I didn’t answer that. But I pulled the hood on and made sure the seals were perfectly tight. I don’t mind taking risks—that’s kind of a professional responsibility, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve taken some really dumb risks over the years in situations where I didn’t have the time to think up a better plan. But give me a few minutes to plan and I’m the most cautious guy you’d ever want to meet. There are no second chances when it comes to accidents involving one of the world’s deadliest pathogens.
Violin and I drew our guns. We shared a nod, then I lifted the hatch.
Chap. 4
Bug fed us the route.
Down a metal ladder, along one corridor, through a doorway, down some stairs, through more doorways and more corridors. At each point we encountered a security barrier—a retina scan, geometric hand scanner, keycard box. MindReader was deep inside the system now, though, and as we approached each doorway the scanner lights went from red to green. Nothing and no one stopped us. Not surprising, since the first three levels were administrative. Funny that even evil and corruption generate a lot of mundane paperwork.
I tried to imagine who would come to a place like this to fix the copier.
Did they have evil copier companies?
Then we reached the bottom level and stood inside the stairwell, stealing covert glances through a small wire-mesh window in the door. Twenty feet away was a heavy-gauge steel door, and outside stood a guard. Big, tough-looking, and alert. He had a Sig Sauer in a belt holster and a Heckler and Koch rifle slung from one muscular shoulder.
Bug said, “Okay, Cowboy, we have sixteen rooms at that level. Employee records indicate a security staff and lab personnel working on all shifts. You’re too deep for thermal scans, but figure anywhere from nine to fourteen people.”
“We see one guard,” I said. “How many others?”
“Four on the schedule. You want me to send backup?”
I cut a look at Violin. She was a superbly trained assassin. A world-class sniper and one of the deadliest knife fighters I’d ever met. Faster than me, and I’m really fast.
“We got it,” I said, “but don’t let anyone upstairs fall asleep.”
I nodded to the door. “You as good with a pistol as you are with a sniper rifle?”
Violin cocked an eyebrow. I told her why.
Chap. 5
As soon as I opened the door the guard whipped around in my direction and brought his rifle up. What he saw was a man in a black hazmat suit.
Specifically, he saw a man in a hazmat suit who took a single wobbly step before collapsing as if dying.
The soldier stared in horror for half a second, caught between needing to know who I was and yelling for help.
Violin leaned out the door and put two bullets in him. One in the heart, one in the head.
Perfect shots, nearly silent, the pfft sounds following each other so quickly they almost sounded like a single report. The guard went down. Without a sound, without a pause. One moment he was alive, and the next he was meat slumping to the ground.
There is a part of me that is constantly appalled at the fragility of life and the grim candor with which an invitation to die is spoken to total strangers. I did not know this man, and it was likely that I’d never know his name or anything about him. Somebody else in another enforcement agency would handle clean up on him. Another person I didn’t know would sweep this man’s life into the trash can.
As I got up I glanced at Violin. There was no flicker of mercy or regret or anything on her face. I had the tiniest flicker of distaste at that before I reminded myself of where she’d been born and under what circumstances she’d been raised. In light of that, it was amazing that she was not, herself, a monster.
I checked the BAMS unit. The lights were still green.
I tapped my earbud. “We’re at the door, Bug. Let us in.”
The security locks clicked.
I took the lead as I nudged the door open with my shoulder. Directly inside was a small room with rows of hazmat suits on hangars, a sign-in log, and a pressurized door. We had to let the hall door close and seal before the inner door would open. The air had that distinctive smell of ultrafiltered air, which never smelled quite right to me. I guess I’ve become habituated to pollutants.
Still had green lights on the BAMS.
We went through the pressurized door and found ourselves in a kind of central courtyard that had three short corridors leading to big doors marked—I kid you not—One, Two, and Three.
Violin turned to me. “Do you know which lab has the Ebola?”
“Nope. Want to see what’s behind door number one?”
She nodded without a smile. I doubted she watched many game shows. I let it go.
We crept toward that corridor, flanked the entrance, and were just about to make the short run to the door when it opened.
A small man in a white lab coat stood there.
He should have been shocked. He should have shrieked and yelled and called for backup.
Instead he smiled.
A small, cold smile.
The four security guards behind him all had guns; all of them had laser sights on me.
“So,” said the small man in the lab coat, “this is fun, isn’t it?”
I recognized his voice.
It was my informant.
I said, “Ah, balls.”
Chap. 6
“Drop your guns,” said the little man.
“Not a chance,” I said, pointing the barrel at his face. He was almost close enough to grab and use as a shield; definitely close enough to kill with my first shot.
The guy seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Shoot me and my guys will kill you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “maybe. But you’ll be deader’n shit.”
“True.” He contrived not to look impressed. I wondered why. “So where’s that leave us?”
“Having a chat.”
“What would you like to chat about?”
“It starts with an ‘e.’”
He chuckled. It made his eyes crinkle, and I realized that he looked exactly like Mr. Rogers. Swap the lab coat for a cardigan and it’s him. It gave this whole thing an extra layer of surreal weirdness.
