The Clearing - DSA Season One, Book One
Lou Paduano
The Clearing
The DSA Season One, Book One
Lou Paduano
Eleven Ten Publishing
BUFFALO, NEW YORK
Copyright © 2019 by Lou Paduano
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Eleven Ten Publishing
P.O. Box 1914
Buffalo, NY 14226
Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
Edited by JD Book Services
Cover art design by MiblArt
First edition published 2019
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Paduano, Lou
The Clearing / Lou Paduano
LCCN: 2019914242
ISBN-13: 978-1-944965-17-4 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-944965-15-0 (eBook)
Other Books by Lou Paduano
The Greystone Saga
Signs of Portents
Tales from Portents
The Medusa Coin
Pathways in the Dark
A Circle of Shadows
Greystone-in-Training
Hammer and Anvil
The DSA
Season One
Promethean
The Bridge
Spectral Advocate
Dark Impulses
Broken Loyalties
For my wonderful readers.
Thank you for starting this new adventure with me.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
About the Author
Consider Leaving a Review
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The Greystone Saga
Hammer and Anvil
Promethean
Chapter One
He hated the job.
“10-43. Officer in pursuit.”
It was his father’s dream, his father’s wishes that had pushed him to go through the academy, to display the shield proudly on his chest. It was never him, never Ben Riley’s purpose or aspiration.
That night was exactly the reason why.
The night’s patrol ran routine. There were no great explosions of violence, no upheavals of murder and chaos. It had been a simple patrol through the Lovejoy District of Buffalo with his partner behind the wheel. He’d offered to drive and was shot down—the start of every shift shared; an eternal joke to lighten the mood.
“I repeat, officer in pursuit.” Emily’s voice blasted in his ear as she fed directions for support to follow in pursuit of the suspect.
A laughable term. ‘Suspect.’ They’d pulled over the mid-size sedan on Walden just outside the park. It was a routine traffic violation and nothing more. The right taillight was out. Ben retrieved his citation pad, hand at the door, when the gentleman inside—lanky and young—made a run for it.
Ben went after him. No hesitation. No regret. Just doing his job, exactly the way his father would have wanted.
“They’re cutting through the park.”
Emily stayed behind to take a closer look at the abandoned vehicle. No words were shared between them, and none were necessary. Partners for almost his entire career, their movements were intuitive, practiced and measured. He’d never known anyone like Sergeant Emily Wright, whose very presence made the job palatable, able to hold his interest and sustain his hope.
Police work meant witnessing the darkness of humanity—attempting to hold the line against a world of sin and despair while somehow carving a small piece of a life out for oneself. The job took its toll, wearing at him, threatening to squeeze joy from his very vocabulary. But Ben kept pushing forward, working it out a little every day. He did it for his father, for Emily, and for everyone else.
Music filtered through the air; the park disappeared behind them. A fence hop and they raced down Wex Avenue, cutting west into the residential area. Single-family homes ran the block. Windows were open even with the rain beating along the ground, the long winter finally over. The rhythm matched both Ben’s pounding heart and the slapping of his shoes against the slick pavement.
He closed in on the man, fingers outstretched. Warnings passed from his lips. Stop. Halt. Freeze. All were ignored or lost in the wind. His hand grazed the man’s jacket before swiping nothing but air. Stumbling forward from the failed attempt, Ben plowed into the side of a parked car. The man ducked to the right to avoid the collision.
Three doors down, the rain at his back, the shadowed suspect leapt over the short, metal fence of the property and blitzed for the porch. Ben followed, unclasping the lock on his holster. He kept the weapon at his side, refusing to allow things to escalate further. He jumped the fence, eyes never wavering from the man at the front door.
The figure didn’t reach for keys to enter the domicile. Instead, a keypad beamed to the right; drilled into the cracked and warped siding. The electronic display demanded a code, which was quickly punched in with the aid of a small scrap of paper tucked between his fingers. Five clicks and the front door released from the frame. The man slipped into the shadows of the home.
Before the door could close, a hair’s breadth from shutting him out, Ben caught it. He hesitated for only a second, then pulled at his radio.
“243 Wex, Em,” he announced. “I’m heading inside.”
“Ben, don’t!” she shouted through the static. “Wait for—”
The door closed behind him and the radio fell silent. Darkness filled the room. Ben shuffled his feet forward slowly, a hand over his father’s Ruger. The sound of metal clanged under his step. Confused, the determined officer took a second step and then a third.
