End Game

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Graham had never been so cold. It was winter-cold inside this little room with its metal table and its forest of hooks hanging from the ceiling. He was wearing so little that the cold seemed to wrap around him like some kind of cooling blanket. He couldn’t stop trembling, but he suspected that a lot of the trembling was due to fear instead of cold.

He’d rather it be from the cold. Show no weakness, Deputy Price had said.

Jolaine’s words resonated even louder. All he needed was time and opportunity. With those things, he stood a chance of getting out of here. With just those things.

But he’d need strength, too, and with all the shivering, he could feel energy draining out of him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and that thought triggered a rush of hunger that consumed his gut, cramping his stomach and making him feel nauseous.

Jolaine.

Another wall of emotion broke over him. Jolaine was all he had left. She was the last one who gave a shit about him at all. Now it was just Graham and these terrible people.

3155AX475598CVRLLPAHQ449833D0Z.

The thought came from nowhere, still intact, still ready to go. The code that was more important than so many lives. How was that even possible? What could it mean?

Well, that was easy, wasn’t it? It meant the difference between life and death for Graham, and maybe for Jolaine as well. As long as he kept it to himself, they would have to keep him alive.

Another terrifying thought bloomed: Maybe that was the plan. This shit with the freezer and the cold air was a form of torture, right? Sure it was. He’d seen it on TV. It was the kind of thing that happened to the Iraqi prisoners in that prison he’d read about in the history books. The books called it torture.

Well, what was the point of torture?

In this case, it was to get him to talk. They’d made that very clear. They’d make him suffer until he gave them what they wanted. And then what?

Well, Jolaine said that if he gave up the information, they’d kill him. So, his choice was to suffer or to die.

That wasn’t a choice at all. That was—

The lock on the other side of the door moved. It made a loud sliding sound followed by a solid thunk when it reached the end of its travel. He waited for what was coming next. Under the table as he was, occupying the same spot for all this time — a spot that had therefore become at least a little warmer — he hoped that he wouldn’t be seen.

Should he be ready to lunge at whoever opened the door? Was this the opportunity that Jolaine had told him to be ready for? How could he know?

The door opened quickly. That was a surprise, because in his mind, the opening would have been a long, drawn-out event, complete with creaking noises and a demonic laugh. He couldn’t see the door because it was blocked by the vertical rectangle that served as one of the legs for the stainless-steel table, and for long seconds, nothing happened. No one entered as far as he could tell, and he didn’t move. The heavy thrumming of his heart was the loudest sound he could hear.

“Come on out, Graham,” said a heavily accented voice. It wasn’t Teddy, but it might have been his brother. The same accent, but a lot thicker. “I know you are here because there is nowhere else for you to be.”

Graham didn’t move, as if by remaining still he could become invisible.

“So you want to play seek and hide,” the man said from the door. “Sure. Fine. We can do that.”

The hiding strategy suddenly seemed like a bad idea. What was the sense of pissing them off? It would be different if he’d set a trap, or if he had some kind of ambush plan. As it was, all hiding could do was make all of this more difficult, more uncomfortable for him.

“I’m here,” Graham said. It came out a little too loud, but that probably didn’t matter. He scooched his butt along the floor the point where he was clear of the table, and then he stood. He didn’t realize he’d raised his hands until he saw that he’d done it, and the realization embarrassed him. When he was standing at his full height, he lowered his hands to his sides.

The man had only advanced a few feet into the doorway, but he stood funny, as if one side of his body were heavier than the other.

“What’s wrong?” Graham asked, reading the expression on the man’s face as one of anger. “I’m right here.”

“I knew where you were,” the man said. He showed an odd smile, an unnerving smile. Then he shifted his weight to point something at Graham.

At first, it registered to Graham as a gun. He started to dive for cover, but before he could hit the floor, a spray of high-pressure water was on the way. The sheer volume of the flow told Graham that it was from a fire hose. When the solid pillar of water hit him in his chest, it threw him backward and down onto the floor.

The stream pummeled him with bruising force, knocking the air from his lungs. When the man redirected the stream to his face, Graham brought his hands up to protect his eyes. Even with his face covered, the water got into his nose and mouth and choked him. The act of coughing brought in more water, and he thought he was drowning.

