Chapter 7 - The Strike in Costa Rica
The humid jungle air of Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, clung to my tactical uniform like a hot towel.
At 0300 hours, I sat in the rear of an unmarked tactical command vehicle parked two miles from Alexi Volkov’s heavily guarded oceanfront estate.
Beside me, Agent Vance monitored the live thermal satellite feed provided by military intelligence assets.
“Target compound has eight armed private security guards on the perimeter,” Vance briefed the team of FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) operators and Costa Rican special forces. “Volkov is inside the primary office suite on the second floor, attempting to wipe his secondary servers.”
“He’s noticed the signal lag from the Chesapeake node,” I noted, rapidly typing commands into my decryption terminal. “I’m feeding a ghost signal into his router right now. It makes it look like my house in Virginia is still online, keeping his wipe-protocol locked in a diagnostic loop.”
“Brilliant work, Major,” the HRT team leader said, slapping a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Sixty seconds to breach.”
The tactical team moved like shadows through the dense jungle canopy.
BANG! BANG!
Flashbang grenades detonated across the courtyard, filling the thermal screen with blinding white light. Gunfire erupted as the assault team breached the front entry doors, neutralizing the armed guards within seconds.
“Clear! First floor clear!” echoed over the tactical radio channel.
I grabbed my sidearm, stepped out of the command vehicle, and moved up the driveway alongside the secondary entry team.
We burst into the second-floor office suite just as Alexi Volkov—a heavily built man in his late fifties—was attempting to smash a micro-server rack with a heavy steel bar.
“FREEZE! DROP THE WEAPON!” Vance roared, targeting Volkov’s chest with his rifle.
Volkov froze, dropping the bar onto the marble floor. His cold, pale eyes swept across the room, landing directly on my military uniform and name tag.
“Major Nolan,” Volkov rasped with a thick accent, a sick smile creeping onto his face. “I must compliment you. Your husband was a weak, pathetic fool... but you have proven to be a far more formidable opponent.”
I walked up to him, drawing my sidearm and holstering it securely before looking him dead in the eye.
“My husband was a fool,” I said, pulling an encrypted flash drive from his server rack. “But you made the fatal mistake of threatening my daughter’s life to cover your tracks.”
“I didn't care about your child,” Volkov sneered.
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“I know,” I replied smoothly. “And that’s why you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison where nobody will care about you either.”
Within an hour, Volkov’s entire central server infrastructure was seized, dismantling an international criminal network responsible for millions of dollars in illegal transactions and saving dozens of potential victims worldwide.
