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- Herausgeber: Titan Books
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
A brand-new original The Blacklist novel. A massive fire on a bridge in West Texas: a tanker truck released its load and incinerated 23 cars and 72 people. A tragic accident, or something more sinister? Raymond Reddington reveals to Elizabeth Keen that this and many other horrific incidents were not the terrible accidents they seemed to be but were in fact collateral damage in a highly lucrative and deadly game known as The Dead Ring...
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Contents
Cover
Also available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
THE DEAD RING No. 166
Also available from Titan Books
The Blacklist: The Beekeeper No. 159
THE DEAD RING No. 166
JON McGORAN
TITAN BOOKS
The Blacklist: The Dead Ring No. 166 Print edition ISBN: 9781783298068 E-book edition ISBN: 9781783298181
Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: March 2017 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or thirdparty websites or their content.
THE BLACKLISTTM and © 2017 Sony Pictures Television Inc. and Open 4 Business Productions LLC. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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THE DEAD RING No. 166
Chapter 1
The bridge was packed, two lanes of tired commuters in dusty, beat-up cars, motorcycles, and pickup trucks. Some were headed east after hard days at oil fields, factories, and farms, others headed west from big box stores like the Walmart up the road, or even the mall, twenty miles past it.
They were tired—too tired to notice the polished silver tanker truck or the shiny black SUV behind it, no matter how much they stuck out. They didn’t notice the black and gray RV with the retractable satellite uplink dish a quarter of a mile back, either. They barely even noticed the motley crowd gathered on the side of the road just before the bridge—fifty men and half a dozen women, mostly tall, all muscular, with an air of lethality and a distinct buzz of anticipation, intently watching the SUV and the truck cross the bridge, and looking just as out of place.
The tanker reached the end of the bridge and stopped. The SUV pulled out next to it, into the oncoming lane, so they were blocking both lanes of traffic.
The commuters noticed them now.
Within seconds a few stray honks became a chorus, like a flock of geese that just wanted to get home and have a beer.
Cameras mounted at regular intervals along the bridge swiveled, taking in the entire length of it.
The honking paused for a moment as the driver of the SUV got out. He was dressed in black, with dark shades and a black cap despite the heat. He was carrying a gun.
He opened the back door of the vehicle, revealing a wire rack that ran across the width of it. Each slot held a small manila envelope, forty of them. The driver swung himself up onto the roof of the SUV, looked across the bridge and fired the gun once into the air.
Instantly, the small crowd gathered at the other end of the bridge began sprinting across it. Like a pack of animals, they moved quickly, fluidly, and inexorably around, between, and over the cars, swarming from one end of the bridge to the other. The honking resumed, increasing in volume as each car overtaken by the runners joined in.
The man with the gun hopped down and walked away, leaving the SUV in place. The driver of the tanker truck got out and followed him. Neither looked back.
The lead runner was a huge man, heavily muscled, with a blond buzz cut, wearing camo pants and a vest. He charged straight up the lane of oncoming traffic, avoiding one car and causing the next to swerve into the side rail. The car behind it crunched into its back bumper, wedging it further into the guardrail.
The second runner was a beautiful young woman with shiny black hair. She pulled ahead of the pack by flinging herself across the tops of the cars, cartwheeling and springing from one to the next, covering distance with remarkable speed. She glanced back at one of the other runners, a handsome young man with tousled blond hair and the muscles of a gymnast, who was nonetheless struggling to keep up with her. They exchanged a furtive smile, but kept on running. As she approached a gap between the cars, her heel crunched the hood of a thirty-year-old Datsun before she vaulted herself onto the asphalt and flat out ran.
The driver got out and shouted after her, voicing his anger and frustration in a spit-flecked stream of curses. But yet another runner, an olive-skinned tree of a man in a black T-shirt, crumpled him with a savage elbow to the ear as he ran past without slowing down.
The first runner reached the SUV and grabbed an envelope from the rack. Instantly, an explosion erupted at the other end of the bridge. A motorcycle and its rider flipped into the air, both spinning raggedly over the side of the bridge and onto the rocks lining the dry creek bed thirty feet below.
