Spectrum Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  PART TWO

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  PART THREE

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  About the Book

  A fast-paced thriller from the author of the international bestselling Shepherd series.

  The gruesome killing of more than 300 white squatters in a South African village is still unsolved when the alleged assassin enters a storage facility in the US and takes several hostages.

  No demands and an obvious play for time leave hostage negotiators on edge. When the FBI is called in, they bring Dr. August Burke, a young man with James Dean looks and a brilliant mind capable of seeing behavioral patterns where others can’t. Unfortunately, Burke hates being around people. Can he put his social anxieties aside and solve the mystery before it’s too late?

  Together with FBI Special Agent Carter, Burke finds the door to a secret laboratory beneath the storage facility. Is this what the culprits are really after? Soon Burke realizes they are dealing with an enemy who is willing to kill thousands without batting an eye.

  Across the globe, Constable Isabel Price picks up her gun and starts the hunt for the killer behind the village massacre, even if that means losing everything. She has no intention on bringing him back alive. Her thirst for revenge leads her to the US, and her path intertwines with the hostage takers.

  Between Isabel Price’s quest for bloody vengeance and August Burke’s uneasy gift, Spectrum weaves a web of intrigue and complex characters into an action-packed crime novel.

  About the Author

  ETHAN CROSS is the international bestselling and award-winning author of THE SHEPHERD, THE CAGE, CALLSIGN: KNIGHT, and THE PROPHET—a novel described by bestselling author Jon Land as “The best book of its kind since Thomas Harris retired Hannibal Lecter” while #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Lisa Gardner said, “The surprises are fast and furious and will leave you breathless to read more”.

  Readers can connect with Ethan on various social media platforms:

  www.ethancross.com

  www.facebook.com/EthanCrossBooks

  @EthanCrossBooks

  Ethan Cross

  SPECTRUM

  A Thriller

  »be« by BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

  Digital original edition

  »be« by Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

  Published in agreement with the author, c/o BAROR INTERNATIONAL, INC., Armonk, New York, U.S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is written in U.S. American English.

  Copyright © 2017 Aaron Brown

  Copyright © 2017 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Köln, Germany

  Written by Ethan Cross

  Edited by Lou Aronica

  Project editor, English: Lori Herber-Griffin

  Cover design, English: Massimo Peter

  Cover Illustrations: © shutterstock: ZRyzner | ostill | Lia Koltyrina | talseN | ilolab

  eBook production: Urban SatzKonzept

  ISBN 978-3-7325-4752-4

  www.be-ebooks.com

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Isabel Price stumbled through the rusty door of the small corrugated metal shack and, ignoring the pain, ran as fast as her strong South African legs would carry her.

  Words like nightmare and why kept floating through the maelstrom of thoughts inside her mind. She felt light-headed and nauseated. She stumbled over the barren terrain between each clapboard shack of the squatter camp. She had to know if they were all dead. She had to know if her boy was dead.

  Dingani shouted her name from somewhere behind, but she ignored him. She had to know. And her desire to know was so strong that no other thought could possibly enter her mind until she knew Tyler’s fate. All she could think about was her boy.

  Her father’s shouts joined with Dingani’s. Elliot Price had always possessed a booming and powerful voice. It had served him well as a budding politician back in the days when the white minority ran the government.

  Isabel ignored her father’s calls. All she could think about was her boy.

  She jumped a fence and landed inside Mrs. Eberle’s herb garden. Isabel didn’t give a second thought to the destruction of the kind old lady’s property. If her fears were justified, then Mrs. Eberle wouldn’t mind. Because Mrs. Eberle was already dead. Along with all the other residents of the squatter camp.

  She kept moving, jumped the next fence, and came to a dirt trail beaten into a roadway by the feet of the camp’s poverty-stricken inhabitants. She ran north and east and across two rows of the thrown-together shacks, each one of them slightly different depending on what was available when they were constructed. Most had dirt floors with the residents sleeping on mattresses
sprawled over the ground. No furniture. No running water.

  Ahead, Isabel saw her destination. A shoddy blue and white shack made of corrugated metal and one-by-fours. She ran up to the tiny home’s front door and knocked with enough force that she feared she may have damaged the clapboard building’s structural integrity.

  There was no answer. No sounds inside. No signs of movement.

