DARK EDGE: Prequel to the COIL Series Read online

  DARK EDGE

  Prequel to the COIL Series

  by D.I. Telbat

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  Copyright 2014 Telbat's Tablet

  All rights reserved

  https://ditelbat.com

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  Cover by Streetlight Graphics

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  There is no redemption without sacrifice.

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  Dedication

  To those whom Christ has won,

  To those who win others for Christ.

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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, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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  Table of Contents

  Dark Edge Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One – The Mole

  Chapter Two – The Sanction

  Chapter Three – The Agent

  Chapter Four – The Poison

  Chapter Five – The Lie

  Chapter Six – The Problem

  Chapter Seven – The Recruit

  Chapter Eight – The Rescue

  Chapter Nine – The Protocol

  Chapter Ten – The Beginning

  Other Books by D.I. Telbat

  About the Author

  BONUS Chapter One – Dark Liaison

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  Chapter One – The Mole

  Corban Dowler stopped his Ducati Diavel motorcycle on the bridge south of London's Buckingham Palace. He hastily stripped off his leather gloves and pitched them into the water below. His fake nose peeled off with more difficulty, followed by the cheekbone plaster. His cap along with the rest of his disguise disappeared over the rail.

  Revving the throttle, he looked back toward King's Road. The street was quiet now just after midnight, but they were certain to be scrambling to track his whereabouts. A veteran CIA agent didn't disobey a kill order without causing panic up the hierarchy of powerful men who could rain down upon him legions of hit men.

  Crossing the river, Corban raced his 162-horsepower beast toward Shard London Bridge, doubling back on any pursuers. If they spotted him, he could out-maneuver them on his motorcycle, but he wanted to see them first.

  Who would the Agency send to kill him? No doubt the CIA would sanction another MI6 resource to take Corban out, since he had failed to assassinate a treasonous MI6 agent.

  Below Shard London Bridge, Corban parked the Italian-made bike and climbed into a parked black Escalade. He drove toward St. Paul's Cathedral, his eyes peeled for a hunter-tracer team.

  Finally finished with killing for his government, Corban felt the weight of that decision lifted from his shoulders. Kenneth Whitlock had been a low-level embarrassment to the SIS, Britain's intelligence sector, but the man's loyalties to North Korea were hardly worth killing him for. Whitlock was in love with a Korean diplomat—probably a spy herself. No one knew how long Whitlock had been seeing the woman, but he'd had no access to intel to pass on that would compromise England, anyway.

  Even if Whitlock had been a higher level mole in the program, Corban still wouldn't have killed him. Sure, he'd never disobeyed a kill order before, but he'd never before believed in the Savior who had died for him, either. Deputy Director William "Chip" Buchanen hadn't taken Corban seriously that fall when he'd told him he didn't want to kill any longer—traitors or otherwise. No more spy hunting, Corban had stated.

  Now came the tricky part, the risky stage of his plan. His refusal to kill Whitlock meant the end of Corban's government career in the least, but it probably meant the end of his life as well. Unless he could implement his plan on time.

  He parked on Oxford Street and retrieved a gray wig and thick glasses from the glove box. The disguise would get him through airport security. London's camera system could watch him throughout the city, but no one would be checking that footage for an hour or two. Even when they did begin to follow his escape route, he wasn't about to make it easy on them. He could live, and learn to serve Jesus Christ in the new birth he'd been given, but only if he survived the next twenty-four hours.

  First, he expected a CIA hunter-tracer team to be dispatched to catch or kill him. He knew they'd do this, utilizing any allied country's assets, because Corban had been a mole-hunter half his life. Though he wasn't a mole or a traitor, his failure to kill Whitlock would flag him as a threat. And threats were often annihilated before intel could be compromised. The report would be sealed, his body never found, and the risk would be neutralized.

  Besides the team, a lone operator would also be given an independent kill order with Corban's name on it, someone he probably knew, but deadly, nonetheless. The assassin would be a specialist of the highest caliber, maybe even an agent he'd trained himself. The CIA wasn't above using anyone local to silence a threat—whether American, British, French, German, or Chinese.

  Corban checked his special operations watch. Almost two hours had passed since he'd left Whitlock alive. He'd give them five more minutes to get into place, then he'd make the call to his wife, Janice.

  He surveyed his mirrors constantly: a newspaper truck passed with an early morning delivery; a car with thumping music coasted by; a little rain on the windshield. Nothing went unnoticed, not when he was being hunted.

  The phone he took from the glove box had never been used. He dialed his home in New York City where it was early evening. It rang five times before Janice picked up.

  "I just wanted to tell you it's over, Janice." Corban grit his teeth, hating the very words he had to say in order to protect her. "We're done. Things have been rockier much longer than I've been willing to admit."

  There was silence for a moment. He could hear her breath shudder over the long distance.

  "Corban, you're a Christian now." Her voice cracked. Though she was a take-charge woman, Janice was sensitive to harsh words. "Is this because I found out about your career? You have to give these things time."

