The King of Plagues (39 page)

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Authors: Jonathan Maberry

BOOK: The King of Plagues
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In Flight
December 19, 7:43 P.M. EST
For most of the flight I sat alone, processing what I’d learned from the shooter—whose name was Sarducci—and seeing if any of these new pieces fit the weird puzzle that was the Seven Kings. The fact of there being so many crucial employees in secure facilities kept shouting in the darkness of my thoughts, but I couldn’t yet understand what it was trying to tell me. Abstract thinking is like that. You gather facts and then throw them into a bag with guesses and bits of the unknown, and either a picture leaps out or it doesn’t. I kept shaking the bag and reaching in for a new fistful of Scrabble pieces.
When my phone rang I expected it to be Church, but the caller ID was blank, which was weird, because I have a DMS account. Nobody’s supposed to be an “unknown caller” to us.
“Yeah,” I said neutrally.
There was nothing. No … I could hear someone breathing.
“Bad time for an obscene phone call, sport,” I said.
“Joe Ledger?”
A male voice. Soft, a trace of an accent.
“I’ll see if he’s in. Who’s calling?”
“Don’t be clever,” he said. “We don’t have that kind of time.”
I was sure it was a voice I hadn’t heard before. He was trying to speak with an American accent, but it was a fake. I was sure of it. I pressed the three-digit code to initiate a trace.
“It’s your dime,” I said.
“You’re looking for the Seven Kings.”
Ah. “Who are you?”
“Don’t be daft,” he said. “And don’t bother to trace this call. It’s routed through a dozen networks on five continents.”
“Are you the person who’s been calling Mr. Church?”
“No. But—”
“Are you calling to screw around or—?”
“No, I’m calling to collect my thirty pieces of silver,” he said. He sighed and I waited. “I am not going to tell you who the Kings are or where to find them. Not all of them. I am not going to reveal all of their plans or give you the intelligence necessary to bring down the entire operation. That really would be a betrayal.”
Even with the scrambler I could hear the turmoil in his voice. It made him sound hysterical and even a little drunk. Either way, it was clear that this was someone who absolutely did not want to make this call.
“I am, however, going to offer you a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“This isn’t for me,” he said, “and I want your word.”
“I can’t give any word unless I know what I’m swearing to.”
He paused and he was probably chewing his nails.
“I am going to say a name. It’s all I can give you, but you should be able to put two and two together to figure where to be to stop what the Seven Kings are really doing. You’ll save a lot of lives. You’ll be a hero.”
“I’m not looking to be a hero, sport. If you have information that can save lives, then let me have it.”
“I want your word. That’s the price.”
“My word on what?”
“That you won’t kill him.”
“Kill who? The person whose name you’re going to give me?”
“Yes. Swear to me that you won’t kill him and I’ll tell you.”
“How can I guarantee that?”
“You’re smart, Ledger. You’ll figure out a way. Do I have your word?”
I hesitated.
“Or,” he said, “I could hang up right now and you can watch the world burn. You think that what’s on the telly is the
real
news? Believe me, mate, this is the warm-up act. I want you to do something about it.”
“You have a lot of faith in me.”
“I should. I already have scars because of you,” he snarled.
“Whoa, slow down. Do I
know
you?”
His snarl turned into a laugh. “No … I doubt you even know my name. But you know
his
. You’re almost as much to blame as s
he
is. Him and that slut Amirah.”
And that fast someone sucked all the air out of the chopper’s cabin.
Amirah
.
Holy Mother of God.
I knew the name he was going to give me. I knew it and I prayed like hell that I was wrong.
“Okay,” I said quietly, hardly trusting my voice not to crack, “tell me.”
“Give me your word.”
What could I do? I could lie, and it probably would be a lie. He would have to know that. So, what value did my word have to this man? On the other hand, what did I have to lose?
“Very well,” I said. “I give you my word that if I can take him alive and unharmed, I will.”
“Swear it.”
I did. I actually did.
There was a muffled sound. It wasn’t a laugh; I was sure of it. I think it was a sob.
