Red Cell Seven

by Stephen Frey

  The room went still for a few moments. Even the baby was quiet.

  “Well,” Travers finally spoke up, “I gave Kaashif TQ during the interrogation. It’s the first time I’ve used it. I checked my phone while he was still tied up, and the trace was already working.”

  “How’d you get him to take the stuff?” Troy asked.

  “I didn’t give him anything to drink for almost a day. He sucked down every drop when I finally gave him a glass of water. He was begging for it. I doubt he would have noticed or cared what was in it at that point.”

  “And he never knew the difference?” Troy asked. “He was that thirsty?”

  “It gives most people stomach problems for a while after they’ve ingested it,” Bill spoke up. “It feels like a mild case of food poisoning, I’ve been told. But it’s tasteless going down. He wouldn’t have noticed, especially if he was craving something to drink that badly.”

  “It feels like food poisoning?” Travers spoke up hesitantly.

  Bill nodded. “That’s the only thing people have noticed so far. Of course, we’ve only been using it for a few weeks.”

  Troy had spotted Travers touching his stomach just then. “What’s up, Major?”

  Travers grinned wryly. “I thought I had a little of that the past day or two.”

  Bill leaned over the table. His expression had turned from grim to intense. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “How did you get the stuff you gave Kaashif?”

  “Nathan Kohler delivered it to our interrogation site outside Baltimore.”

  “Did you drink anything after Kohler got there?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did have a drink of water, now that you mention it. And,” he continued as his tone grew stronger, “Kohler got it for me. But how would he have known what was in the package he was delivering?”

  “Maddux knew about it,” Bill replied. “And Kohler was obviously already working with Maddux at that point. The division leaders all knew about it two weeks ago.”

  “Damn. If Kohler put the TQ in my water, that means Maddux can—”

  “Exactly,” Bill cut in, anticipating where Travers was going.

  Maddux could be tracking Travers even as they were speaking, Troy realized. “Does Maddux have your DNA?” he asked Travers. So it meant Maddux might have followed them up here to Connecticut from North Carolina. “Spit, blood, anything?”

  “Probably. I don’t know. Maybe Kohler got it for him.”

  “You’ve got the TQ trace app on your phone, right?” Bill asked.

  “Yes. It’s like you said. It’s just like a GPS tracking app, except Kaashif can’t turn it off.” His expression turned grave. “Which means, if Kohler really did get the stuff into me, Maddux can track where I’ve been and,” he hesitated, “where I am. Just like I can tell where Kaashif has been.”

  “Maybe that’s why he wanted to take you with him in North Carolina,” Troy said. “Maybe somehow he knew about Kaashif, and of course, he’d want to track the guy himself.”

  “Very possible,” Bill agreed. “All right, let’s wrap this up and get you guys out of here. I don’t want Maddux showing up. What are your next steps?”

  “I check on Kaashif,” Travers answered. “I see where he’s gone and follow up.”

  “I’m going with the major,” Troy said firmly. “And at some point, I’m going to see that girl in the hospital again, the one who survived the attack at the mall in McLean. Jennie Perez. I talked to the doctor while we were on the flight up here. She’s doing better. Maybe she can tell me something.”

  “Don’t waste your time with her,” Bill advised as he donned his reading glasses and scanned the screen of his phone. “She won’t be any help.”

  Troy watched Bill scroll down on the phone. He’d said the same thing about Jennie the other night, that it was a waste of time. “Yeah, well, I think I’m still—”

  “Jesus,” Bill muttered. “People around this country are starting to lose it.”

  “What is it, Mr. Jensen?”

  “It says here that a crowd in Dayton, Ohio, attacked two men who they thought were ‘acting suspiciously’ in front of a strip mall,” he answered, tapping the phone. “They beat one of the men to death, and the other’s in a hospital in critical condition.” Bill glanced up, over his half-lenses. “It turns out they worked at one of the mall’s stores and they were outside just having a smoke. Somebody thought one of the guys had a gun, but he didn’t.”

  Troy looked down at Little Jack. This was the world the boy was entering. He’d never thought much about the danger before. All he’d ever had to worry about was taking care of himself, and he’d always figured he was bulletproof. Now he had to worry about this little guy’s well-being.

  “Here’s another result of the attacks,” Bill said, tapping the small screen again. “The eleven malls that were hit two days ago are reporting a drop in traffic of between sixty and eighty percent. There’s a picture on here of the interior of one of them. We’re six days before Christmas, and the place is empty. It’s killing the economy.”

  “Have any of the death squads hit anything since shooting up that elementary school in Missouri yesterday?” Troy asked as he continued to gaze down at Little Jack.

  “No.”

  Troy felt that fear again as the baby squeezed his finger hard and seemed to grin up at him. “You know it’s going to happen again soon, Dad.”

  “Absolutely,” Bill agreed. “They aren’t going to sit around and wait with Christmas only a few days away. That’s why they did it at this time of year, to have the maximum effect on the season.”

  Troy lifted L.J. up and kissed him gently on the forehead. He and Travers had to get out of here. “You ready, Major?” he asked, standing up.

