The Blacklist--The Dead Ring No. 166

by Jon McGoran

  “And the losers never say anything about it?”

  “Dead men tell no tales. There are no survivors. Only the winner.”

  She shook her head. “Wait, who would agree to that?”

  “There’s no shortage out there of aging mercenaries, former child soldiers so damaged by what’s been done to them, other pathetic wretches who see this as their last chance to escape their miserable lives—one way or another. All hoping to win a fortune, and all but one of them destined to die instead.”

  Keen felt numb, and she was glad of it, because even through the numbness she felt a wave of revulsion that otherwise would have sickened her. She looked up at Red. “Do we know anything about the organizers?”

  “We know he is referred to as the Ringleader. That’s about it.”

  “And you’re saying the fire on that bridge was part of this?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “So the worst of it is yet to come.”

  “That’s right. And the game takes about a week, so it’s coming soon.”

  “My god.”

  He sat back with a grim but determined smile. “The good news, though, is that if this year’s Dead Ring is taking place in the United States, we have a rare opportunity to take down the people responsible and shut down the Dead Ring for good.”

  Chapter 4

  The task force was silent as always as Keen launched into her briefing. But the quality of the silence deepened as she relayed the specific suspicions about the nature of the Dead Ring, and the extent of the death and suffering that had been caused by it.

  Ressler’s eyes burned as he absorbed the horrible cruelty and injustice of it. Aram looked down as he listened. Navabi sat impassively, her face blank, as if the horrors she had already seen made these that much more believable and had prepared her in a way. As if maybe she knew that the only way to get by in a world where such things were possible was to not let it get to you at all.

  “And why are they moving it to the US?” Cooper asked when she was finished.

  “The location of the game is different each time,” Keen replied. “The game’s wealthiest bettors bid millions of dollars for the privilege of hosting it, for bragging rights, contacts, maybe. To prove they can do it.” She paused for a moment. “And I guess for the sick pleasure of watching it up close and in person.”

  “But, we have no proof any of this is true, Agent Keen. Isn’t that right?” Cooper asked.

  She cleared her throat. “That’s right, sir. I expect the first item on our task list would be to confirm that it is.”

  Aram started quietly typing on his laptop.

  “Do we have anything on the bridge tragedy?” Cooper asked.

  “Not much. There were a few cars that drove across the bridge moments before it happened. They reported typical rush hour traffic, and a vehicle broke down. Then a fireball in their rearview mirrors.”

  “How about any of the previous tragedy sites? Turkey? Indonesia? South Africa?”

  “I’m looking into it. There might be some clues at the Turkish locations but the others are all cold. Mostly bulldozed or rebuilt, or at the bottom of the ocean. I’m also looking into similar clusters of events in previous years. Reddington mentioned those three, but he suspected this had been going on for at least five years, maybe more.”

  “I have a friend in Turkish intelligence. Ahmet Aslan,” said Navabi. “He owes me a favor.”

  “Hey, I’ve got something here,” Aram cut in, looking up from his computer. “Someone posted a video.”

  He tapped at a couple of keys and the screen at the front of the room came to life.

  The screen showed a rectangular view looking along a bridge from inside a car. Outside, car horns were blaring. The driver turned the camera around to show her face: she was an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties with a mischievous smile and a blonde ponytail. She rolled her eyes and said, “Traffic. Can you believe it?”

  The tinny pop of a small-caliber gun went off somewhere outside the car, “What the…?” Then she gasped as a big guy in camo and a buzz cut ran past the car.

  Laughing awkwardly she turned the camera out the back window. The road was jammed with cars, and between them, people ran, around the cars, between the cars. One woman ran over the closest car, black hair flowing behind her. “This is crazy,” the driver said, tentatively, not quite sure how to react. She let the camera slowly drop.

  Distorted sounds overwhelmed the microphone as there were simultaneous explosions followed by a scream.

  And the recording stopped.

  “This went out as a live feed over social media,” Aram said quietly. “The girl’s name was Anna Deritter. She died in the fire.”

  The room went quiet for a brief moment. Keen knew the others were experiencing the same thing she was, that puncturing of your hardened professional shell when the terrible but impersonal tragedy of many deaths becomes the personal tragedy of one face.

  She cleared her throat. “If Reddington is right, if the Dead Ring is real and it’s taking place on American soil, that means American lives are at stake, and many have already been lost. It also means we have a unique opportunity to not only identify the Ringleader and put a stop to this terrible game, but maybe even to identify and arrest the people betting on it—many of whom are surely wanted for other crimes as well.”

  Cooper thought for a moment then nodded. “Okay, let’s get started then. Agents Keen and Ressler, I want you to visit the bridge scene, see if you can confirm that this is more than just an accident. Agent Navabi, reach out to your connections in Turkish intelligence and see if you can find out anything about the events there last year, especially the warehouse fire. Aram, I want you to analyze that video, frame by frame. See if it reveals any other clues. Anything else, Agent Keen?”

