by Jon McGoran
“What is it?” Cooper asked.
“I recognize some of his work,” Aram said. “The guy was brilliant. Until recently, his encryption was considered state of the art.”
Cooper nodded and patted Aram on the shoulder. “Good work. See what else you can find on him.”
Chapter 27
“Th-that’s all of them?” asked the Cowboy. It was one minute after midnight, and the only movement on the screens in the last hour and a half had been at the stroke of twelve, when Yancy closed the log-in book with a yawn and the staff rolled the gate closed and locked it.
One of the technicians turned in his seat and spoke past him, making it clear that he was not answering the Cowboy’s question but talking to someone else.
“Thirty contestants, sir. That matches what we tracked from the hotel.”
“Is th-th-that all of them?” the Cowboy asked, this time confronting his fear and looking directly at the Ringleader.
“Yes,” he replied from the shadows, his voice sounding coarse even to his own ears. He rarely spoke, but even after all these years, his voice still sounded like someone else.
The technician turned to the Cowboy now. “Forty keys were distributed on the bridge. Ten key-holders went down at the Yellow Rose. That leaves thirty.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
The technicians and the guards all paused at the same moment and put their hands to their earpieces, listening. One of the technicians tapped a few keys on his keyboard, then handed the Cowboy a simple remote as all four of them left the vehicle.
The large screens were now divided up into smaller screens, each one showing a view of the interior of a different cabin, angled across the bed and into the bathroom. Some of the inhabitants were exercising, some were reclining, some were eating. Some were clothed, some were not. Some were bathing, some were voiding their bladders or bowels. Some were pleasuring themselves.
The Cowboy peered into the shadows, questioningly. “Is this part of the broadcast?”
“No.”
The Cowboy absentmindedly swept the remote control across the screens, and as he did, the windows enlarged and then shrank again, one by one. He swept it back, this time lingering on the one-eyed Iraqi woman, standing there naked, drying her hair.
“This is j-just for us?”
“Just for you,” he rasped. “They are yours. If you want to get to know them.”
The Cowboy tried to look away from the screen, but was unable. “But I don’t…” he started to say, as if they hadn’t done their homework on him. As if they didn’t know everything about him and his particular tastes.
He sank into a deep and absorbed silence as he flicked from screen to screen, mesmerized by the figures on them.
Chapter 28
Keen awoke with a start half an hour before sunrise. It took her a moment to remember where she was and several more to convince herself of it. She used the toiletries kit to wash up and brush her teeth, gagged down an MRE for breakfast, followed by an entire bottle of water.
She gave it a few minutes to settle in, then did some stretching exercises while running through LeCroix’s profile in her mind. She had Red’s description, what little was known from her file and, of course, Keen’s own impressions of her.
She felt like she had a grasp of the woman’s personality, but she was glad LeCroix had been so secretive in life. That would help her avoid getting tripped up.
At five minutes to seven, a loudspeaker crackled to life outside: “Attention, participants. Assembly is at the flagpole in five minutes.”
Keen came out of her stretch, tightening her abdominal muscles against the wave of nervous nausea that swept through her.
She told herself, LeCroix probably would have also been nervous right now. But then again, LeCroix would also be hiding it.
At just under five minutes, Keen took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped outside.
The sun was low, but already blinding, coming in sideways and casting long shadows of the crowd assembled around a flagpole in the square. It looked like a parade ground on a military base. There was no flag, but the rope slapped against the pole in the light breeze.
Within a minute, it seemed like everyone was out there. Thirty of them: mostly big, mean-looking men, although Keen was not the only woman. There was a beautiful Iraqi woman with an eye-patch, and a Kenyan woman whose eyes were blank, her face completely immobile.
The men were big, mostly scarred, and battle hardened. Half of them seemed completely oblivious to the women, or to each other for that matter.
The rest of them stared at the women, with expressions ranging from lascivious to homicidal. Keen seemed to be drawing more attention than the other two, or at least that’s what it felt like. She tried not to acknowledge it in any way.
A huge Australian stared at her intently with smoldering eyes, as if he was going out of his way to be obvious about it. He was bald, the side of his head marked with fresh burns, but he looked vaguely and unsettlingly familiar.
There was another one staring as well. He was younger, softer, and saner-looking than the others. He watched her nervously, his eyes flickering over to her, then looking away any time she looked back at him. Several of the others were looking at him the way predators look at prey.
They stood there for a minute, although it felt much longer, then Yancy approached, wearing the same grimy clothes as before and looking decidedly unwashed himself. He was followed by a man in matching fatigues and a beret. He was in his late fifties, with short blond hair and the kind of face that might once have been boyishly charming, but was now ravaged by bitterness and hatred. A diagonal scar spanned his entire face, from just over his right eye, across his nose, and down his left cheek.
“Okay, ringers,” Yancy barked. “Stand to attention.”
