by Alex Howell
“You got yourself a deal, mister,” Clara said. “Now then. Show me what you’re working with, will you?!?”
Mason grunted, went to the closet of the hotel room, and pulled open the box. He clicked open a few different latches, used the thumbprint identification security measure, and reached inside for the various “goodies” that lay inside. A second look, from the perspective of mere study, made Mason see the gadgets as if looking at them for the actual first time.
First, he pulled out the goggles he had that showed many different types of vision—infrared, X-Ray, night-vision, augmented, gamma, and a few other types that not even Mason himself understood. The different visions, when combined, could give Mason a perfect understanding of what he was looking at and what awaited him. It was as perfect as he could have hoped for—nothing would escape his vision with these.
Next was a customized M18 rifle. This was a rifle that could shoot about a half-dozen rounds per second, have almost no recoil, and had a silencer that limited the sounds to nothing more than the pew that one would hear from a normal silencer—and this on an automated rifle, no less. It also had finger-lock identification, meaning that if someone besides Mason tried to use the gun, it would automatically lock on itself.
Mason then showed the phone that Luke had given him; while not part of the package per se, it was part of the deal of being a member of Onyx. It provided nearly unlimited encryption and protection from hacking; no one was going to get through to the line and listen in.
There were other gadgets; electronic devices that could hack just about any password; lock breakers; brass knuckles that were practically invisible and weightless, but still powerful; and much more.
“Wow,” Clara said. “I still can’t believe that you get all of this as a member of your team. It’s like something out of a movie.”
“Yep,” Mason said. “And if you tell anyone about this, I’ll make sure you never see them again.”
“Really, dad, you think I’d ask for something like that and then betray your trust?”
Mason shrugged and didn’t answer. Of course, of all people, he knew Clara would never betray him. But never, after the incident with General Jones, wasn’t a word that he really believed in.
“Just promise me that if you do follow on the path I’m on,” Mason said. “That you act responsibly and not betray anyone you promise to protect. I’ve seen and experienced too much now.”
Clara patted his shoulder, but Mason just grunted in response.
“I promise,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’ve stressed you out at all. I know this mission has been tough.”
“It’s all right,” he said, though a gross oversimplification of how he felt, it was enough to speak the truth. “Believe it or not, I believe we’ll get him.”
“You do?”
Mason chuckled.
“You see what we’ve got, right?” he said. “And we have something more important.”
He tapped his head.
“Never forget that knowledge is the greatest weapon of all,” he said. “You never know where things you know from before are going to come in handy. The smallest of details can make a huge difference. Got it?”
Clara nodded.
“Now, then,” Mason said. “Let’s get back to our waiting game.”
17
August 19th, 2028
9:33 a.m. EST
Washington, D.C.
Raina was starting to feel the pressure mount, and the cool-headed soldier was reaching her wit’s end.
With Kyle, the quiet, somewhat socially-awkward computer geek—but an underestimated fighter all the same—by her side, she felt walking into the mission that the two of them would be able to figure out this out in no time. Their intellect combined with their work ethic would crack the case and have Warrior by their side. She wouldn’t have quite called it a walk in the park, but a moderate jog that would not have taken her breath away.
Instead, the only outsider visiting them with regularity was President Morgan, and he didn’t seem to have any particular interest in congratulating them on a job well done or encouraging them. He was getting more frustrated by the moment, micromanaging more and more, to the point that Raina had even sent a message to Luke asking him to intervene.
But what was Luke going to do? Stand up to President Morgan while his young extended family faced death? That seemed like a good way to ensure the entire team met an early dismissal followed by some devastating moves from the president. Luke, for his part, had said he would do the best he could, but the response was sufficiently vague that Raina knew he had not actually discussed anything with the president.
Instead, Raina simply kept going through all of her channels for intel, exploring different ways that she might be able to track Warrior, and just doing what she hated doing—waiting and hoping.
On this particular morning, she was groggy and relying on her latest cup of coffee to get her going. Around 1 a.m., her and Kyle had taken turns sleeping in three hour shifts, with hers having ended at 4 a.m. It meant that she had to keep herself awake until 7, when she got to stir Kyle awake. Both of them were reaching the limits of their patience, and both of them were beginning to fear the worse.
They still had a full day and a half before the end of the deadline, but they still didn’t have a way to reach Warrior. Raina knew that someone as emotionally volatile as he would respond to the right signal, that she could trigger him somehow, but she knew so little about him that she didn’t know what to say. She was either so tired or so creative that she thought of creating a fake news report that North Korean representatives were coming to Kansas City for a summit, if for no other reason than to encourage Warrior to come out of hiding, but the idea quickly got shot down as too far-fetched. Even if North Korean reps came to the United States, they sure as hell weren’t going to Kansas City.
In the room, Chris and Marshal were also reaching their limits. Chris kept saying he should have gone to Kansas, while Marshal did his best as the leader to remain stoic—though his snappy attitude, his grumbles, and his thousand-mile stare all indicated that it wasn’t to be. Patience was missing among the entire teams.
