A Conspiracy of Ravens

by Terrence McCauley

  Scott pointed at two of his men, who went back to the vehicle. “We’re on it.”

  “You get the message that I activated Moscow Protocol?”

  “I did. Oohrah.”

  “I guess that’s Marine talk for approval.”

  “You didn’t have a choice,” Scott said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “Today is full of surprises.”

  They walked down a short tunnel that led into the building that had come to be known as the Annex.

  At some point in the 1970s—for reasons lost to history—the University had acquired a dilapidated three-story walk-up in the lower east side section of Manhattan known as Alphabet City. Hicks’s predecessors had used it as a temporary hideout for Assets and Faculty Members who needed to lie low for a couple of days.

  But when Hicks had become head of the University’s New York office, he decided to put the building to use. The Dean of the University, who had always resisted having actual facilities or campuses of any kind, surprised him by agreeing to fund it. Over time, it had been nicknamed the Annex.

  The building had long been deemed an eyesore in the neighborhood, and for good reason. Layers of graffiti marred the building’s masonry, while the doors and windows had been boarded up for years. It had served as a squatters’ den for the homeless, a shooting gallery for junkies, a flop house for runaways, and a den where crack whores brought their johns.

  Hicks had decided to put the building to good use the day he took over. Knowing any activity in front of the building would only bring unwanted attention, he purchased the old tenement building behind it and had University contractors enter through a common basement both buildings shared. This way, work could go on inside the original dilapidated building without drawing unwanted neighborhood attention. The University had always emphasized secrecy at all costs. The other building also had a garage, which made it easier for vehicles to come and go without being seen in front of the main building.

  Contractors had worked around the clock to secretly reinforce the decrepit building’s interior. Steel plating was installed behind the wooden boards. All other access points had been sealed, save for an old door at the back of the building that could only be accessed through a dim, grimy service entrance. Here, a state-of-the-art security portal was welded to the newly-reinforced infrastructure.

  Security cameras and motion detectors were subtly installed at the perimeter to make sure no one tried to gain access. No one could get in or out of the building without biometric permission.

  Except for extensive rewiring and a few improvements to transform part of the safe house into a holding area, the Dean’s funding ended there. Few of the old apartments had been gutted, and much of the abandoned furniture had remained as the junkies and vagrants had left them.

  Periodically, neighborhood activists still called for the building to be revitalized or turned into a homeless shelter or school. Hicks saw to it they were subtly—but effectively—convinced to turn their attention elsewhere. Over the years, several developers had tried to buy the property but were told the owner had no intention of selling. Few had taken no for an answer. Hicks hadn’t been as gentle in changing their minds.

  Drug dealers still tried to gain entrance to the building. They were dealt with in a far more permanent manner.

  Once they closed the armored door between the garage and the Annex, the Varsity men pushed the Russian into the elevator and took him up to the third floor. Since there wasn’t enough room for Scott and Hicks, they stayed behind.

  Scott handed two pills to Hicks as they waited for the elevator to come back down. “Doc Fischer wants you to take these. Says they’ll dissolve in your mouth. Help with your nerves.”

  Hicks ignored them. “What nerves? Christ, Scott. I’ve been through worse.”

  Scott’s hand didn’t budge. He was ex-Marine Recon and looked the part. He wasn’t much taller than Hicks, but broader and more muscular. He had short-cropped silver hair, a lopsided jaw that had been broken at least half a dozen times, and a nose to match. He would have made a lousy clandestine operative, but he excelled as the leader of the University Varsity Squad.

  “Take the pills, boss.”

  “I don’t need them.”

  “You just had a missile dropped on your head, shot four men, drove cross-town at high speeds in the middle of a war zone, and your hands are shaking like leaves. Take the fucking pills.”

  Hicks looked down and saw both of his hands were, indeed, trembling. He hadn’t realized it until now.

  He decided to reach for the pills, but his hand began shaking even worse. He balled his hand into a fist as he pulled it away.