The group formed into two lines of seven and two lines of eight. Some of them seemed determined not to line up too quickly or too cleanly, as if making a show of defiance. A couple of the men, two Russians who seemed to know each other, started pushing and shoving, until Yancy yelled, “Knock it off!” then muttered, “Save it for the games.”
He cleared his throat and held up a hand in the direction of the man standing behind him. “This is Sergeant Corson. He will be running things throughout the Dead Ring. That means he is in charge of you. For most of you, he will be in charge of you for the rest of your lives. You will obey him completely. I work for Sergeant Corson. I help him keep you crazy bastards in order. You will obey me completely, as well.”
Yancy stood to the side and said, “Sergeant Corson?”
The other man stepped forward to occupy the space where Yancy had stood when he spoke.
“Welcome to the Dead Ring,” he said, with a dark smile. “One of you will be leaving here with a minimum of five million dollars in cash, enough to retire from whatever horrible things you’ve been doing for a living. The rest of you will not be leaving at all. At least not alive. Each game will have its own rules and you will be told those rules before the game begins. Other than the rules we tell you, there will be no other rules inside a game.”
The two Russians started pushing again, and Yancy stilled them with a murderous stare.
Keen sensed movement behind her, and glancing back saw three PMCs with assault rifles standing behind the formation.
Corson continued, “Outside that game, however, there are many rules. No communication with the outside world is allowed during the Dead Ring, and no communication about the Dead Ring is allowed, ever. Even if you win. There is no fighting outside the game. No rough-housing. If you want to hurt someone, by all means, please do, but do it inside the game, so the cameras can show it for the entertainment of our sponsors.”
The two Russians started pushing again. As Yancy moved to step toward the disruption Corson put out a hand, stopping him.
“We do not operate under military law in this camp,” Corson said, earning half-hearted cheers from a handful of the playe
rs.
One of the Russians pushed the other one out of line entirely.
Without a word, Corson drew his sidearm and shot the pusher in the head. The crack of the gunshot echoed across the landscape. The hole in the Russian’s forehead let out two large burps of blood, but by the time his body hit the ground, the bleeding had slowed to a trickle. His leg shook once, then stopped.
“Get back in line,” Corson said, to the man who had been pushed.
He did as he was told, stepping over the body. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, not looking at his dead comrade.
“In here, we follow my rules,” Corson continued, his voice rising. “And the penalty for failing to obey my rules is death. Does anyone have any questions?”
His gun was still out and still raised. After a moment, he shrugged and holstered it. “Good. We often lose more than one while going over the rules.”
He smiled at that, as if at some fond memory.
“The game itself will start at sunrise tomorrow. Today,” he gestured to a grassy field at the far end of the compound, “we do the Combine.”
Chapter 29
Corson carried on with his speech as if nothing significant had happened. The remaining Russian player watched as Yancy wordlessly directed two of the other ringers to drag the corpse of his friend from the square. Keen had to resist the urge to watch them as they dumped the body off to the side and returned to their places in the formation.
Two more PMCs came out of the main building carrying video cameras on tripods. They were headed toward a wide grassy field that appeared to be set up with exercise or training equipment.
“The Combine is not part of the competition,” Corson explained. “And there is no betting on it. Frankly, most of our bettors don’t even watch it. You will each be put through your paces in a number of basic athletic competitions—running, jumping, climbing, obstacles—for the benefit of those viewers who choose to watch. We want to give them an idea of who you people are, so they can decide to bet on you or against you, how many rounds you will survive. Whatever they want. Keep in mind that the size of the winner’s purse may be determined in part by how much is wagered, so even though this is not an official round of the Dead Ring, you will be expected to do your best.”
Corson stayed where he was as Yancy led the group toward the grassy field. Most of them stepped around the blood on the ground, but the Australian seemed to make a point of planting his foot right in it.
As they walked, Keen could hear some of the other ringers muttering to each other, a low-level buzz that she did her best to block out as she considered the implications of this unexpected stage of the proceedings.
She hadn’t had a clear idea of what to expect once she got inside, or of how quickly the games would get underway. But she had not expected there to be another preliminary round of any kind.
Looking ahead at the field in front of her, Keen focused on the PMCs positioning the video cameras. They were going to record the Combine, meaning there would be a multichannel video feed going out, presumably uplinked to the satellite, but there would be no betting, and no signal coming in. It dawned on her that when the video signal started, Aram would be waiting for her to activate the transmitter. But with no bets coming in, maybe no signal of any kind coming in, she had no idea if activating the transmitter would send Aram’s Trojan horse out to the other computers, or if it would go nowhere. And Corson had said most of their viewers didn’t even log on for this, so the majority of the subscribers wouldn’t be included in the bust. Once the transmitter had been activated for five minutes the tac team would shut the whole thing down and the operation would be blown. They’d have Corson and Yancy. They could charge them for the murder of the dead Russian contestant. Maybe they could get some information out of them, but it wasn’t a good bet.
