OMEGA: A Black Flagged Thriller (The Black Flagged Series Book 5)

by Steven Konkoly

  She nodded and turned around, slowly making her way to the room. He waited until she was inside before going to work on the furniture.

  “Mind if I move this chair where I can keep an eye on the hallway?” he said to the attendant.

  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

  “Can’t be too careful,” said Daniel.

  “Go ahead.”

  He grabbed one of the cushioned chairs surrounding a wide, circular coffee table and positioned it where he could see the entire width of the hallway. He also had a peripheral view of the main elevator lobby across from the attendant, and the double doors leading to the rest of the fourth floor. While lowering into the chair, he removed his concealed pistol from its holder and tucked it into Jessica’s handbag with one swift motion, nobody the wiser. He set the bag next to his right thigh and placed his hand inside, making sure he could draw the pistol without it catching. All he could do now was wait.

  Chapter 21

  Palos Hills Community Hospital

  Palos Hills, Illinois

  Jessica paused in front of the bathroom. She could see the outline of her mother’s legs under a familiar patchwork quilt toward the foot of the bed. Her mom had made that for the family room couch when Jessica was in elementary school. She remembered the day she proudly unfolded it like it was yesterday. A flood of memories followed. Good ones. She had expected the opposite. Instead of the anger and betrayal she’d anticipated, she felt a bittersweet nostalgia. She could do this. A few more steps brought more of her mother’s body into focus. Another step and she’d be face-to-face with her mother for the first time since she left for Langley.

  “Nikki?” said a gravelly voice. “Is that really you?”

  She took the final step. Any trace of the anger she’d harbored for years drained away permanently. Jessica knew it was gone. Regret filled that void, replace by a warmth toward her mother that she didn’t think could be rekindled.

  “Mom,” said Jessica, unsure what to do.

  “Come here, sweetie,” said her mom, struggling to raise her arms to beckon her.

  Jessica rushed to the side of her bed and hugged her gently, careful with her frail body. Vesna’s arms barely managed to apply any pressure to the embrace. Jessica kept the side of her face pressed lightly against her mother’s, crying uncontrollably while holding her.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” she sobbed. “So sorry.”

  Her mother patted her back. “You have nothing to be sorry about, sweet one,” whispered Vesna. “I’m the one that’s sorry. I always understood. You took good care of me.”

  “I didn’t take care of you, Mama,” whimpered Jessica.

  “Nonsense,” said Vesna, in a firm voice.

  Jessica pulled away from her, staring into surprisingly resolute eyes. They appeared to be the only part of her that was still alive, sunken deeply in darkened sockets. What the hell had happened to her?

  “Look where I am. And where I’ve been. You’ve taken good care of me, my angel. More than I had any right to expect.”

  “I should have taken you away from this place,” said Jessica. “Things would have been different.”

  “I’m right where I was always meant to be. You must believe that.”

  Jessica leaned in again, holding her mom as close as possible. She’d seen and smelled death in its most sickening and violent forms before, but something about this was far worse. The stale air, the near absolute absence of any vibrant color, a feeling of complete depletion.

  “I love you, Mama,” she barely managed to say between sobs.

  “I love you too, my angel,” said Vesna, keeping her close.

  After a few minutes, Jessica pulled one of the chairs closer to the bed and held her mother’s hand.

  “How did this happen?” Jessica asked.

  “Nobody knows,” her mother answered. “Organ failure. Pain all over. It started a few months ago, coming in waves, and just kept getting worse and worse. None of the tests showed anything.”

  “You don’t have cancer?”

  “They couldn’t find anything.”

  Something stirred in Jessica. None of what her mom said made sense. It sounded like she’d been poisoned.

  Vesna squeezed her hand. “Let’s not talk about it. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m just so happy to see you. This is like a dream come true. Maybe I’m already in Heaven.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Mama.”

  “Promise me something,” said her mom.

  “Sure. What?”