  “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  Five minutes later he and Travers were headed down the Jensens’ long driveway in a Jeep Cheryl used to get around the large property to deal with her horses and to run errands into town.

  “So check your phone,” Troy said from the driver’s seat.

  “What?”

  “Check the app on your phone to see where Kaashif’s been over the last two days.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The phone’s at my place in the mountains. I always hide it someplace when I go to sleep, in case of exactly what happened the other night.”

  Troy nodded. That made sense. “I guess I know where we’re going first.”

  CHAPTER 23

  KAREN STOOD statue-still in the darkness of the lonely cemetery as she gazed sadly at Jack’s tombstone. How long had she been here like this, motionless beneath the leafless trees that ringed the cemetery’s stone fence—three minutes, five, ten? She had no idea, and she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop thinking about how both men she’d loved had been killed by Shane Maddux—first Charlie and now Jack.

  Tears trickled down both cheeks as Jack’s handsome image drifted through her memory. Those dark, rugged features and that haunting and unmistakable honesty always present in his expression, no matter his emotion, which she’d recognized right away and found so attractive. She muted a sob as she thought about how much she missed that crooked smile of his, too.

  She leaned down to place a single red rose on the ground in front of the stone, and wiped her face as she lifted back up. But the tears kept coming.

  She was thinking about that poor guy she’d shot in North Carolina, too. And the terrible result of the bullet tearing into his chin and neck. How his time left on earth had suddenly gone from being measured in years to seconds. Had it been necessary to kill him? She absolutely believed so in the moment, but having had time to second-guess herself now, wondered if maybe she acted too quickly. Either way, she’d put a man down for good. The finality of the act was still hard to acc
ept.

  She sobbed again, loudly this time.

  “Stop it.”

  She shrieked and spun around. Ten feet away stood the same man who’d held the knife to Troy’s throat in North Carolina. Her heart was suddenly racing a thousand miles an hour, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She’d recognized him instantly even though he wasn’t at all memorable. He was small and plainly unattractive, not someone who would stand out in a crowd.

  “What do you want?” she asked, trying to make her voice strong.

  “First I want you to stop crying,” he answered.

  He wasn’t armed. At least he wasn’t holding a weapon. But she was still terrified as she stared into his cold, dark eyes through the dim light. Death seemed to surround him like a terrible aura. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. Her pistol was in the holster at the small of her back, but, God, what a risk it would be to draw. The man in front of her wasn’t physically imposing at all, but if he could neutralize Troy, he was no one to trifle with.

  “You did the right thing in North Carolina.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The guy you shot would not have killed you, Karen. I wouldn’t have let him. But you didn’t know that. You did the right thing, and I liked that. You had an objective, and you stayed true to it.” He smiled thinly. “Don’t beat yourself up too much for killing him.”

  How could he know what she was thinking? “How do you know my name?”

  “I know all about you.”

  “Who are you?”

  He chuckled softly. “Oh, that’s right, you and I never met. It was rude of me not to introduce myself right away.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Shane Maddux.”

  For several moments the world before Karen blurred to a haze of nothing recognizable. Shane Maddux. Charlie had told her all about him before he’d been “lost” off the Arctic Fire. He’d been a Falcon, Maddux was his superior, and at first, her fiancé had been in awe of the man who he claimed could do anything.

  But over time, the bright shine from the star had faded until it died completely the night Charlie secretly discovered a terrible truth. Maddux was using his privileges and immunity from prosecution as a member of Red Cell Seven to further his own lurid agenda—murdering civilians in the name of justice, vigilante-style. It seemed some of the victims weren’t as guilty as Maddux claimed.

  Not long afterward Charlie had been washed overboard by a storm on the Bering Sea. At least, that was the official explanation. But the tragedy had seemed far too coincidental in its timing. So she’d gone to Alaska with Charlie’s parents to get more information. However, the captain of the Fire, Sage Mitchell, was not forthcoming, and the authorities couldn’t press charges or even continue to investigate because the other men of the crew—all family members—backed up the captain’s story.

  Troy had met the same fate off the Fire. But he’d survived Shane Maddux, thanks to Jack. Still, Maddux had gotten his revenge on the back porch of the Jensens’ home outside Greenwich.

  “Where is Wilson Travers?” Maddux asked.

  The world came back into focus. “Who?”

  “Don’t play games with me,” Maddux warned. His tone took on an icy edge. “Where is Major Travers? The man you and Troy went to rescue in North Carolina.”

  She hadn’t gone to North Carolina to rescue anyone. She had no idea what the mission was. She’d gone simply to back up Troy, at Bill’s direction. She’d asked Bill if she could get involved. She’d needed something to distract from her sadness, and he’d agreed, though tentatively. Troy hadn’t even known she was following him. At least, Bill had promised he wouldn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know a Major Travers. I didn’t go there to rescue anyone. I only went to—”

  “Stop it. I know about your cop background in Baltimore. And I know you and Troy are working together. I know what you’re capable of. I saw what you did to Nathan Kohler.”