And, for that matter, so was Duke and Case. Duke had at least come by the night before, but Case?
Not my concern. That’s Marshal’s. Do your job, Raina, and don’t worry about the others.
That, of course, was easier thought than done.
Just after half the hour, President Morgan entered. Though Raina had gotten three hours of sleep, she didn’t think the president had gotten three minutes. His tie was undone, he wasn’t wearing a suit, and he didn’t look like he’d bothered to comb his sleek, silver hair.
“I just got off the phone with Mason,” he groused.
Raina looked at Marshal, but he seemed as surprised by the news as anyone.
“Nothing out there. I take it there’s nothing in here?”
No one had the courage to say it, but the looks on everyone’s faces said as much. President Morgan nodded, bowed his head, and kicked the nearest cabinet in frustration while swearing up a storm.
“Where is he?!?” he bellowed. “He has my family and he’s dug himself into some little hole like the coward that he is! I swear to God…”
It occurred to Raina watching him lose his temper and then his control that perhaps he had called Mason as much for the shared experience as for intel. Only Mason knew what it was like to have a loved one abducted. Raina had no children and no boyfriend or husband, but just imagining the idea that she could have a daughter who was kidnapped by some evil man…
It was disgusting, sickening, and disturbing. And Raina knew what she felt was only a tenth—no, a hundredth—of what President Morgan was feeling and what Mason must have felt. All the props in the world to Mason. I don’t know that I could have signed up for this mission if I knew it involved the same crime as what happened to my daughter.
He’s a stronger man than most of us.
Then, as if
fate finally had given them a break, the phone rang.
“Kyle?” Raina said, immediately snapping into action.
“I’m ready,” he said, also becoming fully alert on the spot.
“President Morgan,” Raina said. “Allow me.”
“Please,” he said, still shaking his foot out. “Let’s make sure we get his location.”
The “please” was not polite. It was one of dismissal, in order for Raina to more quickly answer the phone.
Without another waiting moment, she answered the phone.
“This is Raina.”
“Raina? No, I do not want Raina, I want President Morgan!”
Warrior very much sounded angry and on edge. It did not surprise Raina to hear him start to get flustered, but it did concern her—two parties on opposing sides, each with equally frustrated mental states, would get nowhere. President Morgan could get on the line, but Raina would have to do her best to keep him calm.
“The President is in the room, Warrior,” Raina said. “He is listening to you right now. He will be happy to interv—”
“No, no, President Morgan only!”
Raina was losing control of the situation and she knew it. She looked to the president, who folded his arms and looked ready to cuss out the terrorist. She couldn’t have that happen so soon.
“Warrior—”
“I hang up if you do not put him on!”
Raina let out a long sigh, looked to President Morgan, and gave him the OK to take over the call. She still, however, kept listening in. And maybe this will do some good, anyways. It’ll give Kyle a chance to track the call with this delay. She motioned for the president to move very slowly, which he got, but he couldn’t stay silent forever.
“Warrior, my family had better be alive.”
“Oh, your family is alive, President Morgan. But if your team keeps following me, they won’t be for long!”
“I swear, if you hurt them…”
The president’s voice trailed off as Raina put a gently reassuring hand on his shoulder. He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of his own anger, and took a deep breath. Raina didn’t think there was a single person on this mission on either side who had their full sanity left, or perhaps even half of it.
“I am unsure what you mean by my team following you, Warrior.”
“Do not lie to me! I am not stupid! I know a bomb went off in my last location! If it’s any luck, whoever you sent in there is dead now in that blast!”
Raina heard some strange sounds in the background, almost as if Warrior was outside near some birds and other animals, a rather strange contrast to the tension in Warrior’s words. But the attention she gave to this was fleeting and quick, for she had something much more pressing on her hands shortly after.
“Let me make one thing very clear to you, Mr. President. I am two steps ahead of you. You will not find me. You will either give in to my demands, or I will call you and you will have to live with knowing I shot your nieces and nephew.”
Raina cringed. It was the worst thing Warrior could have said for the sake of a civil, long-lasting conversation. And Warrior seemed to know it—she could practically hear him laughing on the other end of the line.
“Goddamn you!”
Just stay on the call like… five more seconds.
“Curse me all you want! You know you need to start a war! America will love you for it, anyways! Do you know how long North Korea has been a pain in the side of the world? Do us all a favor and blow them to hell!”
“Warrior!”
Raina again placed a hand on the president, but such a tactic was only going to work a few more times before it lost its effectiveness.
“Warrior. You know—”
“You are running out of time to meet my demands! And you know that the kids are running out of time to live! We are less than a day and a half before you say bye, bye to the kids!”
Warrior then let out a disturbing, maniacal laugh—or what Warrior probably thought passed for a maniacal laugh—before hanging up. President Morgan slammed his fists on the table, clearly having reached the tail end of his patience. Then, as if to drive the point even further home, he grabbed a mug—what had been Raina’s coffee—and shattered it against the wall.
