Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (38 page)

Torokin held out his palm to stop the officer. “Wait. It may be more beneficial if I go to the hangar myself and allow Pablo to continue our true task, here.” He looked at the technician. “Do you need me to go with you to look at their communication equipment?”

Pablo smiled. “Not at all, judge. I am more than able to look at the equipment myself.”

That suited Torokin just fine. The things Pablo would be checking into were beyond Torokin’s comprehension, anyway. Snagging a passing operative, the officer instructed him to escort Pablo where the technician needed to go. As Pablo and the operative departed, Torokin followed the officer into the depths of the Citadel once again.

*
      
*
      
*

Clasping his hands together, Logan crouched down and stared blankly ahead. He and Marty Breaux were inside the small room identified as Scott Remington’s in
Novosibirsk
’s officers’ wing. Though the room was noticeably stripped—Scott had apparently packed quite a bit for his “transfer” to
Cairo
—there were still enough personal artifacts to warrant a thorough search, which apparently had not been done yet. That Scott’s room hadn’t been combed through was nothing to hold against EDEN. They had their hands full just trying to keep the base from falling apart.

“All right, chief,” said Marty behind him. “You start at one end, I start at ’da next?”

Logan offered no reply. It wasn’t an intentional attempt to be discourteous. Truth be told, Logan wasn’t sure where he wanted to begin. Closing his eyes, he drew in a deep, slow breath, as if he were a predator sniffing out his prey. It was mental preparation before he tore the room apart.

Marty wasn’t quite as reverent. “Well, guess I’ll start in ’da bat’room.” Whistling a tune, the Cajun moseyed through the bathroom door at the right side of the room.

Though Logan shot Marty a look of irritation from behind, he nonetheless set out to the nightstand next to Scott’s bed. As he passed by the bed, he ran his hand gently across its surface, pausing to scrutinize the covers with narrowed interest. The bed was made meticulously. The edges were folded under the mattress with care that went above and beyond that of a typical soldier. The cover itself was pulled back at the top of the bed, revealing sheets beneath that almost looked pressed. Even the pillows were precisely placed. “Think the janitors clean the rooms here?”

“Pfft,” said the Cajun from the bathroom. “Ain’t no janitor ever cleaned
my
room.”

Logan figured as much. “Then he has a woman.”

“Say what?”

“The bed,” said Logan. “No man makes a bed like this.”

The sound of a medicine cabinet opening emanated from the bathroom. “We had to make some pretty crisp beds in
Philadelphia
, chief.”

Shaking his head, Logan said, “Not the way this one’s made.”

“Well,” said Marty, who inhaled several loud sniffs through his nostrils, “I sure hope he’s got a woman. That, or the guy gets a little kinky by his’self wit’ whipped cream.”

“What?”

Marty stepped back from the sink. “I think someone mighta’ been wearin’ a lil’ whipped cream bikini. Just hope it wasn’t
him
.” When Logan leaned into the bathroom, the Cajun pointed to the wall, where a small spot of white substance had solidified mid-drip. “That’s what it is, sure enough. Seems a couple days old. Musta missed this spot in the cleanup, ’cause it ain’t nowhere else.” After a small pause, Marty pointed definitively. “Yeah, I’mma choose to believe dat’s a whipped cream bikini. Either ’dat, or he inhales strawberry shortcake while sittin’ on ’da toilet.”

Logan walked back to the bed without comment. Opening the top drawer of Scott’s nightstand, he shuffled through a short stack of papers inside. They were all stock printouts—the kind of little papers and pamphlets that got handed out to all operatives at some point or another. There was nothing personal about them at all. As Marty walked in from the bathroom, Logan moved down to the next drawer.

Jackpot.

A lone tablet sat inside, riddled with pencil scribblings. Picking it up, he looked back at Marty. “Take a look at this, mate.” The Cajun wandered over.

Only the top page was written upon, and by the look of it, about a quarter of its pages had been torn out. Scott probably took notes, then either took them with him or threw them away. Logan inspected the written page.

