“You need to calm yourself,” said Dembe. At Reddington’s silent order, he had come in from the woods and was now lying on one of the beds with his hands tucked behind his head.
Other than the bars, the room was actually well-appointed, with comfortable twin beds, thick rugs on the floor, bright lighting, and even a small bathroom with a shower. Aram wondered who in hell the Beekeeper brought in as guests.
“I can’t help pacing,” Aram said. “How do you sit still?”
“As boys in an army we learned very fast to take our rest where we found it. We can do nothing now, so we rest until we can.”
“Excuse me, Aram,” said Reddington at the bars.
Aram leaped backward with a yelp. Dembe opened his eyes and sat up, his face inscrutable.
“Don’t say it,” Aram told him.
“As you wish.”
“We have pressing business,” Reddington said, ignoring the exchange. “Just when I think things can’t get worse… well, you know how the sentence ends.”
Aram grabbed the bars. “Why? What’s gotten worse? Have they killed Ressler?”
“No, no. Donald is fine, if a little agitated. More on him in a moment. Right now, we have to get a signal out to the FBI.”
“I thought we didn’t want the Post Office to know anything.”
“We didn’t. But I just came from Santa’s workshop up the hall, where they’re combining the recipe for sarin gas and putting it in those drones. I got a look at the coordinates the drones were programming into the computer. They aren’t for a town, or a city, or even anywhere near this lovely little park.”
Aram shook his head. “Then what is he doing?”
“He’s attacking Fort Daymon,” Reddington said. “The military base.”
“What?” Aram said. “He can’t possibly—oh. Oh!”
“What?” Reddington said.
“He can.” Aram was pacing again. “He absolutely can. Those are military drones. They emit a hard-coded signal that says friendly to the defense systems around the base. The base will detect the drones, but everyone will assume they’re just flying maneuvers or something. And just after dawn is when the majority of the base personnel are outside. The drones will spray a cloud of sarin gas over the entire base and kill everyone in it before anyone knows what’s hit them. Worst of all, Griffin won’t get caught. No way to track him down because it was the military’s own technology. The Beekeeper will tell his Hive people that the gas failed or something, and life here will go on as before. He’ll have to kill us because we know about it, but I doubt that would slow him down. It’s a perfect plan.”
“Why would he do this?” Dembe asked.
“The most rad of all motives, my friend,” said a voice. “Revenge.”
Everyone turned to look.
Vernon was standing at the cave entrance. Three masked drones accompanied him. They were armed with tasers. Aram’s bowels tightened.
“Oh, god.”
Reddington’s hand moved for his jacket pocket, then he apparently remembered that here he was unarmed.
“Good to see you again, Vernon,” he said pleasantly. “I’d offer you tea and honey, but we seem to be fresh out of the former.”
“I had a feeling something funky was going down,” Vernon said. “You think we’re stupid because we’re hiding in the woods, don’t you? Dude, I have a master’s degree and two Ph.D.s. You thought I was some stupid drone.” He snorted. “Looks like I caught you working for the man. The Beekeeper’s gonna be one unhappy dude, Red-boy.”
Reddington cocked his head.
“So the mighty Beekeeper is out for petty revenge on the military base that rejected him and his training ideas.”
“Rejected us,” Vernon said. “You think he was working alone? No man is an island, man.”
“This revenge plan is the reason he set up beekeeping here,” Reddington continued, “because the park is so close to the base. And it’s why he stole all those military-grade drones. So he could slip past the base’s defenses.”
“He didn’t steal them, man,” Vernon said. “I did. The Beekeeper’s good with the psychology, but he’s not much for logistics. That’s my department.”
“And what are your logistics telling you now, Vernon?”
“That there’s four of us and one of you,” Vernon said. “And the one of you is going to take a little zap-nap until the Beekeeper decides what to do with you. I don’t like your chances.”
The three drones moved toward Reddington, their tasers snapping sparks. Dembe was at the bars, his face contorted with anger. Aram couldn’t think. He had no weapon, and no way to use one if he did. Reddington’s hand moved toward his jacket before he apparently remembered he had no pistol there.
