by Chris Carter
Ninety-Nine
Hunter saw it before it actually happened.
He saw something explode inside Ghost’s cold eyes, as if he’d been injected with an overdose of pure anger and evil, and right then he knew Ghost had passed the point of no return. But even though he saw it, this time Hunter wasn’t able to move fast enough. He wasn’t able to get between Taylor and Ghost. Ghost’s trigger-squeezing reaction took only a split second.
As the hammer hit the firing pin in Ghost’s gun, it was like it’d activated a real-life slow-motion switch for Hunter. He practically saw the bullet leave the gun barrel, travel through the air and whizz past the right side of his face, missing it by just a fraction. In a reflex reaction, he began turning toward Taylor, but he didn’t have to. From that distance, even a novice wouldn’t have missed, and he could see in Ghost’s eyes that he was no first timer. A millisecond after the shot, he felt the warmth of splattered blood and brain matter hit the back of his neck and side of his face, as Taylor’s head exploded with the impact of the fragmenting bullet.
The air inside the room was immediately filled with the smell of cordite.
Hunter still managed to turn fast enough to see Taylor’s body be propelled backward and slam against the dappled gunmetal door, before falling to the ground. The wall behind her was immediately colored in crimson red with speckles of flesh, gray matter and blonde hair. The bullet had hit her almost perfectly right between the eyes. Due to Ghost’s diminutive height and his position in relation to Taylor, the bullet traveled in a slight upward and left-to-right angle. The damage was mind-boggling. Most of the right upper part of her head and cranium was missing, blown off by the devastating effect of the Civil Defense bullet – a special type of round designed to mushroom (like turning inside-out) and fragment on impact, sending tiny pieces in all directions.
Taylor never had a chance.
Hunter quickly turned back to face Ghost, whose aim had now moved to Hunter’s face.
‘Make a move, tough guy, c’mon, make a move, and I’ll blow your brains all over her rotting corpse.’
Hunter felt every fiber in his body go rigid with anger, and he had to use all his willpower not to lunge at Ghost. Instead he just stood there, his breathing labored, his hands shaking, but not from fear.
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ Ghost said. ‘Not so tough after all, are you?’
‘WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?’ Lucien shouted. He looked even more surprised than Hunter was. ‘Why the fuck did you shoot her, Ghost?’
Ghost kept his weapon trailed on Hunter. ‘Because the bitch was getting on my nerves,’ he replied in a serious but unconcerned voice. ‘You know I hate when anyone talks about me that way.’
Lucien took a step back, running a hand across his forehead.
‘The foulmouthed bitch got what she deserved.’ Ghost shrugged, as if all he’d done was throw a dart at a dartboard. ‘What does it matter anyway? They were both going to die, weren’t they? They’ve seen our faces, Lucien. You and I know that they would never walk out of here alive. And all this chit-chat bullshit was pissing me off, so I just sped things up for her.’ He nodded at Hunter. ‘And you know what? I’m just gonna do the same for him.’
Ghost’s face burned with sadistic desire, and Hunter saw the same determination of moments ago flood Ghost’s eyes.
There was no time for a reaction.
Another squeeze of the trigger.
Just like before, the bullet found its target with amazing accuracy.
One Hundred
Sky above the city of Milan, New Hampshire.
Forty minutes earlier.
Inside Bird Two, Agent Brody and his team were starting to lose hope.
Their plane had been circling the outer perimeter of Berlin’s municipal airport for several minutes now. The pilot had already told Brody that he’d need a plan of action soon. The plane had enough fuel for another thirty to thirty-five minutes of flight time, but if they weren’t landing in Berlin, they would need to land somewhere else and refuel before flying back to Quantico. That meant turning the plane around and flying to a different airport.
The nearest airport to Berlin was Gorham municipal airport – about five to ten minutes due south depending on the wind. As a precaution measure, the pilot always allowed an extra ten minutes of flight time in case of landing traffic or some other unforeseen circumstance. That left them with a maximum of another ten, maybe fifteen minutes’ circling time. After that, the pilot was turning the plane around and heading toward Gorham.
