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  CHOKE POINTS

  A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller #17

  by

  Trevor Scott

  Calabria Publishing

  United States of America

  Also by Trevor Scott

  Max Kane Series

  Truth or Justice (#1)

  Stolen Honor (#2)

  Relative Impact (#3)

  Without Virtue (#4)

  Karl Adams Espionage Thriller Series

  The Man From Murmansk (#1)

  Siberian Protocol (#2)

  The Spy Within (#3)

  Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series

  Fatal Network (#1)

  Extreme Faction (#2)

  The Dolomite Solution (#3)

  Vital Force (#4)

  Rise of the Order (#5)

  The Cold Edge (#6)

  Without Options (#7)

  The Stone of Archimedes (#8)

  Lethal Force (#9)

  Rising Tiger (#10)

  Counter Caliphate (#11)

  Gates of Dawn (#12)

  Counter Terror (#13)

  Covert Network (#14)

  Shadow Warrior (#15)

  Sedition (#16)

  The Tony Caruso Mystery Series

  Boom Town (#1)

  Burst of Sound (#2)

  Running Game (#3)

  The Chad Hunter Espionage Thriller Series

  Hypershot (#1)

  Global Shot (#2)

  Cyber Shot (#3)

  The Keenan Fitzpatrick Mystery Series

  Isolated (#1)

  Burning Down the House (#2)

  Witness to Murder (#3)

  Other Mysteries and Thrillers

  Cold War Short Stories: Jake Adams International Espionage Prequels

  Cantina Valley

  Edge of Delirium

  Strong Conviction

  Fractured State (A Novella)

  The Nature of Man

  Discernment

  Way of the Sword

  Drifting Back

  The Dawn of Midnight

  The Hobgoblin of the Redwoods

  Duluthians: A Collection of Short Stories

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and not intended to represent real people or places. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.

  CHOKE POINTS

  Copyright © 2019 by Trevor Scott

  Calabria Publishing

  United States of America

  trevorscott.com

  Cover images:

  Cover iStock image of shooter by 4x6

  Background cover image by author

  1

  Pico, Island, The Azores

  Jake Adams was still slightly hung over from ringing in the new year, but was finally starting to feel human again. Part of that had been his isolation all day while Sirena flew to Terceira Island to visit an old friend passing through the Azores. He had spent most of the day sitting on the rocks in front of the house he was renting, watching the Atlantic waves slowly lap against the shoreline. Until two weeks ago, when Sirena had finally had enough of his drinking out of complete boredom, he had cut his booze intake to nothing at all as he worked out each day for hours, pushing his old body back into shape. And it wasn’t like he had that much to drink on New Year’s Eve. Just a little rum and a shared bottle of Italian prosecco.

  Sirena had gotten back just before dark. She seemed somewhat subdued, yet she still somehow managed to reflect an air of newfound rejuvenation. He knew that old friends could often lift the spirits. Yet, she had not talked to him about her visit.

  Now, the two of them sat in the small living room of the house they had rented for the past couple of years.

  Sirena got up and paced across the floor.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She stopped, but gazed out toward the ocean instead of directly at Jake. Then she said, “Bayla wasn’t just passing through the Azores.”

  He had a feeling. Her friend Bayla Ganz was an experienced intelligence officer in the Mossad. Jake had never met the woman, but he had heard many stories of her actions. In the rare photos where Bayla stood next to Sirena, the two women could pass for sisters with their black curly hair and broad shoulders. Most would take them for swimmers or volleyball players, if they had no idea that they could snap a grown man’s neck with their bare hands and handle nearly any weapon on planet Earth.

  “I figured that much,” Jake finally said. “What did she want from you?”

  Sirena turned swiftly. “What makes you think she wanted something?”

  “She’s in human intelligence,” he said. “That’s how they work.”

  Shaking her head, Sirena said, “She’s working with the Mossad venture capital division.”

  Jake laughed and shook his head. “What? The Mossad is investing in start-ups now?”

  She shrugged. “Economic security leads to physical state security.”

  He guessed that was true, but he also knew that if the CIA tried to put together an overt funding branch, congress and the public would have a fit. However, he also knew that the Agency frequently set up dummy businesses, like the communications company he had once run for them in Germany, while he played spy games with the old Soviet Union.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “What does this have to do with you?”

  “Bayla knows that we work for Carlos Gomez,” she said.

  “Who told her that?”

  “I might have mentioned it a while back.”

  Jake guessed that a Mossad officer could keep a secret. “And?”

  “And the Israeli government is interested in aligned business ventures.”

  Jake waved his hand at her and said, “I know you speak about a dozen languages, but could you use English economics for dummies?”

  “Alright. Gomez has a division that is developing a secure technology device that could be revolutionary.”

