Game of Shadows

by R. J. Patterson

  “I don’t want any law enforcement officers snooping around here. Two people dead on my property in the same day—and outspoken critics of mine in recent days—that’s not exactly a good look.”

  “And all it’ll take is one bulldog investigator to sink his teeth into these cases and we’ll never get free,” Besserman said.

  “I’m glad you understand and that we’re on the same page on this one,” Blunt said. “If someone came up here trying to dig up dirt on me, I’m sure they’d find some facts to twist and repackage and then sell them as the truth.”

  “We’ll handle it. Just get the hell outta there before the cleanup crew arrives. We don’t want your paths to ever cross.”

  “Got it. We’re leaving now. And, Bobby—”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got a question about something Wellington said.”

  “Fire away.”

  Blunt balled up his left hand and blew into it, warming it up. “Wellington suggested that Blue Moon Rising existed before we incorporated it. Do you know anything about that?”

  “There was another group before us, but it’s not the same. He was just trying to rattle your cage before he died. The world will remember him as the murderer and coward that he was.”

  “And you’re sure there’s nothing more to that case than what was in Captain Black’s personnel records?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Besserman said. “There could be more to it, but I’ve never heard any whispers about some cover up related to this story until recently.”

  “Wellington scolded us for exposing him, warning us that there was more to the story.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “He shot himself after that grand announcement,” Blunt said.

  “Don’t worry about it. He was just trying to get in your head.”

  Blunt sighed. “I’ll try to forget about it. But when I get back to Washington, we need to talk about how we’re going to handle this with the press.”

  “You’re right. We need to pass along some more stories about Wellington so everybody knows what kind of man he was.”

  “Agreed,” Blunt said. “I’ll contact you when I get there.”

  Blunt hustled back toward the house. When he entered, he found Black and Shields talking while standing just a few feet over Wellington’s dead body.

  “We need to move,” Blunt said. “A cleanup team is on its way, and we don’t need to be here when they get here.”

  “Who were you talking to?” Shields asked.

  “Besserman,” Blunt said.

  “Did you ask him about what Wellington said?” Black asked.

  “Yeah, and he essentially said that Wellington was full of it, just trying to rattle our cages.”

  “Now we need to go,” Blunt said.

  “But what about Dr. Matthews?” Shields asked.

  Blunt shrugged. “Who knows? We’re no closer to Dr. Matthews’s location today than we were when this entire mess started. He could be holed up in a basement in Washington just as easily as he could be tucked away in a research facility in St. Petersburg.”

  “Maybe not,” Shields said, holding up the small box that Antoine had passed off as his blood sugar monitor. “Did you check out this device Antoine was using to incapacitate everyone?”

  Blunt took the box and inspected it. “Is there something I should be looking for on this thing?”

  “Yeah, right there,” Shields said, pointing to the bottom of the mechanism. “It’s got the Colton Industries logo embossed on the casing.”

  Blunt inspected it more closely and then handed it back to Shields. “That’s a fake.”

  “A fake?”

  “It’s a knockoff. Someone is trying to throw you off,” Blunt said. “And it’s Dr. Aaron Matthews.”

  “Well that’s just wonderful,” Shields said. “That leaves us right back where we started.”

  Blunt pulled his cigar out of his mouth and grunted. “No, this is a clue. And I know exactly where he is.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Three days later

  Sillamäe, Estonia

  BLACK CLIMBED A SPRUCE TREE that ascended well above the cinderblock fence designed to keep prying eyes from seeing into the guarded space. The needle-laden branches provided sufficient cover for him as he peered inside the confines and tried to figure out the best approach to gain entry.

  What Black found was a loading dock that appeared abandoned, punctuated by rusted handrails and weathered concrete. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if Blunt knew what he was talking about with this one,” Black said over his coms.

  “I don’t see any activity from my views on the satellite feeds either,” Shields said.

  “No guards, no vehicles. It’s a virtual ghost town.”

  “Should I call Blunt and tell him his hunch was wrong on this one?”

  “Let’s give it some time,” Black said. “I’ll continue surveillance and see if we get any movement.”

  The reason they were Estonia in the first place seemed like a shot in the dark. When Blunt studied the ultrasonic device Antoine had used to incapacitate people, he noticed a piece of loparite, a rare earth element, embedded in the device. Blunt said during the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated one plant in Estonia that handled loparite, using it to help with the process of enriching uranium. Yet after Estonia gained its independence and the plant shuttered, the compound remained a suspected location for nefarious activity by the CIA, including black market uranium enrichment. Combined with the fact that the location wasn’t that far from where Antoine had lured them to in the first place, Blunt was convinced that was where Dr. Matthews was being held.

  A half-hour passed, and Black hadn’t seen any movement.

  “According to the intelligence report, there are only three guards inside,” Shields said. “But I’m beginning to think there aren’t any. Maybe we should just pack it in. Blunt won’t like it, but I think he got this one wrong.”

