by Jack Mars
Rais was reminded of an old adage: You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar. It was a part of his job that most in his position failed to realize, let alone nurture. A knife or a gun could get you to some places, but a pleasant tone, forging an emotional connection, and finding common ground could get you everywhere else.
Rais put the call on speaker while he waited for Cheryl to return with the information. The car he had rented at JFK with his fake identification was currently parked in the lot of a grocery store in northeastern Maryland, only about an hour outside of DC. He assumed that Steele would not have been relocated too far from Langley, so he refrained from going any further until he had a destination.
And this trusting woman was going to make it easy on him. Rais had no gun, and his money was running dangerously low, but he had a full tank of gas and a rather attractive blade he had purchased at a sporting goods store along the way.
All he had to do was pull this thread a little more, and he would find Kent Steele.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Reid pushed open the back door of the SUV before it came to a complete stop outside the Marseille-Saint Charles railway station. The four agents and Dr. Barnard clambered out and hurried up the white stairs to the entrance.
This is it . Reid was certain of it. End of the line. We find the virus, we put an end to this crisis.
“Minot is twenty-three years old, five-foot-four, with bright red hair,” Reid said as they climbed the steps. “Let’s split up and find her. Watson and I will take the south side of the station—”
“I’ll go with you,” Carver volunteered.
Reid nodded. “All right, Carver and I take the south, Watson and Maria, you take the north end. Barnard, you come with us.”
They pushed through the doors of the station to find it eerily empty and silent. With the travel ban in place, the train depot was a ghost town, working on a skeleton crew of employees. Custodial workers were using the opportunity to buff the floors, while a few security guards milled about to turn away would-be passengers unaware of the shutdown.
“Good luck,” Reid told them as Maria and Watson broke off, heading toward the northern section of the station. He, Carver, and Barnard headed the opposite way.
“It’s unlikely she’s in the station, but we still want to be thorough,” Reid told his two teammates as they walked hastily across the empty floor. He didn’t want to attract any undue attention from the security guards on-site. “Barnard, do a quick sweep of this side. Carver and I will head to the freight yard.”
“And if I locate her?” the doctor asked nervously.
“Use the radio,” Reid told him. “Don’t let her out of your sight, but do not approach her alone.” With his phone crushed under the pile of rubble, Reid’s earpiece was useless, but he would have Carver with him.
“Godspeed, Agents.” Barnard hurried off to a set of stairs to check the platforms while Carver and Reid headed toward a rear exit of the station.
“I’m guessing the freight yards will be behind the passenger rails,” Reid ventured as they pushed out into the afternoon sunlight again. “We can only hope that she hasn’t boarded a—”
“Wait a sec.” Carver stopped. “Do you hear anything?”
Reid shook his head, no. Then he understood what Carver meant. He didn’t hear anything —no chugging of engines, no warning whistles, no bells to indicate a moving train.
“Kent, I don’t think the freight lines are running.”
But this has to be right. It has to. They had come too far to be wrong again, to be misled by the Imam and his followers. “We’re here. This fits. We’re still going to check it out.” He broke into a jog across the sets of empty passenger rail lines toward the freight yard.
“Kent, wait up.” Carver hurried after him, putting a finger to his ear. “Langley just confirmed it with Watson. Nothing is running. This is a dead end.”
Reid pressed on defiantly. He refused to believe it. They were wrong about the virologist being the mastermind behind the plot. They had been wrong about finding the Imam in Athens, and about the terrorists fleeing from France. We can’t be wrong again. It’s too late for that.
About seventy-five yards from the railway station and across more than a dozen empty sets of track was the freight yard, literally hundreds of multicolored boxcars lined end to end on the rails. As Carver had keenly pointed out, nothing moved. Everything was quiet, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around.
He paused at the veritable wall of yellow, green, orange, and blue cargo containers. To go around them would take too long, so instead he dropped to his stomach and crawled underneath the nearest train car, shimmying across the gravel between the tracks. The smell of axle grease and fuel filled his nose.
He stood on the other side and waited for Carver, but the other agent didn’t appear. Reid bent and looked beneath the car. Carver was gone. Where the hell did he go? Around? Was there a radio call that I missed? He panicked slightly; what if Watson and Maria found Minot?
He deliberated for a moment. Carver was gone and Reid had no radio. He wasn’t about to go back; he was here and he had a purpose.
The tall boxcars on either side of him formed a long, shadowy corridor. He started down the length of it until he reached a section of enormous, wide cylinders sitting on the tracks—tanker wagons, hauling oil or some other type of fuel. The gaps between them were wide enough for him to slip through. He climbed carefully over the hitch of a tanker and hopped down from the other side to find yet another set of rails laden with boxcars.
This isn’t a corridor. It’s a labyrinth. He hastened along the length of them, trying to find another passage to the other side while also keeping an eye out for any sign of movement—not only from Carver, but potentially from a French girl carrying a cataclysmic lode of smallpox.
