Extraordinary Retribution (2 page)

“Sir, no, please, I don’t know...”

“You know,” said the man, his blue eyes seemingly glazed over, frosted, utterly cold. The shadowed form whispered ominously, “See, I
know
what you do, what you
are
.” Mahjub felt his blood run cold.

“These poor men here,” said the pale man, gesturing toward the hallway, “they don’t know
who
you are, but they know
what you are
.” The man spoke with such venom, a snake’s hiss. “It took some time to track you down.”

Mahjub began to cry, clutching his blasted shoulder, grime and blood on his hands and face. A man with such power over others, now powerless, weeping like a child. “Please....”

There was no pity in the cold blue eyes before him. “Consider me more merciful than you ever were.”

The man stood up and aimed the weapon.

“No!” Mahjub began to scream, but a final gunshot ripped through his throat, silencing his cry as he fell against the wall. He gasped vainly for breath, his healthy arm at the gurgling wound, his eyes swimming, his feet kicking madly as he drowned in his own blood. It was over in less than a minute.

The assassin spat on the dead man, turned, and carried a set of keys from the room. One by one, he unlocked the doors along the hallway as he walked toward the stairs. He spoke loudly. “They’re all dead! Leave now, if you can. God soon brings fire to this place!”

Soft sounds of bodies stirring could be heard within the cells. The hinges of one door ground behind him. When he reached the first step, he dropped the large keychain and ascended to the upper floors.

The truck made a startling sound in the desert night as he turned the key.
Twenty minutes
. That was enough. If they had not escaped yet, they were as good as dead anyway. He stared down at a small radio transmitter on the seat next to him. A red light blinked at the upper-right corner. He pressed the button underneath, and a bright orange glow flashed before him in the darkness. Several seconds later, the sound arrived, the rumbling blast from an explosion as the compound was blown into the sky, rubble and embers raining down on the dark sands.

The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

He doubted Jesus had meant it that way. He shifted gears and raced away from the inferno.

It had begun.

2

“A
re we online?”

The voice was impatient, clipped, and embedded in the background white noise escaping from the small speaker. A young, athletic man was hunched over a monitor, the screen showing as much visual static as emanated from the incorporeal voice. He was seated in the cramped interior of a van, the windows covered with thick, polarized glass that rendered the stale space as dark as early evening.

“I want to have visuals on this,” came an impatient voice over the speakers.

The young man suppressed a sigh and glanced to his right at the woman seated in front of the other monitor. She shook her head and gestured to her shadowed clothes.

“Almost there, Nexus. Mantis getting dressed and the camera’s on her broach.”

“The old bastard’s not done yet? Didn’t know he could keep it up that long. Mantis should get overtime for this job.”

A status window appeared on the monitor, a blue bar marching across the screen. “She’s activated the camera. Connection’s coming up.”

Lights and numbers flashed across the monitor, and suddenly there was a poor color image of the inside of an expensive-looking hotel room. Centered on the screen was a tall, thin man with a crown of full, white hair like a lamp atop his dark business attire. He was straightening his red tie in front of a mirror, his words just discernible through the transmission.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay longer, darling,” he said, turning towards the camera, smiling. “This is an important meeting and then I’m off to LA.”

The camera approached the figure, and two slender, tanned arms reached outward and hung around his neck. A feminine voice lilted coyly.

“Yes, George, first an important meeting, and then your other mistress in LA. I think we’re competing more with each other than with Mrs. Sapos.”

At the mention of his wife, the man’s face tensed. “That wouldn’t be a lie,” he said, stepping backward, running a hand through his hair. His hand shook slightly. “I need a cigarette. Where are those damn patches the bitch makes me wear?”

“I’ll get them,” came the warm voice. The camera turned abruptly away from the figure and entered the bathroom. The hourglass figure of a long-haired brunette appeared in the mirror, a ruby broach affixed to her tight black dress. Her hand reached up to a box labeled “NicoDerm” and pulled out a packet, somewhat larger in size than the others.

Nexus spoke over the transmission. “She has the right one?”

