The Toymaker Page 2

  She watched in horror as the assassin picked up the oar and bashed it against Aaron’s head. Blood ran down the side of his face. Collins flipped a second switch on the wall and Aaron’s body began lowering into the lake. He tossed the picture into the water and opened the door.

  On her phone, she saw him open the boathouse door at the same time the light beamed outward from the doorway. She was twenty feet away, looking straight into the door and right at the Irish assassin. She dropped her phone and fired three shots at Collins. The man staggered back into the boathouse. She ran toward him and fired two more rounds. The assassin staggered backward and fell into the water next to Johnson.

  She raced through the doorway, both men were submerged. She’d seen what Collins had done to Aaron. He was probably dead. No one could have survived that blow. She needed to save Johnson. She flipped both switches, reversing the boatlift. The cables tightened. Bubbles rose to the surface where Johnson went under, none where Aaron went down.

  She grabbed a boat hook from the wall and frantically reached for Johnson’s cable. Probing to hook any part of him. Next to her, Aaron’s lifeless body rose out of the water. Johnson was thrashing like a fish below the surface. She grabbed his collar, pulled his head above water, and ripped the tape from his mouth.

  Johnson coughed and spat water from his mouth, gasping for air.

  “It’ll be okay, Johnson.” She reassured him. “Help is on the way.” Blood was oozing from his gouged-out eye socket.

  He shook his head and coughed.

  “Don’t talk.” She leaned closer. “Just take a—”

  Collins popped out of the water with a knife in his hand. The blade slashed across her left cheek from her eye to her chin. She recoiled to avoid the killer’s grasp, headset falling into the water. Francesca grabbed her pistol, aimed, and fired into the water where Collins went under until her magazine was empty.

  She fell back against the boathouse wall, cradling her cheek, sliding down the wall to a seated position. The pain was unlike anything she’d ever felt. So intense.

  A soft buzzing sound caught her attention. She looked up and saw the wasp a foot in front of her.

  “Matt. Help. Get help.” She said to the drone.

  After two minutes she pulled herself to her feet, the drone matched her moves, and then it suddenly backed away and spun around. She turned and saw him.

  A white blaze down the middle of his brown hair.

  One blue eye and one brown eye.

  CHAPTER 2

  Six Months Later

  Gibson Desert

  Australian Outback

  JAKE PENDLETON STUDIED the camp through his AN/PVS-9 night vision goggles for the fourth October night in a row. He and his friend turned colleague, Gregg Kaplan, were manning an observation post overlooking an al Qaeda training camp run by Mustafa Bin Yasir.

  The rock-strewn ridge had proven to be an ideal vantage point for intelligence gathering since the entire terrorist camp was visible from the perch with virtually no blind spots. Hidden between the mulgas, an evergreen eucalyptus shrub, Jake and Kaplan, a former U. S. Army Special Forces soldier, built short half-moon shaped walls out of rocks. Roughly eighteen inches high, the walls served as blinds where they monitored all movements within the camp. Patterns of the al Qaeda cell’s sentries, location of the communications tent, and all other vital information had been recorded and sent to an analyst at Langley.

  Moonless nights offered additional cover, this phase of the moon chosen deliberately. Darkness had become Jake’s ally. A lesson he learned quickly as he adjusted to his newfound role with the CIA’s Clandestine Service. It reminded him of a phrase he’d heard Kaplan say several times—the motto of the 160th SOAR, Special Operations Aviation Regiment—Death waits in the dark. Jake preferred the comfort of darkness.

  At the direction of CIA Director Scott Bentley, Jake and Kaplan were sent to the Outback to apprehend Yasir. According to Bentley, recent chatter had linked Yasir’s radical cell with plans for other terrorist attacks, potentially on U.S. soil. In cooperation with the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, or ASIS, and the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, SAS, Jake and Kaplan recorded the nocturnal activities and patterns of Yasir and each member of the cell. Since the attack was planned for the middle of the night, every behavioral detail was noted.

