Don’t stop moving. Keep firing.
Her pulse thundered in her ears. A drone cried out and went down, but she couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.
No time to check, keep moving.
Her pistol clicked. Empty. She threw it aside and dove toward Reddington. Two drones took careful aim at her. Reddington fired one more time, and his own pistol clicked. Keen’s adrenaline-hyped senses watched their pistol barrels track her as she flew through the air toward the cover of his table. Her muscles tensed in anticipation of the coming bullets.
Four shots.
Keen flinched, expecting the painful tear of muscle and the hot spurts of blood. None came. She landed hard near Reddington and scrambled to her feet.
Four more shots rang through the cave.
“Are you all right, Lizzie?” he asked.
“What happened?” she snapped.
They both peered over the table. The drones were all lying on the floor. Behind them, in the main entryway, stood Stuart with his smoking pistol. Beside him were Dembe and Ressler, also armed. All three were out of breath.
“I got them here!” Stuart said. “I couldn’t leave you behind, Red.”
“The sarin!” Keen said.
0:10.86.
Reddington lunged for the computer. “The drone that will release the gas is somewhere in this cave,” he said tightly. Keys clacked. “I think I can send it out of here.”
0:06.79.
There was a buzzing in the cave, and a helicopter drone rose from the shadows in a corner. Beneath it, as if hanging from a set of claws, hung the deadly little canister of sarin gas. Keen cast about for a mask. The closest ones were on the dead drones, too far away to do any good in the next few seconds.
Reddington tapped keys. The drone zipped toward the main exit, brushed the side of the cave mouth, righted itself, and flew outside.
0:03.24.
“I’m sending it straight up,” Reddington said. “That should be high enough so the gas won’t—”
The computer screen flashed red.
0:00.00.
Everyone in the room froze. Keen could hear her own heart beat. With her mouth dry, she waited for the scent of chemicals, some tell-tale sign of terror. Nothing.
“We did it!” Ressler said.
“Not quite,” Reddington reported from the terminal. “There are still another three dozen drones heading toward Roebuck.”
Keen peered over his shoulder. The red dots were indeed converging on Roebuck like piranha on a bloody cow. “Can you catch them?”
“I believe so,” Reddington said. “Aram was an excellent teacher.” He took a piece of paper from his pocket, squinted at it, then tapped more keys.
ACCEPT NEW COURSE? the dialog box asked. Reddington clicked the mouse. Almost immediately the red dots turned aside. Reddington let out a deep breath.
“There!” he sighed, and yanked the flash drive out of the port. “They’ll be in safe custody any moment now. Thank you for coming to my aid, Lizzie.”
She gave him a small smile. “If anyone kills you, Reddington, it’s going to be me.”
He laughed expansively and turned to Stuart Ivy. “And you.” Reddington shook his head. “After all that, you came back.”
“Of course I came back.” Stuart produced a handkerchief—where the hell had he gotten a handkerchief? Keen wondered—and mopped his forehead. “I couldn’t leave you, Red. Even after everything you said.”
“I’m still a bit surprised, to be frank.”
Keen shifted, uncomfortable at witnessing this moment between the two friends.
“I never told you the full story,” Stuart said sadly. “I should have, but you were so angry.”
“About how you abandoned Vivian for—”
“No.” Stuart held up a hand. “I did that, yes. And I live with the pain of it every day. But the reason I did it… that’s what I never said.”
Reddington cocked his head in a gesture Keen knew so well, a gesture that seemed strange here in a buried chemical lab.
“What reason is that, Stuart?”
“I was protecting you,” Stuart replied, tenderness and pain suffusing his words. “You were the son I never had, Red. I knew if I went in there, I would probably have died along with Vivian, and you would have come charging in after me because that’s who you were… who you are. And you would have died, too.” His voice trembled. “I let Vivian go so you could live, but in the end you left anyway, leaving a black trail behind you.” Stuart swiped at his eyes with the handkerchief. “So you see, my little aphorism about never letting personal feelings get in the way of personal safety proved right. I did let my personal feelings get in the way. If I hadn’t, Vivian might be alive, and you might be dead.”
