Shadow Maker (9 page)

Istanbul, Turkey

T
he spray of blood from the guard's throat sent a chill through Nick's body. Six hours after leaving Budapest, the three Triple Seven field operatives stood in the main security office of Istanbul University's biochemical research facility, watching videos of the robbery over the shoulder of the university's head of security. As far as the Turks were concerned, they were Interpol agents, thanks to a set of identities created by the techs at Romeo Seven. They watched the playback until the mysterious thief in the flowing hooded cloak disappeared from the frame.

“Holy cow,” said Drake. “You guys were hit by Darth Maul.”

Nick smacked his teammate's arm with the back of his hand. The security officer looked up from his bank of monitors and glared at him.

“What? Too soon?”

The next video showed the same figure in a cold storage locker, sweeping vials of chemicals into a bag. Nick straightened up and let out a short, frustrated breath. “There's not much of use here. He keeps his face well hidden, and despite the drama and the brutality, the whole thing looks like a run-of-the-mill robbery.”

The security man nodded, this time keeping his glare fixed on the cloaked figure on the screen in front of him. “It was. The thief took the lives of three guards and a highly respected department head, but to him, the murders were well worth it. Those chemicals will fetch a high price on the black market—tens of thousands of euros, maybe a hundred thousand.”

Nick watched as the cloaked figure lifted a box through the broken door of a glass cabinet, careful to avoid the remaining shards. Surprisingly, he wasn't wearing gloves. “Did he leave fingerprints?”

“Yes, plenty. But they did us no good. We could not find a match in any database.” The security officer raised an eyebrow. “Even Interpol's.”

“We need to know exactly what he took.”

“For that, you must talk to Dr. Osman, the new chairman of the facility.”

—

Dr. Osman dismissed the security officer as soon as he introduced his guests. “My heart is heavy with this tragedy,” he said, standing and shaking Nick's hand over his desk, “and I am reticent to go over it all again.” He took his seat again. “I told the police everything I know. Can't you get what you need from their records?”

“I'm sorry,” said Nick, “but we have our own interview procedures. It may be painful, but if you want your colleague's murderer to come to justice, the best thing that you can do is help us.”

The doctor stared at Nick for a moment and then spread his hands. “Of course. What do you want to know?”

“A good start will be a list of the stolen chemicals.”

Osman scooted forward to his computer. “I'm not sure how much it will help. There seemed to be no method to it. Some of the most valuable chemicals fell to the floor. Others worth only a few euros went into the bag.”

The printer at the edge of the doctor's desk whirred to life. Nick took the first page it spat out. He scanned down the list. None of the compounds stood out to him. “I'm curious,” he said, still scanning the page. “Your head of security told me the thief could make a hundred thousand euros on the black market, but you just said he left the valuable chemicals behind.”

Osman shook his head. “I told you he left
some
of the valuable chemicals behind. Our security chief is correct. The thief got lucky.” He stood and pulled the rest of the pages off the printer, thumbing through them. When he found the page he was looking for, he shifted it to the top, tapped the stack on his desk to straighten it, and handed the whole pile to Nick. “There,” he said, pointing to an item halfway down the top page. “That was the most valuable item in the room, by far.”

Nick read the entry out loud. “Lithium-six: three kilos.”

Osman nodded. “Worth a hundred thousand euros, maybe more.”

“Why so much?”

“Lithium-six is rare and it is highly controlled. Supply and demand. Basic economics.” The doctor sat down again and gestured at the door. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I must attend to the unhappy task of taking over my late superior's position.”

Nick stayed where he was. “Just one more question before we go. Let's say for the sake of argument that your thief had a use for the lithium-six other than selling it. What might that be?”

“I can't imagine.” Osman returned his attention to his computer. “We use it here to track the transportation of submicroscopic agents between host cells.”

Nick cast a glance at his teammates. Drake shrugged. Quinn shook his head.

“Could you put that in layman's terms, Doctor?”

