Crisis in the Ashes Read online

  Bradley had been a paid assassin for the Osterman administration for a number of years, and his successes at ridding the USA of enemies of the State had no equal . . . he had only failed once, when his assignment had been to kill Ben Raines while he was at war with the Neo-Nazis in Africa, at a point when General Raines was occupied with tracking down and killing the leaders of the Nazi movement. Bradley had been waiting for Raines along the Congo River, and his shot, fired from a distance of more than three hundred yards, had been a narrow miss. When a team of SUSA Scouts was put on his trail, Bradley had felt lucky to get out of Africa with his life.

  But now a second chance loomed large, in Bradley’s view. He had a chance to get rid of one of Raines’s informants, and also a personal friend of his, a bed partner. It wasn’t quite the same as killing Raines himself. However, it was close enough to keep Bradley satisfied.

  Linda Lee was a war widow. For years she appeared to be in a struggle to survive on her tiny forty-acre farm. But the USA’s intelligence gathering had stumbled on a revelation only a few weeks ago . . . Linda Lee was an informant, sending valuable information to SUSA with regard to the USA’s troop movements. And she was a personal confidante of Ben Raines. Orders had gone out at once to eliminate her. As a side note, Raines might be with her on any given night, the reports said. Bradley couldn’t bring himself to believe Raines was foolish enough to visit someone so close to the USA capitol, but Raines was known to be a daring son of a bitch. Perhaps he did frequent her small farmhouse when he was in the vicinity, and visit her while she was alone. If he did, it must be assumed she was sleeping with him, as well as giving him valuable information his armies along the war front could use.

  Bradley meant to put an end to that tonight. If nothing else, he would silence Ms. Lee and break an important connection Raines had with the underground.

  Chris came closer to the house, armed with a tranquilizer gun, a silent weapon that would drop the attack-trained German shepherds in their tracks. Four darts loaded with a very powerful form of Thorazine filled the firing tube, enough to stop the biggest dogs on earth.

  As he expected, a dog began to bark near the cabin. He heard it barking, the sounds moving as the animal ran toward him through a dense stand of oak trees surrounding the house where an open meadow had been cleared around the building itself—proof to a fighting man like Chris Bradley that someone had prepared her living quarters for an assault. This was not the peaceful, rural farmhouse it had seemed from a distance, when he first visited the area in daylight.

  “C’mon, Lassie,” Chris whispered, hearing a second dog bark right after the first. “Sounds like Lassie has a friend with him tonight. I was told to expect two of you, and the Huskie.”

  He could see them now, two dark shapes dashing across an open field leading to the woods.

  “Keep comin’, Lassie . . . you an’ Rin Tin Tin. I’ve got a little surprise for you, an’ it goddamn sure ain’t the dog chow you’re used to.”

  He set his sights on the first huge dog and triggered off a dart. Chris heard the shepherd yelp softly, and then it tumbled to the ground, struggling to regain its feet, making soft whimpering noises.

  Two more, Chris thought. Intelligence reports on Linda Lee’s dogs said she kept the vicious, blue-eyed Huskie at her side virtually all the time. It was this animal he worried about most, since it rarely barked, according to the intelligence report given to General Maxwell.

  A second German shepherd appeared in his sights, and he sent a dart into its ribs. The dog went down instantly, rolling, not making a sound before it lay still in a patch of starlit grass fifty feet from the trees.

  Where’s the damn Huskie? Chris wondered, swinging his dart gun back and forth. Did she have the beast inside the cabin with her?

  He glanced at the house. A single light was burning in a window at the back.

  “The bitch is still awake,” he muttered. It would make it that much better, to kill a traitor bitch like Linda Lee with her eyes open.

  And still, there was no sign of the Huskie he’d been warned about. The creature was said to be a natural killer, trained by Ben Raines himself.

  “Where are you, you blue-eyed bastard?” he whispered under his breath.

  With both German shepherds out of the way, Chris decided on a bold move. He would cross the clearing . . . necessary to get to the rear of the house. If the Huskie showed up, he would have the tranquilizer dart gun in one hand, his Mauser 9 mm pistol in the other.

