by James Hunt
Dylan nodded then reached for the satellite phone Mark kept for emergencies. He pulled out the piece of paper with the number that was programmed into the old cell phone and waited for the signal to connect.
“You’ve managed to stay quiet for the past twenty-four hours,” Perry said, answering quickly. “I’m impressed.”
“You get Sean to a police station. Once I have confirmation over the news that he’s there, then I’ll meet you and hand over the hardware. No other deals, no games.”
Perry paused before answering slowly. “You’ve outgrown yourself, Captain. Don’t let your ambitions cloud your capabilities. Yes, you do have something that I want, that I need, but this doesn’t grant you authority over me; it simply makes us equals.”
Dylan stepped out of the cabin and onto the boat’s deck. “I don’t care what this does to your ego. That is the deal, Perry.”
Perry clucked his tongue. “You forget that I can still deliver your son alive but not in the pristine condition in which you left him. While you think I need that device, you want your son alive and in one piece more.”
Dylan knew Perry was right. While he could push the threats of destroying the device, once it was gone, he’d have nothing left that Perry would want, and with that, his son would pay the price. But Dylan also knew that Perry was arrogant, thinking that he was untouchable. He had danced along the lines of truth and lies for so long that he believed he was the puppet master. “You don’t just need the device, Perry, you need your cover. All I have to do is walk myself into any police station, and I’ll have the ear of any White House official I want. That’s the only reason you’ve kept up your charade, because you still need your people to believe you’re not involved.”
“I will give you your son, but not at a police station.”
“My old marina. Tomorrow. Sundown. I want to be able to see my son from a long way off before the exchange happens.”
“I look forward to seeing you again.”
The call ended, and Dylan exhaled, his body shaking as he collapsed into a seat on the deck. Mark popped out of the cabin below and took the seat across from Dylan. “Well?”
“He went for the marina.”
“It’s a good play, Captain.”
“Yeah.” But none of it mattered unless it worked, and Sean wouldn’t be safe until he was miles away from the city, from Perry, even from himself. Dylan would send him away with his mother. Maybe Cooper could help. Regardless, tomorrow was going to be rough.
***
The clean walls and sharp lighting of the CIA conference room had been Kasaika’s only view for the past twelve hours. He had spoken to no government officials and had not been allowed to see his brothers who had been captured with him. He wondered if Perry would show up but quickly dismissed the thought once he realized what that would mean for the cause.
They couldn’t afford to have that kind of heat on them now. Kasaika knew that the chips they were to steal from the facility were vital. Without them, they couldn’t complete their nuclear missile. Neither he nor Perry would jeopardize that.
Still, the thought of seeing Perry here, holding the man’s life in his hands, made him feel good. While Kasaika didn’t like the man and would like nothing more than to see him locked up, he hated the men Perry worked for more.
But when the door cracked open to the conference room and Perry walked in, accompanied by two other men he didn’t recognize, he had to force the surprised emotions from revealing themselves across his face.
“Hello, Mr. Shamaun, I’m Deputy Director Richard Perry.” Perry placed a folder on the space of desk in front of a chair then took a seat. “First off, I just want to tell you that whatever rights you think you have or you think you’re entitled to don’t exist.”
Perry maintained a look of understanding on his face, but his colleagues looked as though they wanted to lunge across the table and choke him to death. “I do not recognize the legitimacy of this government and demand to be set free. Do this, and I promise you I will kill you quickly.” Kasaika kept his eyes locked on Perry during his final words.
“Regardless of what you recognize, Mr. Shamaun, you are a terrorist of the United States of America, and we will get the truth out of you.” Perry opened the file and tossed pictures over to Kasaika’s side. They were security pictures from the raid on the facility. Perry pointed to Dylan on the page. “This man. He’s an American. How long has he been working with you?”