  “Yeah, and it’s the same thing I’d like to do to you.”

  “I’m sure.” Maddux sneered. “But believe me, you wouldn’t have time to draw the pistol that’s snug in the holster at the small of your back. You’d be dead before you could pull the trigger.”

  For several moments she stared at him, hating him more and more as each second ticked past. She wanted to kill this man. It was a horrible thing for her to admit, because all of her training had taught her to protect life—which was why she was still having a hard time with shooting the man in North Carolina. But Maddux deserved death. She was certain of that.

  He took a step forward, and she took one back. She wanted to draw, but this was a very dangerous man. Charlie and Troy had made that very clear. As she stared into his eyes, she believed he could kill her as fast as he’d bragged.

  “Tell me what I want to know or I will kill you, Karen. It’s a matter of national security. If you have to be sacrificed, so be it.”

  “Don’t come near me.”

  When he took a second step at her, she turned and fled. As she sprinted through and around the tombstones, she could hear him behind her, breathing hard. She reached the waist-high stone fence, hurdled it in a single leap, and raced into the forest surrounding the cemetery. She couldn’t head back to the parking lot. He had that route cut off. Besides, she wouldn’t have time to get in her car and get away. He was too close.

  She pushed herself to her absolute limit, dodging trees and changing directions on a dime, doing everything possible to escape. She was fast…but he was faster. The inevitable lay only seconds away.

  As Maddux’s footsteps on the leaves edged nearer and nearer and he closed the distance between them, she screamed in terror. She tried reaching behind herself for the gun, but it slowed her down, and he tripped her. His foot caught her ankle, and she tumbled forward, glancing off the base of an oak tree and sprawling to the cold ground. Before she could make it back to her knees, he was straddling her lower back and had her right wrist lifted up her spine to her neck. Pain knifed through her shoulder, and she screamed again.

  “Where is Travers?” he hissed into her ear. “I had him right in my sights, and then he fell off my screen.”

  “Off your screen? What do you mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Now where is he?”

  Maddux wasn’t heavy. In fact, he felt light on her back. She should be able to move him, but she couldn’t. Somehow he had her left wrist locked beneath his left knee, and she could barely twist her body without feeling excruciating pain.

  “Let me go!” she shouted. The pain was almost too much to bear—almost, but not quite. He knew what he was doing. “Please,” she begged pathetically. She’d never felt anything like this.

  “I will gouge out your eyes one by one. You tell me where Travers is, or there goes your vision.”

  “I don’t know.” His lips were touching her ear, then her cheek. It felt almost as if he’d kissed her gently. “I swear to God I don’t know.”

  “Is he still with Troy?”

  “I don’t know!” she yelled, writhing desperately to move away from his mouth despite the pain.

  “I need to save this country, Karen. I need to know where Wilson Travers is!”

  She screamed as loudly as she could. It wasn’t from pain anymore. It was from the prospect of pain. His finger was crawling slowly but inevitably across her face toward her left eye, about to inflict possibly the worst pain she could imagine. He was going to do exactly as he threatened. He was going to gouge it out with his bare hand. She struggled violently, but Maddux was a human vise.

  “Tell me.”

  His fingertip was almost there. “No. God, no, no, no!”

  “At this point you are going to lose at least one eye, Karen,” he hissed as his weapon reached its target. “Don’t make me gouge out both of them so you never see—”

&nbs
p; Suddenly he was gone from her back, and a wave of physical relief surged through her entire body as the pain in her shoulder dissipated. She scrambled to her feet, drew her pistol, and aimed it down at him. Maddux lay on the ground a few feet away, shaking and quivering and slowly but inevitably constricting into a fetal position. He was trying to speak, but the tremors wouldn’t allow it. His words were just garbled mutterings. He’d obviously been tased hard.

  “Hello, Karen.”

  Her eyes darted left, toward the voice, and she whipped the barrel of the gun around and pointed it at the shadowy figure standing only a few feet away. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER 24

  FOR THE first time ever, Jacob Gadanz had spent an entire weekday afternoon away from company headquarters with Elaina and Sophie—he’d even turned off his cell phone while he was with them, which he never did. In fact, he’d needed Elaina to show him how. He’d lost that phone for a few hours one morning last month and never felt more naked in his life. But after turning it off today, he’d completely forgotten about it.

  He didn’t regret being out of touch, either. In fact, he found, after a great deal of trepidation about turning it off, that he loved the freedom. Even more amazing, the company actually survived without him. The only thing he ended up regretting was that he hadn’t started doing this a long time ago.

  The three of them had gone ice-skating at a rink near the townhouse, and it brought tears to his eyes to see how athletic they were, especially Sophie. She was fast and agile and skated rings around Elaina, who wasn’t bad herself but clearly couldn’t keep up with her younger sister. It wasn’t that Sophie was so much more physically capable. In fact, Elaina was slightly more coordinated, Gadanz judged, and definitely stronger. It was Sophie’s daring spirit that enabled her to be so much more entertaining. She was fearless, and it was emotional for him when several people watching from the bleachers clapped out loud and cheered at one of her moves.