The Shadow Hunter (The Phoenix Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  “They acted carelessly in picking you up and then in bringing you here,” Orlovsky said. “They felt indebted to you because you saved their lives.”

  Hawk glanced at their bodies, blood still pooling around them. “And apparently it was all for naught.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Orlovsky said, wagging his index finger. “They shouldn’t have brought you here, but I’m glad they did because I’m in need of someone with your skill set.”

  Hawk’s familiarity with Orlovsky centered around his dealings with Middle Eastern terrorists in search of weapons and retrieving information about the clients. However, Hawk’s interest in Orlovsky hadn’t extended much beyond that. But Orlovsky seemed deeply interested in the man he’d been swapped for in a prisoner exchange five years ago.

  “What if I told you that you being here wasn’t just fate?” Orlovsky asked.

  “I wouldn’t believe you because I’m here on my own.”

  Orlovsky arched his eyebrows. “All on your own? You sure about that?”

  Hawk nodded.

  “So you just got up one morning and thought that you’d come visit Siberia. I hardly believe that’s true.”

  Hawk grew impatient with Orlovsky’s attempt at mind games. “Just tell me what you want or I’m going to walk out of here.”

  Orlovksy laughed. “I love a man with a great sense of confidence, even if it’s misplaced. Because you’d be dead before you made it to the door.”

  Hawk sighed and drummed his fingers on the table.

  “Perhaps this wasn’t what you expected when you came here, but I have an opening—and you need a way out of here,” Orlovsky said. “It’s a perfect situation for both of us. I mean, we were once traded as prisoners, why can’t we help each other out again?”

  “And how are you going to help me out if I help you?” Hawk asked.

  “Aside from letting you live?” Orlovsky asked with a smirk. “According to my men, you claimed to be needing a ride. I’m willing to give you one of my cars if you make one delivery for me.”

  “Whenever something is too good to be true, it probably is,” Hawk said. “I have no reason to believe you.”

  “We must trust each other,” Orlovsky said as he placed his weapon on the table in front of Hawk. “Surely you must know that Russians don’t share their vodka with their enemies.”

  Hawk eyed the gun. Even if bullets remained inside it, escaping a sprawling estate with as much firepower as Orlovsky had would be a fool’s errand. The trust was as phony as the idea that if he wanted to pick up the gun and go, he could make it out alive. Hawk had no other option but to go along with Orlovsky’s plan.

  “Okay,” Hawk said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Excellent,” Orlovsky said as he stepped over one of the bodies near the door. “I believe this might be the beginning of an unlikely partnership.”

  Hawk seethed as the Russian left the room.

  CHAPTER 15

  Bridger, Montana

  ALEX PEEKED THROUGH the cracked door of John Daniel’s room. He was lying on his back, clutching the corner of his blanket in one hand and a Star Wars x-wing fighter he’d built with Hawk out of Legos in the other. John Daniel had crashed just after lunch, blissfully unaware that his father was missing halfway around the world. Alex was certain she detected a slight smile on her son’s face.

  During the peace that fell over the house when John Daniel was napping, Alex wanted to join him. She resisted the urge to curl up on the couch and sleep by a roaring fire. But without Hawk around, she didn’t have time to waste. Dusty and Tucker needed to be fed, and Alex had work to do. Besides, she knew if she laid down, she’d probably never fall asleep despite her exhaustion. Not knowing where Hawk was created an underlying level of angst that wouldn’t dissipate until she’d heard from him.

  She put on her boots and traipsed out to the barn. Pulling a hay bale into a wheelbarrow, she delivered the afternoon feeding to the horses. Dusty and Tucker galloped over the snow and went after their food as if they hadn’t been fed in a week. Alex had noticed that the colder it was, the more ravenous the horses acted.

  “Good boy,” she said, stroking Dusty’s mane. The horse gave a quick snort as he snatched the hay with his teeth. She gave Tucker some attention before retreating into the house.

