by Kris Calvert
“Wait. What happens when I tell Daniels that I was with King all night?”
“Don’t know. But we’re about to find out.”
17
KING
Three hours into the trip I got a secure transmission from Nyx. Joy was dead.
I hung my head in my hands knowing innocent people were dying because someone was trying to frame me. Still, I had a job to do. Three years of work, research and deep cover had gone into tonight’s mission and I was carrying it out no matter what. It was quite possible that after tonight all of this would go away—but I couldn’t fail and I couldn’t do a half assed job.
Poring through the intel once again, I looked at my fake credentials. A passport, a key card to get me into the factory, two vials of succinylcholine, and enough C-4 and Semtex to blow one factory in Bangalore, India back to the dark ages.
One of my three targets had dinner plans tonight with another conspirator. I had just enough time to land, change and get to the restaurant. Double-checking the information again, I thought about what could happen if I wasn’t successful.
ZoAlta, the pharmaceutical company in Bangalore and SciTech, its sister company in Russia, were two of the world’s largest makers of inactive excipients in the pharmaceutical industry. The innocuous ingredients in beta-blockers, cholesterol medication, erectile dysfunction drugs and even children’s cough syrups, these additives made drugs look and or taste better. The contributing factors were the lack of inspections—factories like this weren’t under the same kind of scrutiny.
The lab that was my target in Bangalore hadn’t been inspected in five years. They weren’t required to be, and usually got a quick once-over every fifteen years or so. It wasn’t like the United States where the inspections were stringent and the fines were steep. Labor was cheap in India and every major American pharmaceutical company needed the fillers they were producing. ZoAlta had a client list that used their inactive excipients that crisscrossed the globe and hundreds of thousands of lives around the world would perish if their plan came to fruition.
It was merely potassium cyanide—but it would be the end of many lives. Easy to make and even easier to mix into filler compounds sent off to the U.S., it was a ploy that would eventually be discovered, but not without tremendous loss of life. Patients would experience flu like symptoms, have stomach cramps and vomiting like a common bug, but their cells would be systematically deprived of oxygen and they would be dead within hours of taking their usual prescription and over the counter medications.
All healthcare would come to a halt as drugs would be inspected from the ground up, and in the meantime, people who depended upon pharmaceuticals to live would die.
Terrorist cells in the Middle East and Russia had plans for genocide and tonight it was my job to make sure it didn’t come to fruition.
Using each other for their strengths, the terrorists merely wanted to destroy American lives, but there were logistics a Middle Eastern group couldn’t organize—logistics the Russians were more than happy to provide as long as the terrorists simply provided the cyanide. There was a profit to be made—and the Russian mafia was just the organized business to make it.
Quietly, they’d bought up stock in the one major and two minor pharmaceutical companies that did not use SciTech or ZoAlta for their additives. When all drug manufacturing came to a halt, someone would need to be ready to produce any and all drugs—even those they didn’t hold the patent for. Stocks in those three companies would skyrocket. A fortune loomed in the future based on the reorganization of the entire pharma-industry. It was my mission to put an end to the plot in at least one manufacturing plant and it was going down tonight.
I sat back in my chair and examined how I had arrived at this moment, and wondered when it would end. Just starting college when the terror attacks occurred on 9/11, the government was reeling and looking for anyone who was knowledgeable in certain fields. After the Anthrax scare following the fall of the Twin Towers, I, like a few others, was plucked from my pharmacology class at Cornell. I was jonesing to be a badass and not just a doctor. So I took on the charge not really knowing what I was getting myself into.
I’d trained combat my whole life, a product of my father’s ideals of the Spartans. In his defense, it was my grandfather’s way, too. Shipped off early to a military academy, I spent parts of my summer living off the land in rural Alabama, fending for myself, learning to be fearless—strong. And although I don’t think I would ever bestow the tradition on my own son, still it taught me how to survive—an attribute that had served me well over that past eleven years and ten missions.
Placing the papers and passports back into my backpack, I went to the bedroom at the back of the plane to lie down. Too hyped up to sleep, I laid on my back and stared at the ceiling and thought of Reagan. I’d always looked for someone who could understand what I did for a living—what I did for the government. I was a NOC agent—Non-official cover. I was a civilian soldier who worked on my own with little to no contact with my superior. If I was ever caught—I was on my own. No one would come to my rescue tonight if I was found out. I truly was a lone wolf—one with orders from the highest point in our government. The only way possible for me to reveal my identity is to marry—something I’d not even thought about. Not until last night.
Reagan was a trained agent. She would understand the thrill of the job, the need to serve and protect, the importance of the missions I needed to carry out. A civilian wife might not be as understanding or comfortable with the challenges and risks I would need to take for maybe the rest of my life. Reagan was the first woman I’d ever been attracted to that had the capacity to fully understand me.
I’d sent her a present. I checked the time on my watch and looked to my phone. She was wearing the bra and panties.
Texting her was fun, but playing with her from thirty thousand feet was even more fun.
