Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (41 page)

The terrorists circled Dylan, trapping both him and Perry within. A few of them moved the center table that held the Taipan off to the side, opening up the floor space in the center of the room. Perry walked over to Kasaika then set him in the recently cleared space. He clasped his hands over Kasaika’s shoulders. “I killed your brother-in-law. It was a necessary death for our cause to continue.”

Kasaika’s nostrils flared, and his chest heaved up and down from his heavy breathing. His muscles tightened against the restraints, and he looked around to the rest of his fellow Egyptians. “This is the type of men you have become? Letting a Westerner lead you? Letting a Westerner kill one of our own!”

“We know you sold us out to the feds, Kasaika,” Perry said, his voice solemn. “A number of our groups were hit in Boston, locations that you knew about.”

Kasaika spun around, his face reddened with anger. “You left me there to die! You killed my brother-in-law! The men I gave up weren’t even true to the cause. You put our fate into the hands of an infidel!” He pointed at Dylan but couldn’t extend his hand past his waist. “You brought this upon my family!” Kasaika attempted a charge, but one of the terrorists held him back.

“You have forsaken the cause, Kasaika,” Perry said. “You will die, but before you do, you will have a chance to redeem yourself.” Perry snapped his fingers, and one of his men handed him the keys to Kasaika’s restraints. “In the eyes of your people, and of your god.” The metal cuffs around Kasaika’s wrists dropped to the floor, followed shortly by the cuffs around his ankles.

Dylan took a step back as Kasaika was now freed, rubbing the flesh around his wrists then clenching his hands into fists. Perry stepped between them and looked back and forth at the two of them as he spoke. “You will fight in hand-to-hand combat. No weapons will be used. And this will be a fight to the death. Kasaika, if you win, you shall be killed mercifully and given your burial rights. Dylan, if you win, I will tell you why you’re here.”

Perry faded back into the circle, and the surrounding terrorists grunted and shouted as the excitement grew, shifting back and forth on their legs, snarling at the scent of potential bloodshed. Kasaika eyed Dylan with laser intensity and sidestepped around to get a good angle on him, crouching low in anticipation of a strike, both his hands in the air.

Dylan mirrored Kasaika’s movements. He had no idea the type of training his opponent had, but Dylan hadn’t been in a fight since grade school, and despite the win, it wasn’t bringing much confidence to his situation. He backed into one of the terrorists on the edge of the circle and received a shove in the back that jolted him forward, closer to Kasaika, who made a lunge, which Dylan quickly sidestepped.

The consequences of this fight were much farther reaching than just the bunker. All it would take would be one false move, and Dylan’s life, along with any chance of stopping Perry, would be over. Dylan attempted to clear his mind, focusing on the fight at hand, but his children clouded his concentration. The images of their faces struck quick, like lightning.

Dylan’s heart beat through the fabric of his shirt and struggled to escape the protective casing of his ribs. The adrenaline coursing through his veins offered a layer of protection against the aches and bruises he’d accumulated over the past two weeks. His eyes were glued to Kasaika, carefully watching his movements, looking for something, anything that he could use against the man.

And then Dylan saw it: the slight twinge at Kasaika’s stomach where he had been shot the week prior on one of their missions. The wound and scar would still be fresh, and it could be Dylan’s one shot at beating him. If he could get close enough, it wouldn’t take much to bring Kasaika to his knees.

The shouts from the crowd grew intense, the storm of anger and pain rising deep beneath the surface world in their small bunker nestled under hundreds of thousands of pounds of earth. The seedy epicenter of this human volcano was ready to burst at any moment.

Kasaika suddenly swung his fist, connecting to Dylan’s right cheek, sending a hot pain through the rest of his head, and he stumbled backward. Kasaika tried to follow it up with another quick strike with his left, but Dylan veered out of the way, putting distance between himself and Kasaika.

The two continued their dance, circling around the fighting pit, Dylan trying to buy time for the throbbing pain in his temple to subside. When he finally got his feet back under him, Dylan made a charge for Kasaika, keeping his hands up to guard, but sacrificed a shot to the right side of his ribs in order to connect with the old gunshot wound on Kasaika’s stomach.

