Operation: Austin

Chapter One Part One - Rescued

On his business cards, it read: “Gary P. Booker Jr., Booker Security Consulting,” but he rarely handed one out. Most of his contacts either knew him or were blindly reaching out through a secured channel, having been told that someone on the other end might help in their desperate hour of need. He often wondered why he even had business cards, an analog remnant in a digital world, but on rare occasions, sharing one provided the appearance of legitimacy.

The term cybersecurity consultant made his work sound neat and tidy, and it usually was, but other times it got messy. That is what this story is about: a time when things got really messy.

It was a Monday night in the middle of July. The temperature in Eastern Washington had been characteristically hot, hovering around 100° most days. Gary didn’t mind; he had air conditioning, though he did not like using it. Rather, he preferred wearing fewer clothes with quick dips in his pool.

Since he lived alone most of the time, he had little need for clothes unless his teammates, his housekeeper, or her seventeen-year-old daughter were around. Lately, he had spent a lot of time alone with his dog, but Jax didn’t care if Gary worked nearly naked or not.

He was up late into the evening, digging through an Asian chat room on the Dark Web, whose real name is TOR, an acronym for The Onion Router. The system actually has many uses, but it is popularly known as the secure place criminals use to communicate. Referring to it as the Dark Web is sensational, and the media loves to sensationalize things. Besides, nobody wants to hear about some technical process of encrypting messages in layers, especially with a frivolous name like The Onion Router. The Dark Web sounds much more mysterious and dangerous.

He had been monitoring a situation in Davao City, on the Philippine Island of Mindanao. There had been some mention of possible terrorist activity in a dark group he surfed occasionally. That was enough to send him digging through the notorious online back alleys of society, looking for clarity on the matter. The Philippines is 15 or 16 hours ahead of his time zone, depending on whether daylight saving time is in effect. That was why he was sitting in his office, naked on a warm summer evening. Usually, he would be in bed, trying to out-snore the dog that slept on a big pillow in the corner of the room.

The phone rang, breaking into his concentration. Irritated that someone would call at this time of night, he looked to see who it was. The screen on his phone said, “John.”

His best friend’s unexpected calls were not unusual. If he and Layla were not actually in Ellensburg with Gary, they might be anywhere in the world. When that was the case, John frequently poked his head above ground to chat. He usually did not call at 11:00 p.m., though. Curious about a call at that hour, Gary picked up his phone and touched the button.

“Hey, Big John, what’s up? You okay?”

“Yeah, boy,” John assured him. “All good now, but I have a situation, and I need your help.”

Gary had known John Byrne for years; he was one of those hard-to-describe people. The closest comparison Gary could think of was Stallone’s character in the movie Get Carter. He often wondered if that character had been modeled after John’s notorious career as an enforcer and collector for the casino industry. John did not stick out in a crowd, but when an immediate and lasting impression needed to be made on someone, he was the man many powerful people called.

Those who knew him said John was the most interesting person they had ever met. A very common comment about him was, “Somebody should write a book about all of the stuff he’s done, but nobody would believe it was true.”

One of the most amazing stories about John happened years ago when he lived in Seattle. He had been an All-American football and basketball player from New York, and through an odd series of events, with no dancing experience, he ended up in Seattle dancing the lead in The Nutcracker Ballet.

During that time, he worked out at the famous Eagles Gym there. A heavyweight contender was in town, training for a title fight, and finding sparring partners was proving to be a challenge. At a trimmed-down weight of 180 pounds, John decided to go a few rounds with the future champ. At the age of sixteen, he had been the sparring partner for the middleweight champion of the world, so he knew his way around the inside of the ring. Plus, he once wrestled an 800-pound brown bear, so, hey, he thought, how much tougher can a 228-pound boxer be?

That was how John became the regular sparring partner for a future heavyweight champion of the world, a guy who outweighed him by almost fifty pounds.

Eventually, he ended up in Las Vegas, working as a bartender. One afternoon, he bounced an entire motorcycle gang out of an off-strip gambling club owned by his sister. The feat was witnessed by the guy who did all the collecting for the big casinos in town. John was hired on the spot, and for the next five years, he and his boss ran the security and collection business in Sin City. These are just a few of the dozens of unbelievable stories that could be told about John Byrne.

John and Gary, along with John’s team of handpicked mercenaries, collected intelligence for governments, provided security for wealthy clients, performed hostage extractions, and handled special situations where criminals needed to be dealt with efficiently and permanently.

They are not in the Law Enforcement business; they leave those cases to the authorities. Those same authorities, however, called John or Gary when they needed a permanent resolution on cases they could not or would not touch. They were in the justice business, and right at that moment, John was on the phone, and Gary wondered why.

“Must be serious. How can I help?” Gary asked.

“I’m in Las Vegas on a deal. It’s cleaned up, but we had to bring out an eighteen-year-old girl; her name is Paige. Things got complicated, Gary; I couldn’t leave her there. She doesn’t have any family, and I need to find her a safe, quiet place to stay. Can you take her in for a while?”

Typically, when they made a victim extraction, it was for a client, and they knew where the kid was going. It was usually a girl, but occasionally a boy. Now John had a girl on his hands, and for some reason, there were no open arms to receive her and take her home. Gary and John usually worked together on these deals. This must have come together fast because this was the first time Gary had heard of it. He wondered where the intel came from, not that John had to report to Gary, but it seemed odd that he had not heard about it before this call.

Gary had plenty of room; he lived alone in an enormous house near a small town in Eastern Washington. Since he was usually up to his eyebrows in some cyber investigation, it was quiet around the place, but he was not sure about taking in a problem child. After a few years of drama and adventure, his life was finally organized, with a routine he was very much in control of. Additionally, their work involved extremely sensitive security, another reason not to have somebody around, but it was John. So that was reason enough to consider the matter.

“Is she on drugs? What’s wrong with her? Can’t she go to a shelter or something?”

“No,” John denied. “She’s been beaten up some. I was hired to recover another girl from traffickers, and she was onsite. She’s clean as far as I can tell, no tracks. Doesn’t seem the type. She was drugged at a party last weekend and ended up in a bedroom in the same house as my client’s kid. She just arrived in town from Idaho and wasn’t on-site long. She is new here and doesn’t have a safe place to go. I couldn’t leave her there. Besides, it seems like there was an explosion and devastating fire right after we left. The place burned to the ground. The other girl is back with her family, but this kid needs someplace to go for a while, someplace nobody can find her if they come looking.”

“Are they looking?” Gary asked with interest.

“Not that I know of,” John answered. “But I’m not sure who knew about her, and eventually, someone will sort this out. If the cops get a hold of her, the perps will soon afterward. She doesn’t know anything, and she can’t identify anyone important, but they won’t care about that. They need to think she died in the fire. If we don’t get her out of here, she’s a dead girl, and she seems like a nice kid.”

Gary chuckled softly. “There was a fire, huh? Strange coincidence!”

“Yeah, boy,” John replied sarcastically. “Really sad, it was a beautiful place. I hear it was a horrible fire. A really hot one. Probably completely burned the bodies there.”

“Bodies?” Gary teased.

“Well,” John clarified, “Assuming the rumors are true that there were a dozen bodies of traffickers who were killed by a rival gang. I mean, just if…”

Gary was still chuckling. “Rumors. Right.”

“Yeah, you know someone always starts rumors when something like this happens.”