Shadows Rising

by Ernest Dempsey

  He didn’t take chances. It was how he’d survived so long in such a dangerous world.

  Growing up in Yugoslavia, he’d been raised in a poor home. Communism was failing. And for practicing Muslims like his family, they lived under a constant threat of being taken in the middle of the night and driven to some far-off place to be executed.

  When the regime collapsed and war ensued, Tosu had been a young man of nineteen. The fighting was fierce between the warring factions, and in the end new countries were forged from the chaos and spilled blood.

  His parents had been killed when an American bomb struck their apartment building. Probably an accident. Or maybe there had been a high-priority target somewhere nearby. Either way, the deaths of his parents only served to push him further from any semblance of tolerance toward the United States and the countries it helped.

  Out of the destruction, Tosu formed his own little empire, sneaking weapons to anyone willing to kill Americans or their allies. He started simple at first, organizing raids that did little more than piss off the enemy. As time went on, he became more adept at organization, strategy, and taking command rather than trying to carry out his own orders.

  When the Red Ring found him, it was nothing more than a fledgling organization looking to strike back at the nonbelievers around the world. With his vision, he’d helped it grow to so much more.

  Drunken revelers had been killed in nightclubs around the globe. One of his men had struck a gay bar in the United States, executing more than thirty people and injuring fifty before the police interfered and cut him down in a hailstorm of bullets.

  Tosu was proud of the soldier. He’d been a warrior for Allah and struck at the heart of the West’s putrid tolerance of radical abominations. Their leader had applauded both the soldier’s sacrifice and the ability of Tosu to get the man into place to strike with the biggest impact.

  There were other attacks of course: Paris, London, Brussels, and Amsterdam, just to name a few. Tosu had been the mastermind behind all of them, pulling the strings for each blow the Red Ring struck against the infidels.

  Of course, his men almost always died in the attacks. With promises of eternal glory and their every fantasy provided by the Almighty, they had very few reservations about taking on suicide missions. Their sacrifice, Tosu knew, would continue to escalate growing awareness of the sins of the nonbelievers. Through their martyrdom, a new kingdom would rise, one that was free of the disgusting practices of the West, one of purity and righteousness.

  Well, maybe a little of those things. Tosu was no saint. He fed his carnal urges like any man. The money he made from his various activities provided a legion of women at his beck and call. And none would dare deny him.

  He justified his sins by reminding himself, and perhaps even his maker, that he was doing Allah’s work in bringing the infidels to their knees. Why shouldn’t he have a little reward for his efforts? After all, if they were going to be given dozens of virgins upon arriving in paradise, why shouldn’t he have a few of those same delights in this life?

  Tosu looked over at the phone and waited for a moment to make sure it was going to ring again. He knew only a handful of people had that number, so odds were it was an important call. Even so, he wasn’t going to get up unless he was certain.

  He took another draw on his cigar as the phone rang. Shafir wouldn’t appreciate being forced to wait.

  The smoke spiraled upward in a blueish-gray stream. Then he blew it away with a burst from his lips and stood up.

  After the failed ambush in Istanbul, he’d managed to escape with his driver to their rendezvous point, a small safe house apartment in the heart of the city. He’d underestimated the strength of his enemies and their abilities. Most of his men died there on the docks that day. He knew their sacrifice would come with great reward, but that did little to wipe away the anger boiling in his heart. He thirsted for revenge, and the faces of the two women who led the charge burned in his mind.

  Who dared interfere with their plans? It was the second time someone had gotten in the way. The previous time—an intricately planned missile attack on a soccer stadium—would have been as big if not bigger than the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Estimated casualties would have been tenfold.

  Of course, the governments of the West would have rallied their forces and pushed out to attack someone, just as they’d done in 2001. It was what the public wanted, after all. The mindset of Americans, especially, was more focused on getting their brand of justice than actually figuring out who was responsible.

  They’d pinned the attacks on Osama bin Laden, but it was anyone’s guess who was really responsible.

  Tosu had a few ideas, but he’d never shared them with anyone. It honestly didn’t matter. The fact was, the attack was a huge success, and now the countries full of nonbelievers were looking over their shoulders every time they walked into a grocery store, a movie theater, or even a hospital. No one felt safe anymore. The only way they’d ever feel that way again was through death or conversion. Tosu was happy to give them the former.

  The number on the phone display was one he recognized and one he didn’t want to receive. But he couldn’t ignore it. The man on the other end of the line would accept such treatment as an act of treachery.

  While Tosu was one of the most powerful men in the Red Ring, he still had people to answer to. One of them was the guy calling him at that moment.

  “Hello,” he said in a cool tone.

  “What happened?” a gruff, heavily accented voice said.

  Tosu knew what the call would be about. The leader wanted answers. That was a given. Tosu would desire the same thing were their positions reversed. In fact, he was curious as to how the enemy was able to react as quickly as they had.

  “The ambush went according to plan.”

  “Really?” Shafir asked. “Because last I checked, you lost several men. More than ten, I believe. And the ones responsible managed to get away.”