The pillar of water shifted in an instant, and then it started tearing up his belly and his legs. Again, he tried to cover up, but then the stream returned to his face. As soon as he covered it, the stream went back to his balls. This asshole in the doorway was having a great time.

Graham rolled on the floor to turn his back to his attacker. The force of the stream pushed him across the floor until he was pressed up against the far wall.

Still the hydraulic beating continued, raking the length of his body, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. This went on for at least two minutes. There’d be brief respites of five, ten, maybe fifteen seconds when the water stream wasn’t being driven directly into his body, but the flow continued.

And then it stopped, a smash cut from full on to full off.

The attacker didn’t say a word before he left. Graham heard the door close and the lock slide back into place. Then all he heard were the sounds of water dripping and draining and puddling. It was a sound that was worse than silence.

When he was sure he was alone again, he rolled away from the wall and onto his back, and from there to a sitting position. Water ran from everywhere. Where it wasn’t running off a surface, it dripped in a rapid, staccato rhythm that might as well have been a stream. He sat in a puddle that was at least an inch deep, maybe deeper. He could not have been more soaked, not if he had jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool. Every surface of the room was soaked, in fact. Not a dry square inch to be found anywhere.

As he rose to his feet, he noted that the water was deep enough to cover his toes. When he walked, his feet created tiny bow waves that rippled across the width of the room.

When the coolers kicked on again, he understood what they were doing.

They were going to freeze him to death.

Anton Datsik sat at his desk in the study of his modest home in Arlington, Virginia, playing solitaire on his computer as he waited for the phone call that had to come soon if it were to be of any use. When it arrived, he answered on the first ring. “Tell me you have news I want to hear,” he said.

“I do,” the woman said. “We know where the boy is. He’s in the custody of the Chechens as we speak. There’s an old meatpacking plant in Detroit.” She gave him the address.

“How do you know this?” Datsik asked.

“I just know,” she said.

“Who else knows?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Does your boss know?”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Or if she does, I don’t know how. My sources and hers are entirely different. And mine are much more reliable.”

Datsik typed the address into his computer to check out the location. It was both urban and accessible. He checked the clock. “How long has he been there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe one hour. Not much more, I don’t believe.”

“Are you there on the scene?”

“I am not.”

“They cannot be allowed to leave,” Datsik said.

“I believe that is what the Agency hired you for.” There was defiance in her voice this time that hadn’t been there before. He didn’t like it. “I have done my part,” she said. “I have delivered him to you. Now be sure to tell—”

Datsik clicked off. He knew what she was going to ask and didn’t need for that to be out in space for the NSA to listen to. Besides, he had more pressing matters to attend to.

Using a different phone — an encrypted satellite phone that was dedicated to a single purpose — he dialed a number and waited.

Philip Baxter answered on the second ring. “Yes,” he said.

“The clock is ticking,” Datsik said. “I need a plane, eight parachutes, and a pilot who has no memory.”

Baker paused. In the background, Datsik could hear the sound of a television. Sounded like a romance. “Do you know what time it is? How am I—”

“I can end this tonight,” Datsik said. “But I have to work quickly. Telling you the truth, it might already be too late. In two or three more hours, this will either be over, or the world will have nuclear-capable terrorists. All of that, my friend, is on your shoulders.”

He deliberately used the most provocative words he could conjure.

“Your team is ready?”

“It is.”

Another pause. “I’ll get back to you in ten minutes,” Baxter said.

LeBron hadn’t exaggerated. His crib was indeed just a few hundred feet away, the first house on the corner. It took LeBron and his crew less time to walk the distance than it took Boxers to drive. Big Guy parked the Expedition in the alley behind the house and locked the doors.

“Somebody steals this car, they’re gonna get quite a stash,” Boxers said.

It was a hell of point, but they didn’t have a lot of choice. Jonathan was betting on the fact that within the neighborhood, stealing from LeBron was understood to be a bad decision.

“Maybe I should stay out here and guard it,” Boxers offered.

“I’d rather you be inside,” Jonathan said. “It’s only the two of us this time around, and we’re on a really tight clock. I want your opinions.”

Boxers laughed. “Are you really going to plan an 0300 op off the word of a bunch of gangbangers?”