Even worse, they had agreed that if Keen didn’t activate the transmitter within five minutes of the beginning of the satellite feed, they would assume she was in jeopardy and the tac team would come in anyway, shut it all down and extract her.
She had to warn them off.
Her mind was racing, trying to come up with a plan, but by the time they reached the field, she had come up empty.
The field was surrounded by a track, and inside it were cones and tires to run around and across, a set of weights, a climbing wall, and some gymnastic equipment. In the middle were the two cameras on tripods, their operators panning back and forth as if they were already broadcasting.
At the far end, there was a table with several dozen metal water bottles, stacks of folded towels, and bundles of some other white material.
Keen thought it oddly reminiscent of a high school athletic tryout. She scanned the equipment and the field looking for ideas, for some way she could communicate with the task force that wouldn’t give her away. She knew that incredibly high in the sky, invisible to the naked eye and too far away to hear, the CIRRUS drone was flying a slow pattern. Watching her.
She wanted to run out in the field and simply wave her arms, “No, don’t come!”
But that wasn’t an option. A crazy idea flashed through her head that maybe she could arrange the towels or the water bottles, to send a coded message without being caught.
She knew the idea was ridiculous but, while she struggled to remain cool and impassive on the outside, inside she was becoming increasingly frantic. She had mere minutes to figure it out, and if she didn’t, the whole thing would come down in crashing ruin. She thought again about the towels and the water bottles. And then she had an idea.
As the rest of the ringers filed onto the field behind her, she crossed to the table with the towels and the water bottles. As she approached it, Yancy’s hoarse voice called out, “Le Chat!”
She stopped and turned around, but reached out as she was doing so and grabbed one of the water bottles.
“Get over here!” he snapped, pointing to the middle of the field where everyone else was gathering.
She didn’t show him she had grabbed a water bottle, but she didn’t hide it either, sauntering back to the field, ignoring the stares of some of the fellow contestants: some predatory, some curious. The two women stared at her with an almost identical combination of pity and contempt.
When she reached the edge of the group, she stopped and got down on one knee, extending the foot with the transmitter in front of her. She reached down with both hands, and began rolling the water bottle back and forth over the tip of her foot.
“Le Chat,” Yancy barked again. “What the hell are you doing?”
Keen winced and looked up, but didn’t stop what she was doing. “Got a cramp.”
Yancy snorted and shook his head. “Oh, you’ll do great out there.”
Chapter 30
Aram had stayed up throughout the night researching Simon Wall and tinkering around with the jigsaw fingerprint, but he’d kept one eye on the tracking signal, which hadn’t moved until five minutes earlier. The CIRRUS drone video was grainy but the tracking signal was strong and clear. He had watched through bleary eyes as Keen and the other competitors assembled in the clearing at the center of the compound.
Then one of the contestants was shot and killed.
Aram had woken up quick at that point. Cooper had appeared almost instantly behind him, already dressed.
“What is it?” Cooper asked.
Ressler appeared in the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned and untucked, his face crease-marked but his eyes alert.
Aram told them both about the shooting.
Now the three of them watched as the entire group of competitors walked to a playing field set up with track equipment. As they began to stretch, a green signal light appeared in the corner of the screen. At the same time, a soft chime filled the room.
“Oh crap,” Aram muttered, giving his head a vigorous shake to clear it.
“What is it?” Ressler asked.
“The video uplink. It’s live.” He rolled his chair to the other end of the table, and st
arted frantically typing, recording the signal and simultaneously sending it to the FBI’s distributed network for decryption.
“Are you sure?” Cooper asked, as he took out his phone to call Nichols and activate the tactical team. His voice was steely but so calm it seemed to slow Aram’s own heart rate.
Aram took a breath and double checked. The signal didn’t seem to be taking up as much bandwidth as he’d expected, and it was still heavily encrypted, but it was unmistakable. “Yes. Twenty seconds ago.” He looked up. “Nothing from Keen yet.”
Cooper initiated the call and turned away. “This is Deputy Director Cooper,” he said into the phone. “We have uplink. No, there is no word from Agent Keen. Have your team ready and prepare to implement the contingency plan.”
The tactical team was roughly four minutes from the campground by helicopter. It had been agreed that the team would embark after three minutes instead of the full five to reduce the response time, especially in case something went wrong.
As Aram went back to his computer, he could feel his heart rate slowly rise again.
The distributed network harnessed the available and currently unused computing power of hundreds of FBI computers, and the decryption software was state of the art. But the progress bar on the screen, which he knew was almost entirely ornamental, was also at the moment infuriatingly slow and seemingly stuck at two percent.
Once the transmitter was activated, Aram could embed the Trojan horse into the video signal so it would be encrypted along with the rest of the signal. It should work regardless. But without breaking the encryption, he wouldn’t know if it was working. And even if it did work, if they did get their code onto all those computers, if they didn’t know what the signal contained, they’d have a hard time making any kind of case, or enlisting foreign agencies in rounding up the bettors.
