Brad Jacobs Box Set Read online

  TRACK DOWN BOX SET

  A Brad Jacobs Thriller Box Set

  Track Down Africa – Book 1

  Track Down Alaska – Book 2

  Track Down Amazon – Book 3

  Scott Conrad

  Books 1-3 of A Brad Jacobs Thriller Series

  Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ScottConradBooks.com

  TRACK DOWN AFRICA

  A Brad Jacobs Thriller

  Book 1

  Scott Conrad

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Scott Conrad

  4th Edition © September 2018

  Copyright © 2013 - 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Scott Conrad’s “A Brad Jacobs Thriller” Series takes retired Force Recon Marine Brad Jacobs and his fellow veterans on dangerous and thrilling international search, rescue and hostage retrieval expeditions. Their missions are to “Track Down” and retrieve innocent victims by facing off against fierce, powerful enemies and extremely challenging conditions.

  Enjoy the non-stop action, adventure and mystery with the entire team as they always manage to keep their sense of humor even during the riskiest of operations. Each book is a complete story on its own.

  A Brad Jacobs Thriller Series by Scott Conrad:

  TRACK DOWN AFRICA – BOOK 1

  TRACK DOWN ALASKA – BOOK 2

  TRACK DOWN AMAZON – BOOK 3

  TRACK DOWN IRAQ – BOOK 4

  TRACK DOWN BORNEO – BOOK 5

  TRACK DOWN EL SALVADOR – BOOK 6

  TRACK DOWN WYOMING – BOOK 7

  Visit the author at: ScottConradBooks.com

  The Brad Jacobs Thriller Series is a surprising blend of Action & Adventure, Military Thriller, Crime Fiction, Kidnapping, War & Military, Men’s Adventure, Terrorism, Travel, Mystery and Vigilante Justice.

  ____________________________________________

  “A Marine is a Marine. I set that policy two weeks ago - there's no such thing as a former Marine. You're a Marine, just in a different uniform and you're in a different phase of your life. But you'll always be a Marine because you went to Parris Island, San Diego or the hills of Quantico. There's no such thing as a former Marine.”

  General James F. Amos, 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps

  PROLOGUE

  The Central African Republic rests uneasily smack in the center of a lousy neighborhood. The country occupies some two hundred and forty thousand square miles. It is bounded by Chad and Sudan to the north, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo to the south, a long and war-torn border with southern Sudan to the east, and Cameroon to the west. More than four and a half million souls live in this landlocked country. Despite its substantial mineral deposits, uranium reserves, gold, diamonds, lumber, oil, hydroelectric power, and large quantities of rich farmland, it’s one of the world’s ten most destitute countries.

  The period between 1960, when C.A.R. gained its independence from France, and 2003, when its first democratically elected president, Ange-Félix Patassé, was ousted by General François Bozizé, had been scarred by civil unrest under a series of extremely autocratic rulers.

  A year after Bozizé seized power, the Central African Republic Bush War started, pitting the government, the Christian majority, and the fifteen percent of the population that is Muslim (the Séléka) against each other. Despite peace treaties in 2007 and 2011, fighting again broke out between the warring factions in 2012. The result has been massive population dislocation due to religious and ethnic cleansing. A Christian majority has banded together with ex-soldiers, Christians and animists (people who believe, among other things, that magic will protect them from bullets) to form militias known as anti-balaka, which in the local Sango language means “anti-machete”.

  The political situation in C.A.R. remains both perilous and tenuous and can be described at best as very fluid. Conflicting reports come from the area daily, hinting at the possibility of an imminent solution to the troubles afflicting the beleaguered people of C.A.R. Experts remain skeptical.

  MISSING – Day One

  It was 2240 hours when Brad Jacobs stepped off the aircraft at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, passed through the jetway and then checked his voicemail. The retired Marine drew admiring glances from several female passersby, who noted his strong physical resemblance to movie actor Brad Pitt. The resemblance had been both a blessing and a curse over the years.

  At the ripe old age of thirty-seven, Jacobs was as American as apple pie. Six feet two inches tall, with a muscular build and a blond military style buzz cut, he had a lantern jaw and a look of self-confidence in his green eyes. His unconscious military bearing showed a core of inner strength in the man, a core built from courage, from facing the toughest obstacles life could put in his way.

  He had just returned from Las Vegas where he had tracked down and retrieved a bail jumper. There was only one message in his voice mail, an urgent one from Jack Paul, his uncle. The man sounded frantic, mumbling something nearly unintelligible about trouble with his daughter Jessica, Brad’s cousin.

