The Blacklist--The Dead Ring No. 166

by Jon McGoran

  Red shook his head. “That’s a mad man’s game, Marianne,” he said. “That’s not for you.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, a tear rolled down her cheek.

  “It was the only way out,” she said. Then, looking at Keen, “And she ruined it.”

  “Ruined what?” Keen asked, stepping closer.

  “Someone is after us,” she said quietly, her eyes closing again.

  “Corbeaux?” Red asked.

  Her eyes opened, a new level of fear in them at the mention of Corbeaux’s name. She nodded, not asking how he knew. “I did a job. I didn’t know it was him. I would never have robbed him if I had known. I tried to make it right, but there is no way with him. His reputation wouldn’t allow it. He wants blood. My blood. And he was never going to stop until he got it. Or someone else did first.

  “His men came after me once. I barely got away. I don’t know how they knew where to find me. You know how careful I am about my identity. And it is a good thing, too. He said he was going to kill me, and when I was dead, once he found out my identity, he would track down my family and kill them too. He said he would torture them.”

  Red showed her the photo he’d taken from the hit man. “They had this.”

  She looked at it and closed her eyes.

  “So you entered the Dead Ring?” he said.

  She looked almost condescendingly at him. “We weren’t going to win. We knew that. We were going to fake my death on the cameras, and then David and I, we…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes went distant. “Wait, where’s David?”

  “Who’s David?” Red asked.

  “Where is he?” she cried out, looking around, frantic.

  “She was asking for him in the car,” Keen said quietly.

  “Who?” Red asked. “Who’s David?”

  Bells and alarms started buzzing and ringing, a scattering of red lights blinked on the bank of machines attached to LeCroix.

  Amid the cacophony, she looked Red in the eye and said, “He’s my husband.”

  Chapter 20

  Prasad had chased them out, but a few minutes later she came back out and said, “She insists she wants to talk to you. But her condition is weakening, so you better make it fast.”

  Red was now holding LeCroix’s hand and she was squeezing his. Keen stood back, letting them have their moment.

  “We left France,” LeCroix said. “We were going to disappear, but he was never going to stop. In his mind, everyone was looking to see what he would do to someone who dared to rob him. They had to see death and suffering. We knew we needed him to see me die before he found me.”

  “Thus the blood packets.”

  “I was about to set them off when I was hit. If we could convince him I was dead, as far as the world was concerned, I would be dead. I was ready for a new life anyway.”

  Keen thought back to how LeCroix had stood under the camera, looking up at it, as if trying to make sure her face was seen.

  “But why the Dead Ring?” Red asked. “Couldn’t you have staged that all somewhere less dangerous?”

  “It had to be somewhere Corbeaux would see us, and we couldn’t risk returning to France. So when we found out the Dead Ring was here in the States, it seemed the perfect solution.”

  “So Corbeaux is a member of the Dead Ring,” Red said.

  “Yes,” LeCroix whispered. “We knew he would be watching, the evil, twisted bastard.”

  A tear rolled down her face and Red brushed it away with a finger. He gave her a moment to collect herself, then softly, he said, “You got married.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “Last year. We were going to walk away anyway, even before this thing with Corbeaux. David, my husband, he’s not like us. He’s a soldier, a good man. He adores me.” She blushed, visible even through the bruising. “You have to find him. Save him. David Borova. We were supposed to be in Mexico by now. I have no way of getting in touch with him. If he can’t find me, he’ll go ahead and enter the Dead Ring. He’ll look for me there, look for clues. But he won’t survive it. And he won’t survive Corbeaux if that monster finds out we were together.”

  Keen stepped up behind Red. “We’re taking the Dead Ring down,” she said.

  LeCroix looked up at her, then at Red for confirmation. “You’re working with the FBI now?”

  He smiled. “There are times when our interests overlap.”