Lights came alive overhead. Ben’s eyes widened. For his entire life, Ben had sought something bigger, a purpose and an answer for his life, never truly believing he would ever find one.
Until now.
There was no home before him, no living room or kitchen, and no early-twentieth-century decor repaired a dozen times over during the decades. The home wasn’t a home at all, but a vast warehouse extending as far as he could see. Compartments lined the walls, and there were workstations in the center. Lab equipment sat in each, chemicals filtering through beakers in some and high-tec
h medical assemblies positioned in others. Machine arms from an assembly line manufactured devices that the overwhelmed officer failed to recognize. It was technology unlike any seen in the open market. Computer terminals and interfaces adorned every surface in the space, displaying data readouts, formulas, and code—all of which went over Ben’s head.
At the heart of the operation was a cityscape. It was a scale model, but of no metropolis the young officer had seen before. Walls confined the facsimile, the word UTOPIA emblazoned along the base. Ben shifted for a closer look when he noticed the floor beneath him change from solid to scattered.
The grating allowed him to scan below his current position. No longer at ground level, he was suspended many times higher from the bottom of the structure. His feet stumbled from the jarring loss of all sense of direction. Hands grabbed for stability, and he caught a protective railing at the last moment before falling.
“Where the hell am I?” he struggled to ask. “Where—?”
His suspect was gone. The object of his pursuit and the reason he’d stepped foot into the home in the first place. Where once there might have been a dozen places to hide, innumerable shadows existed in the warehouse.
Ben took a step forward then stopped. A sound buzzed in his ear, holding him in place. It started like a bee along his collar and he quickly took a step back. The sound grew with each step.
His radio was back and Emily’s voice called to him from outside. The clarity sharpened the moment he turned around and caught sight of the entrance.
The door returned—white as ever with cracked paint and gaps at the bottom of the frame. It was an anomaly compared with the rest of the place. Ben returned to the door and opened it.
Emily Wright raised her sidearm and Ben threw up his hands, smiling at her arrival.
“Em,” he said as he inched away from the frame. “You have to see—”
A hand slammed into his back, shoving him toward the stairs. Ben stumbled across the porch. He caught the railing before tripping down the landing. He spun around, but it was too late. The door shut, crashing into the frame with finality.
“Ben,” Emily said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he replied, eyes locked on the door. “But you won’t believe what’s in there. It’s—”
Flashing lights washed over them and tires screeched to a halt on the street. Their support arrived: a pair of officers exiting the vehicle to join them.
“Everything all right?”
Emily nodded, a hand raised to hold them back. “We’re fine.”
Ben pulled her back toward the door. “Em, you have to see this.”
He reached for the knob and twisted. It failed to budge. Ben pushed with his left while doing the same motion, all to no avail. Perplexed, he turned to the panel along the siding.
“Ben,” Emily started, confusion resting in her eyes. “Leave it. The guy’s car was clean. No idea why he bothered to bolt. We can have a forensics team take a look and—”
“Let me try.”
“How are you going to pick the right combination?” she asked. “There must be thousands.”
Ben agreed. Five numbers in the sequence meant the chance of stumbling upon the correct iteration was infinitesimal. Still, he pressed on. Covering his finger with his sleeve, Ben carefully tapped a string of numbers, then stepped back.
The door groaned open from the frame.
He smiled, hands spread wide in the air. “Magic.”
“Please,” she scoffed.
“Say it with me,” he continued. “Magic.”
She shook her head as she stepped into the home. “I’m not saying it.”
Ben followed, waiting for an exclamation from his partner to fill the warehouse. Only no cry rose from Emily, and no warehouse spread before them.
He entered the home to find the buzzing overhead light of a shallow hallway. The living room to the right held water-damaged wood for flooring and battered furniture in desperate need of repair. Peeling paint—yellow or what could have been yellow at some earlier date—streamed up the stairs to the second floor.
No cityscape model. No technology leagues beyond anything they had ever seen. No wonder. No amazement of any kind.
“This is what you wanted to show me?”
Ben turned around and the door was still in place. He stepped out then back in, the results never changing. “Not even close.”
All that remained for Ben Riley were questions—unceasing mysteries that would haunt him for the rest of his days.
Chapter Two
It fell apart in twenty-two minutes.
