by Ethan Cross
Marcus wasn’t ignoring the importance of the current situation or tuning out the Director and Fagan. He simply couldn’t filter out the rest of the information as well. It all melted together in his head like watching a thousand television screens at once. He soaked up every detail and filed them away in his mental database for future reference. He tried to focus completely on the conversation, but he couldn’t turn off the rest of the world no matter how hard he tried.
He cracked his neck to the side and pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. He said, “You need me on this case, and you know it. If you want to fire me or put me in a rubber room or whatever you had in mind, that’s fine. But not until after this one is finished.”
Fagan said, “I’m not here to take you off the case, Agent Williams, and I’m not here to fire you. I’m here to get you back on track. We’re on the same team.”
Then the Deputy Assistant AG patted Marcus on the shoulder and walked into the other room. The Director started past as well, but Marcus grabbed his arm and whispered, “What’s really going on here?”
The Director’s gaze traveled from Marcus to Fagan and back again, as if he were debating whether or not to disobey orders. Then he said softly, “The powers that be are thinking of shutting down the Shepherd Organization, and that man is the one who gets to decide our fate. So, for once, please try to play nice.”
“What does that look like?”
“When it comes to Fagan, whatever your instincts tell you to do, just do the opposite.”
5
THE APPRENTICE NO LONGER THOUGHT OF ITSELF AS A PERSON. It was a thing. A monster. An inanimate object on a mission, like a bullet pointed toward an intended target. No remorse. No guilt. No second-guessing. It had been told what to think and do, and it knew nothing else but to obey.
It wasn’t even sure if it was truly alive or if this was hell. It couldn’t be sure that it had ever been alive. Although there were vague pictures that floated through its mind on occasion, they seemed like memories of a life that it couldn’t remember living.
It would eat when its stomach ached. Not because it understood hunger, but because that was what it had been told to do. It defecated into a bucket when it felt the urge. But if the master’s instructions hadn’t been specific on that point, it would have just released the waste onto itself. It registered the smell of the feces swimming in the bucket to its right, but it didn’t feel anything about the smell one way or another. It felt nothing. It wasn’t alive.
It sat in front of the picture window, staring at the house across the street and taking meticulous notes about the family’s comings and goings. As it jotted down the time of the light being turned off in the living room, it had an odd thought. It could read and write and tell time and understand concepts like deception and fear and death. It could drive a car and fire a gun and respond when spoken to. But it didn’t remember learning of such things, as if it had simply been programmed upon its creation with a default set of knowledge.
The house around it was devoid of furniture or pictures. The space only held the chair in which it sat, the bucket to its right, and the binoculars and notebook on the window ledge. It raised the binoculars and watched as Julie Dunham shut off the light in the hallway and joined her husband, Brad Dunham, in the bedroom. That room was lit with a bluish tinge indicating that the television was still on. It knew that Julie would soon join her husband in slumber. Then it would start the timer as the master had instructed.
It sat in place for the next two hours, unmoving, unthinking, just a swirling of the fuzzy and strange images and sensations. Then the timer beeped, and it stood up from the chair, covered its face with a black balaclava, and made its way over to the Dunham home. It kept to the shadows to remain unseen, as the master had instructed.
The security system in the home would be armed, but the master had prepared for that fact. The apprentice removed a small rectangular device from its pocket and pressed the gray button at the center. With a mechanical whir and a protest of hinges, the garage door slid up.
The apprentice then moved inside and slid beneath Julie’s car before closing the garage door with another press of the button. Now it would wait for Brad to leave for work, and once he was gone, it would take the family, just as the master had instructed. It didn’t want to hurt the people inside the house, and it had a hazy sense that what it was doing was wrong. But it also knew that to disobey would bring great pain, and that was the one thing it could still feel.
6
MARCUS HAD BEEN RESTING ON THE AIR MATTRESS AND TRYING IN VAIN TO FALL ASLEEP FOR TWO HOURS WHEN ANDREW CALLED TO HIM FROM THE ADJACENT ROOM. The Director had taken the night shift and then Andrew had relieved him at eight in the morning. Marcus wasn’t supposed to take over until one o’clock that afternoon. Something must have been happening. He leaped to his feet and hurried to Andrew’s side. The CIA operators also came to life, preparing their equipment and readying themselves to move out. The room smelled of burned coffee and brimmed with anxious tension.
“I think we have something,” Andrew said. He tapped a key on the computer and brought up a full-screen view of a dirty-looking man with long red hair hanging over half of his face and a scraggly red beard. The man moved toward the front of the record store in a stumbling zigzag.
“Is that him, Marcus?” the Director asked.
“The build’s right. I can’t be sure, but it looks just like the disguise he used when he killed Crowley in Chicago. See the way his hair is masking half of his face? Ackerman likes to use that trick to throw off facial-recognition software. Most of the programs rely on symmetry. Covering half of the face keeps them from getting a read.”
