“I already checked,” she said. “They’re gone, James. I’m sorry. I know you and Tayeb were close.”
Hicks felt weak. All signs had pointed to them being dead, but hearing it was different. “How?”
“The media is reporting it as a gang war,” she told him. “But it was one hell of a firefight. Someone attacked Tayeb’s safe house with an awful lot of fire power. My sources in Moscow tell me the street was covered in shell casings, but the only bodies they found were in the safe house. It looks like the Vanguard took their dead with them, because there were no corpses on the street. At some point, someone got desperate enough to launch an RPG through the window. That accounts for the CROATOAN message. Everything went down at once.”
The Trustee kept talking, but Hicks took the phone away from his ear. He and Tayeb had never been especially close. He couldn’t even honestly call the man a friend. But he knew his abilities. He knew he wouldn’t have gone down without putting up a hell of a fight. He knew it would take a hell of a lot of effort to take him down.
After seeing what they had done to his facility and to Tayeb’s people, one thing was certain: the Vanguard was much more than just a bunch of arms dealers. They were capable of more than just waging war by proxy.
They were capable of waging war directly.
And although he hated to admit it, the Vanguard seemed too big for the University to fight on its own.
The Trustee was still talking when Hicks said, “I need to talk to Demerest. Now.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” she asked. “He wants to talk to you, too. I’ll make all the arrangements and get back to you as soon as I have them. In the meantime, get what you can out of that prisoner. Anything he says will help. And make sure your people in Europe are ready.”
“My people are always ready. Let me know when you hear back from Demerest.”
He killed the connection and dumped the phone onto the table. He ran his hands through his shaggy hair as he looked up at the ceiling. His entire world was turning to shit and his best people were all in Europe.
He almost jumped when Scott knocked at the door. “Doc says the patient’s ready for you now.”
Hicks gathered up his phone and headed upstairs. Roger had high praise for this new doctor. He’d even called him a protégé. He hoped he was at least half as good an interrogator as Roger. And he hoped Roger was already long gone from that nightclub in Berlin. He’d already lost too many people today. He couldn’t afford to lose him, too.
BY LUNCHTIME, the media had taken the cover story and ran with it.
BREAKING NEWS: GAS EXPLOSION ROCKS NYC
A powerful gas explosion ripped through the heart of the Chelsea district of Manhattan this morning, causing the collapse of three brownstone buildings on West 23rd Street. Dozens were wounded, some seriously, but there were no fatalities, a fact that some city officials are calling a miracle. Every tenant of all three buildings was either at work or at other appointments throughout the city.
While the investigation is still ongoing, sources say a slow gas leak was the most likely cause of the explosion. They claim natural gas from a cracked line had leaked slowly into a small sub-basement all three brownstones shared. Officials have stated there is absolutely no evidence of terrorism in this instance, something that has helped quell the fears of many New Yorkers in a city already on edge.
Other items caught the media’s interest as well.
MOTHER NATURE SPARKS FEAR
A flock of migrating birds sent air traffic controllers into a frenzy this morning when civilian and military radar systems mistakenly identified an abnormally large flock of geese as an unidentified aircraft entering American airspace. Scientists say the odd migration pattern was most likely caused by changing environmental conditions caused by global warming.
VIOLENCE IN MOSCOW
On the international front, escalating gang violence is being blamed for a bombing in Russia’s capital city today. At least ten people were confirmed killed in a blast at an apartment complex. Moscow police officials say the attack was attributed to rising tensions between local crime factions involved in the city’s growing heroin trade.
Berlin, Germany
ROGER COBB gave his handheld device the finger when another message from Jason came through. “Of course I’m moving, you fucking idiot,” he said to the empty room as he packed his gear. “I’d like to see you move any faster with all the shit I have to pack.”
The phone sounded again and he was about to fire off a nasty message to Jason when he realized it was a different sound. It was the security alarm. He looked at the red screen.
PROXIMITY ALERT: ARMED PERSONNEL NEARBY
He tapped the screen and an image from the club’s external security camera showed five large men in long leather coats at the mouth of the alley on the north side of the club. OMNI’s green crosshairs highlighted the outline of a M4 rifle under one man’s coat. He bet all of them were similarly armed.
He was mildly flattered. A hit squad. And these boys had come to party.
Even before he received the Moscow Protocol alert, Roger knew something was wrong. The ex-cop he’d sent to follow Boris hadn’t called or shown up to get his money. The man lived on vodka and tobacco and was always broke. If he didn’t show up for his payment, something was wrong.
He figured the hit squad in the alley was probably that something.
Roger watched as four of them kept an eye on either end of the alley while a fifth man jammed a crowbar into the side door.
Roger cringed. Zev, the owner of Der Underground, would have to get a new one, as well as repair all the other damage that was undoubtedly about to happen within the club. Roger made a mental note to leave him an extra ten thousand euros to cover the incidentals.