  Hicks tried to laugh it off. “Guess I’m not as tough as—”

  Scott cupped his hand over Hicks’s mouth, depositing the pills inside. “Remember not to chew them. Let them dissolve. They work better that way. They work quickly, too.” He wiped his hand on his pants leg. “Had to take them once or twice myself.”

  The pills had dissolved by the time the elevator returned to the basement, leaving a bad taste in his mouth. “Oohrah.”

  THE PILLS did their job. Hicks’s hands had begun to stop shaking by the time he sat at the table of one of the dilapidated kitchens in the Annex. He’d even managed to light a cigarette from a pack he’d found on the table. He normally preferred cigars, but hadn’t had time to grab any before the proximity alert had sounded. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and since the place he lived had been obliterated, he was technically homeless.

  The cigarette was stale, but the tobacco still felt good. He drew it deep into his lungs before letting it escape slowly through his nose.

  Homeless. He winced at the thought of a missile destroying his facility. The idea of it didn’t make sense to him. How had they known where to find me? He had never allowed himself to think of the place as anything more than an office with a bed in it. He had never decorated it with family pictures. He would have needed a family to photograph, and everyone who qualified was long-dead. He didn’t believe in reminding himself of the people in his life who had passed on. He lived with enough ghosts as it was.

  Other than his selection of weapons in the armory, the only personal touch he had allowed in the facility had been his humidor. The loss of the facility, its armory, and technology was bad enough, but it wasn’t until that first drag on a stale cigarette that he remembered he had just filled his humidor with a full box of vintage Padron cigars. He could always get another box, but it was the waste that bothered him.

  Waste had always angered him and the destruction of 23rd Street was just about the biggest waste he could think of. Anger wouldn’t do him any good. Anger made things personal, and personal matters led to mistakes.

  He didn’t know who he was fighting. The CIA? Demerest? The Vanguard? Someone else? He would need a clear head if he was going to find out who and why. And not just for himself. Not even for the University. But for Tali and the life she was carrying inside her.

  For the first time in his life, he was thinking of someone else outside mission parameters. Someone he hadn’t even met yet, but wanted to.

  He wanted to call Tali. He wanted to spill his guts and tell her everything that had happened. He wanted to tell her he was okay. But he decided to text her instead. His ego had taken enough of a beating for one day. He didn’t want to risk hearing indifference in her voice. Tali wasn’t known for her compassion.

  He pulled out his handheld and sent her a direct message: STAY INSIDE. VERY DANGEROUS. STAY AWARE.

  He was surprised when her response was immediate: I’M GLAD YOU’RE OKAY. WAS WORRIED.

  His mood brightened a bit. At least I’ve got that going for me. He allowed himself another drag on the cigarette before calling Jason. It was time to get back in the game.

  “I’m glad to see you arrived at the safe house, sir,” Jason said. “I had OMNI track your route and no one followed you. No signals from your vehicle, either. Did the prisoner survive th
e trip?”

  “For the moment. Fischer has him on the table right now. Have there been any other attacks on us?”

  “Negative,” Jason said. “All other Faculty Members, Adjuncts, Assets, and Affiliates have reported in and seem to be unharmed. The entire team in Europe is gathering at the rendezvous point in Berlin. Tali is already there, so…”

  Hicks already knew where she was. He couldn’t think about her now. “Is she following protocol? Has she gone off-line?”

  “Negative,” Jason said. “She’s still observing the bank in Berlin. Remotely, of course, but she hasn’t cut the feed yet. There’s no signs that OMNI has been compromised, of course, but she’s still violating the protocol. Do you want me disconnect her remotely?”

  He had assigned Tali to set up the safe house and monitor everyone who went into and out of the small boutique bank the Vanguard used to make cash deposits. Everyone who entered and exited the building was photographed and run through OMNI’s facial recognition software. The system looked for common depositors, times of when deposits were made, and other patterns. When someone appeared to be of interest, Tali did a deeper dive into their background and began investigating them in the hopes one of them would lead to the Vanguard. It was a shot in the dark, but when chasing ghosts, one had to stalk the shadows.

