Quantum Assault: A Keeno Crime Thriller

By Réal Laplaine

The federal law enforcement agency of Canada is called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP, one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the world, and one which is famous for several notable things:
Their motto, "We always get our man".
Their famously red riding jackets, black yellow-striped pants and blackjack boots and western style hats, mounted on big horses, which they still use to this day.
And lastly, if you are stupid enough as a terrorist, domestic or otherwise, to cross their paths, they probably won't hesitate to put a bullet in you - essentially, a no-tolerance policy when it comes to such threat levels.
The Keeno Crime Thriller Novels follow in this tradition, minus the riding outfits and horses of course, and are based on a special unit of the RCMP called the ATU or Anti-Terrorism-Unit, headed by Keeno McCole. This small team is called into play as point-man when it comes to taking on domestic terrorism or large-scale criminal rings.
Keeno McCole is a maverick crime-fighter, rarely listening to authority, but certainly no less passionate about getting his man as the saying goes.
He's deadly with a throwing knife, which never leaves his side.
He wears blue jeans and cowboy boots to work.
He drinks copious amounts of coffee along with bear claws.
He loves one woman, and none other.
When it comes to crime fighting, he is fearless to a fault, testimony to that fact are the large number of scars covering his body.
Along with his crime-fighting partner, Jake Williams, and two brilliant forensic and think-tank team members, Janene and Kelly, the ATU is relentless in searching down and removing the criminals on their radar - where ever that takes them in the world.

In Quantum Assault, book two of this series, a boyhood friend, Injun' Joe, contacts Keeno after having found a teenage girl being chased by an armed man in the woods near his cabin. Given the chance to meet his old friend and mentor, the very man who taught him many survival skills as a young boy, Keeno and Jake go to Joe's remote cabin in Ontario, where they meet the girl and soon discover that a human trafficking ring is being run in the area, where young girls, kidnapped from their homes in eastern Europe, and pipelined into Canada, are being sold on the sex market. The plot becomes even more insidious when she reveals that all the girls, like her, have been repeatedly injected with some kind of pathogen. This high-voltage thriller will take you down a very dark road, but a very contemporary one, into the sordid world of human traffickers, as Keeno and his team take on, not only a global trafficking ring, but an operation designed to change the very physiology of women being trafficked, one that suddenly goes out of control and threatens to become a lethal pandemic of its own.

The other books in this series are:

Intrusion: Book 1
The One: Book III
The 9th Divinity: Book IV

"Been a fan now for some time of Mr. Laplaine's books, this one comes as no surprise regarding a complex plot, characters you would like to be yourself and bad guys that are just that...bad!" - Jonas O.

"Loved it. This book was very hard to put down. Full of action and suspense - awesome. Looking forward to the next one. enjoy all of this authors books - he is an awesome writer!!" - Elaine M.

"Been a fan now for some time of Mr. Laplaine's books, this one comes as no surprise regarding a complex plot, characters you would like to be yourself and bad guys that are just that...bad!" - Jonas O.

"Loved it. This book was very hard to put down. Full of action and suspense - awesome. Looking forward to the next one. enjoy all of this authors books - he is an awesome writer!!"
- Elaine M.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Réal Laplaine
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370854257

Réal Laplaine

I write in several genres; crime thrillers, speculative fiction thrillers (some would call it sci-fi but I prefer speculative fiction because my themes are more possible than not) and geopolitical thrillers.I have written a few books which classify as literary fiction - novels with an inspirational edge.My focus has always been on writing very contemporary novels, which, while entertaining, pull no punches on the state of the world we live in, or the potential futures facing us, thus, the speculative fiction aspect of my works.In the bookstore at www.reallaplaine.com you will find my books in eBook formats (ePub/PDF) which are instantly downloadable to your computer, smartphone or other device. Links are provided for each book if you prefer to order Kindle, Nook, paperback or other formats from other book retailers.You will also find a number of my short stories which are cost-free.Some of my titles are now in audio book format - more are coming.Abolishing nuclear weapons:In 2014 I published a book, Twilight Visitor, a geopolitical thriller about China invading Iran for its oil, wherein Iran retaliates by firing a nuclear warhead at Beijing. The book has garnered tremendous reviews, comparing it to the best of Dan Brown and other similar authors, but what is important is that the story impresses on the reader that nuclear war is just a button away. In several of my subsequent geopolitical thrillers this thread also weaves through the stories, to help raise awareness on this existential threat to the future of our kids.Please take a moment to visit the page entitled B.A.N. or Ban All Nukes at www.reallaplaine.comRéal LaplaineAuthor of Break Out Bookswww.reallaplaine.com

Book preview

QUANTUM ASSAULT

A Keeno

Crime Thriller Novel

Copyright © 2013 by Réal Laplaine

Book cover design by Cindy Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2013

Second edition: 2016

Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflects the reality of any locations or people involved.

