Dark Rule (COIL Book 3) Read online

  What Readers are Saying

  "Dark Rule was just as exciting as David Telbat's previous books, with on-the-edge-of your-seat situations, seemingly impossible predicaments, and even a little romance among agents. I found that I was kept spellbound as well as continuing to see God's hand in directing agents. I highly recommend this book to all Christian readers." Ralph C.

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  "Dark Rule, oh boy was it fantastic, it had my attention from the start to the finish." Lynn C.

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  DARK RULE

  Book Three in The COIL Series

  D.I. Telbat

  https://ditelbat.com

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  Copyright © 2013 D.I. Telbat

  All Rights Reserved

  Updated 2017

  Cover Design by Streetlight Graphics

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  There is no redemption without sacrifice.

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  FREE PDF Downloads

  Get your FREE Dark Rule Drawings here!

  ~ Dark Rule Drawings ~

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  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, organizations, ministries, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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  Dedication

  To Randy and Shawn,

  for their years of

  Christian dedication and commitment

  to the people of Cameroon.

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  Acknowlegments

  My thanks to Dee and Jamie

  for their help in the lengthy editing process—

  an adventure all its own!

  And to all my reviewers,

  who help so much to get the word out!

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  Table of Contents

  What Readers are Saying

  Title and Copyright

  FREE Downloads

  Dedication

  PART I

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  PART II

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Endnotes: Vision Beyond Borders

  Character Sketch

  Other Books by D.I. Telbat

  About the Author

  BONUS Chapter: Dark Vessel, Book Four in The COIL Series

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  PART I

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  Prologue

  Heather Kooper leaped off the roof and balanced on one foot atop a blazing neon sign in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. Two stories below, the narrow street bustled with gangsters-turned-businessmen hustling karaoke joints. If she fell now, she'd land on a car parked in front of a massage parlor. Another sign above the shop boasted in Chinese and bad English of the luxuries within.

  Before she had a chance to fall, Heather reached out with a gloved hand and gripped the metal grating. When she stepped off the top of the neon sign, she hung for a moment by one hand above another sign that advertised noodles and a movie for tourists looking for an authentic Hong Kong experience.

  "You have four minutes. Over."

  The voice in Heather's ear reminded her she didn't have time to enjoy the view overlooking Mong Kok's nightlife for even a moment.

  Like the spelunker she was, with practiced ease that would've impressed a gymnast, Heather swung her legs over a water pipe, hung by her legs, then clung to a vertical flange on which she could've slid down to the street. Instead, she applied rock climbing shoe soles to the side of another building and climbed straight up the steel like an island native might climb a coconut tree. One story higher, she reached a closed window. While holding herself with one hand and her two feet wedged against the metal flange, she fit a knife into the side of the window frame.

  Click. The window slid open.

  "Three minutes, Caver. Over."

  "Got it," she said back to Bruce Lavers, a square-jawed Brit across the street. His job was to keep his binoculars trained on the office she was breaking into—to warn her if the security guard made his rounds ahead of schedule. "Almost there."

  Hooking a leg inside the window, Heather drew herself inside the lit office where computer screens glowed and a pot of tea steamed in the corner. The office would open in two hours.

  However, that first office was of no interest to Heather or Bruce, or Bruce's brother, Clifford, in the van below. Instead, Heather opened the office door to the hallway, checked the span of linoleum, then darted diagonally across to a second office door. After checking the knob, she knelt to pick the lock.

  "Two minutes."

  But the lock tumblers weren't cooperating. Heather preferred mapping a cave in Belarus over picking the locks of a criminal organization's headquarters.

  "Sixty seconds, Caver. You better be inside!"

  Stepping away from the door, Heather closed her eyes. She didn't have time to pray, but she prayed anyway. God knew what was happening and what lives depended on that very infiltration of the headquarters of—

  She pulled off her gloves with her teeth and knelt again to her task. In seconds, the tumblers slid upward, and she turned the doorknob as the tap-tap of the night guard's shoes echoed up the hallway from around a corner. Heather dove into the room and pivoted on her knees to softly close the door.

  Seconds passed. A shadow moved across the crack under the door. Heather squeezed her eyes shut and pushed the door handle button-lock as the guard tested the door from outside. He jiggled it again.

  His footsteps continued down the hall.

  "I'm in," she whispered to her mic. "Count five until next rounds. Over."

  "Roger that." There was relief in Bruce's voice, which made Heather bite her lip. He cared for her, and she had a thing for him. But now hardly seemed like the time to dream of what adventures they could have as a couple serving the Lord, and not just as teammates on a Christian Special Forces team.

  Heather counted down a row of cubicles until she located the office space she'd visited two days earlier. The eighth cubicle was labeled in Chinese and English: Materia International.

