The Blacklist--The Dead Ring No. 166

by Jon McGoran

  The PMCs now outnumbered the ringers. Keen wondered how many of them it took to make up for the loss of Yancy. Corson cleared his throat and moved so that he was squarely facing the nine remaining ringers. He seemed somehow discombobulated without Yancy, and Keen felt a slight, strange pang of guilt.

  “It is not uncommon for ringers to get agitated before the final round,” Corson began. Another PMC came up from the direction of the main cabin carrying a box. He began handing out futuristic-looking white bracelets in sealed plastic bags as Corson spoke.

  “You have accomplished quite something by making it this far. And the end is in sight. But still the odds are very much against you. All but one of you will die before the next round is over.”

  When everyone had a bracelet, Corson ordered, “Put them on.” The PMCs again provided emphasis, raising their rifles as he resumed his speech.

  “That can be a stark realization. Because of that we must tighten the rules. Any infractions will be met with the harshest of consequences.”

  The ringers tore open the plastic and took out their bracelets. They looked like smart watches, except the displays were blank. Keen put hers on her wrist, fastening it loosely until one of the PMCs walked up to her and placed the barrel of his rifle under her chin.

  “Tighter,” he said.

  He held the rifle there as she tightened the bracelet.

  When he decided it looked tight enough, he walked up and down the rows, checking the others’ bracelets as well. Okoye seemed to be having trouble putting his on, but he managed to do so without any assistance.

  “You are already facing death, so the consequences for violations must be much worse. Doubtless there are large bets on all of you at this point and we must protect those wagers.” He smiled. “Trust me when I tell you, consequences will not be pleasant.”

  When the PMC was satisfied with everyone’s bracelets, he gave Corson a sharp nod.

  Corson nodded back at him and continued. “The bracelets you are now wearing contain a powerful high explosive. They have a minimum destructive range of five feet, which means that if you are under ten feet tall, your heart and brain will instantly be shredded upon detonation. Any attempt to remove your bracelet will trigger the explosive. Any attempt to flee this facility will trigger the explosive. Any attempt to break any rules or aggravate me in any way will trigger the explosive.”

  He stared at them for a moment, scanning their faces, one by one, as if trying one more time to determine who killed Yancy.

  Finally he shook his head and said, “Go.”

  Keen slowly walked away, waiting for Okoye. They let the others move on without them.

  “Are you okay?” Keen whispered to him as they walked.

  “I thought you were going to bring this thing down?” he asked. “You are running out of time.”

  “I had a setback.”

  “Yes, you lost your transmitter thing. I hope you got it back when you killed Yancy.”

  She looked at him, trying to read his face.

  “You did the world a favor,” he said. “I just hope it doesn’t complicate your plans.”

  Keen remained quiet.

  As they approached the cabins, he continued. “You noticed the camper? The RV or whatever that has been following us?”

  She nodded.

  “That is where whoever is in charge is monitoring everything. That’s where they connect to the satellite.”

  “I figured.”

  He paused for a moment as his eye went into spasm.

  “I am not well at all,” he said. “Even if it was possible that I could win this, I fear I will be gone in a matter of days.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “But remember, you don’t have to win. You just have to survive. After we take this thing down, I’ll make sure you get the best medical care available.”

  He smiled. “It is too late for that, if ever there was time. But don’t worry, I won’t be missing much.” His smile went away. “I will help you however I can and maybe I can leave the world a better place, a place my nephews will miss more when they leave it than I will.”

  They said goodbye and she entered her cabin, saddened that no matter what she did, Jakob Okoye was still going to die.

  Keen drank several bottles of water and ate a foil envelope of tofu doing a decent imitation of teriyaki chicken.

  She slid the TNT out of her pocket and spent an hour studying it with her fingers, getting to know its contours, its lines, but all the while keeping it hidden in her hands in case her room was being monitored. When she was done, she put it in her bra. She figured it would be hidden, protected, and much more easily accessible than on her toe. Frankly, she wondered why they hadn’t put it there in the first place. She smiled at the thought that it was probably because Aram was so shy. He’d had a difficult enough time with her feet.

  The stress of the past few days seemed to suddenly catch up with her, along with the aches and pains, the bruises and scrapes. It was compounded by the boredom of being stuck in the cabin. She lay gingerly back on her bed. As her eyes drifted closed, she thought she mustn’t let herself sleep long. Otherwise, she’d be up all night.

  She drifted off to sleep considering the very real possibility that she wasn’t going to make it out. It bothered her that fake teriyaki chicken in a pouch could end up being her last meal. As her eyes closed, she thought how disappointed Red would be.

  Chapter 73

  It was seven-fifteen when the loudspeaker started blaring reveille. Keen shot upright on her bed, confused. Something wasn’t quite right. Horizontal sunlight angled in through the window. She still felt exhausted, but apparently, somehow she had slept straight through till sunrise.

  Then she realized it wasn’t sunrise, it was sunset.

  She splashed water on her face, checked that the transmitter was in place, then hurried outside.

  Okoye was walking unsteadily by as she stepped out.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.

  “No idea.”

