by Alex Howell
He came to the church entrance first, with the double doors nearly three times as high as him. There was a part of him that felt incredibly uncomfortable, almost sacrilegious, letting his pistol lead him into the chapel, but he saw no other choice—if the terrorists were going to work this way, then he had no choice but to do the same.
He opened the door as little as he could, peering inside. The place was not lit at all—there weren’t even any candles burning. And given that the sky outside was as black as Mason’s jacket, he wasn’t going to get any ambient lighting. Wish I had those night-vision augmented goggles right now. Would go a long way in helping me out.
There, unfortunately, really wasn’t anything Mason could do. He took a couple of steps back, went to the base of the stairs, and turned back around to look at the church.
And that’s when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
Mason looked to a side door of the building just in time to see two men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern heritage—Iranian, no less—stepping outside and turning down an alley. Like everything else that Mason did, he knew that there was no way this was a coincidence. After what he had learned about the members of the group being Iranian… D.C. may have been something of an international city, but this wasn’t exactly a spot known for an influx of Middle Eastern immigrants. Worst case, Mason would scare a couple of men walking at night and quickly apologize.
The only problem was that Mason was supposed to report any important findings over to the other team members, but there was no time for that. He knew if he stopped his pursuit to call back to the other team members, the suspects would get away. He’d get grief from Raina especially for violating his own protocol, but this wasn’t the time for the philosophy of an action—it was just time for action.
Raina, you can thank me as soon as you see me and forgive me later.
Mason quickly jogged over to the alley and began following the men. At first, the two guys seem to be blissfully unaware that they are being tailed, and Mason was able to follow them undetected for some distance. They also didn’t seem particularly rushed or hurried—they weren’t whistling to themselves or laughing, but they also didn’t look like they were trying to move as quickly from point A to point B as possible. Simply, they just looked like two men trying to head back to their apartment who happened to take a rather circuitous route.
Appearances, of course, were usually deceiving.
But then it all went to hell.
In the darkness of the alley, Mason, losing his footing, made the mistake of stepping down on the neck of a discarded beer bottle. The crunching glass alerted the pair of men.
“Damnit,” Mason murmured.
The first man turned, had a look of surprise, snarled, and then took off.
“Run!” one man yelled.
Well, if that’s not a sign that these are the guys I want, nothing is.
Mason immediately kicked it into high gear, chasing after them. He became singularly determined to catch them, no matter what it took and no matter what laws he had to break to catch them. Men like that just didn’t run because they got scared.
He chased the men right out of the alley and back into the street, out into the D.C. night, ready to follow the suspects wherever they would go. He saw them taking off toward the church, as if completing one giant loop. Mason gave chase, only to see them go toward the side of the church on the far side, the very spot from where they had come. Something in Mason warned him that he was being set up, but he was a SEAL with a gun, and by now, they would have shown their weapon. He pursued them.
Unfortunately, Mason was so focused on catching up that he didn’t notice the footsteps that were slowly gaining on him from behind.
Just as he came to the corner, seemingly out of nowhere, he felt a punishing, hard blow to the back of the head that didn’t knock him out only by some divine intervention. He fell immediately, however, and barely avoided smashing face-first into the concrete.
Through the pain of his pounding head, Mason looked up to see someone standing over him. He attempted to pull himself up, but it was no use—though he had avoided passing out from the hit, the blood loss was getting to him. He was fading fast.
Just before slipping into oblivion, the last thing he saw was a brawny arm reach for him.
On that arm was a tattoo of a chalice, along with the phrase, “By blood, we cleanse.”
The terrorists…
Raina… sorry…
14
September 16th, 2028
1:06 a.m. EST
Washington, D.C.
Luke stood in the headquarters of Onyx’s room, following the digital trail of all of the active members of the organization.
He had Case listed as inactive, but otherwise, he had Marshal, Raina, Kyle, Chris, and Mason out and about. Everyone had gone to different parts of town, although Kyle was just a room over, using his skills in technology to see if he could dig up any more information on the terrorists and their possible hiding spots. He hadn’t found anything yet, but then again, no one had.
Also bugging him was that the dot that showed Mason near Round Robin and an old, abandoned Catholic church had not moved at all. This wasn’t necessarily a red flag, as someone like Chris would often remain in one place during sniping attacks over the span of hours, but on a mission like this, it was a little disconcerting.
Still, Luke had done his best to remain hands off. He had never liked to be the guy who demanded status updates from the team every ten minutes; that was the guy that everyone hated and would soon quit on. Instead, he let the members of Onyx reach out to him with updates as needed; whatever went to him went to the rest of the team.
So far, however, communication had been very staggered and rare. Mason hadn’t said a word. Chris hadn’t either. Raina had said one thing. Marshal had spoken up three times, but Luke had a feeling Marshal was feeling more pressure than usual to “look like” a leader after what General Thomson had done.