Drivers screamed and honked and as the runner with the envelope disappeared past the SUV, the cars surged forward in a rush to escape the mayhem. The gaps between them shrank or disappeared altogether. The sound of metal crunching against metal was followed by a handful of screams, louder than the others, as runners were crushed between cars grinding into each other as they tried to escape the madness.
The black-haired woman reached the SUV next and grabbed another envelope. A second explosion, this one in the middle of the bridge, lifted a rusted pickup truck five feet off the ground, and sent two runners shattered and twisting through the air. The truck hit the pavement with a groaning thud, followed by a throaty whoomf, as it erupted into flames. The blond man joined the black-haired woman and grabbed a third envelope. They ran off together as another explosion punched into the air.
In rapid succession, a dozen other runners reached the SUV and grabbed their envelopes, triggering a dozen detonations that fully transformed the bridge into a hellscape of explosions and fire.
When there was only one envelope left, two runners reached it at almost the same moment—a stout, ruddy-faced Irishman with a diagonal scar across his face and a dark-skinned Somali in fatigues and a red beret. The Irishman reached out for the envelope, but his hand closed on air as the Somali grabbed him by the belt and flung him back into the crowd of approaching runners, knocking them over like he had just bowled a strike.
Then the Somali plucked the last envelope out of its slot.
Instead of an explosion, there was a moment of quiet, marred only by the receding footsteps of thirty-nine runners clutching their envelopes. The Somali took off after them. The remaining runners froze, some standing, some still on the ground, all looking on in horror as the back of the tanker truck opened on hydraulics, releasing a torrent of straw-colored liquid.
The dozen or so empty-handed runners still on their feet turned and ran back the other way. The ones on the ground pushed themselves away on their heels, frantically trying to stay ahead of the wave of liquid.
The air shimmered with rising fumes as the choking smell of gasoline spread out rapidly before it.
The Irishman’s knees and heels and hands slipped in the stuff as he tried to clamber to his feet.
A low moaning hum arose from the horrified motorists, just for an instant. Before it could resolve into a chorus of terrified screams, the fumes connected with a spark.
A curtain of fire traveled back to the open tanker truck, which exploded, flipping into the air and shooting a smoky orange ball of fire back across the bridge. The fireball traversed the length of the bridge, causing a series of smaller explosions in its wake as each remaining gas tank detonated, transforming the bridge, and everything on it, into a flaming twisted ruin.
Chapter 2
The light from the video screens blazed and flickered with angry oranges and reds, washing over the handful of people present in the dimly lit confines of the mobile control room. The technicians at their workstations and the armed guards flanking them watched with dull attention, their eyes betraying no reaction at all. They were professionals, and what they were watching was nothing new, not really.
Behind them stood the Cowboy, a soft slip of a man, unscarred and uncalloused. The false bravado he had brought with him to this endeavor had quickly fallen away as things had moved along. Now he was openly awed by the spectacle playing out in front of him. He was frightened, rattled to his core, maybe even horrified at what he had wrought, but he was definitely impressed. He would get what he paid for, even if he didn’t ultimately get what he wanted.
Sitting in the shadows at the back of the room, the Ringleader tapped at his keypad and the soft buzz of precision machinery rose around him. No one in the room turned to look.
It was all enough to make one smile, if one were capable of such things. The Ringleader was not. But he could enjoy the wash of endorphins or serotonin or whatever it was that other people confused with pleasure or happiness or love. The images on the screens provoked it with an intensity that seemed from a bygone era. It was like a religious experience. Only this was real.
It had been a long time coming. But now it was back.
The warm glow of it faded along with the glow from the video screens. But that was okay. Things were finally underway. It wouldn’t be long until next time. And the best was definitely yet to come.
Chapter 3
When Keen received Red’s call, she had wished, like she did every time lately, that she had some kind of excuse not to come and meet him. Or at least not right away.
But she didn’t.
There had been a time when her life was so full it got in the way of work. Now, her life was even fuller, but all it was filled with was work.
Probably just as well.
She looked around at the décor: an odd mix of stylish and cheesy—conical grass hats and bright red and green Asian prints on the wall, but sophisticated blown-glass lights and elegantly set tables. She was sitting in a Laotian restaurant, because… well, because Red, of course.