Vernon giggled. “A great many people want Raymond Reddington dead, man,” he said. “After we wipe out Fort Daymon, we can create a rad execution video that will make a lot of people happier than a dime bag in a tank of nitrous oxide—and the rewards that pour in will fund my chem lab for decades.” He gestured at the drones. “Take him!”
One drone drove the taser into the side of another drone. The drone dropped twitching to the floor. The third drone started to whirl in surprise, but the first drone cracked him across the back of the head with the taser. He went down. Vernon blinked. His mouth opened and shut like a beached trout.
“What—?” he said.
The drone, whose own taser was still recharging, snatched up another from one of the fallen drones and jammed it into Vernon’s stomach. Vernon shuddered and jittered. Spittle flew from his mouth, and a long groan of pain escaped him.
“Holy cow!” gasped Aram.
Vernon dropped to the floor, still shuddering. Then he went still.
Silence rang through the little cave.
Then the drone stepped over the unconscious bodies on the floor, brandishing the taser. The drone brought up a free hand and pulled the mask off.
It was Elizabeth Keen.
Aram stared. All the breath went out of him, though he didn’t know whether he should go limp with relief or tight with tension.
“That taser’s going to wear off in a few minutes,” Keen said. “We need to move.”
“Elizabeth?” Reddington said. “Lizzie?”
“You… we thought you were…” Aram stammered.
“I told you what my plan was back at the house,” Keen said. “Why would you think I couldn’t do it? I fooled the Beekeeper into thinking I was a willing drone. He even thought I was willing to have children for him. He claims he’s creating an equal society, but he assigned no males to nursery duty. And, along with most men like him, he thinks that just because I’m a woman, I’ll do anything for a baby. Any baby.” She patted down Vernon’s body, checking his pockets. “We’ll save those children just like we’ll save the rest of the adults who were kidnapped and brainwashed.”
Keen came up with a set of keys, which she tossed to Reddington. One of the drones groaned. Keen zapped him again, and he went still.
“Can we come out now?” Aram said.
Reddington swiftly sifted through the clinking keys and unlocked the door. They dragged Vernon and the drones into the room. Keen and Dembe confiscated their tasers. Keen gave Vernon another jolt.
“Just to keep him quiet for a while yet,” she explained blandly.
“What now?” Aram asked.
“We need to get Ressler out of that pen, then get a message to the Post Office and tell them where we are,” Keen said. “And we need to find the Beekeeper’s computer key.”
“What computer key?” Aram asked.
“Vernon said that the Beekeeper has a program on a flash drive that lets him control all the helicopter drones at once,” Keen explained. “The flash drive is in a safe in the lab. We need to get that key so the Beekeeper can’t release the sarin gas.”
“A key for the helicopter drones?” Aram said. “We have—”
A sharp pain creased his arm. Reddington had pinched him—
hard. Aram fell silent.
“Have what?” Keen said.
“Uh… we have very little time,” Aram said. “What else?”
“We also need to get a message to the Post Office, either by shutting down the jammer or by using the Beekeeper’s own equipment,” Keen said.
“Weren’t we worried about a Waco standoff?” Aram said.
“That was before we knew the Beekeeper had the power to annihilate an entire military base at a distance,” Keen said. “The only problem is, I don’t know where the Beekeeper’s jammer is, though it’s probably in the lab. Aram, would you recognize it?”
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “It’s not like they make beep-beep noises and have a sticky note on the side that says jammer. And even if we found it, I’d have to figure out how to disable it without drawing attention to myself or the—”
“Would this help?” Reddington drew an object from his jacket pocket and handed it to Aram. He looked at it.
“A satellite phone?” he gasped. “Where did you get this?”
“From some park rangers,” Reddington said. “Extremely helpful lads. Did I ever tell you about the time my plane was forced down in—”
“No,” Keen said. “Will this thing work?”
