by Chris Carter
A few hesitant seconds.
‘The fuck you waiting for, big guy?’ the young voice said. ‘Let’s go. Put your gun on the floor and kick it back before
I put a hole in the back of your head.’
Hunter cursed himself, because the little voice inside his head had been telling him that things didn’t feel quite right since they’d got to the derelict house. But in his hurry to try to save Madeleine Reed, he’d disregarded his instincts and proceeded inside the fallout shelter without properly checking the control room.
‘Do it, Robert,’ Lucien said. ‘He really will blow your brains all over these walls.’
‘Fucking right, I will. You think this is a game, big guy?’
The voice had moved closer. Hunter was almost certain that he was just a little to his right. But Hunter was now holding his weapon high above his head, while the kid behind him had his directly aimed at Hunter’s skull. The advantage had swung the other way. Hunter had no way out.
‘OK,’ he said.
‘Nice and slowly,’ Lucien commanded. ‘Squat down, place your gun on the floor, then get back to a standing position again before kicking it back toward me.’
Hunter did as he was told.
‘Your turn, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien said.
Taylor didn’t move.
‘Bitch, did you hear what he said?’ the young voice asked with overwhelming anger.
Lucien lifted his hands, signaling his accomplice to give him a minute.
‘I’m well aware of many of the FBI’s protocol field rules, Agent Taylor,’ he said, keeping his voice steady and unthreatening. ‘I’m also aware that some of those rules are not supposed to have any exceptions whatsoever. High on that list is the rule that mandates that an FBI agent shall never surrender his or her weapon to a suspect or perpetrator during a hostage situation.’
Taylor clenched her teeth in frustration.
‘Make no mistake here, Agent Taylor, this isn’t your typical hostage situation. This is a life or death situation . . . for you and Robert, that is. If you don’t slide your weapon over to me, you will die. It’s not a threat. It’s a certainty. You need to make a judgment call, and you need to do it sharpish.’
‘Fuck this explaining bullshit, Lucien,’ the young voice blurted out. ‘Let’s just kill these two fucks and get it over with.’
The new ring to the kid’s voice told Hunter that he was right on the edge; going over it wouldn’t take much.
‘Your call, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien said. ‘You’ve got five seconds, four . . .’
Hunter’s gaze was fixed on Taylor’s tense body. ‘Don’t be a fool, Courtney,’ he said under his breath.
‘Three, two . . .’
Hunter got ready to move.
‘OK,’ Taylor said.
Hunter breathed out.
Taylor proceeded to slowly place her weapon on the ground before using her foot to slide it across the floor toward Lucien.
Hunter and Taylor heard the sound of metal chains scrapping the floor for an instant.
Lucien had picked up Taylor’s gun.
‘Nah ah,’ the young voice said as Taylor began to turn. ‘No one told you to turn around, bitch. Keep your eyes on the Goddamn door in front of you, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’
Taylor paused.
‘He really means it, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien said.
‘Does this bitch think I’m kidding?’
Even without looking, Hunter and Taylor could sense that the newcomer’s aim had moved to the back of her head. All he needed was a reason.
Taylor didn’t give him one. She finally complied, and her eyes returned to the door.
‘Now I’m going to have to ask you both to kneel down, and put your hands behind your heads,’ Lucien said, while at the same time, unseen to Hunter and Taylor, signaling his accomplice. ‘Do it now.’
Once more, Hunter and Taylor had no way out. They had to do as they were told.
‘So what now?’ Taylor asked. ‘You’re just going to shoot us in the back?’
‘Not my style, Agent Taylor,’ Lucien replied.
Clunk.
They heard the sharp sound of metal cutting through metal. A few seconds later they heard it again, this time followed by that of a chain running through a loop before falling to the ground.
‘I was just being cautious while I got rid of these chains. Oh, now this is much better.’
The next sound Hunter and Taylor heard was a loud thud, as a heavy metal object was thrown across the room to the other side and collided with the wall.
