Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  “One last thing,” she said. “From this moment on, you’re going to stop being who you were, and you’ll become my team. I’ll give you new combat call signs, and you’ll use them 24–7 from now on. Spiro, you’re Cain. Bobby, you’re Abel.” She gave them each a biblical first name. “You answer to me and only me. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” they shouted.

  “That means you’ll do whatever I say whenever I say it. No arguments, no complaints, no questions. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “You’ll still be Fixers, but you are my Fixers. You’re the Righteous. Let me hear you say that and mean it.”

  “We are the Righteous,” they said, tripping only slightly on that.

  “No, boys, say it like you mean it,” said Eve, giving them a dazzling smile. “Say it like you love me.”

  “We are the Righteous!” they roared.

  And each and every one of them said it like they loved her.

  CHAPTER 58

  VAN DIJK BIOMECHANICA

  ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

  The barking dog woke him.

  And nearly killed him.

  The man saw the headlights coming toward him without any understanding of where he was or why he was driving.

  Reflexes took over. No hesitation, no panic.

  His hands moved on the wheel, one foot on the brake, the other on the gas. Adjusting, compensating, avoiding by inches. The Doppler wail of the truck horn scolding him as the semi blew past, rocking the car.

  Then the road ahead was clear. No oncoming nights. Nothing at all except a wash of pale moonlight over the asphalt and headlights on road signs.

  They were all in Dutch. Well … Dutch and English.

  That made no sense. Why were Italian road signs in Dutch?

  He slowed to a stop and looked around. He was on a country road. Two lanes. The billboard beside advertised a Burger King four kilometers away, but the street address was in Rotterdam.

  “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  In the back seat, the dog barked again. Just once. A hungry bark.

  The man realized that he was hungry, too. Starving, actually.

  With only that as a destination, he stepped on the gas and drove.

  He remembered ordering food. Remembered opening three burgers for Ghost. Remembered eating while sitting in a darkened parking lot of a closed factory.

  Thoughts drifted out of the shadows, and he grabbed at them, hoping to puzzle them together, to form some kind of picture. Hoping for coherence and cohesion, for insight.

  He remembered faces and names. Some of them. Engelbrecht, Bishlow, Fong, Orlando, Barbaneagra, Kaschak, Jones. Others.

  Names belonging to dead faces. No. Not all. Some, he was certain, were still alive. Had that been circumstance or mercy? He couldn’t be sure. Not on any level of his awareness.

  And information. So much of it. Cybernetics, chemical therapies, something called a K-110, militia groups, explosives, implants, chips. Something else, too. He spoke that last thing aloud.

  “The American Operation.”

  Hearing it aloud triggered something, but not the right thing. No details. Merely dread.

  “The American Operation,” he said again and looked at Ghost as if the dog were able to fill in the details. Ghost looked up from a burger that he was eating with great delicacy, and for a moment, those dark brown eyes softened. Became wet. Which made his own eyes burn with unshed tears.

  “What’s happening to me?” asked the man. “What’s happening to us?”

  Suddenly, there was nothing else in the conscious part of his mind as the darkness inside overwhelmed the darkness outside the car.

  He did not notice the hundreds of night birds lined up along the edges of the building’s roof or strung out along the telephone lines.

  CHAPTER 59

  HAMLET OF ARBATAX

  TORTOLÌ, PROVINCE OF NUORO

  Michael Augustus Stafford walked slowly through the ruins of the mansion on the cliff.

  Everything that could break appeared to have been deliberately and viciously smashed. The furniture was slashed, as were the expensive paintings on the wall. He paused in front of a rather nice modernist painting by Dino Basaldella that had to have sold for north of fifty thousand. Now it was tatters. Worthless to anyone. And a number of Auguste Moreau bronzes, each of them signed, were broken or bent out of shape. Clearly, they had been used to do some of the damage in the room. And some of the damage to the staff.

  The bodies of the victims were all gone now, but Stafford had photos on his cell phone to match against the dried bloodstains on the carpet, tiles, and walls. Hundreds of shell casings still littered the floor, and bullet holes pocked every possible surface. One round had punched a neat hole through a blue-and-white Yuan dynasty vase without shattering the whole thing. A low-caliber, high-powered round, he judged. He had a couple of boxes of Stinger 22 LR rounds at home that could have done that. It was interesting, though. He was a collector of art and felt a twinge for the lost treasures. But he was more impressed with the amount of damage and the skill insinuated by it.

  According to the police report, there had been one intruder and a dog.

  “You’re a madman, Ledger,” he said aloud. “Can’t wait to meet you.”

  He walked through the place, following the logical path of destruction. Even with sound suppressors and the element of surprise, Ledger must have been moving at incredible speed. Sure, the guards probably thought this place too inaccessible and too tough a nut to crack, and maybe that made them a little lazy, but once the shooting started, they’d have gotten up to speed quickly enough. They were pros.

  And Ledger had killed them all.

