Extraordinary Retribution (32 page)

Judas cut in. “They don’t understand the significance. They thought it was one of Simon’s men, but we know that isn’t the case. Simon’s been too busy running from us to organize anything. It had to be
him
. The
wraith.
They saw him. Spoke with him. He got them out of jail.”

Nexus leaned forward. “See, we find this
most
interesting.”

Lopez cut him off sharply. “Before we tell you anything, I want some questions answered.”

“You are in no position to negotiate, priest,” said Nexus, a sharp edge to his voice.

“This wraith of yours killed my brother, you bastard. That’s why I was dragged into your toxic swamp. That’s why I’m here. I was willing to risk my life to find this killer, and I’m willing to lose it still. Kill me now, and you’ll lose the information we have about him. Answer
my
questions, and you’ll hear what we know.”

Houston stared at him intensely. Lopez understood her surprise. In this wild world of shadowed struggles, this was the first time he had taken the lead.
I have to know, Sara. And we need the time!

Nexus seemed hesitant and looked to Bravo. The stockier man shrugged. “It won’t matter that they know more. They’re dead, anyway.”

“Who is the wraith?” asked Lopez pointedly.

“A mistake,” said Nexus as he turned around to face the window. He sighed. “His name is Javed Ahmad. Born in Pakistan in the mid-nineteen-eighties, his family, his
extended
family, emigrated to the United States when he was eight years old. By all accounts, he assimilated quickly to the American culture, finding a niche in high school in the counterculture hip-hop world. Fancied himself a
rapper
.”

Keep talking, Farnell.
Lopez looked around the room as Nexus spoke. Two guards stood behind Houston, one beside him. He also knew that Nexus and the one called Bravo were armed, although their weapons were currently out of sight.
How to engage them without being immediately shot? Lunge for the leaders?

Nexus continued. “Our mistake occurred because of his uncle, Rehman. Rehman was a significant player in the underground money transfer business from Islamic charities to militant terrorist groups. Enriched himself with a big slice off the top of every transaction, too. We weren’t so much interested in Rehman as we were his contacts, his knowledge of personnel in the terrorist organizations. From all our clandestine investigations and cooperation with the FBI, we knew that many of the Ahmadi family were involved in the business. We had circumstantial evidence that Javed was as well.”

“So, you rendered the poor kid.” It was Houston.

“The entire family,” said Nexus. “It was one of the most extensive and complicated missions we undertook. It required two planes out of North Carolina, numerous agents, including Miguel Lopez. Including all the agents who are now dead. It was one of our biggest operations, pushed strongly from above. And it was spectacularly successful. Rehman sang like a fucking bird when they squeezed him.”

“You sent a teenager into a torture pit. A kid. You guys are something.” Houston looked furious.

“Collateral damage!” shot back Nexus, spinning around to glare at her.

“Yeah, seems like you have caused a lot of that,” she retorted.

Lopez cut back in. “But how do you know the wraith is this kid looking for payback?”

“We didn’t at first. It took time, and a lucky break that your brother injured him.”

Lopez understood. “The hospital in Tennessee.”

Nexus smiled. “Yes. Not only did we get the physician notes that there was likely extensive modification to his appearance—plastic surgery, even skin discoloration—but we were finally able to obtain tissue samples and employ DNA analysis.”

“DNA analysis?” Lopez was amazed.

“It’s not that high-tech anymore,” said Nexus, returning his gaze outside the window. “All our pickups in the rendition missions were sampled, their DNA analyzed and filed. Useful on many occasions, especially if a body had to be identified post-interrogation.”

“Dear God,” whispered Lopez. Nexus ignored him.

“The Knoxville tissue samples matched the database on Javed. When put together with all the other data, it was obvious. A hell of a story, really. He disappeared after he was released. Off the map for
ten years
.”

“You must feel pretty stupid letting him go,” mocked Houston.

Nexus scowled at her. “This was in the early days, before Masri and Arar caused us so much trouble. Before we shut out the bleeding hearts who interfered with our efforts. But Ahmad turned out to be much more than all the others. Seems he spent a decade preparing just for this slaughter. Some psychologist should get hold of him and make a career! Where and how he trained, received his surgeries, obtained the substantial financial resources needed, we can only guess. Perhaps criminally. Perhaps with the help of organizations hostile to our interests. But however he did it, he became a lethal weapon, as skilled,
more skilled
, than our top operatives.”

