“Mr. Pantin, are you ready? Can I get you anything before we go on?”
Pantin looked at the pretty-eyed studio escort in the mirror, smiled at her sweetly, then said,
“I’m fine.”
chapter 87
Dark called Riggins from an FBI sedan headed south on I-95 at truly unsafe speeds.
“Riggins, I need a plane.”
“Steve? Is that you?”
Dark was surprised that his former boss’s voice wasn’t slurred. The day before Christmas Eve was traditionally a day to get shitfaced. Most federal employees were cut loose at noon; nonessential government business shut down. Riggins enjoyed this time of the year more than most. He tended to avoid his family and tried to drown out the holidays with as much vodka as possible. Usually in a motel room, just in case anyone tried to call to wish him Merry Christmas or some shit like that.
“I need a plane now.”
“A plane to where?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Can you get one, fueled and ready to go?”
With Damien Blair gone, so were the mighty resources of Global Alliance. There was no chain of command, no redundancies built into the team. That meant there was no money. No planes. No staff. No fancy motorcycle delivered to your doorstep in ninety minutes or less. Nothing. Without Damien, the remnants of the team—Dark, Natasha, and O’Brian—were on their own. So Dark called on the only resource he had left.
“Shit, Dark. Are you serious? Is this a hunch, or do you have something solid?”
“Labyrinth is in custody, but he has one attack left,” Dark said. “I have most of the pieces, but I need a little while to figure it out. In the meantime, I need a plane fueled and ready to take me to pretty much anywhere in the world.”
“You don’t ask for favors often. But when you do . . .”
“Where are you?”
“At home. What kind of threat, Dark? What’s going to happen?”
“The worst kind. The kind where thousands and thousands of people die.”
Dark couldn’t see Riggins, of course, but he could imagine him sitting up straight in whatever bar stool he happened to be squatting on. Tom Riggins was a fuckup in every area of his life except one: his job. Which was good, because he’d sacrificed everything else for that one thing.
“I think I can get a plane ready,” Riggins said. “But I need one thing from you.”
“What’s that?”
“I need you to rejoin my team.”
“Fuck, Riggins, are you serious? We got to do this now?”
“Give me that one last satisfaction before I’m through. That we can work together again. Just like we used to. When we were a team, we were unstoppable. You remember those days?”
Yeah, Dark remembered those days. All too well.
“You’re too drunk,” he said.
“I’ll sober up by the time you figure out our location.”
The minutes were slipping by. What choice did Dark have?
“Yeah. Fine.”
And with those words, Steve Dark rejoined Special Circs. Even if the division itself was about to be dismantled, and its head was too far gone to save his own job, let alone anyone else’s.
By the time Dark arrived at Philadelphia International, Riggins had made good on his word. Cashed in every last chip and borrowed a few more to arrange for a private jet loaded with enough fuel to take them halfway around the world.
The problem is—where? It could have been any place Labyrinth had visited in the past few months. But then Dark thought about Labyrinth’s grudge against his brother.
I can move anything I want to anywhere in the world, Blair had once boasted. No questions asked.
Damien and Julian Blair were practiced with the same skills. They knew how to fund, acquire, and ship any object to pretty much anywhere in the world.
Like a dirty nuke, to Global Alliance HQ.
chapter 88
DARK
“So what are we really up against?” Riggins asked.
They were on their way to Global Alliance HQ in a government SUV—also arranged by Riggins back in the United States. France’s General St. Pierre, who had coordinated with them on the Sqweegel case five years ago, felt enough gratitude to Riggins and Special Circs to loan them not only the vehicle and some weapons, but a small outfit from the Commandement des Opérations Spéciales to help secure Global Alliance HQ.
It was Riggins’s peculiar genius that he could arrange for an assault in Paris, using French special forces, without going through the usual channels. Because there wasn’t time to go through the usual channels—and the last thing he wanted was to spark an international panic.
Over the phone, interrupting the general’s Christmas Eve feast, Riggins had framed it simply: following up on a Labyrinth loose end.
“Labyrinth has been captured, correct?” General St. Pierre had asked. “I’ve been keeping one ear on the radio.”
“Yes, but he had a conspirator working inside Global Alliance.”
“Which is why Global Alliance does not want to send their own team to secure their own facilities. I understand.”
“Yeah,” Riggins had said, unable to help himself. “They called in Special Circs to give them a hand.”
Conveniently omitting the part about the possible nuclear weapon hidden in the catacombs under Paris.
But now the bullshitting was over, and Riggins wanted to know about the odds they were facing. For real.
“It’s not going to be pretty,” Dark said, then told him about Global Alliance HQ. Very few ways in and out. Guarded at all times by ex–special forces soldiers handpicked by Hans Roeding.
When he was dying, and Roeding spoke the words—
“Enter the maze.”
—he was preparing them with a secret code.
They would be prepared to fend off any invaders.