  With Mallory Kauffman’s assignment waiting, Alex turned on her computer and began analyzing the material. While working with Firestorm and the Phoenix Foundation, she had come across moles buried deep within the government’s labyrinth of bureaucracy several times. As clever as they always thought they were, they couldn’t hide from the fine tooth comb of a skilled analyst. Everyone left a trail. Whether it be a paper trail or a digital one, even the most careful spies would take a risk at some point. The more challenging cases weren’t solved by someone acting carelessly, but by someone acting too carefully. Even a government employee who was above board on everything would make a mistake at some point, sending an email to the wrong person or purchasing an item using the wrong budget code. Those were natural mistakes, errors that didn’t suggest anything further was wrong. But those who were worried about someone digging through their every move would move with such caution and precision that the perfect picture they painted would cast them as a larger suspect.

  As Alex perused the files, she cross-referenced them with the intel that was supposedly leaked. Her search focused on who knew what information and when they knew it. Once she established that, she was able to sift through the emails to determine who was sharing the information. The problem the NSA analysts ran into was that the intel stolen never seemed to be passed along using digital means. Someone had been very careful to ensure that whatever they learned wouldn’t be disseminated in an easy manner. Alex concluded the mole had to be sharing whatever they had gleaned through old fashioned spy craft. Perhaps it was through a brush contact or a handwritten note planted at a drop site. Due to the limitation of her research in Montana, she couldn’t determine the how. All Mallory wanted was the who—and Alex was certain that she’d figured it out after a few hours.

  The NSA team had pinpointed what information was being stolen, which made it easy for Alex to narrow down who the mole was. However, she still couldn’t say definitively, but she’d done this long enough to know that there were rarely coincidences. And the person who appeared to fit the profile with access to the information was a U.S. State Department employee named Victor Edgefield.

  At 37 years old, Edgefield had plateaued in his career at the State Department. Working in public affairs as an information officer, he was involved in policy meetings and worked on a team responsible for crafting the messaging the Secretary of State desired. Edgefield had been hired after an injury cut short his CIA career. But he’d been passed over for promotions several times over the past few years.

  Around that same time, Edgefield inexplicably started gambling. Based on the sums of cash Alex noticed he started pulling out of his account, the gambling had started a little over six years ago. However, he was detained during a raid on an illegal gambling ring where he’d been playing poker. While he avoided charges, he didn’t avoid his name getting put into a report. Alex also noted on Edgefield’s phone records that he’d contacted a local prosecutor at this time, who promptly dropped the charges against a man named Manuel Diaz, the alleged owner of the operation.

  Apparently, Edgefield’s debts were large enough that his favor didn’t result in forgiveness of the money he owed. Alex found more large sums of cash withdrawn until they suddenly stopped. Within a week after he stopped withdrawing cash from his bank account, the NSA team identified the first instance of sensitive information being leaked. Even more puzzling was who Edgefield was giving the intel too.

  The leaks appeared to be random, sometimes showing up in newspapers and on major television news programs. At other times, the intel would appear in chat rooms on the internet or gossip columns on random blogs. There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to the
leaks other than to make the White House nervous. But that changed when an embarrassing cable between the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and Secretary Wheeler was shared on several websites. While the intel inside it wasn’t all harmful, the frank assessments of other countries’ public officials was at the least embarrassing, at the most diplomatic suicide. The result was a new determination from the White House to expose the source and shut it down permanently.

  Alex finished compiling a brief report before she sent it to Mallory, who immediately called Alex back to thank her.

  “This is excellent work, Alex,” Mallory said. “I don’t know how we missed it. Using the cash withdrawals with the arrest report to affirm the suspicion that Edgefield was gambling proved to be a great piece of detective work.

  “Anything to keep my mind off Hawk being gone,” Alex said.

  “Glad I could help,” Mallory said. “And whenever you can talk about that thing you can’t talk about, give me a call.”

  “Sure thing,” Alex said as she hung up the phone.

