by Jon McGoran
The PMCs were mopping up, taking out any surviving losers, and probably any remaining bikers, too. Three separate balls of black smoke rose up into the sky, trailing wisps that thickened into thin black columns that twisted around each other until they were one.
As the ringers got back on the buses, one of the PMCs jogged over to the spot where they had been standing and poured a can of gasoline onto the meth-covered ground.
The transport came back up the dirt road with the four PMCs hanging on the back. Keen realized it was taking out the bodies. Maybe the others realized it, too, because they all watched it go by, solemn but grateful they weren’t on it. Also knowing that in all likelihood they would be within the next few days.
Chapter 50
It had been a glorious round. A dozen dead bikers and almost as many dead ringers. A last-ditch effort by a gravely wounded contestant to take out two others, desperately clinging onto life and a chance to win the Dead Ring by stealing their winning ticket. It didn’t get much better than that.
And yet it did. Watching Yancy walking over and taking out the last loser. Perfection.
And then the Cowboy had to ruin it.
“Oh my god,” he said. “Is that crystal meth?” He looked back and forth between the bright screens in front of him and the dark shadows behind him, no longer afraid of who he saw there, or not afraid enough. “Seriously, what is that… Eighteen? Is that eighteen k-kilos of meth? That’s half a million dollars, at least.”
The Cowboy scanned the room, looking from face to face, waiting for someone to confirm what he was saying, to agree with him, or acknowledge him even. But he was greeted with silence, and the tap-tap-tapping of the keypad.
“Come on,” he said. “I mean, I’m no drug d-dealer, but this whole thing is costing me millions. Are you telling me none of you are at all interested in recouping s-some of that?” He looked at the screen again, at the ringers dumping their meth onto the ground, then at the PMC bringing the gasoline can over. “Oh, no… no… Don’t tell me you’re going to… No!”
The guards and technicians paused, listening to the voice in their earpieces, and the Cowboy rolled his eyes.
“Oh, Jesus Christ. Are you k-kidding me?” he said. “Do you really think I don’t know you’re all connected over those headsets?” He squinted into the shadows. “Look, if you’ve got something to say to me, just say it?”
He looked around, as if expecting an answer from the shadows, but instead, the guard to his left clamped a hand around his throat and pushed him against the wall, squeezing hard, and then harder still.
“You don’t question the Dead Ring,” said the guard, whispering into the Cowboy’s ear. “You don’t do anything that would put the Dead Ring in jeopardy, like drug trafficking or anything else.” He clenched his hand tighter, causing the Cowboy’s eyes to bulge and his face to turn purple. “And you never second-guess the Ringleader.”
The guard paused for an instant, listening to the voice coming over his earpiece. Then he looked up again. “Do you understand?”
Unable to speak, the Cowboy managed to nod his assent, and the guard released him, letting him crumple to the floor.
Chapter 51
For ten minutes they had all been standing there, wordlessly watching the unchanged screens. The tracker signal was strong and clear, moving just enough that they could be reasonably sure Keen was not dead. The CIRRUS drone, circling high overhead, picked up nothing but clouds—darker when it flew lower, lighter when it rose higher up. Aram checked the settings every two or three minutes, fighting off panic by making sure they weren’t missing anything due to technical errors or a bad setting. But everything was right. This was all there was to see.
The third screen was dark, and in it, Aram could see the reflection of Cooper, Ressler, and Navabi standing behind him.
Cooper and Navabi were like statues.
Ressler was climbing out of his skin, occasionally flashing glares at Cooper, or opening his mouth to say something, probably to protest their inactivity. But he didn’t say a word.
“The uplink feed just ended,” Wall reported.
“We have movement on the tracker,” Aram said quietly, his voice croaky and dry. The tracking dot had moved about twenty feet, according to the scale on the screen.
A few seconds later, the dot began moving again, more quickly this time. “They’re driving,” he said.
The screen showing the video feed from the CIRRUS began to brighten. “The cloud cover is breaking up,” he said.
Spots of faded dusty brown began to peek through the gray.
The CIRRUS was following the tracking dot, and as the clouds parted, the screen showed the two buses and a canvas-covered military truck. Well ahead of them was a large RV, so far away it might not have been affiliated in any way.
The clouds continued to break up and slide out of the way.
Cooper leaned forward. “What’s that?” He pointed at a black smudge on the far left of the screen.
Aram overrode the CIRRUS controls, pointing the camera back toward the direction the vehicles were coming from.
“Oh no,” Aram said.
The clouds continued to part and as the CIRRUS flew on, the angle revealed the U-shaped configuration of trailers, fully engulfed in flames. Black smoke billowed up into the clouds.
“That fire,” Cooper said. “Where is that in relation to where Keen’s tracker was stopped?”
Aram checked the recording. “Looks like it’s the same place.”
“How far are those vehicles now?”
Aram zoomed out the camera and did a quick calculation. “Three miles.”
“Do a quick reconnaissance sweep of that fire and then resume following the tracker.”
