by Matt Rogers
As far as King was concerned, they were indistinguishable.
There were seven of them now in the tiny one-bedroom apartment. High heart rates, high adrenaline levels, high testosterone. The air sweltered, body heat amalgamating.
Drew glanced from King, to Slater, down to Newton. ‘So who’s gonna do the talking?’
Newton jerked his head at Slater.
Drew sighed. ‘You’re in deep shit, aren’t you?’
Newton didn’t answer, which in itself said, Absolutely.
Drew looked directly at Slater. ‘Right. What are we doing here?’
‘We need your help.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Think of this as an illicit and unsanctioned bust. We need you for a quick job, and then we’ll be gone.’
‘I don’t remember asking anything about that.’
‘You’re not understanding what’s going on here.’ Slater turned to Newton. ‘Alright, you have permission to speak. Get talking.’
Niccolò’s demeanour flared. ‘“Permission to speak”?!’
King looked the flustered cop right in the eyes and brought a finger to his lips.
Niccolò’s eyes burned. He took a step forward.
Drew planted a hand on the Italian’s chest and shoved him back. Shook his head. He was smarter than the rest of them. He’d put two and two together, figured that Newton’s reputation, career, and life were threatened, and that the sergeant was about to do anything to make it through this.
Including throwing fellow cops under the bus.
Sure enough, Newton said to Drew, ‘You remember that thing with the house in Roxbury?’
Drew’s eyes hardened to a pair of cold, dead shells.
Slater glanced at King, making a moment’s eye contact. His look said, This could go sideways.
King’s said, I’m aware.
He could have his gun out in a second flat, but so could they. They were elite narcotics cops on the frontlines. They kicked down doors and went through them, usually without knowing what was on the other side. They were used to pulling their firearms in a hurry. Sure, King and Slater had the genetic edge in reaction speed, the both of them having pioneered a black-ops division that focused on that very gift, but here they were outnumbered two to one in a close-quarters environment, cancelling out any advantage they might possess. If it came to a reactionary shootout, the crash pad would become a bloodbath, violence and death handed out indiscriminately. It’d be a matter of luck, and that wasn’t where King wanted to go. If this went south, though, he’d be forced to, which spoke to how badly they needed men like these on their side tonight.
Drew hadn’t taken his eyes off Newton. ‘You realise what you’re doing, right?’
Newton’s face was an anguished mask. ‘I have to do this. I need you to do this for me, so it’s the card I’m pulling.’
‘You’ve thought about whether you’re making the right decision?’
Newton shrugged and sighed at the same time, personifying every facet of the defeated Frenchman. ‘I don’t have a choice, Drew.’
‘What have you done?’
Both King and Slater knew full well that Newton hadn’t done anything, not in the time it took the task force to reach the crash pad. But the sergeant lied. He pointed to King and Slater and said, ‘I gave these two everything. All the info on the payoff. They then passed it onto an intermediary. If you don’t help them with what they need tonight, or if you double-cross them, the intermediary forwards it all to the media. Our badges will be gone and we’ll be in jail and on top of that we’ll probably be the most hated men in America. So … cooperate.’
Newton lied to Drew in much the same way Slater had lied to him.
This was the world they all lived in now. Deceptions within deceptions. Double-crossings and treachery and betrayal. You do the wrong thing once, it becomes a thorn in your side until the end of time. Anyone can hold it over you at a moment’s notice.
King tried to read the room, but he didn’t see it coming.
Drew seethed for a couple of seconds, then said, ‘I should just shoot you now,’ and pulled his gun without warning.
56
Slater watched Drew pull the Beretta and went for his own gun.
He knew with certainty that he’d get his Glock out first, and fire first. He could guarantee he had several lifetimes’ more experience in shoot-or-die situations. The only question was whether he and King could take out Niccolò, Ethan, and Harris in quick succession.
Probably not, but that was the way it would have to go.
At the very last millisecond, Slater reconsidered and froze his hand an inch above his holster. He shot out his free hand and seized King’s wrist, holding it in place, preventing King from pulling his gun either. King fixed him with a furious stare but Slater held steady.
Drew kept the Beretta down by his side.
The air tightened, breath squeezed from all their lungs.
Slater said, ‘You’re not going to use that.’
Drew cocked his head. ‘Aren’t I? Sounds like none of us have anything to lose anymore.’
‘You still have everything to lose. We can all walk away from this in the morning, go our separate ways, destroy all the blackmail. That’s what happens if everyone in this room keeps their cool and does what they’re supposed to do. Or you could ruin it by killing your sergeant and then me and my friend here. You’d be on the run, and maybe free for a while, but they’d never stop pursuing you for the Roxbury thing.’ Slater didn’t mention that he still didn’t know what it was. Newton mentioned something about a payoff. ‘If that’s the life you want, do what you gotta do.’
Their roles now reversed, Niccolò said, ‘Put it away, Drew.’
If Slater was still a betting man, he’d have put the Italian last on the list of those in the room likely to defuse the tension. Life is unpredictable.
Drew put the Beretta back in its holster, and only then did Slater take a breath.
Drew swallowed his pride. ‘What do you need us for?’
