Extraction (John Taylor #8) - Chapter 2

Taylor stood there, open-mouthed.

“Who is it?” Whitaker called from the other room.

“Come in, I guess,” Taylor said, stepping aside and gesturing for Claire to come inside.

“Thanks,” she said, as he closed the door behind her and led her into the living room.

“Loretta,” Taylor said, “This is Claire Massey. Claire, this is my wife Loretta and our daughter Kara.”

“Your ex-fiancé?” Whitaker asked, sitting up in surprise.

“Nash, actually,” Claire said, stepping forward and offering her hand to Whitaker. “I took Wayne’s name when we got married. Your daughter? But she’s …”

“Adopted,” Kara said.

“Ohh, I see. So you got married? That’s great. I’m very happy for you,” Claire said to Taylor before turning back to Whitaker. “He’s a great guy and I’m glad you two were able to find each other. I’m really sorry for barging into your life and I know this must seem terrible, but I need help and I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Taylor said, ignoring the look Whitaker flashed at him. “Sit down and tell us what’s going on.”

“My husband, Wayne, has been working for Northbridge Services for the last couple of years and two months ago he got a chance for a really big promotion. He’s an IT specialist and they offered to make him team lead for a new project, but it required living overseas for six months. I wasn’t thrilled with it, for obvious reasons, but he’s worked overseas before and he pointed out this was … different than when you were over there, so we agreed and he took the position.

She paused and licked her lips, clearly trying to stay calm.

“Could you get Mrs. Nash a glass of water?” Whitaker asked Kara.

Taylor understood what she meant by my not being thrilled. He’d been the last person she’d known to go overseas, and that had not ended well. She had to go through the grief of being told Taylor was dead and when she finally put the past behind her, Taylor had reappeared from his three years of captivity. Unfortunately, she’d gotten married and was pregnant by then, which meant they could never be. While they’d both moved on by now, Taylor wasn’t surprised that she was gun-shy about having someone else she loved leaving the country again.

“For a while, everything was great. He called me every night to check in and sent me a couple of emails every day, until Monday. At first, I thought he might just be busy, but after several days of no word, I started getting worried and called his work. At first, I couldn’t get a lot of answers. I didn’t know his new supervisor and his old one didn’t know where he’d been transferred. A lot of their stuff requires clearances, so that’s not unusual, but the more people I called, the more worried I got. I kept calling until I finally got to the right people, but they wouldn’t tell me what was happening. So I started to make noise. I sent emails and made calls to executives and started talking about going to the press. I guess I got their attention, because two men from the company came to talk to me.”

“They didn’t threaten you, did they?” Taylor asked.

Northbridge was a defense contractor and he’d dealt with them in the past. The people from the company he’d had dealings with had always come off as incredibly arrogant and abrasive and they’d had a few scandals in the past of intimidating and outright threatening employees or anyone else they thought might be a problem. One of their executives had even done some jail time for extortion or blackmail or something like that. He knew how tenacious Claire could be and it wouldn’t surprise him if the people they’d sent to her were there to intimidate her into backing off.

“No. They told me that there had been an incident and a dozen employees, including Wayne, had been taken hostage. They said that, while this was tragic and there had been some deaths, this wasn’t uncommon in the region. Normally, they’d just ransom the men back and the kidnapers or whatever would release them, but they couldn’t do that this time.”

“Where was he working?” Taylor asked.

Since she’d come asking for his help, Taylor had assumed her husband had been sent to the Middle East, since that was an area Taylor actually knew about, but kidnapping for ransom wasn’t a common issue in that area. Most of the hostages that got taken ended up on a video in front of a green flag facing the terrifying last minutes of their lives.

“Somalia.”

“Somalia? Really? Why would Northbridge have a group of contractors working there? We don’t have a significant presence there anymore and half the country is completely lawless, with warlords and pirates acting as de facto governments.”

“I don’t know. I know we had that thing back in the nineties, but Wayne seemed to think it was okay, so I didn’t question it.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to side-track you. You said normally they’d ransom the hostages. That sounds like they were saying they weren’t able to do that this time.”

“Yes. They said because of the tech they were working on there, they couldn’t just pay the ransom and get their men back. They had to also retrieve the tech to keep it from being sold to the wrong people or something. They told me not to worry, that they were putting together a rescue operation that would be leaving in a few days. I’ll tell you, Wayne’s been working for Northbridge for years, and they’ve always been a bit … difficult, but these men set me on edge. I could tell they weren’t telling me something and I knew the only reason they were there talking to me was because of the big stink I created. I’m worried that they see Wayne and the other hostages as expendable and are really only going to get their tech back. I asked about the people they were sending and they said I shouldn’t worry, that they were sending the best. I pressed and they said they’d contracted with White Mountain Security.”