I fantasized about Reagan’s body reacting to my touch on the screen and found myself getting hard at the thought of her squirming at my command.
Unable to keep my mind on business, she crept into my every thought and I imagined a future far away from plans to bomb buildings and thwart attacks—a future with Reagan by my side at Rose Hill. We were happy, like my parents, and living a life together, not putting our lives on the line.
Then a horrifying thought overcame me. Reagan was an FBI agent. There was always a chance she would be in harm’s way. For the first time since my parents died, I felt like I had something to lose. Something precious and perfect—Reagan.
I took a deep breath and tried closing my eyes in spite of the knot in my stomach. I was going to need my strength over the next seventy-two hours. I said a quiet prayer for my own safety and for guidance to carry out the mission humanely. I wasn’t a killer. I was a trained operative trying to save lives, not destroy them. And now I merely wanted to get back to the life of another. It was a new feeling for me—worrying about my own safety. Finally, I had something to look forward to—something and someone to live for.
Closing my eyes, I prayed for safety—mine and Reagan’s. Then I merely prayed for sleep to come.
Awake with forty-five minutes to wheels down, I changed my clothes and sent one last message to Nyx. After landing, I paid an airfield worker handsomely to allow us to hide the Gulfstream in a hanger. The pilots, now fully armed, would wait for my return.
With only my backpack and my wits, I left the tarmac now dressed in jeans, a hoodie and a baseball cap, and walked to the nearest road where a beat up old motorcycle was waiting for me, as planned. Bangalore was hot and smelled of overpopulation. Home to nearly nine million people, it was known for its software companies and not bio-pharmaceutical. But the labor was cheap—dirt-cheap. One million rupees was equal to only fifteen thousand American dollars and the average white collar worker in India made five to six hundred thousand rupees a year. It was easy to find people willing to follow orders without questions if you paid them well enough, and ZoAlta
was just that kind of company.
The twenty miles into town were treacherous and not because I was watching my back for my enemy—because of traffic. There were laws, but no one followed them and driving in Bangalore was like playing schoolyard dodge ball, only with trucks, cars and buses spewing oil and unconscionable amounts of carbon dioxide. At one point I thought the most dangerous part of the mission was just arriving in one piece without suffocating.
I circled my target—the Alibaba Café. One of my targets was scheduled to have dinner there. My orders were to take him out at that location, the other two at the factory itself later tonight. The syringe of succinylcholine I had in the side pocket of my backpack would leave no trace. Complete paralysis and death by asphyxia loomed in the future of target number one: a scientist from Yemen connected with the terrorist cells planning the attack.
I waited in the alleyway across the street, watching them through the window as I fed one of the many stray cats on the streets. My face covered with the hood of my sweatshirt, I stole glances each time a car went past. When the restaurant became wall-to-wall people, as I knew it would, I went.
Checking my watch, I thought of the tight timetable. I needed to carry this out and make it to the factory between shifts. The meetings between the organizers were private and I knew from the schedule everyone would be out of the building with the exception of the high-ranking team. It was my one opportunity to strike, and I had every intention of doing exactly that.
I took one last look around me, surveying the area for bodyguards or lookouts. Slipping the syringe from my pocket, I removed the cap and hid it in my palm of my hand, careful not to stick myself.
“Table for one,” I said holding up a finger to the maître d’.
The restaurant was loud and crowded—the perfect place to carry out the plan. It smelled of saffron and lemons and I felt my stomach growl as I inhaled the chicken and mutton the restaurant prepared over a charcoal oven.
Nodding, he motioned for me to follow. As I neared the table, I purposely slid into a large group trying to find their seats. Deliberately tripping the man in front of me, we both fell into the target’s table. Sticking the needle into his thigh, I compressed the syringe, filling his body with succinylcholine. Pulling the needle out with swift precision as my unsuspecting accomplice righted himself, I watched him apologize as the target looked at him with disgust and rubbed his leg—none the wiser for the collision.
Continuing to follow the maître d, I bobbed and weaved through the crowded room, hustling past the kitchen and out the side door and into the alley. Without looking back I crossed the street, started my bike and sped into the setting sun.
My mission was half over.
18
REAGAN
When we arrived at Joy Henderson’s home it was locked down tighter than a clam’s ass at high tide. Win and I badged our way through the small group outside of her fancy condominium, making our way to the taped off crime scene. There were only two other people inside the room and one of them was familiar—Agent Beckett. By the look on his face, he was less than pleased to see us again.
“Beckett,” I said giving him a nod as I observed the scene, taking in everything about it.
On the bed, face up and spread eagled, Joy Henderson’s hands were bound, her body naked. The white lace panties had been pulled from her throat and were lying on the bed next to her. I looked to the coroner taking photos. “She was arranged like this after she was killed?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “She was shot execution style in the back of the head. Then moved to look like this.”
A pool of blood covered the head of her bed as she’d bled out into the mattress.
“I think you should see this,” Beckett said as he motioned for us to follow him through a hallway from the bedroom that led to her closet and master bathroom.
