The Blacklist--The Dead Ring No. 166

by Jon McGoran

  It was the bald Australian with the burned ear, Titus. He clamped his hand around her throat and slammed her against one of the cabins, then thrust his face out so it was almost touching hers.

  “Who the hell are you?” he hissed.

  His hand was cutting off her air and her vision was starting to dim. She knew she had to act fast. He was holding her up on her tiptoes, so she had no leverage from the ground. She placed one foot against the wall behind her, trying to brace herself so she could kick him hard with the other.

  “I’m Le Chat,” she hissed back, her throat constricted. “Who the hell are you?”

  He laughed. “If you were Le Chat, you’d know who I was. Because I’m the guy who killed her.”

  As soon as he said it, she recognized his eyes. When she’d seen him before, at the Yellow Rose, everything else had been hidden under his wild mane of red hair and his big, bushy beard.

  The burn made sense if he’d gotten caught in the explosion. The shaved head, too.

  She finally got her foot planted against the wall, and she kicked him as hard as she could in the groin.

  He let out a grunt, but didn’t loosen his grip. Instead, with an angry, evil smile, he tightened it.

  Keen’s vision was rapidly fading now. Through the rushing in her ears, she heard a strange sound, like tearing paper, but metallic. Titus loosened his grip, and she sucked in enough air that her vision cleared somewhat.

  As Titus half turned around, she heard a zipping sound and saw a spray of red. Then he let go of her altogether.

  She slid to the ground, coughing, and as her vision continued to clear, she saw Titus from behind, clutching at one bloody eye. He growled and stepped forward, then he stopped, fell to his knees, and tumbled onto the ground as blood spurted out of his throat.

  Borova stepped toward her over Titus’s body. In his hand was half a soda can, torn jagged, folded to a point, and dripping with blood.

  He held it under her throat. “Who are you?” he demanded. “And if you say Le Chat, I’ll kill you, too.” His voice was hoarse, almost cracking.

  Keen scrambled to her feet. She could hear others approaching. “My name is Keen,” she said, massaging her throat. “Marianne LeCroix is dead. I’m sorry. She was fatally injured at the Yellow Rose. She told me your plan before she died. She asked me to help get you out of here.”

  Borova was stunned, his eyes welling up. But Keen got the impression he already knew LeCroix was dead, even if he hadn’t admitted it to himself.

  “We weren’t supposed to be here,” he said. “I just… I didn’t know what to do. I hoped Marianne would show up.”

  Miraculously, considering how much blood was on the ground and on Titus, there was hardly any of it on either of them, just a few streaks and spatters on Borova’s right hand.

  “Right now, we need to hide him and get out of here,” she said. “Put that down.”

  He dropped the jagged can and she kicked it under the cabin. Together they slid Titus’s body as far underneath the cabin as they could.

  The voices were getting closer.

  She gathered her clothes and boots then pulled him by the elbow, down the two rows of cabins, and around the corner.

  “Which cabin are you in?” she said.

  “Seventeen,” he said, dazed. “Was he working for Corbeaux?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the man he had just killed.

  “No,” she said, looking both ways and then pulling him along to the next row of cabins, until they were outside number seventeen. “It was this sick game. But I’m trying to take it down, the people who set it up, and the people who support it. Including Corbeaux.”

  He looked up at that, terrified but energized at the prospect of revenge.

  “I’m not going to survive in here,” he said, his breath fast and shallow, like it was getting away from him. “Marianne was the strong one. We weren’t supposed to still be here. I only came here because I hoped somehow she might show up, too.”

  “Look,” she said, giving his shoulders a firm but gentle shake. “We’re going to shut this down as soon as it starts. You won’t have to survive the game. You just have to survive the first five minutes of it. But I might need your help. So I need you to stay alive, okay?”

  He nodded again.

  “Good. Now get inside and wash off that blood before they find the body.”

  As he stumbled inside, she took off running, and she didn’t stop until she was inside her own cabin.

