Bogey Spades (Battle Born Book 3) by Jack Stewart

Author:Jack Stewart [Stewart, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn River Publishing
Published: 2024-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

36

6 miles south of Middlegate, Nevada

The road in front of them seemed to disappear into the horizon. Only the glow of flashing red and blue lights against the hills on either side of the road told Punky they were nearing the location Dave had passed to them. But as they drew closer, her anxiety wrapped around her like a cloak, and she eased her foot off the gas.

Colt glanced at her from across the cab. “We’re going to find him.”

She nodded but didn’t take her eyes off the road. “I know. But something about this doesn’t seem right.”

They crested the hill, and Punky pulled the Suburban in behind a blue Nevada Highway Patrol cruiser on the shoulder. She squinted through the strobing red and blue lights at several more police vehicles parked in the road and officers milling about and shining their flashlights across the ground.

“Nothing about this seems right,” Colt said. “Why would somebody kidnap KMART, drive out to the desert, and gun down a police officer? I saw what those guys were capable of at the Nugget, and they didn’t strike me as anything but professionals. They didn’t shoot up the place indiscriminately and were almost clinical in the way they took him.”

She had thought the same thing. Whoever took KMART had done so for a very specific reason. But she was no closer to figuring out what that was than she had been when Mantis approached her . . .

“Mantis,” she said.

“What?”

Punky shifted the Suburban into park and turned to face Colt. “This has to be related to Mantis somehow.”

She could tell by the confused look on Colt’s face that he wasn’t following her logic.

“Think about it,” she said. “If Mantis runs the Ministry’s West Coast network, that makes her valuable to almost any other organization that wants to conduct espionage in the area. It’s no mystery that China has infiltrated almost every facet of American society—especially in California, which has an abundance of targets in academia, technology, military, and government. If somebody wanted to leverage the Ministry’s resources, they could do so by controlling only one person.”

“Mantis,” Colt said.

She nodded. “And what’s one surefire way of gaining leverage over another person?”

“By kidnapping a loved one.”

“Like a child,” she said.

Colt remained silent, but Punky could already see the truth in her theory. Aside from the Joint Strike Fighter maintenance data the Marine had provided to the Ministry, there was no indication he even had access to anything of value. And after Colt helped stop a Chinese attack on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Punky’s investigation into KMART had largely centered around a Marine corporal who continued to meet with Ministry operatives but provided nothing substantial.

Almost as if somebody was keeping him close to protect him.

But protect him from whom?

Before she could run down that line of thinking further, her phone rang. She shook away her thoughts and answered. “Special Agent King.”

“This is Lieutenant Moore from the Nevada State Police,” the caller said. “I understand you might have some information related to a trooper’s murder.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.