A cold mixture of fear and excitement spread through Roger’s belly. He tucked the nine millimeter Glock into the holster on his hip, then dug into the bottom of his bag and removed the sheath holding the KA-BAR fixed-blade combat knife. It might not have been the most intimidating-looking knife in the world, but it had never let him down.
He checked the camera feed on his handheld as he moved out into the hall and closed the door to his room. The man with the crowbar almost had the door open, and it wouldn’t be long before all five men were inside.
Roger ran down the maze of halls to the discreet door that led to the stairway to the club’s control room, where all the club’s music and strobes and lighting could be activated from a single console. He didn’t have to see his handheld to hear the steel door finally giving way to the crowbar. The squad had breached the club.
Roger looked at the bank of monitors that showed a live feed of every camera in the club. For insurance purposes, Zev made sure they ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, recording on a daily loop. Roger saw all five men had clustered near the coatroom, each of them holding the M4 carbine they’d been concealing beneath their coats. It was a lot of hardware to capture just one man, Roger thought, but Russians weren’t known for their subtlety.
One man with a crew cut was pointing in various directions, telling each man where he wanted them to go. This man was obviously their leader.
Roger decided to kill him first.
Roger watched the squad fan out. They were obviously professionals, moving low and fast through the darkened building.
As soon as each man was alone in a section deep within the club’s maze, Roger shut down the breaker that powered the emergency lights. The windowless building was plunged into complete darkness.
The club’s security camera feed automatically switched to night vision, installed to give security staff the ability to see what was going on in the dark reaches of the club. Roger watched all five men stop in place and drop to a crouch, M4s at their shoulders. They knew they’d been discovered. And none of them had brought night vision goggles to the party.
Roger focused on the monitor showing the team leader, who had just reached one of the several
bars off the club’s main dancefloor. He was the only member of the team talking, probably via a throat mic.
Time to bust a move, boys. Roger flicked a switch.
Techno music began blaring through the club’s speakers. He raised the volume above standard levels, to the point where it was impossible for the intruders to hear anything in their earpieces.
He watched the green images of the men react to the loud music, each of them pushing the ear buds deeper into their ear canals in an attempt to hear their team leader’s orders. Each man was deaf and alone in the pitch-blackness of a maze, against a target they didn’t understand. They weren’t panicking yet, but they weren’t exploring, either. They were holding in place, trying to figure out what to do next.
Roger threw another switch on the console, activating thousands of tiny white strobe lights throughout the club. The pulsating, blinding light combined with the deafening music disoriented the team even further. The camera feed went back to normal mode and he saw the team leader backtracking toward the alley door.
Now that the rest of the squad was blind, deaf, and isolated, Roger decided it was time to start improving the odds.
He slipped out of the control room and down the stairs to the main body of the club. The music thudded as the pulsating lights revealed a microsecond of brilliant clarity before going dark again.
Roger kept his eyes shut to avoid being blinded by the strobes. He knew the place like the back of his hand and moved across the wall, tracking the team leader who had just managed to find the alley door and made it outside.
Roger pulled the combat knife from his belt and burst through the door. The team leader was slumped against the brick wall of the alley, shaking his head to try to get his bearings.
From behind, Roger wrapped his left hand around the much larger man’s head as he slid the knife up into the base of his brain.
The team leader was already dead, but his body didn’t know it. It tensed and twitched as the electrical impulses of his brain slowly died.
Roger shoved him behind one of the dumpsters lining the alley, bringing both hands down on the M4 to keep him from firing it as he twitched.
Roger pried the larger man’s hands away from the weapon and fell with him as he slumped to the ground, the rifle hanging slack from the shoulder harness beneath his coat.
As the leader’s body went slack, Roger withdrew the blade and rolled the dead man onto his belly. He wiped the blade clean on the leader’s pants and tucked the knife back into his belt. He yanked down the man’s leather coat by the collar until it was completely off, then pulled the M4 free from his shoulder. He patted the coat’s pockets and the dying man’s body for extra clips for the rifle. All he found was a nine millimeter Glock in a holster on his right hip. No extra rounds.
Roger checked the coat and saw he’d been wrong. No Kevlar lining. No Kevlar vest, either. Interesting. If the leader wasn’t wearing one, his men probably weren’t either. Why would they? This was supposed to be an easy job. Bag the fag, right? Sink the twink and be on their way. Ten minutes, tops.
Roger allowed himself a smile as he heard the leader gurgle free whatever oxygen was left in his lungs. He playfully tapped the team leader’s face. “Wasn’t quite so easy, was it, love?”
Roger ejected the magazine from the M4, saw it was full, and slapped it back in. He stood flat against the wall and dug his handheld out of his pocket to check the feed from the club’s security cameras.
The team leader would have been proud of his men. They had found each other in the pulsing darkness and were making their way downstairs via an auxiliary stairway. No strobes in the stairway meant they were in pitch black, though the music ensured they were still deaf. The men moved as a unit, using the wall to guide them in the darkness. Their rifles led the way as they moved in a tight cover formation.