“Yes, that’s it,” said the woman in the van. “It’s as close in appearance to the real thing as we could manage, but it had to be modified for the desired dosage, which—”

“Yes! Quiet!” barked Nexus over their speakers. “Let it play.”

The camera view had by now re-entered the room, and the white-haired man opened the plastic around the dermal patch, his eyes hungry. “Couldn’t find the stupid box last night.” He yanked his shirt over his upper arm and applied the white circle. Seconds later, he had rolled down the sleeve, slipped on his coat, and was at the door with his briefcase. He paused in the frame. “I’ve got to run. Think about Paris next month, Roberta. I know some special hotels. There’s no one quite like you.” The door closed behind him.

The young man at the terminal spoke. “The meeting is on the third floor of the hotel. He’s late already. We’ll switch to the monitors we have set up.”

“This crazy idea better work. I told you I want to see this.”

The young man wiped beads of sweat from his brow. “Yes, sir. It
should
work. It’s a modified version of FLAME with the surveillance modules installed. We infected his laptop as well as the smartphone of the lawyer from the ACLU.”

“What damn good will the phone do?”

“We can at least get audio if we can’t commandeer the laptop. But the laptop should be ours. FLAME reported back; it’s there. The hardware is nothing weird, so we should be able to control the camera and microphone. Should be easier than what they were able to do in the Iranian enrichment plants.”

“Should, should, should is all I hear! This bastard has done nothing but work to ruin everything we’ve struggled for. There are too many variables in this operation!”

“Lophius wanted it that way!”

There was a short period of static over the speakers. The woman gazed straight ahead with a shocked expression. Nexus finally spoke. “Careful using that name at any time, Sentry. He gets it his way, of course. He wanted this to be an accident, so
it will be
. Nothing to trace back to us. Especially not with what we’ve been hearing about recently.”

The young man swallowed.
So, it was true
.
We’re being hunted.

The woman waved her arm. “FLAME signal! We’ve got the laptop. Feeding the video stream. Now!”

The screen lit up with the familiar image of the older executive, the hotel trimmings replaced with a well-equipped conference room. A smart screen was embedded in the wall behind him, and it displayed an image of a prisoner in orange clothing surrounded by armed soldiers. He stood with his back to the image, staring down at the laptop, a perplexed look on his face. “Odd, the camera light’s activated.” He smiled with an embarrassed expression, looking past the camera. “Sorry, gentlemen. And gentlewoman! Damn technology isn’t my forte. You can be assured I’m not recording you, and the camera will be on me the entire time.”

The executive paused a moment, putting his fingers up to his neck, as if checking his pulse. He looked almost seasick.

“He’s showing signs of poisoning,” came the woman’s voice.

“Explain,” said Nexus.

As if forgetting that she interacted with someone located elsewhere, she leaned forward and gestured to the monitor, tapping places as she spoke. “Discoloration around the fingers, his breathing is labored, and he is sweating. There is a beginning of pallor. Disorientation will set in next.”

“Will it be
enough
?”

“Without a doubt,” she said clinically. “Nicotine is one of the most poisonous pharmacological substances known. It’s ten times more toxic per unit mass than arsenic. We’ve given him a dose of two hundred milligrams of the modified compound. One hundred cigarettes worth. It will enter his bloodstream very quickly with the transdermal penetrants we’ve spiked it with.”

“Does the modification reduce toxicity?”

“No, as long as it’s fresh. It severely decreases the half-life in the blood. But Mantis would have prepared it this morning. She was well briefed. The compound is maximally active right now, entering his system. In four hours, it will have broken down into smaller compounds, none of which are tested for. He’ll be dead way before that. There will be an elevated nicotine score in the lab results from what hasn’t hydrolyzed, but nothing high enough to cause suspicion.”

On the screen, Sapos resumed speaking, sounding as if he had just come up a flight of stairs. “As you know, we’ve been working to use our money for some good in this country. I personally have had enough of these rights violations in the name of national security.” He paused, wiping his brow and catching his breath. He seemed to sway slightly in place. “Invasion of privacy, indefinite detention, enhanced interrogation—they are practices for North Korea, not the United States of America.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, dragging it across his wet brow. A voice from behind the camera came through. “Mr. Sapos, are you feeling OK?”

