by Ethan Cross
Demon clenched half the muscles in his body and dug his fingernails into the arms of the chair.
“That’s right, Demon, not only did I rob you of your retribution against me, but I did it in such a way that has exposed you and will lead to the downfall of you and your whole organization.”
The world spun around Demon, in more ways than one. The computer screen was his anchor point, but figures from his past kept reaching for him out of the swirling darkness. The priest from the orphanage. The head guard from his first juvenile detention center. A man whose face he had cut off in a Glasgow back alley.
But those were just distractions. Demon remained focused on the real ghost right in front of him.
Judas said, “Let me begin with what you do know. You helped me write an approved script for this little production, and I’ve strayed from it. Calling in federal agents. Escalating things. But that’s not really why you came out of your hole. You came out because you knew that betraying me was a mistake.”
Demon gritted his teeth. The cathedral storage room around him had grown to the size of an actual cathedral. And it was on fire.
Demon ignored the flames.
Judas said, “Here’s what you don’t know. Let’s start with the obvious one that I just revealed. That’s right, old friend, I know that it was by your order that photo was taken.”
*
Marcus was the first to walk up the slope of the flooded tunnel and secure their position. He tossed a small oxygen bottle and mask combination onto the ground. The small amount of oxygen was all they needed to cross through the flooded section of this shaft, and there were other shafts that could be crossed by free swimming without oxygen. Which made it all the more peculiar that Judas had rented full tanks and wet suits.
The others were right behind him. Andrew, Sheriff Hall, and five members of an FBI tactical team out of Las Vegas who had just arrived. They covered the tunnels and readied their gear and, as they did so, Marcus had his first real opportunity to digest the new information Stan had sent just as they’d arrived at the mine.
The text message had read, Was able to restore Debra’s phone. Looking through it now, but I already found this photo. It was sent from Debra Costello’s phone to a close friend of hers from church, Renata Navarro. Her message with the photo read, “Look at the little problem I’ve been dealing with.”
Standing in the cold tunnel, which smelled to him like an open grave, Marcus recalled the photo from memory. It showed a man from the chest down getting out of the shower. The man’s pubic region was in full display. He was semi-erect. His face wasn’t shown. He didn’t appear to be aware he was being photographed. The image was probably similar to a million others available on the Internet. It had taken Marcus a moment to place what was different. Then he saw it. The man in the picture had no testicles.
When Marcus had originally viewed the photo, things instantly clicked into place. It answered a few outstanding questions. The photo was how Debra had betrayed her lover. It also explained why the Navarro’s had been targeted. A simple photo, probably snapped from a cell phone, had cost Debra Costello and several other people their lives.
To all that, Marcus had texted back: K. Get in touch with the ME’s office and have them check Bradley Reese’s body to see if his testicles have been removed.
A few seconds later, as he had been coordinating with the tactical unit, his phone had vibrated with another message from Stan: Something strange. The meta data shows the photo was taken with a model of hidden camera, not a cell phone.
Marcus didn’t hear confirmation on Reese’s anatomy before entering the mine and still hadn’t decided what to think of the photo being taken with a hidden camera, and unfortunately, now wasn’t the time to figure it out.
Once the members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team were ready, they led the way down the tunnel. Their destination was clear: a faint light to the north of their position.
It only took a moment for the team to converge on their objective. Marcus had instructed them to tread quietly, and so the team held back when they reached the lighted section.
Around the corner, Marcus saw men in full scuba gear. Leonard Lash and his three ULF lieutenants and bodyguards. Lash was already half submerged into the water of the flooded tunnel.
Marcus gave a nod to the team leader and placed his finger to his lips. The commander gave a nod of understanding in return, and the five members of the FBI team melted out of the shadows. The three lieutenants were just standing in a row and easily accessible. The tactical team subdued them without a sound.
But Lash was actually in a good position in the water. He had full view of the tunnel and one foot out the door.
As soon as he saw his comrades fall, Lash dove under and made a break for it.
Marcus ran forward. He knew that the mine was surrounded, but he didn’t want to take any chances. And the place was a warren of tunnels with lots of places to hide.
But the FBI team leader beat Marcus to the escaping inmate, and he only arrived in time to help pull Lash, face covered by a full deep-diving face mask, out of the freezing-cold water.
The ULF leader fought them every step of the way. He thrashed and kicked with all his extremities.
Marcus and the FBI agent threw Lash back up into the tunnel where the others were waiting to help.
But Lash kept convulsing even after they had released his arms.
He fell to the ground writhing and clawed off his face mask. He gasped for breath as he continued to shake. He foamed at the mouth. His eyes were wide and afraid. Marcus smelled the stench as the leader of one of the world’s most powerful gangs evacuated his bowels and died in fear, writhing in the mud.
*
Judas said, “I could forgive you for a lot of things, old friend, but not for this. What you did cannot be forgiven.”
The fire raged around them inside the cathedral. Flames licked the stained glass. The saints depicted on the glass came to life, reached for the sky, and screamed as they burned.