  "We've given it enough time, Janice. It's like our walk in the park last week. No, don't say anything! We couldn't even be ourselves. I've ruined our marriage with my deceit. I won't bother you any longer."

  "Corban, I don't—"

  "Listen to me!"

  "What?"

  "Goodbye."

  He hung up and stared at the phone. Tears blurred his vision, and he knew the new heart of compassion God had given him was taking affect. The conversation had gone exactly as he'd planned, every word perfectly quoted from a script in his mind. All international calls to the US were recorded, but it would take anywhere between an hour and a day to recover that specific call. At that point, the CIA would know Corban was apparently done with his wife, and not just his country. She couldn't be used against him if they thought she meant nothing to him. All ties had been cut.

  But Janice did mean something to him. Only recently she'd discovered what he did for a living. Between his own faith in God's direction and Janice's urgings, Corban had realized he couldn't continue serving his country as a killer any longer.

  Their marriage had been on the edge for years, thanks to Corban never being home, his life obsessed with foreign matters, and his dark moods.

  The most recent problem had been his inability to reveal to her his plan to leave the CIA permanently. She had to believe it was real in order to convince any investigators that it was real. Except, he'd left her a breadcrumb for later: they hadn't walked in the park last week. They'd never walked in the park. That false statement alone would signal to her that he wasn't in a normal st
ate of mind.

  "Keep her safe, Lord. She's in Your hands."

  Corban checked his mirrors, looked up at the camera posts over the sidewalk, and exited the car. He walked in view of a dozen cameras for ten minutes, then hailed a taxi. The trail was intentional, until he wanted to leave no trail at all. In the taxi, he shed his disguise and applied a fake beard as the taxi approached the airport.

  Inside the terminal, he purchased a new cell phone and checked messages on a bulletin board system left over from his Cold War days. Everything was in place. He was going to India.

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  Chapter Two – The Sanction

  "You deal with this mess, Chip!" CIA Director Jacob Dench shouted in his sterile Langley office. "Corban Dowler is your mess! Clean it up!"

  "Jake, it's not that simple." Deputy Director William "Chip" Buchanen crossed his legs while he sat in front of Dench's broad mahogany desk. He wondered why such a powerful man had such uncomfortable chairs for his guests. But then he realized he already knew the answer: Dench liked to watch people squirm in discomfort, as well as under his intimidation. "We're talking about Corban here, not some newbie. He knows every trick in the book because he wrote the book. Whatever move you and I respond with here—it'll be one he already knows. We have protocols. Corban will write new ones for himself."

  "Yeah, but you suspected he'd changed. That's why we tested him with that London contract in the first place. What was the mole's name?"

  "Kenneth Whitlock. A nobody."

  "Right. You already knew Corban had lost his edge. Now it's been confirmed. So you're the one to get him, or find someone who can. Where are your loyalties, Chip?"

  Chip bowed his head and tried to think strategically. Corban was his friend, or had been, but refusing to kill Whitlock potentially changed everything. The warrant for Corban's death had been signed and a body disposal team was probably on standby.

  "I suggest we recall him, Jake, but first recall the H-T team we already dispatched. He'll know we sent hunter-tracers after him."

  "Like you said: it's protocol. Let's keep up appearances until we can figure out his play." The director shrugged. "Why recall the team? A traitor is on the run. We know he's a traitor because he's running. You were right to have observers on Whitlock to see if Corban would falter. Maybe Corban's loyalties are with the North Koreans, too."

  "That's not the problem. I told you, he has new religious convictions. I say we recall him and re-task him to another branch, something without wet work. He doesn't want to be sanctioned for those types of jobs anymore."

  "How can we re-task a man we can't trust?" Dench slammed his fist on his desktop calendar. "No, you take him out, Chip! Do it as quietly as you can, before Corban can set up his defenses. We don't want a defector on our hands."

  "And that brings up some risk calculations our boys did." Chip sighed. "If Corban does turn on us—"

  "He's already turned!"

  "I mean, if Corban responds aggressively with an actual offensive because of our pursuit of him, he could literally dismantle the Agency."

  "No single man is that powerful. We have safeguards."

  "Maybe intelligence safeguards, but what about the Endgame Protocol?"

  "It's a myth, Chip; a story to make newbie agents dream. There's no such thing as an Endgame Protocol. We'd know it if Corban or anyone else had a network of spy contacts powerful enough to take us on—or to defend him from the full wrath of the United States government."

  "But this is Corban Dowler." Chip chuckled and rubbed his jaw, wishing he was sitting in the director's chair and he was giving Dench orders. "He's been in the shadows for thirty years. Who are we to say he doesn't have resources off the grid? After all, he did design our disinformation database."

  Dench rose from his chair and walked around his desk, his eyes never leaving Chip's face. Chip flinched when the director reached toward him. Though Chip was in better shape than Dench, he still didn't want to grapple with his superior in his own office.

  Instead, Dench plucked the files from under Chip's arm, then sat on the edge of his desk.

  "I assume you brought these for some reason." The man scanned through the six files. "Consider me advised otherwise, but I'm sanctioning Corban's end. I'm hardly in the mood for arguing, Chip, but I do trust you. After all, I'm trusting you with my daughter's search, aren't I? Any word on Kimberly?"