Sapos smiled wanly. “Must be coming down with something. Feeling a little under the weather all of a sudden.”

“He’s still standing!” clipped Nexus. “It’s not going to be enough!”

“Wait!” said the woman. “It takes a few minutes for the levels to reach the lethal dose. He’s panting. His respiratory functions are severely compromised.”

The executive continued, his words beginning to sound slurred. “So, I have gathered you here—representatives of the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch—to make an announcement. A generous gift.”

He stumbled, steadying himself on the chair in front of him, his eyes beginning to swim in their sockets. “A gift for you....to continue.... the fight. Dear God, what’s wrong with me?”

Suddenly, the figure was gone from the screen, a dark blur plummeting to the floor. A loud thud sounded, along with gasps and anxious chatter erupting from others in the room. Several figures swarmed the region in front of the camera, bending down to the floor.

“He’s going into convulsions!” yelled one.

“Damn it! Someone get paramedics here right now!”

One set of eyes focused in on the camera, the head cocked to one side. The face drew in closer.

“We might be blown, Nexus!” said the man in the van.

“I see it. Trigger the FLAME erasure module. Burn it from the hard drive and the smartphone!”

There was a flurry of keys clacking and an emphatic smack as Sentry struck the “enter” key. “Command sent! Protocol engaged.”

The screen flickered and suddenly went dark. All the commotion and sound from the conference room ceased. The interior of the van was suddenly still and silent.

“You’re sure he’s dead?” asked the voice over the speakers, the static pops jarring in the new quiet.

The woman nodded. “Very high probability. We’ll know for sure soon. He’s too important for this not to get out quickly.”

“Not important anymore,” said Nexus triumphantly. “Top-flight work, both of you.”

“And Mantis,” said the woman. “She played him like an artist.”

Nexus laughed. “And she’ll be well paid. As will the chemists.”

A cell phone buzzed, and the young man pulled it out of his suit pocket. He scanned the number and then starred at it, horror-stricken. “Jesus.
He
’s calling.” His voice quavered.

“Who?” hissed Nexus. The woman in the room looked over confused.

“
Him
,” whispered the man, as if the unanswered phone could hear. “
Lophius
.”

“Answer it!” cried the woman, her eyes large.

The young man pressed the touch screen and entered a code. He cleared his throat. “Sentry speaking.”

A faint mumbling sound could be heard from the phone, and the woman leaned slightly forward, her body tense as a rod.

The man looked up and spoke to the microphone. “Nexus, he wants to know why you aren’t picking up.”

“The secure connection doesn’t allow it from this device! Tell him that, and tell him the mission was a success.”

“He says he hears you.” The man’s eyes widened. “He also says to break everything down. Immediately.”

“
Everything?
” came a surprised voice over the speakers.

The young man looked terrified as he recited. “Yes, everything! All queued missions are aborted. All assets to go underground.
Maximal threat
. He’s says you’ll know what to do.” He starred at the phone and put it on the desk in front of him. He pulled his hand back like the device might burn him. “He hung up.”

“What else did he say?” asked Nexus.

“That it’s the worst. More confirmed kills. And...and that the program may be terminated.”

There was a long silence in the van broken only by the tense breathing of the occupants. The woman leaned over to the microphone. “Nexus?”

“Lophius is the boss. We’re no longer on offense, people. Time to circle the wagons and hope to God we weather this storm.” Neither person in the van spoke. “Do as he says! Break it down and disappear. You’re on your own until we contact you again.”

“What do we do until then?” asked the man, a bewildered look in his eyes.

“See if you can manage to stay alive.”

Static broke out over the speakers. The voice did not speak again.

3

M
iguel Lopez tossed clothes and other items into a duffle bag almost violently, tearing shirts and pants out of the closet, ignoring his wife’s pleading.