Tears of God (The Blackwell Files Book 7)

by Steven F Freeman

Silva unfastened the top button of her blouse and sauntered over to the desk. “Hi, there. Could you take a few pictures of me?” She grasped her cellphone in a languid hand.

  The man stared at Silva’s cleavage and grinned. “Yeah. I’d be happy to.”

  Silva walked over to the lobby’s far wall. “I like this mural. Can you take it here?”

  The Bulldog waddled after her. “Yeah. I’ll take as many as you want.” He practically licked his lips.

  As Silva began to pose, her eyes darted to Mallory, then to the main entrance. The Bulldog’s attention was riveted on the posing beauty.

  “Let’s go,” murmured Mallory to Mastana. “She’ll join us in a minute.”

  After five minutes of waiting in the dark, Mallory decided the time had come to send a rescue text. She fired off a brief message.

  Silva appeared a minute later. “That was just in time. I thought he was going to ask me to pose nude.”

  “We can’t stand out here,” said Mallory. “This is where they’ll come to look for us. Let’s go behind that shed they use to store their lawnmowers, the one to the right of the employee cafeteria. We can hide there while we decide what to do.”

  They set out without delay. After moving to the rear of the security building, they angled off the sidewalk in a diagonal route across the grass. Within three minutes, they crouched down between the shed and an adjacent electrical box. It wasn’t a prize-winning hiding place, but it would do for a few minutes.

  “Where do we go now?” whispered Mastana. “We don’t have the passcode device any more. Alton had it before he was captured.”

  “Which means Safi has it,” said Mallory.

  “That gets back to Mastana’s question of what to do,” said Silva. “I say we probe the entrances to the perimeter wall to see if any of the guards abandoned their post to join the search for Bravo team. If we go now, we might find one of them unmanned or at least staffed by only one person.”

  “And then what?” said Mallory. “Try to overpower them? We have no weapons except our knives.”

  Silva shrugged. “We can’t scale the wall. What do you suggest?”

  “I have an idea,” said Mallory, rising from their hiding place. “Follow me.”

  In the shadows near the guarded perimeter entrance, Mallory poked her head above the shrubbery that provided a bit of concealment for her team. She squinted in the direction of the Menagerie. Four or five DTI pickup trucks were parked in a haphazard fashion around the building’s eastern entrance. A crowd of at least a dozen guards milled around the vehicles.

  Fortunately, no one seemed to show any concern for the perimeter entrance. Besides those congregating around the trucks, no other guards occupied the ground between the Menagerie and here.

  Mallory squatted back down. She looked at Mastana. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes. I am…a little scared. But I think it is the right thing to do.”

  “Good,” said Mallory. “Why don’t we both go?”

  The teen nodded.

  “We’ll keep our eyes on the Menagerie,” said Mallory to Silva. “You watch for anyone coming from the south.”

  “Roger.”

  Mallory and Mastana emerged from behind the bush and crept along the wall until they skirted the halo of light cast from the entrance’s central floodlight.

  The guard stood outside the shack, craning his neck in the direction of the Menagerie.

  “Kevin!” called Mastana.

  He spun around in the direction of her voice. “Sharbat! Is that you?”

  “Um…yes.”

  “Any idea what’s going on over there?”

  “That is what I came to talk to you about.”

  “You know? Come tell me!” cried Kevin. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Kevin…it is hard to explain, but can you come over here for a minute?”

  His eyes looked troubled, but he complied with the request. After closing to a distance of a meter or two, he nodded in greeting at Mallory. “So, what’s up?”

  A light breeze blew against the wall for a moment while no one spoke.

  “I need to tell you some things,” said Mastana at last, “things I wish I could have told you before. Your director says he is trying to make a new drug to help people in pain.”

  “Yeah, the Razor project. What about it?” Kevin seemed to sense Mastana’s unease.

