Jet 04: Reckoning

  JET IV

  ~

  Reckoning

  Russell Blake

  Copyright 2012 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:

  [email protected].

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  Table of Contents

  Excerpts from Russell Blake’s novels

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  The Geronimo Breach excerpt

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Fatal Exchange excerpt

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  About the Author

  Excerpts from Russell Blake’s novels

  The Geronimo Breach by Russell Blake

  The Geronimo Breach is a breakneck-paced thrill ride that pits a despicable protagonist against the world’s deadliest adversaries. When a pilfered object goes missing, he unwittingly becomes the object of a murderous jungle manhunt to retrieve a stolen secret so shocking it would alter the world’s balance of power.

  Purchase The Geronimo Breach

  Go to The Geronimo Breach excerpt

  Fatal Exchange by Russell Blake

  Fatal Exchange is the story of Tess Gideon, an iconoclastic female Manhattan bike messenger with an appetite for the wild side embroiled in a rogue nation’s Byzantine scheme to destabilize the U.S. financial system. As the body count climbs, Tess is targeted for extermination by a rogue nation’s torture squad while being stalked by a brutal serial killer.

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  Go to the Fatal Exchange excerpt

  Prologue

  Papua, Indonesia

  Hulking yellow ore trucks sat quietly in a sprawling gravel lot, their huge, battered carrying bins empty. A bored guard lounged in the gatehouse, listening to a CD on a small portable stereo as he sat sentinel over nearly two hundred vehicles. After a long day of grinding routine, the shifts had departed and the incessant roar of motors and machinery had subsided, leaving the area eerily quiet compared to the daytime cacophony.

  The torrential rain had finally slowed to a drizzle, a remnant of a monsoon that had blown in earlier during the afternoon and dumped six inches of water on the mountains in as many hours, making the access roads muddy but manageable, as was frequently the case in September.

  The largest gold mine in the world was shut down for the night, awaiting the return of the nearly twenty thousand workers who would arrive at dawn to operate the machines that had stripped the top off a nearby peak, methodically extracting the precious ore that held gold, silver, and copper – natural resources that should have made the region one of the wealthiest on the planet. In reality, the prosperity was almost entirely leached off by the Indonesian government and the company that operated the mine. The jewel in that corporation’s crown, it was responsible for unimaginable profits, while the majority of locals lived in primitive tribal conditions, much as they had for thousands of years.

  That lifestyle was doomed, the toxic sediment from the open pit mine having clogged the rivers and poisoned the animals, intruding into every area of the ecosystem and sullying everything it touched. Fishing, hunting, and virtually any endeavor that required clean water or land were finished in the region – an acceptable cost for the conglomerate that earned billions each year, though not for the natives whose land was forever ruined.

  A roaming sentry shined his flashlight beam in the direction of the man watching the silent vehicles from the guardhouse, then swept it over the huddled silhouettes before returning to the path in front of him. The security force was equipped with pistols and shotguns, but there hadn’t been any problems at the site for several years, so the men were relaxed about their duty – one of near-endless drudgery.

  Headlights bounced up the rutted access road toward the entry gate, and a pickup truck pulled to a stop. The bed was filled with laughing local men whose chocolate skin glistened from the rain, a nuisance to which they were inured, having grown up with the monsoons – the periodic storms as routine as the sun setting into the sea that surrounded their island.

  A guard welcomed the graveyard shift maintenance men with a wave and exchanged a few words with the grinning driver, then raised the barricade and motioned for it to pass. The vehicle lurched off with a groan, its springs straining with the human cargo. The guard lowered the barricade back into position, his sole task for the next six hours completed.

  The local islanders didn’t mix with the transplanted immigrants from Indonesia, preferring to keep to themselves in one of the company towns that had been built to house the workforce. The islanders were bitter that they had gone from owning the island to being a minority, the influx of immigrants having swelled the non-indigenous ranks to over fifty percent of the population, encouraged by the Indonesian government, which was anxious to minimize the power of the natives.

  Efforts to create an independent nation had been stymied when Indonesia effectively annexed the western half of New Guinea and imposed its rule, a move ratified in a sham election in 1969 in which the population was prevented from voting, except for one thousand twenty-five ‘representatives’ of the New Guinea people, who were instructed by their governors to vote for an Indonesian regime or be slaughtered. Unsurprisingly, the vote was unanimous – and approved by the United Nations in a shameful acceptance of the shotgun wedding election.

  Consequently, over a third of the locals lived on less than ten dollars a week and subsisted on primitive farming in conditions of misery and squalor. Malaria killed a huge number of the islanders each year, largely because of inadequate health care and basic infrastructure.