“We can’t afford to wait until we’re a hundred percent,” Fagan said in his nasally New England accent. Then he nodded to the leader of the CIA squad, a tall blond with a lined face and deep-set pale blue eyes. “Go get him. We want him alive—but don’t take any chances.”
None of the operators said a word as they headed for the door. Each man was dressed in plain clothes, but all were armed with tasers and handguns concealed beneath thin jackets and hooded sweatshirts. The government had most likely trained them extensively to blend into a crowd, but there was no crowd out there to blend with. Marcus was relatively sure that Ackerman would spot them from a mile away.
He started after them, but Fagan wrapped a hand around his bicep and said, “I want you to stay here. These guys are the best. They can handle Ackerman.”
He ripped his arm free of the politician’s grasp. “I’m not taking any chances.”
“Marcus, you’re too close to this. Stand down,” the Director said.
Gritting his teeth, Marcus moved back to the monitors. He’d been reduced to an audience member at his own fight, and there wasn’t much he could say about it. At least, not until things went south.
*
Out of the corner of his eye, Ackerman saw the group of agents exit the apartment building. They tried to act like a group of friends on their way to a bar or a baseball game, but he could tell what they were. They couldn’t conceal their animal natures and predatory grace. Not from a man who had also been trained to kill.
Someone had upped the stakes of the game. These men moved with a calm efficiency and practiced ease that spoke of military training and skill. Could be members of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team or, even better, a team of operators from Delta Force or the CIA.
Ackerman felt flattered.
The thought of being hunted by such men and in turn hunting them forced adrenaline into his veins and sent excitement pulsing through all his senses. It had been a long time since he had faced a real challenge, and he had forgotten how good it felt to be in mortal danger. It made him feel truly alive.
Not that his brother wasn’t a wonderful opponent. He just knew that Marcus would never be able to pull the trigger. Marcus could try to hide his feelings beneath that hard exterior, but Ackerman knew that at least a par
t of his brother loved him and wanted to save him.
But the men coming for him now held no such affinity. They wouldn’t hesitate to end his life in a gloriously bloody fashion.
This was going to be fun.
*
Marcus watched the monitors and shook with nervous anticipation as the operators circled their target. The bearded man seemed oblivious to their approach, but if it was Ackerman, Marcus knew that he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
The man pushed through the front door of the record shop, the electronic ding of the door’s bell ringing out through the speakers of Marcus’s computer. He seemed to glance around for a worker, but the store’s owner and one customer had already slipped out the back when they received the word that a possible suspect was approaching. Marcus didn’t want to take any chances of Ackerman grabbing a hostage, and the owner of the shop—a retired cop—had been more than willing to help.
The target began shuffling through some old Beatles records. Marcus looked toward the approaching CIA team. Two were coming through the front door with one waiting on the street as a second line of defense while the remaining two members of the team had circled around through the alley and were coming in the back. Smooth, efficient, confident. Too confident.
His gaze shifted back to the store’s interior. The bearded man with the shaggy red hair still seemed unaware of the presence of the attackers, but Marcus guessed that would be how Ackerman would play it: act like his guard was down, lure his opponents into a false sense of security.
The agents went in hard and fast. The one on the right aimed a big .45 caliber pistol while the one on the left held his taser out at arm’s length.
The redhead still didn’t turn toward them.
Marcus involuntarily and pointlessly placed his hand over his gun. It wasn’t as if he could help them through the computer screen.
“Don’t move. Show us your hands,” taser-man said.
This finally drew the bearded guy’s attention. He wheeled toward them with the look of a scared rabbit on his face.
“Hands up! Now!” the pistol-wielding agent screamed.
The bearded man bolted for the rear of the store but came up against the other two agents. He pulled up short. His eyes darting in every direction before the barbs of one of the tasers penetrated his flesh. He fell to the linoleum floor in a fit of violent convulsions.
The red wig fell from his head to reveal short dark hair.
A split second later a pair of agents were on top of him, securing his hands and feet. The others held back with their weapons still trained on the downed figure, taking no chances.
“This isn’t right,” Marcus said.
Fagan grinned. “I told you these guys are the best. And you were the one who set up this operation. It doesn’t reflect badly on you that they took him down so easily. You put him in that position. Good work all around.”
“That’s not what I mean. Have them pull off the fake beard and show his face to the cameras.”
Fagan relayed the order into his radio, and they all watched as the agents revealed the dirty face of a young man with bloodshot eyes and gaunt features.
“It’s not him.”
“It’s some homeless guy. Ackerman played us,” the Director said.
Marcus barely heard his boss. He had shoved Andrew out of the way and was working the controls of the computer. He brought up the video footage of moments before on the street as the bearded man had approached.