While the knife-like pain rippled through Dylan’s body, the sacrifice seemed to work as Kasaika barreled backward, clutching his stomach and curling over like the handle of a cane. Dylan stepped forward, and each time his foot connected to the floor, another stabbing spasm filled his senses. He chased Kasaika down and sent another shot into Kasaika’s stomach, who blocked it with his left arm then countered with a hard right to Dylan’s chin that sent him to the floor.

Kasaika capitalized on the hit and tackled Dylan onto the hard concrete, where Dylan’s head snapped back into the floor with a loud crack. The blow caused a flash of white light that blinded Dylan’s vision and triggered a deafening, high-pitched whine in both his ears. He grappled with Kasaika, who struck repeated blows to Dylan’s body.

Each blow from Kasaika chipped away at what was left of Dylan’s strength, the strikes coming at him faster and faster until Kasaika’s fist was nothing more than a blur. One of Dylan’s ribs finally snapped in half, triggering a primal scream from Dylan and a powerful reactionary shove with his legs that catapulted Kasaika off him and across the floor.

Dylan wallowed on the ground, each breath shredding his lungs with a thousand tiny knives. The room spun, and when he looked over to Kasaika, who was already on his feet, he scrambled to get his legs under him. Once he was able to stand, he tried straightening his back but was hindered by the pain in his ribs. His body trembled, the blinding pain overriding the pride that spurred him to keep going.

Kasaika pawed at his stomach, which was bleeding. The violent movement had caused his stitches to tear, and blood soaked the fabric of his shirt, but he gave no tell of pain except the light twitch in his left eye. The shouts from the surrounding crowd began to turn in Kasaika’s favor, and in the moment of cheers, his ego swelled large enough to push through the pain, and he stood erect. “I hope you’ve prayed to your false god, Captain. Because after I kill you and you come face to face with Allah, you will burn in the seven hells for all your sins.”

The shouts and jeers from the increasing hysteria of the surrounding men reached a crescendo as Dylan tried to gather what spit was left in his dry mouth to force a swallow. “That’s not gonna happen.” Dylan took a sidestep as Kasaika circled him, going around and around, waiting for his chance to pounce.

“If you’re worried about being there alone, you shouldn’t be.” Kasaika flashed a wicked smile across his face. “That slut you were married to will be there waiting, her screams just as loud as the rest of the whores. And then we’ll send your son and daughter to meet you, where they’ll be cut into a thousand pieces, and the devil will finish what Perry started!”

The surrounding chants and cheers slowly faded from Dylan’s ears. While he could still see their mouths moving, their fists shaking, he could no longer hear them. A white-hot flash of rage consumed him, cauterizing the pain in his ribs, his face, and the rest of his body. He suddenly became aware that his feet were moving, quickly steamrolling toward Kasaika, who started his own charge.

At the moment of collision, Dylan used his weight to knock Kasaika to the floor. Kasaika tried protecting the bleeding gash on his stomach, but Dylan punched the wound repeatedly until he felt the stitches break, and his fist entered Kasaika’s stomach to wails and screams of agony.

Dylan brought his bloody fist across Kasaika’s chin and slammed it down like a hammer on a nail until the screaming stopped then continued even after Kasaika’s body went limp. Dylan was blind to the pain in his hand, blind to the fact that Kasaika was motionless, blind to everything but the bloody stump of bone and flesh that Kasaika’s head turned into. Each punch, splat of blood, crunch of bone only fueled his rage, and it wasn’t until an army of hands and arms pulled him off Kasaika that he stopped.

Once the terrorists had moved Dylan away, they dropped him in a corner of the room, where the surge of energy left him, and he collapsed like a wet noodle. The sharp stab in his side returned, along with the shallow breathing. He looked down at his hands, bloodied and trembling from the adrenaline and pain. He lay on his right side, curling up into a ball, making himself as small as he could, melting into the floor. All the pain, all the loss sank him deeper into the earth until another pair of hands lifted him up and dragged him past Kasaika’s lifeless, bloodied body and through the narrow halls of the bunker until they flung him inside a room.

When Dylan looked up, Perry was standing in the doorway, shaking his head, a sad smile plastered across his face. “Oh, Captain.” He squatted to the floor, balancing on his toes while still gripping the doorframe. “You’ve come so far, given so much. I know how tired you are.”

