Deadly Intent: An Action Thriller (Adrian Hell Series Book 4) (17 page)

22.

APRIL 14
TH
, 2017

11:02 CDT

It was a long drive. It’s definitely one thing I
don’t
miss from my life as a hitman—the constant traveling. The good sheriff and I took it in turns driving, doing two- or three-hour stints all the way here.

The journey was mostly uneventful. There was an hour or so as we went through Little Rock where we thought we might have picked up a tail, but in hindsight, I think we were just overly paranoid—which is forgivable, under the circumstances. We found a cheap motel there for the night, and did our best to recharge our batteries. We got some breakfast and made the two hour drive to Jonesboro.

We’re parked outside the safe house, across the street. We switched cars twice on the way here, and we’re currently riding in an anonymous, rusty red pick-up truck that we… acquired in Jacksonville. The seats are torn and dirty, and there’s a funky smell coming from somewhere, but it’ll do for now.

I’m looking over at a warehouse, seemingly long-abandoned. It’s a large building that takes up most of the block, and the outside of it is a mixture of boarded windows and illegible graffiti.

“Doesn’t look very safe,” observes Raynor, looking out of his window.

“The whole point of a safe house is that it’s somewhere you can go where no one will think to look for you,” I explain. “This is perfect.”

I look up and down the street, but can’t see any other parked vehicles. I assume if Josh or Clark are here, that they’ve left their cars somewhere else.

“We headin’ inside?” Raynor asks.

I glance once more up and down the street, checking the rearview, just to be safe. “Okay, yeah—let’s go,” I say.

We get out of the truck, stretching as we stand, and look around. There’s a light breeze, but it’s not cold, despite the gray clouds masking the sun. The district we’re in seems mostly abandoned. There aren’t any residential buildings nearby, and any neighboring industrial complexes, like the safe house, look like they’ve been empty a while.

I put my bag over both shoulders as we stroll across the street, and head around the back of the building. There’s a small, empty parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence, topped with razor wire. On the back wall of the building, as we turn left, is a fire escape leading up to the roof and farther along from that is a fire exit. We approach the scratched, red double doors, seeing the left hand side is propped open by an extinguisher. We exchange glances of curiosity and caution, and then I draw one of my Berettas, holding it ready in both hands.

“Keep quiet,” I whisper as I pull on the metal bar across the middle of the door and step inside.

We enter a narrow corridor, which is poorly lit and damp, with a musty smell that stings my nostrils. There are two doors on either side of us, closed and caked in a thick layer of dust.

“This place is disgusting…” Raynor mutters, quietly.

We walk on, ever alert for the first sign of trouble. My gun is steady in my hands; my finger resting gently on the trigger, prepared for action. At the end of the corridor is a massive, open expanse of warehouse, running off in every direction. It’s mostly empty, save for a few bits of discarded packaging from years past. In the far right corner is an office room built on metal stilts, with a makeshift wooden staircase leading up to it. I see the light in the window, so someone’s home...

I look back at Raynor and gesture to the office. He looks up and nods at me. We walk slowly, and as quietly as possible, across the floor of the warehouse, toward the corner. We reach the office, and I put one foot on the bottom step, causing it to squeak loudly. I wince, pausing, as I hear movement in the office above us. I aim up, preparing for anything. Raynor is just out of sight, off to my right. My finger tightens on the trigger as the door above slowly creaks open. Then I see Josh stick his head out from inside.

“Hope you’ve brought pizza…” he says, smiling.

I breathe an audible sigh of relief and holster my gun as I walk up the stairs with Raynor behind me.

“I’m getting paranoid in my old age,” I say to him as I reach the top. We shake hands, and I step inside the office, where Robert Clark is leaning over a table in the middle of the room, looking at some paperwork scattered across the surface next to a laptop. He looks up as I enter.

“Glad you could make it, Adrian,” he says.

“Likewise, Bob,” I reply with a nod before half turning and gesturing to Raynor. “Guys, this is John Raynor—he’s the sheriff in Devil’s Spring.”

“Temporarily-retired sheriff,” he says, correcting me as he extends his hand first to Josh, and then to Clark.

With the courtesies out of the way, we all surround the table and get straight to business.

“Okay,” I begin. “Here’s what we know… There’s a terrorist organization who tried to recruit me—then kill me—called the Armageddon Initiative. So far, we know the names of three people who work for them. Yalafi Hussein is the guy who sent people to kill me. He was last seen in New York meeting with an as of yet unknown four-star U.S. general, surrounded by government-issue bodyguards. Hamaad El-Zurak is the leader of the terror group. We don’t know where he is, or what exactly he’s planning, but I have a video message from him telling me I’ll be dead before he succeeds. Finally, we have Clara Fox—our old friend… I don’t know where she is either, but I know she’s kidnapped Tori and killed one of John’s deputies, so for me, top priority is finding her and burying her.

“Next, Josh found out it was the CIA, who sent a team to hijack my plane, take me to Colombia, and kill me. Obviously that didn’t work. After I got away from them, I found a cartel operation that’s smuggling guns around the world for a contact in the U.S. military who goes by the codename Ares.

“More recently, the NSA has gotten involved at the order of the president to raid GlobaTech and seize all assets and information relating to Project: Cerberus. This being a satellite network that does many bad things, most of which no one but a chosen few know about. Suffice to say, in the wrong hands the world could be in danger. And as luck would have it, we happen to know that Hussein had blueprints for this satellite on his laptop, so we know their plans involve Cerberus, but we don’t know to what end. Have I missed anything?”

Everyone looks at each other and shakes their heads in turn. Raynor looks like he’s going to say something, but stops himself.

“John?” I say.