One week was spent on planning, research, and back-tracing—all to figure out the target and the proper strategy to take care of the job. Three days spent going over the breach angle, the layout of the building. Hours spent poring over every minute detail, repeated until each player in the drama could recite the priority of every other person both in the field and at Bethesda One.
It all fell apart in the end.
Susan Metcalf was standing in the hall of the subbasement when the call came in. It didn’t arrive through her personal cell, which rested in her hand. She had spent the previous hour reassuring her superiors—not quite how she viewed them—of their control over the situation and convincing them that it would be handled before the close of business. It was not a promise—it was a guarantee made on the trust she placed in her team. They were the four people most qualified out of any government agency to track down the suspect and apprehend him.
Oliver Blake. She preferred ‘the suspect.’ The term made him sound as inhuman as his actions. One week earlier he had released a contagion on an unsuspecting cafe in Spokane, Washington. Twenty-three people had died beside their beverages—men, women, and children—the strain was indiscriminate in its final judgment. Twenty-three bodies on the floor while one man walked away, satisfied at the result.
Every agency had been brought to task. Every organization shifted their top priority to include the maniac in the gas mask who had terrorized a simple coffee shop for kicks. The Department of Special Assignments, designated DSA, trailed the surveillance image of the figure to the man himself and nailed down a name.
Oliver Blake.
They took the lead, Metcalf coordinating with the CDC and Homeland Security every step of the way. This wasn’t about ownership or jurisdiction. This was about justice for those fallen. The field team had breached Blake’s laboratory at 0738 hours.
Twenty-two minutes ago—a lifetime for her.
“Director?”
Zac Modine, the Head of Operational Support and Research, peered out the door to the Operations hub with a headset in his hand. The heavyset tech’s gaze dropped toward the ground rather than meet her full on.
“What happened?”
“It’s the team.”
With her phone tucked away, Metcalf entered the room. Immediately, the sound of a dozen individuals working in tandem filled her senses. Typing away, analysts sought solutions to problems yet to be determined. They were organizing detailed reports of their findings—precautionary measures to take if action was needed.
The back wall of the extensive space monitored the current operation in detail. To the right were bio-readings of the field team. Four images of each member of the team occupied the screens. The displays filtered through their vital signs, including heart rates and synaptic activity. To the left was a layout of Blake’s compound: an abandoned home on the outskirts of Deer Park.
The center console displayed an inside look at the team’s progress. Only, it no longer showed the home or the equipment found within. The bodycam had been positioned to show the team itself. Three figures filled the view, half-mask respirators still in place for containment protocol.
Metcalf slipped on her headset and angry voices immediately flooded her ears.
“You don’t know what—”
“I’m not going to argue about this any—�
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“We need to—”
“Enough!” Metcalf yelled through the communication line. “What happened?”
Ruth Heller stepped forward on the display, the other two falling silent. Heller wore military fatigue pants. She held a scanner with one hand while the other pushed short strawberry-blond locks behind her ear. “Blake’s dead,” she huffed, the sound crystal clear with the comm inside the gas mask.
Their objective was twofold—find the man and his research. Both goals were necessary to the success of the mission. Taking the man dead or alive had never been a sticking point.
“I don’t see why—”
“There was something in the lab next to where we found him,” she said over the director. Metcalf noticed the operations crew creeping closer to the monitors to listen. “Specimens. Samples. I don’t know exactly.”
“The toxin from the cafe?”
“It was locked down. We thought it was, but…” She trailed off, struggling to find the words.
Metcalf held firm to the headset. “Agent Heller? Has there been a breach?”
“No breach,” Ruth said, shaking her head. “Negative on breach. Samples have been contained.”
“Then what is it? Your gear?”
The black man to her left cut her off. He carried a Glock in a shoulder holster and an M-16 at his side. The consummate soldier, Lincoln MacKenzie was always prepared for war. “Our gear isn’t the issue.”
“Then what is?”
“Grissom,” Ruth said. “He’s—”
“He’s down,” Lincoln finished, fingers tight to his weapon.
“Agent Heller?” Metcalf called. Her heart pounded, the noise of the Operations room deafening. It swallowed her thoughts, threatened to spin her out of control. Jacob Grissom ran the field team. As the Deputy Director of the DSA, Grissom had helped her form the department from the ground up. He had been by her side for the better part of a decade. He brought purpose and direction to everything they did, every struggle and every victory. “We are still reading Agent Grissom’s bio-signs on our end. They’re cutting in and out like the rest of yours due to interference in the lab, but they’re still there.”