Kasaika remained silent, and Perry nodded to the man to his left, who got up, walked behind Kasaika, and wrapped his neck in a choke hold. With his hands bound to the chair, Kasaika could do nothing to defend himself. The pressure in his head felt like it would explode, and he drew in his breath in sharp gasps.
With Kasaika’s face turning purple, the man finally let go. Kasaika collapsed on the desk, and his face slowly returned to a normal shade with each breath. When he looked at Perry, he got nothing more than an expression that told him to tell what he knew.
“A week,” Kasaika said, breathing heavily.
“And what was your mission’s primary objective?”
“You will not win.” Kasaika shook his head. “We have men everywhere, eyes in every city. Your people are paralyzed with fear and too weak to stop us. None of you can.”
Perry nodded to the man behind Kasaika again, and this time a fist landed on the left side of his face, knocking Kasaika’s jaw, along with the rest of him, out of his chair and to the floor. A high-pitched whine filled his ears, and Kasaika managed to push himself to all fours, only to be knocked to his side again with a foot to the ribs.
“What was the mission objective, Mr. Shamaun?”
Kasaika rolled around on the polished floor, a knife-like stabbing running along the right side of his body. The ringing in his ears subsided, but the pain in his ribs only grew with each movement across the floor. He looked up to see both Perry and the agent who’d hit him standing above.
“Agent Diaz is capable of providing further incentive if it’s needed,” Perry said.
“We will kill all of you.” Kasaika’s words came out between wheezes, then he spit out a glob of blood and wiped his mouth. “Your world is over, and my brothers will be the ones to take it from you. It doesn’t matter how many you send or what you do; we will win.”
Perry turned to leave, along with one of the men, leaving Kasaika alone with Agent Diaz. Kasaika looked up, and Diaz cracked his knuckles.
“Time to tell me what you know,” Diaz said. He reached down and picked Kasaika up by the collar then slammed him on the desk, sending blow after blow across Kasaika’s face.
After the first five hits, Kasaika lost count, and the striking pain that accompanied each blow faded with it. Everything started to go numb, and as consciousness slowly drifted from Kasaika’s mind, the last thing he remembered was Dylan’s face and that if he ever had the chance to see him again, he would kill him with his own two hands.
Chapter 10
Underneath the bridges of Boston, trash, feces, and any other litter were a common sight. It smelled sour and dead, as if a dozen bodies had been left to rot.
Cooper had stayed there for the night and hadn’t slept a single hour of it. The slanted, cold concrete provided little comfort, and the sporadic echoes of gunfire and screams haunted her throughout the night. Her body was stiff and uncomfortable, and most of the night consisted of her keeping her hand on her pistol, looking for anyone approaching her who might want to do her harm.
When she wasn’t worrying about someone trying to mug her, her mind drifted to what her next move should be. Wherever Dylan was, it wasn’t likely that he’d be in the mood for any type of bargaining, especially with the woman who let his ex-wife volunteer herself to be taken by the same terrorists who had his son. She could try and call Diaz or Moringer, but that would involve locating a working phone, which she hadn’t been able to find at all yesterday.
It’d been a long walk from the suburban neighborhood back
to the city, and she didn’t want to travel at night, which was why she’d tucked herself under the bridge in the first place. It seemed as good a place as any to guard herself, except for the smell, but at the end of the day, she determined that it was better to risk her nose than her life.
With the morning cast in the grey glow of dawn just before the sun rose, she crawled out from under the spot on the bridge and made her way onto the road. The city skyline was much closer than it had been the day before, but other than the buildings, there wasn’t another person so far as she could see.
A sharp, knife-stabbing pain shot through Cooper’s right leg as she hobbled forward. It was her body’s temper tantrum to get her to rest, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through it. The more she moved, the less her body felt like a slab of concrete, and her alertness returned. But the energy was short lived once the sun was well above the horizon and the heat started to sink in.
By the time Cooper found a police station, her mouth was parched, and what water was left in her body had poured onto her skin and clothes, leaving nothing but crusts of salt. She felt like a raisin when she walked through the station’s front doors.