  * * *

  WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES, Mallory was holding for President Norris on her cell. When he came on the line, he dispensed with pleasantries and jumped right to business.

  “Sir,” Mallory started, “we believe we’ve identified the man responsible for the leak. Would you like for me to have him arrested?”

  “I guess we could,” Norris said. “But what if we waited? Would that be a problem?”

  “What did you have in mind, Mr. President?”

  “If he doesn’t know that we know, why don’t we use him to our advantage?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Norris sighed. “I think I know who’s ultimately behind all this, but there’s only one way to find out.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Central Siberia, Russia

  FROM THE PASSENGER SIDE, Hawk looked up at the Verkhoyansk mountains, their jagged peaks casting a dark shadow on the valley. As he continued to survey the area, he squinted at the small dirt road he noticed winding up the hillside and disappearing around a bend.

  “This is where you take over,” the Russian man driving said as he pulled the truck over onto the shoulder. “I will expect you to return within two hours. If you don’t, I will assume you are dead. Are you clear on the instructions?”

  Hawk nodded as he opened the door. He walked around to the driver side, where the man stood.

  “Good luck, Mr. Hawk,” the man said. “I will be right here waiting for you. Just follow the road and you’ll be fine.”

  “See you in two hours,” Hawk said as he slid into the seat and gripped the wheel.

  The man shoved the door shut and gave Hawk a military salute before hustling over to a vehicle that had been trailing them. Hawk wasn’t sure if the gesture was meant for good luck or condolences.

  Hawk eased the truck onto the snow-covered road. The studs on the tires dug into the frozen terrain and didn’t seem to have any problems with traction. And Hawk found that to be a big relief since his task required him to drive up a steep mountainside.

  The task was somewhat simple in nature. Orlovsky wanted Hawk to deliver a shipment to another man, Igor Kalinsky. While Orlovsky didn’t divulge the contents of the large package, Hawk could only assume it consisted of some sort of drugs. In preparation for the journey at Orlovsky’s estate, Hawk gathered that Orlovsky’s illegal arms trade business had dried up and so he’d moved on to other lucrative opportunities, though ones that required more work.

  Hawk discovered that the estate was also the manufacturing facility for Orlovsky’s operations and contained a handful of meth labs in the basement. The aging mansion had been updated with new ventilation systems that kept the labs’ noxious gasses from catching fire. And while no one had told Hawk exactly what he was delivering to Kalinsky, Hawk figured it out.

  Hawk fiddled with the dials on the radio, which could only tune into one station. It consisted of a mix of static and an upbeat style of polka he wasn’t familiar with that included auto-tuned voices and synthesizers.

  Listening to this is a special kind of hell.

  He turned off the radio and focused on the rugged terrain. After he had driven for about fifteen minutes, the road narrowed. There wasn’t enough room for two vehicles to pass for large portions of the drive, making the conditions even more dangerous. With no guardrail to protect him from dropping down into a rugged canyon, Hawk turned his entire attention to navigating the road to Kalinsky’s estate.

  Hawk rounded a corner and eased into a stretch of road that appeared to be enveloped by the trees. The already-waning afternoon sun was all but gone in the dark forest. Hawk rubbed his eyes and continued rumbling over the snow and ice.

  After another half-hour of oscillating between flat segments and steep inclines, he started to descend. When he eventually emerged from the trees, he found himself in a valley on the opposite site of the mountain. At the base of the area, he noticed Kalinsky’s estate, just as it had been described to Hawk.

  He approached the gate and slowed down as an armed guard lumbered in front of his vehicle and held out his hand. Hawk stopped the vehicle and waited for the man to walk around to Hawk’s window.

  “What brings you here?” the man asked in Russian.

  Hawk explained the purpose of his visit. Satisfied with the response, the man signaled to proceed, waving him through with the barrel of his weapon.

  As instructed, Hawk drove around to the side of a large shed located about two hundred meters away from the house. Once he got out, two men approached him with guns and shouted at him in Russian.