Dylan wanted to spit in Perry’s face but couldn’t muster the strength to do it. His only response was another tremor as he lay on the floor and a wheeze from his lungs as he drew breath. Perry reached out a hand and placed it gently on Dylan’s leg, which Dylan pulled away.

“It’ll be over soon. That much I can promise you.” Perry pushed himself off the ground, but before he turned away, Dylan found a whisper of his voice.

“Why?” Dylan had won the fight, and with the totality of the pain of everything that had occurred, he desperately wanted to know why this was happening to him. He wanted to know why his ex-wife had died, why his son had been tortured, and why he held the weight of millions of dead lives over his head. “Why me?”

But Perry only offered a smile. “Soon.” And with that the door was slammed shut and Dylan was left alone in the cell with only the tortured pain of his body and mind. The tsunami of pain that followed cast his consciousness into shadows, and he drifted off into a realm of nightmares of fire and death—nightmares he hoped would stay in the realm of his mind.

Chapter 11

The maritime records building in Boston was in worse shape than the rest of the city, and Cooper didn’t think it was because of the attacks. The dilapidated structure had long since been abandoned, and whatever files were still inside were sealed and locked up.

Cooper parked the car in the abandoned lot and made her way up the steps to the boarded-up doors, blocked off with crisscrossed two-by-fours. The crowbar hung loosely in her hand as she stood there. If the records to Dylan’s father’s ship weren’t inside here, then they were lost. This was the end of the road, the last piece of the puzzle she needed to put together.

Cooper wedged the flat end of the crowbar behind a slat and levered down. The nails slowly pulled out from the clutches of the building’s side, and with one last push, the board cracked in half then tumbled to the floor. She followed the same motions for the second board, which came out more easily than the first. She used the keys for the lock that she’d obtained from the offices downtown, and the door creaked open as she stepped inside.

The building smelled of musty walls and decaying paper, and trash littered the floor, along with the distinct stench of rat droppings that stung her nostrils. Cooper lifted the collar of her shirt to cover her nose and flicked on her flashlight, which only illuminated more decrepit features.

Cooper made her way to the back of the building, where the records keeper had told her to look for the ship logs. She found the room and, inside it, hundreds of boxes, stacked and sagging on top of each other, covered in thick layers of dust. Her light shone into a corner, and a rat scurried back behind the boxes, its small feet scratching against the floor, retreating until she couldn’t hear it anymore.

The boxes were alphabetized, and she searched for the Ts, finding them in a cluster at the back end of the room. She ripped off the lids and started combing through the old ledgers, scanning page after page of the yellowed strips of paper.

Faded names, cargo lists, dates, all recorded with pen and paper long before the invention of anything digital. Some of the handwriting was hard to see, and after an hour, her eyes began to strain from the dim lighting.

The stacks of books piled up as she searched for the name of Dylan’s father’s ship. She had an idea of the range of dates of the trip but started from the beginning of the year when Perry had been burned. She slowly and methodically went down line by line, searching for her needle in the haystack.

With the piles of books reaching a tipping point next to her, she closed another journal then started a new pile. Cooper leaned back in her chair, which squeaked, and cast her back into the shadows, away from the lantern on the desk.
It has to be here somewhere.

Cooper reached for the next book and opened it, a slide of dust falling down the slanted sheets as she did. Her fingers had dirtied from looking through all the papers. And then, with her finger pushing through the thick layer of dust on the old page, she stopped. At first she thought it was just her eyes playing tricks on her, but after rereading the name, she knew it was real.

The
Fish Bowl
had an entry for departure with a crew of five, and the date of the trip was a week before Perry’s father had burned him alive. Cooper shifted her finger and the light over to the list of manifested names in the details, and there, in faded black cursive, scribbled nearly to the edge of the paper, were Richard and Melvin Perry.

Christ
. Dylan’s father had taken Perry and his own dad on a fishing trip nearly thirty years ago. This was the connection, the possible link as to why Perry had chosen Dylan. But what happened on the ship? Did Dylan’s father strike Perry? Was he hurt on the ship? Was something said? She’d only know if she could speak with the crew that had been on board, and right now the only living survivor of that trip was sealed in a bunker a thousand feet underground.