Jonathan scowled. “It’s local intel. We do it all the time. These guys know more about their neighborhood than we do.”

“We don’t even know if the guys they don’t like inside that factory are the same guys we don’t like.”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” This wasn’t like Big Guy. “Why’s there a bug up your ass on this?”

Boxers started to speak, then changed his mind.

“Talk to me, Box.”

“You know we’re gonna get screwed in this thing, right?” Boxers said. “We’ve got government agencies fighting each other for a piece of this pie, and we’re the ones in the middle who don’t officially give a shit about the outcome so long as we extract the PC from the bad guys.”

Jonathan shrugged. “That’s what we do,” he said. “We’re mission oriented, not politically oriented.”

“Big words,” Boxers said. “Where are you going to be when we’re in the middle of a crossfire between FBI and CIA?”

Jonathan recognized that his answer would seem obtuse, but he didn’t mean it that way. “We’re going to save the PC,” he said. Really, it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The alternative is to let the PC die. That won’t happen. Not on my watch.”

“And what do we do about the bodies that bear government credentials?”

“We say that they shouldn’t have tried to kill a child.” Even in the most cynical corners of the most corrupt governments on the planet — of which, unfortunately, the United States was numbered, thanks to the Dar-mond administration — it was understood that children were not to be harmed in political operations.

Boxers held Jonathan’s gaze, then defaulted to his dismissive chuckle. “Yeah, okay. Fine. I say we wear body armor.”

Now, there was a point where Jonathan could not argue. Before moving ahead, each of them donned their ballistic vests, which were preloaded with three hundred rounds of ammunition for their preferred long guns — the M27 for Jonathan and the HK417 for Boxers.

“As long as we’ve got the ammo…” Boxers said.

“Yeah, we’ll take the weapons, too.” Jonathan didn’t believe in his heart that they were walking into an ambush at LeBron’s house, but there was no way to know for sure. Bottom line: No one in the history of mankind had ever offered up a curse to all things holy for being too well armed or having too much ammunition.

“Let’s kit up all the way,” Jonathan said. A full-on, high-end show of firepower couldn’t possibly work against them. Plus, the more they carried on their persons, the less they risked losing in the event that the Expedition was stolen.

When they were done, Jonathan’s M27 dangled like an exclamation point down the center of his body. His left thigh bore a 4.6 millimeter HKMP7, and the ubiquitous .45 Colt 1911 rode on his right thigh.

He saw that Boxers was similarly outfitted, but with the 417 where Jonathan’s M27 hung, and a Beretta M9 instead of his Colt. “What the hell,” Jonathan said. “Let’s take the rucks, too.”

With the rucksacks on their backs — Jonathan’s weighed in at around seventy pounds, Boxers’ at just north of one hundred — they had nearly everything they needed to invade anyplace that needed invading. Certainly, they had LeBron’s living room covered.

“That covers the theft issue,” Boxers said with a smile. “Sure am glad I brought it up.”

With his tiny wireless transceiver inserted in his right ear, Jonathan connected his portable radio to the transmit button in the center of his chest and he pressed it. “Mother Hen, Scorpion.”

“Loud and clear,” Venice’s voice responded.

“I have a research project for you,” Jonathan said. He read off the address of the factory. “I need you to find out everything you can about the inside of that building. Anything and everything.”

“Okay,” she said. For reasons known only to her, Venice avoided military speak such as “roger” for okay, or even the civilian version, ten-four. “How long do I have?”

“An hour ago,” Jonathan said.

“Are you preparing to go hot?”

“Sooner than later,” Jonathan said. “We’re still determining if that’s the right place. But we think it is. If so, then we go hot right after.”

“Okey-doke,” Venice said. “I’ll let you know when I have something worth sharing.”

Jonathan looked to Boxers, who’d been listening to the same radio traffic. “Anything else to add, Big Guy?”

“I’m just anxious to get moving.”

As Jonathan led the way toward the back door, it opened to reveal LeBron standing expectantly in the opening. “Jesus,” LeBron said, eyeing the weaponry. “You know they’re not here, right?”

Jonathan waited till he had climbed the steps to say, “If the gear is with me, I know it won’t be anywhere else.”