  No one else was immediately visible, and for a second, she wondered if they had both somehow misinterpreted the reveille. But then she realized that most of the cabins around them were empty. Most of the others were already dead.

  Okoye stumbled, but she caught his arm and stopped him falling over. She put her arm through his and helped him the rest of the way. He seemed steadier by the time they approached the main square, and reluctant to be seen being helped by a rival competitor. He pulled his arm away from hers as the other ringers came into sight, filling up from the rows of cabins on either side of them.

  Corson was waiting for them, along with eight PMCs.

  Night was rapidly falling, and as they ascended the slope to the square, Keen looked back toward the gate and saw the RV there, with its lights on. Somehow it looked even more sinister at night.

  As she watched, an SUV pulled up beside it. She couldn’t tell if it was the same one as before.

  “Line up,” Corson barked as they approached.

  They did so, three by three, just like before. The entire group seemed subdued, even Boden and Dudayev, as if they were all reassessing things from this new vantage point so much closer to victory or death.

  Corson walked up to Okoye. “You don’t look well, Jakob. I doubt there is much in the way of wagers on you, but this event is supposed to be entertaining. You’d better not just keel over and die. Our viewers are expecting much more of a spectacle from your death.”

  He turned to Keen. “Le Chat,” he said, in a way that made her wonder if maybe he suspected her true identity, or at least doubted her fake one. “If I was allowed to bet, I would have lost some money on you already. But I’d still be betting against you on this round.”

  The gate opened and the bus pulled in, its headlights bright in the growing darkness.

  Corson stood by the door. Two PMCs got on first, then the ringers filed on board, followed by another two PMCs, guns raised, not taking any chances. Ev
eryone was silent.

  Okoye stumbled on the steps and Corson snorted and shook his head.

  “This should be fun,” he muttered.

  Corson took his place at the front of the bus as it pulled out of the campground. As they turned to head east, away from the dusk and into the night, he said, “Better get comfortable. It’s going to be a long ride.”

  Chapter 74

  The field office was quiet and tense. Part of it, Aram knew, was the adrenaline hangover from almost executing the plan and then holding back at the last moment. Leaving Agent Keen inside the Dead Ring for one more day didn’t help, even if it was at her own request. That didn’t sit well with anyone— especially not after Wall finished decoding the video.

  Again they only had one channel to watch, and again, much of it was wide shots, taken from relatively far away. But there was plenty of violence, and every now and then they could see Agent Keen in the middle of it, usually trying to avoid it, but sometimes committing it.

  There was also an awkwardness in the air, from being outnumbered by strangers in the field office. Navabi and Ressler were now embedded with the tac team to shed a few seconds off their response time. So Cooper and Aram were the only members of the task force on site. Percival, Thomas, and Beckoff pretty much stuck to themselves, but they still gave Aram the creeps. And Wall seemed like a decent enough guy, but he was odd, he was a stranger, and he seemed to have a lot of secrets.

  Mostly, though, it was the grinding anticipation of the next morning—the final round of the Dead Ring, the last chance to bring it down, arrest those responsible, and get Agent Keen to safety.

  Wall had been refining his decryption techniques, studying the things he had done to exploit the back door and figuring out ways to do it faster.

  Aram had watched the videos from the previous two rounds over and over. There was nothing more to be gained from watching them. There was nothing to do but wait.

  It was seven P.M. and the sun had just dropped below the horizon. It was too early to sleep, but Aram’s brain ached from the intensity of the previous few days. He was pondering how he was going to spend the rest of the evening.

  Then he noticed the tracker dot slowly creeping across the screen. He zoomed in and confirmed it was moving from the cabin area to the main square. In the waning light, he zoomed in the video from the CIRRUS and confirmed as best he could that it was Keen, and that the two dots corresponded. She had the TNT on her.

  “Sir,” he called out. “We have movement.”

  In seconds Cooper was looking over his shoulder.

  They watched as Keen lined up with the others in a tidy three-by-three square formation, bringing home the fact that there were only nine of them left. The bus—just one this time—drove through the gates and the contestants filed on board.

  Cooper got out his phone and as soon as the bus turned and exited the campground, he called Nichols and put the tac team on standby.

  Aram texted Reddington to let him know Agent Keen was on the move.

  Percival and the others came in from the other room and Percival started making calls, as well.

  Wall seemed to be watching Percival from the corner of his eye, tapping his fingers nervously on the table. He seemed especially keyed up. He wasn’t just waiting for the satellite feed to start, so he could get to work decrypting it. He was waiting for Keen to activate the transmitter, so he could insert the two programs into the video feed.

  They watched as the bus moved across the darkened prairie, followed a quarter of a mile back by the RV and, behind that, an SUV. The caravan stuck to the back roads, moving steadily across the darkened landscape, three sets of headlights in a sea of black.

  Twenty minutes later, the distant thump of helicopter rotors approached.

  “That’s our ride,” Percival announced. “Agent Beckoff will stay here to monitor the results of our package. Agent Thomas and I will be tagging along behind your team.”