It wasn’t a bad thing, but given that they needed to uncover this case sooner rather than later, Luke knew there were problems with no communication. It signaled that the team wasn’t picking up anything… or possibly even worse.
Luke had to prevent his mind from running to the worst case scenario, so he did what he always did to deflect stress—he went to talk to someone about it. He went over to the next room and sat next to Kyle. While Kyle was so young he could have been Luke’s son, Luke had a certain appreciation for the way Kyle operated. He was on the quieter side, more prone to get pushed around, but he had a tactful way of talking that allowed everyone to feel right. Some of that, to be certain, was just a by-product of Kyle’s quietness, but as he got older, it was a skill he would undoubtedly hone.
“No luck, huh?” Luke said.
Kyle shook his head.
“Not at all,” he said. Noticeably, Kyle only seemed talkative in one-on-one settings; if Luke put even Raina or someone else who was less hotheaded in the room, Kyle got stilted and quiet very fast. “I swear, these guys aren’t that subtle with announcing their intentions, but it’s like they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s weird. They’ve posted on the dark web that they intend to hit a speech of Pierce Richards in the coming weeks, and to some extent, it’s just bravado, but—”
“We know it’s not,” Luke said, filling in the gaps. “But we’re not sure what it necessarily is in any further detail.”
“Doesn’t seem to be the case,” Kyle said. “Mason thinks they’re going to strike in, well, I guess now three days, I think.”
That got Luke to sit up quickly and swivel his chair to face Kyle. This was the first that he had heard of such a thing.
“When did Mason tell you that?”
“Uh, he met with Raina and I about, oh, five hours ago. Was I supposed to have told you that before?”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Luke said. “He hasn’t seen me since he told you that.”
Actually, Mason hadn’t said a
word to Luke since the night before at Round Robin. That wasn’t unusual, but what was slightly unusual was Mason would make such a critical assumption that would impact the rest of the team and not share it with him. It seemed very much out of character.
“But I’m going to inform the rest of the team.”
Luke pulled out his Onyx phone and sent the message to the rest of the team “Need this resolved by Richards’ next speech. Sept. 20th. Gonna get attacked.” It wasn’t the full story, but it got the details across. Urgency had to be had.
Curiously, though, when he looked at it, he saw that while it had gotten delivered to almost everyone on the team, there was one whom it had not gone to—Mason. At least it didn’t deliver to the one guy who had uncovered the timing of it all, but still…
“Kyle, when did you last see Mason?”
Luke’s sense for when a teammate was in trouble was starting to get triggered. He had honed it quite well during his days in the Middle East, and his time in the FBI and now Onyx had all but perfected it. Something was very wrong with Mason—hopefully, it was nothing more than a broken cell phone, but to assume such a thing…
“At that meeting, with Raina, why?”
“And where was that meeting?”
“Here.”
“Damn,” Luke mumbled.
He tried placing a call to Mason, but not only did it not get answered, it went straight to voicemail.
“Is something wrong?” Kyle asked.
“Mason’s not answering his phone. It’s not even on,” Luke said.
He tried Mason’s personal phone, but had the same result.
“The dot on the screen is showing where his phone is, but it’s frozen like that now for what feels like an hour,” Luke said.
He suddenly realized that he was faced with a critical decision. At this point, he had to assume something had happened that had compromised Mason’s status on the mission. Unfortunately, there was no way that Mason had “just” lost his phone or broken it. He would have checked back in at some point.
Given all of that, he had two options—he could send someone in to check in on Mason but risk there being an opening in their security detail that the terrorists could exploit, or he could let the situation be and focus on solving the terrorist plot but risk not helping Mason.
“Last street camera video footage shows him leaving the bar,” Kyle said. “There’s not many cameras in that area.”
Luke silently swore. He knew what he had to do, even if he hated it. He hated it with his every ounce of fiber.
But in a situation like this, Luke could not put the feelings for his best friend above his duty to his country, most especially this close to a presidential election. Painful as it was… Mason would have to wait.
“He probably just did something dumb with his phone,” Luke said, although he didn’t try and hide the worry in his voice. “If there’s anyone I trust to get out of silly and serious jams like that, it’s Mason.”
Luke couldn’t bring himself to face Kyle, though. Not with how he knew he really felt about it. Instead, he sent another text to the entire time.
“Call it a night if you want. Let’s resume at 7 a.m.”
He just had to hope that Mason would do the same, even if he would never get such a message.
15
September 16th, 2028
7 p.m. PST
Palo Alto, California
It had been a long, long day, and Clara was beginning to feel some doubt about whether she belonged at Stanford.
She and Serena had gotten into an argument later that evening about what had happened at the protest, and though their friendship had remained intact and peace had eventually been made, the damage had been done. Serena had said that Clara didn’t understand the importance of standing up to close-minded people, while Clara countered that Serena had only inflamed the situation. It was resolved before it got particularly nasty, but it didn’t do anything to ease Clara’s mind.