  “His name is not Delatam Tahir, as he claims. His true name is Farid Safi. He is an evil man who is working on a secret project to make poisons. When her father discovered this project,” she said, gesturing to Mallory, “Safi had him killed.”

  “Wait,” said Kevin, his eyebrows bunched in confusion, “how do you know all this? Unless—”

  “I see you perceive the truth. My real name is Mastana Dunlow. Her name is Mallory Blackwell. She is a friend but is not my mother. My father, David Dunlow, is one of three prisoners being held in the Menagerie.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Is that what all the commotion is about over there?’

  “Yes.”

  “Why are they being held? What were they doing? What are you doing here?” His expression hardened.

  “The same thing Mallory’s father was trying to do. We are members of a team sent from the United States to discover the truth about Safi’s research. We traveled to Afghanistan a few days ago and broke into the site of Pasha Tech, a company he once ran.”

  Kevin’s eyes wavered with uncertainty. Who could blame him for questioning the authenticity of such an unlikely tale?

  Mastana removed her cellphone from her day bag and brought up her camera roll. “Here are pictures of the storage room on that site.”

  The guard took her phone and flicked through the images. His eyes lit on a picture of a sign written in Pashto script. He shook his head in a mixture of incredulity and disbelief. “Anyone could copy these from the internet. How do I know I can believe you?”

  “Would a real-time satellite feed convince you?” asked Mallory.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wait a second.” She brought up her cellphone and used a fifteen-digit alphanumeric password to open an app. Another minute of typing was needed before she passed the phone to Kevin.

  “That’s us,” she said, pointing to a tiny blob of white located on the perimeter wall of the Goldmine’s infrared satellite image. “I’ll head away from the wall. You should see it, a little white dot, on this feed a few seconds later.”

  Mallory stepped out and walked twenty paces away. After a minute, she returned. “Convinced?”

  Swallowing, the guard nodded. “So can you explain a little more why you and your friends are here?”

  “On the Pasha Tech site, we found evidence of a project called Tears of God,” said Mallory. “This project involves the development of strong poisons, but we don’t know what Safi wants to do with them. It must be something terrible, or he wouldn’t be so determined to keep it a secret. Mastana told you he killed my father, but just a week ago, he killed another American investigator named Max Creighton.

  “I know it seems incredible, but it’s true,” continued Mallory. “We would have told you earlier, but we didn’t know who to trust when we got here. By the time we realized you weren’t a part of Safi’s Tears of God project, it was too late. We had already told you our cover stories. But now we need a place to hide.”

  “You mean you don’t want to escape?”

  “No, my husband, Alton, is the leader of the team in there. Mastana’s father is a team member. We’re not leaving. We just need a place to hide until we can figure out a way to break them out.”

  Silent, Kevin peered into Mallory’s eyes, then studied Mastana’s. The roar of a truck revving up over at the Menagerie carried through the night air.

  At last, Kevin spoke. “I’ve heard rumors about some of the things going on in there. I figured it was just gossip. I guess I didn’t want to believe they’d really do the kind of thing I was hearing a
bout—making poison, like you said, Mastana.” He fell into silence again, then seemed to reach an internal decision. “Come this way.”

  “Wait,” said Mallory. “There’s one more member of our team over there.” She left and returned with Silva.

  “I’ve seen you around,” said Kevin. “Didn’t realize you were with these two, though.”

  “Well, now you know,” said Silva. “Where do you suggest we hide?”

  “I park my car outside the wall every night. It keeps me from having to waste time going through the checkpoint at the front entrance twice a day. You can stay in it if you like.”

  “That sounds good,” said Mallory. “Do we just walk through your entry point, or are there extra security precautions in effect?”

  “Good question,” said Kevin, rubbing the back of his neck. “The cameras are operated remotely. They’re probably all on. But don’t worry. If they’re on, I know an old-fashioned way to disable them. Wait here a minute.”

  He returned to the guard shack and ducked his head into the enclosure.