He said, “There are Seven Kings. Gold, Fear, Lies, Plagues, Famine, War, and Thieves.” He took a breath. “Sebastian Gault is the King of Plagues. If he isn’t stopped, he’ll wipe them all out. And I know—I
know
—that he won’t stop there. She’ll keep pushing him and pushing him, filling his head with dreams of godhood until he creates another doomsday plague. I know he’ll do it … unless you stop him.”
I closed my eyes. God.
Sebastian Gault.
The man who tried to release the Seif Al Din pathogen. The man who came close—so very close—to destroying everything. It was because of him that I was sought out and recruited into the DMS. The last guy to hold my job had been killed. Slaughtered along with his entire team.
Sebastian Gault. If I had a personal bogeyman, then he was it.
After we stopped the release of Gault’s pathogen, a worldwide manhunt was launched. As large and as aggressive as the search for Osama bin Laden—and so far, just as futile. We’d begun to suspect that Gault was dead, his body burned in the same geothermal meltdown that had destroyed the lab where Seif Al Din was created. But now … Gault
and
the Seven Kings.
I felt as if I was falling through space. I pressed my back against the cold metal skin of the Chinook.
“Gault is responsible for the Hospital … for Area 51? Gault’s part of the Seven Kings?”
“Only for a few months. We were brought into this after … after …”
“After the Seif Al Din. A lot of people thought Gault died in Afghanistan.”
The man laughed. A small, sad sound. “Maybe he should have. Maybe we both should have.”
And that’s when I knew who the caller was.
“You said that what’s happening now was part of something else, something bigger?”
“Yes. Gault and the bitch. They’ve taken this whole thing away from the Kings and they’re going to bury us all with it.”
“Who is the woman? What’s her name?”
I knew that it couldn’t be Amirah, Gault’s former partner and the designer of the Seif Al Din pathogen. I knew for sure that she was dead. I’d pulled the trigger.
“No,” he said. “You don’t get that.”
“Then give me something else,” I said. “Give me Santoro.”
“Christ! How do you even know that name?”
“Give him to me.”
“Why?”
“If you know him, then you know why. Give me him and I’ll move heaven and earth to protect Gault.”
He was quiet for a moment. My cell had been running the trace for almost two minutes now and it hadn’t beeped the signal that alerted me to a successful hit. Must be the same technology Deep Throat used.
“Find Gault and you’ll find Santoro. That psycho prick will be in the thick of it. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see that much pain. Now, I’m sorry, I have to g—”
I took a risk. “Toys!”
I expected a scream or a yell of denial or a theatrical attempt to pretend ignorance. Instead he gave a small laugh. The risk had paid off. Gault’s best friend, valet, personal assistant, and maybe more. Alexander Chismer.
Toys.
“See?” Toys said shakily. “I said you were smart. That’s why they tried to kill you today. I’ll give you one more thing and you have to remember it; otherwise all of this goes to shit.”
“Tell me.”
“
They
are everywhere. The Kings, their agents, Santoro’s people. They’re everywhere. Even some of the people you work with and some of the people you’re going to try and rescue. Some belong to the Kings, and some will do anything to keep Santoro out of their lives. You understand what I mean? You can’t trust anyone. Or anything. Nothing is what it seems. It never is with the Kings. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you. Now figure out the rest.”
But he did not disconnect. I waited through several heavy seconds. This time I knew the sound I heard was a sob. Toys said, “If you succeed, Ledger … do me one more favor.”
“If I can.”
“If you save all the lives that are on the line … see if you can spare a little pity. Go to church and light a candle.”
“For Gault?”
“No,” he said. “For my soul.”
Over Pennsylvania Airspace
December 19, 7:46 P.M. EST
I stared at my cell phone for a full minute.
“God Almighty,” I said aloud. Ghost heard the tone of my voice and came over to me and licked my face, looking into my eyes to see if the pack was in some kind of trouble. It surely, surely was.
And yet …
Toys.
It happens that way more often than people think. Cops spend 90 percent of a case gathering evidence, analyzing it, doing interviews, running computer searches, and building a profile of the possible culprit, and then they get a phone call from out of left field that tells them who, what, when, and where. Ten times more criminal cases have been solved by anonymous tipsters, people hoping for rewards or confidential informants.