  Using her police training, Isabel kicked the door and burst inside with her flashlight and service pistol at the ready. This shack had been slightly upgraded compared to most of the others. She had seen to that, wanting her boy to have a better life than sleeping in the dirt. She saw Tyler’s birth mother’s body where she had been sleeping on a pull-out couch.

  Isabel fought the urge to vomit.

  They were all dead.

  But she still had to see for herself. She ran toward the back of the shack where Tyler had his own “room,” the size of a small closet. Still, her boy loved having his own space. She saw the blood coming out from beneath Tyler’s door, and she knew.

  There was nothing more she needed to see. Constable Isabel Price of the South African Police Service, or SAPS, had seen enough crime scenes and enough victims and enough pools of blood to know when someone was not walking away. And she knew that Tyler—like his birth mother, like everyone else inside this all-white South African squatter camp—was dead.

  Isabel stumbled out into the crisp morning air, knocking over half the furniture in her wake. She felt the whole world spinning. This had to be a dream. A nightmare. Any second she would wake up in the hospital after having endured a car crash or a gunshot wound or a brain aneurysm, and she would realize that this whole scene had been nothing but a bad dream brought on by some slightly less horrible trauma.

  But this felt real. Too real.

  She didn’t know what to think or believe. She just fell to her knees in the middle of the dirt path, dropping her pistol and her flashlight and not caring about dirtying up her nice, new pantsuit. She crawled through the dirt, weeping, her tears flooding down her face and staining the ground.

  She didn’t scream or say a word.

  Constable Isabel Price merely fell over on her side and curled up into a ball. Then she closed her eyes and prayed to wake up from the nightmare.

  But all she could think about was Tyler. Her boy. With his head, hands, and feet chopped off. Just like the nearly 300 other residents of the camp.

  Chapter 2

  One month later …

  He heard the low growls before he saw the beasts. The sound of paws in dirt, bushes rustling. Then the roars and the screams. He ran, and one stepped in front of him and Zarina. It batted a paw, toying with them more than attacking. His mother shrieked and dove at the beast, yelling for him to run. He felt warm blood on his clothes, but didn’t know to whom it belonged. He ran and hid and listened as his mother was eaten alive.

  But since the recent deaths he had witnessed in a South African squatter camp, the dream had changed.

  Now, when his mother was being devoured, he was seeing through the lion’s eyes and feeling what it felt. He sunk in his teeth and tore her flesh, pinning her with his claws. He felt the blood in his mouth as he devoured her entrails while she still lived.

  Then he felt something strike his shoulder, and he was instantly awake, reaching for both his knife and gun simultaneously.

  “It’s time. Do your thing.” Dr. JoAnn Raskin said.

  Idris Madeira, or Kruger as he was known professionally, scowled over at the arrogant little American. He knew what time it was, and his internal clock told him that he’d been awakened ten minutes too early. He checked his watch and confirmed the error. Sleep on a mission was often a luxury, and Kruger had learned long ago to take advantage of every moment of rest—because he never could tell when he might have to go days without closing his eyes.

  The target would be sleeping by now. He had decided to wait until three in the morning to be sure. His pompous accomplice had complained and argued that 1:00 a.m. would be more than sufficient. But he overruled Raskin on all operational matters. He was the professional, after all, and had carried out similar assignments on numerous occasions.

  The patient predator was always rewarded with the better kill.

  From the passenger seat, Raskin handed him the syringe and the tube containing the Q-tip without saying a word, like he was some hunting dog being taken off the leash and told to run. If he hadn’t required the American’s knowledge and connections to complete this final job, he would have ended Raskin long ago. The haughty American certainly deserved it, probably more so than anyone else he had ever killed. But such an act of indulgent, emotional violence would have been rash and stupid, and Kruger had learned to play the long game from years of hard lessons and painful mistakes.

  He stepped from the van and headed toward the small two-story home. It was blue-green with projecting eaves and a low-pitched gable roof covered in terra-cotta tiles. He had studied the layout of the house and the target’s routines and knew that Fred Little would be waiting in an upstairs bedroom or asleep in his La-Z-Boy in front of the television.

  The Americans were so obsessed with their TVs. He and Zarina didn’t even own a television. If he wanted to catch a soccer game, they would travel down to the local sports bar or attend in person. He had better things to do with his time than watch others live their lives.