  Chapter 34

  Navabi opened the door to her motel room at the second knock, looking none the worse for wear. “Welcome back,” Red said with a smile, handing her a cup of coffee. “Quite a whirlwind tour you had there.”

  She smiled ruefully and nodded to Dembe, standing behind him. “Not the most relaxing trip, but high on the productivity scale.”

  “So I gathered. I spoke to Cooper and Aram.”

  “I know. Ressler’s on his way here to pick me up. We’re headed to Dallas to see if we can turn up anything on Stannis.”

  “Good thinking. I was hoping we could talk for a moment, before you left.”

  She stood back from the door. “Of course.”

  Dembe waited outside.

  The motel room was humble but clean—bed, bath, armchair, and a wooden desk and chair. Red turned the desk chair around and sat on it, placing his hat on the desk behind him. “The operation seems to have gone a bit sideways.”

  “Because they’re unable to decrypt the uplink?”

  “Because they sent Lizzie in there at great risk, and now they’re unable to decrypt the uplink.”

  Navabi shrugged and sipped her coffee.

  He told her how the encryption was similar to RIX and ARIX-34, and how they had IDed Simon Wall’s fingerprints.

  She put down her coffee. “His prints were at the control room?”

  “No, at the other site, where the men were drugged.”

  She sat back, processing that.

  “An interesting twist to Simon Wall’s career is that after G78 folded, he is thought to have helped form a group called Hackers Helping Humans.”

  “H3? Really? That doesn’t make sense if he’s involved in this stuff.”

  Red sat forward. “So, I need to clarify a few things, Agent Navabi. There were four men found drugged at this other site, where the police thought there was a robbery or an abduction, correct? And their prints were also found at the control room site?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But where the men were drugged, there was also a fifth set of prints, belonging to Simon Wall?”

  “That’s what you just told me.”

  “And the four men were drugged with remifentanil gas, but there was a syringe found at the scene that contained naloxone, which is an antidote to remifentanil?”

  Her eyes widened ever so slightly. “You think it wasn’t a robbery or an abduction,” she said.

  “I think it was a rescue.”

  As she sat there considering it, Dembe knocked on and then opened the door. He gave Red a nod and held up a cell phone.

  Reddington stood and grabbed his hat. “Good luck in Dallas, Agent Navabi,” he said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  As he slipped out the door, he put the phone to his ear and said, “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end sounded like a bag of wet rocks. “Is Reddington?”

  “Koltov, my friend. How’s the knock-off oxycontin business treating you?”

  “Do not even joke,” he said in a thick Siberian accent. “I heard you are looking for me.”

  “I am, Koltov. I am indeed. There’s only a few people I know who move remifentanil, but I know it’s a specialty of yours. There was an incident exactly a year ago in Turkey. Someone used remifentanil gas to incapacitate a small security crew. I want you to tell me who the seller was, and who the buyer was.”

  “Don’t know remifentanil.”

  Reddington laughed as he got into the back seat of
the car. “Ivan, Ivan, Ivan, there was a minute there when I thought we weren’t going to do this little dance. I do so love to dance. But I prefer to lead, as I think you know. So… this is where I remind you that your boss doesn’t know about the fact that you are not only stealing his stolen oxycontin and substituting it with your own bathtub concoctions, but that you are selling the real stuff to his main competitor. And then I point out to you, if you haven’t figured it out, that while he doesn’t know about it, I do. And then we both laugh at how hilarious it would be if I told him. Remember?”

  Red listened for a moment to the silence on the other end of the phone, then let out a big, not entirely fake, laugh. “Ah, that was fun. But now let’s get back to business. You were about to tell me about the remifentanil.”

  “You want remifentanil?”

  “No, I want to know who has been buying remifentanil, and you are going to tell me, or I’m going to get in touch with Gulavitch and tell him about your hilarious pranks, remember? The ones you didn’t think were that funny and that Gulavitch will think are even less funny.”