Osman let out a sigh and looked up at his unwanted guests. “Viruses, gentlemen. Lithium-six is used in tracking and engineering viruses.”

—

“The Emissary is building a bioweapon,” said Nick. He held his phone to his ear as the team descended the marble stairs that led to the lobby of the research facility.

“You have evidence?” asked Walker.

“I have a pretty solid hunch. The terrorists stole a box of controlled material from Istanbul University, material used to modify viruses.”

“I can't have the CDC act on your hunch alone, Baron. Maybe the Emissary is making a bioweapon, or maybe he's planning to sell the material for cash to support another suicide bombing. Get me hard evidence. And if there is a virus, find out what it is and where it's going. Actionable intelligence, Major. You know the drill.”

As Nick pushed through the building's glass double doors, a glint of light caught his eye. Something atop the old tower gate that dominated the university park had flashed in the winter sun. He recognized the distinctive play of light.

“Down!”

He shoved Drake and Quinn to the pavement behind the rental car as the door they had just come through shattered behind them. Glass rained down on the sidewalk. A thunderous report ripped across the campus, followed by another.

The shooter gave them no rest. High-velocity rounds pounded the small SUV. Terrified students screamed and ran for cover. Suddenly Quinn let out a pained cry. Nick and Drake were protected behind the engine block, but the younger operative had taken cover behind the rear tire. It was not big enough. One of the rounds had passed through the rental's thin frame and penetrated Quinn's body armor. He sat back onto the pavement with his hands over his belly. When he pulled them away, they were covered in blood.

While Drake dragged their teammate to the relative safety of the vehicle's front end, Nick searched for his phone. He found it within reach at the edge of the sidewalk, beneath a pile of glass. He could hear Walker shouting on the other end.

Nick interrupted the colonel. “Get me a medevac chopper! Quinn's been hit!”

Beside him, Drake ripped off his outer shirt and pressed it to their young teammate's abdomen.

“How bad?” asked Walker.

Nick watched as Quinn's blood quickly soaked through the makeshift bandage. The kid's eyes lost their focus.

“We need that chopper now, sir. He's bleeding out.”

T
en rounds, almost universal to clip-fed sniper rifles. Nick waited for the inevitable pause as the shooter reloaded. As soon as the impacts stopped, he crawled forward, opened the rear passenger door of the rental and pulled a black duffel from the backseat. The first round of the sniper's second clip passed through the driver's door right above his shoulder as he dragged the bag back to their cover position behind the engine block.

“Come up on comms. Stay with Quinn,” he ordered Drake, handing him one of the team's H&K MP7A1s and a SATCOM earpiece. Then he put his own earpiece in and withdrew his Beretta Nano from the bag. “Cover me.”

After the second set of ten rounds, Drake popped over the hood and fired a volley at the shooter. Nick sprinted into the open. His objective was a good 150 meters away at the other end of a green park, a four-story tower gate bracketed by a pair of three-story turrets. He made it across the street and twenty meters into the sparse trees before the bullets started flying again. Heavy rounds splintered the trunk of an ancient cypress as he passed. “Any questions about what ‘cover me' means?” he panted.

“Working on it,” replied Drake through the comm link. “I'm dealing with a wounded man here.”

As Drake spoke, Nick heard the
rat-a-tat
of his teammate's MP7 over the comm link, followed an instant later by a matching report, echoing across the park. Drake kept the sniper's head down until Nick reached the base of the structure. Then his clip ran out and the shooter opened up again. A slow steady rhythm of earsplitting cracks sounded from the top of the tower.

A crowd of terrified pedestrians huddled beneath the main arch of the tower gate. A young man pointed at the gun in Nick's hand and shouted to the others. Nick ignored him. To the left of the crowd he spied an ancient wooden door, slightly ajar, and pushed through into a stone stairwell. The gunfire above stopped. The shooter was reloading again. Nick raced up the steps.