  “I hope you’re right about this guy,” said Silva, “or we could be joining your husband’s team real quick.”

  Kevin returned. “Let’s go. I turned off the camera, but there’s no reason to stay under the lights any longer than you have to.”

  They took off at a brisk pace, one that would get them through the security point quickly but would still be slow enough to avoid raising suspicions if anyone happened to look in their direction.

  Mallory leaned over to Kevin as they marched over the ground. “You turned off the camera? I thought you said the cameras were operated centrally.”

  The guard grinned. “They are, but the electrical wiring runs right through my guard hut. It’s easy enough to pull out a few. I don’t know what idiot came up with that design, but it’s not a good one. Not if you’re trying to control it from just one place.”

  They reached the wall and passed through the entrance. Another two minutes of walking brought them to Kevin’s car, an older model Corolla.

  “At least there’s room for all of us,” said Silva.

  “Kevin,” said Mallory, “you’ve already saved our butts, but I need to ask for one more favor. I need any intel you can gather on our teammates being held inside the Menagerie. Where they are, who’s guarding them, what Safi’s planning on doing with them, anything at all.”

  Kevin nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. My shift ends in a few minutes. I reckon you’ll need something to eat, right?”

  “We have some granola bars. And some bottled water…I think,” said Mallory.

  Kevin chuckled. “I’ll see if I can get something better.” His countenance grew serious. “Don’t worry. I’ll focus on intel first. Director Tahir—I mean Safi—is a tough one. I wouldn’t want to be his enemy. And based on all the stuff you say he’s done, your teammates in there with him may not have much time.”

  CHAPTER 64

  Farid Safi watched Nabib, his wide-eyed security chief, creep from the office with his tail between his legs. The man had to know the consequences of failure in this organization. After such a colossal security breech, Safi felt generous allowing his subordinate to live. Had Nabib not been a trusted and loyal worker from the Afghanistan days, he might not have.

  Left alone, Safi paced the floor, fuming. Killjoy’s warning had almost come too little and too late. Carelessness of this magnitude couldn’t occur again, or the whole project could be compromised.

  “You called for me, Director?” said a voice from the doorway.

  “Yes, Vaziri. Come in.”

  His second-in-command assumed her usual spot in the burgundy leather chair facing her manager’s enormous, polished desk.

  Safi lowered himself into his overstuffed office chair and steepled his hands. “Your assessment?”

  “Of the intruders themselves or their intentions?”

  “Both.”

  Vaziri leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “Their leader seems shrewd. He knows we’re up to something.”

  “How much does he know, exactly?” asked Safi.

  Vaziri shrugged, a fluid motion possessing the same latent energy as a tiger’s stretch. “Tough to say. He wouldn’t talk. But he did ask me to take him to the police. Said he’d spill his guts there. So at a minimum, he knows the Razor project isn’t our only activity here. Presumably the purpose of their mission was to find out more about Tears of God. If not, why would they take the risk of coming here?”

  “I agree. You said the leader didn’t say much. What about the other two?”

  “They never spoke.”

  Safi drummed his fingers on the smooth lacquer of his desk. “We need to find out exactly how much the intruders know and who else they might have told. You know what to do, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And Vaziri, when you’re done with our enemies, keep them in detention.” He smiled with a humorless grin. “Work on the Carmichael product has been hampered by the lack of human test subjects. I’d say that problem has just been eliminated, wouldn’t you?”

  CHAPTER 65

  Alton had to force himself to stay seated on the cot rather than pace the room. David was right. If they had a chance to escape, they would all need to be ready.

  Gilbert sat on a cot on the opposite side of the room. The man looked to be in shock, like a football player who had just sustained a concussion. Alton pitied the man, but what encouragement could he provide to relieve his teammate’s mental burden?

  David stood at the room’s door and peered through the heavy, steel meshwork of its small window. “I can see a part of the hallway where they brought us in. But I can’t see very far down the other side of this corridor. Just another couple of doors down is all I can make out.”