  “Yes, that is unfortunate, both losing men and the infidels escaping. But I assure you, they won’t bother us again.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “How can you be so certain? If they have beaten us once, they can do it again. And next time could be worse.”

  Tosu didn’t have to ask what the man meant by that. He knew that being captured was worse than being killed. The Americans and the British were renowned for their unethical means of getting prisoners to talk.

  On the outside, their agencies preached the Geneva Convention and fair treatment to those captured in times of war and otherwise. On the inside, however, they used any and all methods to get what they wanted. It was one of the best-kept secrets on the planet.

  While the variations were different, there was always the same thread that ran through their interrogations: There would be an escape attempt story that ended with the prisoner being shot dead, or something along those lines. The claim would be self-defense and that the shooters didn’t have a choice, but Tosu knew better. It was one of the reasons his soldiers fought to the death rather than face torture at the hands of the nonbelievers.

  Now and then, there would be an accident story that barely made the back pages of the news. It could be a prison bus crash that killed several key inmates, or possibly even a “suicide” in a cell. The thoughts enraged Tosu, but he tempered his emotions and stuck to the topic at hand.

  “We are tracking their movements as we speak, great Teacher,” Tosu said. It was a lie, but one he knew Shafir would buy.

  The truth was Tosu didn’t have a clue where the two women or their cohorts were. It was evident that they were working for some kind of extrajudicial agency. Only a well-funded, well-managed organization could equip soldiers with that kind of training and those types of weapons. The way the women moved had been too precise for it to be some kind of organized crime syndicate set on robbing him and his men of a big weapons haul.

  No, they were working for someon
e, but who? CIA? Some other branch of special ops? They were such a nuisance, always playing world police, sticking their noses in places they shouldn’t be. Tosu knew he’d have to wait for the answer, but he had a plan to get it.

  “If you’re tracking them, why not kill them now and be done with it?”

  Great. The Teacher saw through the lie. Or did he? It was, after all, a logical question.

  “A wise man once told me that to kill the beast, you don’t cut off its arms or legs; you cut off the head.” Tosu hoped quoting his master would temporarily sate the man’s thirst for answers.

  “Your flattery is appreciated, but that still doesn’t answer my question.”

  “We can kill their agents, great Teacher. We can eliminate them by the dozens, but that won’t stop them from coming. They will descend upon us like a flood, greater and greater until we are overwhelmed. We need to find out where they’re coming from, who is pulling the strings to these puppets.”

  The leader fell silent for a moment, considering his pupil’s answer. The truth was that Tosu didn’t have many leads on who had tried to ambush him and his men. Even though they were prepared for it and knew what was coming, Tosu and his team were no match for the skills of the two women and the men with them.

  They’d lost many men. The enemy had only lost one, not counting Abdi.

  “We will find them, Master, and they will suffer for their insolence,” Tosu said before the older man could say anything else.

  “Very well, Khalil,” Shafir said, “Make certain they do. I would hate to have to…replace you.”

  “I do not wish that to—”

  The line went dead. The leader hung up the phone before Tosu could finish his sentence.

  Had it been someone beneath him, Tosu would have had the man killed right then and there for the rude gesture. It didn’t work like that going up the chain of command. The Teacher had been the one to bring him in, give him a sense of purpose, and promise him the hope of immortality despite living a life of sin on this earth.

  Tosu wasn’t one for sentimentality. The real reason he wouldn’t challenge the Teacher was that he couldn’t. The man was an apparition, nothing more than a spirit that floated around the world, appearing and disappearing without warning.

  He could have been anywhere on the planet at that moment. He might have even been calling from across the street. Tosu would have never known. The man was impossible to track down.

  Of course, the way the Red Ring operated made sure that their leadership was never in the same place at the same time. That was a lesson they’d learned the hard way, when two of their clerics had met in a desert cave in the mountains of Afghanistan. The cave was bombarded in a surprise attack by (what they assumed to be) United States bombers.

  The entrance had collapsed, and those inside were never heard from again. After that, the Red Ring made sure to keep their cells and their leaders a safe distance apart.

  The only traceable thing about Shafir was his phone number, the one that appeared on the display of Tosu’s phone. Sure, he could put one of his tech guys on it and have him try to trace the number, but if the Teacher found out, Tosu would be a dead man. Unlike all the soldiers who signed up for suicide missions on the Ring’s behalf, Tosu had no desire to rush into death.

  If he had to guess, he’d say that the old man definitely had safeguards in place to defend against such traces. More than likely, he’d ping the trace back to Tosu’s guy, pinpoint his location, and firebomb the building before he could unplug.

  There was no reason to take such action. Tosu was happy with his position. He had no desire to take over from the Teacher. That was a job for a holy man. Tosu wasn’t ready to be holy just yet. The thought, combined with the irritation of being hung up on, triggered one of his carnal impulses.

  “Amad!” he shouted.

  One of his guards stepped in the room with a Heckler & Koch submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. The guy’s shaved head was showing stubble that matched his beard.

