Thriller Thursday 12 5
I’ve been working on a Shadowboxer File called Dragon Jihad, that’s planned to come out at the beginning of the year.
I wanted to share some of it with you-
“There’s a meeting,” Carver said when he answered the phone.
No hello. No personal greeting of any manner.
The way he liked it. The way Carver liked it too.
Straight to business.
“I’ve been to a lot of meetings,” Brill sat up in bed.
A new townhouse.
Another section of the cross county trail.
Plain, functional.
All for a purpose.
“Town Center,” said Carver.
It was a routine and routine was dangerous. Brill knew.
Carver knew.
But the food was good, the service was excellent and it was safe.
As safe as any place could be.
“Fifteen minutes,” said Carver as he hung up.
Brill slid out of bed and worked his feet into a pair of running shoes. He made his way downstairs listening to the noise of the place.
He was still getting used to it.
The last townhome had been burned when a rogue agency decided to clean up what they considered domestic problems.
Like him.
He made enough enemies on his own, but sometimes men in blue suits and red ties and Washington DC offices thought they wanted to take a swipe at Shelby Johnson, his ex-boss, by way of the people who worked for Barraque.
Those same men often discovered just how soft they were in the bubble that wrapped around the DC belt.
Brill was in the real world, and his answer to a swipe was a decisive hammer blow in return.
Shelby took care of the blow back.
Which landed him back in Orlando, one community up the cross county Seminole Trail from his old haunts in Oviedo.
It added five extra minutes to his run, but he figured he was getting older and his body needed the work.
Plus it was a great way to burn off a short stack with extra butter.
He slipped a padded holster into the waist of his shorts, secured it under a thin hoodie and hid under a ball cap before crossing through his back door onto the trail.
Flo handed him a dish towel as he entered the door to the Town Center, and he spied Carver in the booth in the back.
Both men liked to sit with their back to a wall, but the side of the restaurant had garage doors for windows and this cool-ish morning, they were pulled open to the breeze.
Besides, he thought as he settled into the seat opposite of Carver, his partner was just as paranoid and as vigilant for anything out of the ordinary as he was.
A good watcher who would give him a heads up if anything felt out of sorts.
Flo dropped a steaming stack of pancakes in front of him and a giant mug of black coffee.
Carver gave him a tight grin.
“I took the liberty,” he said in a cultured South African accent muted by years working across various countries and cultures.
Brill tucked into the stack, cutting small bites with deft ease.
“East Texas Knights,” Carver said. “A biker gang out of Beaumont, Texas.”
“I figured,” Brill said around a bite.
“Because of the name,” Carver smiled. “Yes, it is evident which state they are in. They use the Interstates and the highways on behalf of the cartels.”
Brill bit back a growl and put down his fork.
He had run into the cartels before.
One particular criminal organization no longer existed, thanks to him.
They killed one of his favorite people, and he returned the favor by killing them all.
He did not consider the debt settled.
“Nothing new,” he said. “Cartels outsource a lot this side of the border.”
Carver dipped a hand into his jacket pocket and slipped a burner smart phone across the table top, slaloming between the coffee mugs.
He tapped a code in without looking, trusting Brill to memorize the four digits as he did it.
A picture popped up.
“Nice screensaver.”
The shot was a woman in a faded black burka, eyes slanted, and without an epicanthic fold.
“Chinese muslim,” Carver explained. “Estimates are twenty million in the population.”
“China lied about their growth,” said Brill. “Overstated estimates by a factor of ten.”
Carver nodded.
“I read the reports. Based on percentages though, we’re looking at eighteen to twenty million.”
“Conservative?”
“A lot of them are in refugee and reeducation camps,” the big man shook his head. “Difficult to determine.”
Brill snorted.
“Am I recruiting the Texas Knights to help me round up a reeducation camp?”
“We think the East Texas Knights are trafficking Muslim operatives over the border.”
“Chinese?”
Carver shrugged as he nodded.
“What’s the source?”
“A shrimp boat.”
“You found stowaways on a shrimp boat?”
“We found a body on a shrimp boat. Chinese male, mid-twenties, radicalized literature and bomb making supplies.”
Brill took a sip of coffee and let it marinate on his tongue.
“Biker gangs moving elements into the US.”
“That’s what we think,” said Carver.
“Based on a body.”
“You’ve seen it before.”
He had.
They both had.
It was almost like a terrorist playbook.
Find angry young men and women, fill their head with a bunch of zealot nonsense and promise them something better if they only do one awful thing first.
“Why cartels?”
“This is the gray area. We know they source their pill drugs from China,” Carver explained. “We know China is spiking some doses with fentanyl as a psyop against America. And we know the open border of the US allows millions of incursions each year.”
He ticked each one off by holding up long black fingers.
“It is not a far step to think they are importing murder bombers across the border.”
