Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  Kuga walked across the room and back, avoiding the debris and broken glass. He stopped and stared out the window, hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  “Then we need to make sure each of those targets is covered.”

  “Oh yes,” said Santoro. “I will make those calls now.”

  CHAPTER 116

  SCANDIC BERLIN POTSDAMER PLATZ

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  Peggy Ann Gondek stood in the middle of the hotel room and looked around. She’d closed the door after bypassing the key card lock and stood now with a Snellig dart gun in her right hand. The Ruger SR22 was tucked into a discreet clip on her belt, hidden by a baggy cardigan. She also had a double-edged stiletto strapped to her left forearm under her sleeve.

  The closets and bureau drawers were empty, room curtains and blackout drapes drawn, bed messed. A small laptop lay on the desk.

  She walked into the bathroom and surveyed the damage. The shower curtain was torn from almost all the rings, the plastic slashed. What was left of the mirror lay in glittering pieces on the tiled floor, each piece smeared with red. There were two words written in what she was absolutely certain was blood, scrawled on the wall.

  Umbra.

  Tenebris.

  “Darkness,” she murmured.

  Mrs. Gondek set her dart gun on the closed toilet seat lid and knelt. Something about the broken, red-smeared mirror troubled her, so she squatted down and took the pieces and began reassembling them. As she did so, what had originally appeared to be just smears formed two more words. They were written in a similar, but slightly different hand.

  The words broke her heart.

  The words terrified her.

  Save me.

  PART 6

  A SHADOW IN THE EAST

  The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.

  —BODHIDHARMA

  Instead of a man of peace and love, I have become a man of violence and revenge.

  —HIAWATHA

  CHAPTER 117

  BERLIN AIRPORTCLUB LOUNGE

  BERLIN BRANDENBURG AIRPORT

  Peggy Ann Gondek sat primly in a padded chair in a corner of the lounge where she could easily see the other customers coming and going. She had a tall glass of iced coffee on the table beside her and the colorful coils of a scarf trailing from her busy knitting needles. Like many travelers, she wore a Bluetooth headset. People smiled at her, and she beamed back at them. Not a smile of invitation, merely pleasant.

  Whenever someone came close enough to hear her quiet voice, she changed the subject to talk about stitches. Garter, purl, stockinette stitches as well as moss stitches, ribbing, and the basket weave stitches. She knew how to pitch her voice so that any subject could sound dreadfully dull, even knitting, which was her passion. People generally did not want to sit within earshot and listen to her drone on and on about it.

  “Alone again,” she said as another person decided somewhere else was tranquiller and less lethally dull. “Is he available yet?”

  “Hold on,” said a woman with a distinctly Brooklyn accent, and a moment later, a man’s voice spoke on the line.

  “Were you able to determine where our friend is heading?” asked Mr. Church.

  “Oh yes,” said Peggy Ann. “Timișoara, in Romania. His flight leaves in a little over an hour.”

  “Can you be on the same flight?”

  “Not a chance, dear heart,” she said. “He got the last seat. Who would have thought so many people wanted to go to Timișoara?”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “I’m on standby for another flight,” said Peggy Ann.

  Mr. Church paused for a moment, then said, “Will you be able to locate him in Timișoara?”

  “Oh, honey, of course.”

  “Let Bug know if you need any additional resources.” And the call ended.

  “Well,” said Peggy Ann to herself as she continued working on the scarf, “and a pleasant good afternoon to you, too.” She shook her head. “Not even a proper goodbye. Hmph.”

  She worked for another ten minutes, finishing the row, and then packed up her things and headed down to find her gate.

  CHAPTER 118

  HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

  TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

  I had another blackout.

  Another day lost to the Darkness.

  I have dim memories only of going to the airport. I had to search my pockets for the boarding pass I used. It told me I was in Romania.

  Why Romania?

  My hand hurt, and I realized it was bandaged. Somehow I’d cut the side of my fist. Had that happened at the processing plant?

  No, I didn’t think so.

  I looked around. This was a nice hotel room, but which hotel? There was a directory of numbers attached to the phone, and it gave the name of the hotel and my own room number.

  Seeing that information began a process that had now become familiar. Details floated back, often without context, and I struggled to make sense of them. I had four different room key cards. They were laid out on the desk, and it took some effort to fish inside my broken head for what they represented. Not sure if that process took five minutes or an hour. All I know is that understanding came, slowly and reluctantly. These were keys for other rooms I’d booked.

  Then I jolted.

  “Ghost…?” I called.

  But there was nothing. No sound. I ran into the bathroom, looking in the closets, under the bed, but Ghost was not in that room.

  Panic tried to punch its way out of my chest.

  I found my shoes and put them on. Found a gun. A Snellig. How in the fuck did I get that through customs? Nothing made sense, and the thought that I—in my fugue state—had either abandoned Ghost or …

  I couldn’t go there.