  “I was just told to make this delivery to your boss,” Hawk said. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  The men nodded and then worked together to retrieve the package, which was about the size of pallet and no more than a half-meter thick. They hoisted the large item out of the truck bed and retreated inside. Hawk remained inside the truck, awaiting further directions. After a couple of minutes had elapsed, a large bare-chested man with nothing on but a ushanka cap and denim overalls stormed out of a side door and headed straight toward Hawk. He caught a glint of light off an object in the man’s hand and realized trouble was afoot.

  Hawk threw the truck in reverse and gunned the engine. The slick surface made Hawk’s truck slip for a second before catching the ice. When the tires caught hold, he flew backward across the open space leading to the exit. Hawk saw the man pull out his weapon and start firing.

  With only one escape route, Hawk ducked low enough that only his forehead and eyes peered above the dashboard. He made a straight line for the gate. Guards scrambled to stop Hawk, but they were too late.

  When Hawk struck the metal gate, it flew open in a flurry of sparks. Men peppered the back window with bullets but didn’t do any damage that compromised the integrity of the vehicle. Through the new openings in the glass, Hawk heard more clearly the hum of the two-stroke snowmobile engines whining as they pursued him.

  Driving a more stable vehicle, Hawk plowed through the snow. Over the next half-hour, he managed to increase the distance between them to about two hundred meters. As he veered around a corner, the road narrowed again, wide enough for just one vehicle to pass.

  Hawk saw this as his opportunity to rid himself of Kalinsky’s men. Once he rounded the corner and was out of sight, he scrambled out of the truck and up an embankment. Upon taking up his perch there, he eased into a prone position and waited for the snowmobiles to round the corner.

  When the first man roared up on the truck, Hawk squeezed off two shots. The first one pinged off the windshield visor on the snowmobile. The second one hit the engine. However, the man kept going. When he realized that he was going to hit the back of the truck, he applied the brakes and braced as the vehicle skidded toward the truck’s tailgate.

  That slowdown was just enough for Hawk to hit the man in the chest and knock him into the snow. He tumbled off the edge and disappeared. Seconds later, the other snowmobiler suf
fered a similar fate, only this time Hawk didn’t miss with any bullets. Instead, his only two shots were true. As soon as the man was hit, he fell limp. The snowmobile’s momentum carried it into the other one before a slight redirect from the collision sent both vehicles careening off the side.

  Hawk scrambled down the embankment and drove away, hoping that he wouldn’t hear or see any more of Kalinsky’s men.

  However, when Hawk reached the highway, he’d almost forgotten about his looming problem. To Hawk, there was little doubt that Orlovsky had told Kalinsky to have his men kill the new carrier. But Hawk wasn’t interested in receiving confirmation. All he knew was that the giant standing in the road had a weapon in his hand. It was drawn and trained on Hawk.

  This ought to be interesting.

  Hawk needed a moment to think. He stopped the truck about fifty meters away from the main road. He revved the engine and weighed all his options.

  After throwing the truck into gear, he shifted into drive and stared at the man, who was waving his arms and pleading with Hawk to stop.

  That was the last thing Hawk wanted to do.

  CHAPTER 17

  Washington, D.C.

  THE SITUATION ROOM was buzzing when President Norris strode into it. He nodded in the direction of his Joint Chiefs of Staff before turning his attention to his cabinet. After he gestured for everyone to take a seat, he rubbed his hands together and opened up a portfolio on the table in front of him.

  “As you all know, we’ve been dealing with a precarious situation with North Korea,” Norris began. “For the first three years of my administration, we’ve experienced unprecedented peace in the modern era. And I fully intend for things to remain that way. The level of prosperity this country has risen to during that time is something every American can get excited about, no matter what party you belong to. And I must admit that it’s a credit to each person in this room doing your job the right way to make sure we don’t wander into a conflict. But with that said, we need to do something about North Korea.”