by Jon McGoran
A text from Aram. BOMB DISPOSED OF. BRACELETS DEACTIVATED. KEEN SAFE.
Red smiled and looked up at Hoagland. “Well, I guess we can’t make you talk. And you’re right. We can’t arrest you.”
Hoagland looked momentarily suspicious. “What are you going to do?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “But before I decide, I’ve got to ask. What was the deal between you and Ed Stannis?”
“What was the deal?” Hoagland laughed bitterly. “I’ll tell you the deal. He was sleeping with my wife and stealing my company—him and those traitorous bastards on the board of directors. But I knew about both. So when they came to Peru to oust me, I took them out. All of them.”
“But Stannis got away.”
“Temporarily.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Well, most of you is. And then?”
“Then I healed, and I planned. And I took back what was mine. I took her and used her and made him liquidate everything according to my instructions. And when he was done, I took him, too.” He laughed. “I guess he really did love her, shrew that she was. It was embarrassing how much he cried as I killed her in front of him. You’d think after a few weeks, he would have gotten used to it, but he screamed even more than she did. When she finally died, I let them stay together, for another year. A second honeymoon I called it, the two of them in that cell together. Just them and the rats. And when there was nothing left of her but bones, and nothing left of him but a gibbering idiot, I killed him, too. Even slower. And he screamed even more.”
“And what about the Dead Ring?”
Hoagland smiled. “My proudest accomplishment. After Peru, I missed the thrill of combat. The Dead Ring helped me recapture it, and share it with some friends.”
Outside, the helicopters were landing.
“Sounds like you’ve got backup coming,” Hoagland said. “I guess our chat is almost over.”
Red pulled up a chair across from him. “Let me tell you why I’m really here. There was a man I used to work with, I daresay a friend. He was a good man, a family man, always on the righteous side of any fight. But somehow, we were friends nonetheless. Seven years ago, he and his boys were on a ferry in Senegal.”
Hoagland smiled at the memory. “La Mer Calme.”
“That’s right. La Mer Calme. Some kind of terrible riot broke out on board, they said. The ferry caught fire and capsized. One hundred and twenty people died. I later found out, that was the first Dead Ring game.”
Hoagland smiled at the memory. “It was spectacular.”
“My friend and his sons were killed. His widow lost her entire family in one blow. All for the twisted entertainment of a circle of rich psychopaths, so jaded and decadent they can’t find joy in the simple pleasures of life.”
“What pleasure could be simpler than that? They say it is death that gives life meaning.”
Red paused while Hoagland spoke, then continued. “His widow was a remarkable woman. Her name is Badri, and she didn’t pine for vengeance. She mourned her family, of course. She was gutted by the pain but she saw all these children left orphaned by the tragedy. Just as she had lost her children, they had lost their parents. And she set up an orphanage. She took them all in. Took care of them, raised them and taught them. Can you imagine, losing your whole family like that and not wanting vengeance?”
Hoagland stayed silent and just stared at him.
Red casually moved his gun so it was aimed at Hoagland’s hand and pulled the trigger. Hoagland shrieked despite himself, holding up his hand, now torn nearly in half.
“Me neither,” said Red. “In fact, I think I bring it out in people. Case in point, our mutual friend Simon Wall. Do you remember him?”
Hoagland’s eye twitched but he didn’t say anything.
Red laughed. “Well, he remembers you. And he was ready to let it go, even after everything you did to him. He didn’t want anything to do with you anymore. He said the same thing you did, that you knew too much, that you had too many friends and too much money. That’s when I suggested he use what you had made him do against you. That’s why right now he is hacked into your accounts and draining them. All of them. So he can use your money to help repair some of the terrible damage you’ve done to this world.”
Hoagland had begun breathing harder and harder as Red spoke, his rage taking his mind off his pain. “I’ll kill him!”
Red laughed. “That’s exactly what Simon Wall said your reaction would be. I said you’d take it better, but he said no. And he was right. So there you go. But you were right about something, too.” Then he raised his gun and shot Hoagland in the chest. “You’re going out with a bang after all.”
Hoagland’s mouth quivered as he looked down at the hole in his chest. As he looked back up, Red shot him in the head.
Chapter 90
At first, all Keen saw was the guy from the processing unit, Ferguson, the guy she had slammed into the wall. For an instant she wondered how he fit into all this.
Then she saw Corson standing behind him, holding a gun to the man’s head. She wondered briefly why Corson hadn’t just pulled the gun on her. Then she saw the look in his eyes. Mixed in with the greed and the hatred was fear. It occurred to her that as far as he knew—as far as she knew—she was the lone remaining ringer. She was the winner of the Dead Ring, and he was scared of her.
But she also realized she didn’t have any more tricks up her sleeve. The helicopters were finally coming in low, two of them. All she could think to do was try to stall and hope an idea came to her.
“The key is mine,” she said. “I won it. I won the Dead Ring.”
“The Dead Ring doesn’t exist anymore,” Corson said. “And that prize is my severance package. Now put down that key or I’ll kill you both.”
“You’ll never get away with it,” she said.
He smiled. “I appreciate your concern, but you let me worry about that.”