  Yasir had been implicated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks although no conclusive evidence linked him to the conspiracy. His association with terrorists known to have hijacked United States airliners and the recent intelligence community chatter had elevated Yasir near the top of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list.

  “Do you think about her much, Gregg?” Jake whispered—undetectable at three meters.

  Kaplan said nothing.

  “Annie. Do you ever think about her?”

  “Not as much as you might think.” Kaplan turned to Jake.

  “Everything about that day in Savannah is etched in my mind. The blood. The carnage.” Jake was silent for a minute, then continued. “Not a day goes by I don’t think of Beth. I just can’t seem to let her go. How did you get over Annie?”

  Kaplan removed his night vision goggles. “It’s easy to let go of something you never had.”

  “I should never have left her. I should have been by her side. I’m the reason she got shot in the first place, then I just left her alone.”

  “Bullshit, Jake, she wasn’t alone, she was in a hospital. With her parents. Recovering. How would you have known? How would anyone know? Quit feeling sorry for yourself. It’s time to let her go and move on.”

  Jake lowered his head, feeling the pain like it happened yesterday, not six months ago. The day she died, Beth had been one month from her thirtieth birthday, three months before their wedding day. If he could go back, he would tell her not to come to Savannah to see him. Would have done anything to keep her away from there.

  Jake turned and sat down against the rock wall, his back to the ledge. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out an energy bar. “Gregg, we’re wasting time. Let’s just set up this attack with the Aussies and get on with it.” He broke it into two pieces, handed half to Kaplan.

  “Patience, Jake. We don’t want to rush things.”

  “Rush things? We’ve been sitting on our asses up here for the past four nights. You call that rushing? It’s time for action.”

  “You’re right." Kaplan said. "We’ve gathered all the intel we need."

  Beyond the ridge where Jake and Kaplan were observing the al Qaeda camp laid the Buckshot Plains. Dawn’s first light revealed the vast, dry region, its red sand hills and desert grass stretching as far as the eye could see.

  Nestled close to the cliff with its recently mounted camouflage netting, the terrorist camp had all but disappeared from satellite imagery. Aerial photos captured the camp prior to the netting and a CIA analyst mapped the camp and sent scaled diagrams to Jake and Kaplan.

  In addition, an ASIS analyst built a 3D terrain model of the camp. It looked like an architectural student’s final project. Every detail of the terrorist camp was depicted with amazing accuracy.

  From the ridge overlooking the camp he could distinguish details through the camouflage netting, verifying the accuracy of the CIA’s analyst’s original diagram, recording any changes, and relaying the intel back to the analyst for modification.

  “Let’s go then.” Jake slipped his NVGs inside his desert camo shirt, stuck the remainder of the energy bar between his teeth, and crawled away from the ledge making his way toward the trail leading toward the SAS camp. Jake waited while Kaplan left instructions with the two SAS soldiers who came to relieve them.

  Kaplan was a good friend. They had endured a lot together in a short amount of time. They met earlier that year under strange circumstances. He was an NTSB accident investigator from Atlanta and Kaplan an air traffic controller in Savannah, Georgia. He interviewed Kaplan during the investigation of an aircraft accident in Savannah. Kaplan was the la
st controller to communicate with the small jet prior to the crash that occurred a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. Proceeding with suspicion, Jake’s investigation turned deadly. It cost him the life of his fiancée Beth McAllister and left him with a burning emptiness.

  Empty. And angry.

  Jake left the NTSB at the urging of his former Navy boss, now director of the CIA, Scott Bentley. The director had lured Jake and Kaplan from their former government careers and recruited them into the CIA’s Clandestine Service where Jake channeled his anger into every covert black op. With each mission, the pain subsided a little. With each hit, he felt better. He became his own therapist.

  He’d seen the CIA shrink—Bentley had insisted he and Kaplan both go to the psychiatrist at Langley. Kaplan’s long-time girlfriend, Annie Bulloch, was killed in Savannah on the same day Beth was shot.

  St. Patrick’s Day.

