Poaching the Poachers: The Key to Greed (eBook)

Chapter I

Godsend of a Feathered Friend

AT THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION’S military base at Arta in Djibouti, Colonel Beaujolais sat behind his mahogany desk sipping freshly poured black tea and reading about the aftermath of the terrorist bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as reported on the front page of Le Monde, when a knock at the door prompted him to stand. “Entrez.”

Into his office walked U.S. Army Special Forces Major Beckard.

Toward a pair of curvaceously legged, once frilly French chairs that now failed to adorn the room with their lumps and fray, the colonel motioned with an open palm. “I’ve been expecting you, Major. Tea?”

“No, thank you, sir,” responded the American, taking his seat. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Colonel.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Major,” said Colonel Beaujolais, nestling himself into his own luxurious leather chair. “Tell me, what is the progress on the American response?”

“Operation Infinite Reach is underway. For now, there are only two targets: a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan suspected of manufacturing biological weapons and a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, where the financier of the embassy bombings is thought to be hiding. We believe him to be the Saudi dissident, Osama Bin Laden.”

Pressing the top of the teapot down as he replenished his cup, the Frenchman cast an eloquent eye underneath a raised brow at his guest.

“I know, it’s not much of a response,” grumbled Major Beckard. “Sort of like swatting flies with a wet noodle.”

“I agree.” The colonel reached for a slice of lemon. “Especially for an operation called ‘Infinite Reach.’” Beaujolais squeezed a few drops of juice into his cup while allowing his quip to titillate his own mind. “However, we must start somewhere, Major. I dare say, you’ll be delighted to know of the Legion’s response to this detestable massacre. Our target lies inside Pakistan, and a very capable team of commandos is there now to conduct a retaliatory assassination of one Ali Mohamed Al-Zardari, a fundamentalist cleric who has been planning another string of such bombings and, I’m afraid, much more.”

“Who’s leading the mission?”

“Master Sergeant Mik Stevens,” said Beaujolais, straightening his spine, “the best I have. He’s a bit unorthodox, mais son travail est excellent. Most effective!”

“Glad to hear it…because you have one of my best, along for the ride.”

“Correct. I chose him just for that reason. I have worked with Sergeant First Class McClarey before, albeit in a more minor capacity. And even amongst the preeminence of the Green Berets, it is clear – the man stands out.”

“It’s very true. The security of McClarey is why I’m here. What’s the outlook? All on point? All systems go?”

“Indeed, sir. There was a small problem when two of our finest motorcyclists suffered injuries, leaving neither available. Most haphazardly, we now have on the team a genius on two wheels from the U.S. Marine Corps.”

“Two Americans? And how many Frenchmen?”

“Actually, just the one, Captain René Delavau. The rest are the usual mélange of nationals we have here at the Legion.”

“It happens at what hour?”

“They’re hitting the cleric at a cultic gathering of insane radicals, inside a fortified compound…” Colonel Beaujolais looked at his watch. “Right about now.”

An uninviting Pakistani slum that may as well remain nameless, a haven for outlaws, thieves, illegal immigrants, and radical Islamists, stank in an everyday way in the hard sun. On the edge of a maze of gray streets and alleyways, within the dark, hot and dusty confines of a street-level safe house, a trio of soldiers awaited instruction from Master Sergeant Mik Stevens.

Two of the soldiers, Staff Sergeant Hobdy of the U.S. Marine Corps, a tall and brawny Missourian with a longing for his wife and four sons, and Corporal Guttmacher of the French Foreign Legion, a capricious and wayward German with a mild Napoleon complex, sat ready atop their Kawasakis.

In a low voice, and a thick Swabian accent that never got old, Guttmacher joked, “Last chance to chicken out and join zeh Coast Guard, Hobdy!”

“Hah!” fired back the Marine. “I didn’t even see the coast ’til I was twenty.”

“Too busy husking corn?” Guttmacher ribbed, with a guttural giggle.

“Bull riding, actually, you ignorant cabbageworm.”