LeBron recoiled from the words. “What, you think my boys are gonna steal from you?”

“A couple of minutes ago, your boys were gonna shoot me,” Boxers said. “Where I come from, stealing isn’t as bad as shooting.”

“Well, you’re in Detroit now,” LeBron said. “Stealing and shooting are different things, but one almost always leads to the other. Your shit would have been safe back there.”

“We mean no offense,” Jonathan said. “May we come in?”

LeBron stepped aside. “Just don’t make a lot of noise. The babies are asleep.”

One day, Jonathan was going to learn to tame his prejudices and preconceptions about people. This neighborhood was a shit hole, and he’d expected the same of LeBron’s house. In fact, the place was spotless. The furnishings weren’t much — he imagined that many of them came from charity thrift stores — but everything was thoroughly dusted and neatly arranged.

They entered through the kitchen, which had all of the necessary comforts, though twenty years out of date.

The Formica of the countertops matched the Formica of the metal-legged table. The appliances were old-school almond, and the floors were flowered linoleum, but overall, the place had a well-loved look. The house exuded pride.

LeBron led the way through a doorway that was slightly smaller than Boxers into the living room, where a sofa and three chairs were all arranged for easy viewing of a nineties-vintage twenty-six-inch television set that was turned off. Dozens of books, if not hundreds of them, lined the short wall from floor to ceiling on the far end. LeBron’s posse had dwindled to one — Georgie, whom he introduced as his little brother.

“This is my wife, Dawn,” LeBron said, nodding to an attractive woman dressed in sweats. She smiled back at Jonathan, though her eyes showed confusion. She looked as though she might have been sleeping.

“Good evening,” Jonathan said. “I’m sorry to intrude.”

“What is this about, Lebby?” Dawn asked. She kept her tone light, but Jonathan was sure he heard an undertone of anger.

“This is Scorpion,” LeBron said. “And his friend, Big Guy. They’re—”

“Why are all of those guns in my house?” Dawn said.

Jonathan moved to explain. “Ma’am, I promise you that we’re not here to do any harm.”

“And they’re not police, either,” LeBron added. “They’re here about the men across the street in the Excalibur Foods plant.”

“Those men are trouble,” Dawn said. “I don’t want to know nothing more about them.”

“Where’s the rest of your team?” Jonathan asked. There was no issue more critical than the location of unaccounted-for firepower.

“I sent them on their way,” LeBron said. “Dawn doesn’t like guns.”

“Including yours,” Dawn said.

“I apologize,” Jonathan said. “But as LeBron told you, those guys in the factory are big trouble.”

“What did they do?” Dawn asked.

“They kidnapped a young boy,” Jonathan said. Off to his side, he more sensed than saw Boxers stiffening. Big Guy hated it when Jonathan shared anything with anyone.

“Oh, my God,” Dawn said, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Why would they do such a thing?”

Jonathan eyed the chairs that were as-yet unoccupied. “May we sit down?”

Dawn seemed hesitant.

“We’ll take these off,” Jonathan said, shrugging out of his ruck and laying it on the floor. Boxers followed suit. Both kept their body armor on, and their weapons either holstered or slung. When he sat, Jonathan took care not to snag the fabric with any of the festooned weapons.

When Boxers sat, he looked like an adult sitting at a little girl’s tea set. Only slightly less comfortable.

“Excuse the gear,” Jonathan said. “We’re sort of obsessive about being prepared.”

“So, who are you really?” LeBron asked. “You never gave me a straight answer.”

“I’m in the business of not giving straight answers,” Jonathan said. He tried to sell it with a smile. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the case.”

“So, you’re with the government,” Georgie said.

A lie would have been so easy here. Given that his client was the FBI, it wouldn’t be that big a stretch just to say yes, but he sensed that that would not necessarily be the right answer in this crowd. “How about I tell you this,” he said, hoping to find a compromise. “We used to work for the government. In fact, we worked for him for a long time.”

“Are you assassins?” Dawn asked.

Jonathan was tempted ask her if that would be a problem. “No, ma’am. While I can’t tell you exactly who or what we are, I can tell you with absolute certainty that we’re the good guys. We’re on the side of the angels.”

“Then how come you don’t have cops with you?” Georgie asked.

