The Blacklist--The Dead Ring No. 166

by Jon McGoran

  Keen had been hanging back to avoid that kind of harassment. She ran over to Okoye and helped him to his feet. He had a deep gash across his forearm.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she said.

  He seemed to be having trouble focusing on her. “Are any of us going to be okay?” Then he laughed and said, “Come on,” and ran unsteadily after the others.

  Once again, Keen didn’t know if the tac team was going to come in hot after the first five minutes, but she reminded herself that getting the transmitter and activating it was her true goal, or at least her primary goal. She needed to find an opportunity to even try to make that happen.

  The PMCs had fanned out and were circling the outer perimeter, outside the fence. Yancy and Corson were approaching behind her, coming through the gate.

  There might be an opportunity after all. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

  As Keen approached the building, the two camera drones circled overhead like angry insects. She paused, looking up at the exposed structure. Boden appeared, already on the third floor. He had one of the other ringers in a choke hold, with his arms twisted behind his back. He laughed as he threw the man off the side of the building, laughing even harder as his victim landed with a wet thud on a pile of jagged rubble.

  Almost immediately afterward, another ringer running up the steps to the third floor vanished, replaced by a bright flash, a loud bang, and a red cascade of shredded meat that coated the steps and rained down on the ground below.

  Yancy and two of the PMCs had started slowly circling the building in opposite directions inside the fence. Yancy laughed as he side-stepped some of the raining debris.

  Keen’s plan began to take shape, but she knew that in order for it to have a chance of succeeding, she would have to survive the round, or at least part of it. And that meant getting to the top of the building.

  The outside of the building bristled with exposed rebar. She had already been thinking that scaling the outside of it might be the safest way to go. Now she was sure of it. She grabbed one of the iron bars protruding from the concrete, and started climbing. Her muscles protested at first, but as she pulled herself up to the second floor, she warmed up and got into a rhythm.

  Chapter 66

  Keen saw two more ringers obliterated as she ascended the outside of the building, further confirming her decision to avoid the interior as much as possible. But when she reached the top floor, she knew she had to go inside.

  As she pulled herself up onto the fourth floor, a chunk of masonry landed on the concrete in front of her and bounced over her. She caught a momentary glimpse of Boden, standing next to a bank of lockers, hefting another rock in his hand. She ducked back over the edge as the missile sailed past her.

  She took a deep breath and swung herself up onto the floor, but by then Boden was gone.

  She sprinted past the lockers to the back of the building and looked over the edge. Yancy was just rounding a corner to the rear of the building. He looked up with a sick grin and blew her a kiss.

  She hurried back to the middle of the floor and used her key to open the next locker and retrieve the carbon steel knife inside it. The key was now stuck in the lock. It wouldn’t come out. All the open doors still had keys in them.

  She turned to go back the way she had come, but Dudayev had just emerged from the front stairway. He smiled when he saw her. It wasn’t a nice smile.

  She had the advantage of a knife, but she didn’t have time. Instead she ran away from him, toward the back of the building. She was still sure that scaling the outside would be the safer bet, but she didn’t want Yancy to see her coming. Despite her better judgment, she took the stairs.

  She was pretty sure the next level down was safe— judging from the charred and bloody walls, whatever trap had been set there was already sprung.

  When she reached the level below that, she immediately spotted one booby trap and avoided it easily, but then she felt the faint tug of a tripwire on her toe. There was a second trap. She looked down and saw it, almost invisible, but it was too late.

  Time seemed to freeze, and for a long fraction of an instant, she thought she was dead. She saw the impact grenade dropping from above. She didn’t have time to think, she could only watch as her body spun and rolled, somehow not only getting her hand under the thing before it hit the ground, but catching it softly enough that it didn’t annihilate her anyway.

  She stayed on the floor for a moment, her nerves almost as shattered as if the grenade actually had gone off. But it hadn’t. And in fact, she realized, it could come in handy. She got to her feet cradling it gently, took a deep breath, and hurried on.

  She avoided both traps on her way to the ground floor, then ran and came up behind the camera aimed along the back of the building.

  Part of her wanted to preserve the camera in case she did get her hands on the transmitter, but she knew she had less than five minutes until the building came down. There wouldn’t be enough time for Aram to execute the plan.

  She slid her knife into the back of the camera and pried out the battery pack.

  She heard a footstep outside, and flattened herself against the side wall. Her plan had been to use the grenade to distract Yancy so she could sneak up behind him, but suddenly there he was, inches away. He stepped out in front of her, the smell wafting off him. Then he checked his watch, turned around and started heading back toward the front of the building.

  They were almost out of time.

  Using the wall at her back to push off, she spun around with as much force behind her knife as she could muster.

  His eyes widened in surprise and horror. So did hers, as she saw the knife embedded in his chest less than an inch from where the transmitter sat in his pocket. Her horror deepened as she realized the knife was wedged between his ribs, that he wasn’t going down, and that he was bringing his gun around to shoot her.

  Still holding the impact grenade, she had to fight him one-handed. But she still had two feet. It felt almost wrong to plant such a vicious kick into the groin of a man who was essentially almost dead. But this was Yancy. It didn’t feel that wrong.