  Koltov sighed over the phone. “Customers pay for discretion.”

  “I’m giving you my discretion for free—and offering you your life at a very low price.”

  He let out a sigh. “I sold remifentanil. Buyer was hacker named Kevin Burton. Lives in Los Angeles.”

  Chapter 35

  As soon as she got inside, Keen slammed the door and flattened herself against the wall, taking deep breaths and trying to slow her heart rate, to calm herself down. She was drenched in sweat, her jumpsuit soaked and clinging to her skin. She was dying to get out of it, but she knew at any moment Titus’s body would be discovered. She was waiting for some kind of alarm or commotion. But the seconds ticked by, then the minutes, and there was nothing, just the conversational tones of the other ringers outside—muttering, snickering, complaining about this or that—as they returned to their cabins.

  After five minutes, she started to relax a little bit. Her feet were dirty and sore and she was dying to peel off her jumpsuit and get in the shower. First, she got herself a glass of water from the tap and drank it. Then, looking down as she put her glass on the table, she gasped.

  The transmitter was gone from her toe.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered, crouching down to examine her toe more closely, cursing as she confirmed it was indeed missing.

  It had been there when she finished the Combine. It must have become dislodged when Titus attacked her. When she was kicking him. She cursed him, glad that he was dead.

  She thought about changing, putting on her own clothes and some goddamn shoes, but she knew she couldn’t waste a second. The transmitter was probably out there in the dust, right where she and Titus had fought. Right in front of where she and Borova had stashed his body. At any moment, someone was going to discover him, and then it would be too late.

  She slipped out the door and paused, looking both ways, and then hurried around the corner of the cabin.

  She smelled them before she saw them. Sweat and testosterone, stupidity and menace—all mixed with the almost musky stink of pot smoke.

  Boden and Dudayev, the psychopals who had been making a show of staring at her earlier. Boden was passing the joint to Dudayev.

  She tried not to think about how they had smuggled it in.

  Turning the corner, she practically bumped into them, but she angled around them and kept moving. She was in a hurry.

  Boden stepped out in front of her, blocking her way. “See what I mean, Dudayev?” he said, holding up the joint. “If you wish hard enough, the fates will provide.”

  Dudayev laughed and stepped behind her, blocking her retreat.

  “Get out of my way,” Keen said, with as much bravado as she could muster. She was still more concerned about the transmitter being discovered than about whatever these two had in mind.

  Over Boden’s shoulder, she saw Okoye approaching, the friendly but maybe somewhat unstable Nigerian. Boden turned to look at him, and she tried to take advantage of the distraction to slip away. But Dudayev was fast and he was strong, clamping his forearm around her neck in a flash and holding her tight.

  Dudayev was her main concern, but Boden would be a bigger problem soon enough. While he was still looking at Okoye she used Dudayev to brace herself and put everything she had into her right leg. With Dudayev lifting her backwards, her aim was not what it might have been, but she connected with the top of her foot to something soft, and Boden dropped without ever turning back around.

  Okoye looked on, amused, still approaching. “Let the lady go,” he said.

  Keen struggled to get free, but Dudayev’s arm was like a steel bar.

  “This doesn’t concern you, friend,” Dudayev said. “Just keep walking.”

  Boden rolled over on the ground, groaning and clutching his groin.

  Okoye’s eye twitched violently for a moment, but he shook his head and smiled again. “Come on, man. Save it for the game.”

  “I said keep walking.”

  Okoye’s arm flashed out so quickly Keen barely saw it. For a microsecond she thought he was striking her, but his arm passed over her shoulder and she heard a loud clapping noise behind her head as his hand connected with Dudayev’s ear.

  The Chechen immediately let go of her and howled, stamping his foot as he clamped his hand over his ear.

  Keen stepped away from Dudayev and Boden.

  “Thanks,” she told Okoye as she stepped around him to hurry on her way.