  She sat at the chair and inserted a flash drive into the USB jack. After holding down four keys simultaneously, the spyware wormed into the hard drive and parsed the data that was too dangerous to be caught stealing—and would certainly cause too much suspicion if asked for directly.

  The screen streamed an allocation table and stopped suddenly. The photograph of a Chinese national blinked onto the screen, a short biography under the hardened face of the woman.

  "I've got her." Heather took a breath of relief. "She's here, guys. She's going by the name of Chen Li. According to this, she's still alive. Over."

  "Roger that, Caver, but where is she? Over."

  "I have th
e coordinates. On my way out." Heather plucked out the flash drive and left the chair as she'd found it. When she looked back at the screen, it had returned to seemingly inconsequential sea level erosion and coral damage statistics along the Great Barrier Reef. "Hang on a little longer, girl. We're bringing you home."

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  Chapter One

  Nathan Isaacson sat in the cockpit of the bright red floatplane he'd been told to procure in Cairns. From the outside, it looked like any other floatplane, but inside, Nathan admired fresh welds and a complete airbag deployment system recently installed into the control panel. An airbag in a plane? What was Corban Dowler up to now?

  The dock to which the plane was tied in the small Australian harbor rocked unnaturally in the water. Glancing up, Nathan saw Corban in a white baseball cap, a black briefcase in his hand. Nathan hadn't seen the ex-CIA agent for months, but it comforted him to see that the aging man hadn't changed. Their world of international espionage was in a constant state of change, but God's people seemed to be in a state of changeless zeal.

  "You don't exactly look like a tourist, Boss, at least not with that briefcase." Nathan hopped onto the dock and grinned as he shook Corban's hand. "I got your message. You sure I'm ready?"

  "Ready or not, God's people need you." Corban crossed his legs and sat down, the briefcase on his lap. "How's the leg?"

  Casually, Nathan studied the shoreline. A man with a dog. A woman jogging while pushing a stroller. A highway with little traffic beyond the parking lot where three vehicles were parked. Finally confident they weren't being watched, and certainly not being listened to, Nathan sat down as well, his left leg extended, a metal brace over his jeans.

  "I'll wear this thing for the rest of my life, but it's a healthy reminder of how the Lord kept me alive in Germany."

  "I like your attitude, Nathan. Always have. Any problems to share? Spiritual or otherwise?" Corban opened the briefcase and arranged his files, then looked at Nathan in the eyes. "Spending six months with Luigi is good for training, but how's your faith? Luigi isn't exactly a beacon of Christ's light."

  "No, he isn't, but I like to think I rubbed off on him a little." They both chuckled, knowing well the stubborn Italian's view of Christians. "I'm good. A little lonely, I guess."

  "Yeah, I understand. When God talks about counting the cost, serving alone is certainly part of that price, Nathan, and it won't get any easier." Corban opened a file. "This is a pretty rough mission for your first undercover. You've been an exemplary soldier, but you've been learning that espionage is a different game. Now it's all about being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove—without the non-lethal weapons you were used to using. It takes more faith and less muscle, I'd say, though there's a place for muscle, too.

  "One year ago, I sent this woman to infiltrate an ocean explorer group." Corban passed Nathan a photo of a brown-eyed Chinese woman in her thirties. "Two months ago, she stopped making weekly reports. She's going by the name of Chen Li."

  "Does she have a personal transmitter or a beacon of any sort on her?"

  "She had one, but we've received nothing for weeks. Maybe she had to disable it if the company she's around began to suspect her." He gave Nathan a printout. "A freelance COIL team broke into a Hong Kong-based company called Materia International three nights ago. It's the group she joined for a six-month recon since they have communist ties in Europe and they've been publishing hostile propaganda against Christians. These are not nice people, and with all the instigation that arose from the IRO that Team Jaguar uncovered in Croatia, we can't be too careful."

  "I read the reports you sent me. According to this data, Chen Li is a tropical ecologist currently on board the Materia, an explorer vessel."

  "That's right. We think she's still alive, but that's for you to discover. If she's alive, I want you to bring her safely home."

  "What's her COIL file say? Is she experienced?"

  "Not so much, though she was trained well." Corban sighed as if a heavy weight were on his shoulders. "If you're asking if she could've changed sides, I can't answer that. All of our agents are tested to various degrees, as you know. Sending you in without more information is part of the danger. This is a secret group, Nathan. The few reports Chen Li did make before she went dark suggested they had guns aboard, and there was some rumor about taking over a settlement of Christians, but she hadn't confirmed anything specifically."

  "Her silence may mean she's been exposed, Boss, in which case—"

  "If she's still alive, get her out." Corban's firmness made Nathan remember how much the boss cared for each and every COIL operative he managed—over one hundred acting as teams or individual field agents. "This was supposed to be a basic in-and-out operation, maybe an evidence-gathering mission, before we contacted authorities. You know better than anyone how the most basic circumstances can escalate."