  "Nothing conclusive. I'm sorry."

  "What are the rumors then? We have people in India. They have to know something! Two weeks without contact, Chip. This is my daughter we're talking about!"

  "Rumors. Your daughter was helping low-caste people in Haridwar on the Ganges River. You know her work was making enemies. Sharing freedom in Jesus to Dalits isn't popular."

  "So is she dead or alive, Chip? Come on!"

  "Kidnapped, it seems. If they had dumped her body, it would've surfaced by now, since she's a Westerner."

  Dench shook his head.

  "Sharing Jesus. My own daughter." He cursed. "I swear, she and Corban are plotting against me! Corban finds religion and my own daughter can't stop spreading it."

  "This is our top priority in India, Jake. I'll let you know the minute we have any hard facts. Our best Far East agents are on it."

  "Alright. Let's get back to Corban." Dench tossed five files onto his desk, but kept the sixth one. "You've classified the guy in this file higher than the others. Why? Who's Nace Scanlon?"

  "An MI6 spook, practically off the books." Chip smiled. If he was going after Corban, so be it. He would enjoy the chase. "If anyone can catch Corban, Nace Scanlon can. His codename is Pyvox. Corban knows we're coming after him, so we'll send something he can't see coming: poison."

  "Poison? How's that?"

  "Scanlon was a biochemist before he was trained at Britain's Fort Monckton. They say this creep has shatter-proof vials of sodium pentothal and halothane up his sleeves. He designed a formula for dieldrin and released it to the Asian black market. The pesticide can be absorbed through the skin, simple contact, and thirty minutes later, after a violent seizure—death."

  "Yeah, but does Corban know him? This . . . Scanlon?"

  "Not as far as we can tell. He might know of him, but Scanlon is an expert at disguises as well. He's trained at subterfuge, and he can track a bit-stream through a binary blizzard, or however they track people on the Internet nowadays."

  "Who cares?" Dench laughed. "Let the techies do their thing, as long as we get Corban. Okay, send Scanlon after him. The Brits won't mind us using one of their own, seeing as we didn't take care of their Whitlock problem. They enjoy cleaning up our messes. Makes them feel superior."

  "I'll get a message off to them."

  "And Chip? Get another unrelated European team on this right away, too, besides the H-T team we already dispatched. Corban might expect one frontal assault, but I want a layered pursuit. I want Corban Dowler taken care of within the week!"

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  Chapter Three – The Agent

  Corban Dowler didn't like living on the run, but after a lifetime of clandestine reporting and shadowing active provocateurs, he'd learned to tolerate the lack of sleep and hasty meals. Though he was in enough danger to warrant hiding underground, he knew God wanted him to live up to his potential. The sheer magnitude of his resources were beyond the Agency's control or knowledge, so he was determined to take on the Agency rather than disappear in silence.

  Though Langley had shut down his personal digital access, he had a dozen other identities he'd used for various missions, and most of those had been black operations, now buried in sealed documents, hidden in numbered boxes, stored in a basement long forgotten. But the identities were still intact in his memory.

  Most of his identities were completely fictional, but a couple had full livelihoods and reputations—because they had been actual people at some point. Once caught or killed, terrorists or international enemies of the state often left behind estates and accounts that many foreign governments dar
ed not claim for fear of reprisal. Corban had anticipated future hardships, and he'd claimed some of these covers as his own. Now that he had only himself to depend on, he still had what he'd built while he was a spy and a spy hunter. It was part of his Endgame Protocol—an agent's contingency plan if his own government turned against him.

  In Paris, en route to India, Corban used a laptop to log into a Japanese proxy server, then tapped into a Langley database in San Diego. He couldn't identify who'd been activated against him, but high level assets had been mobilized, locked behind codenames recently implemented. The secrecy alone told him it was a major operation, maybe involving Director Jacob Dench himself. They were coming to kill him, and he could count on the very best the CIA and its allies could muster to prove their patriotism by shedding his blood.

  Or worse, Corban had many international enemies who would love to kill him, if they knew he was fair game and no longer under the shield of the CIA. But no, Corban decided. The CIA wouldn't risk him being captured by an aggressor from an enemy nation. The Agency would make sure he was killed, and quickly, to put him in the grave with all his secrets.

  His watch beeped and he looked up. He saw an attractive Israeli woman across the terminal—beautiful, certainly, but he also knew her to be deadly. And she was right on time, her flight to Tel Aviv leaving minutes after his own to Bangalore.

  Collecting his laptop and carry-on bag, he crossed the corridor and sat in a seat facing her own. Passing through Paris on his way to India had been intentional. Meeting the pretty Mossad agent was a top priority for his future work for Jesus Christ.

  "May I ask you a question?" He spoke English, though having read her profile, he knew she spoke German, Hebrew, and Arabic.

  Her gaze was intense, as if she was able to see through the fake eyebrows and the plaster around his fake nose. He'd also applied makeup under his eyes and on his cheeks to give him a dark, gaunt appearance.