  His face contorted into a different combination of pain and horror, and he let out a lungful of foul-smelling air. This time he did go down. She pulled his gun away from him as he fell and tossed it aside, then put her boot on his chest and yanked out the knife.

  As the blood bubbled up from his chest, she put the knife under her arm and retrieved the transmitter from his shirt pocket.

  She almost staggered with relief at the sight of it, completely undamaged.

  Yancy’s eyes followed it as she took it from him. A kind of recognition formed in them, as if he understood that she had not only killed him, but that she was going to take the whole thing down. That she had gotten the best of him.

  Keen wasn’t sure how much time she had left, but she knew she had to warn off the tac team. While she was still out in the open, and there was no one around, she held out the transmitter and used the blade of the knife to cover it and uncover it, hoping that the same trick that worked last time would work again this time.

  “H-A-V-E…T-N-T” she said. “W-A-I-T… 4… S-I-G-N-A-L… T-M-R”

  She tucked the transmitter into her pocket, but as she took a few steps back into the building, toward the front, she heard Yancy groan and she stopped. He was still alive, still watching her. He was evidence.

  If Corson discovered him before he died that could be the end of it.

  She tossed the grenade in a low parabola that would end at Yancy’s midsection. Then she ran through the building as fast as she could.

  Chapter 67

  This time, the CIRRUS drone followed Keen for close to an hour. The two buses were followed a quarter of a mile back by two other vehicles that looked like the RV and the transport from the day before. The field office had been vibrating with intensity, but as time dragged on the intensity died out.

  When the buses finally pulled over in fron
t of an isolated, half-demolished four-story concrete building, everyone in the room livened up.

  The alert dinged a second time and as Aram announced, “The satellite uplink is live,” the mood intensified even more.

  Cooper marked the time, and immediately a display on one of the screens started counting down from five minutes. He got on the phone with Nichols and advised him to have the tac team prepare for deployment.

  Wall was furiously typing, recording the feed and accessing the back door so he could start to decrypt it. He might have sensed Aram staring at him, because he glanced over and gave him an awkward smile. Maybe even a guilty smile. It was hard to tell.

  Once again, there were six video channels and one data channel out and one data channel coming in.

  “We have two-way,” Aram announced. Presumably, that meant bets were coming in. This was for real.

  Wall turned in his seat and glanced at Percival and the others at the back of the room.

  At four minutes to go, Aram could hear the tac team helicopter landing outside to pick up Ressler and Navabi.

  Aram enlarged the video image as much as he could without rendering it unintelligible. He could make out Agent Keen, standing in a group with the rest of the contestants in front of the building. But the tracker dot had her located thirty feet away. He was wondering if it had somehow become miscalibrated when all the contestants on the screen, including the figure of Keen, began running toward the building.

  The tracker dot moved in a different direction.

  Outside, the helicopter sat with Ressler and Navabi on board, waiting for orders.

  Aram zoomed in on where the tracker dot said Agent Keen should be, and saw a man in a uniform carrying a rifle, walking slowly around to the back of the building.

  “Oh, no,” he said, drawing a look from Wall as a chill ran through his body.

  “What is it?” Wall asked, rolling his chair closer.

  Aram pointed at the screen. “Keen doesn’t have the TNT,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Yancy does.” He turned in his chair and called out, “Director Cooper! I think we have a situation here.”

  Cooper hurried out of his office. “What is it?”

  The display said three minutes until the tac team would be going in, even without the transmitter.

  Aram had to take manual control of the CIRRUS to get an angle on Yancy.

  “According to the tracker, that’s where Agent Keen should be, but she’s not. It seems to be Yancy, one of the Ringleader’s men.”

  They watched as Yancy continued to walk around the perimeter of the building.

  “He’s got the TNT,” Cooper said. “That’s why she didn’t activate it before.” He called Nichols, “The operation has been compromised. We need to go in ASAP.”

  As the helicopter lifted off outside, Cooper turned back to Aram, and asked, “Have you seen Agent Keen?”

  “Yes. Just a few minutes ago. She seemed okay.”

  Cooper closed his eyes and relief washed over his face.

  Yancy disappeared around the corner of the building, and Aram maneuvered the CIRRUS to bring him back into view. Just as the camera found him, Yancy stopped, looked at his watch, and abruptly turned around.

  “There she is!” Aram cried out, pointing at the screen.

  Agent Keen had jumped out of the rear of the building and struck Yancy hard, ripping his rifle out of his hands as he fell to the ground. A red blotch appeared on his chest and they watched Keen fumble at his body, clearly looking for something. Then the tracker dot started blinking on and off again.

  “She’s got it back! It’s Morse code again,” Aram announced, decoding it in real time, out loud to the group.

  Aram turned to Cooper. “She says we need to wait until tomorrow.”

  Staring at the screen, Cooper hesitated for a brief second, then he got back on the phone to Nichols. “Abort the mission,” he said. “Repeat: Abort the mission. Stand down until further notice.”