QUANTUM ASSAULT

A Keeno Crime Thriller Novel

by

Réal Laplaine

Other books by Réal Laplaine

Intrusion – A Keeno Crime Thriller Novel

Twilight Visitor

The Deception People

The Buffalo Kid

Dead but not gone

See Me Not

Finding Agnetha

Earth Escape

Dedication

To all my favorite crime-fighters and action heroes through time, including James Bond (007), Dirty Harry, Rambo, Neo of the Matrix series, Terminator, Superman and some I have surely missed, all of whom have entertained me and inspired me to create my own unique hero-figure.

1

The young fifteen year-old girl slumped to the ground, landing exhaustedly on her bruised and bloodied knees.

She gasped for air as beads of sweat cut small rivulets through her dirt-caked skin.

How long had she been running, she wondered?

Sheer necessity to survive, to escape their hands and the haunting specter of that camp, drove her to keep running in spite of her exhaustion.

All around her was the desolation of late autumn. Like an army hunkering in for a long wait, a battalion of barren trees surrounded her in all directions, like silent sentinels, refusing to relinquish their posts in spite of the hungry claws of an approaching winter.

The forest floor was a carpet of rust and amber colored foliage – soft to the foot and yet damp and musty with the smell of decay thick in the air.

The wind howled ominously through the boughs of the trees above, bending a nearby pine, causing it to creak and moan in agony.

She tried to stop herself from falling into despondency which her dismal surroundings only aggrandized.

As she hung there, panting, she tried to get a grip on where she was going. There were no landmarks to be seen, no mountains, no roads, nothing – just an endless sea of trees.

Above her, the heavy mantle of gray clouds scudded across the cold October sky, obscuring the sun, making it nearly impossible to determine any sense of direction.

She was lost and she knew it. But she would never give up. She would choose death before allowing herself to fall back into their hands.

The omnipresent fear charged her body with another injection of adrenaline, catalyzing her back into action. She stood, wiped the film of dirt and sweat from her face and then began to run.

After a time, the cold hand of nightfall began to shroud the land – turning the endless forest into a murky and foreboding black.

Sliding to the ground, she leaned against a tree and pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs to conserve her warmth.

Wearing little more than overalls, torn and shredded at the knees as a result of her many falls – she shivered as the cold tendrils of the boreal environment engulfed her.

The young girl, barely fifteen years of age, looked about, listening for any signs of approaching men, but her ears were met only by the lamenting wail of the wind and the desolation of the forest.

Her hand brushed up against something. She brought it up to the dim light to see what it was. A sharp-ended stick!

She sighed with a feeble sense of relief. Out here she had nothing and she was no one – just a girl running for her life.

She pressed the stick against her breast, as if to gain some sense of security – while tears pooled and skidded down her cheeks.

2

The emergency call was first received by the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police and they promptly passed the information over to the RCMP in downtown Toronto.

Protocol between the two law enforcement agencies mandated that any situation with the slightest terrorist ramifications was to be shunted to the The Force – the colloquial term for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP was Canada’s Federal law enforcement agency which more or less embraced the functions carried out by America’s NSA, CIA, Homeland Security and FBI, all in one.

Quite in addition to its many diverse duties in protecting the second largest landmass of any nation in the world, the RCMP also maintained a modest Anti-Terrorism Unit, or ATU. Certainly it was nothing of the magnitude that the Americans boasted, but it was adequate to the needs of Canada.

The ATU was headed by Keeno McCole and had been for some years now.

His high cheek bones, tawny colored skin and intensely black hair were the direct result of his Metis lineage, that is, the First Nation of Canada. His father was a half-blooded Indian and his grandmother had been an Indian tribal chief.

In Keeno’s case the Indian side had been watered down and alloyed with a dose of French and Irish somewhere in the mix. As a consequence his stature was tall, well over six feet in height. Though slim in frame, every muscle on his body had been conditioned and hardened by a career in crime-fighting, having survived more life and death encounters than most men would ever dream of. Proof of this were the scars, the footprints left by bullets, the cold steel of knives, and even shrapnel from exploding bombs which had cut into his flesh.