Words were scrawled everywhere, some of which were circled, and some of which were connected by lines. It was as if Scott was trying to depict a web. At the very top of the page, the words, “The Archer betrays you,” were underlined.

“‘The Archer betrays you?’” asked Marty, reading over Logan’s shoulder. “The hell’s ’dat supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” answered Logan quietly. He read on. There were all sorts of phrases jotted down that Logan had never heard before.
War of Retribution. Golathochian Subjugation. All will be judged.
The words
interference
,
indication
, and
allegiance
were also there, right next to the word
Ceratopian
with a question mark. At the bottom corner, under the headline,
Unknown Species
, were listed
Khuladi
and
Nerifinn
. Next to
Nerifinn
was an arrow pointing up to
Khuladi
, the word
declarers
written next to it. Arrows like that were everywhere.

Marty pointed. “Right ’dere. Benjamin Archer.” He pointed to the judge’s name, written in the middle of the page, then up to the headline at the top. “’Dat’s gotta be what he means by ‘The Archer betrays you.’”

“Guy’s a conspiracy nut,” said Logan.

“But wait a minute, now.” The Cajun crossed his arms contemplatively. “If he made this all up, he’s a nut. But if ’dem two species is real…”

Looking back at Marty, Logan asked pointedly, “Then what?”

Unaffected by the mercenary’s tone, Marty answered, “Then he knows something we don’t.”

“And if he knows something we don’t, what does that bloody make him? A hero? A saint?”

“It don’t justify nothin’, you’re right. But at the very
least
, it means whatever he was doin’—which was undeniably wrong—he was doin’ it with more information than we have.”

Logan dropped the tablet on the bed. “Which doesn’t help us find him.” Setting his hands on his hips, he shook his head. “Nothing on that bloody thing is going to tell us where he is, or what he’s doing with Captain Rockwell, or who his next target’s going to be.”

Picking up the tablet himself, Marty skimmed over the words on its surface. “I know you got a dog in ’dis fight, but ’dis thing here,” he rapped his finger on the tablet, “is exactly the kind of thing we came here for.”

“We came here to find a bloody comm.” He looked at Marty. “Whatever evidence you find, you can hold onto. I’m not here to build a case. I’m here to find Scott Remington.”

Folding his arms and drawing a calming breath, Marty said, “We gonna find him
and
your captain. I promise. But let us grab important stuff on the way. All right?”

Staring at Marty for several seconds, Logan finally offered a sigh. “All right.” Running his hand across his shaved head, the Australian motioned to the tablet without looking. “You hold onto that, if you don’t mind.”

“Not a prob.”

“Now let’s keep scouring this room.”

Marty affirmed, and the two men continued their search.

*
      
*
      
*

Room 14 was a treasure trove of miscellaneous junk. Chiumbo, Sasha, Minh, and Lisa rummaged through it, each in different parts of the room and each perusing what could only be described as
clutter
in their search for some sort of clue about the Fourteenth of
Novosibirsk
. Beyond chess pieces, the occasional gothic romance novel, and a haphazardly-stacked pile of comics, they’d found little else but a lived-in room no different from any other lived-in rooms in the barracks.

Though there were a decent number of personal belongings at the various bedsides—no doubt a result of the Fourteenth’s hasty retreat during EDEN’s attack—little of significance had been found thus far. Nothing they’d found mentioned anything about
Cairo
, Ceratopians, Falcon Platoon, or anything related to the nefarious activity that the Fourteenth was involved with. If anything, the unit’s belongings portrayed them as a group that was strikingly normal and of close camaraderie. It most certainly didn’t look like the den of a terror cell.

“I might have something.” The much-needed declaration came from Sasha, who was standing near a tightly-made bunk bed. The scout was carefully turning the pages of what looked like a journal. The others approached him. “It looks like a woman’s journal. Remington is referenced all over it.” He flipped to the inside cover, where a name was scribbled. “Svetlana Voronova.”

“How does she reference Remington?” Chiumbo asked.

Laughing softly, Sasha shook his head. “Honestly? Like he was a love interest.”

Minh squinted curiously. “A love interest?”

Stopping at a particular entry near the end, Sasha raised an eyebrow after reading the first several lines. “This journal is very personal.”

