Page 1 of Shadow Target

CHAPTER 1

Shep Porter entered Delos Charity H.Q. He had an uneasy feeling as he took a special secure elevator down two stories beneath the building and got off at the floor the Artemis Security mission planning area was on. After a few turns down some corridors later, he arrived at the briefing room and pushed the door open. At a long, polished maple table sat people he knew.

Being a civil engineer, Shep pretty much already knew what the briefing he was there for would be about. He’d been on long-term loan as a Captain in the Marine Corps and had been working undercover with Delos charities for two years now. The unease he’d initially felt about all this kept moving uncomfortably through his gut, and he felt it tighten. He’d already talked with Tal Culver-Lockwood, the President of Artemis, about the up-and-coming work assignment. She’d spotted him the other day, eating in the underground cafeteria on the second floor, and had sat down to talk with him for a moment, her own tray in hand.

“Hey, Cav Jordan wants you to head up a new global initiative, Shep. It involves construction and you’re the right man for this upcoming mission.”

“Oh?” He’d overseen global assignments as a civil engineer project manager before, handling millions of dollars involving overseas military assignments. At thirty years old, he was at the top of his game. His extensive military experience had honed his ability to manage thousands of people at a time. And to do it successfully. Nothing made him feel prouder of his people than to see them complete the assignments he set and bring them in on time and within budget.

He brought his attention back to the present; deep underground, walking into the briefing room. He sported a beard while on secret assignments, and knew people always said he looked like a California surfer dude because of it. It belied his position as an officer in the military. His gaze swept the large room with its two huge screens, one situated on each side wall. There were laptops ready in front of each chair, along with flash drives sitting beside each of them. Tal sat at one end of the long table with the mission brief and her own thumb drive beneath her hands, nodding hello to him. She waved for him to come and sit next to her, gesturing to the chair that sat on her right-hand side. On her left sat Wyatt Lockwood, her husband, ex-Navy SEAL, who was the head of mission planning and a fixture at every major briefing. The Texan gave him a big ‘howdy’ grin and Shep returned it, liking his laid-back demeanor.

Matt Culver, Tal’s brother, two years younger than her, sat next to him, dressed casually in jeans and a black t-shirt, his brown and gold hair longish, giving him the same kind of California surfer look Shep sported. It was his lion-gold eyes that reminded Shep that Matt’s family was only half Caucasian American, the other half mostly Turkish with a dab of Greek thrown in; a DNA hodgepodge of East meets West. Matt had that deep tan color of the Turkish people in his pedigree, even though Shep knew he didn’t get outside as much as he’d like. As an ex-Delta Force operator, Matt headed up the branch of their global charity organization that dealt with kidnap and ransom situations. He wondered if this assignment had overtones of such ‘KNR’ potential involved. Usually, the military utilized him in covert engineering jobs in third world countries, picking up important intelligence info that he fed back to the CIA. Hoping KNR was not involved in this latest mission, he sat down in the comfortable black leather chair across from the red-haired Alexa Culver. She was the youngest of the three Culver siblings, looking very Caucasian, taking after that side of the family, and was the head of the Safe House Division for disadvantaged women and their families around the world.

Shep didn’t want to admit it, but Alexa’s red hair, piled up in a careless knot on top of her head as it was, reminded him of his ex-wife, Willow Chamberlin; she had red hair. that she’d always worn fashioned into one long braid hanging between her shoulder blades whenever she’d flown her F-16 combat jet fighter out of Bagram Army base in Afghanistan. To say she was hell-on-wheels was an understatement. And she’d drawn his attention the very first time they’d met, coincidentally running into each another at a pizza joint on restaurant row. They were both Type-As, always in a hurry and, that night, for whatever reason, they’d backed into one another at the crowded pizza joint. He’d damn near knocked her over, catching her before she fell to the cobblestoned floor. Luckily for him, she had a wry sense of humor, thanking him for hauling her to her feet before she hit the tiles. Her first words to him over the din of constant chatter and the jukebox wailing out yet another tune were, “That’s a helluva way to get my attention.”

Warmth had flowed through his heart whether he’d wanted it to or not. Willow and he had fallen into bed that night like elks during rutting season, to put it bluntly. They’d had great sex. And then they’d had some more. It’d ended up they didn’t sleep at all, and had greeted the dawn together with bloodshot eyes. Her red hair had been tousled, and she’d looked more like a young college-aged girl than the balls-to-the-wall combat jet jockey she really was. To this day, even though they’d divorced three years earlier, Shep had never forgotten that satisfied cat-like look in Willow’s light-green eyes.

Snapping himself back from the past to the meeting at hand, his faraway gaze focused again on Alexa, who had been a US Air Force C-130 transport pilot herself assigned to Bagram. She wore a purple dress, feminine pearls around her neck and on her earlobes. He shifted his gaze to Cav Jordan. An ex-SEAL, he was one of their Asia and Middle-Eastern specialists, and had a thick briefing manual sitting in front of him. Tal had mentioned Africa, so he knew why Cav was here for this briefing. Shep had never been to Africa. He’d never been ordered to the ‘Dark Continent’. He’d been to the Middle East, Europe and Afghanistan, but never there.

The door slid shut.

Shep knew these mission briefing rooms were state-of-the-art. The walls were made of special composite materials that would not allow any enemy satellites overhead to snoop electronically, or in any other way, through the ceiling or walls. Everything spoken in this room was recorded but channeled to the safety of a huge underground vault where all the servers, the heart of their top-secret system, were located. He’d been down there once, and thought it looked even larger than what the CIA had back at Langley. But then, Dilara and Robert Culver, the parents of the clan, were rich beyond most people’s imaginations. They could easily afford the best. Dilara’s Turkish and Greek sides of her family owned together the largest shipping container fleet in the world and were collectively worth trillions of dollars. Figures like that were mind-boggling to Shep, who loved math and numbers.