“It’s not dependent on regular cell phone signals or GPS,” Aram said. “The Beekeeper’s jammer shouldn’t affect it much this close to the Hive.”
“I managed an iffy phone call at best,” Reddington admitted. “For a large part of the business I arranged, I was forced to use a thing I believe the young people call texting.”
“Yeah, texts should go through fine,” Aram said. “But we’ll have to be outside. Even a sat phone can’t penetrate ten feet of solid rock.”
“Okay, new plan,” Keen said. “Split into teams. We sneak outside and get a message to the Post Office, then we get Ressler out. We also steal the key from the lab so the Beekeeper can’t launch in the morning.”
“And all before Vernon and his friends wake up and start shouting,” Aram said. “That’ll be a trick.”
“Dembe,” Reddington said, “perhaps you could keep a door key and a taser and stay with our guests so that they remain… comfortable. Put one on the bed under a blanket to be Aram and put the others under the bed. You stay in the cell in case anyone comes to check.”
“I would rather stay at your side,” Dembe protested gently, the only way he ever protested.
“You have duties here, my friend.” Reddington gave a small smile. Dembe nodded. “Besides, the Beekeeper still thinks I’m an ally.”
Keen didn’t wait for further argument. “Aram, keep that taser, grab a mask and come with me to the lab. Reddington, you should go grab Stuart.”
“Stuart?” Reddington said.
“Do you want him here when everything goes up?” Keen asked.
Reddington crossed his arms. “I find I don’t care one way or the other.”
“I’m not into whatever game you’re playing, Reddington.” Keen sighed and took the ring of keys back. “Save him or not. He’s your friend, not mine. Come on, Aram.”
They ran down the hall.
* * *
Samar Navabi dropped onto the cheap motel bed with a deep sigh. In a moment she would take a shower, swallow a handful of ibuprofen to stave off body aches, and climb under the covers, but for now she just lay on the thin mattress, thanking heaven she wasn’t in a swamp. Her clothes and hair stank of muck after a long day of staring at the mangled bodies of the dead agents who had washed up in the river with no ID or any other possessions to tell who they were. Their fingertips had been cut off and their faces slashed with knives or machetes to stop fingerprinting and fool facial recognition software.
It was nearly a sure thing these men were among the missing FBI agents—it was estimated that they had been killed some time after the team had vanished. The definitive identifiers would have to be DNA and dental records. Thank god she didn’t know any of them personally, and she didn’t envy whoever was handed the job of alerting the families. Navabi had spent the day taking photos of teeth and scouring the area for clues and fending off Harold Cooper. In fact, she was due to update him right about—
Her cell phone buzzed. Sighing, she checked the screen. Cooper. She took the call.
“I’m on speaker with Cynthia Panabaker,” Cooper said. “Any good news? Like a lead?”
“The dead bodies are our people, that’s obvious,” Navabi said, “but the medical examiner will want to cross the i’s and dot the t’s. They were killed in a gunfight and mangled afterward. No clues about where they went into the river. Tomorrow we’ll be sending a team of boats upriver to have a look.”
“What about Aram’s sonar device?” Cooper pressed. “Did it work?”
“Nothing,” Navabi said.
“Maybe we should talk to him,” Panabaker said.
“Let me get him,” she said, always surprised at how easily the lie slipped from her lips. Navabi had always been good at lying, even as a child. She moved the phone away from her ear. “Hey, Aram! Cooper wants to—oh.” She brought the phone back. “He’s just jumped into the shower.”
“Are you two in the same motel room?” he said.
“Sure.” She put a shrug into her voice. “I don’t mind—it’s like sharing a room with my brother.”
“Tell him to report in when he gets out,” Panabaker said.
“No problem, but I think he was planning to go straight to bed. We’re both pretty wiped. Maybe we could do a full report in the morning? Really, there isn’t much to tell.”
Cooper sighed. “All right. Both of you get some sleep.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll call you when—”
Her phone buzzed with another text. Automatically she checked it. A gasp snapped from her chest and she nearly dropped the phone.
