Dalton Griffin had checked three of the five cells on the cell block. He worked backward from number six. He worked conscientiously, but he served more than one master: The Virginia Department of Corrections and the organization that was paying to help extract the prisoner known as Cyclops.
The other four correction officers were employees of the state prison system, but they also worked for the Company, the CIA. Only a few people in the state system knew the true nature of their double service—the chief warden, who oversaw the Red Onion; his supervisor, the chief of corrections operations; and the director of the Virginia DOC himself. Griffin knew that the director of VADOC could have anyone placed anywhere in the state prison system.
The rub was that Griffin did not work for the CIA. He was employed by a shadow organization ensconced in the government apparatus with ties to an outfit external to the Feds. He didn’t know how he had been placed in a CIA black site posing as a CIA agent. The how and the why of how he’d arrived at the Red Onion did not matter. He had a job to do. A job he was being paid very well to accomplish. One he was about to perform.
The prisoners segregated here were five of the most dangerous persons in the world and had tried in one way or another to terrorize the United States of America. They were political prisoners, none of whom had been tried or convicted in an American court room. Their crimes or suspected crimes had been so dangerous and insidious that they had been whisked away without a trial or access to legal aid. Not even the guards knew what their treasons were.
Except, of course, Dalton Griffin.
In fact, Griffin knew one inmate’s story quite well, that of Sharif al-Faisal, aka the Cyclops. Of course, Griffin had come by this information through unofficial channels.
He had checked his accounts hours before leaving for the Red Onion.
His official accounts, checking, savings, and 401k held about a hundred thousand. The corrections officer collected his pay from the Department of Corrections and lived in a modest home on the outskirts of Big Stone Gap in the southeast corner of Virginia. His neighbors knew him as a tough but quiet state employee.
Griffin had been on the payroll of the Simoon for the past eight months. The money they offered was substantial. All they asked was that he be ready when the time came to provide his services. They had deposited $15,000 each month for the last eight in a third account in the National Bank of Abu Dhabi.
Griffin studied the monitor on the desk before him. Each CO had his own private computer terminal through which he could monitor his charge. Cyclops was resting on his back on his cot, with his hands behind his head. His eyes were closed. Griffin couldn’t tell if he was asleep or just meditating.
He glanced at his fellow officers. They had spoken little to him in his first twenty four hours on the unit. He was an outsider. If he had been placed as a guard at the Red Onion, Griffin knew that someone up the chain was also working with his Middle Eastern compatriots.
America is infected with traitors, he thought.
He had received the call forty-eight hours ago, been briefed in a two-hour video conference, and instructed as to what his mission was. He had been tasked with delivering the small package inside the breakfast tray. And to be ready when the time came hours later.
The unit had been shaken to its core by the breach. When they’d found Steven Cooper in his cell, his body cold and blue, they tried CPR and took him to the infirmary. But it had been a futile effort.
An urgent, encrypted communication had been fired off using a secure cell phone to the overseer of the program at Langley informing him of the death. Orders were issued to keep close tabs on all the other prisoners.
He watched now as Cyclops stood up and turned his back to the camera. Griffin watched the prisoner lift a hand to his head. The head moved as if he’d placed something in his mouth. The guard looked around the unit.
Suddenly, Cyclops dropped to the floor. Griffin checked his watch. Prayer time wasn’t for another hour. Confused, Griffin stood and walked to Cyclops’ cell. He peered through the thick glass embedded with chicken-wire window.
“Code Red, cell five!” he shouted into his shoulder mike. He rapped on the window. By the position of the body, he knew they were about to record their second death in the last six hours.
“That’s everything,” Jason said as he collapsed onto the sofa. Over fifteen minutes, he’d poured out the details of the last two days. The retelling exhausted him almost as much as the actual events.
He had begun with the kidnappings, finding the business cards with the microprinting on them, followed by digging up the mini coffins. He capped it off with the request to get the keys from William Luther and then the struggle in the 65th Street home, followed by Luther’s killing, and the escape from the jail with the assistance of The Watcher. Jason recounted the car chase to retrieve the box truck with the refrigerated cargo hold from an old man in the Red Sox jacket at a gas station, the locked rear doors with a key waiting somewhere at whatever destination lay before them, and instructions to drive up the Eastern Shore. He told them about leaving the truck and Peter, and jumping into Sheryl Penney’s car to use her unmonitored phone.
“Where is this Watcher?” Doyle asked.
Jason shrugged. “Is he one of ours?”
Doyle paused as if thinking about whether or not to divulge that information. “No,” he finally said.
“Who is he?”
“Dunno. What’s in the truck?” Doyle asked, changing the subject.
Jason shrugged. “Don’t know. The cargo area is locked. We were given specific instructions not to open it.”
“We dispatched a team to Turkey Run Road. Nothing was found except an old house and we scared the shit out of a family in a mobile home. The woman there confirmed a truck stopped there. The driver went into the old house and came back out five minutes later.”