  His brow wrinkled with concern. Brad considered Jessica to be his closest family member. They grew up together, and she was more like a little sister than a cousin. She was the only family member who had stayed in close contact with him during his fifteen years in the military, sending him cards on his birthdays and sending him letters liberally doused in outrageous perfumes with bright red lipstick kisses on the envelopes. She overheard him teasing a buddy once, about getting letters like that at mail call. She found it hilarious to imagine Brad’s embarrassment when he received one of his own. He had taken a great deal of good-natured ribbing from his buddies over the years. Jessica also sent him “care packages” with cookies and cakes to share with his friends when he had been deployed overseas. They were poignant reminders of home and normality, and they helped Brad and his buddies through the hard and lonely times. They had grown even closer during the four years since his discharge. If she was really in some sort of trouble there was no question that he would drop everything to help her.

  Brad Jacobs had grown up as a loner, an only child. It seemed as if his father was continually being transferred to different bases. There never seemed to be enough time to build many long-term friendships. When his dad had been posted to what was to be his final deployment in Iraq, Brad and his mom went to live with wealthy Uncle Jack, his mom’s brother.

  After Lou Jacobs died, they continued living with Jack Paul until Brad enlisted in the Marine Corps. It was during the four years of living with his uncle that Brad had grown to love Jessica as if she were his sister, the little sister he’d never had. Nothing was more important to him than protecting her.

  Brad enlisted in the Corps at eighteen, immediately after his graduation from high school. The career choice seemed to be a natural fit for the young man. His father, Lou Jacobs, had been a career Marine who’d died at the end of the First Gulf War during Operation Desert Storm while serving under Lt. General Walter E. Boomer, the Marine Force Commander for General Norman Schwarzkopf. Brad was proud of his dad, and a pr
oud, firm believer in what the Marines stood for. It was his pride, integrity, and desire to excel that led him to volunteer for Force Recon, the elite among the already elite Marine Corps. He’d spent the last ten years of his career as one of the best of the best. Three times he’d deployed to Iraq, fighting in the Second Battle at Fallujah and actively taking part in the search for Saddam Hussein.

  Since his separation from the Corps, he’d worked as a private military contractor, which he’d hated, and then he’d changed his focus. He’d become a specialist in tracking down and locating missing persons who disappeared while in dangerous countries that traditional law enforcement tended to avoid. He always enlisted help on these missions from a select pool of men he trusted and had previously served with. His reputation had grown over time. He’d eventually started working as a hostage retrieval expert for international corporations to retrieve high level executives who had been abducted in foreign countries. In between jobs, he used his skills as a bounty hunter to keep busy.

  * * *

  He called his uncle immediately as he exited the airport. Jack picked up on the first ring. “What’s going with Jessica?” Brad asked.

  "She’s three days late checking in with me."

  Jessica was a treasure hunter, always looking to find a fortune. At twenty-six she didn’t really need the money. Her father Jack was wealthy and had long before established a trust fund that left her quite comfortable after she came of age, though the fund had restrictions and conditions that limited how she could spend it. Jack was a devious man, a control freak who couldn’t bear the idea of Jessica’s natural independent nature. Although desperate to make her own fortune and get out from under Jack’s thumb, she wasn’t yet willing to relinquish the semi-lavish lifestyle Jack and his trust fund provided. There was one rule she never broke because compliance assured her father’s continued support in her efforts to make her own way—the weekly check-in call.

  “Where is she this time?” Brad asked.

  “The Central African Republic.”

  “Jesus, what the hell is she doing in the C.A.R.?” Brad paused at the curb as he looked for a taxi in the freezing rain. Usually there was a line of the damned things waiting for recent arrivals, but the weather seemed to have generated a greater demand for them on this wintry night.

  “Looking for a lost diamond mine,” Jack continued.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me, doesn’t she know that the Séléka Rebels control most of that country?”

  “You know Jessica, not afraid of a damned thing.”

  More like crazy, Brad thought to himself. You do everything you can to run her life, Uncle Jack, why in the HELL did you let her go to the C.A.R. of all places? He knew there was no time for recriminations, so he cleared his mind and concentrated on what it would take to bring Jessica back.

  Brad’s fifteen years as a Force Recon Marine and his vocation over the following four years had given him the skills needed to find people, and to deal with trouble. He knew he would need all of those skills to find Jessica. He also knew from personal experience that the C.A.R. was one of the most dangerous places on the planet, and operations there were a logistical nightmare. Getting Jessica out was going to be a serious challenge, even for him.

  “So,” Brad asked, “where exactly was she in the C.A.R. the last time you spoke with her?”

  “When she checked in last week,” Jack replied, “she was somewhere east of Bangui, in the southern prefecture of Kemo, following research on Henry Morton Stanley and his last African expedition in 1887. Somewhere she read a legend of Stanley’s party stumbling onto an immense diamond mine hidden in the jungle near the Ubangi River. She was trying to follow a map she discovered concealed in the binding of one of Stanley’s old diaries. She told me that the diary appeared to be in his handwriting. I tried to ask her if she’d had it authenticated, but she wouldn’t discuss it with me.”