Brill sighed and motioned for the check.
There were too many miles open on the southern border and a body in a boat meant they were using the Gulf too.
Add in the mostly unmanned Canadian border to the north and thousands of miles of unattended and unwatched coastline and the consensus was they couldn’t win this fight.
Which was why he was being called in, he supposed.
An unconventional fight called for harsh measures.
Maybe it was time to take down another cartel, or two.
“Where do I start?” he asked as he pocketed the smart phone.
“I have sent a kit to the plane,” said Carver as he laid two crisp twenty dollar bills on the bill between them.
“They are expecting you.”
CHAPTER TWO
Normally he would run back to the townhouse and drive his old truck to the small FBO on the edge of downtown Orlando.
Carver wanted him to save time, so a driver waited right outside of the door with a big black private SUV.
“Mr. Wingfield,” he looked up from his phone as Brill stepped out of the front door. “Mr. Carver extends his courtesy.”
He opened up the back door.
Brill did a quick scan of the interior before getting inside.
He trusted Carver but it wouldn’t be the first time someone else used his name to gain trust.
The driver was a young kid though, skinny, with a black shiny suit and hair that needed a trim.
If he was undercover, he was doing a damn good job.
More than likely, he was just a UCF student trying to earn some tuition money by shuffling passengers across the metro.
Brill reached behind his back and set the pistol in his lap though.
Just in case.
It was how he spent most of his life and a lot of his thoughts.
Planning.
Just in case.
The kid hopped on the 417 and took it south toward the airport.
Brill didn’t relax, but he sit back in the seat and waited.
The Fixed Base Operator was fifteen minutes from Oviedo, and the plane was waiting outside of the hanger.
All familiar, all done before.
More than once, Carver had arranged to use a billionaire’s private jet after doing a job for the man that saved him a son and his fortune.
That’s what Carver was best at.
Building the relationships they needed to operate as an independent asset agency.
Brill was best at being the asset.
So far.
He supposed that one day, that luck might run out, and he suspected his end would be bloody.
If he gave it much thought, which he didn’t.
He expected to live as close to forever as he could, and acted accordingly.
Diet. Exercise. Fresh air.
Which often consisted of whatever he could grab, how much faster he could run than what was chasing him, and the exotic climes and locales that made up Europe, North America and Mexico of late, though he had breathed air on every other continent.
He didn’t care about dying.
He cared about righting what he thought was wrong in the world.
Tyrants masquerading as rebels. Tyrants masquerading as Senators.
Men and women who would use the systems of a civilized world to exact and enact abuses on people who couldn’t fight back.
He would fight for them.
The world was full of bad men, and maybe one day, one would get him.
Until then, he would thin their population in doubles and singles, as fast as he could.
The SUV pulled into the airport lot, was waved past security and drove to the hanger with the waiting jet.
The stairs were down and a stewardess waited for Brill at the bottom.
She smiled as he got out of the back of the SUV and tucked his pistol away while the kid driving drove off.
“Mr. Carver had a package delivered for you,” she said as he approached the stairs.
Brill thanked her and offered to help lift the steps, but she waved him off.
She had done it several hundred times, and he would probably just get in the way.
“We’re flying into Lafayette Louisiana,” she told him. “It should take an hour and ten minutes. Would you like coffee?”
He nodded, and inspected the black duffel bag that sat in front of a seat.
It was sealed with a zip tie.
Brill broke off the tie and accepted the cup of coffee with one hand.
He felt the plane move forward with a quick lurch.
“We’re third in line for take off,” the pilot called back.
He put on his seatbelt and watched the stewardess strap in next to the cockpit.
The coffee warbled in the cup as the plane accelerated down the runway and leaped for the Florida sky.
It climbed and circled and pointed it’s tail toward the still rising sun as it cut across the Gulf toward the Cajun coast.
Go GRAB THE SHADOWBOXER FILES TODAY
Use this code: 6QTHLKGSTZ
Every day, I sit down and write.
I write a daily newsletter called It’s 9AM.
I write on a novel or short story in one of six genres.
I write plans and to do’s and task lists.
It is a lot of ass in seat stuff.
Lucky, I type fast, and when I get good and hopped up on double expresso k-pods, it flies by.
I had two audiobooks come out this week:
Go listen to PIEBALD TROUBLE
Just click PLAY
I’ve been posting a lot of shots from my nature walks, cool stuff that I think you’d enjoy so HIT SUBSCRIBE on the channel so you don’t miss any.
PLUS
Holiday Action Thriller Giveaway 2024 group promo
Action, Adventure & Intrigue Giveaway group promo
MYSTERY/THRILLER/SUSPENSE SALES: DEC group promo
Pour Decisions: A Katie Murphy Cozy Mystery FREE
Lost Souls: A Novel of Crime and Suspense FREE