Jesus, this doesn’t end . He squeezed himself precariously between two boxcars and found himself in yet another corridor, the sixth in a row. He had never been in a freight yard, at least not that he could remember, but occasionally driving over the Bayonne Bridge from New York to New Jersey had afforded him the view of the freight yard below it, and it was enormous. If the Marseille-Saint Charles yard was even half as big, he could easily get lost in here.
He lowered himself down from the boxcar hitch and was about to huff a frustrated sigh when he stopped dead in his tracks.
Not fifty feet from him was a figure, sitting on the ground facing away from him, her head of fiery red hair shining despite the long shadows of the train cars. She had her knees drawn to her chest and, most importantly, a brown tote bag at her side.
Reid’s heart leapt with excitement and anxiety in equal measure. He had found her. And the virus.
He lifted his boot to take a step in her direction, but paused. The ground was gravel; she would hear him approaching. Shoot her. She’s alone and you have a clear shot. A single bullet would end all of this.
His hand reached for the hilt of his Glock 19.
Then he heard a sound, possibly the last sound he would have thought to expect in the moment. Claudette Minot sniffled.
She was crying.
Reid’s hand left his jacket empty. No. You’ve been responsible for enough death today, and you’re not going to shoot a crying young woman in the back. She’s going to be apprehended, and she’s going to help us find Imam Khalil.
He took a few steps toward her, his boots crunching on the gravel. She turned suddenly, and at the sight of him she scrambled backward, pulling herself awkwardly to her feet.
“Claudette.” Reid put both his hands up, palms out, as a gesture of nonviolence. “Please step away from the bag,” he said in French.
“Stay back!” She stooped and grabbed the strap of the tote bag, hefting it onto her shoulder. Her eyes were moist and rimmed in red. She had definitely been weeping.
“Look around you. There’s nowhere to go. There are others with me. You can’t run from this.” He took a few more slow steps in h
er direction.
Claudette looked frantically past him and over her shoulder. “I don’t see anyone else.” There was a nervous tension in her voice. “You’re alone.”
“So are you. There’s no train, no rendezvous. No Imam Khalil.”
Her eyes widened in shock at the mention of the Imam’s name. “How do you know about him?”
“I know more than you think,” Reid said. He kept his voice low, soft, nonthreatening. “I know what’s in that bag. I know that you need to put it down and step away.”
Her eyes glistened with the threat of fresh tears. “He… he told me the trains would be running. He told me to come here, to find the car…”
Reid’s gaze flitted from Claudette to the train car that she had been sitting beside only moments earlier. It was a tanker wagon, and though it had been painted over gray, vague markings showed through where it had once been white.
Alarms screeched in his head. Something about this was very wrong. Everything the Imam had planned so far suggested he was a step ahead of the CIA, ahead of Reid. How could he make such a miscalculation?
He turned his attention back to the girl and the tote bag. “I’m not going to tell you again. Put the bag down and step away from it.” She was a fanatic, and he had little hope of getting through to her. If she didn’t heed his warning he was going to have to shoot her.
“You don’t understand.” She stared at the gravel. “I can’t fail now. I can’t.” Her head lifted slowly, her bloodshot gaze meeting his. “I am the Imam Mahdi.”
Reid froze. Imam Mahdi. The same words that died on the lips of the Syrian boy in Barcelona. Suddenly he understood. The boy wasn’t calling out for the Imam. He thought he was the Imam.
“Claudette,” he said slowly. “Think for a moment. Did Imam Khalil tell anyone else that they were the Mahdi?”
She shook her head quickly. “No. Only me. It was always me…” She sniffed again. “He… he only told Adrian to get him to mutate the virus. It wasn’t true.”
Reid sighed in dismay as the bigger picture came together. This Imam Khalil was no holy man; he was a con artist, luring people in with his ideologies and convincing them that they were important, a redemption figure, for his own ends—a jihad against the western world.
This girl was a terrorist, yes. She was in possession of what was currently the deadliest known weapon on the planet. But she was also a vulnerable young woman who had been indoctrinated when she was at her lowest, a pawn in a game she could barely understand.
Worst of all, Reid knew that there would be no changing her mind. He was going to have to shoot her if he had any chance of getting the bag away from her.
“I’m so sorry, Claudette. Truly I am.” He reached into his jacket and pulled the Glock 19.
At the sight of the gun Claudette gasped and lowered the tote to the ground. For a moment Reid thought she might comply, but instead she dropped to her knees and tore the zipper open.
Now! he screamed at himself. You have to do it now! He swallowed the lump in his throat as he aimed and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened, not even a click.
The biometric trigger guard was locked.
Claudette quickly pulled a steel box out of the tote bag, emblazoned on each side with a biohazard symbol.
Panic rose in Reid’s chest as he repositioned his thumb and tried again. Still nothing. He glanced down at the Glock; the thumb pad was smeared with black soot from the explosion and subsequent fallout. It wasn’t reading his print.
No! He switched the gun to his other hand and tried again, but the damage had been done. He had no time to wipe it clean and hope it worked. The girl’s fingers were unclipping the box’s four metal clasps.