Judas said, “You tricked me into savagely killing the woman I loved. I’m not like you, Demon. I never was. I didn’t object to murder if it was necessary for a job, but I never loved the killing. At least, not in the way you do. I could have walked away from all that. But I didn’t plan on it. I was planning to tell Debra the truth and then convince her to come away with me while I continued to work for you.”
The screen seemed to dissolve into darkness, leaving only the torso of his former apprentice hanging on a black background. Then the figure morphed into a person sitting across from him at the table.
Demon said, “I don’t want men working for me who want to walk away.”
“I assume you saw the money I was stashing. Maybe that was enough, or maybe you also caught me stealing all of your files as an insurance policy against you. But instead of confronting me about it, you decided to sabotage my relationship. You put in a hidden camera at Deb’s father’s cabin before a weekend we were going up there. Then you created a photo that looked like it was taken in a mirror from a cell phone. From there, you made it look like she had photographed me in order to make fun of me with her bitch friend. But you’re an artist and you’ve taught me so much. You knew my sensitivities. You knew exactly how to push my buttons. You knew what would happen next.”
The fire continued to rage inside the cathedral. Pieces of the structure collapsed, and burning debris fell to the ground. And below that, Demon’s world continued to spin on the turnstile.
He said, “That’s right, boy. I know you all too well.”
“So I did as you knew I would. I killed her. And in the moment when I ended her, I loved killing again. She had betrayed me, and I so enjoyed making her pay for that. Except that, later on, I noticed the angle of the picture. I had taken Deb’s body up to the cabin to stage a scene for the police, and I went in to use the head, so I checked. And there hidden among some fake flowers was a small hidden camera. And that’s when my world came crash
ing down. Deb hadn’t betrayed me. The betrayal was from you.”
“You betrayed me first by giving your allegiance to that bitch over me.”
Judas continued, “Here’s something else you don’t know. You know that I murdered my father, but I never told you the full story. After Father mutilated me and murdered the love of my life, I let him live for months. Not out of necessity or to prolong his suffering in some way. I waited out of kindness. Because the premiere of his masterpiece was just around the corner. He would die, but I didn’t want to rob him of his dream. That night, the production was an overwhelming success. He had a wonderful party afterward, by his standards anyway. He even sprang for the more expensive prostitute. I smothered him in his sleep. I let him go out on top. That’s more than he deserved. But he was all I had ever known. He was my father, and I suppose I owed him that much for saving me from being abandoned in a Moscow dumpster by my shlyukha mother at birth.”
The cathedral continued to collapse and burn, and then the stained glass windows exploded soundlessly in slow motion.
Demon ignored it all.
“And who doesn’t want to go out on top? You see, that’s what I’m going to do. All this has been of my design. When I discovered the camera, I knew that I would crush you and kill myself in a way that would be talked about and studied by generations to come. I will be forever remembered. And you. My teacher. My friend. My adopted father. You will be erased. I’ve made my last production such a public spectacle that it can’t be glossed over. That’s important, because here’s something else you don’t know … ”
Judas paused for dramatic effect. Demon hated when the boy did that.
The roof of the cathedral flew away as if devoured by a tornado, and rain fell in torrents and extinguished the flames.
Judas said, “You see, old friend, Deb’s father wasn’t always in the correctional industry. We knew he was in law enforcement but, in truth, I discovered some files that Powell had kept as an insurance policy against a man named Philip—it’s actually what gave me the idea to do the same thing against you—but those files revealed that Powell had once been a member of a group called the Shepherd Organization.”
The rain turned to blood.
Demon had heard rumblings of a group by that name.
Judas said, “These shepherds are tasked with hunting the country’s worst murderers by any means necessary. They’re an elite group with resources and connections and, in Powell’s files anyway, they seldom take their suspects alive. These men will hunt you from the shadows. They’ll topple all you’ve built, and if they can they’ll remove you from existence. And I’ve led them straight to you. I would suspect that they’re surrounding the mine at this very moment. Or if these shepherds are as good as the files made them seem, then they may already be inside this room.”
Demon’s gaze traveled around the spinning room. He saw a lot of things moving, but he had no idea what was real.
Judas laughed. “Maybe not. In any case, they will hunt you and destroy you. I’m going to provide them with files on you and your entire network. And I’ve done all this when I’ve been dead for hours. You can’t get your retribution and satisfy your laws or torture me to find out what I’ve done with your files. You are completely helpless and at my mercy. And, just as you taught me, there will be no mercy. I betrayed you to your enemies, to your greatest nightmare, and I’ve outsmarted them all with a body count that could rival anyone. I’m the greatest ever. I—”
This time, Demon couldn’t contain himself. With a bellow of rage, he reached for Judas’s neck. He found the front of a computer screen instead. He grabbed it by the edges and smashed it against the storage room wall.
The cathedral had faded back into his mind.
He overturned the table and smashed the wooden chair to bits. Then he stood atop the turnstile, panting and literally seeing and tasting red.