  The preparations were all in place. Fred Little’s house key had been stolen from his pocket, imprinted, and returned. The security system code had been acquired by watching through a window using a telescopic lens as Fred entered it. Kruger simply walked into the house as if he were the owner returning from a hard day’s work.

  As he ascended the stairs, he hugged the wall with his size 22 boots, stepping up one foot at a time, knowing that creaks and groans were seldom found on a stair’s innermost edge. His right hand held a black Beretta M9A1 pistol with a sound suppressor threaded over its barrel, although he had no intention of using the weapon. It was merely a precautionary measure.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw a dark face and the glow of eyes. He raised the gun as a reflex before he realized it was only a mirror. He stepped forward, and the image of himself grew larger. A large window over the home’s foyer allowed the moonlight to illuminate his form, but he had to lean his seven-foot frame down in order to look into his own eyes.

  But were they his eyes or were they Kruger’s?

  He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t differentiate the line between Idris, the husband and father, and Kruger, the professional killer and mercenary who was spoke of in certain circles as a phantom. He had only allowed Kruger to be a mere shadow, a predator, a weapon, a tool used to print money for Idris. But now he couldn’t decide if Kruger had taken over or lost all control.

  And then he was back in the squatter camp, going from house to house. He saw his own hands bringing down the blade over and over, chopping off pieces of what had once been people so poor they slept in the dirt. But in his ears, he didn’t hear the ripping and breaking of sinew and bone. He heard his mother’s screams and the growls of the lions.

  Suddenly aware of his surroundings, he stood back up to full height and checked his watch. Cursing himself, he double-checked his weapons out of pure habit. He had succumbed to another fugue and had apparently been staring into the mirror for a full five minutes.

  On most of his missions such a lapse would have resulted in his death. He was lucky that this particular target was sleeping peacefully and had no one to watch over him. But Kruger knew that luck only held out so long. It only took one mistake, one second of lost focus. He needed to get out of the game. And he needed to do it quickly or he wouldn’t have to worry about whether he was truly Idris or Kruger, because they would both be dead.

  He opened the bedroom door and crept inside. Fred Little slept on his back and was snoring like a bear. The thin sheet had been kicked away and only covered a portion of Fred’s torso. He wore nothing
but a white T-shirt and checkered boxer shorts. This routine had been verified on three previous nights using a remote-controlled drone to peer into Fred’s bedroom window.

  Kruger gently moved the sheet aside and pulled up on the leg of Fred’s boxer shorts. Then he retrieved the Q-tip from the tube and swabbed the injection site. The local anesthetic would keep Fred from feeling the penetration of the needle. He waited a moment to be sure the numbing effect had taken hold, and then he injected the succinylcholine into the middle third of Fred’s upper thigh, straight into vastus lateralis muscle.

  He waited a few moments for the drug to spread through his target’s system. As he waited, he watched Fred sleep. Kruger knew from his research that Fred was the youngest of three boys born to a wealthy farming family in rural Kentucky. His inherited money allowed Fred to attend college at MIT and study robotics, but to Kruger’s eyes, Fred still looked like he belonged in the backwoods, hunting and fishing, with his auburn brush pile mustache and long sideburns cut into a point in the middle of his cheeks. But Kruger definitely wasn’t judging the man. He—or rather his alter ego, Idris Madeira—had been born in a small village in Mozambique and felt more at home on the savannah than in a jungle of concrete.

  After a sufficient amount of time had passed, Kruger flipped on a lamp beside the bed. When that didn’t rouse his slumbering target, he slapped Fred across the face.

  The man opened his eyes, breathing heavy and trying to clear the haze of sleep. Fred tried to move but found himself paralyzed.

  “Don’t struggle, my friend,” Kruger said. “I’ve injected you with a paralytic that still allows you to feel pain. The downside is that it will also relax the muscles that allow you to breathe. If you struggle too much or exert yourself, you’ll die from asphyxiation.”

  Probably still groggy from sleep and hoping this was all a dream, Fred said, “What do you want? Take whatever you need.”

  “I was going to do that anyway, but it’s very polite of you to offer consent.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I need some information.”

  “Information about what? I don’t know anything important.”