Brody had his cellphone on the table in front of him. He was staring at its dark screen as if hypnotized. When he finally checked his watch, another seven minutes had passed. Three more minutes and this operation was over. He had to call Kennedy.
As he reached for his phone, it rang.
One Hundred and One
This wasn’t the first time Hunter had stared down the barrel of a gun. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a life or death situation either, but Ghost was too far away for Hunter to be able to get to him in time, and he was too close for Hunter to be able to dive away from the bullet.
This time there was no way out.
In that split second before Ghost squeezed the trigger, all Hunter could think of was how sorry he was for not being able to protect Taylor, and for not fulfilling the promise he’d made Jessica all those years ago while he held his fiancée’s mutilated body in his arms.
Despite what he was facing, Hunter didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t even blink. He would not give Ghost the satisfaction. His gaze stayed on Ghost’s face. And that was how he was able to see his head explode.
It was a perfect shot. The bullet hit Ghost on his left temple. Its hollow-point cavity was immediately filled with fluids and tissue, forcing it to mushroom as it began traveling past the cranium wall and across Ghost’s brain, savagely ripping apart everything in its path.
The mushroom effect of a hollow-point reduces the bullet’s velocity considerably, and in most cases there will be no exit wound. The bullet will generally lodge itself within its target. But again, at such close range, the power of a .45-caliber round was more than enough to propel the bullet all the way across Ghost’s shaved head.
When it occurs, the exit wound of a .45 mushroomed Civil Defense bullet is impressive. In Ghost’s case, it was the size of a grapefruit. Half of the right side of his face, from his ear to the top of his head, exploded out as if an alien being had hatched out of a large egg. Bone, blood, brain matter and skin splattered against the wall and the control console to his right, covering everything in a sticky, gooey red mess.
The terribly loud sound of the fired shot made Hunter jerk, but he still kept his eyes open. He saw the anger, the determination and the evil dissipate from Ghost’s eyes, before his whole body was basically lifted from the ground by the force of the shot’s impact. It slammed against the control console and flopped to the ground like an empty flour sack. A pool of blood quickly began to form around his head.
His gun also hit the console, but it slid away to the other side of the room, ending somewhere behind the cardboard boxes.
Hunter’s heart was racing like a Drag car. Adrenaline had flooded every vein in his body, making him shake. His gaze finally moved to Lucien. He could still see a thin plume of smoke traveling in the air from Lucien’s shot, but again, before Hunter could react, Lucien had already aimed Taylor’s gun at him.
‘Stay right where you are, Robert. I really don’t want to, but if need be, I’ll put a bullet right through your heart. And you know I mean it.’
Hunter stared at him, unable to hide his surprise for what he’d just done.
‘I’ve never liked him anyway,’ Lucien explained in his usual matter-of-fact manner. ‘He was just a dumb, sadistic kid with no purpose, who was traumatized when young, and because of that he loved torturing and killing people just for the fun of it.’
Coming from Lucien, Hunter found the comment very rich.
Hunter’s focus was on Lucien’s gun.
‘Believe me if you like, but I had no intention of killing Agent Taylor, unless I absolutely had to, but unfortunately she touched on a very delicate subject when it came to Ghost. You see, he came from a very dysfunctional family. Both of his parents abused him physically and psychologically in ways that are hard for even me to imagine. They forced him to walk around the house naked all the time, and they made constant fun of him, especially of his manhood, calling him a series of derogative names. Would you like to guess one of them?’
Hunter breathed in. ‘Pencil-dick.’
Lucien nodded once. ‘That’s the one. Unfortunately, the same name Agent Taylor threw at him.’
For a deeply traumatized and disturbed person, a single word, a sound, a color, an image, a smell . . . a multitude of simple things can easily reopen a terribly painful wound. Usually the person’s reaction is highly unpredictable, but in the case of a violent person, violence is almost always present within the reaction. In the case of a psychopath like Ghost, that violent reaction is usually fatal.
