The problem was, there was only one person who could potentially lead him to the man with the blue eyes, and he had a hunch that help would come at a fairly painful price.
24
Mason called Club Five while he was driving. Assuming he heard correctly over the deafening music, Ramses hadn’t come in yet, but they expected to see him at some point. Mason hadn’t talked to his old friend since watching him being driven away in the back of his partner’s Crown Victoria. While he knew Ramses wouldn’t hold him personally accountable for the treatment he’d undoubtedly received at the hands of the police, he would demand a measure of recompense. The scales always had to remain balanced with him, which was simultaneously one of his more damning qualities and one of his most redeeming ones. He inherited that trait from his father, who’d earned an advanced degree from the eye-for-an-eye school of thought. Mason pitied the guy who put Ramses’ old man in prison when he finally saw the light of day.
Horace Donovan had been raised in the Bronx, cut his teeth in South Boston, and launched his career in Vegas at a time when the town sat on the brink of becoming an amusement park for sinners. He helped clubs find dancers and dancers find shows. He connected out-of-town guests with ladies in need of a little supplemental income. He lured developers into the heart of the desert and convinced them that they never wanted to leave. “King of the Eternal Sands,” he called himself. A modern-day pharaoh. And it was only fitting that his first wife should bear him a son and that he should name that son after the most powerful ruler the Egyptian Empire had ever known, Ramses II.
And then everything started to change. Vegas decided to incorporate and make itself over as the Disneyland of the Desert, ushering in a new world of white tigers and dancers with their tops on. Everything was fake, from the pyramids to the smiles to breasts stuffed so full of silicone they didn’t even bounce anymore. And then there was the new wife twenty years his junior, who was little more than a kid herself and wanted nothing to do with his.
So Ramses was shipped off to the John C. Fremont Academy of the Rockies in Colorado, where he ended up sharing a room with Mason. The son of a career criminal and the son of a prominent prosecutor turned politician. One could argue about the moral shades of gray between the two professions, but as long as the checks cleared, the school would issue a navy blazer to just about anyone.
Considering everything they’d been through together, Mason knew Ramses wouldn’t have deliberately sent him into a trap. His old friend was nothing if not meticulous. He would have verified the veracity of the intelligence before passing it on, especially knowing that one of these days he would step far enough across the line that Mason would have no choice but to take him in. When that day arrived, there would be no hard feelings. If Mason showed up on his doorstep with a warrant for his arrest, he would offer his wrists without argument. That was why Mason regretted the way things had gone down the night the officers died in the explosion. Ramses had taken a risk to get him the information and had surely been rewarded with a beating on both a personal and a professional level.
Ramses lived on the top two floors of a black glass building that looked like an obsidian spike driven into the heart of lower downtown, or LoDo. He’d stripped them bare and turned them into his own private playland of sorts. Every room had a wall of windows that looked out upon his private domain, the world he had conquered. There was even a swimming pool on the roof with a glass bottom that cast strange shifting shadows across his living room, day and night.
Only one of the six elevators in the lobby went all the way up to his suite, and he’d replaced the button with a key slot, which meant that Mason had to stand facing the nearly invisible security camera above the panel of buttons, hit the hidden call button, and talk through the speaker.
“Well, well, well,” Ramses said. “I have a hunch you didn’t come all this way because you were concerned about my well-being, so I’m thinking either you’re here with a bouquet of flowers and an apology or you need something from me. Again. And considering I don’t see any flowers…”
“I’m sorry,” Mason said. “Now would you bring me up already?”
“I’m not really feeling the sincerity.”
Mason stared directly into the camera so his old friend could see his eyes when he spoke.
“Ramses. They killed my wife.”
The elevator doors closed. They were stainless steel and polished to such a degree that he found himself surrounded by dozens of imperfect copies of himself, all of them staring at the digital readout as the car climbed to the 24th floor.
The elevator opened upon a dark, cavernous space with deep blue ambient lighting. This was the room where Ramses brought and entertained his guests. There were overstuffed black leather chairs and couches everywhere, silhouetted against the night sky and the skyscrapers.
The doors closed behind Mason, sealing off the light. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness before advancing into the room.
“Do you have any idea how badly you inconvenienced me the other night? I was barely out of lockup in time to catch breakfast.”
“Four officers died, Ramses. You’re lucky they aren’t still working you over in an interrogation room.”
“I do a favor for a friend and end up in cuffs. I’m not sure you and I share the same definition of luck.”
Ramses was sitting in a deep leather chair maybe five feet away, his right ankle propped on his left knee, his hands gripping the armrests. He cocked his head first one way, then the other. The darkness concealed his expression.
“I need your help,” Mason said.
Ramses’ white teeth glowed blue when he smiled.
“But uh, now you come to me and you say, ‘Don Corleone, give me justice.’” It was a serviceable Brando. “But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me ‘Godfather.’ Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married—”
“Damn it, Ramses. Are you going to help me or not?”