She didn’t have time for a sit-down lunch, but the meal and the pause would both do her good. And of course, whenever she and Red met like this, it meant something big was headed her way, something he’d be handing off to her, and that she would be bringing to the task force. That’s how it worked.
It had only been a few of years since Red, once one of the FBI’s most-wanted, had turned himself in to the bureau with an offer to help them lock up his long Blacklist of international criminals, with the mysterious stipulation that Keen serve as his liaison to the task force that would investigate each case.
She drank some more water, trying to wash away the memory of the taste.
The woman behind the counter, presumably the proprietor, watched her suspiciously.
Keen tapped her phone to check the time. They had agreed to meet at three. As the display changed from 2:59 to 3:00, the door to the place opened and Red walked in wearing his black overcoat and signature black fedora.
The proprietor’s suspicious face split into an eye-crinkling grin at the sight of him. He smiled back at her, his face twisted in his own weird version of a beaming grin.
Keen shook her head, feeling a smile of her own tugging at her mouth despite herself.
“Lahela,” Red said affectionately.
“Reddington,” the proprietor replied, grabbing Red by the elbows and looking up at him with the fondness of an aunt about to suggest he had grown since the last time she’d seen him. They exchanged a few words in some tonal Asian language, and then the old woman turned and looked at Keen with a shrug, as if maybe she had misjudged her.
The old woman followed Red over, and he sat across from Keen, taking a newspaper out from under his arm and putting it on the table. He pointed to the menu and held up two fingers.
Lahela nodded proudly, approving of his choice.
As she hurried off to the kitchen, Red looked at Keen over the menu. “This place has the best red curried snakehead this side of the Mekong River.”
“Snakehead?” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Are you kidding me?”
“Fresh-caught, too,” he said, laying his napkin on his lap, then leaning forward. “People complain they’re an exotic invasive in these parts, but I say if they’re going to be this delicious, bring on the invasion!”
He laughed at his own joke, maybe a little too much, then stopped abruptly and slid the newspaper across the table. “Have you read the papers?”
Keen read the banner at the top of the page, upside down, without picking it up and looked up at him. “The Fort Stockton Pioneer? No, I haven’t gotten to it yet. Still reading the Brownsville Herald. Why?”
He smiled but didn’t put much into it. “There was an event on a bridge in Perdeen, Texas yesterday.”
“That fire… Yes, it was terrible. Thirty-seven people died, right?”
“And seventeen more in the hospital not expected to make it.”
“The reports said it was an accident involving a gasoline truck, right? The fire started after it somehow released its load.”
“It did involve a gasoline truck, but it was no accident.”
“What are you saying?”
“It was actually a preliminary round in something called ‘The Dead Ring.’”
“The Dead Ring?”
“Do you remember last year a warehouse fire in Turkey killed seventy people?”
“Of course, it was a terrible tragedy.”
“It capped off a week of tragedies that included nineteen dead in a runaway train crash and a mosque swallowed by a sinkhole, all within twenty miles of each other.”
“Okay.”
“The year before last, a mine collapse in South Africa took fifty-five lives, ending a similarly tragic week.”
“So, what do they have in common?”
“None of them were accidents. All of them were part of a sick, deadly, and highly lucrative game.”
She didn’t see that coming. “A game?”
“The Dead Ring. A cross between a reality TV show, a gladiator contest, and a snuff film. The players compete for a jackpot rumored to be in the millions.”
“How come I’ve never heard of it?”
“None of it has ever been proven. It’s the stuff of rumors and tall tales told by soldiers and mercenaries. But I believe it’s true. It is highly secret, streamed on the Dark Web, strictly for the viewing and betting pleasure of a super-rich international circle of those with a taste for such things.”
“Jesus,” she whispered, thinking about it.
They remained quiet for a moment as Lahela brought their food. Snakehead or not, it looked delicious. But Keen had lost her appetite.
“Wait, how do these tragedies fit into a game?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Presumably they represent the field of play on which the contestants compete. I don’t know the nature of the games.” He flashed a sad smile that seemed to be trying to mask some deep pain and sorrow. She couldn’t tell if it was just from the magnitude of the evil, of the tragedy inflicted on humanity, or if it was something more direct. More personal. “The huge numbers of collateral casualties generated as the game’s players compete to accomplish some task are part of the spectacle.”
“And the losers never say anything about it?”
