Chapter Three

Thorn

Brussels, Belgium

Monday, Twelve Twelve Hours

"G entlemen, your plane delay is working in our favor." Commander Titus Kane's voice crackled from the cell phone Thorn was holding out. Three Panther Force operators stood shoulder to shoulder in a tight circle, heads bowed. They huddled around the commander's words, protecting them from intrusive ears.

"I need you in a secure location ASAP to receive orders. Stash your bags. You won't be heading home today."

Panther Force had been in Europe on a protection detail for a group of United States diplomats. Half the negotiation team had moved on to London and were covered by their fellow Strike Force team members.

Thorn, Honey, and Gage drew the short straw. For them, the security mission was over.

They'd already put their principals on the government jet, here at the Brussels International Airport, and were waiting for their own commercial flight home when the call came through from Headquarters.

The three men hefted their duffels to their shoulders and moved in lock step toward the exit, spooling up for their next assignment.

"I think our best move is to rent a couple of cars. We can store our bags in them and pull up the encryption site on a laptop." Honey lifted his chin toward the car rental signage. "We'll be ready to move if need be." At six-foot-eight, Honey Honig always had the best vantage point for locating things. He was also the most easily located. Six of one, half-dozen of another. It either served them well or it sucked to be him. There was rarely an in between.

The three brushed past the preoccupied passengers flowing through Brussels International. It was newly renovated from the 2016 dual bomb explosions in the terror attack on the airport. That weighed on Thorn's mind. All that glass. Tons and tons of glass. He imagined, as they jostled toward the car rental booth, what would happen to the people underneath the glass walls if the panes shattered, splintered, stabbed through the air toward those underneath. How would he protect himself and the people around him? Where could he go in an instant to find cover? His head on a swivel, taking it all in, Thorn processed through the options. Those kinds of thoughts were part of Thorn's job. He plotted this kind of information as a habit. Assessed each change in the dynamic. Where was he in the space? Who was near him? What needed to happen?

Thorn worked as an elite operator for Iniquus, a private for-hire protection and operations group, which signed contracts with the US government and, on occasion, with corporations or the hyper-wealthy. Iniquus was an organization populated by the best of the best as they left the US Armed Forces. The Deltas, like Honey, the Marine Raiders, like Gage, and the SEALs, like Thorn. Battle hardened. Battle ready.

They made their way up the short line to the rental agent, signed contracts for two high performance cars, and walked away with two sets of BMW keys. They had no idea what they'd be involved with, but rarely was it a good idea to have access to only one vehicle.

The unpredictability of their work always gave Thorn a shot of adrenaline. He liked that about his job. The risk. The challenge. This was his world. There was no such thing as nine to five. He was always in go mode.

The rental cars were parked on opposite sides of the deck. Thorn tossed his duffle in the trunk of one of the cars and jogged through the rows to join up with his teammates.

When Thorn popped open the back door, Gage already had his laptop fired up. His fingers tapped through the encryption protocol to bring up a secure line.

"Gentlemen." Titus's gravelly voice filled the car's interior as Thorn pulled the door closed with a bang that echoed down from the cement ceiling. "We're lucky to have you positioned at exactly the right place at exactly the right time."

"Sir," the men answered in unison.

"We've signed a contract with an alphabet for a new case."

"They need their hands that clean? They're not even giving us their letters?" Honey asked. There was a reason why the US government sometimes preferred hiring a private brand instead of putting their necks out, especially if things went sideways in an allied country.

"Let's just say, they'd like to keep a low profile." Two photographs appeared on Gage's screen, a woman and a child. "Memorize these faces. Chances are you'll never see them, but if you do, you need to intervene by whatever means possible. They were kidnapped this morning in Toulouse, France."

Toulouse was in the south of France and a long distance from Brussels.

The picture on the screen changed to just the woman's face.

Thorn focused on her photograph. It was probably a still frame captured from a video. The woman's long, honey-colored hair was lifted as if she was swinging her head violently toward the camera. Her blue-green eyes filled with fear and what Thorn read as physical pain. Something in his gut squeezed down. His jaw clamped tight. Power surged through his muscles. It was the way his body felt as he threw himself into combat. A photograph had never pushed his buttons this way before. "Do you have a larger picture that includes her body?" he asked. "What's happening to her right there?"

"The man who took a video on his cell phone focused in with his zoom at that moment. It's the clearest picture we have of Juliette's face. We're still putting a case file together on the incident. We don't have time to get a complete picture before we put your team on the mark."

The child's image came onto the screen. "This is the boy who was with her."

The child's eyes were wide with surprise, there was the blur of a man's arm, wrapping around him. Thorn didn't see a family resemblance between the two.

"Her child?" Gage asked.

"We're waiting for answers on the child's connection. Here's what we know," Titus said, putting Juliette's picture back on a split screen so they could memorize both faces. "The woman is named Juliette DuBois. She is twenty-nine years old. A French citizen living in the United States on a green card. She is the daughter of Dr. David Dubois who is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency scientist. We all know how important it is to the United States' interests to secure our DARPA scientists. Our reports indicate that Juliette flew to Toulouse, France yesterday. This morning she went to visit with her grandmother, Pascale DuBois who lives in the neighborhood where Juliette disappeared, according to our intake report. However, and here's the interesting part, Pascale DuBois denies having a granddaughter. Madame DuBois's caregiver turned Juliette away at the door just before two men pushed Juliette into their car at gun point."