‘Now please, stand up and turn around,’ Lucien commanded.
They did.
Standing next to Lucien, holding a Heckler & Koch USP9 semi-automatic handgun, was a wiry and small man, a little like a professional horse-racing jockey in build, who looked to be only about twenty-five years old. He wore a crooked smile that seemed to bend in the same direction that he hunched his shoulder, giving him a skewed and somewhat menacing look. His head was completely shaven, and his blue eyes glowed with an intensity that was unsettling. He had a large, badly healed scar that ran from the left side of his chin, all the way to the back of his right ear, crossing his right cheek. Even from a distance, Hunter could tell that the scar had been made either by a blunt knife, or a thick piece of glass. Across the room he also saw the heavy-duty, 48" bolt cutter that Lucien had used to free himself.
‘Remember when I told you that it wouldn’t be hard for me to find an apprentice if I wanted to?’ Lucien said with a lopsided grin. ‘Well, I did want to, and just as I’d said, it wasn’t hard at all. So let me introduce you to Ghost.’ He gestured toward the shaved-headed man to his right. ‘I call him Ghost because he moves like one, so light and silent you won’t ever hear him coming. And due to his size and amazing flexibility, he’s able to hide in places you can’t even imagine.’ Lucien allowed his gaze to move to the cardboard boxes. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but he was actually inside one of those.’
One of Ghost’s front teeth was chipped. Every few seconds he nervously ran his tongue across its jagged edge, giving him a very edgy look, as if he was about to lose control.
‘I like her,’ Ghost said, his gaze falling over Taylor as if she were naked. ‘And she’s got pretty toes. I reeeeally like that. Let’s just kill the big guy and take her with us. We can have some fun with her.’
Taylor didn’t shy away from Ghost’s eyes, the anger in her stare colliding with the desire in his.
‘Did you arrange everything the way we’d planned?’
Ghost nodded. His attention was still on Taylor.
‘I don’t want you to think that I’ve been lying to you all this time,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t. Why don’t you open that door, Agent Taylor?’ He indicated the gunmetal door. ‘And see what lies behind it.’
Taylor held Lucien’s stare for a while longer before turning around and pushing the door open. On the ceiling of the corridor beyond it, two very weak fluorescent tube lights flicked and hissed as if they were about to blow. Their light seemed to travel down the hallway in slow motion, and as it reached the end of it Taylor’s heart almost stopped beating.
Ninety-Seven
Hunter had also turned to see what lay beyond the door.
The corridor was long and narrow. The walls were made of solid concrete, just like the shelter’s control room. There were several doors on both sides of the hallway and one directly at the end of it. All of them in the same dappled gunmetal color as the one Taylor had just opened. They were all shut, with the exception of the one at the far end.
The light that propagated from the fluorescent tubes wasn’t strong enough to properly reach the last room, so all they got was a sort of hazy silhouette, but even so, Hunter and Taylor had no problem identifying the shape of a naked woman’s body. She was sitting on a chair. Her head was slumped forward awkwardly. Her hands looked to be tied behind her back, and she didn’t seem to be moving.
T
aylor felt a nauseating shiver start right at the pit of her stomach.
‘Ghost,’ Lucien said, ‘the lights.’ He nodded at the control desk.
Still with his attention locked on Hunter and Taylor, Ghost took a couple of steps to his right and flicked a switch on the old-fashioned control console.
Inside the room at the far end of the corridor, another weak light bulb struggled to come to life for a few seconds before finally engaging. It bathed the room in a pale yellowish glow, and right then every muscle in Hunter’s body tensed.
Madeleine Reed wasn’t dead. On the contrary, she was pretty much alive, but compared to the picture they’d seen of her inside Director Kennedy’s office just hours before, she wasn’t even a shadow of the woman she used to be. Her weight had drastically plummeted. Her smooth skin looked like it had aged forty years in just a few months, and it now clung to her bones as if she were a terminal cancer patient. The dark circles under her eyes were so intense they looked like surgical bruises. The eyes themselves seemed to have sunk into her skull just a little, but enough to give her a cadaver’s appearance. Her lips were dry and chipped, and her body looked weak and extremely fragile.