  “I think you might be—” Black said before stopping. “Hold on. I think I see something.”

  Black scanned the area below through his binoculars and noticed someone at the front perimeter fence, which led into the empty back parking lot. However, a small gate for pedestrians swung open and he ducked inside.

  “I’m watching it too,” she said.

  The man, who was carrying a briefcase, strode around to the back of the building and entered a number on a keypad beside a door. The door flew outward, and a guard with a machine gun slung over his shoulder glanced around the parking lot as he ushered the man inside.

  “Bingo,” Black said. “I’ve got the access number.”

  “At least we know there’s one armed guard,” Shields said. “Think this might be the right place now?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  Black shimmied down to the ground and climbed over the fence. He hustled up to the keypad and entered the number. Once inside, he was greeted by a musty smell and a dark corridor with flickering fluorescent lights. He trained his weapon in front of him as he moved forward.

  He turned left and found a set of stairs. Upon descending to the bottom floor, Black turned down the hallway and found a lab. He peeked through the glass window and found a half-dozen people clad in white coats, analyzing objects underneath microscopes, operating centrifuges, and recording results on clipboards. At the far end of the room, two armed men hovered over the workers.

  Black was still surveying the activity inside when a man rounded the corner and shouted at him in Russian. Without hesitating, Black shot the man twice, killing him.

  The gunfire attracted the attention of the two guards in the lab as they raced toward the door. Black sprinted around the corner and crouched low, waiting for them to emerge. As they did, he took them each out with a couple shots.

  Then everything fell eerily quiet.

  Black eased inside the lab door, where he was met by wide ey
es and slack-jawed faces.

  “Dr. Matthews?” Black asked as he scanned the room.

  One man raised his hand and stepped forward. “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

  Black shook his head. “No, I’m here to get you out.”

  “My invention didn’t kill anyone, did it?” Matthews asked.

  “Your invention?”

  “Night-Night, the ultrasonic device I built for that monster who’s kept me and all these other people here for the past couple of years.”

  Black nodded. “There’s one person who’s dead because of it—Antoine. Now, if anyone wants out of here, you need to come with me.”

  “And we need to hurry,” one of the scientists said. “Vladi will be back any time now.”

  “Vladi?” Black asked.

  The man nodded. “Yes, he’s the one who runs this place, and he always has at least two of this thugs with him.”

  “All right,” Black said. “Let’s go.”

  All the other researchers raced toward the door, except Matthews.

  “There’s something I need to do first,” he said, hustling over toward a supply closet. He started grabbing bottles and putting them on the table.

  “What are you doing?” Black asked. “We need to go.”

  “Acetone,” Matthews said, showing the label to Black. “I don’t want anyone getting their hands on this research.”

  “And what’s this going to do?”

  “It’s going to help burn this place to the ground, something that should’ve happened a long time ago.”

  Black helped Matthews douse the liquid all over the lab, while the other workers waited in the hallway.

  “Hurry up, Aaron,” one of the women called. “We need to go.”

  When they were finished, a faint smile spread around the corner of Matthews’s lips. “This has been a long time coming.”

  He pulled a zippo lighter out and tossed it into the room. Immediately, flames engulfed the entire area.

  “Go, go, go!” Matthews said, urging everyone up the stairs.

  Black was just about to join them when he heard a deep booming voice.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Vladi bellowed.

  Black poked his head around the corner to see a muscular bald man crinkling his nose as he stuck it in the air.

  “What’s that smell?” Vladi demanded.

  “Plug your ears,” Black said in a hushed tone. Then he activated the device he’d lifted off Antoine’s dead body. It only took a few seconds before Valdi and his two men were lying on the ground in a heap.

  After navigating around the bodies, Black led the hostages outside and through the pedestrian gate where Shields was waiting on the other side with a van. Everyone hustled inside without saying a word.

  Once they were situated, Matthews grabbed Black by the shoulder. “I was trying to destroy that technology. If that falls into the wrong hands—”

  “Then make sure it doesn’t,” Black said as he offered the mechanism to Matthews.

  He took it and studied it before stuffing it into his pocket. Matthews smiled for the first time since Black had laid eyes on the scientist.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how we found you?” Black asked.

  Matthews shook his head. “I don’t need to ask. I already know.”

  “You make sure you give your daughter a big hug when we arrive back home,” Shields said. “If it weren’t for her, we never would’ve gone looking for you again.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Matthews said. “She’s relentless.”

  Black leaned back in his seat and listened to the escapees share stories of survival as they expressed their relief over finally breaking out of what had become a virtual prison for them.

  This is why I do what I do.

  CHAPTER 38

  Two days later

  Washington, D.C.

  BLACK SIFTED THROUGH the reports on the conference room table with Shields, reviewing everything that had been written about the mission. The redactions barely made the documents readable, but they were necessary to satisfy the terms of Firestorm’s existence. When major operations on foreign soil were completed, a record of the group’s activities was required to protect them from scurrilous accusations, just like the ones the late Senator Wilson Wellington hurled at them.