Honey bent closer to the computer. His face set with concentration. "Have the kidnappers reached out yet?" This was Honey's forte. He was an Iniquus negotiator who made contact with the bad guys and manipulated an opening, then reached in and pulled the hostages out of the line of fire, getting them home as safely as possible.

Thorn knew that the cases Honey hated most were the ones with kids' lives on the line.

"We have not been contracted to deal with the kidnapping. But on background, the tick tock of the event is interesting. Juliette DuBois showed up at the house and is turned away. The caregiver called the police on Juliette because Madame DuBois said she didn't have any grandchildren, and the caregiver thought Juliette was up to some scheme to hurt Madame DuBois."

Thorn crossed his arms over his chest, his brow pulled in tight as he focused.

"After she was turned away, Juliette walked across the road. A neighbor walking his dog saw two men with guns force Juliette into their car. He filmed it on his phone. He said there was a child and that the child wasn't there anymore once the car had driven away. Just as the kidnappers' car rounded the corner, a taxi pulled up in front of Madam DuBois's house. The video tape guy was in shock and told Dr. David DuBois, the taxi's fare, what had happened. DuBois responded by jumping back in the waiting cab and left just before the police arrived. The man with the video of the incident walked over and showed it to the officers. Our client believes that the family was targeted in a kidnapping to gain leverage over Dr. DuBois."

"Broad daylight," Thorn said.

"Until the kidnappers make contact," Titus said, "we don't know if the kidnapping time frame, juxtaposed with the father's arriving in front of Pascale DuBois's home was a coincidence, a mistake, or the plan. Our contractor believes it was the plan."

"We're in the right place at the right time because Dr. DuBois is heading here to Brussels?" Gage asked.

"Affirmative," Titus said.

"And David DuBois is with DARPA. His research is top secret, then." Gage shifted around in his seat. He was engaged to a DARPA scientist who had developed the BIOMIST system for the military. Someone had come after her full tilt last December. It had been close. But Panther Force was able to pull her out of the net that tried to trap her. They protected her until the bad guys were brought to justice. Panther Force was well aware how vulnerable the scientists' specialized military research made them to rogue players. "Dr. DuBois, do we know his expertise?" Gage asked. "Do we know why his family might have been targeted?"

"Right now, it's irrelevant to your task," Titus said as he put a new picture up for them. "Dr. DuBois," he said.

David DuBois looked like an ordinary American male: glasses, balding head, paunch belly, with the jowly jawline of a man nearing retirement age.

"Dr. DuBois booked a last-minute ticket for a flight that left Washington D.C. last night. This morning he arrived in Toulouse. He must have gone directly from the airport to Pascale DuBois's home. It was a one-way ticket."

"Just this morning? And now he's flying to Brussels?"

"According to our intake notes," Titus explained, "the Brussels ticket was purchased during the time frame between his leaving Pascale DuBois's house and getting to the airport in his taxi. He booked the first international flight available, which takes him here to Brussels. From Brussels, he has a ticket for a red-eye to Washington – again, it was the first available ticket to the US."

"All right," Thorn said, "the kidnapping is background. We think that Dr. DuBois is a target. He's trying to get back on US soil. How can we facilitate that?"

"Your assignment is to put eyes on him from the moment he deplanes until he's safely in the air heading toward the States. We're trying to arrange for at least one of you to be on that flight with him. He's not to know you're there. Our client wants to be the one who discusses the kidnapping with him once he's back on U.S. soil. They can better protect him, and they can better interview him from D.C."

"Security watch, yes, sir," Honey said. "Do we expect that someone might be trying to kidnap Dr. DuBois, as well? What are the risk factors here?"

The Panthers didn't have permits to carry guns in Brussels. Conceal carry, silencers, combat knives were all big fat no-goes. If anything sparked, they'd be going at it hand to hand. None of them minded a good fist fight. The problem was, bad guys rarely played by the rules. They'd have weapons that Panther Force did not.

"We're all working in the dark," Titus said. "At this point, there's no evidence to believe that Dr. DuBois is a target. There may be a different reasoning behind the disappearance of Juliette DuBois and the child, something that had to do with the woman herself. Or it could have been an opportunity attack."

"Mother and child? Broad daylight in the street? It doesn't read that way to me," Honey said.

"Exactly," their commander responded. "As far as I know, no one has reached out with demands from the bad guy side. After the police watched the video, and discovered Dr. DuBois worked for the US government, the police called the American embassy, who contacted the CIA and FBI, and so this very quickly trickled down to you."

"Roger," they said in unison.

Titus gave them DuBois's flight information, and they checked their watches.

"We'd better scramble to case the area before the flight comes in," Thorn said.

"Nutsbe will be your support. Report anything unusual," their commander said. "Remember, foreign soil means foreign laws, and foreign prisons."