‘You’re a special antinarcotics task force,’ Slater said. ‘Is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I take it you have all the training. Urban warfare and the like.’
‘Obviously. We’re not media puppets. We actually do this shit.’
‘Good. There’s a pair of ex-soldiers camped out in the Dogtown settlement on Cape Ann. We’re going to hunt them down and kill them tonight. Anyone got a problem with that?’
Drew said, ‘Dogtown,’ as if he were testing the name on his tongue.
Niccolò said, ‘What, the fucking ghost town?’
‘Yes,’ Slater said, ‘the ghost town. These men we’re hunting aren’t happy with us. Usually that wouldn’t be a problem but they happen to have access to a button on a detonator that we very much don’t want pushed. So we’re going to track them, circle them, and then swarm them. Is any of this sounding too hard?’
Drew said, ‘Detonator for what?’
‘That’s our business.’
‘And who are you, again?’
‘That’s also our business. We’re trained. That’s all you need to know.’
Drew shook his head. ‘Nah. That ain’t gonna cut it. There’s mountains of shit I need to know if we’re helping you with this vigilante crap. Who trained you? What’d they teach you? Who trained these boys we’re supposedly hunting? What do you know about ’em? Where in Dogtown are they gonna be? That whole place is like three thousand acres last time I checked.’
Slater was just grateful the tension had, for the most part, dispersed. It sounded like Drew was aggressively interrogating him, but it was a hell of a lot better than where they’d been a minute ago. These were questions he wanted answers to because he was intent on doing professional work, not because he was deliberately making a fuss.
Slater slapped King on the shoulder. ‘My friend here will tell you what he can. There’s things we know and things we d
on’t. Things we can divulge and things we can’t. In the meantime—’ he strode over to Newton and hauled the sergeant to his feet ‘—there’s something I need to talk to Sarge about in private.’
Drew said, ‘He needs to stay in our sight,’ as Slater dragged Newton toward the door.
Slater stared at Drew as he passed by. ‘Says who?’
Drew had no leverage.
It became painfully clear in the ensuing silence that there was nothing he could do about it.
Slater hauled the sergeant out onto the landing and led him away from the door, into the shadows of the building’s façade, leaving King to communicate the information he deemed necessary to share. When they were well and truly out of earshot, Slater said, ‘What happened in Roxbury, exactly?’
Newton grimaced. ‘They’re helping you, okay? You don’t hear them kicking up a fuss anymore. That’s all you need to know, surely...’
Slater feigned a knee to the balls. Newton jolted in fright like he’d been electrocuted. Slater pulled the strike back at the last second, grabbed Newton’s lapels and bunched them up and pulled him in close. ‘I’m the one who determines what I need to know.’
‘Okay,’ Newton murmured, reluctant but too scared not to share. ‘Roxbury. A few years back, 2017 maybe. The boys were busting a heroin mill. I wasn’t there. They took out the perimeter guards and breached the entrance and walked into the mill itself, walked right in on the big boss, Štefan Čapkovič. You ever heard of him?’
Slater shook his head.
‘Big Slav,’ Newton said. ‘Huge guy, head of a syndicate. They weren’t expecting to get so much as a single player, let alone the ringleader of the whole operation. They walked in on Štefan standing over a pair of women who were effectively comatose. It was fresh. There was blood still on his hands. He’d been beating them, maybe to death. Teaching them a lesson for something. They never found out what that lesson was, or why it was being taught that way. Štefan had over a million dollars in cash on the table in front of him and he offered them all of it to walk away, and they took it. They walked away and left the women with Štefan, and he’s still walking around to this day. Split four ways, that’s three full years salary each, and no tax. That’s college funds for their kids. This job, it asks so much of you, and leaves you with nothing. I don’t blame them for taking the payoff.’
That’s fine, Slater thought, because I do. ‘Noted.’
He lowered his voice, then got to work feeding Newton instructions regarding the immediate aftermath of what was going to happen in Dogtown later that night. Newton listened with bated breath, a grimace fixed to his expression, his cheeks paling with each additional demand.
Slater had planned hours ahead.
When he was finished he said, ‘You understand?’
Newton said, ‘That’s going to be diff—’
‘I don’t care how difficult it’s going to be. You’re going to make it happen. You understand?’
Newton nodded.
‘Good.’
Slater marched the sergeant back into the crash pad.
57
Alonzo didn’t need to leave his apartment to know there was tumult in Winthrop.
Neighbours’ panicked chatter along Wadsworth Avenue came in through the open window.
Seafoam Avenue and Pleasant Street were both down the road. He’d heard the sirens and the commotion when Slater’s house was alight, which had brought it to his attention in the first place, before the police chatter could. Now he sat in his office, using the concern of Winthrop’s residents as background noise as he executed line after line of code, searching for backdoors that could help Violetta and Alexis find a means of escape.
He’d been at it for an hour now.