The lights snapped on with a thud, illuminating the entire level. Massive glass terrariums filled with tropical plants, flowers, waterfalls, and all kinds of reptiles were staggered around the room like pillars. The blue lights provided heat and artificial moonlight. Were Ramses not such a good criminal, he would have made an amazing zoologist.
Mason cringed when he saw Ramses’ face. There were stitches on his right cheekbone and his eyes were ringed with faded yellow bruises. The cut on the bridge of his nose was going to leave a nasty scar. But it was the fire in his eyes that concerned Mason the most.
“Pretty freaking sweet, right?” Ramses stood and gestured to his face. “Compliments of the DPD. Just what I always wanted. A disfigurement. I remember waking up that day and thinking to myself, ‘Man, if only there were a way of adding a little character to my face, something that would not only make me look like Frankenstein, but would hurt like a motherfucker, too.’”
“You done? I liked the opening bit, but the rest was fairly contrived.”
Mason heard the crack and tasted blood in his mouth before he even saw it coming. He landed squarely on his rear end and sat there for a long moment, opening and closing his jaw to make sure it still worked.
“I owed you that one,” Ramses said.
“The hell you did.” Mason dabbed his lip with the back of his hand. “You asked me to punch you as a favor.”
“And now I’ve returned that favor. See how well the system works? Surely you, of all people, didn’t think for a second I wouldn’t repay the debt, did you?” He smirked, grabbed Mason’s hand, and pulled him to his feet. “You weren’t the only one who was set up that night, you know, and I don’t take kindly to being used. So I’ve been making some discreet inquiries on my own.”
Mason followed him across the main room to a wide spiral staircase that wound upward into an anteroom with sheets of water trickling down chiseled marble on three sides and a single stainless-steel door set into the
fourth. Ramses tapped a series of numbers into the digital combination pad and the door slid back into the wall.
“And…?”
They entered a wide tiled foyer with potted trees that reached all the way up to the twenty-foot ceiling, where the diffused moonlight cast wavering shadows across the pool on the roof. There were bedrooms to either side, tucked back around the other side of the waterfall room. Ahead, three stairs led up to an elevated living area with a massive flat-screen television, the most comfortable furniture ever made, and the kind of computer setup Bill Gates probably had in his own house. All of it surrounded by windows that gave onto open sky.
“Beer?”
“Ramses.”
“All I know is that no one knows anything.”
“You’re deliberately trying to piss me off now, aren’t you?”
“That’s your answer. None of the usual players are involved. The guys moving drugs are worried that someone might be horning in on their territory. The weapons guys feel the same way. All anybody knows is that someone’s doing something, but no one has any idea who they are or what they’re selling. They’re working on the fringes, keeping to themselves, not forcing any confrontations. They might as well be ghosts. So what does that tell you?”
“I would know if we were dealing with government operatives.”
“All I’m saying is if it looks like a duck…”
“These people are responsible for the deaths of nearly twenty federal and local law-enforcement officers. There’s no way the government—”
“I know one person you could ask straight up.”
“My father liked Angie a lot more than he’s ever liked me. I guarantee you that if he knew anything about what happened to her, he’d have already done something about it.”
“So what do you have to go on?”
“That’s why I came to you. I’m looking for someone. The kind of guy that anyone who’s ever seen him won’t be likely to forget.”
“I can ask around. But if he’s as connected as I suspect, even asking questions is going to stir the hornet’s nest. Are you prepared to handle the whole swarm?”
“This is the man who killed my wife, Ramses.”
Ramses stared him directly in the eyes for several seconds, his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching.
“Whatever you need.”
Mason handed him one of the printouts he’d made of the man with the blue eyes on the lens of his wife’s sunglasses. Ramses glanced at it briefly, nodded, and then tucked it inside his suit jacket.
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m going to need a little time.”
“Time’s a luxury I don’t have. When I last saw this guy, he was dealing with some really scary stuff.”
“How scary?”
“Biological.”
“Christ. I’ll see what I can dig up. What are you going to do in the meantime?”
“Considering that picture is all I have to go on, my only option is to try to draw him out.”
“I guess you’re just going to have to start beating the bushes.”
Ramses smirked and led Mason down the hallway to the left, past a bedroom with what looked like a jungle gym built above the bed and a bathroom with an enormous Jacuzzi spa and sauna, and to the end of the corridor, where it simply terminated against a full-height window, through which they could barely see the distant lights of Colorado Springs, sixty-some miles to the south. He didn’t recognize the false opening in the wall to the left until Ramses walked through it and guided him into a room he undoubtedly never would have seen under any other circumstances.
“What the hell is this?”
“Think of this as my toolshed. This is where I keep my bush beaters.”
25
Mason had to admit that there was something empowering about driving through downtown Denver in the middle of the night with a Thunderstorm bullpup assault rifle in a padded case behind his rear seat. The OTs-14 Groza was originally designed for postcollapse Russian special forces and came equipped with an under-barrel grenade launcher that could be swapped for a suppressor, interchangeable barrels with different lengths to suit his various tactical needs, and a range of optics from full-day to night vision. He had a dozen clips filled with 7.62 × 39 mm cartridges that could be fired at a rate of 750 rounds per minute and five grenades he figured would open a lot of doors for him. And all of that in a sleek futuristic design that weighed less than seven pounds. It was a beautiful weapon that had become a casualty of financial circumstances and somehow had found its way into the hands of a sin merchant like Ramses and God only knows what other criminal element.