  “Leave her alone for now. What about Roger?”

  “He responded to the alert and is in the process of packing now. He should be out of the nightclub within the hour.”

  Hicks’s jaw set on edge. Fucking Roger was never on time. “Ping him back and tell him he’s got only ten minutes. I need him mobile, not trapped in a nightclub in the middle of Berlin.”

  “I’ll tell him to get moving, sir.”

  “Good. Give me a situation report on what’s happening at the attack site.”

  “I was talking to Mark Stephens when you called. He’s still on the line. I’ll patch him through now.”

  Stephens skipped the pleasantries and began his report. “I don’t know who you called, James, but whoever it was has some serious juice. Every agency on the ground deferred to me as soon as I got here. The media ran with the gas explosion story I fed them without question. They didn’t even blink an eye during the fire department press conference.”

  Many people mourned the death of investigative journalism. James Hicks wasn’t one of them. “Any federal agencies on site?”

  “The whole alphabet soup. ATF, FBI, NTSB. Our friends in Langley sent some people, too, but they’re playing it cool and hanging back. Everyone is following my lead like the fear of God has been put into them.”

  Hicks could hear a glint of pride in the former DIA man’s voice. It was understandable that he liked his detractors kissing his ass for a change, but Hicks didn’t have time for indulgences. He made a mental note to keep Stephens’s ego in check before the call ended. “What’s the real death count? Don’t sugarcoat it. The media is reporting zero fatalities.”

  “They’re not sugarcoating it,” Stephens said. “No one was home in any of the apartments at the time of the blast. A couple of cats may have bitten the dust, but no human casualties. Some people got hurt by debris, but nothing life-threatening. The media is calling it a miracle. Lots of wrecked cars on the street, but that’s what insurance is for.”

  Hicks didn’t believe in miracles. At least they wouldn’t have a lot of victims’ families being interviewed on the news, demanding answers about how this happened. “Is the facility secure?”

  “Completely destroyed,” Stephens reported. “Looks like whoever it was dropped a Hellfire II on you. A bunker-buster set for ground detonation.”

  “I know what a fucking Hellfire II is,” Hicks snapped. “I want a damage assessment.”

  Stephens complied. “It crashed through the buildings like a rock through water, but didn’t detonate until it hit the sub-basement. Most of the blast was contained by the bunker. Probably vaporized everything. Absorbed a good portion of the blast, too. Some of the neighboring buildings might need structural support, but—”

  Hicks didn’t care about real estate. “I want verification on total destruction of the facility as soon as possible. Remove anything that even resembles technical equipment as soon as it’s safe. There’s an armory down there, so be careful of exploding ammunition. I want all of that cleared out before the firemen get in there with cell phones and start posting images on Instagram. If anyone remarks that it looks like someone was living down there, write it off as squatters or some damned thing.”

  “Okay, James. Jesus, you don’t have to be so—”

  “Did you grab the three packages I left across the street?”

  “A Varsity Squad already removed the driver and is in the process of getting the two men on the roof as we speak. They’ll run their prints and faces through OMNI before they move them.”

  “Good. Stay on-site and report back every hour on the hour until further notice. If you need a break, I’ll send Scott over to spell you. I want a command presence on-site at all times, especially when they begin clearing the debris. Keep an eye on the feds, too. We still don’t know whose side they’re on.”

  Stephens paused for a moment. “Hold on a minute. You don’t think Demerest could be behind this, do you?”

  Hicks found that rich, coming from Stephens. “You and your friends tried killing me with a drone once, remember? You tell me.”

  “Damn,” Stephens said. “You don’t give an inch, do you?”

  “I’m not paid to be nice,” Hicks reminded him. “Report back in an hour. And keep your ego in check. Don’t throw your weight around unless it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t want anyone making phone calls just because you’re feeling yourself. Understand?”

