Threat Zero

by Nicholas Irving

  “You’re a good man, Jonesy. I’ll pass that along to Sergeant Major,” Harwood said.

  Jonesy shook his head. “No need. He knows, but thanks.”

  They jumped into the pleasant morning mist, a slight wind blowing off the Anacostia River, just beyond the stadium. Tall buildings surrounded the stadium, as if they were all leaning over trying to get a view inside. Random cars motored by with purpose; no one cruised this part of Washington, D.C., ever, much less at 2 A.M.

  “That way,” Hinojosa said, looking at her phone.

  Harwood led them across M Street, Southeast, beyond high-rise condominiums, and into a series of two- and three-story D.C.-style brownstones with flat rooftops. The streets had a planned-community feel to them. Small trees were planted every ten yards along the small yards. Every home had a version of a low white picket fence. Interstate 395 hummed with light traffic less than a mile to the north. Beyond that the Capitol rose from the teeming rooftops like a morning sun lifting above the ocean.

  “Next block,” Hinojosa said.

  “Wait,” Harwood replied. He held his hand across Hinojosa, blocking her movement. Then he pulled her down.

  There were two cars parked on the street less than half a block from them. Heads were moving back and forth, as if they were chatting. The windows were slightly fogged. Enough to write something in, Harwood thought, which meant they had been shut off for a while.

  “Two cars. Count about six guys, three in each, including drivers. Where’s our target?”

  “Right around the corner from them. I mean directly around. Two houses down.”

  A car came around the corner, sweeping them with its headlights. It stopped, and two men poured out. Harwood stood and stepped in front of Hinojosa while drawing his pistol and knife in opposing hands.

  The men were tattooed and scarred. They were baring teeth, looking like inked-up gargoyles, lips rolled back, teeth bared, muscles prominent. Like pit bulls without leashes, they leapt toward Harwood, two on one. Harwood sliced up with his knife and caught one man across the jaw, spewing blood everywhere. He spun and landed a back kick into the attacker on his right. The man rolled toward Hinojosa and was up and leaping at her. Harwood pistol-whipped the first man, his head as hard as concrete. Two more slaps with the pistol and he went down. He spun around to find Hinojosa and the second man squared off in a knife duel, circling like two wrestlers. Where Hinojosa had gotten the knife, he didn’t know, but was glad she had one. Maybe three seconds had passed since the whole thing started. He lifted his pistol and shot the man squaring off with Hinojosa then whirled in time to put three rounds into the windshield of the car careening their way. Its tires lurched up onto the curb and sent the car airborne. It landed with a thud on the first attacker that Harwood had knocked unconscious. The car bottomed out and spun into a telephone pole, dragging the man’s body beneath. If not for the pole, the car might have slammed Harwood into the brick wall behind him.

  Hinojosa cleared the dead gang member of a knife and Glock. Harwood checked the driver’s seat. One of his bullets had clipped the neck of the driver; the carotid artery was pumping blood out of the side like oil from a quart jug.

  “This was a diversion,” Harwood said. “They were rear security. These guys were sent to get the Twitter guy.”

  Two blocks down the four MS-13 assassins were out of their two cars, drivers remaining at the wheels. Two were looking in their direction and two were headed around the block. Like their dead brethren, these two men were wearing jeans and no shirts. They walked quickly, then began jogging, then transitioned to a full two-block sprint. Each was carrying a gun. Harwood’s shots had been “silenced,” but they were still loud enough to wake the neighbors. They had maybe five minutes to escape the area before the police came, if that.

  Harwood and Hinojosa bolted to the right into an alley. Hinojosa kept running, the rabbit, as Harwood pressed into a small doorway alcove before the attackers pinwheeled and followed into the narrow darkness. As the first man approached, Harwood lashed out with his knife, blade out running along his forearm. The man’s momentum carried him forward, but Harwood knew that he had scored a direct hit on the carotid artery. Blood was spewing like water from a cut high-pressure hose.

  Harwood’s momentum carried him into a frontal collision with the second man. He sliced at the man’s gun carrying hand, causing him to slow. He was confused, naked, without his weapon, so he retrieved a knife and locked on to Harwood in an odd wrestling move, like a front headlock. Both men had knives that were swinging wildly like two pendulums sparking off one another. Harwood’s rucksack made his movements more cumbersome and the MS-13 gangbanger was strong.

  Harwood spun and slammed the man into the alcove where he had been hiding. He jabbed up with his knife, but the angle that they were both keeping on one another prevented him from gaining any leverage. They were A-framed, powerful arms locked against each other’s shoulders, heads butting. Harwood’s short uppercuts with the knife hand were blocked by the gang member’s powerful forearm. He needed room to operate and this small area wasn’t helpful. He spun and let go all at once, risking turning his back to the man for a brief moment. The gangbanger was quick, though, a street fighter, and landed two rabbit punches in Harwood’s kidneys that felt like hammer blows. He was beyond the arc of the slashing knife, but just barely. Sirens began to blare loudly in the distance. Looking into the man’s eyes, Harwood saw evil. The irises looked elliptical, like a deadly serpent’s.