As he spoke, the phone started buzzing in her hand and she saw that it was Ressler. She swiped to answer it and thumbed on the speaker phone.
“Shut up and listen to me,” she said loudly. “I know you think that just because you’re holding one of the workers hostage in front of the main gate and you’re threatening to kill me, that you figure you can get away with this. I know you’re thinking you can just take your shot.”
Corson looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you want to just take your shot. Do you understand me?”
“Just drop the goddamned key before I kill you both!”
“I could just give you the key, but I don’t think I can trust you,” she said, glancing to the left as the helicopter approached through the night sky. “I can’t trust that you’re not going to kill the hostage anyway, and then kill me.”
“I’m going to count to five,” he said, his voice straining as the helicopters grew louder. “One…”
“Do you hear me, Ressler?”
“Two,” Corson said. Then, looking around, “Wrestler?”
“I said: Take. Your. Shot.”
She saw the muzzle flash, then heard the crack of the rifle at the same instant that Corson’s body jerked and he crumpled backward into the night.
The hostage stood motionless for a moment, then he turned, saw Corson’s body on the ground, and ran off in the direction of his coworkers.
Keen went to Corson and picked up his gun. Kneeling next to him, she checked his pulse, confirming he was dead.
The helicopters came down outside the gate, hovering just above the ground. The tac team jumped out of the closer one—ten agents, including Ressler and Navabi.
As they swarmed through the gate toward her, four figures jumped from the second chopper and ran off into the darkness.
“Are you okay?” Ressler shouted as he ran up to her. Navabi put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she
said. “Nice shooting, by the way. How about the Trojan horse? Did it work?”
“Like a charm,” Navabi said. “Cooper said they’re getting data from two hundred and thirty computers around the world. Interpol is already coordinating raids.”
“Who’s in the other chopper?”
Ressler screwed up his face. “CIA.”
“CIA?”
“It’s a long story.”
She nodded. “Okay, later. We should sweep the facility. I don’t know if there’s any other ringers left. There shouldn’t be any more bombs, but we should sweep for them, as well.”
Ressler said, “You’re not going anywhere until the medics check you out.”
“We’ve got this,” Navabi said.
Keen started to argue, but then it hit her like a wave, all she’d been through. Maybe it was the adrenaline leaving her body, but suddenly she was exhausted.
“We’ll take care of it,” Ressler said.
Keen nodded. This time, she decided, she’d let them.
Chapter 91
Reddington and Dembe stepped out of the mobile control center just as Percival and Thomas ran up, accompanied by two other agents. “Thank goodness you’re here!” Reddington exclaimed, stepping over the bodies of the two men he’d shot from the helicopter.
“Reddington?” Percival said. “Goddamn it, what are you doing here?”
“Good lord, man, I thought you would have gotten here way before we did. Frankly, I thought we’d just be helping to mop up after you guys. What happened, did you get lost?”
“Where’s Hoagland? Is he in there?”
“Well, yes, he is. Or most of him is. He’s actually somewhat dead.”
“Dead? What happened?”
“Good heavens, I have no idea. Very possibly some sort of bunker suicide thing, I don’t know. There is one Dwight Tindley in there, I think he’s still alive. He’s no Michael Hoagland, that’s for sure, but if you want to rendition him off to God-knows-where, I’m sure you could waterboard some useful intelligence out of him, or at least motivate him to come up with some very entertaining fiction.”
Chapter 92
Ressler, Navabi, and the others hustled through the gate and swept across the facility, leaving a lull of quiet in their wake. A light breeze picked up, and Keen heard a faint but distinct creaking sound, like a door opening on hinges that could use a little oil. She looked past Corson’s body, out through the gate, and saw the prize box, slightly open, the lid opening further on the breeze.
As she approached it, the wind kicked up again, stronger this time, and the lid swung all the way open.
She thought about Okoye and the Akaba School, how he had planned to donate his winnings so they could continue their work without worrying about money. He had been willing to risk his life for them but instead he had given what little life he had left for her.
On an impulse, she reached into the box and carefully removed the briefcase.
Behind where it had sat there was a massive brick of explosives wired to the sides of the box, and to a detonator, just like the other device.
As she backed away from it, she saw a black Humvee bouncing across the desert, approaching fast. She thought maybe it was CIA, but then she thought again.
It skidded to a stop, kicking up a spray of dust and gravel just outside the gate. Four men got out, each of them carrying an assault rifle.
The one in the front yelled at her in a thick French accent, “LeCroix!”
It was Corbeaux.
She almost laughed. She was so tired, so done, and so surprised by this turn of events. She looked around, but there was no backup in sight. Corbeaux and his men moved toward her, and she realized the situation really wasn’t all that funny.
She still had Corson’s gun, but she knew she’d never be able to take down all four of them before they killed her.
The only cover she had was the silver box that stood between her and them. She moved back, away from them, shifting to one side to keep the box between them.
“I’m not LeCroix,” she said.
Corbeaux laughed. “Don’t deny it, LeCroix. We know it is you. We saw you on the game.” He laughed again. “Lucky you, I guess you won. But now I think your luck has run out.”
