Hunter: Intrepid 2
Chris Allen
momentum
About Hunter: Intrepid 2
His orders are simple: ‘The safety catch is off. Return that girl to her family and drag those bastards back to justice. Dead or alive. It makes no difference to me.’
Alex Morgan – policeman, soldier and spy for Intrepid, the black ops division of Interpol – is on the hunt for Serbian war criminals. But these guys were never going to let it be that simple. An assassination attempt is made on the presiding judge of the international tribunal. Days later, the judge’s daughter, the famous and beautiful classical pianist Charlotte-Rose, vanishes in mysterious circumstances.
The girl is not just a pretty face and the daughter of a judge, however. She’s also the goddaughter of Intrepid’s veteran commander, General Davenport. It’s up to Morgan and the Intrepid team to track the kidnappers and the missing woman before the very fabric of international justice is picked apart at its fraying edges.
Part James Bond and part Jason Bourne, Alex Morgan must walk the line between doing the right thing and getting the job done. And this time he’s got permission to make it personal.
To my Sarah and our boys, Morgan and Rhett
“For justice to be meaningful it has to have an impact outside of the courtroom too.”
Judge Carmel Agius
Vice-President, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia – ICTY
Zagreb Regional Legacy Conference
Zagreb, Croatia
7 November 2012
Contents
About Hunter: Intrepid 2
Dedication
PART ONE WHATEVER IT TAKES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART TWO DEAD OR ALIVE
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
PART THREE NO SECOND CHANCES
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
PART FOUR A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 81
Chapter 83
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
PART FIVE THE DRAGON’S CAVE
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
EPILOGUE AS LONG AS YOU WANT
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
About Chris Allen
PART ONE
WHATEVER IT TAKES
Chapter 1
CORFU, IONIAN ISLANDS, GREECE
Reaching the summit of a treacherous climb and cautiously stowing gear he'd need later, Alex Morgan pushed through a wall of coarse bracken that surmounted the sandstone cliff's edge. It was pitch black, the light breeze that had accompanied his climb had become a strong wind and the high branches on the elms and oaks were beginning to sway. A storm was coming. The noise would be both a help and a hindrance: masking his movement while also impeding his ability to identify incoming threats. A situation only exacerbated by that other double-edged sword: darkness. Wasting no time, Morgan made straight for a long corridor of olive trees and, using them for cover, crept furtively through the shadows, edging closer to the house.
His mission had begun.
With his anonymity ensured beneath a black balaclava and his body wrapped in a sheath of combat fatigues, weapons and tactical equipment, he moved quickly, deep into the grounds of the secluded Villa Prinkipissa, which, for almost five years, had harbored his target. But there were no princesses to be rescued from this cliff-top hideaway. The villa was a jumble of aging yet well-restored buildings of Mediterranean design, located in the north-east of Corfu island beyond Agnitsini. It was remote, private and protected. With views across to Albania, the main house, stables and servants' quarters were surrounded on three sides by huge stone walls topped with fat fingers of jagged glass set into cement. The fourth side of the compound was wide open, totally exposed but for a sheer 60-foot drop straight down to Ipsos Bay. That had been its weakness. Complacency had allowed them to believe it was impenetrable. It wasn't.
Morgan's target, Milivoj Serifovic, was a former senior officer and counterintelligence specialist of the State Security Service of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia. The old Serbia, circa early 1990s. Born in 1950, Serifovic would now be sixty-two. According to Interpol and the arrest warrant issued by the ICTY—the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia—Serifovic, among others, had planned, ordered and personally carried out the execution of Bosnian Muslims—Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbs—within Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. He was a killer on a grand scale, a very big fish, and had eluded authorities for more than fifteen years until the recent whisper of an Interpol informant reinvigorated the hunt for him. At that point, the intelligence analysts in Lyon had connected the dots and, in accordance with protocol, responsibility for the recovery of the fugitive war criminal was handed across to Intrepid: the Intelligence, Recovery, Protection and Infiltration Division - the ultra-secret, clandestine sword of Interpol.
Serifovic's time had finally come. Morgan just hoped the man would survive the arrest so that he could be dragged in front of the ICTY and answer forhis crimes. Personally, Morgan was happy to be the one doing the dragging.
Morgan's point of access would be via the old servant quarters, which now served as a guest annex. It was connected to the main villa by a long, narrow passageway. Taking a final deep breath before committing to the breach, Morgan moved in from the olive trees. He crept forward in stony silence and, reaching out, tried the handle of the ancient wooden door. Then, just as his fingers closed around the handle, one of Serifovic's bodyguards, a huge man, barreled out through the door. He hadn't ev
en known Morgan was there, but in that split second when their eyes fixed upon each other, the magnitude of their unexpected confrontation was grasped by both of them.