The headquarters was a ghost town, with only a few officers roaming the back desks. Cooper banged on the empty reception desk counter to grab their attention. “Hey!”
The first officer who looked at her went back to the papers on his desk, sifting through them slowly, with no inclination to speed up the process. Cooper banged on the counter again, this time rattling the blank computer screens and causing a pen to roll to the floor. “Hey! I need to speak to whoever’s in charge here, now.”
“Are you hurt?” the officer asked.
Cooper scrunched her face in bewilderment. “What? No, I’m not hurt.”
“Then whatever you want is not an emergency.” The officer went back to his shuffling of papers, and just when Cooper reached for the handle of her pistol tucked under the back of her shirt, another one of the officers came around the corner.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “We’re all a little burnt out.” Dark circles dragged his eyes down, and the stubble across his face made him look older than his hairline suggested. The officer’s uniform was stained around the collar. Cooper couldn’t tell if it was food, sweat, or something more unsettling.
“I need to make a call,” Cooper said, taking her hand off her pistol. “Do you have any communication lines still open here?”
The officer nodded. “It was down for a few hours yesterday, but we’ve been able to keep the emergency lines open. But with most of the cell towers still down, we haven’t received many calls. Most of our guys are out on patrol with the rest of the police force downtown. Not much action on the outskirts of the city.”
Cooper nodded her head passively as she dialed the number, trying to make it look like she was listening. A sudden burst of hope went through her when the line rang. She just hoped that Diaz would pick up.
“Agent Diaz.”
Thank God. “It’s Cooper.”
“Cooper? Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you? Moringer’s been going ballistic since the mission botched. They’ve got Dylan Turk all over the news. Where the hell have you been?”
“It’s a long story, but since we’re talking about the Dylan, have you heard anything from him yet?”
“No, it’s been radio silence, but there isn’t a federal employee within the FBI, CIA, or Homeland who isn’t looking for him.”
“Well, wherever he is, you can bet Perry is doing whatever he can to look for him. Listen, I went over to the ex-wife’s place, where I was ambushed by a cluster of terrorists who managed to kidnap her. My guess is, Perry thinks he can still get the upper hand with Dylan since he now has two members of his family instead of one.”
“What about the husband and the daughter? Were they there as well?”
“No, she said the husband took the girl to some cabin in upstate New York. They should be safe and out of reach. Listen, what’s happening with our homeless guy? Have we got him in front of a judge yet?”
“It hasn’t exactly been easy trying to get a hearing, but we have an appointment tomorrow. The Massachusetts Attorney General will be there too, but what they’ll decide to do is anybody’s guess.”
Cooper knew Perry would have backups to backups. The only way to surprise him was to get to Dylan before he could. “Listen, tell Moringer that we need to make a deal with the feds and the CIA to get Dylan an offer to make sure that he doesn’t end up in jail.”
“Well, we’ll have to make it quick,” Diaz replied. “Moringer just told me he got a tip from the FBI that a deal is happening today.”
“What? Where?”
“No street name, just coordinates. Where are you? I’ll come pick you up. We’ll go together.”
Cooper checked the clock on the wall. “You just keep our witness safe and see what Moringer can do about setting up a deal for Dylan. I have a feeling that Dylan really will give up those chips in exchange for his boy. Will DEA have a presence at the exchange?”
“No, it’s strictly the feds. They’re keeping it small, close knit, and the DEA is on the shit list right now after what happened with the computer chips. The only reason Moringer knew about it was so we have better lines of communication, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Will do.” Once Cooper jotted down the coordinates of the meet, Cooper hung up the phone and then handed it back to the officer. “Do you have a working computer here?”
“Yeah, it’s running off the emergency networks.” He walked her around to one of the workstations, and Cooper brought up the GPS system used for dispatchers. The location was only a few miles away. It wouldn’t take her longer than half an hour if she could manage a light jog.
