There was a pause, punctuated by the sound of Drexler fiddling with the camera. Clearly, he was rotating it to face him. Then Drexler addressed the camera:
‘Hello, America, my name is Ivan Drexler. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about the fine work of The Order of Babylon. But, cruelly, you’ve been left in the dark about who’s behind it all. So I’m making this video to put you out of your misery and to tell you that I, Ivan Drexler, am the mastermind behind The Order of Babylon.
‘Now, by the time you watch this, it’ll be Tuesday afternoon. But as you can see from the timestamp on this video, I’m recording this the day before, on my flight out of the country with my hostage, FBI Director Robin Muldoon, in a plane that belongs to the US Military. And the reason I’m recording this video now is because I want to disclose the details of my final attack – due to take place tomorrow morning – in order to prove that I had prior knowledge of it, and therefore that I’m responsible.’
Drexler paused.
I knew what was coming next. Drexler was about the announce the all-important details of his final attack. And I knew that as soon as he’d disclosed what we needed, I had to pounce because his Beretta was still aimed at Muldoon and though his finger wasn’t on the trigger, it’d only take a second for it to get there and squeeze. Drexler continued:
‘Tomorrow morning, twenty high schools across the eastern seaboard will each be visited by two of my angels of death at precisely 8 a.m. EST. These angels – who’ll all be under twenty, and will be carrying Beretta pistols – will kill everyone they encounter. Then, at precisely 8:30 a.m., they’ll all take their own lives. A simple yet beautiful finale.’
That was it. That was what we needed.
Time to kill this worm.
With all my might, I slammed my shoulder into the door. It swung inwards and struck Drexler hard in the back, causing him to stumble into the tripod. In the next instant, I was inside the room and before Drexler could react, I slammed my right fist into his left wrist, breaking it one brutal blow, and sending the Beretta skidding under a seat. Then I went in for the kill – I went to grab his throat. But he saw it coming, and jerked his head to the right and as a result, I grabbed his ear instead, ripping it clean off his head.
Suddenly, there was a lot of noise.
Drexler was screaming. Francis was shouting about the detonator in Drexler’s right hand. Muldoon was shouting at Francis that the vests were disabled…
But none of this disrupted my focus. I was going to kill Ivan Drexler. And with this thought, I went for his throat again, and this time I got it, slamming him hard against the right-hand wall. Then, after allowing our eyes to meet for a fraction of a second, after allowing him to see his executioner, I tightened my grip and ripped out his windpipe.
When I turned around, I found my son sprinting towards me from the direction of the cockpit, his Beretta in hand. He stopped about level with Muldoon, glanced at Drexler lying dead and mutilated at my feet, then, with his eyes manic, with a look like his whole world had collapsed, he trained his gun at my head.
I had no doubt he was about to shoot…
But then, suddenly, Muldoon – who Francis must’ve released from the cuffs while I was killing Drexler – raised himself from his seat, and struck Samuel hard across the back of his neck just as he squeezed the trigger. Samuel’s aim was thrown, and the bullet fizzed past me, through the partitioning wall, and into the next room, where it was thankfully absorbed by the cash on the other side.
I snapped my gaze away from where the bullet had pierced the wall, and back to Samuel, expecting a second assault. But there was none. Muldoon’s blow had knocked him cold. He was strewn unconscious at my feet.
And just like that, it was over. The job was done. And though all around me was activity, as Muldoon ran towards the front of the plane and announced the pilots were alive but unconscious, and Francis seized on Samuel’s body, and used the cuffs to secure his hands, I knew that for me, there was nothing left to do.
And so I sunk to the floor, and rested a hand on Samuel’s cheek.
It felt cold and unfamiliar.
Epilogue
Monday, April 14, 2013. New York State.
It’s been forty-one days since that flight. Forty-one days on the run.
We landed at Andrews AFB that afternoon, and before anyone there had even begun to grasp what had happened, I’d slipped away. I’d had no choice: after the things I’d done, I knew that sticking around would mean facing the firing squad. But while Muldoon had been willing to feign disorientation and hold off ordering my arrest for an hour or so to give me a head start, he’d not let me take Samuel…
From the moment I left Andrews, I listened out obsessively for news on Samuel. But though the botched hijacking was reported, there was no mention of him – clearly a decision had been made to cover-up his involvement altogether. And this worried me deeply. Because when a terrorist is arrested without public knowledge, then anything goes. Beatings, waterboardings, unimaginable horrors.
But on the plus side, there was also no mention of any terrorist events in the days that followed – the information I’d got from Drexler had been enough. And there was no mention of me, either. National security had clearly made the decision to cover up my activities, too.
But just because they weren’t announcing it publicly, this didn’t mean they weren’t hunting me – they were – and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, there were certain high-rankers who’d stop at nothing to suppress me. So in those first few days I covered my tracks with manic care. And yet, after a couple of weeks I had no choice but to take risks: my lacerated liver had gotten to a point where either I did something about it, or risked fatal consequences. And so I raised funds by recklessly hot-wiring cars, enlisted a backstreet surgeon in Baltimore to do the deed, and spent the next two weeks with inadequate painkillers, in enormous pain, recovering in a squalid rental property nearby.
But then, once I’d recuperated a bit, it became clear to me I needed to take a bigger risk still. I needed to get in contact with someone in the know in DC because the lack of information about Vann, Mort, Olivia, and most of all Samuel, was killing me. And I decided – since Vann and Mort were both probably being watched, and Parkes was too heavily guarded – that Alex Schneider should be my target, Chief of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit.
So one evening, before she’d gotten back from work, I broke into her apartment, and surprised her with a gun to her head. She was unapologetic about her part in falsely identifying me as mastermind behind The Order, but she talked alright. Mort, she told me, had been suspended, but had avoided anything worse for now, since there was no proof he’d had prior knowledge of the attacks. Vann was under house arrest because he’d clearly had at least some prior knowledge, though just how much remained unclear. And Samuel, thanks entirely to the efforts of Muldoon, had been spared the clutches of the CIA, and had been sent instead to the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center – New York’s equivalent to Broadmoor.
All she knew about Olivia was what she’d heard through the grapevine – that she loathed herself for ever having trusted me again.
Of course, it was impossible to know if she was telling the truth; but I was aware this was the best information I was going to get.
I left Schneider locked in a cupboard, unable to raise the alarm, and got out the city easy enough. And it was then that I carefully made my way to a motel in rural New York – a run-down, innocuous shack in the middle of goddamn nowhere.
And here I am still, two weeks on, in the same squalid motel, holed up like an animal.
I know it’s only a matter of days before I have to move on, before it’s no longer safe for me here, but I’m using this time as best I can to recuperate: my liver’s still damaged from the shoddy surgery, and I’m exhausted.
And yet, perversely, I’m looking forward to when they come for me. Because at least then I won’t have time to sit and think. Won’t have time to dwell – as I’ve
been doing compulsively, painfully, agonizingly – on the devastating fallout of that fateful week.
On the fact that my son is brainwashed and broken and languishing in an asylum. On the fact that I’ve lost everything I’d worked so hard to regain with Olivia.
On the fact that, because of decisions I made, dozens of innocent people had lost their lives under the most horrific circumstances – innocent people, whose faces have now infiltrated my nightmares, whose absence have become a part of my DNA.
First published in United Kingdom in 2016 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2016 by Richard Davis
The moral right of Richard Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781910859223
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co
False Prophet: The gripping breakthrough thriller (A Saul Marshall Thriller 1) Page 31