  There was movement beyond his attacker.

  Hinojosa.

  She held up her pistol and fired twice. The man braced, as if punched in the back. He stood there for a moment, staring at Harwood, blood beginning to trickle from his mouth. The man smiled, blood gurgling against what few teeth he had. He raised his knife hand and waved it at Harwood, stepping forward like a robot with a dying battery.

  Programmed to hate and kill, the man stumbled forward. Harwood retrieved his own pistol and shot him nearly point-blank between the eyes. Wasting no time, he ran to Hinojosa who had turned toward the address they had for Maximus Anon, the Twitter researcher. They were standing in a courtyard with four sets of back decks opening to the manicured lawn that was twenty yards across. Like a square, people in sixteen townhomes could potentially see what was happening. Hinojosa’s gunshot, while necessary, was loud, and lights were flicking on.

  “Second from the right,” Hinojosa said. She was taking deep breaths, no doubt fueled by adrenaline.

  They raced up onto the wooden deck of the townhome reportedly owned by Maximus Anon, LLC. The tax records did not show an individual’s name associated with the ownership. Harwood had no idea what to expect. He slowed as they approached the back door, noticing two stories up and possibly a basement. Corrugated metal half-moons filled with gravel were protecting two small windows at ground level that peeked up at them. Through the window off the deck, the radiant beams of flashlights crossed like dueling light sabers. They were too late. The MS-13 gang members were searching the house.

  The doorknob rattled. The deadbolt unlocked. Harwood and Hinojosa pressed up against the sliver of brick wall in between the window and the door. The door opened inward and away from them. The flashlight made a quick sweep of the wooden planks, its arc barely grazing Harwood’s boots. Someone shouted, “Hey!” from across the courtyard. The door shut, and two voices ricocheted in Spanish. Harwood looked at Hinojosa.

  “Nobody’s here. Let’s haul ass.” She translated for him.

  The front door slammed shut. Harwood waited ten painful seconds, wondering if it was a trap. The car doors slammed. The sirens grew louder. Harwood opened the door. Hinojosa followed as they raced through the kitchen into a family and dining room. The house was neat, well kept. Furniture was perfectly arranged, like a showroom.

  He said, “Check upstairs, I’ll take the basement.”

  Hinojosa flew up the stairs as Harwood opened the door that led into a darkened cellar. He flicked on the lig
ht switch, listening to Hinojosa’s footsteps thunder above. He didn’t like splitting up, but they had about thirty seconds to finish what they needed to do. Entering the basement, to the left was a laundry room with a large washbasin and white washer and dryer. To the right was a door and wall that looked like an add-on after construction. Harwood tried the doorknob but it was locked. He stabbed his knife into the drywall, carved a quick hole, and then punched his fist through the smaller opening to make a bigger one. His hand felt around for the inner knob, found it and twisted. He opened the door and shouldered through while awkwardly retrieving his arm.

  Inside the room was a series of servers and monitors, like a hacker’s wet dream. He spun through the room and took inventory. No sign of anyone hiding anywhere. Something caught his eye. It was a small insignia decal on the side of one of the server racks. A red one-inch oval on the side of the black surface. He studied it for a second and recognized it immediately.

  Semper fidelis. Always faithful.

  The Marine motto.

  No time left to research further, he raced up the steps in tune with Hinojosa’s footfalls coming down. They met at the front door, opened and shot out like burglars chased by an alarm.

  Across the street was a similar warren of townhomes. They fled through an alley as police cars screeched to a halt on the side road where the MS-13 gang cars had been parked. They sprinted at full throttle through two more neighborhoods, crossed under I-395, drifted farther east, toward Anacostia, and found a public housing project that fronted Southeast Boulevard.

  They dove into the open doors, raced up the steps until they were on the roof. A couple of homeless people were laid out in sleeping bags on one side, so Harwood and Hinojosa jogged twenty yards the other way and knelt. He knew they were treed in this building, but he felt that they had moved far enough away from the scene that they could stop, plan, and move.

  “Anything upstairs?” Harwood asked.

  “Two perfectly made beds. Closets filled with men’s suits and classy women’s clothing. If we’d had more time I would have tried on a few things.”

  Harwood nodded, smiled. First joke in a while. A good sign.

  “The basement had servers and computers in it. Almost like a hacker lived in there, but as we were running the thought occurred to me that someone could be punching into that system from the outside. Like it’s a place just to house the electronics.”