  “When you walk out of here, you don’t look back. Ever. You go off and live a good life with that young man,” said her mom. “I remember him from the last time I ever saw you. He had the devil in his eyes that night. Like he could kill a man.”

  “He almost did kill a man that night.”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” said Vesna, her eyes looking glassy and distant. “I’m just so happy to see you one last time.”

  “I should have come sooner.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. You deserved to get out of here. A lot of your friends didn’t.”

  If only her mother knew where she had ended up. That was the irony of it all. Jessica had traded one nightmare for another and, in all likelihood, would have been better off staying. There was no psychiatrist’s couch for the things she’d seen and done after “escaping” Palos Hills.

  Jessica started to respond when she heard the sound of an elevator chime.

  Chapter 22

  Palos Hills Community Hospital

  Palos Hills, Illinois

  Daniel sat up in his chair when the elevator chimed. A quick glance to his right told him it didn’t come from the elevator lobby. Neither of the indicator lights next to the doors had illuminated. He turned his head a little further to catch the hospice attendant’s eye.

  “Service elevator,” said the man.

  “You expecting anyone?” asked Daniel, tightening his grip on the pistol.

  A bright green plastic laundry cart emerged from the service elevator, pushed by a man wearing maroon hospital scrubs.

  “That’s just Kevin. He takes away dirty towels or sheets left in bathroom hampers. He comes by once a shift.”

  Daniel confirmed that Kevin was the only person to get off the elevator. The attendant raised his hand to acknowledge the man’s arrival. The gesture was returned in kind by the man maneuvering the cart into the center of the hallway.

  “You’re sure that’s Kevin?”

  “He’s been on the night shift for close to a year,” said the attendant, pushing his glasses higher on his nose.

  “Does he go in all of the rooms?” Daniel asked, keeping his eyes locked on the man in scrubs.

  “He has a list of the occupied or recently vacated rooms. I send it to janitorial services through the computer. Sometimes he forgets it, though,” he said. “Kev, you got the list?” he called.

  “Got it, man!” replied the guy, lifting a sheet of paper out of a tray attached to the cart. “I’m already pretty full, so I might need to make two trips.”

  “Tell him to skip 451 and the room across the hall,” said Daniel.

  “Dude, you need to seriously take it easy. Unless Kevin’s your wife’s ex-boyfriend, there’s no problem here. You’re acting like there’s some kind of international cartel out to get her.”

  You have no idea.

  Despite this initial thought, the attendant’s last sentence somehow eased Daniel’s tension. He was indeed being ridiculous. The line between healthy caution and morbid paranoia could be a fine one in this business, but he wasn’t vetting a meet-up location with a clandestine field contact. He was sitting in an upscale hospital outside of Chicago, waiting for his wife to finish visiting her terminally ill mother. He didn’t trust the U.S. government to honor his immunity deal, especially the new administration, but if they’d really wanted him in custody, there wasn’t much he could do except get on that sailboat and vanish.

  “Yo
u good, man?” the attendant queried.

  Daniel eased his grip on the pistol. “As long as you know this guy.”

  “I see him every night. You can go hang out down by her room if it would make you feel better.”

  Not a bad idea. Daniel started to get up.

  “Just don’t bother Kevin or I’ll have to call security.”

  He sank back into the cushions. There was no way he wasn’t going to bother Kevin if he got up, and the last thing he needed was a run-in with hospital security or, even worse, a police officer.

  “That’s okay,” said Daniel, turning his head toward the attendant for a moment. “Sorry if I’m making you nervous.”

  “I totally get it. Just trying to keep things low-key around here.”

  “You’re doing a good job.”

  Daniel took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, bringing his surface-level tension down a notch. He checked his watch, dismayed by how little time had passed since Jessica entered her mother’s room. On the bright side, it was enough time to convince him that the visit wasn’t going to end in disaster.