“Dead men tell no tales. There are no survivors. Only the winner.”
She shook her head. “Wait, who would agree to that?”
“There’s no shortage out there of aging mercenaries, former child soldiers so damaged by what’s been done to them, other pathetic wretches who see this as their last chance to escape their miserable lives—one way or another. All hoping to win a fortune, and all but one of them destined to die instead.”
Keen felt numb, and she was glad of it, because even through the numbness she felt a wave of revulsion that otherwise would have sickened her. She looked up at Red. “Do we know anything about the organizers?”
“We know he is referred to as the Ringleader. That’s about it.”
“And you’re saying the fire on that bridge was part of this?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“So the worst of it is yet to come.”
“That’s right. And the game takes about a week, so it’s coming soon.”
“My god.”
He sat back with a grim but determined smile. “The good news, though, is that if this year’s Dead Ring is taking place in the United States, we have a rare opportunity to take down the people responsible and shut down the Dead Ring for good.”
Chapter 4
The task force was silent as always as Keen launched into her briefing. But the quality of the silence deepened as she relayed the specific suspicions about the nature of the Dead Ring, and the extent of the death and suffering that had been caused by it.
Ressler’s eyes burned as he absorbed the horrible cruelty and injustice of it. Aram looked down as he listened. Navabi sat impassively, her face blank, as if the horrors she had already seen made these that much more believable and had prepared her in a way. As if maybe she knew that the only way to get by in a world where such things were possible was to not let it get to you at all.
“And why are they moving it to the US?” Cooper asked when she was finished.
“The location of the game is different each time,” Keen replied. “The game’s wealthiest bettors bid millions of dollars for the privilege of hosting it, for bragging rights, contacts, maybe. To prove they can do it.” She paused for a moment. “And I guess for the sick pleasure of watching it up close and in person.”
“But, we have no proof any of this is true, Agent Keen. Isn’t that right?” Cooper asked.
She cleared her throat. “That’s right, sir. I expect the first item on our task list would be to confirm that it is.”
Aram started quietly typing on his laptop.
“Do we have anything on the bridge tragedy?” Cooper asked.
“Not much. There were a few cars that drove across the bridge moments before it happened. They reported typical rush hour traffic, and a vehicle broke down. Then a fireball in their rearview mirrors.”
“How about any of the previous tragedy sites? Turkey? Indonesia? South Africa?”
“I’m looking into it. There might be some clues at the Turkish locations but the others are all cold. Mostly bulldozed or rebuilt, or at the bottom of the ocean. I’m also looking into similar clusters of events in previous years. Reddington mentioned those three, but he suspected this had been going on for at least five years, maybe more.”
“I have a friend in Turkish intelligence. Ahmet Aslan,” said Navabi. “He owes me a favor.”
“Hey, I’ve got something here,” Aram cut in, looking up from his computer. “Someone posted a video.”
He tapped at a couple of keys and the screen at the front of the room came to life.
The screen showed a rectangular view looking along a bridge from inside a car. Outside, car horns were blaring. The driver turned the camera around to show her face: she was an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties with a mischievous smile and a blonde ponytail. She rolled her eyes and said, “Traffic. Can you believe it?”
The tinny pop of a small-caliber gun went off somewhere outside the car, “What the…?” Then she gasped as a big guy in camo and a buzz cut ran past the car.
Laughing awkwardly she turned the camera out the back window. The road was jammed with cars, and between them, people ran, around the cars, between the cars. One woman ran over the closest car, black hair flowing behind her. “This is crazy,” the driver said, tentatively, not quite sure how to react. She let the camera slowly drop.
Distorted sounds overwhelmed the microphone as there were simultaneous explosions followed by a scream.
And the recording stopped.
“This went out as a live feed over social media,” Aram said quietly. “The girl’s name was Anna Deritter. She died in the fire.”
The room went quiet for a brief moment. Keen knew the others were experiencing the same thing she was, that puncturing of your hardened professional shell when the terrible but impersonal tragedy of many deaths becomes the personal tragedy of one face.
She cleared her throat. “If Reddington is right, if the Dead Ring is real and it’s taking place on American soil, that means American lives are at stake, and many have already been lost. It also means we have a unique opportunity to not only identify the Ringleader and put a stop to this terrible game, but maybe even to identify and arrest the people betting on it—many of whom are surely wanted for other crimes as well.”