Besides his doctor at the RCMP and of course his girlfriend, Janene, few people had witnessed the degree of damage which Keeno had sustained in the line of duty.

As he drove into Toronto from his ranch just outside the city, he mused over the prior evening, the celebration of his birthday. In fact, Keeno hated birthday parties, avoiding them like the plague. But when Janene had shown up at his door with a large cake, a case of his favorite beer and her rather provocative and unpretentiously sexy outfit – his knees more or less gave way.

The traffic was relatively light, which was only to say that for a city of over five million people it was at least moving forward by increments.

Already his stomach was grumbling in anticipation of his morning coffee, not to mention the usual bear claw which always attended it; an enormously large and very sweet pastry filled with chunks of sweet apple, and to which he was an acknowledged and committed junkie. Without those two items to kick-start the day he could barely get a mental synapse working.

The panel in front of him beeped. He tapped it.

‘I’m still thinking about last night,’ he began with brazen flirtatiousness.

‘It was fun,’ responded Janene with an embarrassing smile, ‘and of course, every girl just loves to hear that but not when others are listening in.’ Janene rolled her eyes as Jake and Kelly grinned at one another from the other side of the office.

‘Yeah, tell us all the nasty details about last night,’ shouted Jake.

‘Get a life, loser,’ responded Keeno.

Kelly cut in.

‘How about me, I’m interested in what went down last night too,’ she said with a playful flick of her eye at Janene who by now was sinking deeper into her chair.

‘Don’t you two sex-deprived dipshits have some work to do?’ said Keeno.

Janene took over the dialogue again.

‘We just got a report from the OPP; a suspicious man was seen packing boxes in the loading area of the Richmond-Adelaide Centre.’

‘Oh, that sounds pretty dangerous,’ Keeno’s facetious tone filtered through.

‘There’s more,’ she continued, dismissing his casual commentary. ‘The caller said that she saw him fiddling with some wires inside one of the boxes, which she insisted could be a bomb.’

Keeno deftly swung his Jeep across two lanes and onto the next off-ramp.

‘So, how’s your day going so far?’ he digressed.

‘It’s good, but if you stiff me on our dinner date tonight I could turn into your worst nightmare.’

‘Oh, I almost forgot about that?’

‘See, I do have some leverage in this relationship.’

‘Oh, you have plenty of things to leverage me with.’

‘Get your mind out of the gutter, boy’ said Janene, even though she thoroughly enjoyed the flirt.

Yeah, gutter-mind! shouted Jake from across the room.

Keeno paid him no mind.

‘You know, I should be pulling up at Starbucks by now for a large coffee and a bear claw, but noooo, instead I’m chasing after some monkey who is stacking boxes in an alley.’

Janene frowned, thinking as she did, that once again he was making nothing of the whole matter. Sometimes she wondered if Keeno’s use of humor in times of danger wasn’t just a coping mechanism.

‘Tell you what, cowboy, I’ll pick up a coffee and your sugar-coated drug-fix and have it here by the time you get to the office – ok?’

‘Deal,’ he said as he clicked off the connection.

Keeno reflected over just how much of an anchor Janene had become in his life – a crazy life, one where death stalked and taunted him at every turn. She was beautiful and intelligent – with a brilliant forensic and investigative mind. Moreover, she never tried to bridle him and that quality alone was possibly more important to him than all the other perks of their relationship.

From the age of four when he had saved his mother from a brutal death by stabbing her attacker in the leg with a pair of scissors, he had become a maverick, highly independent, passionately driven in life and never allowing himself to be corralled by anyone. Janene appreciated his qualities and she didn’t try to harness him … well, not entirely anyhow.

He had come to see her as the Yin in his life, the positive force which counter-balanced the Yang – the criminal world which he fought. With her, his life had balance.

Within moments he arrived at the Richmond-Adelaide Centre, a large office complex located in the heart of Toronto’s financial district. Navigating through the busy morning traffic he found the narrow alley which cut a track between two tall structures.

As he parked his Jeep he caught the fleeting image of a man stepping behind a shipping container. Keeno’s senses instantly went to high-alert.

Beyond the muted background noise of the waking city, no other sound could be heard in the narrow alley. But even so, his ears were tuned to every slightest dissonance and nuance. Three years of mentoring as a young boy under his uncle had taught Keeno the skills of survival in the wilds of Canada’s hinterland – skills which would serve him even now.

As he rounded the shipping container he saw the boxes stacked against a wall. True to the report, there were wires stringing from one to the other.