“So he made it there?”
Doyle nodded. “Can you contact Peter?”
“I would if I could, but our phones were confiscated. The man at the gas station took everything before we got into the truck.”
“Will your brother try to contact the authorities?”
“Pete was a topnotch marine …”
“I can vouch for that,” Agent Johnson chimed in.
“He’ll do whatever it takes. But he won’t jeopardize Michael or Chrissie.”
“Let’s hope,” Doyle continued, “we hear something soon.”
One hundred and fifty miles northeast, inside the Dawson Pharmaceuticals manufacturing plant, Angelo Sheppard rapped three times on the door. The word Security was stenciled on the frosted glass embedded in the thick oak. Without knocking or warning, he pushed it open.
“Hey, Gus.”
“Hello, Mr. Sheppard. Pretty quiet tonight. What’s up?”
“I’m sorry to ruin your night. But we have a gaggle of kids on the grounds. Northeast corner near the road.”
The uniformed guard sat before a computer monitor with eight boxes arrayed across its screen. Each block contained a video image from feeds around the grounds. At the bottom of each block, shortened, condensed words indicated which camera was providing the image. Every few seconds, some of the images flickered, changing to a view from another camera.
Gus pressed several keys. The eight blocks disappeared, changing to one large view of the well-manicured lawn in front of the building. The guard manipulated a joystick and panned the camera, zooming it in and out at various points.
“I don’t see anything sir.”
“They were there a minute ago. Can you check it out?”
“I’m not supposed to leave the control room. Kevin is at lunch. He went down the road and took the security vehicle.”
Sheppard nodded. He already knew this and had timed his visit to coincide with the other guard’s absence. The guards were not supposed to leave the premises. But they had been doing so for about six months. “I understand. But these guys looked like thugs. I’d hate for you to have to explain to one of the VPs why they damaged something or hurt someone on your watch. I’d feel better if you went out there. After all, you’re the one with the gun. And I won’t tell anyone that Kevin left the grounds.”
Gus looked at the screen and back at Sheppard, weighing his options.
“I’ll watch the monitors while you’re gone,” Sheppard persisted.
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
As soon as Gus was gone, Sheppard sat down and went to work. He’d sent the rent-a-cop to the farthest corner of the campus, buying himself as much time as possible. Sheppard had practiced what he was about to do for the last three weeks. He punched the keyboard until the eight-image array returned. Then he moved to the network video recorder and squeezed behind it, pushing the small stand on which it stood away from the wall. He lifted the small cloth covering the cables and studied the sight. The small rectangular box, no bigger than the size of a large VCR, held forty-eight ports into which ran an army of coaxial cables. Dawson was currently using forty of the forty-eight available ports.
Thank God they haven’t upgraded to IP cameras! Analog cameras made this task much easier, he thought.
Each analog camera around the plant, forty in all, was hardwired via a coaxial cable with its feed running from ports in the wall into the back of this network recorder.
Sheppard found the five ports he needed and unscrewed each coax cable from them. He removed five small devices called repeaters from under his shirt. Each was identical—a small black box with a four-inch coaxial cable protruding from one end and a coax receiving port on the other. Sheppard screwed the first unsecured cable into a repeater then connected the repeater’s cable to the network recorder, thus placing the device between the cable from the wall and the network recorder.
He walked back to the screen and checked the image corresponding to that port. The repeater recorded a short ten second video from the image on that camera and continuously looped it back to the monitor.
He left the security room and ran the fifty feet to the hallway the camera monitored and switched off the lights in the hallway. The corridor went dark. Sheppard then returned to the security office, out of breath. He rechecked the image for that camera and saw that the image showed the lights still on in the hallway. He smiled. It’s working. The cameras would not record movements by anyone in these hallways or on the loading dock!
Sheppard repeated the process with the four remaining ports and cameras, inserting a repeater between the network recorder and the coaxial cable. He checked his watch. He had planned on fifteen minutes, start-to-finish. Everything was done with three minutes to spare and there was still no sign of Gus. Sheppard covered the back of the NVR with the small black cloth, covering the repeaters, and pushed it back into place. He pulled up the camera feed of the front lawn and saw Gus the Guard standing on the grass.
His covert activities could now be conducted in total secrecy. Sheppard would return tomorrow after his covert activities had been conducted and remove the repeaters. If everything went according to plan, by the time anyone discovered what was going on, Sheppard would talk Gus back out of the office and remove the repeaters.
Sheppard hated the sneaking around. If he didn’t, he was sure Quinton Boyd would end his career. All of this would be over soon.
The Greek Monitor sat at her computer in the cramped one-bedroom extended-stay hotel just outside Clintwood, six miles east of the Red Onion. The small suite had an open-ended lease. She had a feeling the message she was going to send would mark the end of the CIA’s need for her surveillance.