Cooper thought for a moment then nodded. “Okay, let’s get started then. Agents Keen and Ressler, I want you to visit the bridge scene, see if you can confirm that this is more than just an accident. Agent Navabi, reach out to your connections in Turkish intelligence and see if you can find out anything about the events there last year, especially the warehouse fire. Aram, I want you to analyze that video, frame by frame. See if it reveals any other clues. Anything else, Agent Keen?”
“The Dead Ring seems to last about a week from start to finish. If that’s what this is, whatever’s next is coming soon.”
“Then we better act quickly.”
Chapter 5
Traveling the globe had its definite upsides, even as a wanted fugitive. Lahela’s curried giant snakehead might’ve been the best this side of the Mekong River, but it couldn’t compare to the snakehead Red had eaten on the Mekong Delta itself. He thought back to the delicacy, and the delicate young woman who had served it to him, and he smiled.
But there were upsides to being stateside again. And not the least of them was Maryland crab, dusted with a ridiculous amount of Bay Seasoning and steamed to perfection. There was something exquisite about the hot crabs burning your fingertips and the sting of the spices finding the dozens of cuts left by the razor-sharp shell, and then the incredible morsels of delicate white meat pulled from the carnage. And there was nowhere better to experience all that than Fred’s Shed.
The place made no pretense at being anything other than what it was, but it achieved what it set out to do with glorious indifference to anything else. The walls were unfinished wood, the floors peeling linoleum, the décor nonexistent except for a few decades-old beer signs.
But when Dominic Corrello walked in, he still somehow managed to cheapen the whole thing. He looked around at the place and sneered, with the reflexive disdain of the small-minded out of their comfort zone.
It was hard to believe that Corrello was among the most well-connected purveyors of sensitive information. If Red hadn’t personally done business with him on four different continents, he’d have pegged him as the type to spend his entire life within five miles of the neighborhood where he had grown up.
Corrello exchanged nods with Dembe, and dropped into a seat across from them. Red slid one of his crabs across the paper covering the table, followed by a mallet and a nutcracker.
Corrello shook his head. “Can’t believe you eat them bugs.”
Red slid his butter knife into the crab’s body and removed a pristine white lump. He managed to keep his hands so clean throughout the process, he had to dredge the meat in seasoning before putting it into his mouth. He savored the flavor for one moment before sliding the carcass off to the side, away from Dembe.
“Crustacea, Corrello. But I’ve eaten bugs, too, on many occasions. Chapulines are my favorite. Roasted crickets with chili and lime. Some say it tastes like bacon, but I think that doesn’t do it justice. You should try them. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Disgusting is what it is.”
Red squeezed a wedge of lemon into his hand, updating the mental map of cuts in his skin as he rubbed his hands together and wiped them off with a paper towel. “What have you got for me?”
Corrello put a thumb drive onto the corner of the table, away from the detritus of Red’s lunch.
“Not much. Not even sure what it is. No one I talked to knows if this Dead Ring thing is for real. But I gotcha something, a piece of video that a guy told me was part of it—a warehouse fire in Turkey.”
Red cocked an eyebrow and a smile flickered across his lips.
Corrello leaned forward. “It’s crazy stuff on that video. And the guy I got it from, he said the guy who recorded it got himself killed for doing it. Ain’t nobody supposed to record this stuff, and the people who set it up, they found out and killed him. The guy I got it from, he was seriously scared when he gave it to me.”
Red reached out and palmed the thumb drive. “What about you, Corrello. Are you scared, too?”
Corrello grinned. “Not as long as you keep paying me for the stuff I turn up.”
“Well then, as long as you keep turning things up for me, you’ve got nothing to fear at all.”
* * *
Red paused outside Fred’s Shed, enjoying the sunlight for a moment before he and Dembe got in the car.
“You really must give them a try, Dembe,” Red said as he sank into his seat. “Some of the best eating around.”
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Dembe looked at the dilapidated exterior of the restaurant, then at Red in the rearview. They’d had hundreds of similar exchanges over the years, about similar venues and similar cuisines. He nodded noncommittally.