Yet, to meet the children of Dilara and Robert, all here in this room, one would think they were normal, everyday folk. But they weren’t, not by a long mile. Their parents had raised them to not be tied to their money or their power or made to feel they were special or different from everyone else on the planet. Upon meeting any of them, Shep had always been amazed at how down-to-earth, warm and caring these three siblings were to everyone. That had been an amazing discovery when he’d first been ordered by the Marine Corps Commandant to work for Delos as an undercover agent for an undisclosed period of time. It was an odd order, and Shep had never been told exactly why he’d been chosen for the super-secret job. But his instincts, as well-honed as they were, whispered to him that Delos was so large and global that positioning a few well-chosen military people within, was a positive move for both sides.

People here treated one another, no matter who they were, as equals and in a friendly, respectful manner. Competition did not exist in this place, which was refreshing to him. Shep supposed that was down to Dilara’s direct influence, since she was president of the global charity group.

“Well,” Tal murmured, watching the first screen come alive down at the other end of the room as Wyatt threw some photos up on it, “let’s get on with it, shall we?”

Shep saw the computer screen flicker on. He had his own laptop open, as well, fully prepared to take part in the high-tech briefing. “Let’s go for it,” he told her.

Smiling faintly, Tal said, “We’ve been thrown a bit of a curveball on this one, Shep. And we’re not sure you’re going to be willing to take it once you find out what that is, but know that the mission has already been cleared with the Marine Corps, CIA and FBI. For now,” and she gestured toward the screen at the other end of the room, “I’m going to ask Wyatt to give the briefing. You need to know what you’re in for. And of course, you can refuse the assignment at any time, with no hard feelings.”

“Right,” Shep murmured. What curveball? His engineer’s mind went into overdrive for a second, but he found nothing. He’d never turned down an assignment, and wouldn’t start now. He had no African experience, so that could well be what Tal was referring to. He focused in on Wyatt’s presentation, watching the screen.

“We’ll be sending you to Ethiopia. There’s a huge lake, Tana, in the Northern Provinces of the Amhara Tribe. At the southern tip of the lake is Bahir Dar: Population three-hundred thousand and change, part of the capitol of the Amhara Region. The Blue Nile, a major waterway, originates from the lake.” He raised an eyebrow and gave Shep a glance. “Emperor Haile Selassie, long since passed, was of the Amhara tribe. At one time, he considered moving the national capitol to his own tribe’s regional capitol, but didn’t.”

“Was that my history lesson on this trip?” Shep asked, grinning.

Wyatt chuckled. “I believe our people need to know the history of the area, as well as just cold logistics. It puts a lot of understanding in us as to how things evolved in any given spot in the world.” He pushed a second thumb drive toward Shep. “There’s the rest of your history lesson as well as a lot of other useful did-you-knows.”

Smile increasing, Shep took the folder. “I’ve got a long flight in front of me, so I’ll be needing some good reading material.”

Wyatt produced a third thumb drive, handing it to him. “The rest of it is on here. Top secret. Need-to-know only. And only you and the pilots need to know.”

“Pilots?”

“Yes, we hired two of them from Shield Security, out in Alexandria, Virginia, a year ago. They are under contract to us moving forward. They will be ferrying you and your team around various villages in the Northern Provinces.”

“Okay,” Shep said, placing the thumb drives into his briefcase.

Wyatt pressed a key on his laptop and up came a new photo on the big screen.

“This is a Somali tribesman, Tefere David, who was born there but has spent most of his time in Ethiopia and will generally make your life hell while you make the security upgrades around each of our Delos charities on that list of cities and villages in front of you,” and he gestured to the information on the wall screen. “Tefere David is forty years old, black hair, dark brown eyes, and is a scavenger of the first order. He was kidnapped from his village at the age of eight by Somali warlord Cumar Hanad, who then raised him. Tefere refers to him as his father and works for him to this day. He now has a five-hundred-man group of ragtag Somali soldiers in Ethiopia where he has based his so-called kingdom. Over the last six months, he and his thugs have been hitting our charity outposts in the rural villages you see on the screen. Their intent is to rob. To take money, food and anything else they can carry. It is disrupting the Delos charity program in that region, as a result. So far, they have not killed anyone. He’s got one helluva track record on doing just that, but we believe from the emerging pattern, that this time he’s wanting goods, not taking lives. At least, not yet,” and Wyatt lifted his head toward Alexa. “You want to fill Shep in on what he’s gonna be doing?”

Alexa pushed yet another thumb drive across the table to him. “Tefere is in bed, if you’ll pardon the pun, with Valdrin Rasari, a Russian billionaire, the biggest and most successful sex trafficker in the world. Rasari lives in the small European country of Malgar which is near Albania. We have been working closely with Shield Security who have intercepted a cell phone call, via the CIA, of Rasari and David making a deal worth millions. For the last six months, the Somali has been using his Russian-supplied army vehicles to roar into one of the villages where a Delos charity is located. They shoot up the general area to scare the population into submission. There’s always a huge Russian truck along on these attacks. His soldiers spread out and start grabbing young girls around age twelve through fifteen, and boys seven to twelve and throw them in the truck. They kidnap them and then they’re transported to Malgar where Rasari puts them on a global dark web internet site, which is their selling block. These children will never see their families again.” Her voice dropped. “Statistics on stolen children who are pushed into sex trafficking show that they are usually dead before the age of eighteen.” Alexa shook her head. “It’s a hopeless, brutal life for them.”

Shep scowled. “Shouldn’t the Ethiopian army be doing something? Or the police? Or whoever?”

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