  I grabbed the room keys, tucked the gun into my waistband, and ran into the hall.

  “Ghost,” I sobbed. “No…”

  CHAPTER 119

  THE PAVILION

  BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

  STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  Mia Kleeve huddled in a treetop with Belle.

  It was midday, and the Fixers were creating thunder with live fire drills. A third of them were in body armor and a dozen in the K-110 fighting machines. During the night, they’d received intel from Scott Wilson about what the science team had been able to piece together. It was truly terrifying.

  The two women, though hidden and unsuspected by the enemy, were shaken to their cores. As was Andrea, who was at his post on the far side of the camp. His bird drones sent images to them and to the TOC.

  “God, I wish we could just call in a strike,” muttered Mia. “Drop a fuel-air bomb and just erase this whole place.”

  “I am in harmony with that, Magpie,” said Belle.

  “Plan B would be to just go in and cut some throats.”

  “Again, this is a good plan.”

  They smiled at each other, though both of them knew neither plan was ever going to be approved. Knowing part of what the enemy was doing was not enough. Sure, a powerful and direct military action could take out this camp, even with the Fixers and their fighting suits and body armor. But what if this wasn’t the only camp? What if this was only one of many such camps? What if taking this place out would cause the other camps to go into hiding? What then?

  The answer to each question was the same.

  And it was a terrifying answer.

  CHAPTER 120

  HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

  TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

  I found him in the last hotel room.

  Of course not the second or third. The fourth.

  I opened the door and there he was. On the bed. Unmoving.

  My heart sank.

  “No!” I cried and ran to him, flung myself onto the mattress and pulled him to me. He came. Limp, boneless, eyes half-open, tongue lolling.

  I pressed my head to his chest, praying that for once
the universe wasn’t that completely cruel. Kill me. Don’t hurt Ghost. He’s a dog. Dogs are pure love. They are mean if we make them mean, and they’re not if we love and care for them.

  I listened to the vast nothing inside his chest.

  And then …

  The slow, steady thump … thump … thump.

  It was only later—much later—after holding him for a long time, that I found the fragments of the Sandman dart pasted to the fur on his shoulder.

  Where I, in my deepest darkness, had shot him.

  CHAPTER 121

  ARKLIGHT SAFE HOUSE

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  Toys stood looking out the window, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped, head bowed.

  “You’ve been there for hours,” said Violin. “Come and sit. Have some breakfast.”

  He shook his head.

  Harry, who was at the stove pushing globs of eggs, onions, and diced potato around a pan, leaned close to her and in a confidential tone said, “What’s his beef? He doesn’t even like Joe.”

  “Hush, Harry,” she said and walked out of the kitchen and went to stand by Toys.

  After a few minutes, he said, “If you’re going to give me a lecture, don’t.”

  “Why would I lecture you?”

  He turned his head and looked at her.

  Violin had her long dark hair up in a loose bun and wore a baggy sweatshirt that made her slim body look thinner than it was. She wore no makeup, and that aged her, revealing tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Toys had no idea how old she actually was. There were rumors that she was well into her fifties, though she looked—at most, even in the unforgiving sunlight pouring in through the window—about thirty. Her mother, Lilith, had the same timeless quality and could reasonably be guessed at forty, fifty, or sixty; though Junie said she’d heard that Lilith was quite a bit older. Good genes? Or something else? He wasn’t sure.

  For his part, he felt his years. He was not yet thirty-five and felt ninety. His twenties had been spent doing harm to the world, and his thirties were, so far, some kind of holding action. FreeTech had given him purpose, but it also bored him to tears.

  He said, “You would have laughed if you’d been there when I appealed to Church about getting back into the field. God, I was so righteous about it.”

  “You must have been convincing.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said bitterly, “I convinced him that somehow I, of all people, would be able to find Ledger and bring him back safe and sound.”

  “Well,” she said with a wry smile, “you did find him.”

  “And he bloody well shot me.”

  “Be happy he used a dart gun.”

  “Tell me, have you ever been shot with Sandman?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not exactly fun.”

  “Joe is capable of doing much worse.”

  Toys snorted. “Frankly, darling, I think I’d have preferred a beating.”

  Cars passed as people left their homes to go to work. The sight of that normalcy, that ordinary life, made him sad.

  “Look at them,” he said, “everyone hurrying to get to their cubicles or their shops. Getting the kiddies off to school. Thinking about picking up dry cleaning at lunch and going to the pub for a cold one after work with their mates. Maybe a PTA meeting or helping the kids with homework.”

  “They,” said Violin, “are who we fight to protect.”

  He leaned his forehead against the glass, which was cool despite the sunlight. “I never had that. Not even as a kid. Always got knocked around at home. Started getting into trouble when I was eleven, and it only ever got worse. Then I fell in with Sebastian Gault, and that turned out to be a right shit show.” He sighed and straightened. “When I was in that life, I loathed those people. Truly hated them. Held them in the highest contempt for being what they were. Ordinary. Nothing was more unappealing to me. Then Ledger blundered into my life. And Church. That unnerving bastard Church. And … Junie.”