Red shook his head. The phone buzzed and Dembe answered it, then handed it to Red, who looked at the display and said, “Hello, Lizzie.”
“We’re on the case,” she said.
“Good,” Red replied as the car pulled back into traffic. “Have you turned up anything?”
“Maybe. Aram found a video from the bridge. One of the victims posted it live, just before the fire.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’ll have to come here to look at it though. Until we have an idea how sensitive all this is, he wants to keep it inside.”
“Very prudent. I won’t be coming empty handed.”
Chapter 6
They were standing in a darkened room in the converted post office that served as the headquarters of the task force, waiting as Aram tapped at his computer.
The screen at the front of the room came to life, showing a large warehouse building, three stories tall, with crude concrete walls, a corrugated metal roof, and the words TÜZEL ANTREPO emblazoned across the front. A dusty road ran alongside it. The darkened windows flickered and for several seconds the muffled sounds of screams and gunfire could be heard from within.
A cluster of women appeared at one of the third-floor windows, panicking and trying to open the window, to escape. A line of machine gun fire mowed them down from behind, the bullets tearing through them, shattering the glass and spattering it with blood. A large man in battle gear appeared where the women had stood, but then he was cut down as well.
A moment later, an explosion punched a hole in the second-floor wall, sending chunks of debris tumbling toward the camera. The screams and gunfire grew louder, coming through the opening in the wall. A man appeared, running toward the opening, a dark silhouette against the flames inside. Just as he was about to jump through the hole, a tight grouping of bullets tore through his midsection and he stumbled and fell, landing with his arms and torso hanging through the opening.
One by one, the windows were shot out from within, and with each broken window the cacophony grew louder. Smoke poured from each broken window, rising up into the dark sky. Women started climbing from the third-floor window to escape the flames within. The first one climbed down to the second-floor windows, but the next two simply dropped, crumpling onto the street below.
As the first woman reached the street and started to run away, the front door exploded open and she faltered in a hail of shrapnel.
Another man emerged from the hole where the door had been, wearing camo and boots, and blood. His left leg was in shreds and he dragged it behind him, down the front path, directly toward the camera. Halfway there, he stumbled and fell, but he kept pulling himself across the ground. Another man, similarly dressed, appeared behind him, eyes gleaming through a face streaked with gore, but apparently unharmed. He strode toward the camera and without pause lifted the injured man’s head and slit his throat. As the man on the ground gurgled and sputtered, his killer walked past the camera and out of sight.
As the gunfire inside the building slowed to a trickle, several figures appeared at the windows, watching whatever was happening behind the camera.
For a moment, nothing happened, then a dozen tiny staccato detonations reverberated through the building and it was instantly engulfed in flames. The black silhouette of a man appeared in one of the windows, then the fire swallowed him up.
The screen went dark. Aram hit a button bringing up the lights.
For a moment no one made a sound.
“So that’s what we’re trying to stop,” Keen said quietly. “Red emphasized that if this is the Dead Ring, the next round will be within a day or two.”
Cooper nodded. “Agent Navabi, anything from your friends in Turkey?”
“My contact put me in touch with an Agent Sadek with police intelligence. I spoke with him briefly and he confirmed that he thought what happened at Tüzel Antrepo was a part of this Dead Ring. He sounded willing to cooperate, even to share, but uncomfortable speaking on the phone. My sense was that he didn’t trust that no one else was listening in, and perhaps someone high up may have been involved somehow.”
Cooper grunted. “Okay. We need to get moving on this. Keen and Ressler, when are you leaving for Texas to examine the bridge scene?”
“Our plane’s in ninety minutes,” Keen said.
“Good. Aram, can you analyze that video for any clues at all, any identifying tags or embedded codes, anything?”
“Absolutely.”
He turned to Navabi. “I’d like you to go to Turkey, talk to this Sadek, see what he knows, and what he suspects. See if you can visit the scenes of these events and find out whatever you can.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
As they began to leave, Keen approached Cooper. “A word, sir?”
“What is it, Keen?”
“Reddington has asked to see the video from that bridge.”
Cooper thought for a brief moment, then nodded. “Okay. You can show him in here. Aram, you can set that up, right?”
He nodded.
“Good,” Cooper replied. “Let’s get moving, people.”