  “You mean his neural implants?” Jake asked.

  “They’re not actually implanted into the brain,” she said. “I understand they implant them behind the ear.”

  “What kind of battery life before replacement?”

  “That’s the beauty,” she said. “The battery is the technology revolution. They are constantly being recharged by the electrical activity of the body. Don’t ask me how.”

  Jake thought about any government or company able to access and control miniature implanted devices on millions of citizens. It was bad enough that companies had placed smart phones in the hands of nearly everyone. And now devices with cameras had been introduced to millions of homes around the world. Big Brother was probably not going to be a government entity, but instead would be tech companies with more money than God and the moral compass of pedophiles.

  Before Jake could delve into the Mossad’s venture capital prowess, a signal came across his phone. He picked it up quickly from the coffee table and viewed the screen. Something had tripped his security camera out by the
main road leading into their house.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He watched the real-time video, where a man crept along with a rifle. Then another sensor went off and Jake knew exactly what he needed to do.

  “Shit,” Jake said, getting up quickly. “We’re under attack.”

  The two of them had trained for this. They rushed around the house shutting off lights and grabbing weapons. Jake grabbed a M4 carbine with a suppressor and shoved a full 30-round magazine into his back pocket. Then he clipped his Glock 17 onto his right hip. Sirena found her own handgun and a 12-guage tactical shotgun. On her head she wore a set of night vision goggles.

  Now, in the darkness, their eyes having adjusted, the two of them slipped out the back door and into the shrubbery on the back knoll overlooking their house.

  Jake clicked on his night vision scope and scanned the perimeter of the property. Before firing, he needed to know their intent, he thought. At least four of his cameras had picked up movement, but some of those were redundant. They had to be dealing with at least three attackers, though.

  Clicking on his comm unit, Jake whispered to Sirena, who was at least ten yards to his right, protected by the high brush and a huge volcanic rock. “At least three targets,” he said.

  “Copy,” she said.

  Within seconds, one of the attackers kicked in their front door. Jake could see movement in front of the windows, but he didn’t fire. Not yet.

  Suddenly, a man in tactical gear swept out the back door.

  Jake found a spot and pressed off a round, dropping the man to the ground. The cough of his round barely broke the silence of the night.

  “Moving toward the front,” Jake said. He got up from his position and vectored around the side of their house, his rifle leading the way.

  As he rounded the side of the house, another target appeared in his night scope. He shot twice instinctively at center mass, dropping the man to the dewy grass near the front door. When he was about to move in, he heard a shotgun blast from the back of the house. Then a second shot pierced the night air.

  “Status?” Jake asked.

  “One more down,” she said.

  “Same here. Moving in.” He slipped around the front of the house, keeping low and ready to fire.

  Hesitating at the front door, he thought about the numbers. Had they shot all of them? Or was there a fourth man? With one quick motion, he shoved the door in and start to move inside. But gunfire forced him behind the wall at the doorframe.

  “At least one more inside,” Jake said.

  “Entering the back door,” she said. “Watch your crossfire.”

  “Roger that. Aiming high.”

  Crouching low, Jake twisted his gun at an angle and fired off a long series of shots, which struck the living room ceiling. His shots were followed up by at least ten louder rounds hitting the doorframe and wall. But Jake knew that those rounds would never penetrate the lava stone walls, which were nearly a foot thick.

  Jake shot again and waited for the response, which came almost immediately. Then those rounds were interrupted by three shots from inside. All three shots hit flesh with a dull thud.

  “One more down,” Sirena said. “Sweeping the house.”

  As Jake waited, he noticed the man he had shot out front was moving slightly. He aimed his M4 and almost fired. But instead, he kicked the man’s rifle away from his hands and pulled the gun from the holster on the man’s hip.

  “Clear,” Sirena said. “Coming out.”

  Jake clicked on his gun rail light and saw immediately that he had hit the man in his tactical vest with one round and his neck with the second round. The man was down, but he might live if he could get to the only hospital on the island.

  Then Jake moved the light to the man’s face and noticed the guy was Asian.

  “Ninjas?” Sirena asked when she got next to Jake. She flipped up her NVGs.

  “Ninjas are Japanese,” Jake reminded Sirena. Then to the man he asked his name first in English and then in rudimentary Chinese. He knew perhaps ten phrases in Mandarin, compliments of an old girlfriend that had lived with him years ago in Innsbruck.

  The injured man gnashed his teeth but said nothing.

  “Shit,” Sirena said.

  “What?”

  “Siren heading this way,” she said.

  One of their neighbors must have called it in.

  Jake switched to German and said to Sirena, “We need to get the hell out of here. We’re burned in the Azores.”

  “What about this asshole?” she asked.

