Arch Enemy

by Leo J. Maloney

  They made for the stairwell, staying low until they had cleared the heavy fire-resistant door. Morgan struggled to keep up as his longer-legged partner took four steps at a stride.

  “We need to intercept them downstairs!” Morgan said. “Shepard, any word on the police response?”

  Sound of a keyboard clattering. “Nine one one has been flooded with calls,” said Shepard. “They’re getting reports from all around the city. Explosions, shooters, all sorts of things.”

  Morgan’s heart sank. “Are they simultaneous attacks? Hitting several targets at once?”

  “No,” said Shepard. “I’m looking at Twitter and Facebook now. The Acevedo thing is the only one there with pictures and real reports. People at the other sites are saying that it’s a hoax.”

  “Diversionary tactics,” said Morgan. “To keep responders away from here. Looks like we’re all there is. Is tactical at the ready?”

  “In the van,” said Bishop.

  “Keep the motor running,” said Morgan. “We’ll cut the shooters off downstairs.”

  Chapter 76

  Morgan elbowed through the screaming crowd that funneled toward the front door of the Acevedo building, emerging from the suffocating throng into the cool outside air. He ran for his car, leaving Conley, who couldn’t get past the crowd, behind—there was no time to wait. He couldn’t resist a glance up at the broken window above at the distant corpses, dangling from ropes just over the enormous Acevedo sign that graced the building. It was gruesome, and it was meant to be.

  Morgan jumped into the Olds and turned the key, starting the motor.

  “Anyone have a visual on the getaway vehicle?”

  A white van cleared two feet off the ground as it roared from the garage ramp, scattering curious onlookers and smashing into a car as it turned. The reinforced Ram ProMaster looked like it could more than take the hit.

  “Never mind,” said Morgan, tires singing as he floored the accelerator. He was joined in the pursuit at the next intersection by the Zeta tactical van, black and fragile looking compared to their quarry. They sped down the narrow Water Street.

  “That you, Cobra?”

  “Affirmative.”

  They circled back to Court Street, which merged onto Cambridge. Within a few blocks, police cars were following, sirens blaring. The Legion van barreled on ahead, undeterred. In fact, it seemed that all lights were turning green to let it pass.

  And then the squad cars were swerving off the road, crashing into parked cars and buildings. One ramped off a parked sports car and landed upside down on the sidewalk.

  “What the—”

  “They’re hacking into the cop cars!” said Shepard. “They’re disabling everything connected to the electronics in the car.”

  In his 1970 Oldsmobile, Morgan didn’t have to worry. Every single part of it was mechanical except for the radio.

  The van was another story.

  “I’m losing control!” came Bishop’s voice. “We’re gonna crash!”

  “Brace for impact!”

  The van plowed full speed into a parked car, pushing it some thirty feet before stopping.

  Morgan pushed the gas pedal harder. The white van was a full city block ahead.

  “Shepard, get them on the traffic cameras!”

  At the next intersection, the cars from the cross street advanced before he passed. Morgan swerved, narrowly avoiding a crash.

  “What the heck?” They were turning the cross lights green as they passed. Morgan held the horn at the next intersection, passing inches from an oncoming car.

  They were cutting it closer themselves, Morgan noticed, turning the light green before even they made it through.

  “Traffic cameras are all dead!” Shepard exclaimed.

  Morgan sped past one more city block, but cars were moving in from both sides. He pushed down on the gas to make the gap—

  The crossing cars overlapped. Morgan slammed down hard on the brakes, letting the Olds drift sideways, losing speed until it came to a stop with nothing but a nudge to the nearest car crossing the intersection.

  Morgan got out of the car and watched as the white van traveled down Cambridge Street until it disappeared onto Storrow Drive.

  Chapter 77

  Alex Morgan’s heart fluttered when she saw the mention of Acevedo on her news alert. She opened the article on the first news aggregator site on the list.

  22 Dead in Downtown Boston Terror Attack

  She read on.

  An anonymous source claiming to belong to the Legion of Erebus has released a statement explaining the motive of this brutal attack.

  She clicked on another link for an article labeled ON THE SCENE. It was dominated by pictures, taken on phones by people who’d been there, or still were. Each image bore a warning for graphic content. She opened the first. The bodies were barely visible, hanging far above street level. She felt her stomach heaving. She clicked the next, and the next. This last photo was taken by a camera with a proper optical zoom, the bodies shown just close enough to make out the faces. Among them, clear as day, was McGovern.

  Not mobile enough to reach the trash can, she threw up on the floor next to her chair.

  “Ew!” said Katie, who’d been highlighting a textbook on her side of the room.

  “Sorry,” Alex said, pushing herself to stand. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “It’s all right,” Katie said. “You’re crippled. I can get it.”

  “No,” said Alex, “stay.” She walked to the door. “I’ll get some toilet paper.”

  She walked past the bathroom and went to Simon’s room instead. He was sitting at his desk.

  “Simon, did you see?”

  “Yeah.”

  “McGovern was one of them,” she said.

  “I saw.” She only now noticed that he seemed oddly calm.