A long, heavy moment dragged through the room. Keen didn’t know how to respond or what to do, so she did nothing. The others also stood quietly.
“I think I knew that,” Reddington said at last. “From the moment it happened, I knew. I was angry that you chose me over Vivian. She was the best of all of us, and I hated to think I was alive when she was dead. I’m sorry, old friend.”
And he reached out to embrace Stuart. Keen let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Tears ran openly down Stuart’s face while Reddington’s showed its usual round stoicism, but Keen could see how moved he was, and she found herself strangely glad to know he could feel this way.
“The remaining Hive drones will be coming back soon,” Dembe finally said. “We should not remain in this place.”
And then, only then, did they hear the blessed sound of FBI helicopters in the distance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Where are those helicopter drones, Reddington?” Navabi demanded.
Reddington cocked his head. “That seems to be the question of the day.”
They were all standing in a large tent hastily erected by the FBI task force that had arrived with the three helicopters sent by Cooper from the South Carolina field office. FBI agents in Kevlar vests and hard helmets were swarming over the Hive’s caverns, gathering bodies, storing evidence, and rounding up the last of the drones. With the Griffins dead, none of the drones seemed particularly interested in fighting, and they appeared resigned to giving themselves up to them.
Aram sat in a corner of the tent with one leg in a new bandage and the other in a Velcro brace, his face slack with painkillers. Ressler was at a camp table, shoveling down field rations like they were free pizza in a frat house. Mala sat in another corner, a blanket around her shoulders. Any time someone had tried to take her too far from Keen, she went into hysterics, and it had been easier just to let her stay. She was consulting with Aram and tapping furiously on a borrowed cell phone. Now that Reddington had shut off the Beekeeper’s damned jammer, everything was working fine.
Pug was outside in handcuffs, but Keen had exacted heavy promises from the agents that he was not to be mistreated. She would talk to Cooper about his case later. A lot of the Hive drones would, in fact, have to be evaluated for psychological coercion, especially the ones taken by the Bodysnatcher. Dembe had conducted a pair of agents to the safe house, where they had found a young drone, sedated and zip-tied to a heavy chair, with no one else in evidence, though one of the agents reported finding what looked like strange little cart tracks on several rugs and a stack of completed Sudoku puzzle books in the trash. The truck with the children in it had already been intercepted, and that would be a project and a half for an entire team of child psychologists. While Stuart…
Stuart had been allowed to quietly slip away. Keen hadn’t been too happy with the idea, but Reddington had insisted. “What good would it do to hold and interrogate him?” he pointed out. “He helped us, for heaven’s sake. He’s harmless and he has no money. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”
And Keen had reluctantly agreed.
Navabi gestured at the laptop on the table. “You were the last one to control them, Reddington, and now we can’t find them anywher
e.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Reddington said mildly. “They’re designed to fly under normal radar, and military detection systems register them as friendly. It’s fiendishly difficult to follow them overland. No one expects you to find them.”
Something inside Keen’s head clicked. “That was your plan from the start, wasn’t it?”
“My plan?” Reddington folded his arms.
“Oh!” Ressler looked up, still chewing. “The sarin gas! It’s worth millions on the black weapons market. Once Aram made you that key, you needed to get yourself into the Hive so you could get your hands on it. That’s why you bought that shipment of tributylamine and then turned me over to the Beekeeper—it was your way inside. You didn’t really care about the Beekeeper at all!”
“You’re selling chemical weapons?” Navabi spat. “My god. That’s… I can’t even think how awful that is.”
“No,” Aram spoke up from his corner. “He’s not selling the sarin.”
Everyone turned to look at him.
“How do you know that?” Keen asked.
“Once you’ve combined sarin with tributylamine, it becomes unstable,” Aram said. “After a few hours, it breaks down into harmless compounds. The sarin will be worthless by sundown.”