At the top of the stairs, he kicked open the door and leveled his Beretta. No one. The ledge that faced the research facility was directly ahead, but the sniper had abandoned his perch. Then Nick heard the crunch of a footstep to his right. The shooter struck before he could bring his gun around, knocking him off his feet and knocking the Beretta from his hand.

Nick hit the gravel rooftop hard, but he rolled backward over his shoulder and came up facing his attacker. The man wore the same black cloak as the killer in the security video. The face under the wide hood looked Turkish, with a thin black mustache and beard, not much more than stubble. His hands were open, ready to fight, and his right palm bore a black marking similar to the tattoo on the driver in Budapest, a geometric shape within a circle.

In the distance, Nick could hear the rescue helicopter approaching. He circled the shooter, muttering a command to Drake. “Nightmare Two, I'm keeping our sniper busy. Move now. Get the kid to the roof and get him on that chopper.”

“What about you?”

“I'll be fine.”

The shooter lunged. Nick caught him by the lapels of his cloak and fell backward, twisting mid-fall, slamming him to the ground. Usually that maneuver knocked the wind from an opponent, but the impact did not faze this enemy at all. With terrifying strength, the shooter rolled Nick onto his back and came up on top. The two of them bumped against the low lip of the tower roof, and Nick felt the eerie threat of four stories of empty space.

Nick threw a left-and-right combination, connecting with the left before the shooter reared up, out of range. As if by magic, a knife appeared in his hand, an ornate curved hilt with two black blades on either end, forming a crescent. He grinned and slashed down at Nick's throat.

Nick caught the wide sleeve of the cloak and redirected the shooter's momentum rather than blocking it, pulling his arm across his body. The first blade missed his neck by an inch. The tip of the second blade missed it by a millimeter. After the knife cleared his throat, he kept pulling in an arc, stretching his arm back above his head to pull the shooter forward and off balance. At the same time he bumped upward with his hips and twisted right. The lip of the roof acted as a stop, blocking his opponent's knee. The shooter's eyes widened and he toppled over the edge.

After taking a moment to catch his breath, Nick stood and peered over the side, expecting to see the sniper's broken body lying on the pavement below and a crowd of students gathering around it. There was no one, no onlookers, no shooter, not even a scrap of cloak or a spot of blood.

Across the campus, the rescue chopper lifted off from the research center and nosed forward to rush Quinn to the hospital. Nick's phone chimed, a message from his chess app. The ivory text read,
TheEmissary has taken your knight. Your move.

A
search of the roof revealed no weapon and no shell casings. The sniper had to have ditched his rifle before Nick made it up the stairs. Then a flash of gold caught his eye. The shooter's strange knife lay on the lip of the roof.

Nick retrieved it and turned it over in his hand. Its workmanship was beautiful. Gold and silver arabesque inlays formed an intricate pattern of vines with heart-shaped leaves, weaving in and out of eight-pointed stars—all set into a dark alloy that he could not identify. The shooter must have dropped the knife when he went over the edge, though he managed to retract the blades. Nick could not figure out how to get them out again.

The woven designs on one side of the hilt surrounded a small silver inlay circle, enclosing two crescent moons set back-to-back, the same symbol tattooed on the sniper's right palm. Lacing through the vines on the other side of the hilt was a phrase in flowing gold calligraphy. Nick understood the Arabic words, but he was not certain of their meaning.

“Nightmare One, did you get him?” asked Drake over the comm link.

“Negative. What about Three?”

“He looked bad when I put him on the chopper, no color at all. Lighthouse scrambled a C-17 out of Incirlik with a surgical team. The colonel doesn't trust Turkish hospitals.”

The crowd filtered out from below the tower. Some of the young men stared up at the Western intruder. Nick could see blame in their eyes. “We need to get out of here. Get the gear from the car and see if Romeo Seven can arrange some transpo.”

“Back to the hotel?”

“Yeah. And then the market.” Nick glanced down at the ornate knife in his hand. “I need to talk to an old friend.”