Easy targets for Roger’s new M4.
Roger pocketed the handheld as he ducked back inside and ran for the staircase. He crouched in the darkness, eyes closed against the strobes, stopping where he knew the stairway door would be.
He checked his handheld and saw the men had just rounded the turn for the final landing. He poked the M4 around the doorway and raked the group with withering fire at point-blank range, low and tight. The techno music drowned out the gunfire. The muzzle flashed even faster than the strobes, showing Roger the outlines of the men as they fell.
Roger kept firing until the magazine ran dry. He pulled back into the club and checked his handheld again to make sure they were all dead. All four men were down. All of them had been hit in the upper body several times. None of them was moving. Roger watched for another minute in case one of the men was playing possum. They had obviously been trained, so they might be smart enough to lie in wait for a target to present itself. After a good five minutes without even the slightest movement, he decided it was safe to check the scene himself.
Using the flashlight mode of his handheld, he stripped each man of his weapons. They’d all been carrying the same load as their leader: an M4 and a Glock. He tossed all the guns out into the club before checking each man’s throat for signs of a pulse. Only one of them showed even a glimmer of life. A quick plunge of the knife put an end to that. He also took pictures of each man’s face and scanned their fingerprints. All of it would be uploaded to the OMNI system, where it would automatically attempt to identify each of the men. He made a mental note to do that to the team leader, too, before he placed him in the dumpster.
His preliminary work done, he shined his cell phone’s light around the stairwell. There was blood, of course, but his aim had been true. Most of the rounds had found their targets and hadn’t nicked much of the building at all. The stairs and walls were chewed up by the bullets, but not enough for clubgoers to notice. A little bleach, a dab of paint, and it would be passible enough for the club to open that night.
Loading the bodies into the dumpster outside one at a time would take some effort. Doing it discreetly even more so, but it had to be done. He’d use one of the plastic sheets from the S and M chamber upstairs to slide them through the club and into the alley one at a time. That should minimize the blood left in the more public areas of the club.
He couldn’t expect Zev to do that for him.
He’d been such a gracious host. Expecting him to clean up five dead bodies would’ve been rude.
He tossed his empty rifle with the others and sagged against the stairwell wall.
All this work and he still hadn’t finished packing.
The Annex, New York City
THE MEDICAL floor was the only clean room in the entire Annex.
Roger had insisted that the suite, in addition to the Cube interrogation chamber, had all the features of a modern operating room, including a full complement of drugs needed to either dull or magnify pain. A surgeon could either patch up a gunshot wound or perform open-heart surgery should the need arise. Hicks had balked at the cost at first, but eventually gave in. He was glad he did. Roger was nothing if not thorough.
Doctor Fischer stood at the bedside of the man he had just spent several hours working to save, only for Hicks to question and most likely kill. If Fischer felt any irony, he hid it well.
Hicks listened to the cacophony of the various machines monitoring the Russian’s vital signs as the patient’s chest rose and fell in ragged breaths. The entire left side of his face and skull was black and swollen, his left eye completely shut due to the blow from the Ruger. A steady drip from an IV sent medicine directly into a port in his right hand.
“Any tattoos on him?” Hicks asked the doctor.
“Left arm,” Fischer said. “Looks like Spetsnaz. I saw a few when I was in Afghanistan.”
Hicks checked it himself and saw he was right. “What’s his status?”
“Barely alive,” Fischer said. “The XStat kept him from bleeding out, but he had a hell of a lot of internal bleeding in the intestines. I did what I could, but I’ll have to go in again if you want him to
last the night. A good portion of his lower vertebrae is gone, so he’ll never walk again, assuming he lives long enough to try. His left wrist is crushed and several bones in his left arm are fractured. If I don’t tend to them, they’ll become infected. There’s a good chance I’ll have to amputate everything below the elbow in a day or so. The left side of his skull is broken and he’ll probably lose that eye if he lives long enough. I’d bet he has a concussion, too, but…”
Hicks looked at him. “You asking me to feel sorry for him, doc?”
Doctor Fischer’s bland expression held. “No, but the concussion and the anesthesia, combined with the shock he’s going through, will make him less responsive than you expect. There’s also a possibility of a bone fragment hitting his lungs or heart, which would kill him instantly at this point.” He looked down at the broken body of the patient in the bed. “I’ve seen what you do to people who displease you. I’d like to avoid the same fate.”
Hicks couldn’t argue with him there. “Can you wake him up?”
“I can try, but no guarantees on what will happen when I do. He could go into cardiac arrest or die.”
“Do it anyway.”
Fischer took a vial from the medicine cabinet, loaded a syringe, and injected it into the port in the Russian’s hand. The patient’s eyes fluttered open as he gasped awake.
Fischer left the room as Hicks leaned over the bed. In Russian, he asked the man, “Who are you working for?”
The man tried to lift his head and cried out from the effort. “Where am I? What happened?” he gasped in his native tongue.
A Conspiracy of Ravens Page 9