  “Bring me one of the girls.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The guard started to leave. Tosu stopped him. “Amad.”

  The man reappeared in the doorway.

  “Make that two.”

  8

  Dublin

  Adriana woke with a start. She looked around the unfamiliar room through a blurry film. She rubbed her eyes to clear them. Where was she? She didn’t recognize the place.

  She sat up, almost in a panic, and then remembered what happened. A-Tak’s—rather, Ray’s—apartment in Dublin. That’s where she was. She took in the surroundings to get reacquainted. The simple, thin mattress on the futon had felt like sleeping on a cloud after the rigorous day she had yesterday. She’d underestimated how exhausted she really was. There wasn’t even a memory of falling asleep. The last thing Adriana could recall was sitting on the edge of the couch while Ray was entering hundreds of lines of code to set up what he called his “net.”

  Her neck was a little stiff, which was another telling sign she’d slept hard during the night. That always happened when fatigue kept her in one place on the bed. She kept twisting it until there was a hint of relief and then stood up to get her blood circulating.

  The little room was probably less than a hundred square feet. Tiny, undecorated, and surrounded in plain white walls, she wondered if her associate had ever set foot in the space.

  She walked over to the door and cracked it open.

  One of the hinges squeaked its protest as she looked out through the gap between the door and the frame.

  Ray was sitting at his workstation, fingers flying across the keyboard. The sudden noise caught his attention, and he spun the chair around.

  “Ah, good morning, sleepyhead,” he said with a stupid grin.

  Adriana frowned. She was a sleepyhead. Another four hours should do the trick, she thought, knowing full well that wasn’t an option.

  “How long was I out?” she asked, stepping into the living room.

  He twisted to the left and grabbed a coffee mug next to his keyboard. “I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “Eight hours? Maybe nine? I didn’t time it.”

  “Crap.”

  “You were tired. You needed the sleep.”

  He sounded like her father. Diego Villa had always been a doting dad, almost to the point of spoiling her. It might have been the reason she’d pursued dangerous occupations and hobbies once she’d come of age. Deep down, she had the feeling he’d tried to keep her from that kind of life since his had been one of always looking over his shoulder.

  “Coffee?” Ray asked.

  She swallowed. Her throat was parched, and she could use some liquid, not to mention the caffeine. “How much you got?” she asked, half joking.

  He grinned and stood up, walked over to the kitchen, and grabbed the steaming pot. Ray poured the coffee into a plain white mug. “Sugar or creamer?” he asked.

  “Just a little sugar.”

  He grabbed a packet out of a bowl on the counter, stuck a spoon in the mug, and brought it over to her.

  She took the hot brew gratefully and sipped, savoring it for a moment. She raised the mug and gave him an appreciative nod.

  For a couple of seconds, her heart sank despite the toasty morning beverage in her hand. Adriana missed Sean. One of their favorite things to do together was wake up late and drink coffee. They’d usually go through a few cups before heading off to start their day. Their coffee time gave them a chance to steal an extra hour from their hectic lives.

  Now, not only was she running around the world, Adriana was chasing terrorists, one of the most dangerous things she could imagine doing.

  But she wasn’t afraid. Life had hardened her to most fears. That wasn’t to say she never got scared. It was just that death wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Watching her mother die had relieved her of that fear. The agonizing moment her mother passed had burned into her memory, but
Adriana also remembered the peace on her mother’s face. The struggle was over. The torture would no longer continue. There was a kind of relief in that—for both mother and daughter. The memory was a fragment in time that took away her fears of dying and replaced them with a stoic resolve to live the best she could without worrying if the next day would come or not.

  Ray slid back into his chair as she sidled up next to him on a stool. He noticed she was deep in thought, that or still waking up.

  “So,” he said, interrupting her thoughts, looking at all three monitors simultaneously, “we caught something interesting in the net last night.”

  Her eyebrows perked up. “Really?” Adriana was surprised although she knew she shouldn’t be. He was good at what he did. That’s why she was here. Still, Tosu was slippery. The entire Red Ring was an organization shrouded in a fog. No one knew how to get in. And finding those in charge was like finding a needle in a stack of needles.

  “Yep.”

  She leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, taking another draft from the mug. Her eye ran over the lines of code on two of the screens. She didn’t understand one bit of it. She wondered if her father, an agent well versed in methods outside the law, could have deciphered all the stuff Ray was looking at.

  “How’d you do that? Did you put out some kind of search algorithm or something?”

  He frowned for a second and then chuckled. “No. This is other stuff.”

  She cocked her head to the side and pinched her eyebrows together. “Then…how did you find them?”

  “I put out a Craigslist ad for guns and explosives.” He shrugged as he said it.

  Her confused look deepened. “What?”

  “I’m kidding. Although…it’s kind of like that. I went on to the dark web and posted some fake ads for weapons, explosives, that kind of thing. Got a ton of hits from Russia, by the way. Whoever you’re working for might want to look into them in the future. Just saying.”