As the bodyguard pushed the door open into the quiet darkness, the light from within momentarily dazzled Morgan. Nonetheless, the Intrepid agent exploded into action. There was no other choice.
Fortunately for Morgan, the bodyguard's gun, a Heckler & Koch 416 N, was slung across his back; convenient for carrying but totally useless if needed in a hurry. The weapon's sling, belted tightly across the man's chest, also impeded access to the automatic Morgan knew would be sitting beneath his left armpit. Sloppy. But he hadn't been employed for nothing: the guy was a monster. Just shy of 7 feet tall, he was a good 30 pounds heavier than Morgan. From the instant the two predators engaged, their faces just inches apart, Morgan knew the monster wouldn't get to his weapons in time. But that was no matter to this guy. He would default to brute force. Morgan, the apparent David in this David and Goliath scenario, knew it had to be quick and quiet. He could not lose time or, worse, attract the attention of others this early on.
Without hesitation, Morgan launched himself inside the guard's immediate space, driving his cupped hands upward and inward, managing to strike both ears simultaneously, bursting the man's ear drums with the ferocity of his attack. The bodyguard wailed in agony, staggering, momentarily disoriented, amid the howl of the winds high in the treetops. Morgan made the most of it, grabbing the bodyguard by the lapels of his leather jacket and pulling him down while driving a knee into the man's crotch. Once, twice, three times Morgan mercilessly pounded with everything he had. The big man was teetering like a large, mortally wounded animal but he was not going down easily. His huge arms were swinging blindly around in the darkness, each with the power of a wrecking ball on the end of a crane arm. Morgan dropped, narrowly missing one arm, then another, then side-stepped awkwardly around to the side and managed to get his right forearm up around the man's neck and chin. Clinging to the bodyguard's back, avoiding the slung weapon and fighting hard to bring him down, Morgan went for the classic blood choke, or sleeper hold, maneuver. Using his left hand, he pushed his right arm tight into a narrow V, compressing the carotid arteries and jugular veins on both sides of the guard's tree-trunk neck.
Enraged but weakening, the big man dug in hard and stood to his full height, lifting Morgan from the ground. With all his weight and strength, he pushed backward, slamming Morgan hard into the wall of the outbuilding, crushing the air from his lungs.
The Intrepid agent's grip on the blood choke loosened and the tables turned. The bodyguard clawed for Morgan's forearm with both hands and when he found it, held firm, then violently jerked his head backward, headbutting Morgan and splitting the agent's eyebrow. Snapping his upper body forward, the man flipped Morgan over his right shoulder to the ground.
Morgan slammed into the hard ground like a thrown safe, only to be grabbed by the throat, lifted off his feet and pinned against the wall. The monster's massive hands closed hungrily around Morgan's throat. Giant thumbs crept expertly across his flesh like blood-fattened slugs until they found just the right spot to squeeze. Morgan fought desperately to wrench the G-clamp hands from his neck. For seconds that seemed like minutes, Morgan went like hell for the other guy's eyes, nose and ears but his attempts were all in vain. The man had him.
Finally, with just a gasp left in his rapidly failing lungs, blood streaming from a deep gash above his left eye and the physical exertion of the affray threatening to conquer him, Morgan reached for the SIG Sauer P226. The big man's massive thumbs were closing down on the Intrepid agent's windpipe with the power, precision and finality of a hydraulic press. A victor's grin split the man's battered features. Morgan could sense rather than feel himself lifting the SIG the last agonizing fraction of an inch clear of the thigh holster. But his fingers were numbing. There was no power in his hands. The oxygen supply to his limbs had depleted. He fumbled. The thumbs around his throat tightened more. The gun was slipping. His lungs were screaming for air. Every bit of the man's weight was behind the squeeze. Morgan knew the gun was going. He felt his life draining from him. Then disaster - the SIG fell from his grasp. The grim reality that his last vision on earth was to be the hideous face of a gangland thug flashed through some still-functioning corner of his subconscious.
A surreal euphoria overwhelmed Morgan, taking control of the last moments of his life. Sight and sound were abandoning him. His body became a dead weight under the crushing assault of the bodyguard's pressure.
The monster saw the transition washing over the face of the dead man in his hands. He'd seen it before - strangulation had been his signature and even though the exhaustion of this particular struggle had taken an equal toll, he had finally prevailed. This guy was done.