  “With your help we can put an end to the Dead Ring,” Keen continued. “And arrest the monsters betting on it. If you’re right, if Corbeaux is a part of it, we’ll arrest him, too. Help us, and you’ll be helping David.”

  “I have a ticket,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Keen asked.

  She let out a long shallow sigh. Her color seemed to fade, maybe from her injuries, or from her growing awareness of how serious those injuries were. “The first two rounds aren’t technically even part of it. They are qualifying rounds. Too many people want to get in, so they have to kill some of them off. You have to get through them in order to even enter. That was the risk we were willing to take—that we were confident we’d get through. The first preliminary round was on the bridge. We had to get to the van, grab one of those envelopes, and get away before the bridge exploded. Inside each envelope was a key card for a room at the Yellow Rose Hotel, and instructions to go to that room today.” She paused and tried to take a deep breath. It didn’t seem easy. “Inside that room was a key card for another room, and a combination to that room’s safe. Once the alarm went off, you had three minutes to get to the other room, open the safe and take out your invitation. Before the whole thing blew up.”

  “So wait,” Keen said. “You have this invitation?”

  She nodded. “It was in my pants pocket when they cut them off me.” A wry, wistful smile played across her face. “I loved those pants.”

  Keen was about to turn away, but that smile stopped her. She smiled back. Although she’d never been terribly concerned about clothes or fashion, Keen could identify with LeCroix’s concern about her pants. It was such a human moment, such a mundane concern, that she felt a momentary connection with this dying thief she had never met before. In other circumstances, they might have been friends.

  She brushed LeCroix’s hair away from her face, generating another smile, this one raw and desperate, grateful but filled with mortal fear. LeCroix grabbed Keen’s hand, squeezed it hard.

  Red seemed to pick up on the moment that passed between them. He didn’t move, but he stayed quiet and his presence somehow receded, as if he was willing himself out of the way.

  Keen would have stayed there with her, she would have waited with LeCroix until she recovered or died. But the clock was ticking. Lives were at stake and she had a job to do.

  LeCroix seemed to sense it, too. The moment was gone. Her smile went from intimate and vulnerable to polite and reserved. She pulled back her hand and turned away, looking at nothing.

  As Keen went to the closet and rooted through the bag of tattered, bloody clothes, LeCroix started coughing, a deep, wet rumbling cough that seemed too big to be coming from her.

  Red asked, “Who is the Ringleader?”

  “I don’t know,” LeCroix replied, her voice cold and clipped. “I only know there is one. I don’t know any of the people involved. Just David.”

  “How did you get in? How did you know about it?”

  “I actually found out about it while I was researching Corbeaux, trying to find out who this monster was that was trying to kill me. Then I asked around among the most unsavory people I could find. It wasn’t that hard once I knew what I was looking for.”

  Keen found a small brown envelope, a few inches across, in the pocket of LeCroix’s mangled jeans. “Is this it?”

  LeCroix nodded, and held out her hand.

  Keen handed it to her and she tore it open and slid out a piece of thick paper, folded in the middle, adorned in ornate calligraphy.

  LeCroix read it
aloud. “‘Congratulations. You have won entry in The Dead Ring.’ There’s GPS coordinates, then it says seven P.M., and today’s date. Under that it says, ‘Pack light.’”

  She handed it to Red, who handed it to Keen.

  “So how does this work?” Keen asked, staring at the card, considering the implications.

  “What do you mean?” LeCroix asked, her voice straining on the last syllable as she stifled a cough.

  “Are you supposed to just show up?”

  “That’s how it worked before,” she said. “That’s all I know.”

  Red turned to look at her, questioningly, as if he could sense the process taking place in her head. But then LeCroix started coughing again, and Keen turned on her heel and left the room.

  When she got out into the hallway, Cooper and Aram were standing with Ressler.

  “Sir,” she said to Cooper. “I didn’t know you were here.” She and Aram exchanged nods of greeting.