Aram paused the autopilot and took manual control of the CIRRUS. He felt a pang of anxiety as it peeled away from its pursuit of the truck holding Keen. He felt like he was abandoning her.
On the screen, the horizon pitched to one side as he circled back until the column of smoke was right in front of them. In a few seconds he was headed right toward it. He veered off to the left, so as to not fly directly into it. As he looped around lower, they could see the ground littered with bodies. At least ten of them, plus twice that many serious-looking bloody spots.
“That’s a biker gang,” Ressler said, pointing at two of the bodies, lying in the dust next to a row of burning motorcycles. “Look at the patches. The Cossacks. I don’t get it.”
Cooper was breathing loudly, aggravated. “Get back to following that convoy.”
Ressler stepped up next to Cooper. “Sir, there’s obviously some kind of problem,” he said. “We need to go in there and get Keen out.”
Cooper looked at him, concerned but also mildly irritated. “Thank you for your input, Agent Ressler. Duly noted.” He turned to Aram and Wall. “How long before you can decrypt the video feed, so we can see what the hell went on down there?”
Aram looked at Wall. That was his thing, really.
Wall’s face went blank for a moment as he did some mental calculations.
“About two hours?” he said, uncertainly.
“Make it one,” Cooper said. Then he turned and strode into his office.
Chapter 52
“This place is amazing,” said Orest Juergins, practically trembling with excitement as he looked around. “I can’t believe I didn’t know it was even here.”
Juergins was a boring man. In fact, truth be told, he was exactly the type of “not quite our type” that places like the one they were in contrived to exclude. He would probably never see it at night, never experience the withering disdain of the bartenders. As it was, he would have to content himself with the passive condescension of the waitress. And if Red ever came back this way, he’d have some explaining to do. But that was okay. He never planned on coming back this way.
With its rich wood paneling and leather-upholstered furniture, the place felt as heavy and grounded as any place on earth. But the floor-to-c
eiling windows belied that impression, showing off the city far below and the flat land stretching out beyond it.
Red knew that part of the point of a place like this was for idle rich people to show how unimpressed they were. It was nothing special to them.
Juergins had spent five minutes with his nose pressed up against the glass, trying to see if he could spot his house.
Red envied the man his giddy excitement. It was a feeling Red treasured and it was increasingly elusive. A nice view of the Dallas suburbs wasn’t quite going to do it. The brown tea they called espresso there wasn’t either.
“An amazing view,” Juergins said as he returned to the table with his orange juice.
“It certainly is something,” Red said, sipping. “Thanks for joining me. As I said on the phone, before I add Big Talkers to my list of preferred causes, I’d like to get more of a feel for the place.”
“Absolutely,” Juergins said. “As I’m sure you know from the brochures and our website—”
Red held up a hand. “Yes, I’ve read the brochures and the website.” He lowered his voice, conspiratorially. “I need to get a better sense of the people with whom I will be associating myself. You don’t want to put your name on the side of a building without knowing what’s really going on inside, am I right?” Juergins’ eyes went a little rounder at the suggestion that a donation of that size might be on the table. “Who are your other big donors? Who are you naming scholarship funds after? Who is on your board? Who are you making your man of the year?”
“Oh,” Juergins said, his face flushing crimson. “Well, as it turns out, I was this year’s man of the year.”
“Congratulations.”
“But I’ve been volunteering with the organization for twenty years.”
“I’m sure it was very well deserved. Who won before you?”
“Well, that was Jerry Simmons. He’s a bigwig at Southwest Capital. He’s only been involved in the last few years, since his grandson was diagnosed with a phonemic disorder. But he’s given more money than almost anyone else, since then.”
“And he has no skeletons in the closet? No youthful indiscretions or grownup weaknesses I should know about?”
Juergins looked indignant. “Good heavens, no. He is a deacon in his church and a coach in the local softball league.”
Red stifled a smile. That would have raised a red flag if he had been in the slightest bit interested in Jerry Simmons’ potential liabilities.
He put down his drink. “Who was it before that?”
All the indignity on Orest Juergins’ face vanished, replaced by a wince that appeared before he could stifle it.
“Oh, um… that would be Dwight Tindley. He’s a big-shot oil services guy. Had a bit of a stutter when he was a kid, but I think now it’s mostly just when he’s under a lot of stress. He was a big supporter for close to ten years.”
“Was?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said was, not has been. Is he no longer a supporter?”
Juergins cleared his throat. “Well, no, not the last few years. His company has been growing very aggressively, internationally even. It’s not unusual for donors to cycle into and out of different causes.”
Red sipped his espresso. “You seem nervous talking about him.”
“No, not at all,” Juergins said, his jowls flapping as he shook his head. “We have lots of donors who move on to other causes after a while. Some even come back after a few years. I remember Gordon Stueben, man of the year about fifteen years ago. He went off the radar for five years, then came back, ran for the board and gave us one of the biggest donations we ever—”
“I’d like to hear more about Tindley.”
Juergins frowned, like a child who had just been caught at something he thought he’d gotten away with.
Red smiled, reassuringly. “Look, I am very difficult to shock, believe me. But I hate to be surprised later.”