Kyle, you better have gotten the details. I could have used some more coffee before that call.
“I want that man found and killed now!” the president said before storming out of the room. “Do not come to me without such an update!”
With that, a chilled silence filled the room between her and Kyle. The rest of Onyx smartly kept their distance as all eyes fell upon the two of them. Raina knew her standing in Onyx, to say nothing of the safety of the kids, depended on their success right here.
She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and looked at Kyle.
“Could you track it?”
Kyle clicked through a few things, typed on his keyboard some, and seemed to generally scramble in front of his laptop. Raina could only hope that this was the act of someone so close to figuring out what he needed to know, not the act of someone who was unable to cross the finish line.
“No.”
Oh, no.
About the only thing that was good about what had just happened was that the president was not in the room to hear Kyle’s bad news. If he was, he might have punched and kicked the entire place into smithereens out of anger. For right now, though, Raina held on to the slim hope that Kyle had just spoken too soon and that the exact location would come through at any second.
“It was too short by about two seconds,” he said, groaning. “I know it’s still somewhere in Kansas, within a couple hundred miles of his last call, but…”
Another tense silence filled the air as Raina hoped that Kyle would suddenly lurch forward at the sight of new information, giddily announce Warrior’s location, and relay that to Mason. She looked over at Marshal and Chris, who seemed hesitant to look her in the eye.
But about ten seconds later, with an awkward glance from Kyle, Raina knew such a thing wasn’t going to happen.
“It would take us months to comb that entire area,” Raina mused. “Even if it only took us a week, we don’t have that kind of time. At most, we have a day and a half. Maybe a couple more hours past that if we can negotiate with Warrior.”
Seeing that she had no other option but to now rely on the team’s intuition and training, she called Mason, hoping that the man who Luke had hyped up so much could come through in some fashion. I sure hope the man lives up to the legend, she thought. He answered on the first dial.
“Yeah?”
“Warrior just called,” Raina said. “He’s cracking. I don’t know if he’s going to last the whole period of time before he starts killing the kids. His emotional state has always been off, but it’s especially bad right now.”
“Damn!” Mason growled. “Were you able to track the call?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Raina said. “The call was too short. However, we have it on recording. We were hoping you could listen to it. Maybe you can pick up on something. We’ll see if we can also get anything.”
“That’s an awful big maybe.”
Yep. Just like seemingly everything on this mission.
“It’s about the only thing we have right now, Mason,” Raina said. “Because everything that is definitive is not in our favor.”
Mason let out a sigh before asking Raina to play it back. Raina kept looking over her shoulder, half-expecting the president to walk in. She most certainly did not want to face him until at least the phone call with Mason had wrapped up.
She had Kyle play the call back. Raina leaned back in her chair, listening to it all unfold, wondering when or if she should have jumped in so that Warrior could stay on long enough for Kyle to trace the call. He had to have known that they were tracking his calls; had he deliberately hung up just short of the time needed for the full tracing to happen?
It was certainly possible, but Warrior seemed t
oo emotionally out of control for that to happen. It was a far greater probability that the timing had just been coincidental, a poor moment of luck for the team—and one that may have cost three little kids their lives when they had the ill fortune of nothing more than having the wrong last name and family connections.
Sometimes, it wasn’t the hard-liners and the tough soldiers that were the hardest to beat, but the emotionally volatile ones. You never knew what they were going to do, and no matter how many training manuals, simulations, and experiences Raina accumulated, she knew that emotion made people act in very unpredictable ways.
It really didn’t help that they still knew next to nothing about Warrior aside from his demands, his voice—about as nondescript a voice as Raina could ever get—and his tone. It was like trying to sketch a portrait of a man with only the color red and blue. It would never get anything close to accurate or reasonable.
The call wrapped up, and Raina leaned forward to the phone. She did not pick up on anything new on a second listen that she didn’t already know, and judging by the lack of enthusiasm on the other end, she didn’t hold out much hope for Mason to have discovered anything either.
“Well? Any thoughts?”
She could hear Mason groaning on the other end of the line before she had even finished her question. She’d have to send it to him and the rest of the team and hope that someone could crack the code sooner rather than later—because at this point, there was no later. It was sooner, soon, or not at all. Less than a day and a half.
And the team could not afford any option other than much, much sooner.
“I can’t pick up on anything,” Mason said. “Just sounds like he’s calling you from outside. That’s it. Can’t narrow it down at all.”
“That was my thought too,” Raina said. “Wasn’t exactly calling from his car or from a warehouse. But the outdoors is way too expansive. He could just be—”
“Can you play it again?”
Of all the voices Raina expected to hear on the other end of the line, the one of Mason’s daughter was not one of them. Raina never forgot a name, but she had reason to believe she would never hear from Clara after what had happened. She either had something so compelling that it required her to hear the call again, or she was trying to be helpful in a way that was actually detrimental to the team.
