PRIMAL Vengeance

Chapter 42



The Bunker, Lascar Island



"OK, team, what've we got?" Vance walked in to the conference room and dropped into the leather seat at the head. To his right sat Chen Chua, to the left sat one of his operations officers.

"Good news," Chua started. "We have confirmation of Bishop's location. We pulled GPS co-ord and voice match off Yang's phone." Chua saw the quizzical look on Vance's face. "I pulled a few strings and got it covered by the NSA—no big deal. Anyway, Bishop is currently located at the PETROCON refinery."

"That's good news?"

"For now. My assessment is they're going to transfer him to the Chinese Embassy in Khartoum. Best guess, we've got less than twelve hours before they move him."

"Working with that time frame what options do we have to bang in on the target?"

"Nothing solid," reported the operations officer. "I spoke with Mirza last night and he doesn't have enough manpower to hit the refinery direct. His preference would be to interdict a road move."

"Makes sense. What about options to reinforce his team?" asked Vance.

"Aleks and Kurtz are both on a plane from Abu Dhabi to Ethiopia at the moment. Mitch is inbound and should RV with them around 1000 hours our time. If all goes well they should be on the ground with Mirza no later than 0600 hours local."

"Excellent work, having those boys around will certainly give us a few more options. I want you and your team to work up a number of concepts. Let's run with an interdiction of a road move and a worst case scenario if they try to chopper him out."

"I'm working on a third option as well, Vance," the man said. "A road move to the airfield up north and a fixed-wing flight into Khartoum."

"Good thinking. That's all for the time being. Can you give me a heads up when the boys are on the ground?"

The operations officer grabbed his folder and made for the door. "Will do, boss."

When he was gone, Vance turned to Chua. "So what's the go with China? You dug anything up on this Zhu character?"

Chua nodded. "Saneh's been sniffing around in Shanghai, digging up some dirt. In between her time spent in nightclubs and shopping malls, she has actually uncovered something we may be able to use."

"Useful for the overall mission or recovery of Bishop?"

"Both." The intel chief pulled an A4-sized blow-up of a surveillance photo from his folder and slid it towards Vance. "It seems that Zhu has a son."

Vance picked up the photo. "Real party animal, hey."

The shot was taken in a club, a polo shirt-wearing Chinese youth cuddled up with what looked like a pair of very attractive European escorts.

"You thinking a straight out swap?" asked Vance.

"My preference would be to recover Bishop without having to give up the kid, then we could use him to influence Zhu to play nice with South Sudan."

"But we can always use the kid as a contingency plan."

Chua nodded.

"Good plan, I like it. My only concern is Saneh being on her own in Shanghai."

"She's very resourceful, I'm sure—"

"That's not the issue. A kidnapping has lots of moving parts. She'll need back up."

"Vance, with most of the team in Africa, we simply don't have the extra manpower."

"No doubt about it, we're stretched." Vance leaned back in the leather chair, putting his boots up on the conference table. "I know of one operative available and I'm pretty sure he can speak Chinese."

Chua looked confused for a moment.

"Pack your dancing shoes, Chua. You're heading back to the motherland."