  “Everything look good to you?” Blunt asked as he entered the room.

  Black slapped the table and nodded. “It looks perfect.”

  “Shields?” Blunt asked.

  “Looks good to me, sir,” she said.

  “In that case, we can consider this mission successfully closed.”

  “Finally,” Black said. “Were you there when Dr. Matthews was reunited with his daughter?”

  “That was an amazing moment,” Blunt said. “Made the past week worth it. I’m sorry you didn’t get to experience it with me.”

  “It’s the job,” Black said. “Nobody is supposed to know we exist. In fact, nobody is even supposed to know I’m alive.”

  “You did a good job of staying under the radar,” Blunt said. “I did have to do a little work with Besserman to make sure that your face was deleted from some closed-circuit footage when you weren’t in disguise. But your secret is still safe.”

  Black stacked the papers up and shoved them toward Blunt. “Speaking of Besserman, were you able to figure out anything regarding what happened with my father? Was Wellington telling the truth about there being something else?”

  “We’re still digging, but apparently there were some other personnel files of his that were actually destroyed,” Blunt said. “Besserman asked Mallory Kauffman to look into the disappearance of some other records that your father was indexed as mentioned in. However, they’re all gone. But we’ll keep looking. Something will pop up soon enough. Whoever was ultimately responsible for your father’s death will have to answer for what they did.”

  Black sighed. “Okay, thanks for all you’re doing. I just want justice for my dad.”

  “Me, too.”

  They concluded their meeting by discussing their next mission involving a commander who’d disappeared off the grid. Once they deconvened, Shields followed Blunt into the hall.

  “Want to go get a drink after work, maybe catch a game?” she suggested.

  “How about something a little more low key?” Black asked. “I wouldn’t mind the company, but I’m not keen on the idea of going back out in public again if I can help it.”

  “Your place this evening then?”

  “Sounds great.”

  Black finished up the rest of his day and then drove home. He thought about his father and the final excruciating moments of his life. While Black was sure there were more painful ways to die, getting dragged to death behind a truck driven by Taliban soldiers had to rank up there as one of the most humiliating.

  Feeling sentimental, Black retrieved a box of his father’s belongings and was digging through it when Shields knocked at the door. She came in carrying a six-pack of Black’s favorite IPA beer along with a bottle of wine.

  “This ought to help us take the edge off,” she said as she made a bee line for the kitchen.

  “After the past couple of weeks we’ve had, we need it.”

  Shields poured herself a glass of Merlot and then cracked open a bottle for Black before handing it to him. She glanced down at the articles and items strewn across the coffee table.

  “What’s all this?” she asked.

  “I just got to thinking about my dad and how I wished I would’ve gotten to know him better,” Black said. “Or know him at all, really. What happened to him almost feels like someone else’s story sometime, and I just wanted to reconnect with him a bit. And this is the only way for me to do it since my mom is gone too.”

  Shields sat on the couch and picked up a photo from Captain Black’s squadron. She studied the image closely and pointed out Wilson Wellington standing near the back.

  “There’s the murde
rer,” she said. “Seeing this image after knowing all we know is somewhat surreal.”

  Black sighed. “But what do we really know? That everything we’ve been told up to this point may not even be true? It’s frustrating to no end.”

  Black waved his hand dismissively, brushing up against the side of the box. It tipped over, the contents spilling out across the floor.

  A gold medal with a red, white, and blue ribbon clanked onto the floor. Shields scooped up the prize and handed it to Black.

  “What did he win this for?” she asked as she gave the object to him.

  He cocked his head to one side and inspected the inscription on the front for a moment. “To be honest, I have no idea.”

  As he went to place the medal back into the box, he shook it. Something rattled around inside.

  “What’s this?” he asked aloud.

  He fiddled with the back, which appeared to open somehow. After a few seconds of turning and twisting and pushing and pulling, the back popped off. Inside was a small piece of paper folded up several times. Black unraveled the note and read it aloud.

  “Call Myron Tillman,” Black said before mumbling the number to himself.

  “Who’s that?” Shields asked.

  “Beats me,” Black said.

  Then he flipped over the note. On the back, the words “Blue Moon Rising” was scribbled in pen.

  “This guy has the answers you’re looking for?” Shields asked.

  Black shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  He wanted to dial the number right away. Refusing to wait, he punched the number into his phone. After several rings, a pre-recorded message from the telephone company stated that the number Black had dialed was no longer in service.

  “If you feel you’ve reached this number in error . . .”

  “Now what?” Shields asked. “Want me to start digging into who this guy was and see if we can track him down today?”

  “Only if you want to,” Black said.

  “You know I love a good mystery.”

  “Of course, it may turn out to be nothing,” Black reminded her.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” she said, grabbing the note. “I’ll get to it in the morning.”