There was forty feet between them. Reid had no choice. He dropped the gun and charged at her as fast as his legs would carry him.
He wasn’t even halfway to her as she lifted the lid. Once again it felt as if time slowed down, as if he were running in slow motion. His legs weren’t moving fast enough.
Then—Claudette’s jaw fell open in utter incredulity. Reid expected her to reach into the box, to pluck out a vial and release the virus.
Instead, she stood.
Her arms fell limp at her sides.
Her eyes blinked quickly several times, as if trying to process whatever she was seeing.
Reid skidded to a stop ten feet from her as she took two steps backward. He couldn’t believe it. She saw it, and she’s had a change of heart.
Her gaze met his, and in that moment he saw her—not the brainwashed fanatic, but the real her. A susceptible young woman, scared, bewildered, and completely alone.
“But… but I’m the Mahdi,” she said softly.
A single gunshot cracked the air. Reid crouched instinctively as Claudette Minot’s body convulsed once and fell to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Reid could do nothing but watch as Claudette collapsed sideways to the gravel. Her eyes were wide and confused, her lips still working in some final, unheard utterance.
About twenty yards behind her stood Agent Carver. He slowly lowered his Glock.
Reid felt a strange mix of anger and relief. He knew he would have done it himself if he was able, but now seeing her lying dead on the ground filled him with remorse.
“She down?” Carver asked, his gun still at waist level.
“Yeah. She’s down.” Reid looked up at the agent as he demanded, “Where were you?”
“I told you I was going around. Didn’t you hear me?”
Reid shook his head. “No. I didn’t.” It didn’t matter now. Carver had done what he was unable to do. He snapped out of it and circled around the biohazard box to take a careful look at what had made Claudette Minot freeze like that and step away.
He held his breath as he peered inside. He had hoped, in the moment, that the woman’s sudden halt meant a change of heart, but he was extremely doubtful that that was the case.
“Dammit,” he said in a whisper. The steel biohazard box did not contain vials. It did not contain a virus.
The box contained nothing. It was empty.
“It’s not the virus,” Reid announced as Carver trotted over to him.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Carver glanced down at Claudette’s body and shook his head. “What a waste.” He held a finger to his ear. “We found Minot, but it was another goose chase. She didn’t have the virus. Freight yard.” To Reid he muttered, “I suppose we should be glad it’s not another bomb.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Reid stood quickly. “If Minot was a false lead, then someone else has the virus. This was a distraction, to put us off track while they get the virus out.”
Carver nodded his agreement and started to trot down the length of the freight rails. But Reid didn’t. He paused. Something about this didn’t feel right.
Why here? Why send Minot to a freight yard? Why would the Imam have her leave her phone behind? If she was a red herring, we could have tracked it and found her that way…
“Kent?” Carver slowed, tossing a glance over his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Hang up a second.” Something Claudette had said only moments before she’d been shot. “He… he told me the trains would be running. He told me to come here, to find the car…”
To his left was a cylindrical tanker wagon, the one that Claudette had been instructed to find. Reid used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe away some of the dirt and grease from the side.
It had been repainted, but the former side of it was still faintly legible. The white letters that had once been large and bright on the curved tanker’s side said KHALIL OIL.
He stared at the tanker in disbelief. This isn’t a red herring. It’s a clue. We were led here, while the virus gets to where it needs to be. All of this was a ploy, not just to keep them busy, but to bring them to some inevitable conclusion—not the least of which was that they were too late.
But once again he was missing a lin
k, between the Imam Khalil and this tanker wagon, this Khalil Oil.
“Oil,” he murmured aloud.
“What’s that?” Carver came trotting back to see what he’d found.
But Reid didn’t answer. A memory came swimming through his head, pushing hard like a fish struggling upstream.
The CIA black site in Morocco. Designation H-6, aka “Hell Six.” An interrogation. You pull the fingernails from an Arab man for information about the whereabouts of a bomb maker.
Between screams and whimpers and insistences that he doesn’t know, something else emerges.
A pending war. Something big coming.
There is no pending war.
A conspiracy. A cover-up. Designed by the US government.
You don’t believe him. Not at first. But you couldn’t just let it go. No one lies under that sort of duress.
You knew something, back then. You didn’t want to believe it. Not at first. But you found more. Others that had small pieces of intel. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you started to put it together.
Then Amun happened. You got distracted. You vowed to return to it.
You didn’t get the chance.
Reid sucked in a breath as a sudden, intense headache intruded into his skull. He leaned forward, bracing himself against the filthy tanker wagon with a flat palm. Thousands of miles away, in his office back home in Virginia, was the letter from Alan Reidigger. In it his old friend had told him there was something else that Kent Steele knew, something dangerous. Before the memory suppressor, Agent Zero had been onto something—something he was afraid to tell anyone else about, even Alan.
You were building a case.
You never finished.
You never told anyone.
“Kent? You okay?” Carver frowned, watching Reid’s confused, almost pained expression.
“I… I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I can’t say for sure, but… but I think there’s something much bigger going on here.”
“Bigger than a world-ending virus?” Carver asked in disbelief.