‘When Ghost was seventeen years old,’ Lucien added, ‘he
finally had enough. He tied his father to a bed, castrated him, and left him to bleed to death. After that, he used a baseball bat to beat his mother’s head into a paste. He was too damaged. I knew I’d be getting rid of him soon anyway.’
Despite the bloody chaos of the control room, Hunter forced himself to think as clearly as he possibly could. His main concern came back to him, and he turned his head to look down the corridor behind him. His eyes caught a glimpse of Taylor’s body on the floor, and his heart sank yet again. He looked back at Lucien.
‘Let Madeleine go, Lucien,’ he said one more time. ‘Please. If you really want another victim, take me instead. She means nothing to you.’
‘True, and that’s exactly why I should kill her, Robert,’ Lucien said. ‘Because she means nothing to me. Now you were my best friend. We have some history. Why would I want to kill you instead of her?’
‘Because you already took half of my life when you took Jessica from me,’ Hunter replied. ‘And I know you don’t like to leave things half done.’
As much as Hunter tried to hide it, Lucien recognized real emotion in his voice.
‘So this is your chance, Lucien,’ Hunter continued. ‘Let her go and finish what you started with me, because if you don’t, I will kill you.’
Despite the seriousness of his words, Hunter spoke as if he were talking to someone inside a library, his voice quiet and steady.
‘OK,’ Lucien said, taking a step closer to the blood-covered control console, his weapon still targeting Hunter’s heart, ‘let’s see if you are a man of your word, Robert.’ He flicked a switch and the door at the end of the corridor swung open again.
Hunter turned and faced the hallway.
Madeleine immediately looked up. She looked even more petrified than before.
Hunter knew that she’d heard both shots, and they’d no doubt scared her imagination into fantasizing the worst as to what was happening outside and, worse, what would now happen to her.
She looked to be almost hyperventilating; right then, nothing in the world could make her stop shaking.
Lucien jerked his gun toward the hallway. ‘Let’s go join her, shall we? I have one last surprise for you.’
One Hundred and Two
Hunter had to step over Taylor’s body to reach the hallway. Lucien followed, but at a safe distance. There was no way Hunter could mount an attack before Lucien fired at least two shots at him.
As Hunter started down the corridor, Madeleine’s eyes met his and he could see only one thing in them – pure terror.
‘Please help me.’
This time Hunter could finally hear her. Her weak and quivering voice was drowning in fear.
‘Madeleine, please just stay calm,’ Hunter said in his most confident voice. ‘Everything will be just fine.’
Madeleine’s gaze moved past Hunter and found Lucien, and it was as if the monster that had been haunting her worst nightmares since she was a little girl had just materialized in front of her. Fear grew inside her like a hurricane, and she began screaming and wiggling her fragile body in the chair.
‘Madeleine,’ Hunter said again. ‘Look at me.’
She didn’t.
‘Look at me, Madeleine,’ he repeated, firmer this time.
Her stare moved to Hunter.
‘That’s right. Good girl. Keep your eyes on me and try to stay calm. I’ll get you out of here.’ He hated himself for lying, but in the situation he found himself in, there wasn’t much else he could do.
Madeleine still looked terribly scared, but something in Hunter’s tone seemed to work. She looked directly at him and stopped screaming.
‘Get in, turn left, walk five paces and kneel down, Robert,’ Lucien said as they got to the door.
Hunter did as he was told.
The room was completely bare, except for the chair with Madeleine and a small module with two drawers at the opposite end from where Hunter had kneeled down. There was a faint aroma of urine and vomit, fighting the harsher odor of disinfectant right inside the door, as if someone had been violently ill, and the clean-up had been sloppy.
Lucien entered the room after him, turned right and approached the module. He opened the top drawer and reached for something inside.
Madeleine’s eyes wavered toward him.