“Can we pause to appreciate the wonderfulness of my trap?” he asked.
“Yes, hooray, I’m sure you’ll get your Mad Scientist merit badge.”
He pursed his lips. “Sadly you won’t get the Be Prepared badge. You came in here alone?”
“He’s not alone,” said Violin. “He brought a date.”
We all laughed about that. The laser sights never budged, though. Not theirs, not ours.
“You want to cut to it, friend?” I said. “You set a trap and we walked into it. Now we have a standoff. What’s the punch line here?”
“Oh, it’s pretty simple,” he said. “I’m in charge of quality control here. Our clients had some questions about our security. Despite all of our assurances that we have excellent security as well as redundant, fail-safe and alternative systems, they were still jittery. So I arranged a practical demonstration. We, um, leaked some information to several law enforcement agencies, domestic and foreign, over the last fourteen months. Different information to each agency, and leaked in ways that would encourage them to keep that information in-house. You know how you fellows in the alphabet agencies hate to share. Since then we’ve had the FBI, the CIA, Homeland, the DEA, and a few other groups come poking around. Not here, of course, and never the same company twice.”
“You’re not Marquis Pharmaceuticals?”
“Oh, hell no. And, by the way, Marquis doesn’t actually know we’re down here. At least, no one in authority does. We own key members of maintenance and security, as we do with fifty or so other companies, including the construction company that built this place, the zoning board, and the various federal offices that watchdog facilities of this kind. That’s the real way to get things done, you know. Forget about corrupting the high-prof
ile executives. They’re always being watched and audited. No, the secret is to own the blue-collar grunts and the watchdogs because nobody of consequence is looking at them. It’s the same way with some of the financial games we have running—we have our people in the IRS, the SEC, as well as Wall Street. We own the people who are paid to look for the bad guys.”
“That has a familiar ring to it,” I said.
His smile turned into a grin.
“I’ll bet it does.”
“You’re the Seven Kings,” I said.
His grin kept getting bigger.
Oh fuck.
The Seven Kings were the world’s most powerful and elusive organization. They pretended to be an ancient secret society and reinforced that by hijacking the history and urban legends of other secret societies, from the Illuminati to the Neo-Templars. They also pretended to be terrorists, but in truth they used terrorist groups as pawns, funding and supporting them and ultimately aiming them at specific targets. Terror, however, was only a byproduct of their game, and they weren’t in it for God or to further a political agenda. They were in it for the money. If you knew exactly when a major terrorist attack was going to happen, you could make an incredible fortune during the flight-to-safety stock market panic that always follows. The Kings were behind 9/11 and the 2009 economic crash. Three of the Kings—Osama Bin Laden, Sebastian Gault, and Hugo Vox—were dead. That left four of them, and any replacements they might have recruited.
“I am a very small cog in the machine that is the Seven Kings,” he admitted. “The organization, however, is always growing. And in case you’re wondering, we’ve filled all outstanding vacancies. Killing me won’t stop this project, and it won’t prevent our clients from receiving the fruits of our research.”
“Let’s see if that’s true after I blow your nutsack off.”
He just grinned.
“Okay, Sparky,” I said, “so you duped me here with an anonymous phone call. You also put out the stuff about Ryerson?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Mr. Ryerson is one of ours. Very low level, but like I said, that’s where the action is.” He turned his smile toward Violin. “We were hoping for Interpol or a Recces operative from South Africa. But I don’t think that’s who you are.”
“She’s a Jehovah’s Witness,” I said. “She wants to know if you heard the word of God today.”
“Cute.”
Violin thought so, too. She laughed. There was a bit of a threat in the laugh, too. And a bit of fear.
“I wasn’t clear on something,” said the guy, “so let me correct that. When I said that I didn’t know who you were, miss, I meant personally. I know which organization you belong to. Arklight has become quite a troublesome little sewing circle. That’s why I invited representatives of our newest client to join us.”
“Joe…,” murmured Violin, and even as she said it I heard a soft scuff behind us. I turned. Door number two stood open, and two Red Knights stood there.
They were also smiling.
Their mouths were filled with jagged teeth. You see teeth like that in monster movies, but in the movies they’re fake. They’re special effects. That’s not the case with the Knights. Those teeth are way too real. Both of the Knights carried weapons that looked like ice axes. Dagger-tipped on one end, hatchet blade on the other.
The Knights looked at me with their rat-red eyes and dismissed me with sneers. The looks they gave Violin were different. Women in general were less than nothing to the Red Knights, which was a viciously patriarchal society. Women were slaves and breeding stock. But Arklight was different. Those women had killed many of the Knights and hunted them around the world with the same ferocity as Nazi hunters after World War II. It was kill on sight on both sides, and I knew that they would go after Violin with every intention of killing her while making the torment last.
The fact that they didn’t attack her immediately suggested that they didn’t know who she was. If they knew that she was Violin, daughter of Lilith, there would already be blood on the floor.