  “Screw the Huskie,” he said, leaving the trees. He was not truly afraid of any breed, so why worry about one Eskimo sled dog?

  His boots made a soft swishing sound through the grass . . . the noise something a dog would hear that might escape a human’s notice.

  “To hell with it,” he said, confident after leaving the pair of shepherds half-conscious.

  He crept over to the house, staying away from the square of yellow light from the windowpane. He paused long enough to listen for voices, or any hint that Ben Raines might be inside. It would be a coup, and a handsome reward in his pockets, if he got Raines along with the woman.

  Glancing around him, Chris still wondered about the Huskie, and why he hadn’t seen or heard it.

  Probably inside with her.

  When he was satisfied that the trees and grounds around him were clear, he started toward the back door of the cabin, tucking the dart gun into the waistband of his black pants. If the dog was anywhere close by, it would have come for him by now.

  He advanced to the back porch steps and cocked his Mauser. The only other weapon he carried was a French-made dagger, more than sixteen inches long with a point like an icepick, hidden in a sheath in his right boot.

  Are you ready to die, bitch? he asked, recalling the photographs he’d been shown of Linda Lee, placing only a slight amount of his weight on the first porch step to see if it made any noise that would announce his arrival. Miss Lee was a pretty woman with dark hair and big chocolate eyes, judging by the pictures. Bradley would get a special thrill out of killing a girlfriend of Ben Raines. If he could, he would make her die slowly.

  The second step was soundless, as was the third, and only the chirp of crickets and the distant hoot of a night owl made any disturbance in the absolute silence around the farmhouse where he would make his kill. No vehicles were parked near the two-rut lane leading to the place, and it was a safe guess that Linda was alone—that Raines, if he did really visit, was elsewhere tonight.

  He stepped to the back door, gun in hand, and twisted the doorknob. Bradley grinned when he found the door was unlocked, opening inward easily.

  The stupid bitch is gonna make it easy for me, he thought. It was as if she’d invited him in for tea.

  He pushed the door out of the way, feet spread apart, his gun trained on the back room, a kitchen. The room was empty, or so he believed. He saw no one near the sink or seated at the small kitchen table.

  Bradley placed his left foot inside, wary, unable to believe his good fortune. Raines apparently didn’t think all that much of the woman, or he would have left a guard at her house or taught her to lock her goddamn doors at night. Relying on dogs to protect her was the dumbest notion he could imagine.

  Suddenly, a dark shape lunged toward him from a cabinet near the kitchen sink. Strangely, there was no sound, no hint of a presence. A pair of glittering blue eyes came at him from his right.

  Bradley swung his pistol toward the movement, seconds too late. A set of gleaming white teeth sank into the flesh of his neck, while more than a hundred pounds of animal slammed him against the wall.

  “Shit!” he croaked, then his windpipe collapsed under the sheer power of a massive dog’s jaws. He fell to the floor, dropping his gun, doing everything he could to free his neck from the raw strength of the Huskie’s bite.

  Bradley’s head banged on the floor, while the giant animal began to shake him back and forth . . . blood spewed from his neck wound in pulsing bursts, splattering over the front
of his black shirt.

  With his air supply cut off, he was losing consciousness within moments. He could not free his throat from the jaws no matter how hard he tried . . . and still, the huge dog made no sound at all.

  A voice, a soft woman’s voice, came from another part of the house. “Kill him, Cody.”

  A low growl came from the beast’s chest.

  “You bastard,” Bradley croaked with his last breath of air, for now the pain in his neck was excruciating. He tried to pry the teeth from his flesh with both hands.

  “And who is the bastard?” the woman’s voice asked, sounding farther away.

  “This son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch!”

  A silence, and then Bradley felt himself falling off the very end of the earth.

  “Kill him, Cody. Do it now!”

  Chris Bradley saw his life flash before him, all his years of training, his experience handling attack dogs. Something had gone wrong this time. He had disabled the German shepherds so easily.