  The night air was thin at fourteen thousand feet, so the mercenaries were winded after the long trek from their base camp. Bright spotlights illuminated the barren mine production area, operations having ceased hours before, and only a security detachment remained to guard against vandals or theft. The outline of the massive open pit gashed into the heart of the mountain was just visible in the gloom, the yawning expanse stretching for over a mile.

  The leader of the group of six men pointed to his right at the aerial tramway that ran down the side of the mountain. A short, muscular man with a large backpack strapped securely in place nodded, and then broke off from his companions and made for the control area. The others watched him disa
ppear into the dark before turning their eyes to the leader, who pointed at the buildings below them.

  “You know the drill. Let’s get this over with. I want to be out of here in half an hour, tops,” he said, then gestured at the buildings – a hospital, a school, and the production facilities.

  The men had run simulations on the most efficient way to achieve their objective and were prepared for what was to come. Each was equipped with a modified M4 assault rifle with a sound suppressor, visible laser, infrared illuminator, and PVS-17A mini night vision sights. But in spite of the firepower, the goal was to penetrate their objective, place explosive charges throughout the facility, including on the sluice pipelines and all communications wiring, and then slip away – not to get involved in a full-scale gun battle if they could avoid it. If they did have to fight their way out, however, they had come prepared. In the end, it didn’t much matter to the men either way – they’d all seen more than their share of combat and were as used to it as humans could be.

  The leader motioned to the men to split up, and they made their way to their pre-assigned targets, melting into the night like ghosts.

  A truck carrying two security men crawled along the perimeter road, the engine barely turning over, the patrol rounds obligatory. Everything seemed in order. Which it had been every night for as long as either of them could remember.

  “Hey, you thinking about what you’re going to do once you get a little time off?” the driver asked, making conversation, trying to kill the boredom that was a constant of the job.

  “No, not really,” his partner said. “I mean, I have to worry about the kids, and my – wait, did you see that? Over by the sluicing pipeline?” He pointed a wavering finger at the big pipes.

  “See what? You hitting the bottle early tonight?”

  “I saw something.”

  “Something. What was it?” the driver asked, slowing further and cranking the wheel to the right, bringing them closer to the huge pipelines that carried the slurry – a mixture of gold, silver, and copper concentrate – to the port at Amamapare seventy miles away, where it was filtered and dried before being shipped all over the world.

  “I don’t know. I thought I saw someone.”

  “At the pipes? What would they be doing there?” the driver asked caustically. “There’s nothing to steal.”

  “Can’t hurt to take a look.”

  The truck crept towards the pipelines.

  “I don’t see anything, do you?” the driver asked again, and his partner shook his head.

  “No. Wait a second. What’s that over by that seam? Can you make it out?” The guard aimed his LED flashlight at the pipes.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Over there. I see something.”

  “I don’t. This is a waste of time.”

  “You’re probably right, but let’s check it out on foot. You never know.”

  The driver rolled to a stop and both guards got out, the passenger carrying a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun in addition to his sidearm.

  They moved around the concrete wall that separated the pipeline from the access road, the beams of their lights playing along the freshly painted metal surface of the three pipes. Both men stopped at the same point twenty yards away. Two rectangles protruded from the surface, near a welded seam where the sections had been joined.

  “What the hell is–”

  The driver’s chest exploded in a bloody pulp as three silenced rounds tore through it, his exclamation cut short by a gurgle as he flew forward and landed face first in the wet dirt. His partner swung the shotgun back towards the road where the truck sat idling, but never made it. Two slugs blew off the side of his face and the top of his skull with a wet thwack before he could find a target to shoot at.

  A figure in black stepped from the shadows adjacent to the nearby maintenance shack, leading with the silenced snout of his M4, and hurried to the two corpses and removed the radio from the driver’s belt before glancing up at the rectangles. A small red LED blinked at him. He double-checked his watch before tapping his ear bud and murmuring into it.

  “This is Jupiter. I took out two guards. I’ve got their radio, but we need to presume they’ll be missed. Where are we? Check in. Over.”

  A whispered voice responded in seconds. “Tram’s wired. I’m five minutes out from getting my secondary target finished. No interruptions so far. Saturn out.”

  “This is Mars. Ten minutes away from my target being completed. One patrol came by, but I didn’t engage.”

  The others checked in. They’d be ready to boogie in twenty minutes, tops.

  “Pluto here. I’m headed to the communications center. See everyone at the rendezvous point in twenty. Check in if there are any more casualties. Don’t leave any survivors.”