Chapter 7
Keen had seen the footage before, and it paled compared to the carnage of the Turkish warehouse. But Anna Deritter, the young woman in the video, was so vibrant and full of life, it brought home the tragedy of her death, and all the others, once again.
Red watched impassively.
“I’ve been through both videos several times,” said Aram. “I’ve already picked up a few interesting things I want to show you.”
The video started once more, just like before. Red watched from where he was at first, a black figure silhouetted by the light streaming in from the hallway. He showed no reaction at first, but as the view shifted to look out the back windshield he stepped forward closer to the screen.
A few seconds in, Aram paused the video. “Here,” he said, getting up from his computer to point at a fuzzy black shape mounted on the bridge’s guardrail. “I’m pretty sure this is a video camera. They seem to be mounted at regular intervals along the bridge. And when I analyzed the Turkish video, I pulled out some very unusual codecs. It seemed to be part of a multichannel feed, not your standard YouTube fare. If I can reverse the—”
“Fascinating,” Red said impatiently, taking another step closer to the screen. “Continue the video, please.”
Aram looked at Keen, taken aback, like maybe he expected a little more in the way of praise.
Keen gave him an encouraging smile and nodded.
Aram returned to his computer and resumed play. He leaned forward and squinted at the screen, as if trying to see whatever Red was looking for.
The camera shifted out the rear window again, at the runners coming up behind the car, at the woman with the black hair coming over the next car back.
“Freeze it,” Red barked, startling Aram but spurring him to action.
The woman’s face was mostly covered by her long black hair.
“Advance one frame,” Red said.
Aram did.
“Again.”
He did.
They advanced three more frames until the face on the screen was perfectly visible and angled right at the camera.
Red stepped even closer, his face two feet from the screen. He raised his hand as if to touch it, then he turned on his heel and left the room.
“Red!” Keen called out, following him. “What did you see?”
“I’ll tell you when I know.”
Chapter 8
Keen and Ressler had gotten on the next plane from Dulles to El Paso, but the drive from the airport to the bridge took longer than the flight itself, in no small part due to the traffic clogging the tiny rural roads, trying to find alternate routes to the bridge, which was closed indefinitely.
“I guess that would be it,” Ressler said, nodding over the steering wheel at the mess that appeared in front of them as they rounded a bend in the road.
Keen let out a sigh. “Yeah. I guess so.”
The bridge was a charred ruin: bits of concrete and rebar hanging from the bottom, blackened metal hulks all burned and twisted clogging the top. The streambed that ran underneath it was littered with pieces of bridge and vehicles blackened from the burning fuel that had spilled.
Yellow tent cards showed where the bodies had been found, scattered under the bridge and carpeting the tarmac itself. Keen thought of dandelions taking over a neglected lawn.
The scene was surrounded by local cops from several jurisdictions, clustered by their different uniforms and mostly just watching as the state officials worked the scene.
A news van from a local network affiliate was still parked alongside the road leading up to the bridge. It was probably the biggest local story in the last twenty years. She hoped the coming days wouldn’t bring any bigger ones.
Ressler parked just past the news vans and just before the long line of patrol cars. As they walked up to the bridge, one of the local cops turned around with his hands up in front of him and an exasperated look on his face. Keen got the sense he’d probably been turning away gawkers for the past two days.
But Keen and Ressler held up their badges before he could even tell them there was nothing to see.
“FBI,” Ressler said, drawing looks from the other cops milling around.
Keen could hear the buzz of conversation double in volume and intensity.
The cop who had been waving them off stepped closer and asked, “Do they think this is a terrorist attack?”
“No,” Keen said firmly. “We just wanted to take a look.”
“Oh,” the cop said. Disappointed, he waved them through and rejoined the cluster of cops in the uniforms that matched his.
The scene was under the control of the Texas state forensics team. Half a dozen techs in bright yellow protective overalls were combing through the wreckage.
A trio of agents in shirts and ties stood at the end of the bridge looking on. “Who’s in charge of the scene?” Ressler asked as they approached.
They turned around and one of them said, “Who’s asking?”
Keen held up her badge. “FBI. Agents Keen and Ressler.”
“Deputy Barker. You guys asserting jurisdiction?” He seemed almost hopeful.