She typed her message into the email that would eventually find its way through various relays to her handler, the deputy director of operations of the CIA. The woman had been typing and crafting the message for the last hour, perfecting it, then using the polygraphic communications cipher to encrypt it.
The two paragraphs outlined how Cyclops had been taken from his cell, unconscious or dead, only hours after Steven Cooper had been confirmed as a casualty. All of this happened during one shift. Dalton Griffin was the variable. The new corrections officer had been on duty for less than eight hours when these crises occurred.
Her final coded words to the deputy director were: Cyclops is no longer on site. I followed the vehicle and know where they have taken him.
She typed in the coordinates. Satisfied, she pressed enter and the email disappeared.
An hour later, Sharif-al-Faisal awoke with a sharp intake of air into his lungs. The room spun. The ceiling seemed to rotate above him. He felt as if he was about to spin off the cold, steel slab.
He closed his eyes again, quelling the nausea and the spinning. Slowly, his senses returned. His ears picked up a soft, rhythmic beeping. A female voice penetrated the fog of his mind.
He’s coming around. Increase the rate of the reversal agent. Bring it up to fifteen micrograms per hour.
The blurry face of a very attractive woman filled his field of vision. The soft lips rippled as her mouth formed words that did not quite register. Faisal blinked rapidly. The facial image strobed. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and a stethoscope hung laterally around the collar of her white lab coat.
“Where am I?”
“Just relax,” the woman said. “It will take several hours for the reversal agent to take full effect and for you to regain all your faculties.”
“Where am I?” Faisal repeated.
The doctor disappeared. A diminutive man wearing another starched lab coat replaced the woman. A pair of silver eyes peered at him from under a bald head and over a tightly cropped goatee.
“You are coming around nicely,” the man said.
Faisal asked the question a third time. Still no one would answer him.
“Leave us,” a third voice commanded.
The receding footfalls were followed by the clicking of a metal door latch. Sounds exploded around him as if through a loud speaker.
The drug!
The man attached to a third voice came into view from the opposite side of the bed. Faisal turned his eyes and gazed up at him. The man’s head was turned, looking to the foot of the bed, as if waiting for the doctor’s to leave. After a few seconds, he rotated his head and looked at Faisal, not speaking for a full fifteen seconds.
Dressed in a black turtleneck sweater under a tweed sports coat, he studied the patient with his hard black eyes.
“Welcome back.”
Al-Faisal tried to sit up. A firm hand pressed him back down.
“Not yet,” the man instructed. “Let the reversal agent do its thing.”
“What happened?” Al-Faisal asked. The words sounded foreign to him, as if spoken by a drunken man.
“Everything went as planned. You took HH-34. It worked as it was supposed to.”
Al-Faisal frowned in confusion.
“You died and we brought you back.”
“Where am I?” al-Faisal asked. The words felt like they were coming from outside his body.
“In a safe hospital in rural West Virginia, an hour from the prison. Now relax. In a few hours, we will move you out of here … to be reunited with your mother.”
Four hundred miles northeast of the safe hospital, Peter Rodgers sat behind the wheel of the Freightliner with the engine running. His hands rested on the steering column, gripping the vinyl. He had not moved a muscle since the man standing ten feet from the cab had ordered him to place his hands on it. It was late Sunday afternoon. The parking lot itself was deserted, save for the idling truck.
“Are you Jason?”
“Yes,” Peter lied.
“Where’s your brother?”
“I left him at a coffee shop on the way.”
“I was told there would be two of you.” The man’s face was covered with a black bandana much like outlaw cowboys once wore. Peter couldn’t discern the make of his weapon. But it was a large caliber that would cause a lot of damage.
“Sorry about your bad luck,” Peter intoned calmly. “It’s just me.”
“Turn off the engine and get out. Now!”
Peter cut the engine, pushed open the heavy door, and stepped down. He stood beside the open cab with his hands raised, palms facing the gunman.
“So what is the going rate for secret deliveries to Dawson Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey?”
“Shut up!” The man removed a cell phone from his jacket pocket and pressed a preprogrammed number.
“Are you an American?”
“I said shut up!”
The man’s gun hand wavered. His eyes darted about as if he’d forgotten what to do next.
This guy’s a nervous wreck.
Peter pressed his luck and the man’s patience. “You know treason carries the death penalty.”
“If you say another word, I’ll shoot you right here. My orders were to secure you and your brother …”
“Well, I’m glad I made him get out of the truck.”
Someone answered. The gunman spoke to the person on the other end. “Where the hell are you? He’s here. Get the fuck over here!”
Thirty seconds later, a dark sedan pulled to a stop in front of the truck. Four men exited. Two flanked Peter. Before the hood was placed over his face, Peter saw the second pair of men climb into the truck.
He was tossed roughly in the back of the sedan beside a third man, whose presence he could feel. The former marine’s hands were bound in front of him. Peter heard the truck engine rev and move off. Seconds later, his head jerked backward as the car accelerated away.