Cooper shook the officer’s hand. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”
“Hey, wait.” The officer stepped forward awkwardly. “You need a ride somewhere?”
Cooper turned around at the door with one foot already outside. “Trust me. This isn’t somewhere you’ll want to be.” She broke out into a light jog as her veins pulsed with a sudden burst of adrenaline and energy. Cooper hurried through the streets as fast as her body would take her. She kept to the main roads now that the sun was higher and to make sure she didn’t get lost.
The heat from the asphalt cooked her feet and legs, and it wasn’t long before the burst of adrenaline had run its course, and Cooper was left with nothing more than the sheer will of her constitution to make it the rest of the way.
When Cooper finally arrived, her muscles ached, and she unholstered her pistol, searching the area for signs of anyone already there. She slowed her breaths to a more manageable rate. The area was nothing more than abandoned buildings, long ago shut down and boarded up before any of the attacks happened. Only the remnants of what businesses used to be here remained in the forms of rusted signs, broken windows, and fading paint.
“Cooper?”
When she turned around and saw Diaz, she couldn’t help but smile. She holstered her gun and jogged over to him. “Damn, it’s good to see you.” She wrapped him in a hug and squeezed tight. “What are you doing here?”
Diaz pushed her back and took a moment to look her over. “Are you all right? Did you bring any backup with you?”
“I’m fine, and, no, I didn’t. Where the hell is everyone? You sure this is the place?” Cooper turned and walked around, looking for the best vantage point to view the exchange. “Have you had a chance to scope the place out yet? From here it looks li—”
Cooper turned back around, and Diaz had his gun out and aimed at her skull and had a phone to his ear. “She’s here. No, she didn’t tell anyone. Understood.” Diaz hung up the phone then pocketed it.
Cooper felt the cold rush of betrayal form in her stomach then spread like a virus, slowly shutting down the rest of her body. “Whatever you think you’re doing, don’t.”
“Sorry, partner,” Diaz said, taking a few s
teps closer. “You should have just stayed out of it. I thought that when Moringer suspended you for the first time, you would have lain low, but you just kept pushing. You dug your own grave on this one.”
Cooper took a step back, her peripherals scanning for anything she could use or anywhere she could run. “What happened to the witness?”
“Oh, he’s here,” Diaz answered. “Unfortunately, he was killed by a rogue agent and his body tossed into a trunk just before the highly dangerous, recently suspended agent Cooper killed herself after downing a fifth of whiskey.”
A piece of glass crunched under Cooper’s boot as she continued her trek backward. “How long, Diaz?”
“Working for Perry? A couple years. The money was just too good to pass up, and all I had to do was spread some rumors about my partner.”
Cooper stopped, the wind seemingly knocked out of her. “You? It was you who started those?”
“It was easy enough with how many times you’ve been undercover and how you rub everyone the wrong way in the department.”
The weight of Cooper’s pistol sagged in its holster, and she cursed herself for not keeping her guard up. “Perry won’t last forever, Diaz. He’ll be stopped, and when he is, anyone who’s been associated with him will have a cell right next door. You think he’ll give a shit about you once all this is done?”
“By then, I’ll be on a beach in the Mediterranean, sipping on a cold drink. I’m not sticking around for whatever that psychopath has planned, but you can bet your ass it won’t be good. I’ve got enough money to go anywhere and do anything I want.” Diaz pulled the hammer back on the pistol and placed his finger on the trigger. “Turn around, Cooper.”
“What? Can’t do it while you look me in the face?” Cooper felt her heel step into a patch of dirt. Less than ten feet away was a cracked door to one of the buildings. All she needed was two seconds. “At least have the balls for that, Diaz.”
“And you wonder why nobody ever liked you.” Diaz took a step forward, and Cooper kicked up the dirt, flinging it into Diaz’s eyes. He fired blindly, and the shot grazed her arm, but she managed to make it to the door regardless.