I jerked my head toward the Knights. “And them? The Seven Kings are recruiting monsters now?”
“Oh, hell,” said the scientist, “we’ve always recruited monsters. I believe you’ve encountered some in the past.”
“So, what’s the play?” I asked. “We all know how this ends, so tell me why we’re still chatting.”
He nodded. “You’re right, we do know how it ends. Ideally I live, you die, my clients are satisfied that we know who’s looking at us and, more importantly, how they’re looking and how they typically respond. So far there have been no surprises. The administrator in me appreciates that, because it allows the Kings to continue working the way we’ve always been working, knowing that the blunt predictability of the United States government’s various law enforcement agencies actually contributes to our success. However, the sociopath in me—and, yes, I admit it; in the Kings that’s both a job requirement and pathway to promotion—that part of me is disappointed in how clumsily you’ve walked into this trap. I thought that the DMS would send someone of greater skill.”
I shrugged. “Life sucks sometimes.”
He gave a sad nod of agreement. “So true. Anyway, to answer your question, the ‘play’ is that you get a choice. We want to know exactly how the information we leaked was disseminated internally by your organizations. Who received it, who processed it, who had eyes on it, how and to whom was it shared. That sort of thing. A complete rundown.”
“Let me get right on that,” I said. “We betray our people and then you kill us. I have to tell you, Sparky, that your sales pitch eats dog turds.”
“No, wait, hear me out,” said the guy. “That’s not the choice I was talking about.”
“This should be good,” murmured Violin. Behind her the Knights growled like dogs.
“It is,” insisted the guy. “There are three possible scenarios. In one scenario—the one I think we can all be happy with—we sit down over coffee and you talk, and that talk will be viewed as part of the application process for joining our organization. In that scenario we’re all friends and nobody gets trigger-happy. Nobody dies.”
“Very generous,” said Violin.
“Isn’t it?” the guy said, nodding. “And your safety would be guaranteed. You become part of our team, and believe me, the pay and benefits are spectacular. We take very good care of our people and we reward loyalty. Loyalty to us, I mean. Sure, there’s a vetting process and a probation period, but once you prove yourself, you’re really part of the family. No threats, none of that. It’s how they recruited me. Now I’m on the administrative level. You can be, too.”
“Why do I get the feeling that your nose should be growing a foot every time you open your mouth?” I asked.
“I’m dead serious.”
“Unfortunate choice of words,” said Violin.
“Oops. Yeah, sorry. We really do want you to join, and if you do then you have a real future and a great life. Look at me, look into my eyes. Do I look like I’m lying to you?”
I did, and I think he was genuinely serious. He held a lot of good cards, so there wasn’t much reason to lie to us.
“But the alternatives aren’t as much fun,” he continued. “In scenario two you still tell us everything we want to know, but you make us work for it. Make no mistake, you will tell us everything, but the process of encouragement is extreme, and what they bury afterward won’t even look like people.”
“Not a fan of that one,” I said.
“No, of course not,” said the guy. “Though my friends from the Red Knights are particularly fond of it.”
“We will rip the truth from you,” said one of the Knights.
“Shove it up your ass, Count Chocula,” I said.
Violin laughed so hard she snorted. Even the guy chortled.
“What’s the third scenario?” I asked, even though we all knew what that one would be.
“Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” said the guy.
/>
I took a long breath and let it out slowly. “There’s a fourth scenario,” I said.
“Oh? Does it involve me suddenly coming to my senses and letting you arrest me?”
“Not exactly. It involves you unburdening your soul to me. You tell us everything you know about the Seven Kings, including the identity of each King, the names of your customers, and the locations of any bases you have.”
He goggled at me for a moment, then he burst out laughing. Even his guards looked amused, and until now they’d been stone-faced. I laughed, too. Violin turned to the Knights and gave them a saucy wink.
“That’s really funny,” said the guy.
“I know, right?” I said.
“It’s also the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.
“Not entirely.”
I cut a look at Violin, and she wore a small, confused frown. She had no idea where I was going with this. I put a bland smile on my face.
“I will go this far,” I said. “I’ll tell you our names. It might matter in the way this all plays out.”
“Please do.”
“I’m Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger.”
His face went slack for a moment and he lost some color. But he recovered fast and cleared his throat.
“And the, um, young lady?”
The young lady straightened, her chin lifting imperiously. “You can call me Violin, daughter of Lilith, senior field operative of Arklight.”
You really could have heard a pin drop. I think I heard the Red Knights grinding their fangs together. The Seven Kings guy’s face kept vacillating between horrified shock and the delight of a kid on Christmas morning who thought he was getting socks and underwear and instead discovered a pony with a bow tied around its neck.
“Oh my God,” he breathed.
“Yeah. Bit of a jackpot moment,” I said.
“This slut is ours,” growled one of the Red Knights. “We will use her until she screams for death and then send her eyes to the demon Lilith.”
“You are welcome to try,” said Violin. “I’ll break your teeth out and add them to my collection.”
Joe Ledger Page 17