He shakes his head and holds his hand up. “It’s nothing,” he says. “I’m just trying to get my head around this… What’s all this about a satellite?”

I look over at Josh and raise an eyebrow, giving him his cue to fill in the blanks. He nods.

“Cerberus is a floating firewall that protects the country’s nuclear launch codes,” he explains. “But it also spies on everyone, monitoring every possible method of communication under the guise of national security. Plus, it has the ability to hack other country’s nuclear arsenals. If you control the satellite, you control the world—end of story.”

Raynor removes his hat and lays it on the table. He then removes his sling, slowly stretching his right arm and gently massaging his shoulder where Clara’s bullet hit him.

“So we’re assuming the bad guys wanna take over the world using this Cerberus thing?” he asks.

“Pretty much,” says Josh. “Bit stereotypical if you ask me, but these bastards seem determined all the same.”

I massage my temples. My head hurts from trying to think about this monumentally screwed up situation...

“Josh, you got any ideas where these ass-hats are hiding?” I ask.

He looks at Clark, who steps in front of the laptop and starts tapping away on the keys.

“Actually, we have,” he says. “As I’ve said, we’ve been doing our best to track their movements and narrow down their positions. We’ve had algorithms running to scan satellite feeds all over the world, as well as… ah,
borrowing
information from certain government systems… and I think we’ve got them.”

He taps a few more keys, and then spins the laptop around to show Raynor and me. On the screen is a topographical map of Eastern Europe, with a red circle placed on it. I look at it for a moment, trying to figure out the exact location.

“Ukraine?” I ask. “I thought you guys figured that much out already?”

“We did,” confirms Clark. “But we’ve since been able to narrow it down to a more specific location.” He leans over and points to the screen. “There’s an underground medical research laboratory in Pripyat, about ten miles south of the river. We have images from the region showing recent activity. We think this is where Clara retreated to after she took Tori…”

I look closer at the screen. “Pripyat… isn’t that…?”

Josh nods. “Yeah, that’s the ghost town that was evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in ‘86. Nearly fifty thousand people abandoned the city due to radiation levels. Even now, it’s too polluted to live there. That’s why we think they’re in the underground facility, protected from any prolonged exposure to the surface radiation.”

“How sure are we that it’s Clara?” I ask.

“As sure as we can be,” answers Clark.

I nod, processing the information and planning what comes next. It’s the first time in I don’t know how long that I’ve been able to focus on a single thing and picture the outcome.

“That’s amazing work, guys—seriously. Especially given you’re being forced to operate remotely, with limited access to your computers. How soon can we be ready to go in there?”

Josh and Clark exchange glances, which immediately worries me. Josh scratches the back of his head and looks away momentarily.

“Ah… we’re not sure we can,” he says, reluctantly.

“I don’t understand…”

“Arranging transportation to get us into the country is going to be hard enough at the moment,” he explains. “But assuming we
can
get there, we then have to navigate the city itself. While radiation levels have dropped below fatal thresholds, it’s still not safe to spend prolonged periods of time unprotected in the city. We’d need specialist clothing and transportation, which is hard to get our hands on at the moment. And that’s not taking into account any skirmish that might occur once we’re there. It’s bad enough without being under fire as well.”

I turn and pace away slowly toward to the door and back again. I slam my fists down on the table, causing everyone to jump a little.

“Damn it, Josh! This is Tori we’re talking about! Fuck the terrorists, and fuck the satellite. I’m only concerned about getting her back, and I fully intend doing just that. I’m not interested in what we can’t do—I want to know what we
can
do!”

My outburst leaves them speechless, and I immediately feel bad. I’m just getting tied up in knots here. We’re making zero progress, and every way I turn seems to result in a new problem. I hold my hands up to the three of them and take a deep breath.

“Look, I’m sorry—I just…”

“Adrian, it’s fine,” says Josh. “Listen, do you have this video message they left for you?”

I nod and reach into my bag, producing the DVD for him. He puts it in his laptop and plays it.

“Charming fella, ol’ Hamaad, isn’t he?” he says as it finishes. “Somewhere, there’s a straight-to-video horror movie missing its star. Let me see what we can do here…”

We all look on as Josh’s hands become a blur over the keys, as he does God knows what. I catch a glimpse of Clark as he looks on—he’s got that
Jesus, how does he do that?
expression on his face. That makes me feel bad, because I know I gave him a hard time back in New York because he basically isn’t Josh. Watching him work now will just hammer that point further home for him.

Raynor’s expression is the other end of the spectrum. His jaw’s open, and his eyes wide as he watches the screen move at a speed most normal people can’t quite fathom.

“What in the hell are you doin’?” he asks, sounding probably the most Texan I’ve ever heard him sound.

Josh smiles. “In an effort to dumb it down for Adrian, I’m essentially scanning the background of the video and running software linked into one of the surveillance drones that GlobaTech still has operational, to try to determine the location where it was filmed. I’ll then cross-reference that with the digital time stamp in the metadata of the video file to see archived footage of the area at that specific time, to see if we can see where El-Zurak is hiding.”

Raynor scratches his head and picks up his hat, putting it back on. “
That’s
dumbing it down?” he asks.

Josh doesn’t answer him, but I put a hand on his shoulder and smile.

“You’ll get used to it,” I say to him.

“And bing…oh,” says Josh, sounding excited and almost immediately deflated.

“What’s wrong?” asks Clark.

“I think I’ve found El-Zurak.”

“Why’s that a bad thing?” asks Raynor.

Josh looks at me. “He’s in the middle of a mountain range in Northern Afghanistan, close to the Tajikistan border.”

“Not the friendliest of places…” I muse.