  In the military, that’s called having a John Wayne day. But even so … even with the breaks going his way, the sheer enormity of all this was incredible.

  He wondered if he could have done it. This would be at the upper range of anyone’s skill set.

  When he reached the master suite at the top of the house, he stopped in the doorway and stared. It looked as if someone had attached a fire hose to a tank full of dark red paint and then cut loose. Stafford tried to do the math on the blood spatter and still came up short.

  What had happened here?

  Stafford knew that Ledger had been pushed all the way to the edge by what Santoro had done to his family. Okay, there was the edge, but this was past that. And that called to mind a whole raft of Nietzsche quotes, and as he walked into the room, he spoke them aloud, fitting each like puzzle pieces to Ledger’s fractured psyche.

  “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

  That was often not true, as Stafford knew. Santoro proved that with virtually everyone he went to work on. Most people crumble under a certain level of pressure. And even if they survive, they’re crippled by their own immutable awareness of how fragile and powerless they truly are.

  But when that statement was true, in those rare cases, then it was a cosmic verity.

  Santoro had tried to break Ledger’s heart and mind and will, but instead, he’d made him into this. Into a monster.

  Maybe Santoro didn’t understand that. He’d won so often with people, broken the unbreakable, that he’d lost perspective.

  “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

  Santoro—and possibly Kuga—were drinking their own Kool-Aid, believing the hype that was scaring the piss out of the tourists in the business.

  He walked through the room, seeing the blood, matching it to the bodies in his photos. This was where the last stand had been.

  “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

  The Christmas Eve slaughter had been Ledger’s abyss, and he’d looked way too close. He’d become a monster. An actual monster.

  Staff
ord stopped by the wall over the bed. It was smeared with thick blood that had now dried to the color of bricks. He studied it in exactly the same way he studied the brushstrokes of Van Gogh, Paul Wright, and Philippe Pasqua. There was so much to learn from the way an artist applied his brush, or knife, or fingers.

  This was artwork.

  Of a kind.

  There were strokes within it. Fingers had played on this wall, moving through the red, running blood even as the corpses lay cooling around the room. Even as the smell of death permeated the air.

  “There is always some madness in love,” he said. One of Nietzsche’s less frequently quoted insights. “But there is also always some reason in madness.”

  So, what then, was the reason in this madness? What was Ledger saying to himself, or about himself?

  He did not believe that it was a cry for help. Nothing as weak as that, or as pedestrian. And yet there was a message here. He could feel it.

  Stafford walked around the room, looking at the big smear from a dozen angles. Finally, he turned out the lights and used his cell to shine a bright blue-white beam at the swirls from several different angles.

  And that’s when he saw them.

  Two words were smashed together, written in a fit of rage, the letters colliding, violating one another, bursting through each other.

  Umbra.

  Tenebris.

  Two Latin words.

  Each casting a different meaning but inextricably linked. Bound together by the intended meaning here.

  He spoke the translated word aloud.

  “Darkness.”

  It made him shiver.

  It made him smile.

  CHAPTER 60

  PHOENIX HOUSE

  OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

  Church tapped on the open door of Bug’s office.

  “Word is that you have something for me,” he said.

  “Maybe I do.”

  Church closed the door, and Bug activated the lockout system.

  “Still no actual sightings of Joe,” said Bug, “but what I’m calling discovery via circumstantial evidence.”

  Church sat. Bug opened a drawer and removed a package of vanilla wafers and handed it to him. Church smiled and opened it, selected one, and bit off a piece. He brushed crumbs from his tie.

  “Enlighten me,” he said.

  “Last night someone broke into a sport boat rental company in Singita Miracle Beach in Malta and stole something called a gommoni.”

  Church nodded. “That’s a commercial version of the RHIB.” The rigid-hull inflatable boats were used by both military and private sportsmen because they were fast, light, and extremely durable. “And you think this was our missing friend?”

  “Yup. All their security cameras seemed to malfunction at the same time.”

  “Funny how that keeps happening.” Church took another bite, chewed, then asked, “Where is Mrs. Gondek?”

  Peggy Ann Gondek was a semiretired field agent who had worked with Church and Aunt Sallie in the days before the DMS. She was part of a network of associates whom Church trusted and occasionally employed.

  “Her flight touched down in Rome three hours ago. I’ve sent her the relevant information. She said she’ll try to work up a list of possible targets. Her horseback guess is that Joe got a lead on some black market stuff right there in Rome and may have swiped the boat to go out to someone’s yacht, or maybe a freighter taking whatever Kuga’s selling. Second guess would be one of the biotech labs in either Rome or Naples. There are five on our watch list. And then there’s the bioweapons broker in Sardinia, but his place is a fortress, so Joe might leave that to us or the Crociati. It would take a small army for that gig.”

  The Crociati—Crusaders—were an Italian rapid response team modeled after the UK’s Barrier and Church’s former group, the DMS.

  “So, my money’s on one of the targets right there in Rome.”

  “One more thing,” said Church. “Have you made any progress on whatever Kuga might be planning in America?”