  Corban took the photograph and printout back and closed his briefcase. Nathan looked down at his own hands. He'd known peace and war, but more often war. Whatever burden God asked him to carry now, he knew God would give him the strength to endure it.

  "Just tell me what to do." He felt a chill of excitement crawl over his skin. "To tell you the truth, I'm tired of running mole exercises with Luigi. I need to get back in the field."

  "You're still a Marine at heart." Corban smiled. "You can't help it, can you?"

  Nathan shrugged and grinned, then became thoughtful a few seconds later.

  "How're the boys?"

  "Scooter's on a new team operating mostly in Colombia nowadays. Bruno's been in Africa."

  Rising to their feet, Nathan felt a little unsettled that Corban hadn't given him more details about his old COIL teammates. Perhaps it was for the best since they all thought he'd died in Berlin the previous year.

  "Glad to see you're getting used to life without your mustache, Nathan. It was one of your most identifying characteristics."

  "Who said I was getting used to it?" Nathan touched his upper lip. "Luigi kept threatening to tranquilize me and shave it off if I didn't do it myself!"

  "How'd our mechanics do?" Corban stepped past Nathan and onto the port side pontoon of the plane to look into the cockpit.

  "Well, she flew up from Gladstone without incident, but if you're referring to the reinforced fuselage and the airbag, I have to tell you that's got me puzzled." Nathan tapped his foot against the pontoon as he waited for Corban to respond, but the aged spy continued to admire the cockpit. "Okay, Boss, I get it that she's built for a potential crash, but how does that get me close to these Materia International people?"

  "You've got it halfway figured out already." Corban moved back onto the dock. "You're a bank robber. There's a gadget in the engine that'll start to smoke on cue. You need to crash within sight of the vessel known as the Materia. They'll pick you up."

  "Just like that?"

  "A brazen robbery will be reported tomorrow morning, and a plane theft an hour later. The rest is up to you. Make an impression and become part of the crew."

  "You've been busy, Boss."

  "Just survive the plane crash, will you? You're not exactly replaceable, Nathan."

  "I'll do my best." Nathan smiled.

  "And get Chen Li out alive."

  Nathan's smile faded. His reunion with Corban Dowler, founder of the Commission of International Laborers, was over. God's people were in danger. It was time to get to work.

  "I'll do everything I can, Boss."

  "I know you will. Come up to the car. I've got the cash in a couple duffel bags."

  "Cash?" Nathan followed Corban up the dock. "What cash exactly?"

  "You're a bank robber, Nathan. I have half a million Aussie dollars in the trunk." Corban stopped and turned to Nathan. "Unless you'd rather be a bank robber with no props to show off to those on the Materia . . ."

  "Half a million, you say?" Nathan swept his hand before Corban. "By all means, I'd rather be a successful bank robber than a failed one. Lead the way."
r />   #######

  At an altitude of two thousand feet, Nathan flew the floatplane toward the coordinates Corban had given him—near the 147-degree longitude, just east of the Reef, deep in the Coral Sea. As soon as the Materia explorer vessel came into sight, Nathan kicked a lever into the downward position, which triggered the recently installed engine mechanisms.

  The plane's engine sputtered and the controls began to shake, but the plane reacted when he flew it in a broad arc around the obviously anchored Materia. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a trail of black smoke against the blue January sky. When it came to boarding the Materia as intended, a long list of problems now faced Nathan. But it all relied on him living through the crash first.

  He checked his speed and descended in altitude. The surface of the water looked calm enough for the ocean, but he thought of all the other things that needed to go right as well. For one, the plane had to sink so it couldn't be inspected and her new alterations discovered. This put further pressure on Nathan to perform some sort of controlled crash—a stunt he'd never practiced, let alone attempted!

  The crew was on the explorer vessel deck now. He had their attention. The engine continued to cough loudly, and Nathan eased her speed even more. The pontoons caught an ocean wave and the plane bounced back into the sky. Still too much speed. After decreasing a little more, he tested his seatbelt harness and steadied his breathing. The plane glided over the surface.

  "This is gonna hurt," he mumbled, then pushed the controls forward.

  The plane dove the last yard into the sea. The nose caught and immediately flipped the plane over on its top. The airbag deployed and slammed into Nathan's face with such a punch to his nose that he knew it broke on impact. The seatbelt held against his collarbone as he hung upside down. Though dazed, he shook his head and acknowledged the water flowing into the cabin through holes in the fuselage put there for the express purpose of sinking her.

  Nathan released the seatbelt and fell onto the ceiling. He splashed around in the rapidly increasing water for the two bags of money strapped in the copilot seat. Without the money, his bank robber story carried no weight. Holding his breath, he fit through the cockpit door and dragged the money with him—the bags becoming more waterlogged by the second. But Nathan had already looked inside the bags at the bundles of money; they'd remain buoyant for a while before they sank like wet rags.