Just then he heard it – a barely discernible grating.

Compelled by some instinctual cognizance, he dove to one side just as the bullet ripped past his head, close enough to feel its sting.

He threw his body into a spin, snapping his gun from his side as he did and then swinging it upward at the figure standing atop the container.

Keeno squeezed off a shot. The bullet ploughed into the shooter’s chest and sent him tumbling to the ground.

Approaching with caution, he found the man lying amidst the very boxes which he had been stacking. One hand covered the hole in his chest, a feeble attempt at stemming the thick red life-blood which oozed out.

The shooter’s gaze instantly fell to the badge clipped to Keeno’s shirt, identifying him as a member of the RCMP.

‘Fuck,’ he said with a torpid wheeze, ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Why did you shoot at me?’

His eyelids fluttered and his face grimaced in pain as he tried to answer – his words emitting sluggishly.

‘I thought you were one of them?’

‘Who?’

The man tried to answer, but already the maws of death had gripped him. His lips formed into a feeble grin as he flicked his eyes toward his right hand.

‘You better run!’ was all he managed to say as his head flopped over to one side.

With a sudden sense of dread Keeno saw the dead man’s switch in his right hand. Pushing back with all the strength he could muster, he tried to distance himself as the pressure on the actuator was released.

The explosion rocked the air, sending a blast-wave moving outward at roughly the speed of a Category V hurricane. It propelled him, like a rubber ball, into the opposite wall with an agonizing crunch, pounding into Keeno with tsunami-like force.

As the blast abated, Keeno slumped forward into the asphalt, hitting with a dull sickening thud.

3

When the young girl opened her eyes it was early morning. The foreboding darkness of the deep-black night had been replaced by a sea of white mist which hung over the forest floor, enshrouding the land in an ominous cloud.

As she chased the sleep from her eyes, she could barely make-out the dim outlines of strange shapes hovering in the miasma. Were they men or were they just trees, she wondered?

All through the night she had nightmare visions of being caught and locked away again.

Reality rushed in, reminding her of the omnipresent panic which stirred inside of her.

Forcing herself to her feet she was met with the numbness of night’s cold chill still clinging to her body. She stamped her feet, forcing the blood to flow and as she did she heard the sound.

It stopped her dead in her tracks and for a moment all she could hear was the sudden and cogent beating of her own heart.

Then it came again, the crackling dissonance of a radio, a man’s voice, echoing from the fog around her.

She twisted and turned, desperately trying to see where it was coming from. Once again the sound pierced the morning solitude – sending her bolting in panic. She sprinted, like a spooked deer, pushing herself as fast as her tiny form would go.

Within minutes her entire body was drenched in sweat. Her breathing came raggedly and she was forced to stop.

As she hunched over, gasping for air and as sweat dripped from her face, she listened for any sound that interrupted the ambient silence. Her ears were met, at first, by only the subtle call of the wind drifting high above. And then she heard it again, the crackling of a radio which filled her with uncontrollable terror.

As she spun to strike a new course she saw him emerging from the mist ahead - a terrifying poltergeist staring at her with his cold dark eyes.

Clothed in forest-green army fatigues, with standard-issue military boots, a cap and an Israeli TAR 21 assault rifle slung over his shoulder, he was an intimidating sight to the defenceless girl.

He craned his neck and spoke into the radio perched on his left shoulder. ‘I found her.’ Then he began striding toward her.

With a sudden injection of adrenaline she charged into the woods. He shouted after her, but she didn’t stop. Death was preferable to her at this point.

The sound of his gun barked, shattering the morning tranquility as a bullet struck the tree next to her. Shards of bark scattered into her face, like shrapnel from an exploding bomb.

Blood suddenly oozed from her cheek – the pain of which simply drove her even harder. She weaved between more trees as two more shots cratered the earth on each side of her.

His heavy breathing and the thudding sound of his strident footfall sent her into overwhelming panic. She surged forward with even greater desperation, but as she did, she failed to see the protruding root which snagged her left foot and sent her flying headlong into the ground. Her face slammed painfully into the wet moss with a hurtful crunch.

He approached her from behind.

‘Get up you little bitch,’ he hissed, looking down at her with menacing eyes.

She turned her head and looked up defiantly. He reached down, clutched her by the hair and yanked her to her feet.

Her screech echoed through the otherwise silent forest.

4

The world was a blur, as if he was looking at it through an opaque glass or through the bottom of an old-fashioned glass ashtray where all the features were clouded in misty colored hues.