Taylor and Whitaker exchanged a worried glance.

“Yeah, that was my thought too. I’ve seen stories about them on the news and I don’t really follow the war anymore, because of …. Anyway, I heard their name and I got more worried. I told them I wanted to send my own expert along, just to make sure my husband and the rest of the hostages were safe. They said no, of course, but I insisted. I told them Wayne might have signed an NDA, but I didn’t and I’d go to the papers about this and raise a big stink. They tried to tell me it’d be expensive, but I told them I’d pay for it. We went back and forth for a long time until I told them to get out. I set up a call with a reporter as soon as they left, but they came back an hour later and told me they’d agree, as long as I signed an NDA to not talk to anyone other than my agent about what was happening. That’s the favor I came to ask. I know I have no right to ask this and you can say no, but I wanted you to go with them and make sure Wayne and the rest of the men came home.”

Taylor opened his mouth to speak but Whitaker beat him to it.

“Of course he’ll help you.”

“Hold on,” Taylor said. “You know I don’t have any kind of expertise in sub-Saharan Africa, right? I’ve never deployed there and I don’t speak any of the languages.”

“Arabic is one of the major languages,” Whitaker said.

“Ohh, see, I didn’t even know that. I know some guys who served in that area that would be more useful and might have some contacts down there. I’m not saying I won’t do it and of course, I want to help, but there are better people if you want to get your husband back.”

“I don’t know them and I know you. You are the most tenacious man I’ve ever known and I know that if you promise to bring Wayne back to me, nothing will stop you. You came back from the dead after three years. There isn’t anyone I trust more with my husband’s life than you.”

“I appreciate that you have that kind of faith in me, but this kind of situation needs to be looked at objectively, or people die. While I have the basic skills for this, I’m not an expert in hostage rescue, I don’t have any knowledge or contacts in the area, and I haven’t done this type of fieldwork in years.”

“Bullshit,” Kara, who’d been mostly quiet through all this, said. “Russia was only a couple of years ago, and you didn’t have a whole team of soldiers with you. You got us out then, you can get her husband out now.”

“It’s not that simple. The situations were different.”

“So what?” Whitaker asked. “You hadn’t stopped a psychotic bomber before, but that worked out. You hadn’t investigated a serial killing general before, but we got him. I, more than anyone, want you to stay safe, but this is what you do. Why are you becoming gun-shy now?”

“Because what happens if I fail.”

“Then the mission would have failed anyway,” Claire said. “I will at least know you did everything you could to save him. I know it’s weird, doing this kind of thing for me, of all people. But if what we had meant anything to you, please do this.”

“Fine,” Taylor said with a sigh. “Give me the information of the people I need to talk to and anything else you can think of and I’ll get in touch with them.”

“Thank you,” Claire said. “Thank you.”

She stayed for another thirty minutes, answering questions about specific people Taylor would need to talk to and going over everything again in as much detail as she could remember. There wasn’t as much of that as Taylor would have liked, but he wasn’t surprised. She was on the outside of everything and only got involved because she wouldn’t just take the companies word for what was happening. He wouldn’t know the real situation until he talked to the people in charge, and he assumed they’d keep him in the dark as much as possible, since there was no way they wouldn’t resent his interference, regardless of what approvals Claire had gotten.

“I need to make some calls before we meet with them,” Taylor said after Claire left. “I want to know as much about them ahead of time as possible. We don’t know the full team, but I can at least find out about the connection between Northbridge and White Mountain and see if I can find out what Northbridge was doing in Somalia, of all places.”

“I’m not going to be able to go with you on this,” Whitaker said, seeming suddenly nervous.

“What!? Why? You were the one convincing me to agree to go, and now you won’t go?”

“I was going to wait until I went to see my doctor this week, to make sure, but … I can’t go because I’m pregnant.”

“You’re what?” Taylor said, stopping in his tracks.

“It’s why I was so moody the way back. I’d been feeling sick and my last period was supposed to be before we even went to England, so I took a pregnancy test before we checked out of the hotel. I’m getting a little old and I’ve been told by doctors before that it was unlikely I’d ever be able to have kids, so I wanted to check with my doctor before I said anything, but I’m pretty sure I am. And if I am, I can’t go into something like this.”

“No, no you can’t,” Taylor said, still trying to process the sudden information. “You said you’d been told you couldn’t have kids. Is there a chance that this is a false positive or something?”

“I don’t think it is. I’ve been having really bad morning sickness and I can just … feel it. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“This is great!” Taylor said, excited.

“It is?” Whitaker asked, uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

“Of course it is. Kara, get in here.”

“What?” Kara, who’d gone back to her room after they’d shown Claire out, said as she reappeared from the room they still kept for her.

“You’re going to be a sister!” Taylor told her.

“Really?”

“Yep. You think you’re ready to be a big sister?”