  Hicks killed the connection, but Jason called right back.

  Jason said, “Stephens deserved that dressing down, sir. I’ll monitor the situation from here just in case I need to step in.”

  “Quit kissing my ass,” Hicks told him. “I can take people trying to kill me, but I can’t take people brown-nosing me.”

  Jason was silent for a beat. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

  “I need you here in New York as soon as possible. Report to the Annex and be ready to jump in to help Stephens if I need you.”

  “But I thought you said Scott would spell him if—”

  “I’ve got other plans for Scott. And I need you here while I’m in the field.”

  “Understood,” Jason said. “In the meantime, the Trustee contacted me a few minutes ago. She said she needs to speak to you. It’s urgent.”

  Of course it is.

  He groaned as he ran his hand over his face. The hand was rock-steady now.

  Normally, he could picture his Carousel of Concern spinning at an orderly pace, each priority clearly presenting itself to be dealt with in an orderly fashion.

  Now the goddamned thing had been blown to bits and he didn’t have the time to try to put it back together again. Now wasn’t the time for contemplation. It was the time for action.

  But contemplation edged its way in anyway. He’d only been concerned about the attack. He hadn’t the time to think about why it happened until that very moment.

  The facts began coming into focus on their own.

  Roger had given him a lead on a Russian thug who called himself Boris.

  OMNI showed Boris was tied to a mysterious thug named Wilhelm/Willus Tessmer.

  Hicks had called Tayeb to start digging into Tessmer.

  Tayeb’s facility went CROATOAN hours after that.

  Then someone dropped a missile on his facility. A Russian squad had lased his building for it.

  All of it was related. Only question was if the Vanguard or Russian contractors were working for Demerest.

  Jason snapped him out of it. “Are you still there? The Trustee is waiting.”

  “I’ll call her in a minute. In the meantime, find out what happened to Tayeb and his men. Look at media accounts, police channels, eve
rything. I know OMNI’s reach is weak in that part of the world, but try it anyway. Call me if you get something definitive. Send me a report in an hour no matter what.”

  “God,” Jason said. “You think all of this is related, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s what bothers me. And by the way, sorry for snapping at you just now. You saved my ass today.”

  “No need to thank me. It’s my job.”

  Hicks killed the connection. He took a long, final drag on his cigarette before he flicked it into the ancient sink behind him. His hands were finally as steady as they normally were.

  Time to see what Ma wants. He dialed the Trustee’s extension on his handheld.

  “Asking how you’re doing would be a stupid question,” she said. “Were you injured?”

  “I got out in plenty of time, thanks to OMNI and Jason.” Hicks felt his temper begin to spike and fought to tamp it down. “I’m going to ask you a direct question. I want a straight yes or no answer from you. No hedging. No stalling. Did Demerest do this?”

  “Absolutely not,” she answered. “I was on the phone with him discussing the Jabbar information. He was over the moon about it, James. We were actually talking about how we could work together when he got word of the attack.”

  “Sounds awfully convenient.”

  “We were already on the phone for an hour,” she said. “And he’s not the type to use a drone on American soil against an American target. Definitely not with all the heat on the Agency at the moment. I didn’t even know we had a facility on 23rd Street. How did they find it?”

  “I don’t know,” Hicks admitted, “but I’m going to find out. I’m hoping my friend upstairs can give me some answers.”

  “I hope he does,” she said. “I know you still blame Carl for the drone attack on the highway last year, but that wasn’t him. He’s not above ordering you killed, but he would have done it a lot cleaner than this. It’s simply not his style. And based on my conversation with him this morning, he was looking to work with you, not kill you.”

  Hicks didn’t know her well enough to believe her. But he knew sincerity when he heard it, and he heard it now. “Then that means it was the Vanguard. I’ll confirm that after I talk to the asshole I captured. They’re working on stabilizing him now. In the meantime, I need you to check on Ronen Tayeb’s people in Moscow. They were working on a couple of leads for us.”