He fought back a strong sense of derealisation, a sensation that flared whenever he spent too long in a state of deep focus. It was the nature of his mind. He could process information faster than anyone he’d ever met, but it came at a cost. The level of intensity that resulted from such extreme mental cognition drained him in a way he couldn’t explain. It usually revealed itself as an out-of-body experience, a headache that morphed into a sense of dissociation, like it wasn’t his fingers flying over the keys, or his eyes processing data. Back when this problem first reared its head, the sensation usually then spiralled into anxiety and head-spins, largely due to the fear of not being connected to his own thoughts, worried that at some point his brain might just snap and float away, never to return to his body. Over time he learned to overcome this, so it didn’t get blown out of proportion in his head.
If he wasn’t humble, he might have labelled it as the tortured struggle of a genius at work, but he’d never thought so highly of himself.
He finished working through the options available to him, using the final black hat program in his repertoire, and his fingers came off the keyboard.
He bowed his head.
Whoever Arnold was, the guy was talented. He’d taken over the suburb of Back Bay, which encompassed just over a half mile stretch south of the Charles River. Alonzo had gone so far as to hack into the digital infrastructure that kept the power grid up and running. He’d fished around, but found nothing, and he knew the authorities wouldn’t be able to either. So until Arnold relinquished control of the electricity and cell coverage, that patch of inner city Boston was his alone.
All Alonzo could discern was that Arnold wasn’t living up to his potential. If the hacker was this talented, and showed it through his government and military work, Alonzo would have heard of him. The fact that the man had flown under Alonzo’s radar back when he was working for the government meant that Arnold was giving his job the bare minimum, and using his gifts for extracurricular activities. It wouldn’t surprise Alonzo if he learned that the guy was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, stolen inexplicably from some overseas financial institution and hidden away in accounts in Switzerland, just for the hell of it.
You’re wandering…
He pulled his mind back to the present, went to the kitchen and ran a glass under the tap. A few swigs of water and he felt more himself, felt like he was back in his own skin instead of lost to some illusory cyber-world.
But you can’t stop.
He had to go back.
He knew, perhaps better than anyone, that one line of code could change the course of history. In this case, it would change the state of a windowless basement in Back Bay. Two families wiped out. In the grand scheme of things, nothing huge — worse atrocities happened every day, all over the world. He was smart enough to favour objectivity, and he was able to detach himself from his fickle emotions, realise that he and his friends weren’t the centre of the universe. But he was also smart enough to know what the knock-on effect would be from the loss of those two families.
It would create two monsters, two wrecking-ball destroyers in human form.
It would strip Jason King and Will Slater of every ounce of their humanity, and what would result from that?
So after finishing the glass of water, he hustled back into the office and got back to work.
58
It took King and Slater half an hour to cover what they knew about Ronan’s crew.
They cross-referenced snippets of the backstory that Ronan had fed King with their own in-depth knowledge of the world of black operations. That way, they were able to give the task force a sense of what they’d be walking into, which King and Slater thought was permitted. It’d do no one any good to keep the cops in the dark and give them less of a fighting chance. Sure, they were blackmailing Drew and his boys into cooperation, but for the next few hours they were all technically on the same side, and winning would benefit all parties.
When their explanation was done, Drew said, ‘What, that’s it?’
It was less antagonistic and more conspiratorial; Slater considered that progress. It seemed more like “Come on, we’ve got to work together” than “You’re setting us up to fail.”
Slater shrugged. �
�We’re just as much in the dark as you guys are. There’s nothing we’re withholding. We only just discovered they existed.’
Ethan stood in the kitchen next to the narrow window above the sink, sucking on a cigarette and exhaling the smoke through the flyscreen. ‘Black ops in Afghanistan? You think they were with SOG?’
Special Operations Group, Slater recognised. A department of the CIA’s Special Activities Centre, responsible for a vast swathe of off-the-books ops that the government don’t want their name attached to (it’s important not to tarnish the brand.)
‘No way to know specifically,’ Slater said, eyeing Ethan. ‘You know something about SOG?’
These cops were clearly elite, but didn’t seem like they had prior military experience.
‘Only what I’ve read,’ Ethan said. ‘If it’s clandestine operations, it’s them, right?’
Slater turned to King, who smiled.
Niccolò didn’t like that. ‘What?’
King jerked a thumb at Ethan, who ground his cigarette butt into an ashtray on the countertop. ‘He’s read about SOG. That alone makes SOG the tip of the covert iceberg. You think every black-ops department has a Wikipedia page?’
Drew said, ‘I take it you two weren’t with SOG, then.’
Slater said, ‘Not relevant.’
The seven of them formed a ring around the perimeter of the open-plan kitchen/living room — Ethan and Harris by the sink, Niccolò and Drew leaning against the small kitchen island on the living room side, Newton slumped dejected in the recliner, King and Slater by the front door. Now Drew breached the circle, stepping right up to Slater, who didn’t budge an inch. King hovered to the side, watching with interest, like a boxing promoter between a face-off.
Drew’s voice came out low, cold, controlled. ‘You already told us too much, let too much slip. I know things now. I know I could walk right out this door, and, yeah, maybe you could shoot me in the back of the head, but then you’d have to kill everyone else. And, look, maybe you might. We don’t know exactly where you’ve been, what you’ve done. You might be super-soldiers. But then you’ve got no backup, and this thing in Dogtown goes to shit, and you lose whatever you’ve got on the line.’