  “Jesus . . . call him off!” he gasped, ready to make any sort of deal he could to stay alive.

  “But why?”

  “I’ll . . . pay. I’ve . . . got . . . money.”

  “Your money doesn’t interest me.”

  “Please . . . listen . . . to . . . my . . . offer.”

  “I don’t care what your offer is, Mr. Bradley. It won’t be enough. Kill, him, Cody!”

  Incredibly, the power behind the Huskie’s bite increased. Bradley felt gristle and bone snap in his neck while his head lolled back and forth on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood.

  He made a feeble attempt to bring his knee up into the dog’s belly, and found himself too weak to bend his knee. He was dizzy now.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Bradley. I’ll tell Ben you dropped by to pay me a call. He’ll enjoy that. You have . . . you had, a very good reputation as a paid killer.”

  Bradley’s last thought was a question: How had the woman known his name? How had she known who he was?

  The world turned dark around him, and his pain slipped away, until he felt nothing at all.

  He was dead and his body was cooling by the time Linda fired up the radio transmitter she had hidden in her cupboard. “L-two calling Eagle Two,” she began, glancing at the body on the kitchen floor as she slowly stroked Cody’s neck.

  When the transmitter gave the answering call sign, Linda talked quickly. “Eagle Two, this is L-two. I’ve been compromised. They sent an assassin after me tonight.”

  “Are you all right?” Mike Post asked, concern in his voice.

  “Yes, but I need an extraction team soonest. Also, you need to check your security. There’s no way I could have been uncovered unless they found out from someone on our side.”

  “Roger that, L-two. We have a Scout team in your sector, and we’ll have them proceed to your extraction point at midnight. Is that enough time?”

  “Yeah. Tell them I’ll have dogs with me. I can’t leave them behind.”

  “Ten-four, L-two. Eagle Two out.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Claire Osterman looked around her office at the men gathered for their meeting with Yiro Ishi. Otis Warner was smoking a cigar, as usual, his eyes far away as if his thoughts were elsewhere. Harlan Millard sat on her right hand, his eyes flicking back and forth like a lizard’s, looking for enemies where none existed. She wondered again why she tolerated the weak-willed, cowardly son of a bitch, especially since his performance in bed had of late been sorely lacking. General Maxwell and Captain Broadhurst completed the group.

  She took the cup of tea Herb Knoff offered and tasted it. Delightful, as always. The man was a wonder. Too bad that in bed he was more like a rutting bull moose than a man making love to a woman. Ah well, time to get on with it.

  “Do we have any business to discuss before we bring Ishi in?”

  General Maxwell cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am. Two things. First, the attempt to neutralize the spy I told you about failed. Linda Lee escaped after killing the man I sent to execute her.”

  Claire’s face became dangerously dark. “More incompetence, General? It seems that every time I give you a simple assignment, your men manage to fuck it up! I don’t know how much longer I will be able to put up with this, Max.” She hesitated. “I wouldn’t count on reaching retirement age if things don’t change General. What else?”

  “It seems that lots of sick people from SUSA are migrating northward, trying to outrun the plague. Reports of massive casualties among our own civilians are coming in. The plague we sent to SUSA is coming this way, and fast.”

  Claire pursed her lips. “And why wasn’t this eventuality foreseen?”

  Otis Warner was the only one in the room with the courage to speak. He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at Claire. “It was, Madam President. I warned you myself this was a distinct possibility. You said, if I remember correctly, ‘screw the civilians. Our troops have been vaccinated, and that’s all that counts.’”

  Claire glared at him, started to speak, hesitated, then said calmly, “So I did. Thank you for reminding me, Otis.” She leaned back in her chair, “Well, no use crying over spilt milk. Enough people will survive to rebuild the USA after we win the war. In fact, we may be able to use this to our advantage. Perhaps we can go to the UN and blame the entire plague on Ben Raines and his generals.”

  She glanced at Harlan. “See about sending a report to that effect to Chapelle at the UN, Harlan.”

