddly, am I,” Taylor said, weakly trying to put her into a headlock that she easily skipped out of. “England was fine. The tower was cool and we toured a few castles. The food sucked.”
“It would have been better had we been able to go to real restaurants instead of a crappy pub every night.”
“I was just trying to get the local culture.”
“Beer isn’t the only culture in England,” Whitaker said, coming back into the living room. “Besides, we managed reservations at several very nice restaurants where the food was great. He just thought they were too fancy. How’d you get here?”
“Mary Jane dropped me off on her way to a thing for her mom. I told her you’d give me a ride home.”
“Ugh, we just got off a seven-hour flight. I just want to take a shower and crawl into bed.”
“I can stay here tonight and you can take me back in the morning.”
“Don’t you have school,” Taylor said, flopping down on the couch. “It’s still Wednesday, right?”
“No and yes. Last week was the end of the semester. I’m on summer break.”
“How’d you do this semester,” Whitaker asked.
“Good. My counselor says I’m caught up and almost all the way on level and if next year goes well, I’ll be able to graduate at the end of the school year.”
“See, I said you were smart enough to catch up,” Taylor said.
“I was smart enough to convince Mary Jane and her friends to help tutor me all year and take classes all last summer.”
“You would have made it even without all that.”
“Can I stay with you two tonight? Mary Jane has some late event with her mother and won’t be back tomorrow, and I get bored when no one else’s there.”
“You really should move back here. We aren’t out in Alexandria anymore. You could live here and go to school. I’m sure Mary Jane might like to go back to living on her own.”
“Has she said anything?” Kara asked.
“No, but she’s in her early twenties, and I’m sure she wants to have boys over or do her own thing without a high school student hanging around.”
“That’s how it is? She’s my best friend, and she doesn’t care that I’m a little younger than her.”
“Six years younger,” Taylor said. “But I think it would also be good to have you back here with us.”
“You two still live pretty far away, and are farther from the metro now than when you were in Alexandria. Getting me to school would still be a problem every morning, and I don’t want to transfer to a public school. You can say I’d have caught up no matter what, but we both know it wouldn’t have happened if I went to a normal school.
“Why not. We’ll take you home tomorrow,” Taylor said. “When do you start your internship?”
“Two weeks.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to find something else?” Taylor asked, restarting an argument that had raged for weeks in their house.
“We’ve been through this,” Whitaker said, sticking her head out of the kitchen. “I didn’t push her into it, she asked. Besides, I did the high school program with the Bureau when I was a kid, and I loved it.”
“You were never a kid. You were assembled at some G-Man factory in the Midwest.”
“I still do not understand why you did not want me to go with you,” Kara said, putting on her best fake pout. “I have never seeing England.”
“You know why, Kara,” Taylor said. “You didn’t have time. You had school and finals to finish and only a week and a half until your internship started. Your schedule was just too tight.”
“Plus, it was our honeymoon. We had put it off for months already, and people don’t normally take their kids on their honeymoon.”
“We could have still made it work,” Kara muttered.
“Okay, my bullshit meter is going off the scale. You’re angling for something, what is it?”
“Fine. There’s a break in my schedule at the end of the year after my internship finishes and my school starts again. Mary Jane is planning a trip to Eastern Europe, and she asked if I wanted to go. She’s going to Prague, Bucharest and Montenegro.”
“No,” Taylor said.
“Why not?”
“You know why not. The Bratva is still pissed about what happened in Belorussia, and would like nothing more than a little payback. They don’t have the infrastructure here to touch you, especially with the kind of security you have living with Mary Jane, but things are a lot different in Europe, especially that close to Russia.”
Kara stomped her foot and switched to Russian, which is something she did every time she got annoyed.
“It’s not like I’m going to be traveling alone. Mary Jane’s mother will make sure we have plenty of security and we aren’t going into the places where those people operate. They aren’t going to start an international incident just to get some whore they lost.”
“First of all, you know I don’t like it when you talk like that, and you know it goes further than that. Malik and his son were big players and the organization takes their deaths seriously.”
“You know I hate it when you two do this,” Whitaker said.
“Sorry,” Taylor said, switching back to English. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea going back there if you don’t have to.”
“And I think they don’t care. It’s been two years and they have not made any attempt to come after either of us since we came back. Besides, I will be with Mary Jane and her security detail the whole time.”
“She has a point,” Whitaker said. “I think it should be fine, although we’ll need to have a talk with the agent in charge of Mary Jane’s detail. They might decide you’re too much of a risk to take with them, or her mother might, for that matter.”
“If they all agree that it’s still safe to go, will you let me,” Kara asked?
“We shouldn’t write it off out of hand,” Whitaker said, looking back to Taylor. “Let’s just look into it, okay?”
“Fine,” Taylor said, knowing when he was beaten. “We can talk to them and see what they think. To be clear, I’m not saying yes. I’m just saying we can look into it.”
“Thank you,” Kara said, standing on her tiptoes and kissing him on the cheek.
Someone knocked on the door, causing all three to turn and look. Kara started to go around Taylor to answer, until he put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back. They lived in a gated community and killers didn’t tend to knock when planning an attack, so it was unlikely there was anyone dangerous on the other side of the door, but they’d had enough close calls over the years that he tended to be a little jumpy every time.
Calling over his shoulder, Taylor said, “How about we …”
Taylor’s voice trailed off as he opened the door.
“Hi, John,” Claire said. “I need your help.”