  Chapter 23

  Palos Hills Community Hospital

  Palos Hills, Illinois

  Dragan Ilic shifted uncomfortably in the cramped laundry cart, his knees nearly touching his cheeks. When the cart bumped across the lip of the elevator door, the hard plastic base of the cart jarred his tailbone. He should have put one of the towels under his ass before climbing inside. Better yet, he should never have agreed to this insane plan. How the fuck was he going to pull this off without both of them in the same room?

  He craned his neck as far forward as possible without pulling a muscle and squinted through the two-inch-diameter hole that had been drilled into the front of the cart. Even worse, Marko Resja, or whoever the fuck he really was, had a clear sightline down the hallway. The son of a bitch had moved a chair to the edge of the lounge and was staring right at him!

  “How are we doing up there?” he said softly, but loudly enough for Kevin Shaw to hear.

  “Everything is normal. Just like it always is,” said Shaw. “Just like I said.”

  “It better be, for your family’s sake.”

  “I guarantee you it will be fine,” hissed the man, in a tone Dragan didn’t care for. “As long as you don’t keep talking.”

  “You better watch your tone,” said Dragan. “I alone determine what happens to that little girl of yours. Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t,” said the man in a defeated voice. “Is the plan still the same? I see a guy watching us.”

  “The plan is that you do exactly what I say, when I say it. Service the rooms as normal.”

  “Understood.”

  Srecko had a few guys “babysitting” the man’s wife and daughter. If all went as planned, the man’s family would be released within the hour. Unfortunately, he’d never see his family again. Dragan needed to make a slight adjustment to the plan in order to ensure a clean getaway from the hospital. With Resja watching the hallway like a hawk, he couldn’t take the chance that Shaw might make a noise and draw the trained operative’s attention.

  The original plan had been to take them both down in the old woman’s room. Kill Resja with a suppressed pistol and Taser “the whore,” then knock her out with a strong sedative for the return trip. Things would go down differently.

  The whore. He had to laugh. Srecko had called her by no other name since he’d been hired to work on this job. Not even during the detailed briefings leading up to tonight. He’d warned Dragan repeatedly that she was lethal and that he wanted her delivered alive. He wouldn’t get paid a penny beyond the down payment if he killed her or allowed her to kill herself.

  “Do not underestimate this one,” Srecko had echoed, over and over again.

  The woman intrigued him. From the limited number of newspaper clippings Dragan had found hidden in a shoebox, he’d learned surprisingly little about Nicole Erak, “the whore,” that had arranged the upscale town house on her mother’s behalf. She’d been one of those varsity athlete, National Honor Society types, got into a good college, graduated with honors, then essentially disappeared—at least from her mother’s life.

  He’d found no pictures or evidence of a father. How she’d ended up in Belgrade, infiltrating Srecko’s Panthers, remained a complete mystery. If any clues had been kept in the house, he would have found them. He’d spent the better part of the past two months as Vesna’s daytime caregiver at the town house. Ironic considering the fact that he had been the one to prick her skin at the nearby Jewel-Osco grocery store with a tiny drop of dimethylmercury, guaranteeing her rapid, but controlled decline.

  Framed photos of Nicole alone or with her mother adorned the mantel and nightstand at the town house, all of them taken long ago. The daughter had been a seriously hot piece of ass back then. She’d looked pretty damn good in the dossier Srecko had given him too. Dragan seriously hoped Srecko let him take part in the rumored festivities planned for the woman. He might even consider discounting the job to get a backstage pass. Why not? It wasn’t every day you got to be part of a snuff film. And a patriotic one at that! Nicole Erak had apparently played a major role in the downfall of Srecko Hadzic’s Panthers, one of the cornerstones of Serbia’s Nationalist movement.

  Dragan bumped against the sides of the cart as his hostage went about the business of removing and replacing the towels and linens left in each bathroom. As discussed prior to exiting the elevator, he was to drag the cart at least halfway into each room to conduct his business. The front of the cart had been modified to swing open so he could slip out undetected and load Erak’s unconscious body into the bin. A false top had been installed three-quarters of the way up the interior of the cart, layered with used towels. Anyone casually inspecting the contents would see a nearly full bin full of dirty laundry. Anyone pushing the inspection any further would get a hollow-point bullet to the face.