Compounding his dulled sight was a sickening thud which pounded in his head like someone hammering on his brains.

Keeno lay there for a long time trying to calm his body, which his awakening had suddenly catalyzed into a fever of discordant pain.

As he acclimated to the ambient sounds he became distinctly aware of the gentle background hum of machinery.

Where am I, he thought?

He moved, only slightly, and was painfully assaulted by repeated surges, like bolts of electricity. It seemed as if every part of his body was aching – which was probably close enough to the truth.

As he focused, his mind began to take on clarity, like smoke dissipating from the remains of a charred and scorched house. He recalled the shooting incident, the short conversation with the dying man and then the abject shock at seeing the dead man’s switch in his hand.

As he stared up at the fuzzy ceiling, a sense of panic crept in that maybe the blast had damaged his eyesight.

Keeno strained to focus his sight on a ceiling lamp, the details of which wavered and morphed like a mirage in a blistering hot desert. After several agonizing minutes the machinery kicked in – transforming the room from a pasty soup, to lucidity.

He let out a long sigh of relief and then looked about the hospital room, still painfully aware of the throbbing headache which assailed him each time he moved his head. He flexed his arms, hands and legs and in spite of the discomfort, he was happy to know that he was not paralyzed or severely damaged in any way.

It was then that he saw her, asleep in a chair off to one side.

Janene had her legs tucked up under her butt and her arms folded gently across her breasts, with her head gently tilted against the wall.

He silently admired her for a time, thinking to himself that her pose, her elegant face and the wonderful curves of her body could have been a classic Manet painting from the Renaissance period.

The door to his room suddenly burst open and in tromped a very familiar face – Jake Williams, his partner in-crime and best friend.

Jake’s visage exploded into a large smile.

‘Bout time you woke up!’ he declared with a boom. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I would have to find a new partner.’

‘Dream-on,’ said Keeno, eyeing the second cup of coffee in Jake’s hand. ‘Is that for me?’

‘If you’re coming back to work it is, otherwise you’re destined to drink whatever crap they serve here.’

Keeno reached for the coffee cup and took a sip.

‘How long have I been out?’

‘Roughly a day, give or take a few hours.’

Jake was pretty much the opposite of Keeno in most respects. He had a stout body, with thick muscles and short powerful legs, and his large head with short-cropped hair sat atop a burly neck.

Where Keeno had dark features, Jake sported light-colored hair and crystal blue eyes.

Jake was prone to smiling often, cracking jokes whenever and wherever it suited him, in spite of the circumstances. In fact, his general sense of congeniality made him appear more like a friendly car salesman than a lethal crime-fighter.

The two had become lifelong friends when Keeno had moved back to Toronto at the age of eight, after three years of living on a remote farm in northern Ontario with his uncle Lou. Jake, a local bully at the time, had decided to pick a fight with the smaller and thinner boy. After being laid flat on the ground three times in a row, Jake finally acquiesced to the humility he felt and realized that becoming friends with Keeno was probably the smarter of two roads.

Keeno gingerly sipped the brew and let out a long sigh,

‘Gawd, I needed that.’

‘How are you doing?’

‘I feel like shit.’

‘I’m glad you’re up because honestly, I couldn’t handle much more of Janene’s whining...’

A voice stopped him mid-sentence.

‘You do realize that I am right here, right?’ said Janene with a slight hiss.

She slipped off the chair and approached the two while casting a threatening look at Jake and then she kissed Keeno on the lips.

‘That is the only part of my body that doesn’t hurt. Well actually, there is one other,’ said Keeno with a flick of his eyebrows and a leer.

She cut him off. ‘Save it for the bedroom, buster. You are so lucky that you didn’t die on me,’ she said menacingly.

"And what?’

She shook her head, annoyed by his flippancy. ‘You weren’t supposed to get blown up – you were meant to check out what he was doing, that’s all.’

Keeno shrugged and held the cup of coffee for her to see.

‘I warned you, shit happens when I don’t start the day with a good cup of coffee.’

She rolled her eyes.

"Do you remember anything about what happened?’ asked Jake.

Keeno related the details up to the point of the explosion.

‘I wonder who that bomb was really intended for?’ posed Janene.

‘What was that stuff?’ asked Keeno.

‘C4 – and you are so lucky to be alive,’ she reiterated as she poked him in his bruised ribs. ‘There were eight boxes with bricks of C4 packed inside and an electronic sensor which was activated by that dead-man’s-switch. Fortunately for you the guy had not finished connecting all the bricks, otherwise we would have