  “The Ekklesia—they’re just a front for the Legion.”

  “I know.”

  She leaned in closer and brought her voice to a whisper. “Simon, we’re accessories to murder. We could go to prison for a long time for this.”

  “I know.”

  She threw up her arms. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling so relaxed about the whole situation.”

  “I don’t care, Alex. For once, I feel like I’m doing something. I feel like I’m useful.”

  “Are you crazy?” She pointed at the gruesome scene gracing his computer screen. “You call this useful?”

  “All this studying and hard work, and I only had a life of nine-to-five to look forward to. Best-case scenario, I’d work for Google and have free sushi for lunch. Tiny cog in a huge machine of doubtful utility. Now, that whole idea seems suffocating. Rats on an exercise wheel, pushing a bar for rewards.”

  “Simon, people are dead.”

  “Exactly. This is real. This is meaningful. It’s a drop of sense in this world that makes none.”

  “Look at the damn pictures and tell me this makes sense.”

  “I’m not a sociopath,” he said, averting his eyes from the screen. “I don’t take pleasure in it. But my empathy also tells me that we did the right thing. Have you read the statement? Did you look at any of the documents they released? Do you know what these people were doing? Drugs. Weapons to cartels and warlords. Buying governments and fueling civil wars. The death and suffering they’ve been causing to pad their bottom line? They’re not human beings, Alex. These people are animals. They don’t deserve any better than what they got. Ugly as it is, this is justice.”

  Alex felt like she might throw up again.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I’m not feeling well.”

  Simon bent down and looked her square in the eyes. There was something cold and intense in them that wasn’t there before. It frightened her.

  “Be brave,” he said. “We’re doing something. We’re making our difference. Fighting for a cause. We have to be steady in our purpose. Unwavering.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m
not wavering, I promise. It’s just a lot to deal with.”

  “Give it time,” he said. “What we did was right. You’ll see.”

  Chapter 78

  Morgan stopped at the newsstand down the street from the Hampton building, which housed Zeta headquarters, to grab the morning papers. The Boston Herald carried photographs of the board members and high executives hanging over the Acevedo sign, while the Globe opted for a more respectful black cover.

  Neither had reprinted the manifesto, but they didn’t have to. It was everywhere on the Internet.

  All corporations that make their money on the blood of the innocent . . . Yesterday, they were among the most powerful men and women in this country. Today, they are dead.

  So it will be with all the corrupt, the unjust, the oppressors.

  —Legion of Erebus

  Morgan slapped the paper down on the Zeta War Room table.

  “Fine, I was wrong,” said Shepard. He looked pale and worn, his hair wilder than usual, his skin more pale. “But you’re late. Karen has been getting her I-told-you-so’s in for hours.”

  O’Neal was sitting at the corner of the table, pulling at her bangs, her tiny frame seeming diminished by stress.

  “Did you get any sleep last night?”

  Shepard took a drink from a bottle of Mountain Dew. “What do you think?

  Bloch came out of her office, followed by General Strickland. “Morgan,” she said. “Thank you for coming. I’d like to brief the two of you on new information brought by General Strickland. I’ll let him do the talking.”

  “Thank you,” said the general as they took their seats around the table. Strickland stood, leaning with both palms resting on the table’s surface. “The Legion of Erebus has finally come out of the shadows and identified itself. Yesterday’s display should be enough to dispel any doubts not only about their existence but their capabilities as well. Today, I’d like to discuss the legendary leader of the Legion. A man known only as Praetorian.”

  “I’m willing to believe in the Legion,” said Shepard. “But Praetorian? Come on.”

  “Praetorian is real,” said Strickland.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because we caught him two months ago.”

  There. There was the bombshell. He had already told Bloch, judging by her lack of reaction, but Shepard was stunned.

  “Impossible.”

  “We have him in custody now,” said Strickland.

  Morgan broke in. “And you’ve been sitting on this fact while we’ve been killing ourselves trying to find out anything about the Legion?”

  “If there were relevant intelligence to share, I would have shared it.”

  “Bullshit. We should have gotten access. We should have gotten interrogation tapes. Anything!”

  “Let me tell you what happened last time we acted on intelligence offered by Praetorian. In exchange for a few comforts behind bars, he agreed to give us the location of the safe house of one of his followers’ cells. The location was booby-trapped with explosives. We lost three operatives.”

  “We’d double, triple check,” said Morgan.

  “Another time, we gave him access to a computer so that he might help us track some of his people. It took him about thirty seconds to shut down the system in the detention facility for three days. Prisoners were out of their cells. It was chaos.” Strickland rubbed his face with his hand. “We moved him to a more secure facility. He hasn’t spoken a word in about six weeks.”

  “But if you know his identity—”

  “I didn’t say we knew his identity. We have the man, but we haven’t matched him to any information in any known database.”

  “It’s impossible that you have nothing at all,” said Morgan.

  “If anything, we have less. He might be playing us even in what we think we know.”

  Morgan stared into empty space, trying to assimilate the news. “So why this? Why now?”