It really didn’t help that classes weren’t getting any easier, and on top of that, when she arrived late—sadly, as usual—to her constitutional history class, she saw that they had gotten an assignment for a ten-page paper due by the end of the month.
The month! That was two weeks away, and Clara had never written more than three pages in two weeks. Now she had to do that?
And yet, all around her, her classmates seemed to thrive in such a tough academic environment. These were the sons and daughters of Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists who saw Stanford coursework not as challenging, but as a mere “to do” on the way to millions of dollars.
Making it worse, though, was that her father had not sent anything in the morning. Mason usually sent wake-up texts to his daughter in the morning, but she hadn’t heard from him in over 24 hours. Her last text, delivered half an hour ago, wasn’t responded to either.
This was most certainly out of character for her father.
She realized that he was busy, and even considered the possibility that he was in transit—on a plane somewhere, and was simply unable to respond. But usually he gave her some kind of notice. And even if he was, there was no transit in the world that would have left him without a full day’s worth of communication.
Where was he?
Her gut was warning her that something seriously bad had happened. She didn’t think the worst had happened—someone would have called her and broken the news gently if her father had been killed—but she had a suspicion that something happened on the mission. Something like transit or a dead cell phone would never have prevented Mason from reaching her—he simply would have borrowed a tablet or someone else’s device to communicate with her.
She knew one person who would absolutely know where he was, but calling him…
He needs to know too. If something happened, he needs to know. Call him. Worst case, you leave a voicemail and someone else follows up.
Scrolling through the contacts in her phone she came to one that she had saved for her dad’s old colleague, Luke Simon. Feeling her anxiety build after dialing the number and putting the phone to her ear, she quietly mouthed her next words, too nervous to actually say anything loud or with confidence.
“Please pick up. Please, Luke… please.”
She knew that as a mission leader, Luke would know better than most what her father was up to. And, if he didn’t, he’d be able to put out a note to the rest of Onyx to start searching for Mason.
But hopefully it never came to that.
“Hello?”
Clara gave a slight breath of relief, but she knew it was just one step of many to actually having her nerves resolved.
“Hi, Mr. Simon, this is Clara Walker, Mason’s daughter.”
“Oh! Hi Clara, how are you?”
“I’m fine, look,” she said, taking a page from her father’s book and going straight into business. “Do you know about anything that’s happened with my father in the last day? I’m just worried about my dad. I haven’t heard from him all day and he hasn’t answer his text or phone calls.”
The silence on the other end of the line, unfortunately, gave Clara the answer she had dreaded. He doesn’t know anything. And if he doesn’t know, then almost certainly no one knows. No one that would want to help him and reach us, anyways.
Oh, dad…
“Hmm—that’s not like him is it?”
Luke had sounded like he wanted to be reassuring, but to Clara, it just came across as a little too simplistic. It sounded like he was either oblivious to what she was talking about or outright ignoring what she needed to know, which, knowing Luke, was most certainly, not the former.
“No, it’s not,” she growled. “Do you know where he might be?”
“Well—as you probably are well aware, much of your dad’s work is classified, so I can only tell you the most basic of details.”
That didn’t sit well with Clara at all. She looked around and realized she was in too public a spot to discuss. She asked Luke
to give her 30 seconds, but as soon as she was out in a private spot on the quad, she didn’t waste any breath launching into Luke.
“I don’t know if you remember, Luke, but I helped you guys solve the Warrior case,” she said. “Not to mention that I’ve already seen the inside of a government job with my own capture. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I need to know where mydDad would be operating. Don’t hide that from me and don’t hide if something happened.”
Luke gave a long, long sigh.
“Clara, where I am right now, I can’t answer that.”
He’s on a government line. He’d be in huge trouble for revealing secrets like that.
Damnit. Fine. Just give me anything.
“Just tell me what you can.”
She didn’t know any other way to phrase what she wanted, because at this point, it seemed pretty clear Luke wasn’t going to give her anything of actual substance. This only increased her stress and her anger.
Then he surprised her.
“Your dad and some other Onyx team members are currently on a mission in the D.C. area trying to recover—to recover some missing items. They are working with a really tight time frame to find this stuff. I haven’t heard from him since, uh, last night, but we know he’s out on the prowl, doing his work.”
D.C. Just like with me…
The words brought back a flood of memories to Clara, who suddenly had a fear that the roles would be reversed—Mason would be the captive and Clara would be the rescuer. Maybe it was a little bit crazy to think about, but with Mason, nothing was crazy. Her mind began to dance with the worst of it.
“I see,” she said, trying to give the impression that she was calm.
In reality, though, the fact that Luke also hadn’t heard from him was nothing that reassured her. If anything, the tension in her chest increased even more. Luke was either remarkably skilled at being optimistic or he was trying to put on a pretty face for Clara, but it wasn’t doing much good.