“What are you doing?” Andrew asked.
“He would have wanted to watch.”
“There!” Marcus jammed a finger against the monitor over the image of a young blond woman pushing a new plastic baby carriage.
Fagan said, “What are you—”
But Marcus was already on the move. He rushed into the bedroom and threw open one of the windows to reveal the fire escape. The rusting old metal protested as his weight dropped onto it.
He took the grated stairs three at a time, grabbing the railing and using it as a pivot to slide around the corners. When he reached the bottom, he kicked the ladder. It dropped to the asphalt of the alleyway with a resounding clang.
Marcus slid down to street level and sprinted down the alley away from the record store. The blond woman had walked straight past the store and then turned away to the left. His only hope was to circle around and cut her off.
The sudden burst of adrenaline and the pounding of his heart combined with the throbbing headache and made him feel dizzy and nauseous. But the adrenaline also made his legs pump hard and fast.
His pounding footfalls echoed off the walls of the alley. Above and to the left, he heard someone calling after him and following him down the fire escape. He ignored them. They wouldn’t arrive in time to make any difference.
He came up on the end of the alley as it intersected with another street. Pulling his Sig Sauer semi-automatic, he pivoted around the corner. But neither the blond woman nor anyone else was in sight.
Pistol still in hand, he rushed across the street and into another alley. This one smelled of grease and ginger and sesame oil. A small white man carrying a trash bag and wearing a shirt covered with Chinese symbols pushed open a door on the right.
Marcus didn’t say a word as he shoved past the man into the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. A cook yelled something unintelligible. A waitress pushed through from the dining area carrying a tray of plates piled with food remnants. Her eyes went wide at the sight of the large man barreling down on her. Marcus didn’t have time to stop. The pair collided, and the plates crashed to the tile floor. Shards of glass and grains of rice and pieces of orange chicken went everywhere. He spun away, slipping in the mixture of sauces and leftover food, and stumbled into the dining area.
The restaurant’s patrons yelped in shock as he pulled his gun. Mothers cowered beneath booths with their children while others fled toward the bathrooms. He ignored them all.
Marcus burst onto the street and sighted down the barrel of his Sig Sauer at the young blonde woman pushing a baby stroller and making her way up the street. She was heading straight for him. Less than fifteen feet away.
Only she wasn’t a “she” at all. She was his brother—Francis Ackerman Jr.
*
Ackerman’s face broke into a huge grin at the sight of the man staring at him over the barrel of a gun. Marcus had seen through the ruse, and Ackerman beamed with pride at his baby brother.
Of course, he still wasn’t going to let himself be captured. He had considered such a possibility. That was why he had loaded the seat of the hooded infant stroller full of a simple binary explosive made from potassium permanganate and brake fluid. All he needed to do was tilt the carriage at the proper angle or shove it forward at sufficient velocity, and the two chemicals would mix and cause a chemical combustion. Simple, yet effective. It was amazing the things one could learn on the Internet.
He didn’t believe that the bomb would be powerful enough to kill or injure anyone—and therefore not violate his promise to Marcus—but it should still serve as a nice distraction.
“Hello, Marcus.”
“You make an ugly woman,” Marcus replied
“Really? I thought I looked rather alluring. You can put the gun down. I know you wouldn’t kill me. We’re family, after all.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Marcus said as he pointed the gun down at the lower half of Ackerman’s body. “But I won’t hesitate to shoot you in the leg.”
“As fun as all that sounds—”
Ackerman was about to shove the carriage toward his brother, but Marcus’s next move stopped him cold. Marcus lowered the gun and jammed it back in his holster.
Then Marcus said, “I’m sure you’ve got some backup plan. You always do. You always come prepared. We’ll probably still catch you, but someone might get hurt in the process.”
“So you’re surrendering?”
“No—you are.”
Ackerman laughed. “I think you’re
a bit unclear on the rules of our little game. And I’m not going back into a cage. I spent most of my life in one. I think I’d rather be dead.”
“I need your help.”
Ackerman heard more sets of running footsteps pounding down the street behind him. The team of agents from the record store were almost there. If he was going to make a move, now was the time.
“That’s a new one. So what can I do for you?”
“You can help me catch our father.”
Ackerman’s smile faded. “He’s dead. I killed him myself.”
“Apparently not. He’s still out there.”
“Believe me. I killed him. It’s the one thing I’m good at.”
“He must be better at surviving than you are at killing.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Surrender, and I’ll tell you everything. You’ll just have to trust me. I swear on our mother’s grave that I’m telling you the truth.”
Ackerman thought about that for a long moment. Then he raised his hands and said, “Fine, you win. I’m all yours, brother. But don’t touch the stroller. There’s a bomb in there.”