Chiumbo crossed his arms and leaned against the nearest bedpost as Sasha continued reading. “She was not the one with him in
Cairo
, correct?” the Mwera lieutenant asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Minh.

“No,” said Lisa. “The one in
Cairo
was Esther.”

Sasha froze, his eyes glued to the page in front of him. “Whoa.” Looking up from the page, he stared at the back wall. For several seconds, he said nothing, until at long last he closed the book in his hand. Drawing a preparatory, but focused breath, he looked at the other two men. “I think we just found a motive.”

*
      
*
      
*

Torokin’s palms pressed together in front of his mouth as he stood at the entrance to the underground hangar. From a distance, it almost looked as if the Russian judge was praying, though his eyes were indeed open. The officer who led Torokin to the hangar had hinted that what Torokin would find there would be a surprise. The mere suggestion had prompted a flurry of possibilities to pass through the judge’s mind. Suffice it to say, none of them had come close. And now, he stood before it—the object of the officer’s hinting—at a loss for words.

The final resting place of Ignatius van Thoor.

He and the other judges knew the moment that Thoor met his end. Klaus Faerber had commed them himself after the deed had been done. But the
where
, up until that point, had been an unknown. Though the knowledge that Thoor had died in a secret, underground hangar added nothing to their quest to track down Scott Remington and the Fourteenth, it nonetheless added a level of intrigue to the event as a whole. Where was Thoor going? If this was a hangar, where was the aircraft? Had he been left behind by his own troops? The answers to all of those questions had gone to the grave with the late general.

For Torokin, standing there meant even a little more. He was now in the very spot where Klaus—his best friend—had exacted revenge for the murder of his son. Though the bodies of Thoor and whoever had been with him were now gone, the outlines remained in chalk on the floor, much like a crime scene. It was an eerie sight to behold. The outline of Thoor was so unintimidating. Like he was a normal human being. The truth, of course, was that he’d always been one of those. But the aura of the general had been undeniable. Torokin wondered if, to any degree, Klaus had taken a moment to realize the magnitude of what he’d done in striking Thoor down, right there in that room. He was fairly sure his friend hadn’t.

“So…” Torokin said, half-shaking his head in bewilderment as he scanned the rest of the carved-out hangar, “what was he doing here?”

Walking to a spot on the floor several meters away, the officer knelt down and pointed to an area with dark blood stains. “Everything about this is very odd, judge. There were other bodies here, as well, that apparently had
not
been killed by EDEN operatives in the attack. They looked like they’d been devoured by a canrassi.”

“A canrassi?” Torokin asked with genuine surprise.

The officer nodded. “Unfortunately, there are no cameras in this room—at least that we have found—so there is no footage to show what actually took place before Thoor was killed.”

“Why would a canrassi be down here? Could it have been Thoor’s?”

Rising to his feet, the officer walked back to Torokin. “If one had been here with Thoor, the Vectors on scene would have killed it. There was no canrassi body here. It is also worth noting,” he went on, “that neither was a ship.”

That made no sense at all. “If an aircraft
would
have escaped through this hangar, would we have detected it?”

“Not necessarily. The tunnel leads to an area that is on the outskirts of the base. If the aircraft was flying dark and had its transponder turned off, it is possible it would have slipped away in the midst of the attack.” He frowned. “But what Nightman would have done this? To leave General Thoor behind…”

Torokin finished the thought for him. “It would have been a death sentence.” Thoor was practically a god to these people. To abandon him to his death would have put a mark on everyone in that aircraft. But the fact remained that Thoor
had
been left behind. Could his own Nightmen have actually done that to him?

His thoughts were interrupted as his comm crackled. Logan Marshall’s voice emerged. “Judge, we need to see you as quickly as possible.”

It was the Australian’s tone, not necessarily the words themselves, that indicated to Torokin that something serious was up. Smiling cordially to the officer, the judge stepped away and answered, “Where are you?”

“Room 14. Everyone is here except you and Quintana.”

“Very well. I will get in touch with Pablo. I assume he is needed, as well?”