  “We just got here,” Cooper said. He tipped his head toward the door behind her. “What’s the latest? What’s going on in there?”

  “She’s not doing well. But she gave us this.” Holding up the invitation.

  They all stepped closer to look at it.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s our ticket inside the Dead Ring,” she said. “But I think there’s going to have to be a change of plan.”

  “What do you mean?” Ressler asked.

  “One of us is going to infiltrate the Dead Ring. But it’s not going to be you, Ressler. It’s going to be me.”

  Chapter 21

  Keen explained her reasoning: her resemblance to LeCroix, how few people knew what LeCroix looked like, and how whoever was behind the Dead Ring— or watching it—would have reason to expect her to be participating.

  Cooper was silent, seriously considering it. Aram was wide-eyed at the prospect.

  Ressler screwed up his face, dismissing her plan. “That’s ridiculous.” He shook his head. “These are battle-hardened trained killers you’ll be up against. You wouldn’t last ten minutes.”

  Keen bristled, even though she had thought pretty much the same thing when Ressler told her he was going in. “Well, I’ll only have to last five minutes, you said so yourself. And I don’t have to try to win anything, I just have to stay alive until the cavalry comes.”

  Cooper let out a heavy sigh. “That actually makes sense. Okay, let’s revise the plan and see what it looks like.”

  “Sir, you can’t be serious,” Ressler said, but before he could argue further, a bell started ringing in LeCroix’s room, followed by another and then a loud buzzer. Prasad ran past them and into the room, followed two seconds later by a trio of nurses pushing a crash cart packed with medical equipment.

  “Oh no,” Keen whispered, taking a step after them.

  The nurses disappeared into the room, and an instant later, Red backed out of it, watching them work, until the door closed in front of his face.

  Dembe, Cooper, Aram, and Ressler gathered around them, listening to the jumble of beeps and buzzes, urgent voices calling out orders and readings, shouts of “Clear!” followed by the percussive punch of the defibrillator. One by one, the other sounds faded away, replaced by the lone, monotone wail of the heart monitor flatlining.

  Then it stopped, too.

  The door opened and Prasad came out. She stopped short as if she didn’t expect them to be standing there. Like she wasn’t quite ready to say the words she had to.

  She looked at Red, then at Keen. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We did everything we could.”

  Keen thanked her and she slipped away.

  Red nodded.

  He didn’t cry, of course. Keen was pretty sure he was incapable of it. But she knew he felt pain—a lot of pain—and he couldn’t always hide it. His face was a mask most of the time but that didn’t mean the pain wasn’t there.

  Ressler and the others faded back to a respectful distance, giving them the moment they needed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He nodded, acknowledging it. His eyes stared at the closed door as if they were seeing something else entirely.

  “You two were close?” she said.

  “More or less.” His eyebrows shrugged. “More and less, actually. We shared a moment of great meaning and little duration. I was very fond of her.”

  He looked at Keen and tried to smile again, that strange, strained, inappropriate smile that would wrestle across his face when human emotion got the best of him.

  “She gave us some useful information,” he said, looking down. “That invitation is just what you need to get Ressler into the Dead Ring.”

  “He’s not entering it,” she said quietly, knowing he was not going to like the change. “I am.”

  His head whipped around, his eyes piercing. “What are you saying?”

  She explained her reasoning.

  “Lizzie, that’s preposterous. I won’t allow that.”

  “It’s not up to you. This plan makes the most sense. You know it does. The first round starts tomorrow.”

  Red glared at Cooper. “Are you signing off on this plan?” he demanded.

  Cooper had been standing there with his head down and his hands clasped in front of him. Now he widened his stance, his demeanor changing from respectful condolence to resolute, and maybe slightly defensive, authority. “Under the circumstances, I think it’s the best plan we have. Yes. And I know it’s not without risk, but we’ll be taking every precaution to ensure Agent Keen’s safety.”