Boxers took that one. “Because they’re not always on the same side as us.”

The conversation was meandering, and Jonathan wanted to bring it back on track. “Tell me about your concerns with the Excalibur plant across the street.”

LeBron and Dawn exchanged glances, and Dawn nodded. “That plant’s been empty for almost three years,” LeBron said. “Tore this place up when they left. Took two hundred jobs away because the politicians were too busy putting money in their own damn pockets to pay any attention to the little guy. I used to work there. So did Dawn. Terrible, terrible thing when it closed.”

Jonathan heard Boxers stir and prayed that he would keep his mouth shut. So far, nothing LeBron had said was relevant to anything they wanted to know, but it was a mistake to push people who had just started talking.

“So, it just sat there, you know what I’m sayin’? Just sat there like it was mocking us. They put up that big fence with the warning signs, and then it just sat there.”

“Until about two months ago,” Dawn said. “We started to see all kinds of traffic coming in and out, but none of it looked official.”

“Bunch of damn Arabs, I think,” Georgie said. “Lots of Muslim hats and shit.”

“We called the anonymous FBI hotline, but they didn’t do nothin’,” LeBron said. “Asshole on the phone tried to make me the crazy one. Even called me paranoid.”

“What do you think they’re doing in there?” Jonathan asked.

“I don’t have any idea, but I know it ain’t right. I never thought about kidnapping, but why not? They could be making crystal meth for all I know.”

“And that would be a problem?” Boxers said with too much of a smile in his voice.

“Yeah, Hagrid, that would be a problem,” LeBron said.

Boxers swelled in his seat. He did not like being teased about his size.

LeBron wasn’t done. “Just because I’m black and just because I live in a damn slum don’t mean that I’m stoned out on drugs. I grew up here, asshole. This is my home. You think I want some outsider coming in here and stealing the minds out of all the neighborhood babies?”

“Look,” Jonathan said. “I’m sure Big Guy didn’t—”

“You shut up,” LeBron snapped. “Don’t make excuses for him. He want to make excuses, let him make his own damn excuses.”

“I’m sorry,” Boxers said.

Jonathan almost fell to the floor. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Big Guy say those words before.

“I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

LeBron seemed surprised, too. Sort of deflated.

Boxers pointed a forefinger at Jonathan. “And like he said, you shut up.”

“So, the bottom line,” Jonathan said, “is that those folks have been squatting where they don’t belong.”

“Tell ’em about the guns,” Georgie said.

Jonathan arched his eyebrows. Guns were always a relevant topic.

“Those guys don’t bother nobody,” LeBron said. “I got to be honest with you about that. I mean they don’t get in my grill, and I leave them alone, too.”

Jonathan waited for the rest.

“But I watch them,” LeBron went on. “I mean there’s a lot of bad shit goin’ down in this neighborhood, so I watch a lot.”

“Like you were watching us,” Jonathan said.

“Right. Exactly like that.”

“Except you use binoculars for them,” Dawn prompted.

LeBron seemed embarrassed. “Well, yeah. ’Cept I use binoculars to watch them.”

“And you’ve seen guns?” Jonathan asked.

“Lots of guns. Rifles, missile launchers, all kinds of crap like that.”

Boxers leaned forward in his seat. “What did the FBI say when you told them about those?”

“To hell with the FBI. They don’t want to talk with me, they don’t want to talk with me. I ain’t callin’ back to beg.”

Jonathan understood the feeling, and at one level, he admired it. It never ceased to amaze him how shocked bureaucrats became when the public at large spontaneously developed ways to work around their bullshit.

“What do they do with the guns?” Boxers asked.

LeBron looked to Georgie and got a shrug. “Nothing, really. I mean they don’t come to the road or anything. But when they’re down there at their space, they’ve always got guns.”

“You said they had missile launchers,” Jonathan said. “What makes you think they’re missile launchers?”

“Because I watch the Military Channel,” LeBron said. He seemed insulted at such an elementary question.

Jonathan looked to Boxers. “What do you think?”

Big Guy shrugged. “He watches the Military Channel. Not a lot else looks like a missile launcher.”

