Chapter Seven #4
“It’s partly in Serbian,” Jed’s voice came on over the channel. “He’s talking to Dragan Dilaver. Eight Ball is providing the translated transcript on your screen now. Read the highlighted parts as you listen to the conversation.”
Helen looked at the screen to her left as a word processing document appeared. Without waiting, she used the mouse to click on the start window prompter. She was getting the hang of this debriefing business.
Two men were speaking in the recording, sometimes in English, sometimes in Serbian.
She knew that Dragan Dilaver was a notorious drug- and human-trafficker in Macedonia.
It was easy to pick out his gravelly voice as he spoke with the undercover American.
She wasn’t particularly good at Serbian, but it was similar enough to Russian in parts that she caught the gist of the conversation.
Weapons, women, dangerous liaisons. She followed the scrolling text on the screen, reading the parts that were highlighted as she listened in.
“Your government’s sneaky, Hawk. They negotiated to have the KLA take over what’s left of Yugoslavia and they make drops in big crates called ‘Relief Aid’. Some of these crates are actually filled with weapons and they’re dropped at specific locations for me.”
“How did they choose you? Do you have a direct line to the U.S. Armory? Come on, Dilaver. Don’t tell me you’re an agent for the American government.”
“No, you have it backwards. I have an agent in the United States...” Male laughter.
“Your aunt?”
“She’s high level, got the authority to approve shipments or something... She said there’s some problem moving the weapons from her end right now and she might need my help. What do you say, Hawk? Help me out?”
Eight Ball interrupted in the ear phone, “End of snippet One.”
Helen pulled out the buds and returned her attention to the big overhead screens. The man appeared to be talking to someone off-screen with his mic off. The woman was taking notes. Jed remained silent, apparently waiting.
While he waited, Helen mulled over the recorded conversation.
That was probably the operation the commandos had been talking about in the meeting she’d interrupted.
From what she could gather, there was a list somewhere with some big important weapons that were missing.
Jed and his men’s task was to find and retrieve them.
One of them was the decoder she’d helped locate recently.
The other was this shipment in Macedonia.
She frowned. Dropped by the CIA themselves?
Whoa. She’d missed that part while watching the nightly news.
The man shifted his gaze back to the camera. “We’ll work on the identity of the female relative.”
Jed nodded. “Affirmative. Easier at your end. Get Ricardo Harden from TIARA in on it. He has resources inside the CIA.”
“I know he’s your friend and that he’s a major part of Admiral Madison’s investigative council, but can we fully trust him?” the woman interjected. “He’s still CIA.”
“Once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat,” the man observed.
“Harden wasn’t always a bureaucrat,” Jed said. “Besides, this is personal to him. His wife, GEM operative Nikki Harden, was a victim of the CIA moles.”
“All right, McNeil. I’ll update you on any conversations with him.”
“In your opinion, is the Virus unit still overextended, now that you have Admiral Madison’s SEALs to help you out?”
Helen frowned. She knew, from T’s briefing and some reading, that the COS commandos—the original nine—had undergone an intensive experimental training program called Virus, so this “Virus unit” must be referring to her team.
There were seven of them now, excluding her.
Like her, two of the others, Armando Chang and Shahrukh Kingsley, were relatively new additions.
It’d never occurred to her until now why there was the sudden merger between certain parts of CCC and GEM.
She’d figured the need to avenge for lost teammates came into it but, in this room, she saw that the merger was more than that.
The big explosion that had killed a few of the COS Commandos and her sister operatives so many years ago had effectively shut down many ongoing operations and pushed CCC to the limit.
So now they were back to eight, if they counted her. She rubbed her nose. She wondered what “number” she’d be assigned. The thought made her roll her eyes. Why couldn’t men be more creative and use gems and jewelry instead of stupid numbers?
She looked thoughtfully over at Number “so-I-can-still-freak-you-out” Nine.
He projected the aura of a man who very seldom failed.
How galling it must have been for him to see his men die, to acknowledge that he’d failed them.
His job was to close a mission. It suddenly dawned on her he’d never “finished” that particular one.
Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t know where the feeling came from, but she’d bet a whole week of coffee Number Nine had been working toward some end game he wasn’t revealing to whoever these two debriefing him were.
So many layers to this man. Could she ever have the time to peel him apart like he did her?