  Chapter 68

  When the text came in from Aram that there was no sign of Keen activating the transmitter, Red directed Dembe to drive around the corner and park in front of Tindley’s house. As soon as they pulled up, he got out and walked up to the front door.

  The drive and the walk took one minute.

  It took another twenty seconds for Mrs. Tindley to answer the door.

  “Hello?” she said. She was duly suspicious, but Red looked respectable enough that she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  The place didn’t seem like the home of someone who would be involved in something like the Dead Ring. She didn’t seem like the wife of someone who would be either.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Red said. “Mortified, actually. I would never dream of bothering Mr. Tindley at home, but we’ve got a problem. A big, big problem. And he’s not answering his cell phone. Is he here, by any chance?”

  She snorted and shook her head, like that was typical of Dwight. “And you are?”

  “Sorry,” he put out his hand. “Sherman Phelps. I’m kind of new with the company, which makes it extra awkward me coming here to Mr. Tindley’s home and all.”

  “I’m afraid he’s off on a hunting trip,” she said, rolling her eyes as she said it.

  Red screwed up his face. “Ugh. He really is, huh? I know that’s where he said he was going, but I kind of hoped he was making that up. I thought he just needed some time away from work. And don’t get me wrong, if anyone deserves time away, it’s Mr. Tindley, am I right? A lot of bosses think they’re so indispensable the place would fall apart without them, but with Mr. Tindley, it’s really true. And so he goes away and, well, here we are?”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “The Kazakhs are at it again. They’re saying the fee they agreed to includes us paying all internal corporate business taxes, which I know Mr. Tindley would never have agreed to. Never. It’s only about twenty million one way or another, but they’re threatening to back out of the whole deal if they don’t get what they want, and that could be some real money. When we start talking ‘B’s’ instead of ‘M’s’ I know it’s time to call Mr. Tindley. Even at home.”

  “Well, he told me not to call him unless it was an absolute emergency, but it sounds like this is one, huh?”

  “Red lights are literally flashing.”

  “I’m surprised Clark didn’t call or come by… Maybe I should call him.”

  “Clark is actually supposed to be on a hunting trip of his own, if you know what I mean.”

  She laughed and swatted at him, scandalized, but as if his reference was absolutely unambiguous. “Oh! Good for him, but wow, so soon after the operation.”

  “Well, you know Clark.”

  She laughed again. “Come on in, Sherman. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I’ve inconvenienced you more than enough.”

  She led him into the kitchen and as she picked up her phone, he eyed the knives on the magnetic rack over the sink. There was a filet knife third from the left that he would probably use if it came to it.

  He looked at his watch. Four minutes since the uplink started. It was looking more and more like it would come to it.

  Too bad. He kind of liked her.

  She placed the call, then held the phone out to her side and said, “He told me to call once and hang up then call back if it was a real emergency.”

  She disconnected and had just hit redial when they both heard a tapping at the front door.

  Mrs. Tindley gasped at the sight of Dembe, but Red said, “Don’t worry. Just my driver.”

  “Your driver?”

  Red walked to the front door, and Dembe held the phone up to the glass, revealing the latest text from Aram: KEEN BACK ON LINE AND IN CONTACT. SENT A MESSAGE. WE GO IN TOMORROW.

  For a fraction of a second, Red considered going ahead with his plan anyway. But he decided it could put Keen at even greater risk. Tomorrow would have to do.


  “What do you know,” he called out as he walked back into the kitchen. “The Kazakhs have backed down. Crisis averted. No need to bother him.”

  He could hear Dwight Tindley’s voice on the other end of the phone, angry and suspicious. “What is it? I t-told you not to c-call me today.”

  She smiled and shook her head at the sound of his voice. “I’m sorry, honey, I thought it was an emergency, but it’s not.”

  The phone went dead without another word.

  Chapter 69

  Keen didn’t watch the grenade go off. It wasn’t about cool indifference or unwavering self-confidence. It was about only having minutes before the building came down, and running like hell out of there before it did.

  The first level was littered with debris, including two dead bodies, one of them in pieces. But with no interior walls, she could see straight through to the outside. Hovering in the sunlight out front, right at eye level, was one of the camera drones. It sickened and infuriated her to think if she died, if the whole building came down on top of her, that her death would make great viewing for the sick bastards betting on the Dead Ring.

  As she pumped her legs harder and faster, she heard someone come down the rear steps behind her, but she didn’t pause, didn’t look. She just kept running.

  The sun was high overhead, lighting up just a sliver of the concrete floor, right at the edge. That’s what she was running for—that sunlight. As she broke its plane she could feel the warmth of it, first on her nose, then her forehead. Her eyes filled with the glare of it.

  Keen was halfway out from under the building when she heard the rapid-fire percussive reports of the shaped charges going off behind her.

  She didn’t let up for an instant—she knew it was too soon, that she was too close for that. But there was a moment when everything else slowed down, as if the entire world was taking a deep breath, gathering its strength and fortitude for what was to come next.

  She was almost entirely out from under the building, almost entirely out into the light, when the concrete and metal around her let out a brief, tortured groan. Then it all came down.