  “Yesterday’s events have made it clear that we need to take greater risks and intensify the hunt for the Legion,” said Strickland. “I understand you are one of the most experienced and successful interrogators here at Zeta.”

  “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

  “I believe so,” said Bloch. “Morgan, we’d like you to talk to Praetorian yourself.”

  Chapter 79

  Lisa Frieze came home at noon after spending more than twenty-four hours in the office. She was maybe the most tired she had ever been. It was not a pleasant surprise to find Peter Conley waiting for her outside her building. Once the sheen of their near-death experience had worn off, the wrongness of their tryst came into sharp focus. Much as she wanted him, she also knew he took what he needed from her, all the while keeping vital secrets.

  “Tell me you haven’t been waiting there for hours,” she said as she unlocked the front door to her building.

  “I knew you were coming home,” he said. “We have—”

  “I don’t want to know,” she said, opening the door. He just stood there. “Well? I don’t think you came just to say hello.”

  He followed her inside and up the stairs. She held her apartment door open for him. “Come in.”

  “Excuse me.”

  It was funny. She’d imagined him in her apartment on so many lonely nights. Reality was so stark and ugly in comparison.

  “There are boxes everywhere,” she said as a kind of halfhearted apology.

  “It’s fine.”

  “So what are you here for?” She made herself busy putting away silverware from the drying rack as if it were urgent, as if the rest of her apartment wasn’t a total mess. “I mean, you must want something.”

  “Actually, I really only wanted to talk about yesterday.”

  “Ah,” she said, tossing the dish towel on the sink and crossing her arms. “You mean the terrorist attack that coincidentally happened in the same building where we were conducting a bizarre investigation into an elevator-related death”—she paused for breath—“during which not only was I nearly killed but got into a lot of trouble with my boss, thank you very much.”

  “I wanted to tell you about the investigation. I wanted to tell you what it was all about. I just couldn’t. It was classified.” There he went, with his puppy dog eyes. But Frieze wasn’t falling for it.

  “Meanwhile, you pump me for privileged information, right?”

  “You have no idea how much I wanted to tell you everything.”

  Frieze screamed in frustration and kicked a box that was stacked on top of another. It fell with a din of clanging metal and breaking glass.

  “What is this freak show of you and me?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” he said, moving toward her. She backed away from him, averting her eyes. God, she couldn’t even look at him.

  He picked the box up and set it on the table.

  “I was just hoping we could talk. I think we have something here, if we could just—”

  “Get out, Peter.” He didn’t move. She yanked the apartment door open for him, so hard that the doorknob slammed against the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster. “I mean it. I’m done.”

  “Lisa, I—”

  “Go,” she said through an upswell of tears.

  He walked out and turned, still trying to talk. She slammed the door and broke down on the kitchen floor, crying from exhaustion and heartbreak.

  Chapter 80

  The chopper touched down at sixteen hundred hours. It was night already in the black waters of the Bering Sea. The frigid air filled the cabin as the doors slid open, carrying with it flurries of snow.

  Morgan stepped onto the helipad out into the bitter cold on the deck of the oil tanker Aurora Borealis.

  The chopper lifted off as he reached for the iced-over railing of the steps that led down to the deck. Morgan was met by a couple of surly men wrapped in thick parkas holding MP5s in one hand and the railing in the other. They were swaying with the ship.
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  Morgan followed them inside the bridge through an external hatch. The two men took off their parkas. The taller of the two said, “This one’s yours,” and took off without another word.

  The other was ginger, red-haired and freckled, with a short nose and high forehead. The overall impression was that of a little troll. “Jim Oehlert,” he said, taking off his parka. “Part of the long-term team here on the Good Ship Hellhole.”

  “Dan Kinch,” said Morgan. Alias. Standard procedure.

  The inside was not too much warmer than the outside, but Morgan took the cue and took off his jacket, shaking the snow off at the door.

  “Sure you are,” said Oehlert. He stowed his H&K MP7 submachine gun in the armory and locked it with a key that he put back in his jeans pocket. “Well, welcome, I suppose. I got stuck with the task of showing you around. I may not sound very enthusiastic, which is because I’m not. But it beats the whole lot of nothing that most of us get to do on this ship.”

  “You miss dry land?”

  “Just every goddamn minute,” said Oehlert, holding on against the tilting of the vessel. Morgan didn’t and stumbled against the wall. “Because there is not one where this bathtub is not swaying like it’s at a Phil Collins concert.”

  “Oil tanker, huh,” said Morgan, regaining his footing. “I expected a military ship.”

  “Everyone expects a military ship for a clandestine operation,” said Oehlert. “Which is exactly why this is not one.”

  “Clever,” said Morgan.

  “Would you like a tour of the facilities? Of course you would. Why would you be here otherwise? Come on, I’ll show you your bunk first. Give you a chance to drop off your stuff.”

  Oehlert led Morgan through a bulkhead and down a long alleyway. “We have a chronic excess of vacancies up here, because as you might imagine, we’re a skeleton crew.” He stopped and opened a steel door with a creak. “The upshot is you get your own room.”