Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

“So . . . the guest workers are Korean? Koreans eat dog sometimes, don’t they?”

“They do. But so do some other Asian cultures. Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and China.”

“Well, we know they aren’t Chinese.”

“No, sir. We know they aren’t anyone else but Chinese. Only the Chinese have experience with rare earth processing. None of the other countries deal in this industry at all.”

Now Peters cocked his head. “But . . . China was kicked out.”

Brawley smiled broadly. “The Chinese state-owned metal mining corporations, Chinalco and Minmetals, were kicked out, but what I have determined is that these guest workers are Chinese gangster miners.”

“ Gangster miners?”

“Yes. There are illegal mining companies working all over the country.”

“How do you know?”

She clicked to the next slide. “This is a rare earth mine in Mongolia. It’s a gangster mine, run by an illegal outfit out of Shanghai. This image is from last August.” The mine was full of people. Cars, trucks, earth-moving equipment. “This mine has been underproducing for a few years, but they kept it open, digging out what they could. Three hundred fifty or so workers, based on the housing.”

She switched to the next slide, and the next, and the next. They all showed the same mine and surrounding buildings; the only difference was the date in the upper left corner changed. October, December, February.

She clicked to bring up the next image, from April. Peters looked at it for a moment and said, “I’ll be damned.”

Annette grinned. “Where did everyone go, boss?”

“To North Korea? To Chongju?”

“Damn right,” she said. “The gangster miners must have been hired in secret by the North Korean state-run mining industry because they didn’t have the expertise to operate the mine themselves. Same with the processing facility. The only difference there is the Chinese will need to somehow get some workers with experience in that. The existing gangster mines don’t process their own ore.”

Peters stood up from his desk. He had not even taken a sip of his coffee. “We need to run this up to the fifth floor. Even though it’s a little early to present the director with stories about dog meat, they’ll need to see this right away.”

“We?” she said. “I look like crap.”

“You look tired, Brawley. Like you’ve been working your ass off. That’s a good thing. I might have to rumple myself up a little before we go so you don’t make me look bad.” He said it with a smile.

“You couldn’t if you tried, boss.”

24

The breach of Karel Skála’s apartment building on Krišt’anova Street in Prague took place at two p.m. It went smoothly; an old man exited the building just as Ryan and Caruso walked up the steps and they caught the door before it closed. Once inside, they moved to the right, sticking close to the wall, and then they stepped into the stairwell without anyone noticing them.

The stairs were empty at this time of the afternoon, so they came out onto the fifth floor, still undetected. They made their way down to Karel Skála’s door, and Ryan knocked while Dom sized up the lock.

After a second and third knock, Ryan nodded to Dom and stepped out of the way. While Dom dropped to his knees and began working on the lock, Ryan watched up the hallway, keeping his eyes trained on the stairwell. The elevator bank was closer than the stairs, but Jack knew he’d hear anyone coming via elevator long before the doors slid open. No, their main concern now was the possibility of a neighbor coming out of one of the five other apartments on this floor, or else the stairwell on the far end of the hallway flying open.

No words were exchanged between the two men. Ryan wanted to tell his cousin to hurry the fuck up, but he fought the urge. He knew Dom would defeat the lock faster than he could, so he forced himself to be patient.

Finally, Jack heard the click of the latch opening, and then he followed his cousin through the door.

The small entryway was dark and unremarkable, and this led to an equally dark hallway about twenty feet long. Halfway down on the right was an archway, and they found this led to a well-appointed living room. There was not a single light on in the small apartment, so Jack flipped on a lamp by a sofa so they could look around. Everything was neat and undisturbed.

Both men sniffed the air, trying to decide if anyone might be in the apartment, but neither man detected any particular smell.

They split up and did a quick but careful walk-through to make sure the place was unoccupied, then they met in the living room.

Dom spoke softly. “An office in back. No computer. Guest bedroom is empty as well.”

Jack said, “Master bedroom off the right here. Lot of junk lying around, it will take a little while to search this place. Let’s snoop around. I’ll start in the office. You start in the bedroom.” He then called Gavin. “Gavin, everything okay?”

Gavin Biery replied from his overwatch position: “All’s well outside.”

Jack reentered the master bedroom and looked for anything interesting out in the open, but that didn’t take long. Skála looked like he lived the life of a regular educated European male in his late twenties. There were clothes lying around, books and magazines on his bed, some cheap art on the wall. The guy obviously liked to play squash; there were racquets and other gear lying on a shelf, and a picture of Skála posing on a squash court and holding a trophy rested on his dresser, next to the small trophy itself.

Jack stepped into the master bathroom and went through the medicine cabinets, noted the man had what appeared to be a prescription to combat male pattern baldness, and a large bottle of over-the-counter medicine to treat an upset stomach.

On the other side of the apartment Dom combed through the office. He didn’t speak or read Czech so he couldn’t identify any of the papers or notes on Skála’s little desk, but nothing looked terribly interesting. He felt around under the desk, pulled out the drawers and looked for false compartments, and he searched behind the bookshelves of the small office. When he came up empty in this room he went into a guest room and checked under the bed, then stepped into the bathroom and started searching there.

In Skála’s bedroom Jack opened the closet and saw Skála had an impressive array of suits on one side, and on the far side, in the back of the closet, a long row of winter coats were pressed together tightly. Jack decided this would be a great place to hide a safe or anything else Skála wanted to keep hidden, so he began feeling around through the coats. While he searched for any sort of a safe or hidden door, Dom called from the kitchen.

“We can plant a bug in here, but we’ll just have to come back and get it if he doesn’t show up before we leave.”

Jack felt play in a board in the back wall of the closet. He yanked a few coats off the rod and dropped them to the floor to reveal a loose piece of wallboard a foot and a half wide and several feet tall. He started to pull on it, and while doing so, he said, “Hey, cuz. Check this out. I might have a—”

The large board peeled back easily, and behind it knelt a pale white man in his underwear. His eyes were red but wide, and he held a large metal object in his hand.

The man screamed and raised the metal object.

“What the—” Jack leapt back in surprise, which worked to his advantage, because the man jumped out from his hiding place swinging.

Jack rolled backward across the bed, ended up on his feet against the shelf with the squash equipment on it. The attacker came forward, leapt up on the bed, and raised the weapon high to swing it down. It was a brass lamp, big and heavy, and the man wielded it like a two-handed sword.