Two hours later, Nick and Drake parked a new rental in a metered spot along the outer wall of Istanbul's Old City. That morning they had been Interpol agents, now they were tourists. Nick wore jeans and a Columbia jacket. Drake wore khakis with a Walking Dead T-shirt under a windbreaker.

While they waited in the car for their appointment, Nick's phone buzzed. He pressed it to his ear. “What've you got, CJ?”

“More than I want and not enough,” replied the FBI agent.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that while you're running around, terrorizing Turkish college kids, I'm getting nowhere. I keep coming up with dead ends.”

“Don't kid, CJ,” said Nick. “The Emissary sent out another move. You were watching the coffee shop. You should have bagged him by now.”

“It's not that easy. If we roll in before pinpointing the exact customer, we'll violate the civil rights of every legitimate caffeine addict in the joint. We can't do that. Not in this girl's America.”

“Have you made a list of regulars who were around when the moves were made?”

“Of course, but I need more data so I can rule more of them out. I need you to keep playing.”

“Roger that.” Nick heard voices and laughter. Drake was watching a YouTube video on his phone. He slapped the big operative's arm with the back of his hand and gestured for him to keep an eye on the street. Drake frowned at him and rolled a finger in the air, signaling him to move the conversation along. Had he been born to another generation, Nick was certain his teammate would have been one of those ADD kids. He returned his attention to CJ. “I have something new for you to chew on.”

“I'm all ears.”

“Scott has been digging deeper into the scraps of code we found on Grendel's servers. They are definitely part of a virus.”

“You have specifics?”

“Some.” He explained that the fragments resembled Stuxnet, the virus the NSA sent into Iran to wreak havoc on their nuclear centrifuges in 2010. Stuxnet was a very specific and very powerful program. It had no effect on the computers it passed through, but when it reached its target, it became the first virus to enter through Windows and cross-talk to an industrial control system. On the upside, Stuxnet spun the Iranian centrifuges out of control, doing as much damage as a gaggle of bunker busters. On the downside, it left copies of itself on millions of computers, becoming a blueprint for hackers worldwide.

“It was only a matter of time until one of these bozos found a way to adapt it,” said CJ. “What does Grendel's version do?”

“We don't know, but Scott is convinced that the virus and the messages to the suicide bomber are linked because they were kept on the same section of the server. I'll have him send you a summary. For now, that's all I've got.”

“You haven't asked about the ‘more than I want.'”

Nick rolled his eyes. CJ could never just spit things out. She had to play games, a sign of the control freak inside. “Okay, I'll bite. What did you mean by ‘more than I want'?”

“I'm so glad you asked. I've had more attention than I want from a certain Mr. Cartwright, the senator from Virginia—a lot more. It seems one of his staffers was injured in the bombing on the Mall, and a first responder refused to treat him. Ring any bells?”

“Not yet.”

“Tall guy. Lawyer. Claims that the first responder not only refused to treat his eye, he also punched him in the chest.”

Nick cringed. “Oh, yeah. That was me.”

There was a pause. In his mind's eye, Nick could see CJ's head cocking to one side, her free hand going to her hip. “Are you insane?”

“The guy had it coming. I had to get to people with more serious injuries, and he wouldn't leave me alone. He got physical. I returned the favor.”

“I shouldn't have asked.”

“Keep the senator at bay, CJ. We don't need interference from power-hungry politicians.”

“What's it worth to you?”

Nick closed his eyes. “Dinner?”

“He's a U.S. senator.”

“Fine. A nice dinner. An expensive one. Whatever you want.”

“Tell you what, I'll plead ignorance as long as I can, but if he keeps digging, he's going to turn something up. He has the ear of the president. These days there's no defense against that.”

Drake tapped Nick's shoulder and pointed to his watch.

Nick acknowledged the signal with a nod. “I've gotta go.”

“Sure you do,” said CJ. Then her voice became distant, like she was holding the phone in front of her face. “Dinner, Nick Baron. A very
expensive
dinner.”

The line went dead.