Nexus turned from the window and walked toward the coffee table. Lopez estimated the distance.
He’s close. Can I reach him before they shoot me? Sara, will you be ready?

“He’s hunted down every person in the chain of that mission. He began with the Syrian prison—he killed all the staff and blew the damn place up. He killed the pilots who flew the missions, the Boeing reps who managed the airplanes, the staff who manned the hangars. As you know, he’s hunted down and killed all the agents who were involved, including your brother. Now, he’s after us, the organizers, the leaders of this program. You watched Zulu die. The pressure drove another to suicide. Now, Bravo and I are all who remain.”

“He did all this for revenge,” stated Lopez, speaking to himself as much as anyone. It was mind-boggling.

Nexus nodded. “And he’s still out there, priest. Hunting.”

Bravo spoke, turning to the window himself, looking out over the rural fields. “It will end soon. Either we’ll kill this wraith, or he’ll finish his mad quest and bury us.”

A flash of insight struck Lopez, and he shook his head. “No. You’re wrong. It won’t end if he kills you.”

Nexus looked at him dismissively. “Especially if he kills us, you fool! Haven’t you been listening? He’s out to destroy everything at CIA involved in what happened to him. We are the last point. The architects. Once we’re gone, it’s over.”

Lopez shook his head again, more strongly. “But your dark program wasn’t just born inside the CIA, was it,
Nexus?
You’ve been so worried about your own hides that you haven’t thought through things completely. You
aren’t
the last point, and that maniac will have figured that out. I’m just an outcast priest, and I have. Your little death squads are the product of a much greater mind.” Bravo turned around, his expression alarmed. “Just look how obsessive this is. How complete in its tortured fury. He wants to cut out this cancer all the way to the root. He wants total vengeance!”

Nexus stood frozen in thought. “Total vengeance?” repeated the leader. His eyes widened. “Oh, my God.”

The lights went off, and the background hum of a generator ceased. The farmhouse was plunged into an eerie silence and shadow. The guards stiffened, their weapons trained off Houston and himself. They turned them to the doors and window. Lopez could feel their panic.
The time is now!

Bravo rumbled. “He saved them from the police to
use
them. You fools, you’ve led him straight to us.”

Lopez lunged at Nexus and saw Houston leap out of her chair. The guards shouted, and the two leaders reached for their weapons.

Simultaneously, the room exploded.

53

T
here was a bright orange and yellow light, a thunderous sound and wind, and Lopez felt himself thrown against the wooden table and bounced onto the floor. He was vaguely aware of shards of glass and stone hurtling over his head and the screams of people around him. He lay there stunned for a moment, in shock, and he began to choke on the dust and smoke that filled the air. The sounds of automatic gunfire erupted around him.

Opening his eyes, he saw the bright flashes from a weapon. A shape was in the smoke, standing where the door had been, now a giant smoldering hole in the wall. Two bodies fell next to him, one inches from his face. It was the guard who had stood next to Houston. Groaning from a sharp pain in his shoulder, he rolled off his stomach to his side to be presented with a gruesome sight: the man called Bravo was hanging against the empty frame of the shattered window, the rebar from the wall eviscerating him and holding him in the air like a fishhook. Blood was everywhere, and his eyes were blank. He was dead.

A scuffle broke out behind him. Slowly, he raised himself to his knees and turned around. In a series of lightning-fast moves, he saw a shadow disarm one of the guards, strike him with several blows to the face and neck. The assailant then reached to his leg and pulled up a knife. The blade flew along a horizontal plane propelled by the arm and sliced open the guard’s throat. A drowning scream was the last sound the dying man made as he fell to the floor.

Lopez felt dizzy, his head throbbed from the impact he received in the explosion, and the smoke was making it hard to breathe. He tried to rise to his feet, but his knees buckled. He fought to steady himself as he sank back to the floor, catching himself with his hands. Taking several breaths of acrid air, he regained his sense of balance and looked up again.