  “Any guards out there?”

  “Yeah. One right outside the door. If there’s more, I can’t see them.”

  Alton studied the room for the twentieth time. It may not have been designed as a cell, but it served that purpose well. The door his teammate peered through was the only way in or out. And thirty minutes of crawling around the floor in search of patched-over vents had served no purpose but to dirty Alton’s hands.

  “Someone’s coming,” said David. He stepped back.

  The door swung open.

  “Miss Vaziri,” said the guard, sweeping his hands forward in an invitation for someone to enter.

  Flanked by two armed guards, the previous interrogator glided into the room. She took in the lean forms of Alton and David and furrowed her eyebrows in concern. Her gaze then landed on Gilbert, whom she studied for a count of five. “You. Come with me.”

  Gilbert pressed back against the wall, his eyes wide. “Agent Blackwell…”

  “Wait,” said Alton, rising. “Take me instead.”

  “Nice try, but I think I’ve found the man most likely to spill his guts.”

  Alton stepped forward, only to find the barrel of an AK-47 pushed into his ribcage.

  “Take a seat,” growled the guard.

  “You’re a civilian company,” said Alton. “You’re not allowed to hold someone indefinitely without calling the police.” He knew such protestations would prove fruitless with someone of Vaziri’s obvious seniority, but perhaps one of the guards would begin to question the legitimacy of the prisoners’ confinement—if they hadn’t already been bribed into silence.

  Two hours later, the door to the cell swung open. A guard pushed Gilbert back into the room and pulled the door shut with a clang.

  A sheen of sweat covered Gilbert’s face, and his hair splayed in all directions. His rumpled, stain-streaked shirt bore witness to some type of ominous physical activity.

  Gilbert took a few steps forward before staggering. David leapt to his feet and helped the toxicologist to the closest cot.

  Gilbert slumped onto the mattress and leaned his head into his hands. A trickle of blood ran from behind his right ear down inside his shirt collar.r />
  “What happened?” asked Alton.

  “They asked me…questions. A lot of questions.” He shook his head, wincing as the motion elicited a new bout of pain. “They’re professionals. They know just how to beat a guy without leaving marks—not too many, at least.”

  “Yeah,” said David, “torturers are trained to do that.”

  “What did they ask you about?” pressed Alton.

  “Why we’re here. What our orders are. How much we know about their work. More…I can’t remember everything.” Gilbert sighed and lowered his head in a dejected manner. “I would have thought I’d last longer, that I’d be tougher than I was.” He looked at the floor. “I’m sorry. I told them everything I know—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Alton. “Everyone cracks at some point. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  Alton gave a start. Gilbert hadn’t mentioned a particular question, one of extreme importance to Alton and David.

  Alton took a seat next to his injured teammate and whispered into his ear. “Did they ask about the others? Do they know about Alpha team?”

  Gilbert had just started to shake his head no when the door burst open.

  “No whispering!” shouted the guard. “I’ll not have you making any secret plans on my watch.”

  As David stepped towards the guard with clenched fists, Vaziri stepped into the room. She snapped a kick straight forward and caught David in the solar plexus, sending him crashing to the floor. He writhed in silent agony, gasping for breath.

  “Listen to the guard,” she said, “or next time, it won’t be a love tap.” She turned to Alton. “Your turn.”

  CHAPTER 66

  Alton limped between two guards. He might have been able to take them on, but Vaziri was also part of their group. She had forced Alton to walk in front, a clever approach. From that position, she would see any unusual movement on Alton’s part and be prepared to counter-attack before he could act. Yet with his bad leg, Alton couldn’t outrun her, even with a head start of a few feet.

  They wound their way through a series of corridors of spotless white walls peppered with industrial-strength electrical outlets. Doors painted with the walls’ same shade of eggshell white were spaced every dozen yards or so.