  “The Dead Ring seems to last about a week from start to finish. If that’s what this is, whatever’s next is coming soon.”

  “Then we better act quickly.”

  Chapter 5

  Traveling the globe had its definite upsides, even as a wanted fugitive. Lahela’s curried giant snakehead might’ve been the best this side of the Mekong River, but it couldn’t compare to the snakehead Red had eaten on the Mekong Delta itself. He thought back to the delicacy, and the delicate young woman who had served it to him, and he smiled.

  But there were upsides to being stateside again. And not the least of them was Maryland crab, dusted with a ridiculous amount of Bay Seasoning and steamed to perfection. There was something exquisite about the hot crabs burning your fingertips and the sting of the spices finding the dozens of cuts left by the razor-sharp shell, and then the incredible morsels of delicate white meat pulled from the carnage. And there was nowhere better to experience all that than Fred’s Shed.

  The place made no pretense at being anything other than what it was, but it achieved what it set out to do with glorious indifference to anything else. The walls were unfinished wood, the floors peeling linoleum, the décor nonexistent except for a few decades-old beer signs.

  But when Dominic Corrello walked in, he still somehow managed to cheapen the whole thing. He looked around at the place and sneered, with the reflexive disdain of the small-minded out of their comfort zone.

  It was hard to believe that Corrello was among the most well-connected purveyors of sensitive information. If Red hadn’t personally done business with him on four different continents, he’d have pegged him as the type to spend his entire life within five miles of the neighborhood where he had grown up.

  Corrello exchanged nods with Dembe, and dropped into a seat across from them. Red slid one of his crabs across the paper covering the table, followed by a mallet and a nutcracker.

  Corrello shook his head. “Can’t believe you eat them bugs.”

  Red slid his butter knife into the crab’s body and removed a pristine white lump. He managed to keep his hands so clean throughout the process, he had to dredge the meat in seasoning before putting it in
to his mouth. He savored the flavor for one moment before sliding the carcass off to the side, away from Dembe.

  “Crustacea, Corrello. But I’ve eaten bugs, too, on many occasions. Chapulines are my favorite. Roasted crickets with chili and lime. Some say it tastes like bacon, but I think that doesn’t do it justice. You should try them. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Disgusting is what it is.”

  Red squeezed a wedge of lemon into his hand, updating the mental map of cuts in his skin as he rubbed his hands together and wiped them off with a paper towel. “What have you got for me?”

  Corrello put a thumb drive onto the corner of the table, away from the detritus of Red’s lunch.

  “Not much. Not even sure what it is. No one I talked to knows if this Dead Ring thing is for real. But I gotcha something, a piece of video that a guy told me was part of it—a warehouse fire in Turkey.”

  Red cocked an eyebrow and a smile flickered across his lips.

  Corrello leaned forward. “It’s crazy stuff on that video. And the guy I got it from, he said the guy who recorded it got himself killed for doing it. Ain’t nobody supposed to record this stuff, and the people who set it up, they found out and killed him. The guy I got it from, he was seriously scared when he gave it to me.”

  Red reached out and palmed the thumb drive. “What about you, Corrello. Are you scared, too?”

  Corrello grinned. “Not as long as you keep paying me for the stuff I turn up.”

  “Well then, as long as you keep turning things up for me, you’ve got nothing to fear at all.”

  * * *

  Red paused outside Fred’s Shed, enjoying the sunlight for a moment before he and Dembe got in the car.

  “You really must give them a try, Dembe,” Red said as he sank into his seat. “Some of the best eating around.”

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, Dembe looked at the dilapidated exterior of the restaurant, then at Red in the rearview. They’d had hundreds of similar exchanges over the years, about similar venues and similar cuisines. He nodded noncommittally.

  Red shook his head. The phone buzzed and Dembe answered it, then handed it to Red, who looked at the display and said, “Hello, Lizzie.”

  “We’re on the case,” she said.

  “Good,” Red replied as the car pulled back into traffic. “Have you turned up anything?”

  “Maybe. Aram found a video from the bridge. One of the victims posted it live, just before the fire.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You’ll have to come here to look at it though. Until we have an idea how sensitive all this is, he wants to keep it inside.”

  “Very prudent. I won’t be coming empty handed.”

  Chapter 6

  They were standing in a darkened room in the converted post office that served as the headquarters of the task force, waiting as Aram tapped at his computer.

  The screen at the front of the room came to life, showing a large warehouse building, three stories tall, with crude concrete walls, a corrugated metal roof, and the words TÜZEL ANTREPO emblazoned across the front. A dusty road ran alongside it. The darkened windows flickered and for several seconds the muffled sounds of screams and gunfire could be heard from within.

  A cluster of women appeared at one of the third-floor windows, panicking and trying to open the window, to escape. A line of machine gun fire mowed them down from behind, the bullets tearing through them, shattering the glass and spattering it with blood. A large man in battle gear appeared where the women had stood, but then he was cut down as well.