As the light inside the room came on, Madeleine blinked desperately several times, her sad and confused eyes struggling with the brightness after who knows how many hours of darkness. Focus took a while, but when it finally came, her drained brain had to battle to understand the images in front of her. She slowly lifted her head, and the look on her face went from puzzled, to hopeful, and then to pleading, before at last settling on desperate. Her lips moved, but if any words did come out, their sound wasn’t strong enough to reach anyone at the other end of the hallway.
With the room now under its own light, Hunter and Taylor could finally see the entire picture.
Madeleine was indeed naked, her hands were surely tied to each other behind the chair’s backrest. Her feet were tied to the chair’s legs.
As her eyes at last registered people at the other end of the corridor, she started shaking. Her breathing came in little gasps, as if there weren’t enough oxygen in the room.
‘Madeleine,’ Hunter said, reading the first signs of acute panic on her. He knew she’d been conditioned. She’d been tortured and scared for so long that her immediate psychological response to seeing anyone down in that hellhole was to flood her body with terrifying fear. Right now, to her, everyone was a threat, because everyone she’d ever met down there had tortured her.
‘Listen to me, honey.’ Hunter’s voice was as calm and as warm as he could make it sound. ‘My name is Robert Hunter, and I’m with the FBI. We’re here to help you. Stay calm and we’ll get you out of here, OK?’
Hunter felt so useless saying those words. He wanted to go to Madeleine, free her hands and feet, get her out of that fallout shelter, and reassure her that she was safe, that the nightmare was now over, that no one would hurt her anymore. But he couldn’t do any of that. All he could do was throw empty words traveling down that corridor, and hope that was enough to keep Madeleine from losing control.
Madeleine’s lips moved again; again, the sound of her words weren’t strong enough to reach anyone’s ears in the control room. But Hunter had no problem reading her lips.
‘Please help me . . .’
Hunter quickly peeked at Ghost. He was standing by the control console, his weapon firmly in his grip, his stare burning a hole in the back of Taylor’s head. Lucien was standing just a step to his left, but his attention seemed to be everywhere – nothing would escape him. If Hunter tried anything, he’d be dead.
Lucien nodded at Ghost, who flicked a different switch on the control console. The door to the room Madeleine was in slammed shut, no doubt sending even more fear snowballing into every molecule in her body.
Reflexively, Taylor turned to face Lucien and Ghost. ‘No. Please, no.’
The suddenness of her movement caught Ghost by surprise, almost tipping him over the edge, his arm tensing even further and his finger half-squeezing the trigger on his gun.
‘You better stay where you are, bitch.’
‘Please,’ Taylor said, her hands up in a surrender gesture. ‘Shutting the door on her will make her panic even more.’
Lucien nodded in a carefree way. ‘Yes, I know.’
Anger radiated from Taylor. ‘You sonofabitch.’
‘Let her go, Lucien,’ Hunter said. ‘Let Madeleine go. You don’t need her anymore. You don’t need to take her life. She means nothing to you. Take me and let her go. Let Courtney take Madeleine out of here, and take me.’
‘You dumb fuck,’ Ghost said. His gun was still aimed at Taylor. ‘Reality check, big guy – we already have you, and the whore inside the room, and the pretty FBI bitch with the pretty toes here.’ He blew Taylor a kiss while rubbing his groin. ‘Soon you’ll be all mine, bitch. And I’ll make you scream. You can bet on that.’
Taylor’s self-control completely escaped her.
‘Fuck you, you tiny pencil-dick ugly fuck.’
Maybe it was Taylor’s words, or maybe Ghost had just had enough of this game, but the overload switch in his head flicked.