The last time Dark was here at Global Alliance HQ, he was escorted by these private guards, many of them mercs and black ops professionals. They were trained to fight fierce—and dirty. They had no idea what they’re protecting, and Dark suspected they didn’t care. Their paychecks were fat. They could not be reasoned with—not once a command was given.
The only way past them was to blitz them.
Riggins divided the French special ops guys into strike teams, then handed Dark a radiation detector. “Here. In case we all do make it past those guards alive.”
“How did you explain these to General St. Pierre?”
“Told him we suspected a Labyrinth agent may have poisoned the water down here.”
Before they parted, Dark put a hand on his mentor’s shoulder.
“Riggins,” Dark said, “listen, just in case . . .”
“Hey, save it for after we kill the bad guys and save Paris, okay?”
“Okay,” Dark said. But the words that were about to tumble out of his mouth weren’t exactly an apology. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Riggins for hiding the truth. Not that it mattered now, anyway—they could all be dead in a matter of minutes.
While Riggins led a team through the parking garage, Dark’s team assaulted the other weak link—the backup entrance at a sewer junction. Of course, led was a misnomer—Dark stayed behind the half-dozen soldiers as they stormed down the fetid and gunk-caked pipe, moving so quickly it was difficult to keep up with them. Dark wore body armor but insisted on carrying a Glock 19, the weapon he was most familiar with. No sense carrying an automatic weapon unless you’ve spent weeks upon weeks with it.
A French special ops leader whispered something and gestured with two fingers, but Dark did not have a chance to understand because within a fraction of a second the entire pipe was full of gunfire.
The Global Alliance mercs had not waited for the invaders to fire the first shot. They opened up a fusillade of bullets from the first hint of trouble in the pipe. No doubt they’d already radioed their teams guarding the other entrances.
Dark crouched down, waiting t
o take his shot—no use blasting away in the dark and smoke and confusion. A special ops soldier fell to his right, his forehead blasted open. Fuck. Dark stepped forward, saw a blur at the far end of the pipe. He squeezed the trigger, and followed the blur the best he could.
The brutal engagement felt like an eternity to Dark, and it occurred to him that maybe this is what it felt like when you were about to die—the last seconds of your life, elongated to almost infinity.
Then there was a horrible, eardrum-spiking blast and hot relentless fire in his face and then he realized this was it—this was death.
chapter 89
DARK
The Glock was still in his hand.
That was the first thing Dark was aware of when he regained his senses:
The Glock was still in his hand.
And there was movement all around him.
Someone pressed fingers to the side of his throat. Something else pressed up against his temple.
The barrel of a gun.
Opening his eyes would mean instant death. Death was going to come in a second anyway, because in one second the merc crouching down next to him would feel the beat of the blood in his carotid artery and then he would pull the trigger, blasting through skull and brain and that would be the end.
So Dark kept his eyes shut and squeezed the trigger, the bullet smashing through the sewage and into the merc.
A gunshot popped LOUD right next to his head—the merc squeezing off one last shot and missing by the slimmest of margins.
When Dark finally opened his eyes and scrambled backward until he reached the edge of the pipe, he saw the devastation all around him, and realized what had happened. Someone—either the mercs, or the French special ops—had set off a grenade. That was the only thing that could explain the horrible twisted bodies around him, and why Dark could hear no sound outside of the thundering of his own heart. Dark wondered if Labyrinth would find that amusing. Threaten to puncture a man’s eardrums, and karma pays you back.
Dark slowly rose from the bottom of the pipe and made his way forward. The face of his watch had been shattered, but if the time was still accurate, they had only three minutes left.
There was no sign of anyone else inside Global Alliance HQ. The mercs must have cut the power immediately and put the entire facility in lockdown mode. So here was Dark, mostly deaf and almost blind, looking for a container the size of a dirty nuke, somewhere down here. A weapon that could have been placed here God knows when—weeks? Months? Maybe even years ago? Julian Blair could have been spying on his own brother since the very beginning—since the moment he arranged for the use of this space.
Two and a half minutes now.
Dark unclipped the radiation detector from his belt and hit the power button. Nothing happened. He tried it again—nothing. Fucking no.
NO.
The radiation detector, which must have been damaged in the blast, was dead.
If Labyrinth could see Steve Dark now, he would surely be howling in delight. The one man who could stop him was now literally lost in the maze of his own making, blind and deaf and lacking the artificial sense that could save him, that could have saved them all....
Two minutes now.
Fuck it.
Dark would spend his last seconds on earth searching anyway.
Riggins was on the floor of Damien Blair’s office, sitting like a kindergartener, legs splayed. Dark saw the other radiation detector on the floor to Riggins’s right, as well as a steel box between his legs. He’d done it. He’d found the damned thing. Hidden all this time in a secret compartment under Blair’s own desk.
Brothers, to the last.
Riggins must have heard the movement and spun around with a gun in his hand. Sorrow washed over his face when he saw that it was Dark.
Now Dark could see the contents of the box—the most important being the digital timer, telling them there were only forty-seven seconds remaining.