“Well,” he said, lacing his fingers together and flexing them back and forth as he chose his words. He looked up with a tiny, tentative smile. “Just like you, we like to be very careful about who we affiliate ourselves with. And… and who we ask our other supporters to be affiliated with. Dwight Tindley hit a bad spell, business wise, several years ago. And that’s fine—we all understand that. Goodness knows, we’ve all had ups and downs. But he kind of fell apart, drinking a lot and so forth. And that’s not the worst thing in the world either, you know? Lots of people hit a rough patch then go on to do great things. But he kind of changed after that.”
“Changed how?”
“He was an oil guy and he used to associate mostly with other oil guys. Not roughnecks, either, more like, you know, Houston executive types. But all of a sudden, he’s hanging out with all these hard cases.”
Red put on a pained expression, hiding his delight at finally getting somewhere with Juergins. “What kind of hard cases?”
Juergins’ shoulders did a wiggly dance, like he was trying to shrug his way out from under something. “Military types, but not soldiers. More like private military. Mercenaries and the like.”
Red shrugged, like that wasn’t so bad.
“But that wasn’t all. There were also some serious bad guys. I don’t know if it was drugs or, like, weapons dealers. But it was something bad.”
“Oh my.”
“Yes. And the worst part was, Tindley didn’t belong with them. You could tell just looking at them. It reminded me of high school. You know when the bad kids let that one good kid hang around with them so they could cheat off his paper? That kind of thing. But I think he wanted to be one of them. He wanted to be ‘bad,’ for whatever reason.”
“So you cut ties with him?”
“Well… let’s just say I didn’t follow up when his checks stopped coming.”
“I see.”
Juergins’ eyes were drawn to Dembe as he rose from a booth on the other side of the room, then they widened as he approached their table and handed Red the cell phone.
Red held up a finger as he looked at the display. Cooper. “Yes?” he said.
“There’s been a development.”
Chapter 53
The CIRRUS drone had followed the convoy back to the campground, and since then, the tracker dot had barely moved. Not motionless, but less than fifty yards according to the scale at the bottom of the screen, moving around on foot and well within the confines of the campground.
Ressler and Navabi had retreated to the sleeping quarters to catch up on some rest.
Wall had decrypted the incoming portion of the two-way satellite signal—the portion that included the incoming bets—but it consisted of seemingly random numbers, meaningless without whatever key had been previously agreed upon by the various parties. Now he was up to his elbows in decrypting the uplink feed.
Left with the mundane task of monitoring the motionless tracker dot, Aram returned to idly reconfiguring the jigsaw puzzle fingerprint from the Turkish control room. He had created four prior configurations and run them through the database, but none had generated any hits. He tweaked the most recent version, pulling two of the sections closer together, and saved that as version number five. He had just submitted it to the database when the exterior door swung open and Reddington walked in, trailed by the blinding afternoon sun.
Cooper emerged from his office as if he’d been expecting him.
“What happened?” Reddington demanded.
Cooper stepped aside and motioned Reddington into his office.
Aram tried halfheartedly not to listen, but their voices, though civil, quickly became raised, and the flimsy walls did little to muffle them.
Cooper calmly explained what had happened that morning: what they had seen, what they had done, and, more importantly, what they had not done.
“So Keen went through a full round of the Dead Ring, that’s what you’re saying,” Reddington said when he was done. “The one thing you said wouldn’t happen?”
�
��We don’t know that’s what happened. Our camera was obscured. But we intercepted the satellite uplink and we’re decrypting it now.”
Wall’s typing was growing more rapid and more determined, but the conversation between Cooper and Reddington grew louder right along with it, almost as if they were talking over it.
“So the uplink was live in both directions?” Reddington said, his voice incredulous. “And you didn’t go in after five minutes, like you had told me you would?”
“As per Agent Keen’s request,” Cooper replied, his voice sounding like it wanted to be louder still. “As I explained before. And as I also explained before, this is Agent Keen’s job. And going in was her idea.”
“And what about your job, Harold? Isn’t part of that not putting your agents into unnecessary harm?”
Wall hit the enter key with a flourish, then turned to share an awkward look with Aram.
The door to Cooper’s office swung open, and Red stormed out.
Cooper came up behind him and lightly put his hand on Red’s elbow. “Look, Red, I share your concerns,” he said quietly. “But I can’t put this operation at risk and endanger countless innocent lives just to get Agent Keen out of harm’s way. We’ve seen what these people are capable of. We can’t risk losing this opportunity to shut them down. And we can’t do what we need to do until Keen activates the transmitter during the live feed.”
Wall cleared his throat. “Um… there might be another way.”
Cooper and Red both turned to look at him.
“What do you mean?” Cooper said.
“I wasn’t listening to you or anything, but um, if we could get hold of the login info, like, from one of the bettors or viewers or whatever, one of the subscribers, we might be able to get our code inside their signal even without the transmitter.” His computer dinged and he turned to look at it. “We’ve decrypted the first chunk of video.”
Red pulled his arm away from Cooper’s hand, and they both came over to the workstation.