All heads turned toward Reddington, who returned their gazes coolly. “Sorry to disappoint, Agent Navabi.”
“Aram is right,” Keen said slowly. “He’s not selling the sarin. But that doesn’t mean he’s not selling.”
“Can someone just please explain?” Navabi complained.
“Have I ever told you about my cousin Greta?” Keen said in a tone similar to Reddington’s. “Lovely girl. Adored tequila. Looked great in a two-piece. Every six months, she took a trip down to Mexico in a delightful Corvette convertible—cherry-red, her favorite color. She said she was visiting her ailing mother who lived in Guadalajara, but the border guards figured she was up to something, so every time she crossed, they searched her convertible for contraband. They even got out the drug-sniffing dogs, if you can believe it! But they never found anything. She crossed the border this way for years before one enterprising detective figured out what she was doing.”
“And what was that?” Ressler asked.
“She was smuggling cherry-red Corvette convertibles,” Keen said.
Silence fell across the tent. Navabi pursed her lips. “The drones.”
“Dozens of them.” Keen nodded. “All equipped to fly under radar and evade US military detection. Hundreds of millions on the black market. And we let Reddington fly them to an undisclosed location.”
“I took the liberty of using a taser on the key not long after your colleagues arrived,” Reddington said. “We wouldn’t want those drones to accidentally fly into a school or a hospital.”
“Or leave a record of where those drones went,” Ressler said sourly.
“I do have expenses, you know,” Reddington said. “Including a new car.”
“Where is she?” A tall, thin man with dark hair and an equally thin nose burst into the tent. “Where’s my daughter?”
“Pavel Rudenko,” Keen said, and Ressler got to his feet with a stony look. “Your hired mercenaries were less than useful. Discharging and firing military-grade weapons on federal land—that’s a double fistful of felonies.”
Rudenko straightened an off-the-rack suit. “What are you talking about? I never hired nobody! They must have snuck in here to conduct maneuvers or somethin’. And since they all kicked it, you can’t prove otherwise. I want my daughter.”
He tried to peer around Ressler at Mala, who kept her face down and continued tapping at the phone.
“Actually, Mr. Rudenko,” Ressler said, arms crossed, “we found one of your men still alive. He spent the night bloody and half-conscious, but alive. He’s already given us a bunch of details about your hiring process.”
“So?” Rudenko shot back. “His word against mine, and anything you say won’t be worth a dog’s fart in a hurricane by the time my lawyers get done. You get that through your head, boy.”
“Look,” Ressler growled, “I’m not in a mood to deal with your—”
“Let me see my daughter!”
“Here, Dad.” Mala rose and let the blanket fall from her shoulders like a queen’s cloak.
Pavel Rudenko rushed toward her, his arms open for an embrace, but Mala held up a hand. “No, Dad. I’m done. You’re done.”
“What are you talking about, angel? You’re coming home. You need to come home. You’re just a girl. If you don’t—”
“You’ll what, Dad? Cut off my electricity again? Bad-mouth me to my landlord so I have to move again?” Her face was cold. “No. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, Dad. You’re going to leave me alone. Forever.”
“Yeah? Why would I do that?” he asked in a soft, dangerous voice that made Keen’s skin crawl. Ressler reached for a non-existent pistol.
“Because you won’t have the resources to come after me anymore.” Mala held up the phone. A wasp buzzed across the screen and popped a smiley-face, which deflated. YOU’VE BEEN STUNG! the screen announced.
“Stingster, Dad.” She handed him the phone. “I told Agent Mojtabai over there what cloud service you used for your business files, and he made a few… suggestions. I just now grabbed some of the better documents and uploaded them to your own app. They’re all over the Internet now. Business deals, client lists, delivery schedules, receipts. Stung!”
The blood drained from Rudenko’s face.
Ressler casually glanced over his shoulder. “Huh. How many of those clients live in countries the United States has forbidden its citizens to deal with? Besides trailer parks?”