  Cooper bristled. “If you interfere in any way—”

  Percival smiled and put up his hands. “Don’t worry. I’ll have my people call your people and we’ll set everything up.”

  It sounded like they were scheduling a lunch date.

  Then they were gone. Wall seemed relieved. Aram was too. He didn’t trust them. But in the wake of their departure, as the convoy continued across the plains, the energy in the room dissipated.

  After an hour, Cooper called Nichols and had the tac team determine another launch site that would keep them within five minutes of the bus’s new location. They relocated to a high school football stadium parking lot.

  Aram texted Reddington an update.

  After two hours, the tac team had relocated twice more, hopscotching across the West Texas plains to stay within a five-minute range of the bus.

  Aram kept a running list of possible destinations, using a map overlay and satellite images. But it was a useless task when possible destinations could include a bridge or an abandoned building. As quickly as the possibilities were identified, they were discarded because they had already been passed by.

  Finally, three hours after leaving the campground, the bus turned onto a dirt road. The RV and the SUV followed, then followed again when the bus left the road altogether a mile later.

  “Sir, we might have something here,” Aram said, texting Red the same.

  Once again, Cooper had anticipated the moment and was standing right behind him. Wall returned from the personal quarters, yawning, and took his seat.

  He had just turned back to look at the screen when it went completely black.

  “Have we lost the CIRRUS camera?” Cooper asked.

  “No,” Aram replied. “They’ve turned off their lights.”

  Cooper said, “What’s our list of possible destinations?”

  Aram was already working on it, checking his list and simultaneously panning the CIRRUS camera across the horizon. Slowly, from left to right, a mass of lights lit up the night sky. At first he couldn’t figure out what it was. It looked like a city, but there was no city out there.

  As he zoomed in, he realized what he was looking at, and he whispered, “Oh, no.”

  Chapter 75

  For three hours they’d been driving through the dark and desolate West Texas landscape. They passed a handful of small towns, but for most of the drive the only lights were the bus’s headlights, stabbing into the darkness in front of them, and, on the occasional sharp bend, the headlights of the RV and the SUV a quarter of a mile behind them.

  Then both sets of lights went out.

  For a moment, all Keen could see was the faint lights of the bus’s dashboard.

  Then she noticed a glow on the horizon.

  The driver put on a set of night vision goggles and a pair of tail lights swerved around them as the SUV passed them. A moment later, the bus surged forward. Over the next five minutes the glow on the horizon turned into lights that grew bigger and brighter as they approached.

  Keen felt a cold sweat as she realized it was some sort of petroleum or chemical installation.

  It was huge.

  Her mind raced trying to think about how this round could possibly go down. There must be dozens, if not hundreds, of people working at a facility like that. And even out in the middle of nowhere, there were small towns scattered around.

  The fallout from any kind of large-scale incident at a plant like that could be devastating.

  Corson stood in the darkness as the bus slowly rumbled forward.

  “Behind me is the Wolfcamp Petrochemical Plant,” he said. “Part refinery, part processing plant, part chemical manufacturing facility. This is where you will be playing the final round of the Dead Ring. Any attempt to flee this facility will trigger the explosives in your bracelet, which, in case you have forgotten, will kill you instantly. There is a thirty-meter buffer around the outer gate. Do not exceed it. In the control room of the plant’s primary operations center, there is a glass box on the wall with a red key for the pla
nt’s master shutoff. This is also the key for a metal box that has been placed just outside the main gate. Inside that metal box is a briefcase containing five million dollars in cash.”

  Boden and Dudayev high-fived each other, apparently undisturbed by the notion that at least one of them, and probably both, would be dead by the time that money was claimed.

  “The object of the game is to retrieve the key and open the box. Once the box is open, you can safely remove the money, making you the winner. Any attempt to damage the box or open it without the key will detonate four pounds of C4 located inside it, obliterating the prize money and whoever was foolish enough to try to steal it. Upon completion of the task, the detonator in the winner’s bracelet will be deactivated. The remaining bracelets will all be detonated, as will eight pounds of C4 wired to the main intake of the plant’s primary chemical reactor. So, if it ends up that you are the winner, you might want to get as far away from here as you can, as quickly as you can.” A smile appeared in the darkness. “The stakes are high, but you knew that when you signed up. So,” he clapped his hands together. “Good luck to all of you. My sympathies to most of you. And congratulations to one of you.”

  Chapter 76

  As Aram told Cooper where he thought the convoy was headed, he realized that as horrible as the first two rounds had been, they’d been tame compared to some of the previous Dead Rings. It looked like they were going to make up for that now.

  Cooper called Nichols. “You need to get in the air, now. The buses seem to be headed for Wolfcamp Petrochemical Plant. If whatever they have in mind in there is anything like what they’ve done in the past, the results could be devastating.”

  On the screen, the CIRRUS showed the RV pull off the road, onto a trail that ascended a small bluff, overlooking the plant from half a mile away. The bus and the SUV remained on the road, headed straight toward the front gates, but the SUV pulled around the bus and sped ahead of it, stopping thirty yards outside the gate. Two men got out, ran around to the back, and pulled out a large metal box.