  Red looked at Ressler, who shook his head ever so slightly, letting him know he did not agree with the decision.

  “We won’t get a better chance than this,” Keen said.

  But Red stormed off, pushing his way through the swinging doors without looking back.

  Chapter 22

  The coordinates on LeCroix’s invitation matched a place called Pinella Hunting Camp. It was an abandoned campground that had been purchased with cash from a sheriff’s sale six months previously. The FBI’s logistics unit had set the task force up with a temporary field office fifteen miles away in an abandoned school, Cavelier Elementary, which had been run by a local minister until the nearest town lost one employer too many and withered away to almost nothing. The school had only been closed a couple years, so it wasn’t in too bad a shape. The main work area was in the lobby—a high-ceilinged room with tile floors and blue cinderblock walls. Cooper was set up in the principal’s office, separated from the lobby by a large window and a wooden door.

  The classrooms extended off in two wings at right angles, forming an “L” shape. The upper school classrooms were set up with cots for sleeping, the lower school classrooms with the weapons locker and other supplies. They also had a couple rooms at a motel not too far away, for showers and such.

  “Mr. Reddington was pretty upset, huh?” Aram said as he spread a thin layer of glue onto the nail of Keen’s big toe. They were in the nurses’ office, down the hallway with the sleeping quarters.

  Aram seemed nervous, even more than usual, and Keen sympathized. It was an awkward situation for her, too, and an oddly intimate moment.

  “He sure seemed to be,” Keen replied, watching him do it. “But he needs to learn that he’s not in charge of everything,” she said. “And he’s certainly not in charge of me.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that, not out loud. She didn’t like to share her thoughts or feelings about Red with the rest of the team. In the two or three years since he had appeared out of the blue insisting on working only with her, she had been determined to maintain the appearance that their relationship was strictly professional, even if she knew, somehow, that it was more than that. Their relationship outside of work had consisted almost entirely of him trying to protect her from danger while at the same time constantly embroiling her in it, and maintaining a level of mystery about their past so relentless that it had become almost mundane.

  Aram cleared his throat, as if h
er words made him even more uncomfortable than having his hands on her bare feet.

  “Okay,” he said, holding up a small, paper-thin device the size of a dime, or a toenail. “This is the tracker and transmitter, or TNT. As you can see, it’s incredibly thin. It needs to be invisible, secure, and backed by something solid to protect it. Affixing it to your toenail is the perfect solution. So, before it’s activated, it operates as a passive, line-of-sight tracking device. We will be constantly pinging it, and whenever we have a line of sight, we’ll be able to track your location. The signal will go through your shoes or clothing or whatever, but it can’t pass through metal. So if you’re in a vehicle or a building, just try to hold it outside once in a while, so we can track you. It’s lightly scored down the middle. To activate the transmitter, just bend it in half along that line until it gives slightly. When activated, it’s a two-way signal booster and transmitter. You just need to locate it within ten feet of one of their wireless cameras and we’re in. The battery only lasts ten minutes after that, but once the video uplink starts—and the two-way signal is sending video out and bringing bets placed by the viewers in— we only need five minutes of transmission to get our code into the video signal, and to receive confirmation that it’s working.”

  The tactical team, or “tac team,” assigned to the operation was based at an air force training facility forty miles away. They’d move to one of several closer locations when things got underway, so they could be onsite wherever Keen was, to shut things down within five minutes as soon as the Trojan horse was in place and the infected computers were all reporting back.

  Aram carefully placed the TNT onto her toe, then sat back and let out a deep sigh. “Just let that dry for a few minutes,” he said. “Then it will be repositionable. So you can stick it back on if need be, or use the adhesive to affix it somewhere else, like on the camera or one of the cables, maybe.”

  “How close to the camera does it need to be in order to work?”

  He shrugged. “The closer the better. But anywhere within ten or twelve feet should work.”

  Keen smiled. “Should be a piece of cake.”