“You can’t use this,” Rudenko whispered. “You didn’t get it with a warrant.”
“We don’t need a warrant,” Ressler reminded him. “This information was released by an anonymous source on the Internet and will spark a nice, long investigation. Maybe you and I can go talk. I think there’s a trailer outside. I’ll feel more comfortable in there.” He hauled the protesting Rudenko out of the tent.
“Wow,” said Navabi.
Mala sank back into the chair. “I did it. I can’t believe I did it.”
“You did, Mala.” Keen squeezed her hand and looked at Reddington. “You definitely did.”
* * *
“What’s the real reason you went in there, Reddington?” Keen demanded.
They were outside now, well away from the beehive of activity the FBI had created. Birds sang, insects buzzed, and clouds rolled away from a boiling sun. Reddington wore his hat.
“Why must there be a single reason, Lizzie?” he countered. “People are complicated, and they rarely do anything for one single reason.”
“Keen!” A helmeted agent trotted up with a clipboard. “We need you to sign this.”
She glanced at the form and signed. The agent bustled away.
“That’s absolutely not true,” Keen said. “Brass tacks, people are simple. They have a need to fulfill and they try to fill it. What need were you filling here? Money? Revenge?”
Reddington sighed. “Whatever my motivations, they didn’t include you going into the Hive, my dear. That was all you, and you nearly derailed everything.”
“I’m not some drone you can order around,” she shot back. “What was the secret the Beekeeper said he knew about my father?”
“Don’t you know?”
Keen blew out a breath. “He didn’t know anything. It was a lie, just like everything else in the Hive.”
“You’re a wise young woman, Lizzie.”
Another agent strode up. “Keen, the team that’s processing the guest room is short-handed. They won’t be finished in time.”
“I think Rogers and Barry are about done packing up the chem lab computers,” Keen replied. “Tell them to go help.”
“Gotcha.” She left.
“New queen bee?” Reddington asked archly.
“Don�
�t even. And you deflected my question about your motivations.”
“I will always want you to be safe, Lizzie,” Reddington said. “If you’re looking for a simple motivation, there it is. You can accept that or not. It’s the truth.”
Keen searched his face and several moments went by. At last, she nodded. It wasn’t everything she wanted, but it would do for now. She turned her attention back to the new hive below.
EPILOGUE
Night drifted up out of the valley. It started at the bottom, where the shadows always turned purple before they climbed the sides of the hills and finally the mountains. Crickets chirped shyly, then more confidently, and the gathering darkness chased the day’s heat away. A river flowed like liquid silver at the bottom of the valley, churning over rocks and rushing around boulders and filling the air with water smells.
Stuart Ivy strolled along the high riverbank with a flashlight in one hand and a shovel in the other. The river flowed by several yards below. As the shadows deepened, he followed the bank until he came to a great oak tree with its roots wrapped around a boulder the size of an easy chair. Stuart set the shovel down, knelt with a groaning of old joints, and crawled around the boulder with the flashlight until he came to a small carving near the bottom. The flashlight beam picked out a crude letter G.
Humming to himself, Stuart took up the shovel and started digging. Time passed and the sky was turning purple when the shovel blade hit wood. Stuart dug more carefully now, and from the hole pulled a box perhaps a foot across. It was heavy, and something inside it clanked.
“My beauty,” he breathed. “Oh, yes.”
The latch was stiff, but he got it open and shined the light inside. An impressive pile of badly tarnished silver forks and spoons and knives looked back at him. Mixed in with the silver were dozens and dozens of gold coins that gleamed like little suns in the flashlight. A small bag of rotting leather was tucked into a corner. Stuart flicked the bag open with one hand. Emerald rings and brooches, green as new grass, spilled into his palm. Smiling, he put them back in the bag, then gave a little laugh and held one of the spoons up to the light. The handle was engraved with an elaborate G. He laughed again. “Fantastic! Oh, my. Fantastic!”
The Blacklist--The Beekeeper No. 159 Page 27