Guttmacher laughed louder and Hobdy’s broad smile almost lit up the room.

The same bit of light in the claustrophobic, murky garage bounced off the flashing sapphire eyes of Green Beret Shane McClarey, whose adrenaline flowed all the more copiously as memories filtered through his mind, fueling his vengeance on this momentous day. As he held the handlebars, with his left foot planted on the grit and his right leg hanging over the motorbike, he recalled the mayhem he had witnessed with wide, pulsating eyes. The dumbfounding madness of the bombed-out rubble that was once the Embassy of the United States of America to Kenya had not left his psyche in peace. A black arm here, a white leg there, half a head on a table, brains splattered all over…and the blood, everywhere the red, fresh, steaming blood…the whole place reeked of human entrails. He smelled it now, on his bike, queasy with keen recollection. Arriving in a wild run, stunned and sick beyond description to find a scene so woefully tragic, so utterly revolting, and so astonishingly heartless, the soldier had hardly known what to do first.

Routinely on his way to deliver updated intelligence to a CIA agent who lost his life in the blast, Shane had missed being inside the embassy by mere minutes. In fact, had it not been for a bird having crapped from the sky during his walk over there, requiring him to clean his boot in a park fountain, Shane, himself, indubitably would have been one of the embassy’s casualties. He remembered cursing that bird while he looked for a source of water so as to make himself presentable at the embassy…“Damn that bird!”…now I’m going to be late! (and Shane was never late)…only to praise that bird forever after – hail that Godsend of a feathered friend! Bless you, oh, bird in the sky that saved my life.

Though consternated by his ending up a fluky survivor of the devastation, Shane remained profoundly grateful to have been able to save over a dozen of the gravely injured, thanks to the rigorous medical training he had received in the 18D program at Fort Bragg. Now in the safe house, amidst his blurred vision, to his surprise the water in his eyes started momentarily to gather, so he snapped himself back to the mission at hand. All of Shane’s senses had now peaked, and every muscle in his body ached for retribution.

“McClarey!” barked Guttmacher. “Let’s go get us some payback!”

Sergeant First Class Shane McClarey checked his watch and took hold of the radio. “Circus Clowns to Ringmaster, we’re ready to roll out the show. Over.”

Not far away, in a wide alley where he could at once hide out, look legitimately present, and not block traffic, Master Sergeant Mik Stevens sat behind the steering wheel of a flatbed tow truck. Tapping his pen on his thick and long thigh, this gigantesque Australian was not at the point of impatience, but, still, he yearned to make a move and get the mission accomplished, behind him, and logged forever in his long list of military feats. Suddenly some children, all under the age of about fourteen, stopped in front of his tow truck in a raucous affront. “Bloody hell.” Mik sat up in his seat with a put-on ireful look in his eye, hoping to inspire in them a desire to quickly depart; Mik’s buzz-cut blond head, white skin and angry blue eyes struck them as foreign and daunting, and the boys (pretending within themselves not to be intimidated) ran off, turning their urge to raise hell from the tow truck to each other. In the rearview mirror, Mik watched one kick another, and he nodded slowly with self-satisfaction when they all blew off in a huff back down the alley and out of sight. Relieved for the moment, Stevens took note on his pad of the hour and minute, and soon was tapping the pen once again on his meaty thigh.

A natural-born leader, at age fourteen Mik had taken the reins of his family’s destiny when his father became paralyzed from the waist down after a hard fall from horseback while rustling cattle on a ranch near Lake Eyre in the Outback of South Australia. With five younger siblings, a mother, a grandmother and a newly disabled father, the plucky teen shouldered the responsibility of providing for them not only by taking over his father’s job on the neighbor’s ranch, but also by embarking on a secret mission to hunt for opal. Up well before the rooster’s crow, off he set each morning with pick and shovel to meet his Abo buddy, Bambam. The pair of boys explored far and wide, both before and after Mik’s work at the ranch. Day upon day, while his father slowly recovered from the mental and physical shock of the horrid injury, Mik focused on...