Ramses had always been vigilant. In his business, it paid to be prepared for every possible contingency. It was a long fall from the tightrope he’d chosen to walk, but that “toolshed” of his appeared to have been designed to withstand a siege.
His life’s goal hadn’t always been to follow in his father’s footsteps; in fact, quite the opposite. He’d actually attended West Point—thanks in large measure to a glowing letter of recommendation from a congressman who owed Mason’s father a favor—where he’d majored in information systems engineering before becoming completely disillusioned with the entire military complex. He never told anyone about the events leading to his discharge, and Mason knew better than to force the issue.
Truthfully, Mason was surprised Ramses had lasted as long as he had. He’d had good money on him washing out in under a week. Ramses wasn’t the kind of guy who got along well with people in positions of authority. He’d just been so determined not to end up like his father that he’d put himself in the only situation where even he couldn’t succeed.
While Ramses’ time in the army might have exposed him to some facets of the government Mason probably didn’t want to know about, he couldn’t fathom how any federal agency could be involved in this situation. He understood that an unknown entity moving stealthily around the fringes fit the mold, but he just couldn’t see the motive. Why would anyone in a position of power need to import a virus when there was a readily accessible storehouse at the CDC in Atlanta? From what he understood, it wasn’t incredibly difficult to requisition any of their diseases through normal channels—with the right qualifications, anyway. Why massacre its own strike force?
Mason didn’t buy it.
He pulled to the side of the road, scrolled through the memory on his phone, and dialed a number he hoped an old friend hadn’t changed since last they spoke. If anyone could figure out which bushes to beat, it was this guy. There was no message, only a beep.
“It’s Mace,” he said. “Call me back.”
He looked around and realized he didn’t know exactly where he was or how he had gotten here. He’d been driving without a destination, hoping continuous motion might stimulate inspiration. A ceaseless string of lights crossed the elevated section of I-25 in his rearview mirror. He was in an industrial corridor where all the buildings cringed away from the road behind chain-link fences. Half of them were abandoned; the other half looked as though they should be. There was even one that reminded him of a fortress. It had concrete walls, barred windows, a three-bay garage, and backed to the South Platte River. Compared to the neighboring buildings, it was practically free of graffiti. A faded FOR SALE sign hung from the fence, and undoubtedly had for a long time.
A forlorn train horn echoed in the distance.
It wasn’t until that moment that he realized just how quiet and deserted this area was, when once it must have been the artery through which the lifeblood of the city’s economy flowed.
Mason had just started to drive again when his phone rang.
“That was quick,” he said.
“Is this James Mason?” It was a woman’s voice, deep and resonant, almost as though it created an echo of itself. “Agent James Mason of the FBI?”
“Yes.” The word came out like gravel. He cleared his throat and tried again. “This is Special Agent James Mason. With whom am I speaking?”
; “Will you help me?”
“I have some questions for you.”
“Will you help me?”
“Yes.”
She covered the phone and made a noise that sounded almost like a sob.
“There is a park near Forty-fourth and Sheridan. Across the street from the old amusement park. Do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“There is a playground on the east side of the lake. In this playground is a jungle gym. Be there in twenty minutes.”
Click.
He looked at the number on his caller ID, committed it to memory, and dialed a number he knew by heart. He was already talking when the operator answered the phone.
“I need a reverse listing on a phone number. Area code three zero three, four two six, one nine one six.” He had to fight with gravity to keep the Cherokee from rolling as he swung through the red light on Santa Fe and sped toward the highway. “Tell me you’ve got something for me.”
“Sir, I need your identification—”
“SA James Richmond Mason. Badge number victor tango alpha zero one one two nine six three two three.”
“Yes, sir. The number corresponds to a pay phone at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Sheridan and Twenty-sixth. Can I be of any further assistance?”
Mason terminated the call and pinned the gas pedal to the floor. From his experience, people who gave you short notice to be somewhere at a fixed time either intended not to wait beyond the allocated time or planned to be gone by the time you got there.
He hit the off-ramp onto Sheridan at the fourteen-minute mark, blew through the light, and sped to the south. The skeleton of a roller coaster reared up to his right from behind age-old maple trees. As soon as he saw the trademark hacienda entrance to the Lakeside Amusement Park, he cranked the wheel to the left and shot past the western edge of the park. The lake reflected the moon like a black mirror behind the cattails. He took the first entrance and parked in the lot. Leaped out of his car. Hurdled the gate. Sprinted into the darkness. The path leading to the playground was lined with mature blue spruces that minimized visibility. There were trees everywhere, in fact. It was the perfect place to set up an ambush, and this was definitely the kind of neighborhood where you could count on no one to have seen anything. But he had to take the chance.
The Extinction Agenda Page 11