  When he nodded, she gestured toward the door to the anteroom. “Herbert, show the little bastard in, please.”

  Herb walked ponderously to the door and opened it. He gestured, saying nothing, and the diminutive Japanese man walked in. He took small steps, his head bowed in a gesture of subservience, but Claire knew better. The son of a bitch had the temerity to demand money for his services. Well, she’d soon see about that. Put his balls in a vise, and see how fast he capitulated.

  “Mr. Ishi,” she said, her voice all sweetness and light. “Won’t you have a seat? Would you care for some coffee, or tea?”

  He looked up at her from under black eyebrows, though his hair was snowy white. “Tea, please.”

  She gestured at Herb, then leaned forward with her elbows on the desk. “My associates,” she began, inclining her head toward General Maxwell and Captain Broadhurst, “tell me you refuse to provide us with the secret of your BW bomb, or the vaccine against the bug, unless we pay you a sum of money, yet you won’t tell us how much you want.”

  He nodded his head once, quickly. “Hai.”

  Claire frowned. “I assume that means yes in English.”

  “I’m sorry, Madam President.” He shrugged. “Old habits die hard. My answer is yes, that is correct.”

  She leaned back and steepled her hands in front of her as Herb handed Ishi his tea. “What am I to do with you, Mr. Ishi? We are at war, you see, and your refusal to aid your country in its time of need could be considered an act of treason. And, as you know,”—she hesitated and let her eyes go hard and flat—“treason in time of war is punishable by death.”

  A slight smile curled Ishi’s lips. The bastard wasn’t afraid of her threats, she realized. He knew he had her by the short hairs.

  “You may call it treason, Madam President. I prefer to think of it as getting only what I deserve for saving the USA millions of dollars in war expenses and hundreds of thousands of lives.”

  Claire sighed. “Will you now tell me how much you think you deserve for this . . . patriotic act, Mr. Ishi?”

  “I think five million dollars would be fair and equitable.”

  Claire tried and failed to keep astonishment off her face. “Five million dollars? Are you mad?”

  “I do not think so, Madam President. The one Apache helicopter your flyers lost in combat the other day will cost over ten million dollars to replace, and that is not counting the cost of training the pilots to replace those killed in the crash. I believe my offer is very reasonable.”
r />   How does the little bastard know about that? Claire wondered. She cut angry eyes at General Maxwell. She was going to have to have a serious talk with him about his security arrangements when this meeting was over.

  “Of course, when you put it that way, I can see your point. I’m sure we can arrange the cash for you within a matter of a day or two.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should have made myself clear, Madam President. I would prefer to have gold, either coins or bullion, or uncut diamonds.” He shrugged, and had the grace to attempt to look embarrassed. “I am sure you are aware that USA currency is virtually worthless, since the war has been going so badly.”

  “But,” Claire stammered, “five million in gold would weigh a considerable amount. How would you carry it?”

  “I do not want it given to me, directly,” Ishi answered. “I would like to have it delivered to my numbered account in Switzerland, to the Bank Suisse on Rotterdam Strasse in Geneva.”

  Claire’s face was flushed, and the veins on her neck were standing out. The little shit was lucky she didn’t have Herb kill him on the spot.

  “And then?” she managed to croak though dry lips.

  “As soon as I am notified the money has been deposited, I will clear up any problems with updating the bomb’s delivery system and provide your medical authorities with the appropriate vaccine for the plague.”

  “But that could take weeks.”

  He gave a tight smile. “I sincerely hope not, Madam President. The SUSA grows stronger every day, and the war is costing you millions every hour. The sooner this is accomplished, the sooner you will begin to save money . . . and lives.”

  “So you will stay here to help with the bomb and vaccine until the gold is delivered?” she asked, thinking he wouldn’t live to spend the money once he’d given them what they needed.

  Ishi glanced at Herb Knoff and smiled again, shaking his head. “No, ma’am. I fear that would be very foolhardy of me. There might be . . . ah . . . an accident, once I’d given your men the vaccine. I believe I will await the arrival of my . . . fee in Switzerland, a neutral country.”