The box was still between them, but the four men continued to move closer to her.
“LeCroix is dead,” she said, saddened at the thought of it. Her words brought back images of the woman, bruised and broken in her hospital bed, dying from the injuries she suffered trying to escape this thug. She thought of LeCroix’s tears and worry for David— justified as it turned out, because now he was dead, too. And she thought about LeCroix’s family, and her fears of what would happen to them if Corbeaux learned her identity. He was calling her LeCroix, not Le Chat.
“LeCroix is dead,” she said again, softly. Maybe to herself.
“Not yet,” he said, with a smug smile. “But she will be dead soon enough.”
“I keep telling you, I’m not LeCroix,” Keen said. “But you know what?”
They paused where they were, eying her suspiciously, gathering closer to the silver box in case they needed it for cover.
“I kind of liked her,” she said.
Keen dropped to the ground and fired once into the prize box.
The metal sides and the lid were instantly torn into razor-sharp shreds that spun off into the darkness, barely impeded by the French thugs they had passed through.
The fireball swelled out, engulfing Corbeaux and his men and then rolling up into the sky, briefly illuminating the carnage below and the desert around it before fading into a black smudge of smoke.
Chapter 93
Keen was exhausted and aching, covered in bruises and cuts, some deeper than others. She slept for most of the first flight. But for much of the second flight, after they touched down in Florida to refuel and restock for the remainder of the trip, she reflected on the outcome of the operation.
Aram’s Trojan horse did exactly what it was supposed to. Interpol coordinated the arrests of one hundred and forty bettors on the Dead Ring— drug kingpins, human traffickers, dealers in illegal antiquities and endangered species—all sorts of the worst people out there. There would be more to come, and a lot of them were already trading information, which should lead to even more arrests.
The CIA was not one hundred percent happy. Percival had been livid about finding Hoagland dead before he got there, but mollified somewhat by the treasure trove of intel enthusiastically delivered up by Tindley. Percival also claimed that several of Hoagland’s secret accounts were emptied during the last round of the Dead Ring, a claim that was given added weight when Interpol reported similar complaints from some of the bettors.
Percival accused the task force and Wall of having something to do with it, but he had no proof whatsoever. The fact that he had insisted the task force include the malware without knowing what was in it, and destroy it afterward caused speculation that the missing money had gone into the CIA’s accounts, or Percival’s.
Coincidentally, twenty-four hours after all this went down, an anonymous benefactor donated tens of millions of dollars each to a variety of human rights groups and relief agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International and a little-known group called Hackers Helping Humans.
After the plane landed the second time, Keen began to process all she’d been through the preceding week. Red and Dembe took care of the external things—the logistics of moving themselves and their cargo from the jet to the Land Rover. The internal things, they gave her the space to do on her own.
It took a while to get started. She’d had to block it all out in order to function and to survive. But once she began, it came to her in a rush.
The landscape they drove through was at times oddly similar to West Texas, then strikingly alien as they passed baobab trees and people in colorful traditional garb. Mostly what Keen saw as she looked out the window were the faces of the dead. She mourned all of them�
��even the ringers and those responsible for the game, the ones whose lives had left them damaged and evil. She mourned their lives as much as their deaths, especially the ones she herself had killed.
Even more, she mourned those like David Borova. Maybe he wasn’t innocent, but he was definitely a victim. And like Marianne LeCroix, whose life she had briefly inhabited.
Most of all, however, she thought about Jakob Okoye.
As briefly as she’d known him, she considered him a true friend. And as flawed as he might have been in life, he had died heroically, unselfishly, and for a good cause. He had saved her life and many others. And now she and Red and Dembe were going to help make sure he would continue to save even more.
An hour after they left the airport, Dembe pulled the Land Rover off the dirt road and into a rutted driveway. A wooden sign read: Akaba School.
The driveway curved in front of a simple, one-story mud brick building, with a wooden roof and a porch running along its entire width. In front there was a swing set, and in back an enclosed field where dozens of children played soccer.
As they got out of the Land Rover, a strikingly attractive woman in her late forties came out to greet them. She wore a colorful tunic and carried herself with a gentle authority that left no uncertainty that she was in charge.
She smiled proudly but her eyes were wet as she approached them.
“Miss Badri,” Red said as they approached.
Badri put her hand over her mouth, as if to compose herself. “Mr. Reddington, Mr. Zuma, Agent Keen,” she said, turning to each of them in turn.
Keen held up the briefcase with the prize money from the Dead Ring. “This is from Jakob Okoye. He wanted you to have it.” There had been some controversy over whether the prize money had been obliterated in the explosion that took out Corbeaux, but there was no evidence to the contrary.
Badri took the briefcase, in a daze. Her eyes held a mixture of relief and sorrow. “He was a good man, but confused,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I can keep the winnings from such a terrible thing.”
Keen put her hand over Badri’s, keeping her fingers wrapped around the handle of the briefcase. “Jakob Okoye helped make sure those who participated in the Dead Ring answered for it. He made sure that what happened to your family, and to his, will never happen to another family again. Jakob Okoye didn’t just win the Dead Ring, Miss Badri. He ended it.”