He saw a shadow bend down across from him. Showing incredible strength, the wraith raised the bloodied form of Nexus from the floor and slammed him against the wall. Lopez could see that the former Counterterrorism Center chief was mortally wounded. His face and chest were embedded with shards of glass. A huge wound was visible along his right side, bleeding profusely. His eyes swam.

“Look at me, Farnell!” The wraith screamed like a banshee, his voice wild and harsh. The eyes of Nexus slowly focused. They morphed from delirium to fear.

“You...”

“Now you will taste justice. With my own hand, I will avenge a young boy that you sent to hell. Now I will send you along with all your djinn to the fire of hell to burn for all eternity.”

Nexus writhed feebly, trying to escape the powerful grasp of his executioner. “No, no...”

“Yes,” spat the wraith, his voice as much of a weapon as anything else. Nexus flinched and moaned, his body too broken to scream. The wraith brought up his knife. “Know pain, and then death!”

Now Nexus did scream. It was blood-curdling. The knife ripped into him, across his stomach, cutting through his abdominal wall. His body spasmed but was held fast to the wall by a powerful left arm. The wraith continued to drive the knife upward, slashing violently through the chest cavity, sawing through the sternum as Nexus’s eyes rolled into his head. His body slid slowly to the floor, and the wraith like a panther leapt on top of it, sawing and sawing toward the heart. Blood spurted everywhere as the wraith drew the knife back and forth maniacally.

Lopez stared transfixed, unable to move, the sheer horror almost beyond the ability of his mind to absorb in his weakened state. Then the body of Nexus shuddered violently and stopped moving. This only seemed to infuriate the wraith, and he violently threw down the knife, the hard bone too great an obstacle for the tool. Finally, he uttered a wild sound that ended in crazed laughter. Standing abruptly, he grabbed the automatic weapon slung across his shoulder, opening fire at the floor. For nearly ten seconds of cacophony, he unloaded a hailstorm of bullets into a dead body.

Lopez stood up, the madness overwhelming. He had to find Houston. He looked over the room and spotted her on the floor. Her eyes were closed, and her shirt was soaked in crimson. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

“Sara!” he shouted and moved toward her.

A blur approached him from the right. Before he could respond, a forearm struck him in the chin, driving him downward onto the coffee table. The impact nearly knocked the wind out of him. He stared up into the eyes of madness. Lopez prepared to die.

“You are the priest.” The eyes were still wild, but the voice was controlled.

“Yes,” came his weak answer, hoarse from the smoke and exhaustion.

“I have no fight with you. Your brother deserved to die. I think you know that,” he said, eyeing Lopez carefully. “If you interfere with what I have to do, I will kill you.” To emphasize his point, he pressed the barrel of the gun to Lopez’s forehead.

The pain was intense. The barrel was still smoking from the flood of shots the wraith had put into the dead body of Nexus. There was a sizzling sound, and Lopez nearly screamed, a half-moan, half-scream still escaping his mouth despite his efforts to control it. He smelled his own burnt flesh.

Lopez hissed through the pain. “If you hurt her, killing me won’t save you. I’ll climb out of the mouth of hell to drag you down.”

“Unnecessary,” said the wraith. He removed the gun, tearing a thin circle of flesh from Lopez’s forehead, the skin stuck to the rim of the barrel. “I know she’s clean. You both are alive only because you are clean.”

Lopez closed his eyes and prayed that this crazed monster meant what he said. There was the sound of someone moving through the room, and then the voice of the wraith came from a distance.

“If you wish her to live, take her to a hospital, soon.”

Lopez tensed and opened his eyes. He looked around the room. The wraith had vanished.

54

L
opez rushed over to Houston. She was still unconscious, but she was breathing. He cradled her head in his arms and tapped her cheeks with his palm, calling her name.

“Sara. Sara! Please, it’s Francisco. Wake up, Sara. Please, wake up.”

She began to breathe faster, and her eyelids fluttered open. Lopez felt tears in his eyes. He kissed her forehead, drops spilling onto her face.

“Francisco,” she said weakly, staring at his face. “You’re hurt. What happened?”