‘Look at me, Madeleine,’ Hunter called again. ‘Don’t worry about him. Keep your eyes on me. C’mon, this way.’
She looked back at Hunter.
‘You are very good with hostages, Robert,’ Lucien said, moving to the left side of Madeleine’s chair.
Hunter finally saw what Lucien had retrieved from the drawer – a stainless-steel blade, about five inches long.
‘You know,’ Lucien said, ‘I really hate guns.’ With a quick hand movement he released the ammo clip from Taylor’s .45 Springfield Professional. It fell to the floor, and he kicked it behind him, across the room from where Hunter was. In another very quick double-hand movement, he pulled back the slide, ejecting the bullet in the chamber.
Hunter kept his attention on him. He finally began to see a chance.
Lucien then moved the gun away from him and used his finger to depress the recoil spring plug. In no time at all he had completely stripped the gun, dropping all the separate parts onto the ground.
Hunter breathed out, his muscles tensed-ready as he wondered if he could get to Lucien fast enough.
‘Don’t even think about it, Robert,’ Lucien said, taking a step forward and positioning himself partially behind Madeleine’s chair. The blade, now in his left hand, moved to her neck, while with his right one he pulled her head back by the hair. He could see that Hunter was dying to lunge at him. ‘You move a muscle, and I’ll slice her neck open.’
Madeleine felt the cold blade dig at her skin and her heart almost stopped. She was so petrified that this time she wasn’t even able to scream.
Hunter held steady.
‘I know you despise me, old buddy,’ Lucien said, smiling slightly, almost apologetically. ‘And I don’t blame you. Without knowing the real purpose behind everything I’ve done, anyone would. To everyone I’m just a psychopathic sadistic killer who’s been torturing and killing people for twenty-five years, right? But to you I’m much more than that. I’m the person you’ve been hunting for twenty years. The person who so savagely mutilated the only woman you’ve ever loved. The woman you were going to marry. The woman that would give you a family.’
Hunter felt the anger and rage inside him start to gather strength again.
‘But I’m much more than that,’ Lucien said. ‘In time you’ll understand. I’m leavin
g you and the FBI a gift.’ He jerked his head in the corridor’s direction. ‘You’ll have no problems finding it. But that will come later, because right now I’m going to give you a chance to fulfill the promise you made to yourself and to Jessica all those years ago, Robert. And this is going to be the only chance you’ll ever get, because if you don’t kill me now, you’ll never see me again. Not in this lifetime.’
Hunter’s heart shifted gears inside his chest.
‘The problem is,’ Lucien continued, ‘the moral dilemma that is about to storm through your head and throw your conscience into a tormenting mental battle, old buddy.’ Lucien’s gaze flicked to Madeleine for a moment before returning to Hunter. ‘Let me clarify what I mean by asking you one single question.’ He paused, his stare almost drilling holes into Hunter’s eyes. ‘And that question is: If you come after me now, how are you going to contain her bleeding and get her to a hospital before she bleeds to death?’
In a super-fast movement, Lucien moved the knife from Madeleine’s neck down to her body, and stabbed her on the upper left-hand side of her abdomen, just under the ribcage. The blade penetrated all the way to its handle.
Hunter’s eyes widened in shock.
‘No!’ he shouted as he sprang forward, but Lucien was ready for it, and before Hunter could get to his feet, Lucien used the sole of his boot to kick him square on the chest. The powerful blow sent a winded Hunter tumbling backward. Lucien extracted the knife from Madeleine, opening the wound and causing it to start bleeding profusely.
‘Keep your promise to Jessica, or save Madeleine, Robert,’ Lucien said as he moved toward the door. ‘You can’t do both. Make your choice, old friend.’ He disappeared down the corridor.
One Hundred and Three
It took Hunter a couple of seconds to be able to breathe again, and when he did, his lungs and his chest burned as if he’d sucked in hot coal. Reflexively his hand moved to his chest, and his eyes to the door. His socks scrambled across the floor, trying to maintain some sort of grip as he fought to get back on his feet.