‘No,’ he said, with so much anger it almost drooled out of his mouth. ‘Fuck you, you stupid whore.’ He squeezed the trigger on his gun.
Ninety-Eight
FBI Academy – Quantico, Virginia.
Forty-five minutes earlier.
It didn’t take the FBI long to get in contact with Joshua Foster, the air traffic controller at Berlin’s municipal airport. The call was immediately transferred to Director Kennedy in the Operations Room.
‘Mr Foster,’ Kennedy said, switching the call to speakerphone. ‘My name is Adrian Kennedy. I’m the director of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I believe that you were in contact with one of our agents. His name is Robert Hunter. You handed him the keys to your Jeep.’
‘Ummm, that’s correct.’ Understandably, there was a nervous edge to Joshua Foster’s voice.
‘OK, Mr Foster, please listen carefully,’ Kennedy said. ‘This is very important. I understand your car was brand new.’
‘Yeah, well, I got it about two months ago.’
‘That’s great. Now did the car come equipped with a location transponder, a GPS locator, in case of theft?’
‘Actually, yes, it did.’
Kennedy’s face lit up.
‘But I don’t have the transponder tracking code with me,’ Foster said, anticipating Kennedy’s next question. ‘It’s back at my house.’
‘We don’t need it.’ The agent at the radar station took over. ‘All we need is the car’s license plate and I can find the transponder tracking code from here.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Foster gave them his Jeep’s license plate number.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Foster,’ Kennedy said. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
‘Could I ask . . . ?’ Foster tried saying, but Kennedy had already disconnected the call.
‘How long will it take you to find this tracking code,’ he asked.
‘Not long at all,’ the agent replied, already typing something into his computer.
As Kennedy waited, his cellphone rang inside his jacket pocket again. It was Special Agent Moyer, the agent in charge of the expedition sent to Lake Saltonstall in New Haven. They were looking for Karen Simpson’s remains, together with those of four other victims.
‘Director,’ the agent said, his voice firm but a little subdued, as if to show respect. ‘Sir, the information is one hundred percent legit. So far, we’ve dug out the remains of exactly five bodies.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Would you like us to carry on digging? The area here is pretty vast, and if this was the perpetrator’s preferred burial ground, who knows how many more we might find.’
‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Kennedy replied. ‘You won’t find any more bodies.’ He had no doubt Lucien had told the truth. ‘Just prep the ones you found for tr
ansportation. We’ll need them here in Quantico ASAP.’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Good work, Agent Moyer,’ Kennedy said before hanging up.
‘Got the transponder tracking code,’ the agent at the radar station announced, as he entered a few more commands into his computer.
Everyone’s eyes were glued to his screen.
‘Tracking now.’
The seconds felt like minutes. Finally, the map on the agent’s screen repositioned itself to show the location of a bright, pulsating dot.
‘We’ve got the Jeep’s location,’ the agent said excitedly. A short pause. ‘And it doesn’t look like they’re moving anymore.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ Kennedy said, frowning at the screen. ‘But where the hell are they exactly?’
‘Right in the middle of absolutely nowhere, by the looks of it,’ Doctor Lambert commented.
According to the map, the Jeep was parked at the end of a nameless dirt path deep inside a dense forestland several miles from Berlin’s municipal airport.
‘We need a satellite image of the area instead of a map,’ Kennedy said.
‘Give me a second,’ the agent replied and immediately started typing again.
Two seconds later, the map on his screen was swapped for a satellite image of the area.
Everyone frowned at the screen for a moment.
‘What is this?’ Kennedy asked, pointing at what looked like a construction site not that far away from where the Jeep was parked.
The agent zoomed in on it and readjusted the resolution. ‘It looks like an old abandoned house, or building of some sort,’ he answered. ‘Or at least what’s left of it.’
‘That’s it,’ Kennedy said, ‘that’s where they are. That’s where Lucien was keeping his victim.’ He reached for his cellphone and called agent Brody inside Bird Two. They needed to land and get to that house – NOW.