  The bloodiest day in Savannah’s modern day history. It was something Jake and Kaplan held in common. It should be a bond between them, but Jake knew it wasn’t.

  The loss of Beth changed him, forced his anger to surface—anger he didn’t know he had until his first covert assignment two months after her death. He wasn’t supposed to kill his target, his assignment was to capture him and return to Langley. Something went wrong and he panicked.

  His heart raced. Beads of sweat rolled down his face. His anger churned inside him like a volcano ready to erupt. Thoughts of Beth, the Irishman, and death ignited his volatile state of mind. His grip on his semi-automatic tightened as he aimed at his target. Seconds later he felt relief as his victim lay covered in blood. Once again, he’d avenged Beth’s death, a secret he’d kept from Bentley and the CIA shrink.

  Along with relief was affirmation. A declaration in his own mind that Laurence O’Rourke, the man who shot Beth, was dead. He was killing O’Rourke over and over. Every time he aimed his pistol, he saw O’Rourke’s face. Every time he squeezed the trigger, O’Rourke died. He recalled the blood spurting from the man’s neck. The man lying on the stone floor in the Friars’ chamber, a red puddle under his neck and head. He watched the man’s face grow ashen, heard gurgling as the man tried to speak, watched the man grow still and die. Once again, he had avenged Beth’s death—then came exhilaration, followed by calmness and tranquility.

  A sound on the trail caused Jake to look up. “It’s about time, I was about to leave your ass here.” Jake could barely make out Kaplan’s dark features behind the balaclava. With his dark skin, black hair, and brown eyes, Kaplan’s size, six-one, two hundred-ten pounds, was his only discerning feature from the terrorists in the camp.

  Kaplan smiled. “When we get back, I’ll call Bentley. Get the green light for tonight.”

  “We should have already taken them out and captured Yasir. We could have squeezed out the location of the other attacks and not risked missing our next target.”

  “Provided Yasir knows anything about them.” Kaplan motioned for Jake to take the lead down the trail. “These cells don’t usually share information about each other’s activities. Only the handler knows all the locations…and handlers are more difficult to catch.”

  The three-mile hike from the ledge overlooking the terrorist camp to the SAS base was characteristic of the mountainous Australian Outback—rugged. It took them over an hour traversing the rocky terrain to reach the camouflage canopy covering the basketball court sized SAS camp. Australian sentries were concealed in the hills surrounding the camp blocking every access. Their job was to ensure the unit’s presence in the desert remained undetected by the terrorist cell. Even if the cell had access to satellite imagery, which was unlikely, the camp would be virtually undetectable.

  Centered under the large canopy was the TEMPEST secure tent. The copper mesh tent contained another copper mesh room inside, which provided extra radio frequency shielding for all the equipment housed within its curtain walls. A tent inside a tent. The radio frequency shielded enclosure was part of the ‘Executive Travel Kit’ as Kaplan had called it. The shielded tent technology eliminated the possibility of electronic eavesdropping by providing a high degree of radio frequency attenuation. Other equipment housed in the tent were receivers from SIGIT Group which were used to monitor everything transmitted or said inside the terrorist camp.

  The terrorist cell would be scanning for signals, so the TEMPEST provided extra precaution to prevent being detected. The success of the mission depended on the element of surprise.

  Jake followed Kaplan into the small enclosure that housed the Integrated T2C3 Secure Communications Workstation. Its main feature was the secure satellite phone and link terminal allowing for secure voice and data transmission and reception.

  Inside the dimly lit room, Jake saw an Australian SIS analyst monitoring the secure data link terminal. The same analyst was always at the terminal. Monitoring the TEMPEST’s level of integrity and analyzing signals received from the terrorist camp was his only job—and he always seemed to be there. The man must never sleep.

  Without looking up the analyst said, “Bentley wants you to report in. He is waiting for your call. Said there has been some new development and your mission might be scrubbed.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ios Island, Cyclades

  Greek Islands

  REVENGE.