Jonathan didn’t bother to ask for a hypothesis of why they would want that kind of weapon. While not all portable weapons systems were created equal, they all shared the common purpose of blowing shit up. They were equally useful as offensive or defensive weapons, provided the operators had adequate training. And what else did they have to do while sitting around an abandoned meatpacking plant but train?

This was all bad news, though none of it particularly surprising. In a perfect world, 0300 missions were executed against sleeping unarmed hostage takers. Alas, it so rarely turned out that way.

“How many of them do you think there are?” Jonathan asked.

“What do think, Georgie? Fifteen? Twenty?”

“I’d say at least twenty,” Georgie said. “It’s hard to tell because they come and go all the time. Sometimes new faces, sometimes old ones. Always dudes, by the way. I haven’t seen a single woman go in there.”

“But the rag heads are like that, right?” LeBron asked. “They don’t let women do nothin’.”

Jonathan determined in two seconds that nothing good could come from a discussion launched by that statement. He figured it was the way of the world that everybody needed to call names at someone else.

“So, let’s call it twenty-five people,” Jonathan said.

“We’ve faced worse odds,” Boxers said. His face showed not the slightest trace of concern.

“Only with better intel,” Jonathan said. “I think we should launch the Raven.”

At the mention of the word, Boxers’ eyes darted to the others in the room. He hated sharing operational details.

“It’s declassified now, I promise,” Jonathan said. “It’s public domain.”

Big Guy hesitated for just long enough to demonstrate his displeasure, then he stood and walked back out to the Expedition.

As Boxers exited, Jonathan addressed the others in the room. “I’d like to ask you a favor,” he said. “I’d like to use your lovely home as a kind of command post. Just for a little while. I promise we’ll be careful with your stuff.”

“No,” Dawn said. “The babies are upstairs.”

“I swear to you that we will not draw fire to this location. We just need a spot—”

“Will not draw fire?” Dawn said. “Who talks like that?”

“I think they’re like the Army,” LeBron said.

“You should see the shit they’ve got in their truck,” Georgie said. “It’s like a fort or—”

Dawn turned on LeBron next. “Is that why you’re doing this? Is this about your dream to be a soldier?”

“Excuse me,” Jonathan said to defuse what sounded like it could devolve into a long-standing, oft-repeated argument. “Remember what’s at stake here tonight. We believe that the men you describe have kidnapped a young boy after murdering his parents. There’s a young lady involved, too. We don’t know if she is dead or alive.”

Dawn looked horrified. “Who would do that?” she asked. “How do I know that you’re telling the truth?”

“You do know that I’m telling the truth,” Jonathan said. “I can see it in your eyes. And I can’t get into details.”

“So, you are the government,” LeBron said.

Jonathan surrendered. “Yes,” he said. “Well, not exactly, but essentially, yes. It’s complicated. But I can tell you this: If we don’t help that boy, the consequences will be awful. Not just for him, but for thousands of people.” He paused as the words sank in.

“That’s a really shitty deal, I know,” Jonathan continued. Then, to Dawn, “Forgive my language. Some words are hardwired, but I promise I’ll try.” To the group: “I know I’m asking you to take a leap of faith, but I’m telling you exactly the way it is.”

Sensing a crack in Dawn’s barriers, Jonathan rose, pivoted, and walked three steps to his ruck and pulled out the money satchel. “I have something for you here,” he said. With his back turned to the others, he counted off two banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

He turned back to the room. “Here’s two thousand dollars for your troubles,” he said. “Again, you have my word that no harm will come to your house or your children. Consider this payment for your inconvenience.”

Jonathan walked past LeBron and headed for Dawn. “Here you go, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance. In advance.”

Dawn’s eyes shifted from the money to Jonathan’s eyes and back again. “Who are you really?” she asked.

“Honestly,” Jonathan said. “If I could tell you, I would. For now, I’ll just have to be Scorpion.” He’d been told by countless others that when he smiled, his eyes flashed in heart-melting ways. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he’d learned to use the expression to get his way.

Dawn reached out for the cash. “I’m trusting you,” she said. “And I don’t trust nobody.” Her eyes turned steely. “Don’t you dare let me down.”

Jonathan crossed his heart. “Thank you,” he said.

A loud noise drew their attention to the back door in unison.

“Holy shit,” LeBron said. He was the only one in position to see what was going on.