Can you hear me? Riggins asked, gesturing to his own ears.
The words were muffled, but Dark nodded. Yeah, I can hear you.
Everybody else is dead, Riggins said. They died so that I could get in here. But what good is that? I have no fucking idea how to stop this thing.
Dark kneeled down next to his mentor and now saw how damaged he was. He’d taken at least one bullet, because blood was pooling around his legs. The smear on the floor told Dark that Riggins had literally crawled in here, fucking radiation detector in hand, hoping against hope to find the bomb.
And he had.
And there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.
Thirty-five seconds remaining.
You didn’t by chance take a course in any of this stuff, did you?
Gallows humor from Riggins. Dark looked into the box and saw, beneath the tangle of wires, a wooden maze. The kind you’d use in a lab experiment to test mice and their memories. Nothing fancy—probably something that a grad student labored to build over a long weekend, gluing the barriers and painting the wooden slats a neutral color. The timepiece was in the middle, at the heart of the labyrinth.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. I’ve been trying to work up the courage.
Nineteen seconds remaining.
Dark squeezed Riggins’s shoulder. Riggins lifted his gun from his lap. In Dark’s mind, he saw the gun continuing on a path straight to Riggins’s temple. Oh God no. Don’t do this. Not now, not like this—what the hell was the point?
Thirteen seconds remaining.
But instead, Riggins pointed the gun at the digital timer and squeezed the trigger.
chapter 90
DARK
On his way home from the airport, Dark stopped off at the
Grove to buy a dress for Christmas.
The actual holiday was seven days in the past, but Dark knew he couldn’t show up empty-handed.
The doll store at the Grove was three stories of pure unadulterated innocence—tiny cribs, bibs, accessories, and of course, outfits. The previous Christmas Dark had bought his daughter a doll on a whim. Little Sibby had loved it. Hugged it, refused to part with it the entire Christmas break. Since bringing Sibby back home to live with him, Dark had come back to the same store to buy more dolls, more accessories. He told himself that this was a way of telling Sibby that they’d have some kind of normal life. Buying things. Building a home for lost children. Only a madman would purchase so many things if he didn’t intend on keeping them around . . . right?
Even though Dark had come here often, he felt strange every time he stepped through the front door. Especially now with a loaded Glock weighing down his jacket pocket. The store was meant to be a throwback to a more innocent time—a safe haven for little girls to be little girls. There were even tea parties and fashion shows held here.
Dark, though, was glad that innocent times could still exist.
Thankfully, Riggins’s somewhat ill-conceived idea of taking his .45 to the timer and ignition system on the nuke worked. He shuddered at how close they had come. How close Labyrinth had been to destroying part of this world, to leaving Sibby without a father.
Though Labyrinth was no longer a threat, rioting and violence continued around the world. New Labyrinth copycat crimes sprung up on an almost daily basis in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, targeting the same “pillars” he was so intent on taking down: medicine, law, education, politics, art, and so on. Even more disturbing, ordinary citizens were increasingly vocal about blaming their governments for failing to stop the outbreaks. Which in turn emboldened Labyrinth acolytes to commit more acts of protest and violence.
Labyrinth had started a fire, and left the rest of the world to sift through the ashes. Even the United States wasn’t immune. Congressional hearings were kicking up, a lot of stones being unturned, and it sounded like nobody would be handing out slaps on the wrist anymore. Too many were watching, too many people were paying attention. And it was no longer just the threat of losing reelection. People were dying.
But the most vocal, of course, was Labyrinth’s “Other.”
Alain Pantin—the man who had been secretly mentored by Labyrinth himself under his guise of “Trey Halbthin.” There was some shock in European political circles after the link made headlines. But Pantin came forward and explained that while he regretted the link to such a vile killer, his views and message were the same. Governments and corporate leaders needed to be held accountable for their actions. The revolution may have been inflamed by a diseased mind, but that did not negate the need for a revolution.
Pantin was ultimately untouchable, because he’d done nothing wrong. Dark and Natasha had dug deep but could find no evidence that linked Pantin to any of the attacks. Some commentators even argued that Pantin was just another of Labyrinth’s victims—but continued to speak the truth even at great personal cost.
There was no personal cost, Dark realized. Pantin’s approval ratings were climbing daily, and his voice heard in more and more corners of the globe.
That’s what scared Dark the most. Labyrinth’s message, his cause, was still alive, still spreading.
How can you fight that? Dark wondered.
As he strolled out of the store, Dark’s mind turned to Natasha. She couldn’t make it for the holidays, but she’d be here in L.A. in just a few days’ time. She wanted to talk about the future of Global Alliance. Even with two members missing, it was still a force of good in the world.
Dark told her he’d have to think about that, then asked her if that was the only item on the agenda.
She told him,
“Well, let’s just say you and I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Later that night, New Year’s Eve, Sibby threw an impromptu tea party. She poured a pretend cup for Riggins, who was on their living room couch, his arm in a sling.
Dark Revelations Page 24
