Troubleshooters (Jackson Chase Novella Book 2) by Connor Black Read Free Book Online Page B

“Why don’t you two take the car? I’ll have someone here run me over to the phone company.”
    “Call Naseeb for a ride back. He’s supposed to be on call for us 24/7,” I said.
    “And if he still doesn’t answer, we’ll come get you,” Sterba added.
    “Got it,” Chen replied. “I’ll send the coordinates as soon as I can.”

    V ehicle number 56 turned out to be an old Toyota pickup. Tucked into a corner of the dirt lot behind the police station and covered with a thin layer of dust, ‘56’ wasn’t just the identifier, it was probably its age.
    Standing before the little truck, Sterba turned to me and said, “Well, at least this will be familiar to you.” I smiled at the reference to my grandfather’s flat deck in Auckland that Sterba disliked so much.
    “Feels like home,” I said as I sat behind the wheel and turned the ignition. She was a little reluctant to start straightaway, but soon we were sputtering up the hill to the hotel.

    H aving cleared security and parked the little pickup, we found ourselves in front of the collapsed portico, exactly where we’d stood the day before. My eyes ran over the burnt facade again, imagining the guests in their beds as the bomb went off. It was a scene that was sadly familiar.
    A loud crashing sound came from our left. Instinctively, I crouched and moved my hand in the direction of the weapon holstered on my hip.
    “Easy, partner,” Sterba said, coming to my side. “Worker just dropped some lumber.”
    “Sorry,” I replied.
    “Something you want to tell me?”
    “Mmm.” I wasn’t really listening. I stepped forward, making my way over small piles of debris into the destroyed lobby. Having looked at the bomb’s point of origin yesterday, I found myself making a circuit of the rooms surrounding the kitchen.
    We came across a stairway and moved up to the second floor. A long corridor, badly damaged by smoke and fire, led to rooms closer to the blast radius. The narrow confines of the hallway, combined with the smell of burnt wallboard and plastics, continued to remind me of a very similar situation.
    “It was a few years ago,” I said quietly. “The Kabul Inter-Continental.”
    The scene in Kabul had borne a striking resemblance to this one. A long hotel, five stories high, slightly isolated location. I was with NZSAS at the time, and we had arrived on scene after the first three suicide bombers had detonated themselves.
    “I remember hearing about that. Terrible night.”
    “It was.”
    As we made our way further down the hall, more rooms had caution tape across their doorways. Looking in one, we could see the exterior wall gone, and most of the floor missing. The next showed the same. And the next.
    “It was 2011. There was a security conference on at the hotel. Local officials were organizing and preparing for the withdraw of international forces.”
    “There was a wedding in the hotel as well, right?” Sterba asked.
    I nodded, and continued, “Nine insurgents were hidden in the vegetation behind the hotel. When they entered, they came in hard and fast. Blew right through security.”
    “I would’ve thought a meeting like that would be heavily secured.”
    “It was. But these guys came loaded for bear. Assault rifles, grenades, RPGs, you name it. They cut through the checkpoints all too easily. They also wore suicide vests. When the surviving security forces saw that, they turned and ran.”
    I remembered our assault vividly. Fast roping from helos onto the roof inside a protective ring of cover fire. Gaining entry and clearing the stairs, one of the more dangerous moments for any operator. The screams of hotel guests mixing with the screams of the Taliban fighters as we cleared each floor. The grenades they used that injured one of my squad mates. The venomous anger on the dirty face of one of them through my reflex sight just before I squeezed the trigger.
    And I remembered the explosion when the last of the Taliban fighters detonated