  “Progress is an ugly word,” said Bug. “I’ve been noodling around on some dark web sites, and all I can find so far is that one of Kuga’s black market crews moved some weapons into the U.S. via trucking routes from Canada. Don’t have manifests, but it’s a fair amount. And, before you ask, I had MindReader poke around in surveillance logs from the CIA, DoD, and Homeland, but there’s no indication of any nuclear materials. My guess is it’s guns and ammo.”

  “Being sold to whom?”

  Bug fished around in the mess of papers on his desk, found a pair of stapled pages, and handed them to Church.

  The big man scanned the lists. “These are mostly militia groups. Some very far out on the political fringe.”

  “All with avowed nationalistic politics. Bunch of ’em are white supremacists, too.”

  “But not all,” mused Church.

  “No. Doesn’t mean much except they’re buying from the same vendor. Kuga’s undercutting everyone else’s prices.”

  “Put Nikki Bloom on this,” said Church. “Her whole team. There’s a pattern in here, and we’re not yet seeing it.”

  Bug glanced up at him. “You think there really is something big brewing?”

  “I do.”

  “Any idea what?”

  “No. That’s why I want Nikki on it. Nobody finds a pattern better than she does.”

  “Agreed. I’ll go over this with her right away.” He paused. “Is this on the same level of hush-hush as tracking Joe?”

  “No. Brief Scott on it as well.”

  “Okeydokey.”

  “This is all very good work, Bug.” Church stood up. “You know that I appreciate all that you do.”

  Bug smiled faintly. “You don’t need to say it.”

  “I do,” said Church, “and should probably say it more often.”

  With that, he left the office.

  CHAPTER 61

  VAN DIJK BIOMECHANICA

  ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

  “Tell me about the American Operation,” said the man. “I won’t ask again.”

  The scientist backed away, his feet slipping in the blood. He wanted to turn, to run, but the dog stood there by the exit to the stairs, and the big man with the knife was between him and the main door. The scientist’s name was De Vries. He was corrupt, and willingly so. He was bought and owned and content with that. He was also trapped.

  “Please…,” he mewled.

  “I can make you tell me,” warned the big man. “You know I can.”

  The knife was red, and the hand holding it was scarlet to the wrist. All around the room was evidence of what the knife could do and what the man was willing to do.

  If this man was really a man at all.

  There was something wrong about him.

  He seemed to be darker than anyone should be, given the bright fluorescent lights. And there was something in his face, in his eyes. They seemed to burn, to give off real heat.

  I’m going mad, thought De Vries.

  “If you tell me,” said the man, “I may let you live.”

  The scientist’s back thumped against the wall. “Wh-what?”

  “You heard me. It’s the one chance you have. The only chance.”

  The man was so close now. De Vries held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, a plea for mercy. He knew who this man was. Everybody in the network was talking about him, yelling about him, screaming about him. The insane American and his dog. Colonel Joe Ledger and Ghost. Monsters, both of them.

  Ledger stepped very close now and placed the blade of the knife against De Vries’s cheek. The flat, not the edge. It was almost a caress, almost tender, but in the worst possible way.

  “You’re him,” gasped De Vries. “You’re Ledger.”

  That made the American smile.

  But it was not a good smile. No, not at all. There was death in that smile. There was hell in it.

  “Joe Ledger isn’t here right now,” said the man.
“I am.”

  “I … I don’t understand…”

  “Tell me while you still have a tongue.”

  De Vries felt his bladder go. A moment later, his sphincter failed as well. Then his knees. He thumped down to the floor, his trousers filled with piss and shit.

  He could not look at Ledger. He dared not look away. So De Vries closed his eyes, squeezing them shut. He jammed his balled fists against his head.

  And he told the monster everything he knew.

  He talked for a long, long time.

  When he was finished, when there were no more follow-up questions, De Vries toppled over and curled into a ball on the floor. Waiting for the knife.

  Waiting for the pain.

  He lay there for a very long time.

  So long. He felt as if his mind and body—perhaps even his soul—were shutting down. Preparing to be ended. Preparing to meet God. Or the devil. He prayed to saints whose names he had thought he’d forgotten. To a god he had abandoned before he’d entered university. He wept, and he prayed.

  Perhaps he even slept.

  When he finally summoned the courage to open his eyes, he was alone.

  Completely alone.

  With the awareness of having soiled himself. With the knowledge of how deep his betrayal had run.

  Alone with the bodies of everyone he worked with.

  Alone.

  But alive.

  CHAPTER 62

  THE PAVILION

  BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

  STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  Top and Bunny didn’t have long to wait.

  A door opened in the closest of the small buildings, and two women came out. It surprised the men to see that one of the women was Jill Hamilton-Krawczyk—HK—and from her broad smile, it was obvious she enjoyed the surprise. She wore a different blue diamond, this one a pear-shaped cut of at least four carats, and half-carat stud earrings. She wore a billed cap in the same shade as her diamonds.