They spent the rest of the evening celebrating, although the shadow of Claire’s request still hung over everything. Taylor caught Whitaker giving him concerned looks throughout the night, and he was still trying to figure out why she’d pushed so hard for him to go. He did find some time to shoot an email to Dave Bryant, a friend and former intelligence officer in the Army whose business it was to know about people like Northbridge and White Mountain.

Because of the time differences, Bryant didn’t get back to him until the morning.

“Hey, how’d that thing with the DIA go?” Taylor asked when he picked up.

After the events in Germany early in the year, Taylor had owed several large favors to Bryant for helping him out of a jam he and Whitaker had gotten into. Once Taylor had the inside track into the US Government, thanks to his now high profile connection to President Caldwell, Bryant had called that favor in. The Defense Intelligence Agency, which was the military’s intelligence arm, had been looking for someone outside the agency to handle some contract work in Europe and Bryant had asked Taylor to help him get it.

While Taylor had made it clear when Bryant first called that he wasn’t going to do any favors that would come back on him or Whitaker, like doing something illegal, this had turned out to be nothing more than getting him a meeting and putting in a good word. After the thing with the Army several months ago he was, at least for the time being, in the good graces of the Army as well as Caldwell’s administration, so Bryant’s timing had been fortuitous. Of course, knowing Bryant, it probably wasn’t a coincidence.

Since Taylor was about to ask for a favor, he figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to subtly remind Bryant that they were even at this point.

“Good,” he said, without elaborating.

Even though the Army had heard him out and given Bryant the meeting, no one had actually told him what they needed someone outside of their agency for. Knowing these guys, they’d probably never tell him.

“Good. I need a favor.”

“I assumed,” Bryant said in his ever-prickly nature.

“An old friend has asked me to go on a rescue operation to Somalia to help secure the release of hostages taken by a local warlord. They belonged to Northbridge, who hired White Mountain Security to do the actual extraction. I want to know what I’m getting into before I walk through the door.”

“If White Mountain is involved, I can tell you it’s not anything you want to have a hand in.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of the news stories.”

“Then you’ve only scratched the surface. Those guys are bad news all the way around.”

“How so?”

“A couple of things to be aware of. One is their hiring practices. To keep costs down, they tend to recruit guys that other PMCs would avoid. Of course, they get the side benefit that these guys share a lot of White Mountain’s values. That’s the second thing. They tend to be extremely over aggressive, even when it makes their job harder. These guys are the shoot first, and then shoot again, and maybe shoot a third time before asking questions type. They’ve blown up more than a few deals, literally, because they couldn’t keep it in their pants, ordinance-wise. That’s the third thing. Their track record is spotty at best. If they’re doing a hostage rescue, then there’s a good chance at least some, if not all, of the hostages will wind up dead because they go through the doorway too hot without making sure who they’re shooting at first.”

“That’s the news report I saw.”

“Like I said, you only know the half of it. If you’re talking about that thing last year in Kabul, I know the reports said that the friendlies were caught in a cross-fire, but that isn’t exactly accurate. It’d be more honest to say a single guy took some potshots at them so one of their yahoo’s decided the best way to handle it was to shoot off an M72, just to be sure. Blew a chunk out of the side of the building, along with everything in the room. Including the friendlies. They tried to claim the friendlies hadn’t even been there, but the army came in to do clean up and try and get some control over the situation, and pulled the bodies out of the rubble.”

“Jesus,” Taylor said.

He’d served with a few guys that reckless, but they didn’t tend to last very long, usually getting the boot on a bad conduct discharge before they caused too much havoc.

“Which is why my friend wanted me to go along,” Taylor said. “Her husband is one of the hostages.”

“Well, just watch your back. The kinds of guys they hire aren’t always the most stable.”

“Once I find out who’s on the team, if I send you their names, could you get me their files? I’d like to know what I’m getting into.”

“Can’t your new friends in the puzzle palace get that for you?”

Taylor had considered calling a contact in the Pentagon after Claire told him what was going on, but even with Taylor’s connections, they tended to be hesitant about handing out information.

“I didn’t have time to jump through hoops. I’m meeting with them today and the smart money says we’re oscar mike by tonight.”

“Yeah. You know you’ll owe me for this.”

“Maybe I could just pay you for the intel?” Taylor suggested, since he really did hate the idea of owing favors.

“You can’t afford me. I get government rates.”

“Fine, I’ll owe you.”

“Music to my ears. Send me the names when you get them and I’ll dig up dirt before you leave. Did you want me to find out anything else about the situation?”

“Yeah, see if you can find out what they were doing in Somalia in the first place. I can think of a lot better places for them to set up that wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Sure, I’ll do some poking around.”

As usual, Bryant hung up as soon as their conversation ended, skipping all of the pleasantries.