  A moment later, an explosion punched a hole in the second-floor wall, sending chunks of debris tumbling toward the camera. The screams and gunfire grew louder, coming through the opening in the wall. A man appeared, running toward the opening, a dark silhouette against the flames inside. Just as he was about to jump through the hole, a tight grouping of bullets tore through his midsection and he stumbled and fell, landing with his arms and torso hanging through the opening.

  One by one, the windows were shot out from within, and with each broken window the cacophony grew louder. Smoke poured from each broken window, rising up into the dark sky. Women started climbing from the third-floor window to escape the flames within. The first one climbed down to the second-floor windows, but the next two simply dropped, crumpling onto the street below.

  As the first woman reached the street and started to run away, the front door exploded open and she faltered in a hail of shrapnel.

  Another man emerged from the hole where the door had been, wearing camo and boots, and blood. His left leg was in shreds and he dragged it behind him, down the front path, directly toward the camera. Halfway there, he stumbled and fell, but he kept pulling himself across the ground. Another man, similarly dressed, appeared behind him, eyes gleaming through a face streaked with gore, but apparently unharmed. He strode toward the camera and without pause lifted the injured man’s head and slit his throat. As the man on the ground gurgled and sputtered, his killer walked past the camera and out of sight.

  As the gunfire inside the building slowed to a trickle, several figures appeared at the windows, watching whatever was happening behind the camera.

  For a moment, nothing happened, then a dozen tiny staccato detonations reverberated through the building and it was instantly engulfed in flames. The black silhouette of a man appeared in one of the windows, then the fire swallowed him up.

  The screen went dark. Aram hit a button bringing up the lights.

  For a moment no one made a sound.

  “So that’s what we’re trying to stop,” Keen said quietly. “Red emphasized that if this is the Dead Ring, the next round will be within a day or two.”

  Cooper nodded. “Agent Navabi, anything from your friends in Turkey?”

  “My contact put me in touch with an Agent Sadek with police intelligence. I spoke with him briefly and he confirmed that he thought what happened at Tüzel Antrepo was a part of this Dead Ring. He sounded willing to cooperate, even to share, but uncomfortable speaking on the phone. My sense was that he didn’t trust that no one else was listening in, and perhaps someone high up may have been involved somehow.”

  Cooper grunted. “Okay. We need to get moving on this. Keen and Ressler, when are you leaving for Texas to examine the bridge scene?”

  “Our plane’s in ninety minutes,” Keen said.

  “Good. Aram, can you analyze that video for any clues at all, any identifying tags or embedded codes, anything?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He turned to Navabi. “I’d like you to go to Turkey, talk to this Sadek, see what he knows, and what he suspects. See if you can visit the scenes of these events and find out whatever you can.”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  As they began to leave, Keen approached Cooper. “A word, sir?”

  “What is it, Keen?”

  “Reddington has asked to see the video from that bridge.”

  Cooper thought for a brief moment, then nodded. “Okay. You can show him in here. Aram, you can set that up, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Good,” Cooper replied. “Let’s get moving, people.”

  Chapter 7

  Keen had seen the footage before, and it paled compared to the carnage of the Turkish warehouse. But Anna Deritter, the young woman in the video, was so vibrant and full of life, it brought home the tragedy of her death, and all the others, once again.

  Red watched impassively.

  “I’ve been through both videos several times,” said Aram. “I’ve already picked up a few interesting things I want to show you.”

  The video started once more, just like before. Red watched from where he was at first, a black figure silhouetted by the light streaming in from the hallway. He showed no reaction at first, but as the view shifted to look out the back windshield he stepped forward closer to the screen.
>
  A few seconds in, Aram paused the video. “Here,” he said, getting up from his computer to point at a fuzzy black shape mounted on the bridge’s guardrail. “I’m pretty sure this is a video camera. They seem to be mounted at regular intervals along the bridge. And when I analyzed the Turkish video, I pulled out some very unusual codecs. It seemed to be part of a multichannel feed, not your standard YouTube fare. If I can reverse the—”

  “Fascinating,” Red said impatiently, taking another step closer to the screen. “Continue the video, please.”

  Aram looked at Keen, taken aback, like maybe he expected a little more in the way of praise.

  Keen gave him an encouraging smile and nodded.

  Aram returned to his computer and resumed play. He leaned forward and squinted at the screen, as if trying to see whatever Red was looking for.

  The camera shifted out the rear window again, at the runners coming up behind the car, at the woman with the black hair coming over the next car back.

  “Freeze it,” Red barked, startling Aram but spurring him to action.

  The woman’s face was mostly covered by her long black hair.

  “Advance one frame,” Red said.

  Aram did.

  “Again.”

  He did.

  They advanced three more frames until the face on the screen was perfectly visible and angled right at the camera.

  Red stepped even closer, his face two feet from the screen. He raised his hand as if to touch it, then he turned on his heel and left the room.

  “Red!” Keen called out, following him. “What did you see?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know.”