Opening a door next to her closet, Beckett stood back for us to see.
“What the hell?” Win said as we stepped into a gallery of restraints, sex toys and a piece of furniture I’d seen the night before in King’s white bedroom.
“I guess she was into sex or something,” I posed the question half asking, half observing.
“Or something,” Beckett chided.
I turned to him. “Do you really think this room is significant? I mean the fact that she was into an alternative lifestyle?”
“We have two murders with striking similarities, Miss Weatherford. They are still teaching crime scene investigation at the Academy aren’t they? They taught it when I was there.
We followed Agent Beckett back through the crime scene and to the living room. “You mean back when J. Edgar Hoover used his goons to blackmail? That was a glorious time in the history of our esteemed organization. Better yet, a more important date, May 12, 1972. When women were finally allowed into the little boy’s club.”
“Stupid Skirt.” He said the words under his breath as he walked away, but still I heard them loud and clear.
Beckett was pissing me off. He wanted to anger me, but I wasn’t going to take the bait. Instead, I did him one better. I pulled rank. “Well, thank you for spear-heading this until we could arrive, Beckett, but my orders are to take over jurisdiction going forward. I’m sure you need to get back to your own…ah…cases I suppose. So,” I paused to look around like I really didn’t give a damn—because I didn’t. “We really appreciate your…efforts.”
Win’s phone rang and he turned his back to answer. I stared at Beckett without even as much as blinking and the old man gave it right back to me.
“Yes, sir.” Win walked away from us and I knew we were getting orders. We needed to contain the site.
“I know you think you know what you’re getting into Miss Weatherford,” Beckett began.
“Agent Weatherford,” I corrected.
“Whatever.” Beckett’s words were to me just like him, inconsequential. “But you have no idea.”
“Agent Beckett,” Win said hanging up the phone. “I need to clear this area if you could…”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on my way out. But know this,” he said pointing his bony finger at the two of us. “Don’t look for local backup when this shit blows up in your face.”
“Thank you, sir,” Win said using his official FBI voice and not the usual soft, southern one I’d become accustomed to. “I’ll make a note of your helpful cooperation in the case file for our director in D.C.”
I turned away, unable to contain my smile.
“You little pukes are all alike.”
“You know, my father is a retired detective in upstate New York. Thirty-five years of dealing with the lowest of the low. But he didn’t want me to be a cop like him. Said there were too many in the old guard who were threatened by the new kind of law enforcement on the streets today.”
“Yeah,” he said. “What kind is that?”
I took one step forward to look Beckett in the eye. “Skirts.”
“So, again, thank you, but we can handle it from here,” Win said to the coroner who shrugged his shoulders in disbelief. “And we’re going to need your photos.”
“We need to clear out this area please. Who found the body?” I asked. A sweet voice piped up from the corner of the room.
“I did.”
“Great, you stay, everyone else can go. And please leave the premises. We don’t want any blue lights or news crews.”
The room began to clear and I made my way to the pretty redhead. “And who are you?” I asked as I motioned for her to sit on the couch in Joy’s overly decorated living room.
“I’m Lilah. Lilah Preston.”
“Have I met you before?” I stared at the pretty redhead who was older than me. She had such a childlike face I found it hard to put my finger on a real age.
“I don’t think so. I’m Dr. Giles personal assistant.”
“How’d you find yourself here this morning Ms. Preston?” Win asked, joining the conversation late
as he eyed the officers and coroner leaving the condo.
“I was supposed to pick up some papers from Joy for Dr. Giles while he’s in Washington D.C.”
“What kind of papers?” Win asked.
I stared at Lilah Preston. My gut told me there was more to know about her and for a split second I wondered if she too owned the white lace thong with King’s crown on it. “Excuse me, please.”
Walking back through Joy’s bedroom, I felt compelled to look in her sexual playroom once more. Searching the room for the bra and panty set King had sent to me, I prayed silently that it wasn’t also in her closet. I wanted my experiences with King to be my own—I wanted them to be exclusive to me in my mind, even if they weren’t in reality.
The bra and panty set were nowhere in sight, but in the corner was the same curved couch that King had in his bedroom—his was white, Joy’s was black. Larger at one end and smaller at the other, the narrow space in between made it feel like a bench—the length, like a couch.
Obviously a couch made for sex, now I knew why King had it in his bedroom. I also knew Joy was one of his sex partners.
I had some questions for King—lots of questions.
“Whatcha doing?” Win asked, walking up behind me.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just trying to get a handle on what we’re dealing with here.”
“You mean what you’re dealing with.”
I walked past him not acknowledging what his words implied. “Ms. Preston, what’s the significance of the white lace panties?
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you own a pair?”
“Me? No.”
“So you aren’t now or have never been in a relationship, sexual or otherwise with King Giles?”
She tried to seem shocked at my question, but something about her told me she wasn’t shocked at all.
“No.”
“We need to get in touch with King…I mean, Dr. Giles. Do you have access to him?