“What is it?” Cooper said. “What’s going on?”
“I just got a text,” Navabi said. “It’s Agent Keen. She’s in the Hive.”
Cooper’s voice snapped to attention. “Keen? The Hive? What’s the Hive?”
“It’s a long text. Hold on… hold on…” She scrolled through the message with shaking fingers. “It says someone named Benjamin Griffin—the Beekeeper—is planning to spray sarin gas over Fort Daymon at dawn. He has military-grade drones with clearance codes that’ll let them slip right under the fort’s radar.”
“Jesus,” said Panabaker. “I’m getting the Pentagon on the line.”
“Where is she?” Cooper demanded.
“Getting that now,” Navabi said. “The Beekeeper and his people are hidden in caves in Sumter National Park. She, Ressler, and Aram are there now.”
“Aram?” Cooper sounded startled.
Oops.
“Yeah. Uh… we’ll need to have a conversation about that. Probably later, sir,” Navabi said. “Reddington got involved, and—”
“You’re right,” Cooper said tersely. “We’ll have a conversation later. Right now, we have to deal with this situation. Tell me. All of it.”
In the background, Panabaker was talking urgently in a low tone, presumably on her own phone.
“Reddington wanted Aram to create a program that controlled the Beekeeper’s helicopter drones,” Navabi said, getting the words out rip-the-Band-Aid-off quickly. “Then he had Aram deliver it to him in the park. We think Reddington intended to sabotage the Beekeeper’s plan from the inside with Keen.”
“Keen’s phone last put her near Fort Daymon,” Cooper pointed out. “We sent people to look for her there, even though Aram said we’d been spoofed. We found nothing.”
“Right. The Beekeeper spoofs GPS and jams cell phones to keep himself hidden. Visitors to the park think it’s the mountains interfering with the signal. The Beekeeper’s people grabbed Keen and Ressler and killed the others, I think. Reddington escaped to a safe house and was coordinating their escape. That was where Aram came in.”
“And you didn’t tell us about this,” Cooper said.
<
br /> “The Beekeeper is heavily armed, sir,” Navabi said. “Military-level armed. Reddington was afraid you—we—would storm the place and turn it into a siege.”
“Putting Keen in even more danger,” Cooper finished. “Unfortunately, I’m starting to understand how Reddington thinks. Her life is more important to him than the entire task force. But why is she contacting us now?”
“The attack on the military base,” Navabi said. “There’s more to the text message.”
“Go.”
“Ressler and Reddington are still inside the Beekeeper’s caves. Keen sent coordinates.”
“Cynthia, can you get us a team of helicopters?” Cooper said.
“Already on it,” she said. “But it’s going to take a few hours, and we won’t be able to do much until sunrise.”
“Sir, Keen and Aram are going back into the caves to get Ressler, Reddington, and Dembe out. And—oh god.”
“What?”
“The Beekeeper has children on the premises,” Navabi said. “Babies.”
A moment of silence followed that.
“Jesus,” Cooper breathed.
In the background, Panabaker was on her phone again. Another long pause followed, punctuated only by Panabaker’s terse conversation. Navabi was suddenly very, very glad she wasn’t in charge.
“What do we do, sir?” Navabi said.
“There’s no choice. We have to go in,” Cooper replied.
“Yes, sir,” Navabi said.
“How fast can you get over there?” he asked. “This is turning into a military operation all too fast.”
“I thought it was illegal for the military to act against fellow Americans,” Navabi said.
Panabaker came back, apparently in time to hear the last remark. “Sarin gas is a terrorist’s weapon, and the Beekeeper is planning to use it against civilians and our military. I’m classifying him as a terrorist. He’s no longer a fellow American.”
“Understood,” Navabi said.
“I want my eyes at that operation,” Cooper said. “Go!”
Navabi fled the motel room, leaving sleep and guilt behind.
The Blacklist--The Beekeeper No. 159 Page 21
