Mitchell and Jackson left Jen alone with Kim, and together they walked over to a small, young Asian-looking woman dressed in fatigues like them. She was busy helping dress the wound on an injured local. Samantha Chen was the team medic, but her short stature meant nothing; she was just as deadly with a rifle as any man on the team. Sam, as she preferred to be called, stood just over five feet tall with a petite but firm build. Her dark-brown eyes burned with a passion to be the best at everything she did. A former airborne medic, she was a professed adrenaline junky and loved to free climb and sport parachute whenever she could. Standing beside Sam was a tall, slender man with a thick black goatee. Gordon Cardinal, a Canadian from the Rockies, was the team’s sniper and surveillance expert. Whereas Sam was excitable, Cardinal was as cool as a mountain glacier; nothing ever seemed to faze him. Relationships in their business were frowned upon, but Mitchell turned a blind eye to Sam and Cardinal’s blossoming romance. He reasoned that if he did not see it, he did not know about it.
“How did it go?” Mitchell asked Cardinal.
“Smooth, really smooth,” he replied. “We were on them before they had the chance to kill them all.”
“They’re actually quite good,” Sam said proudly of the police special unit. “Not a single terrorist got away. Unfortunately, five people were killed before we got here.”
Mitchell reached out and squeezed her arm. “We did the best we could. There are a lot of people alive here today because of what we and especially our police counterparts did. We should be proud of ourselves.”
Sam smiled and went back to her work.
The adrenaline built up in his system slowly left Mitchell’s body, making him start to feel fatigued. Slinging his rifle, Mitchell decided to check on Jen one last time before rounding up his team and heading back to their camp. As he wandered through the camp, students and locals alike came up and shook his hand. This was not normal; Mitchell’s people usually did their work in the shadows, without notice, and without thanks. In his mind, he reasoned that he and his team were simply doing their job.
Mitchell and Jackson had known each other for years, serving on numerous deployments to Afghanistan together. Both former US Army Rangers, they had recently been enticed to leave the service and come to work in the world of private security. Reticent at first, both men decided to take a leap of faith and retire from the army to a more stable life that paid far better than the military ever could when Jackson’s eldest son got into trouble with a local street gang during his last deployment.
“Mister Mitchell…Mister Mitchell,” called Jen from behind a growing gaggle of police and students.
Mitchell walked towards her. A bright, warm smile on her face greeted him.
“I’m glad you that found me, I wanted to see how you were doing,” said Mitchell. “It’s not every day that a person gets kidnapped.”
“Mister Mitchell, I’m doing quite well, thanks to you and Mister Jackson,” said Jen.
“Please, call me Ryan,” said Mitchell, smiling.
“Ok then, Ryan,” said Jen, stressing his name in jest.
“We will be leaving soon, but I was wondering when you might be heading back to the States and what your plans might be when you get back home?” asked Mitchell.
Jen looked into Mitchell’s eyes and saw that this was a man that she could trust. She suddenly felt herself staring again. Keep it casual flashed in her mind like an alarm bell going off. “We’ve been told by the police that they are going to leave some men with us tonight, but we have to wrap up our dig by tomorrow morning and head back to Manila for a flight out of the country,” said Jen.
“Prudent move, it’s not too safe around here, not after what happened today.”
“No, I guess not.”
Mitchell canted his head, trying to catch Jen’s attention. “You still haven’t said what you plan to do when you get back to the States.”
Jen smiled at Mitchell’s attention. “Why, Mister Mitchell, are you trying to ask me out?”
“The thought just came to me. It may seem a bit forward, but in my line of work hesitation never pays off,” Mitchell said with a smile. “I know several good restaurants in New York City, if you were interested in some fine dining.”
Jen smiled. “I would love that, but I happen to be living with my mother in Charlotte, North Carolina right now.”
“Good thing I know several good restaurants there as well,” said Mitchell, not backing down.
Jen felt out of sorts; first a kidnapping and now a man she just met asking for a date in the middle of the jungle. There was no way she could explain this one to her mother. “Ok, you win, Mister Mitchell; dinner when I get home. Now, how will I get in touch with you?”
Mitchell dug out his wallet and with a smile, he handed her a business card before turning about to rejoin his team, leaving her standing where she was.
Jen watched him fade into a crowd of milling soldiers. A wide smile broke across her face. She suddenly felt alive, hoping that her heart was not going to take her down the wrong path again. She could tell that Mitchell was unlike any man she had ever met before in her life. Holding onto the card, she stood there, knowing that she could not wait until they met again.
5
The small red MD-500 helicopter flew through the hot afternoon sky, cruising along 1,000 meters above the dark blue-green sea, easily doing two hundred kilometers an hour. The pilot had yet to push the small but versatile craft to its limits. Sitting stone-faced beside the pilot was an attractive woman in her late twenties. Her pale, almost porcelain-white skin and long black hair gave her the look of a model. The pilot, a mid-forties, blonde-haired ex-Russian police chopper pilot, had picked up the woman from a private airstrip just outside of Istanbul. He was under strict orders not to talk to his passenger, and that suited him fine. Most people talked too much for his liking; however, this one looked almost statue-like, sitting there saying nothing, doing nothing, just staring straight ahead, ignoring the world flying past beneath her. The silence may have been welcome, but for some indefinable reason, she made the pilot quite uncomfortable. The sooner he landed and was rid of his passenger, the better it would be. He knew from his flight briefing that this was going to be a quick visit, followed immediately by a return flight straight back to the private airstrip, where a Lear jet was waiting on standby. All he had to do was fly the helicopter, keep his mouth shut, forget his passenger was ever in his helicopter, and an easy fifty thousand dollars was his.
A minute later, the luxury yacht Imperator emerged like a welcoming island on the blue horizon. Relief flooded through the pilot; he wanted this task over with as soon as possible. He quickly radioed the ship that he had their guest and began banking to the right, so he could align his helicopter with the massive yacht’s rear helipad.
At 120 meters in length, the Imperator was the fifth largest luxury yacht in the world. Crewed by forty, it could comfortably accommodate twenty guests at a time in the most lavish rooms imaginable. For its rich occupants and guests, it had all the usual features such as an indoor theatre, two heated pools, and a huge dining room along with many additional unseen defensive measures such as black-market Russian made ship-to-air missiles, a mini sub, and the latest in surveillance and mine detection systems. This vessel did not want to be bothered.
Dmitry Romanov watched silently on the ship’s closed surveillance system as the helicopter came in and effortlessly landed on the deck. At fifty-five years of age, he was a man at the height of his game. The heir presumptive to the long vacant Russian throne, Romanov claimed he could trace his family lineage as far back as the beginning of the House of Romanov in 1613. His family had lived in Paris ever since the Russian Revolution in 1917; however, recently, Romanov had decided to move back to the land of his ancestors and had bought land outside of Moscow and built a palatial mansion for his family to live in. He had always known affluence and prestige; his father was a wealthy executive who died when Romanov was in his teens. Although young, Romanov quickly took the reins of his father’s business. Driven by an insatiable desire for wealth and power, he was a multimillionaire by age eighteen and a billionaire before he turned thirty, with offices and holdings all over the world. Oil and natural gas were the two commodities that Romanov continually sought. If they were out there hidden deep underground, he seemed to know where to look and never let anyone or anything get in his way. His shares of companies involved in oil exploration in Russia and West Africa were unmatched; his profits soared by the day. He rarely traveled anywhere except aboard his yacht, safe and secure from his rivals and the prying eyes and ears of many a hostile power.