  The group’s leader considered the latest and shook his head in silent disapproval, then returned to sighting through the night scope at the guard standing under the overhang of the darkened building that housed the cables and communication equipment connecting the mine to the outside world. They had always known there would be collateral damage, but the more of the security detail that went missing, the greater the chances that the operation would be interrupted before all the charges were placed.

  He made a quick judgment call and lightly squeezed the rifle’s trigger. His weapon spat death into the night, and the hapless guard collapsed in a bloody heap. It couldn’t be helped. He’d been watching the man for five minutes, but the drizzle had kept the sentry glued to the building, and now he was short on time. There was no room for failure or partial completion of their mission. The orders had been unambiguous: cripple the mine so that it would be out of commission for months. It had been made clear that payment hinged on the success of their work, and no qualms had been voiced about any casualties that resulted. The objective was paramount, and anyone who got in the way was expendable.

  He trotted to the building and, without glancing at the dead guard, moved to the locked door and affixed a small charge to the deadbolt. Ten seconds after he flipped the switch, the small detonator gave a dull thump and the door blew open, the noise muffled by an incoming cloudburst. He swung around, checking to verify he was still alone, then edged into the gloom of the darkened interior, taking care to swing the door closed.

  Four minutes later the leader stepped back out and scanned the area, then sprinted to the dead man’s security truck and pulled away, pausing to give the rest of his group an update as he drove towards the main gate. The guards there would also have to be executed, but he’d planned to do so anyway once all the charges had been placed, signaling the conclusion of the night’s work.

  His ear bud clicked and another report came in – four of the group were now done and ready to roll. The fifth man murmured a terse update – he would be finished shortly.

  The truck’s headlights swung towards the gate that protected the mine’s primary entry road, and just as the leader was drawing near it the distinctive roar of a shotgun boomed from one of the buildings near the crushing area. He stiffened as the radio he’d lifted from the dead guard crackled to life.

  “We have at least one intruder in sector C. He’s shooting at me. David got off one with the shotgun, but he’s down. Doesn’t look like he’s going to make it.” The voice sounded panicked, and then two smaller caliber shots echoed from the same area, followed by three more. Pistol, by the sound of it.

  One of the two guards at the main gate squinted at the approaching truck and swung his shotgun towards it as his partner fumbled inside for his. The ruse the leader had hoped would get him close enough to take them both out had just gone down the drain. He gunned the gas and then cranked the wheel hard left as he stomped on the brakes, sending the truck into a controlled skid as it drew closer to the gate. The shotgun’s baritone detonation sounded from the guard shack, then the explosion of the windshield and passenger side window showered him with glass as the truck slowed to a stop. He jumped out, rolling onto t
he ground while he fought to keep the protection of the wheels between himself and the guard.

  Another deep boom; buckshot tore into the gravel next to him, and both rear tires popped. The leader took a breath, dodged to the side of the wheel, and cut the first guard in half with two staccato bursts from his rifle; then paused, waiting for more shooting. He was rewarded by another explosion and rolled clear of the truck, firing as he did. The second guard flew backwards and slammed against the wall, dropping his weapon in the process. The leader let loose another burst for good measure, obliterating the man’s head. He heard another few pops from below – the pistol again – and then the mine fell silent as his ear bud came to life.

  “This is Neptune. I’m hit, but the charges are in place.”

  The leader tapped his bud. “How bad?”

  “Shoulder. Not terminal. I can still make it to the rendezvous. Took down two guards.” Neptune’s voice sounded strained but calm.

  “Any more near you?”

  “Negative, but I see lights approaching, so we can expect pursuit.”

  “We can’t wait for you if you get stalled.” The leader’s voice was flat, emotionless.

  “Roger. I’ll be there.”

  Another glance at his watch told him they had three minutes until rendezvous. He reached into his backpack, removed a can of red spray paint, and approached the fallen guards, eyes scanning the periphery, his M4 at the ready. Once at the shack, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and popped the cap off the paint, tossing it onto the floor, and then carefully sprayed the message that would be found on the shack walls. Finished, he took a towel from the sack, wiped down the can, and threw it outside onto the gravel, next to the first butchered security guard’s corpse. Stepping back to inspect his work, he nodded to himself, and then extracted a phone from his pocket and took several photos.

  If the company or the government tried to hush up the attack on the mine, the images would go live on the internet within twenty-four hours, leaving them with no option other than to acknowledge that the unrest in the area had grown to the point where the sustainability of the operation was in question. Two similar painted messages had been left by his men in other strategic locations, so there could be no doubt about the apparent motives of the attackers.