  Ian Collins had obsessed about it every day for the last six months. First, his reputation as one of the best assassins in the business had been ruined when he failed to deliver on a contract in what was made into a public spectacle by the meddling of one man. Then several days later he was wounded in a shootout at a mansion in Georgia. Now, he could no longer support his lavish lifestyle and was forced to live like a rat in hiding.

  His last paying contracts had been lucrative but it had left him a pariah. Without work for six months, his cash reserves had dwindled. He needed work.

  Collins sat on a rock atop a hill looking down at the town of Ormos on Ios Island. His sanctuary. His retreat. And the rock—his favorite place for reflection, contemplation, and planning.

  The perch offered a beautiful vista of Ormos harbor; a tranquil sheltered waterfront nestled amidst the Greek Islands. He’d seen a postcard photo taken from the very spot he now sat. A cruise ship in the harbor had just dropped anchor. Soon tourists would flood the streets of his small retreat, buying over-priced trinkets from the merchants near the waterfront.

  Collins owned a small villa on Ios Island, one he’d paid cash for several years earlier while his cash flow was abundant. Whenever he felt threatened, whenever he got that uneasy feeling Interpol was getting too close, or whenever he just needed a break, this was where he came. Here, he was off the grid.

  And off the grid was where he had to stay. His travel would be limited. All expenses paid with cash. No paper trail could be left to follow. Not yet.

  Collins, a former Irish Republican Army hit man turned assassin, once had a lucrative business. He was good, maybe the best. During a time when society seemed to adopt an attitude of solving its problems by eliminating them, he was in the business of eliminating people’s problems—and business was good.

  Society labeled him a psychopath. He preferred “product of his environment.” He’d grown up with violence. In his younger days in Northern Ireland, it was a way of life.

  He hadn’t always been ruthless. He remembered the turning point, now a haunting memory. He was a teenager when an escaped convict came to his hometown of Londonderry. The man beat him, tied him up, and forced him to watch while the man raped a woman, the aunt of Collins’ best friend. He felt helpless and scared but another emotion emerged that day as he watched how powerless the woman was to defend herself. Domination over the weak. The convict was the mighty lion who had stalked his prey, taken what he wanted, and then, satisfied, walked away.

  Collins mastered the skills of an assassin. His hits were clean. Executed with precision and accuracy.

  Keeping a low profile was not easy anymore. After the botched assassination atte
mpt in Savannah, Georgia on St. Patrick’s Day, his likeness and description had been telecast worldwide, and since that day, he was at the top of Interpol’s most wanted list.

  The logical thing was to disguise his appearance. Although distasteful to him personally, he kept his hair bleached and dyed to match the natural white streak in his hair leaving him with a full head of white hair. Dark brown contacts in both eyes masked his mismatched irises, one vivid blue, the other light brown. All traits associated with his Waardenburg’s Syndrome, a hereditary medical condition passed to him by his father.

  During childhood he’d dealt with the ridicule and joking about his different eye color and white streaked hair. He ignored the teasing and pretended it didn’t bother him. But things changed after he witnessed the rape. He began to get in fights, each one more brutal than the last, until he beat a boy to death. He hid the body and was never implicated—another runaway teenager the authorities ruled.

  Fear was soon replaced by the thrill of domination. There were other children who later disappeared and were never found. But they got what they deserved. And so will the meddling American.

  In the distance Collins could see the Greek island of Silkinos. A beautiful backdrop as the sun sank lower into the western sky glistening off the crystalline waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

  Revenge. How sweet it will be.

  He sat on the rock and plotted.

  Plotted his revenge. He wanted to make the man pay for destroying his livelihood. He wouldn’t kill the man—not at first anyway. Killing the man was too easy. Collins wanted him to suffer. Just like the girl who teased him in school, he tormented her first by putting her cat’s head in her lunchbox. Later she disappeared.

  The meddling man who had ruined his reputation would feel Collins’ wrath. Soon, the man would know it was he who killed his fiancée. Collins would take great pleasure delivering that message. The man needed to feel guilt, needed to suffer.