True Fiction (Ian Ludlow Thrillers #1)(65)
From the CBS 2 News in Los Angeles during a live, impromptu news conference held by Tony Petrocelli, the famed criminal attorney representing Ronnie Mancuso, with dozens of media outlets on the courthouse steps:
My client believes that Blackthorn is part of a vast, continuing conspiracy being perpetrated by the global elites to control the world’s limited resources for themselves. We will prove that he was the victim of sustained and relentless harassment by Blackthorn that included constant surveillance, the destruction of his home, and an armed assault by trained killers. Is it any wonder that he snapped under that extraordinary pressure?
From Fox News, Shepard Smith reporting as video played of two men emerging bearded and dazed from an underground shelter in Nevada and into the custody of police:
The arrests of two Blackthorn operatives who had been imprisoned for months on Ronnie Mancuso’s Nevada property, and the wreckage of one of the infamous “black helicopters” so often referred to by those who believe in the New World Order plot, seem to confirm the actor’s claims of a vast conspiracy aligned against him.
From TMZ, and reported by some fat guy who looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a month:
Ronnie was released today from Corcoran Mental Hospital after six months of treatment. The first thing he did was go to In-N-Out, where he must have eaten forty double-double burgers. Look at these pictures. He was like one of those competitive eaters you see at a county fair.
From David Muir on ABC World News Tonight:
The remaining assets of Blackthorn Global Security, once the largest private security company in the United States, were sold today to satisfy the terms of the hundred-million-dollar settlement reached with actor Ronnie Mancuso in his lawsuit against the company. As part of the settlement, the company accepted responsibility for destroying the actor’s Nevada ranch and an attack on his Los Angeles home last year. The company maintains that actions against Mancuso were carried out by “rogue operatives” under the command of an unnamed executive, one of the thirty-four who were killed in a catastrophic fire at their Bethesda headquarters. The company still faces trial in Los Angeles on a number of criminal charges.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
An Excerpt from Death in the Sky by Ian Ludlow
The mood in the Blackshadow situation room in midtown Manhattan verged on festive. Clint Straker was dead, tracked to Grand Central Station using the RFID chip in his driver’s license. Their assassin had strangled Straker with a garrote in a restroom, left his body in a stall, and put an OUT OF ORDER sign on the door. All that they needed to do now was collect the corpse before it was discovered. A containment team was only minutes away.
For the first time in weeks, Dalton Trask could finally relax and truly enjoy his success. The president was on the verge of signing the classified executive order outsourcing the CIA’s covert operations to Blackshadow Global Security. The one man who could have stopped it from happening, who’d discovered that it was Blackshadow, and not the Islamic terrorists, that had crashed a plane into downtown Seattle, had just bled out on a toilet. Straker got what he deserved for meddling. He was just one man. He’d never stood a chance against them.
“The team has reached the target.” The status update was delivered by Andrea Zane from her command console with her typical urgent intensity, as if the agents were breaching a terrorist compound instead of a men’s room in a train station. Her report was also redundant, since the helmet-cam view from the team leader was visible on one of the flat-screens.
The team entered the filthy bathroom and pushed open each stall door, revealing one disgusting, overflowing toilet after another, until they came to one occupied by a man in a dark overcoat. Straker’s body was piled on the toilet, his head hanging down, his white shirt and dark slacks drenched in blood.
“They’ve found him,” Andrea said, once again stating the obvious.
“I want to see his face,” Dalton said.
The team leader heard Dalton’s order in his earpiece and lifted Straker’s head by the hair. The gash across Straker’s throat gaped at them like an obscene smile.
Except that it wasn’t Clint Straker they were looking at. It was another man, wearing dark sunglasses.
“Who the fuck is that?” Dalton roared.
“It’s our asset,” Andrea said, clearly confused. “But that can’t be.”
“Why not?” Dalton asked. “You just said that it’s him.”
“Because he’s here in the building,” Andrea said, pointing at her screen. “He came through the door ten minutes ago.”
To access the building, agents had to pass a retina scan and possess a card key that granted them access to selected areas of the building. Their every move within the building, and every keystroke on their computers, was tracked and logged.
“Take off the dead man’s glasses,” Dalton said.
The team leader removed the sunglasses from the corpse. One of the dead man’s eyeballs was missing. There was a collective gasp as every agent in the room reacted to the gruesome image. Dalton pounded his fist on the console.
Straker was in the building.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “Lock down the building. Track the asset’s card key and tell me where Straker has been and where he is now.”
“He was in your office and now he’s—” Andrea began, then looked over her shoulder in horror. Dalton whirled around and saw Clint Straker leaning casually against the wall, an amused smile on his face.