  Smaller holes had been drilled into the sides of the cart, allowing him to see in either hallway direction when the cart was parked inside each door. Marko Resja appeared to remain alert in the lobby, never taking his eyes off the cart. He’d have to be extremely careful in the final stages of this operation. Any slipup would undoubtedly lead to a messy situation. He was convinced that he could deal with Resja if necessary, but he had little confidence in his ability to take out Resja and silence the attendant simultaneously from this range. Dragan cursed the moment he refused the offer of a suppressed, compact rifle. With that type of weapon, he could Taser “the whore” and quickly hit both Resja and the attendant with headshots and be long gone before somebody raised the alarm. Based on his hostage’s assurances, the place was a mausoleum at night. Figuratively and literally. Everyone here was on death’s doorstep, including Resja and Nicole Erak.

  After a few more minutes of rumbling through the hallway, he heard a distinct sound: triple knocking against the back of the cart near his head. After a long pause, the triple knock sounded again. Their next stop was the room across from 451. He acknowledged the notification with a double knock. Now for the moment of truth.

  The cart turned and stopped, the interior darkening when Kevin repositioned himself in front of the cart to pull it into the room. Four knocks indicated they were safely in position within the room. Dragan felt along the left, front side of the cart and released two latches. He slowly opened the door and peered into the dark room. Half of Kevin’s body was visible, outlined by the illumination from a night-light in the bathroom.

  “It’s all clear,” the man whispered in a barely audible voice.

  Dragan twisted his head at a nearly impossible angle to press his left eye against the hole drilled into the back of the cart. He wasn’t taking any chances with Kevin. People did crazy things under pressure. Across the hallway, the couch and chairs visible from his point of view remained empty. He could still make this work.

  “Hold the cart,” said Dragan.

  When Kevin’s hand firmly grasped the
horizontal handle along the rim, Dragan slowly and carefully inched his way out of the cramped hold and onto the carpeted floor. He sat there for a few seconds, listening intently. He then reached into the cart, quietly removing a duffel bag.

  “Get inside the bathtub and lay down. Shut the shower curtain,” whispered Dragan.

  The man complied, disappearing into the bathroom. When Dragan heard the shower curtain ruffle and the plastic tub creak under Kevin’s weight, he unzipped the bag and withdrew a suppressed pistol. He pushed the bag onto the bathroom tile and crawled into the softly lit space, standing up once he was completely inside. Equipped for handicap use, the bathroom was spacious, allowing him to shut the door without getting too close to the bathtub. He needed the door shut. The sound of a suppressed pistol, no matter how quiet, would be immediately recognizable to a trained operative.

  “You okay in there?” he asked quietly.

  “I think so,” said the man. “Hey, there’s a solid stainless steel handle in here. It might be easier just to tie me up in here.”

  Dragan opened the shower curtain a quarter of the way with his left hand, keeping the pistol concealed behind his right thigh. The handle would have indeed served his purposes well if the plan hadn’t changed so drastically. He raised the pistol and aimed it at the man’s forehead, pressing the trigger before the guy could react. A single hole appeared above the eyebrows and his body went slack. The subsonic 9mm hollow-point projectile had obviously done its job. There was no need to fire a second bullet. He closed the curtain and knelt next to the tub, removing a black wig and a pair of thick-rimmed, nonprescription glasses from the bag.

  After a few seconds of adjustment in the mirror, he closely enough resembled the man lying dead in the bathtub. The disguise wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but at the distance between here and the lobby, he should be able to go about his business without drawing any scrutiny.

  Dragan opened the bathroom door and placed his duffel bag on top of the dirty towels, shoving it far enough down to remain undetected. He reached inside the bag and removed a Taser and a gray auto-injector syringe, placing them on the tray attached to the cart handle.