Who in hell would ever expect Toys to be mine? Or to be the one who hammered a crack into the hardest case the DMS ever tackled.
I was sweating badly and I dragged a forearm across my eyes.
They
are everywhere
… .
Even some of the people you work with and some of the people you’re going to try and rescue
.
I looked around the cabin of the Chinook and inside my head the Warrior was drawing his knife and squinting through the gloom.
Who did I trust? I’d been away for months, and Santoro had more than shown that he could turn ordinary and trustworthy people into killers.
I thumbed open my sports coat. The handle of the Beretta was comfortably close.
Rudy?
He lay in a narcotic doze while Circe sat beside him, tapping away on her laptop. If Rudy was under Santoro’s thumb, I think I’d lose it. Rudy was my best friend. Closer to me than my own brother. He was the only person on earth I trusted completely. No … no, it couldn’t be Rudy.
Circe?
Who was she really? She worked for Hugo Vox at Terror Town. She was in position to know the security secrets of a lot of crucial operations, and that included probably access to security information on facilities like
the London Hospital, Fair Isle, maybe even Area 51. After all, Church and Vox both trusted her. An unscrupulous person could exploit that trust. Sure, she looked beautiful and innocent and forthright, but she could also be a good actress. I’d met spies and moles before. They aren’t picked for that kind of work if you could just look at them and say,
Yep, that there’s a spy.
And she was pretty handy with a gun. On the other hand, she didn’t pop a cap in my favorite head, so props for showing good judgment. Unless that was part of a plan to win my confidence and insinuate herself into the DMS.
Across the cabin, Circe brushed dark curls from her face; then she looked at Rudy and placed a hand very tenderly on his chest and kept it there for almost a minute while he slept. I didn’t want it to be her.
A few feet away, Top and Bunny were seated side by side. Bunny was dozing; Top was strip-cleaning his M4. He caught me looking and gave me a slow nod. I nodded back.
Bunny and Top had been with me since I joined Echo Team. We’d saved each other’s lives a dozen times over. They were brothers to me.
On the other hand, Bunny had four sisters and lots of nieces and nephews. He had parents. That gave the Kings a lot of dials they could turn. Same with Top. His daughter, Monique, lost both her legs in Baghdad two Christmases ago. A Taliban mine blew up under her Bradley. Top was divorced; his ex-wife was a nurse. I knew Top still cared for her, maybe even still loved her, and he certainly loved his daughter. If Santoro threatened them, especially Top’s wheelchair-bound daughter, was there anything he
wouldn’t
do to protect them?
That was a hard call. I’d like to think that both men would come to me, or to Church, with it. Of course … I’d been away, out of touch and out of reach.
What would I do if one of them had been turned by the Kings?
I’d try to save them if I could. Them and theirs. And if I couldn’t? If they came at me? Shit. I knew what I would do, and I could hear the Warrior grunt his dark approval.
That left Khalid, DeeDee, and John Smith. I knew them, but I didn’t really
know
them. We had less history. Smith was a closed book that nobody could read. Maybe Church, maybe Rudy. No one else.
DeeDee? She had no family, no close friends. If she was a rotten apple, it would be more likely in the role of a spy rather than a coerced victim.
Khalid? The doctor and scholar who was also a first-class shooter. I liked him and I knew that I trusted him. But it occurred to me that I didn’t know much about his family. He had a brother here in the States, but the rest of his family lived in the Middle East. Iran, Egypt, and some in Saudi Arabia.
I realized that I was not adding Church to my list. If he was a bad guy, then we were all totally fucked. I’m pretty dangerous, but he scares me. He scares everyone. You simply cannot imagine him losing a fight, and I doubt he ever has. He’s brilliant, cold, vicious, detail oriented, and largely a mystery. If it came down to a fight between us, I didn’t like my odds.
I flipped open my phone and called him. He picked up on the third ring. I told him everything Toys had said.
Church listened without comment and the silence continued after I was done.
Finally, he said, “What’s your ETA?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Talk to no one about this,” he said. “No one.”
I began to ask him a question, but Church hung up on me.
I settled back against the wall, my jacket open and the butt of my Beretta within easy reach, and stared into the middle distance all the way to Brooklyn.

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