  He put his hand on her arm, leaned in close, and said, “I know you are not Le Chat.”

  Chapter 36

  Before Keen could react, the air erupted with the screaming wail of a siren. A voice came over the loudspeaker, tersely directing all ringers to report to the main square immediately.

  Ringers emerged from just about every cabin, filing down the rows toward the center of the campground, asking each other what they thought was going on. Keen and Okoye looked at each other and went along with them.

  She desperately wondered what he meant—was he saying he knew her real identity was LeCroix, or did he know she wasn’t Le Chat at all? Did he know she was undercover, working for the FBI? Was he threatening her with exposure? He seemed a decent enough guy, and he had come to her assistance, but that didn’t necessarily count for much.

  She wanted desperately to know, but she was almost grateful for the interruption so she didn’t have to ask him, at least not yet. She needed to think.

  As they approached the main square, she refocused her anxiety from Okoye and what he did or didn’t know, to whether they had discovered Titus’s body, and what would be the ramifications from that.

  Enough of the ringers were military trained that they lined up as a matter of course. She got into formation and Okoye stepped up next to her. A few seconds later, Dudayev and Boden arrived, walking gingerly and staring daggers at them both.

  Clearly, she and Okoye had made a couple of enemies.

  Yancy and Corson had emerged from their cabins and strode toward the main square flanked by a pair of PMCs. Corson was visibly furious, his scar even redder than the rest of his face. It was hard to tell with Yancy—he always looked angry. As they approached the front of the square, one of the PMCs came up and spoke to Yancy, then the two of them walked off.

  “There’s been an egregious violation of the rules,” Corson roared. “One of our contestants has been murdered!”

  The crowd had already been buzzing at a low level, and the buzz remained absolutely unchanged, with no variation in tone, timbre, or volume. A few ringers looked around, trying to figure out who had been killed, but for the most part they didn’t seem to really care.

  “When we find out who is responsible, there will be severe repercussions,” he said. Keen looked around and saw no sign of Borova. “You people know why you are here. If you want to kill each other, fine, but save it for the game. Goddamn it, the first round is tomorrow at daybreak, so you s
avages need to hold off on killing each other for twelve goddamn hours.”

  Yancy came back and hurried up to him, whispered in his ear and handed him something. Keen’s heart sank.

  Corson pushed Yancy aside and held up Keen’s lost transmitter. “We found this at the site of the murder,” he said with a sly smile. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but it looks important. Perhaps the rule-breaker is missing something?”

  A moment later, one of the PMCs ran up and said, “Borova is not in his cabin.”

  “Search the grounds,” Corson barked, sending them scrambling. Then he turned to Yancy. “Get the bee.”

  Yancy grinned. It was a terrible thing.

  “Perhaps there have been two infractions, or perhaps we’ve found our violator,” Corson said. “Either way, you will see what happens to those who break my rules.”

  A few minutes later, a trio of PMCs returned. “No sign of him, sir,” one of them reported.

  Corson smiled. Yancy returned, pushing some kind of cart with fat, rugged tires. It had a large black box on the bottom shelf, a smaller box on the middle shelf, and a monitor screen on the top. Yancy quickly pulled the boxes out and put them on the ground.

  He opened the smaller box and removed a tablet computer, which he handed to Corson. Corson handed him Keen’s transmitter, and Yancy put it in his shirt pocket.

  The screen came to life, a flat gray rectangle.

  Corson manipulated the tablet with his thumbs, and the larger box began to hum. The top opened and a quadcopter drone rose out of it, hovering in the air six feet off the ground. It was sleek but almost flimsy except for what looked like a gray brick attached to its underside and a spherical camera mounted next to that.

  A picture appeared on the screen, a shaky image of the assembled ringers. As the drone slowly rotated, the picture panned around until it showed a distressing close-up of Corson’s face.

  Corson moved his thumbs and the drone rose high up into the sky. The camera angled down and the view on the screen showed an aerial view of the campground, rapidly shrinking.