  Jack’s voice sounded strained as he continued. “She sensed they were getting close to the location indicated on the map, but she felt like someone was tracking them. Small rebel patrols harassed them a couple of times, but she wasn’t convinced they were the ones tracking her party. She said they traveled so deeply into the jungle she thought they probably lost whoever was behind them.”

  Shit! That frigging jungle is as bad as the Congo. I’ve known experienced trackers to get hopelessly lost in that hellhole! “OK, I’ll take care of it,” Brad replied. “Let me know if you come up with any more information, Uncle Jack. It’s gonna be a long night.”

  Brad disconnected the call as he finally flagged down a taxi, his mind reeling. He’d been exhausted when he’d landed at the airport, and waiting around for an hour for the cab had made it worse, but he knew there’d be no rest for him this night. The last thing he could afford to think about was sleep.

  BAD THOUGHTS, BAD DREAMS

  The news about Jessica’s disappearance was devastating. Brad realized time would be critical in this situation. Getting to the Central African Republic as quickly as possible was of paramount importance. He knew the C.A.R. far better than he wanted to and knew he could find Jessica. The real question was whether he would be able to find her before that fucking hell on earth killed her.

  She could not have found a worse place to get into trouble. There are a million ways to disappear in the middle of Africa, some voluntary, most of a far more sinister nature. There was no way to know if she had been injured, murdered, lost in the jungle, or kidnapped, either for ransom or because some religious fanatic or group didn’t like the way she dressed. The rape of a helpless woman was commonplace, and it was not unusual to find the bones of missing people scattered around the jungle floor, bearing the distinct marks of human teeth. Brad thought that being eaten was a thoroughly disgusting way to die and didn’t even want to think about that possibility. It was hard to get the mental image of Jessica being chopped up and cooked over an open fire out of his head, no matter how hard he tried. He felt sick to his stomach.

  No question he needed backup if he planned on going into the dark heart of Africa. The Séléka was a collection of downright crazy bastards who would be eager to kill him on sight for literally no reason at all, and the anti-balaka resented and resisted any outside interference. Brad was a firm believer in peace through superior firepower and he needed a small but decidedly badass team to ensure that both he and Jessica got out of Africa alive.

  As he climbed out of the taxi at his apartment near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, he pressed the speed dial number on his smartphone to connect him with his closest friend and associate, Mason Ving. Ving was a retired forty-seven-year-old Force Recon gunnery sergeant, a massive black man, six feet tall and two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, tendons, and bones.

  Ving had acquired a small beer gut since his retirement from the Corps, but it hadn’t slowed him down much. He had skin so black it had blue highlights in the light of day and a bald head that glistened. His smiling brown eyes could turn deadly and reptilian when he got riled, and Brad learned over the years that when Ving’s eyes frosted over it was best to be somewhere else.

  That’s not to say that Ving couldn’t be friendly. He had a deep, warm voice that wasn’t at all what one would expect to hear coming from the mouth of a Force Recon gunnery sergeant; he sounded like the actor James Earl Jones. When he did get upset, that same voice could sound as if it was issuing from the lungs of Lucifer himself, but that was a rare occurrence. His sheer size and commanding presence were intimidating enough to be more than adequate for most circumstances, even in the most extreme of combat situations.

  Brad and Ving served together on many missions including Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. They fought together at the Second Battle of Fallujah, known as Operation Phantom Fury, which was the bloodiest confrontation of the entire Iraq War and the most intense urban warfare involving the Marines since the 1968 Battle of Hue City in Vietnam. Ving had been awarded the Navy Cross for his act
of heroism in this battle. Brad had just been happy to come out of it with his ass in one piece.

  After retiring from the Corps, the two men became closer than ever. Brad relied on Ving’s support on several very heavy assignments in recent years and knew the man would respond to his request in this case. Ving had eaten the lion’s share of the cookies and cakes Jessica had sent and he understood the depth of Brad’s relationship with his cousin. Brad smiled to himself, remembering Ving’s assistance in getting Jessica out of trouble on a couple of her previous escapades.

  MOVING FORWARD

  Ving barely had a chance to get the phone to his ear before he heard Brad’s voice, cold and hard. “Ving, I need your help.”

  "Dude, it's zero dark thirty and you’re callin’ askin’ for help? What's up, man?"

  “It's Jessica, Ving. She's three days late checking in with Uncle Jack.”

  "I’m guessin’, ’cause you ain’t laughin’ that she ain’t laid up on some beach in the Caribbean with some male model," Ving grumbled. He knew that Jessica was a little prone to getting into a jam now and then, but it was easy to forgive her because she was pretty and she made some damned fine chocolate chip cookies… his favorite kind. Ving sat upright in his bed, fully awake and alert but speaking quietly so as not to disturb his wife, who was fast asleep on the bed beside him. "Where was she when she last made contact, Brad?"

  “The C.A.R.,” Brad replied.

  "Oh shit! Couldn't she find a more dangerous place to play?" Ving grunted. "What's the plan?"