He stepped off the spinning table and, once his feet were back on solid ground, he was better able to filter out the hallucinations and know what was real.
Unfortunately, the men with the assault rifles were indeed real.
The man in the center of the group, a man aiming a large, black shotgun at Demon’s chest, said, “Keep your hands up and no sudden movements. And just so you know, those shepherds that your friend was talking about … We are that good.”
*
After securing the escaping prisoners, Marcus and the tactical team received some unexpected news. Apparently, the other half of their team, the one trapped inside the prison, had secured Jerry Dunn and the control room. Spinelli had opened lines of communication and expected to have the system fully restarted at any moment. The full tactical team was preparing to take the prison and massing in the manufacturing facility.
Andrew had asked, “What do we do with Lash’s body?”
Marcus took one look at the dead ULF leader and said, “We’ll send someone for him, eventually.”
Then the group of eight led their four living prisoners up the makeshift metal ladder and back into the manufacturing facility.
But as they led Demon past Lash’s body, Marcus noticed that the killer seemed genuinely surprised that the air tanks had been poisoned.
Once up top, the FBI took their prisoners into custody, and Sheriff Hall and the tactical teams went to work on the planning and preparations for a final push to retake the prison.
Marcus stepped away from the group, and Andrew followed. Marcus said, “Something’s not right.”
“Too easy? Cause I didn’t think it was all that easy. It’s been a pretty rough case in my book.”
“A few things aren’t adding up.”
“Like what?”
“In the video, Judas claimed his death total would rival anyone.”
Andrew said, “He’s up to what now, that we know for sure? Debra, the shooting victims, Ray Navarro, anyone killed inside Foxbury, Lash … ”
“But most of them weren’t by his hand.”
“But they were by his design. Plus, he could be referring to killings that took place long before any of this started.”
Marcus nodded. “You could be right. But what about Lash and the others? Those tanks or masks, or both, knowing our guy, were laced with some kind of poison.”
“Yeah, like he’s reaching out from beyond the grave and still killing.”
Marcus rubbed at his cross tattoo and whispered, “What if he doesn’t want anyone to get out alive? This isn’t over. He wants a bigger body count, and I know how he’s going to get it.”
*
Ackerman tried to stay busy while Spinelli worked. He had secured the elevator, established and rigged Powell’s office as a fallback point, and double-checked the restraints on the prisoners. He was glad when Spinelli finally established communication with the outside world and discovered that Marcus had Demon and the others in custody.
But he was extremely disappointed that he had missed all the fun.
Maggie had really stepped up and was helping to organize and plan the final retaking of the prison. She had Valdas and the Director on a video call on the big screen. Apparently, Spinelli had been able to bypass the frequency jamming by communicating through a hard-wired internet connection.
Ackerman had stepped aside to observe.
There was a large clock on the wall. The kind of white-faced, clearly numbered old clock that hung in prisons and schools across the country. It showed the time as 7:29 a.m. And that made Ackerman think of something Spinelli had said.
He didn’t want me to do anything. At least, not before 7:30 a.m.
That had seemed strange to him at the time. Why 7:30 a.m.?
And then another memory came back.
Maggie said, “Why does it matter how they’re charged?”
“Because if I had full control and my fingers on the switches,” Ackerman said. “And I essentially possessed the power of Zeus within these walls, I know exactly what I would do.”
If the old Ackerman had had the
same opportunity as Judas, the chance to fry hundreds of people, hostage and hostage-taker alike, with one press of a switch, he would have had just one question: Where’s the button?
Ackerman knew then that Judas and Demon weren’t done killing. They didn’t want a standoff. They wanted to burn it all down and crawl out of the ashes.
He started forward to warn Maggie, but then he stopped when he realized that there wasn’t a charging station in the CCE, and so no one here would be killed, merely shocked until their batteries were drained. That was a relief. He had been worried about his little sister for a moment.
Then his brother ran into the room on the other end of the big display, demanding to speak with Maggie. Marcus came onto the screen and said, “Maggie, he’s planning to send out a system wide kill order.”
She shook her head. “What? Who?”
“Judas. Bradley Reese. I’m betting that literally any second, a Trojan horse in the code, a fail-safe, will—”
Maggie started shaking and fell to the floor. Her bracelets and anklets had been activated.
Marcus screamed her name.
Ackerman looked around the room at all the other people being electrocuted, which would also include Ms. Spinelli in the room below them.
He stepped forward and placed his shoe on Maggie’s chest to keep her from harming herself. He said to Marcus, “Don’t worry. There’s not a charging station here in the control room. None of the people in this room should die. Except maybe Powell with the whole bee sting thing.”
Marcus screamed, “Most of the hostages are being held in the chow hall, which I’m sure does have a charging station.”
“Yes, it does.”
“So they will die.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Anything we can do to save them? As in, right now!”
Ackerman considered that. He saw one of the assault rifles lying across the workstation. With a smile, he said, “Back in a sec,” and snatched up the rifle.
He ran for the server room hatch, slid the last few feet, and swung himself down through the opening in the floor into the small server area.