  “She thinks the world of you.”

  “She shouldn’t.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  He avoided her eyes. “Because I’m not worthy of anyone’s admiration, or fondness, or kindness. Those people out there? Even the most boring, mundane, mindless worker bee is worth fifty of me. A hundred.”

  “You are valuable to the war.”

  “The war is the war,” he said, echoing one of Church’s favorite sayings. “Yes. I’m a good killer, so that makes me valuable as a person.”

  “We’re both killers, Toys,” said Violin. “And I have considerably more blood on my hands than you do.”

  “Are you so sure about that?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I am.”

  He turned to study her.

  “That sounds like a longer conversation than we have time for now.”

  “Yes, and perhaps it’s one we’ll never have. Time will tell.” She paused. “So where are you going with your self-loathing? I mean … I don’t want to sound callous, but are you going anywhere with this?”

  He laughed. “Nowhere of use, that’s for sure.”

  Violin folded her arms and leaned against the wall beside the mirror.

  “Tell me something…”

  “Sure.”

  “Would it help if I were to slap the self-pity off you? Or would you prefer to go upstairs and flagellate yourself for a while? I can braid a rope and cake it in rock salt.”

  He stared at her for several long seconds.

  “Dear god,” he said, “I’m actually whining, aren’t I?”

  Violin held her fingers up half an inch a part. “Just a little.”

  Toys looked up at the ceiling, and then he burst out laughing. After a moment, Violin joined him. In the kitchen, Harry—who was a good way into burning the eggs—glanced over his shoulder and wondered what the heck was so funny. They were still laughing when the smoke alarm went off.

  Which made them laugh even harder.

  CHAPTER 122

  HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

  TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

  I sat with Ghost all through the day and into the night. Even when, deep inside his drugged sleep, he peed the bed. It got all over me, but I didn’t care. He could bite my face off, and it would be less than I deserved.

  And yet, when he finally woke up, he looked up at me with those big, liquid brown eyes and gave a sad, apologetic wag of his tail. He whimpered and pressed his muzzle against me. Asking for my forgiveness for whatever wrong he’d done to deserve what I’d done to him.

  I don’t know that I have ever felt more ashamed of anything in my entire life.

  I held him and rocked him, and then I carried him into the shower, sat down fully dressed in the stall with him, and let the water rain down. He licked water and tears from my face.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  And I said it a thousand times.

  CHAPTER 123

  ARKLIGHT SAFE HOUSE

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  Toys was shaving in the upstairs bathroom when his cell phone rang. It was Church. He took a steadying breath before answering.

  “Look,” Toys said instead of hello, “before you tell me what a failure I am, let me—”

  “Save it,” said Church. “Tell Violin her jet is fueled and waiting for the three of you.”

  “What? Why? To go where?”

  “Romania,” said Church. “Mrs. Gondek thinks she’s found Ledger.”

  “I—”

  “No time,” said Church. “Go.”

  CHAPTER 124

  RTI SAFE HOUSE

  KRAMPENBERGER STRASSE

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  Otto Jäger was not a happy man.

  Partly because he was deeply embarrassed. He had been in various covert ops groups for thirteen years and had worked with Aunt Sallie and Mr. Church for much of that time, following seven years in the Deutsches Heer, where he’d been a stabsfeldwebel, and one of distinction. Being appointed the in-country
liaison to Rogue Team International had been a big thing, a sign of trust, and a position of which he was rightly proud.

  And then Joe Ledger had knocked on the door and shot him with a Sandman dart. Just like that. There wasn’t even a good brawl to look back on. No one would have expected him to win such a fight, but at least the anecdote would be better. In the right circles, he could dine out on tales of a knockdown bout of fisticuffs with the legendary Colonel Joe Ledger.

  But no. Just a dart. Not even a conversation. Ledger had not gone so far as to show him the courtesy of a cover story or even a simple greeting. The door opened and the lights went out. Jäger woke on the couch with a blanket over him and a nice pillow under his head.

  So, Otto Jäger was not particularly cheerful.

  What made things worse was now Mr. Church, Scott Wilson, and the others at Phoenix House were being nice to him. Nice. He was getting emails from staff members asking if he was okay.

  He spent most of the day wandering around the safe house cursing Joe Ledger and everyone in his family going back seven generations.

  Inventorying what Ledger stole was his ostensible job, but that only took ten minutes. Now he had to “rest and feel better, old chap,” as Wilson had said three times.

  “Leck mich am arsch,” he snarled, and wished he had a picture of Ledger—and maybe one of Scott Wilson—that he could piss on. Or wipe his ass with.

  When he heard a knock on the door while making coffee, he froze.

  Was it him again?