  Aiming his rifle barrel at the man’s face, Jake asked for the man’s name and who sent him. Still nothing.

  Sirena set her shotgun against the house wall and grasped the man and swiveled him to his face on the wet surface. She checked all of his pockets, but found nothing.

  “Pros,” Jake said. Then he heard the siren getting closer and could finally see the lights flashing in the distance down the road. He had selected this house so they could see any traffic coming from the only major town near them. Police presence on Pico Island was nearly non-existent. Dangerous crimes were rare. Murders never happened here.

  Sirena rolled the man over to his back and shoved her foot into the man’s crotch. “Who sent you, asshole?” she asked in English.

  “Suck my dick,” the Asian man said with a heavy accent.

  “I knew he spoke English,” she said. Then to the man she added, “I barely feel enough for a light snack.”

  The man swore in his native tongue and Jake now knew for sure that he was Chinese. He remembered being called those same derogatory terms in the past.

  “He won’t say a word,” Sirena said. “We’ll just turn him over to the local police.”

  “I agree,” Jake said. “He’s with the People’s Republic of China Ministry of State Security, Bureau Two.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m sure the Portuguese government will like to know that MSS sent hitmen from their International Intelligence Division.”

  The Chinese man’s eyes shifted side to side, but it was obvious that he understood what they were saying.

  Finally, the man said in English, “Kill me.”

  “The police will be here any second,” Sirena said.

  “Damn it,” Jake said. Then a thought came to him. He kicked the man’s handgun toward his right hand. When the man grasped the gun and started to lift it, Jake pressed off a bullet into the man’s forehead, dropping him to the ground like a sack of flour.

  Sirena grasped Jake’s arm. “What do we do about the police?”

  “Grab the go bags,” he said. “I’ll handle the cop.”

  She nodded and went inside.

  Jake turned and walked with purpose toward the end of his driveway. Within seconds, the police car pulled up and must have seen Jake with his rifle slung over his shoulder, since the car came to an abrupt stop. He could have hidden in the underbrush, but he needed to give Sirena time to load the car with their bags.

  Out of some respect for the local police, Jake raised both arms as if giving up. Then he slowly walked toward the stopped car.

  The police officer opened his door and aimed his gun at Jake, yelling instructions in Portuguese. Although Jake had picked up enough of this language in the last few years to comply with his orders, he pretended not to understand, still walking closer.

  “Ich verstehen nicht,” Jake said in German.

  “I don’t understand German,” the police officer said. “Do you speak English?”

  “A little,” Jake said with an accent.

  “Then put your gun down or I will be forced to shoot you.”

  Jake continued forward and said, “This is my home. I was attacked by four men.”

  “That gun is illegal in Portugal,” the officer said.

  “So is four men trying to kill an innocent resident. I assure you that I’m not a threat to you.”

  The police officer wasn’t budging.

  In
his ear, Jake heard Sirena say, “Everything is loaded and ready to go. What about the police?”

  “Working on it,” Jake said.

  “Do you want me to wait?” she asked.

  “No. He might have called for backup.”

  Then Jake got an idea. To the police officer he said, “I am putting my gun down now.”

  The officer kept his gun trained on Jake and simply nodded understanding.

  Jake slipped the sling from his shoulder and gently set his M4 onto the grass alongside the gravel driveway.

  “The handgun also,” the policeman said.

  Jake nodded. Then he picked up his gun butt with two fingers and set it next to his rifle in the grass.

  Satisfied that Jake had complied, the police officer moved around the car door toward Jake. With the worst tactics Jake had ever seen in a police officer, he watched the man get way too close to Jake.

  Turning to look back toward his house, Jake tried to look as compliant as possible. Then he said, “My girlfriend is coming. We were almost killed tonight.”

  The officer was about to say something when Jake quickly took the man’s gun from him and swept the man to the gravel driveway, crashing hard to the ground. The man’s breath was taken away. He gasped for air.

  “Sorry about this,” Jake said.

  The policeman raised himself to his elbows, trying to catch his breath. Before the man could say a word, Jake kicked the man in the face, knocking him out.

  Then Jake quickly went to the patrol car to see if it was equipped with a dash cam. It wasn’t. But he guessed the officer had at least called in his position because the dispatcher was asking for his status.

  As Jake got back to the driveway, he picked up his guns. Then he wiped his prints off of the police officer’s handgun before setting it on the grass.

  Sirena showed up with their car and Jake slid into the passenger seat.

  “You didn’t kill him, did you?” she asked.

  “Not even close. Let’s go.”

  She pulled the car onto the grass around the police car and then to the main paved road. “Which way?”

  “Good question. They’ll close the Pico Airport and the ports. We’ll need private transport.”