With a final, utterly exhausted expulsion of air, he released his grip.
Alex Morgan felt himself falling, descending headlong through an endless tunnel of brilliant light, slowly at first, gently rolling and tumbling without a care. Then the hammer fell. He was hurtling at breakneck speed. On and on - the momentum intoxicating. Flashes of his death struggle with the bodyguard raced past as he plummeted down, down, down. Yellow teeth. Black eyes. The stench of putrid breath. The animal sounds of survival in the midst of brutal hand-to-hand combat. He submitted to the power of his primal subconscious.
Suddenly, everything changed. His descent slowed, stopped and then, with the force of a medieval catapult, Morgan hit a bend in the tunnel and was fired with crippling speed in the opposite direction, called back by the siren cry of the storm. Back the way he had come. Back to the beginning of the tunnel. Back to life. Back, back, back, until his vision was consumed by nothing but the face of his killer.
The man had made a deadly mistake. He had assumed success rather than ensured it, releasing his grip on the Intrepid agent's throat a moment too soon.
With his gun far from reach and clinging to life his only objective, Alex Morgan's left hand closed around the SOG Force SE38 knife on his belt. His thumb popped the restraining strap across the top of the knife and his palm and fingers closed gratefully around the familiar serrated scales of the handle. With a sharp intake of air that momentarily stunned his assailant, Morgan's body erupted in an explosion of adrenal overload.
The bodyguard's face registered the transformation but it was too late. With the same animal ferocity that had beckoned him back to life, Morgan tore the knife from the sheath and drove it upward in one fluid movement, through the chest, deep into the man's heart. Both hands clasped around the handle, he pushed with everything he had left and held the blade firmly in place. Except for a last wretched attempt to reach for Morgan's throat there was no further resistance from the huge man. It was only a reflex. His knees buckled and the bodyguard crumpled to the ground, dead.
Morgan staggered, almost falling down with him, but he knew he couldn't afford to. If he was to collapse, loss of consciousness would be a certainty in his current state. Swaying, he slowly extended to full height in primal triumph and sucked air back into his grateful lungs. After those ferocious, agonizing few minutes, all was quiet again.
With his breath rasping deep in his lungs, he looked down at the blood on his hands and tried to wipe it clean against the fabric of his combat fatigues. But there was no use. Blood never came off easily.
His gaze shifted an inch, beyond the hands to the body of the man at his feet. The heart had stopped and blood was oozing rather than pouring from the chest wound. Morgan checked his watch, the battered old Tag Heuer had sat on that wrist for years. Fuck! The man had had to be killed, there'd been no alternative. The clash had only been brief, but still he'd lost precious time. Time he could ill afford.
Mechanically, Alex Morgan retrieved the knife from the chest of the dead man and, wiping the gore across the man's jacket, returned it to its sheath. He reached with bloody fingers into a pocket of his combat trousers and withdrew a small GPS tracking device, which he clipped
to the body. The GPS unit would guide the local Interpol liaison officer, along with the Greek police, straight to the location of the body when Morgan remotely activated it. Of course, his intention had been that the device would be attached to a live body, not a dead one.
He found his SIG, checked it, and headed for the door.
One down.
Chapter 2
SUNSET HILL, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA
Madeline Clancy was in need of fresh supplies. It had been a few days since she'd ventured out, for no other reason than she'd had enough to get by on and had been enjoying the peace and seclusion of her home. The local police had been incredibly attentive and while she'd resisted their attempts to maintain a permanent presence outside her home, she had diligently followed their instructions concerning regular call-ins and carrying her personal duress alarm at all times. But, judging by the state of the fridge and pantry, the time had finally come. Reluctantly, she closed her book, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia by Michael A Sells, and peeled herself away from the view looking across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island and beyond to the snow-capped Olympics, although the overcast conditions today didn't really allow for a clear view of those breathtaking mountains.
It was only 14 degrees Fahrenheit outside, so she zipped into her Marmot Chelsea coat hanging by the front door and stepped out into a chill breeze coming in from the Sound. Normally she would have worn more, but she didn't plan to be out long so the jacket would do. Of course, locals knew that the trick to living in Seattle was layers. Learning to layer your clothes was just a normal part of life in a climate like this. She just hoped that she'd make it back home before the rain arrived.
Folding her jacket and climbing into her car, Madeline reversed her Range Rover from the garage and pulled out into the street. She drove the familiar route along NW 68th, eventually working her way across to NW 15th Avenue, heading downtown. She didn't notice the compact VW Golf that joined her near the junction and was completely unaware that it stayed close all the way to Pike Place Market.