  “Could be, but why?”

  “Obviously Maximus Anon doesn’t want to be discovered,” Harwood said.

  “Doxed. So he or she has an important job,” Hinojosa said.

  Below them cars sped along the Southeast Freeway. Beyond that headlights cut a path across the Anacostia River on I-395. New construction was sprouting along the north bank. Half-built condominium buildings towered over the District Yacht Club. The piers poked into the water like bony fingers, the slips half full of assorted vessels from yachts to twenty-foot speedboats.

  In the distance to the south and west, the flashing blue lights from the crime scene grew in number and intensity as the police gathered. Police cars also blocked the roads leading outward from the residential area. The block was too tight, though, Harwood thought, and of course they and the MS-13 gang members had already fled. The police had four dead MS-13 bodies, provided the members didn’t clear them out. But two police helicopters appeared on the scene and began working in concentric search patterns from the crime scene outward.

  “Semper fidelis,” Harwood said, remembering the decal on the server rack.

  “Marines. Always faithful.”

  “Right. Maximus Anon is a marine.”

  “Or former marine,” Hinojosa said.

  “No such thing. Once a marine, always a marine,” Harwood said.

  “Who do you think? Know any marines?”

  “Weathers,” Harwood said. “He’s a marine.”

  “Who was trying to kill us.”

  “Who told him to dump me?” Harwood asked. He looked at Hinojosa, searching for a tell.

  “I don’t know. He was communicating directly with CONUS. I suspected something based on seeing he had a burner phone, which is why I gave you the Baku bail-out option. Then I used a Jack Rabbit to find his number and eavesdrop. That’s how I found out he talked to someone here in the National Capital Region who was using a voice changer. You can buy them on Amazon nowadays. But it had that low mechanical sound to it. Traced the cell number and it was a burner, also. But the directive was to dump you alive in Iran. I presume to leave evidence of American involvement in the murders. Your fingerprints were on Stone’s sniper rifle and so it would have been easy to make you as the killer.”

  “I was the killer,” Harwood said. “You directed me to kill. Who directed you?”

  “Bronson gave me the instructions. Our tiff was a façade.”

  Harwood thought about Bronson. Good-looking black guy. Better looking than him, that was for sure. Harwood was a jagged rock to Bronson’s shiny diamond. Polished and political, Bronson could be good for either Maximus Anon or the mechanical voice.

  Or both.

  “Bronson is a former marine,” Harwood said.

  “I know. I just put that together. You think he is Maximus Anon?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Harwood said.

  Hinojosa nodded.

  “But first we need to find a place to hole up, because this rooftop isn’t going to hold,” he said. Harwood stared at the half-built condominiums as he spoke. It was approaching 3 A.M. and the city was at the ebb of its activity. The partiers were home and fast asleep. The early risers and commuters were either hitting snooze or looking for coffee. The freeway had a rare moment of inactivity and Harwood led Hinojosa back down the stairs, passing a few stoned and sleepy drifters wandering the littered hallways. He guided her over the expressway and found a gap in the fencing. Navigating past piles of concrete blocks and rebar, he found an opening into the stairwell that would be the fire escape, most likely. He took that up as far as it went, walked onto the concrete floor that was a giant open space. Two walls were built and two of the sides were open, awaiting construction. Harwood used a flashlight to scan, saw a few fast-food bags, thought about rats, didn’t see any, and decided this was as good as any place. He walked the length of the floor, saw the fire escape on the other side, checked the exfiltration route that way, and was satisfied.

  But then, two police cruisers with unlit racks slowed as they slid past the construction site. He pressed them against the concrete wall, bare I-beams above. The cars continued along Southeast Freeway, going slow. Definitely looking. Two Coast Guard patrol boats slipped by along the river, searchlights swinging like a used car sale.

  “Okay, the cops are everywhere. Feds, too. We stop here. I was looking at the marina, but the Coast Guard is already in the water. Maybe we hide here for an hour or two. Let things cool down. What day is it?”

  Hinojosa thought for a second. “Tuesday morning.” She checked her phone to be sure and nodded.

  “Bronson will be in his office. You have his number?” Harwood was snapping his SR-25 together. He extended the bipods and aimed at the road then spun around and aimed at the river. He had some dead space, but he could hold there.

  “I do,” she said.

  “Okay, we wait here, make the call, and then move right away. Even money says that someone used a smartphone to record some of what happened. Good chance we’re on that recording,” Harwood said.

  “Oh, God.” She clearly hadn’t thought of that.

  “We have to do everything we can to stay off the radar while still getting at Bronson. He could be the key to this. It all started with him.”

  “It did,” Hinojosa said.

  “And then we find that missing MacBook.”

  “The one from Samuelson’s apartment,” Hinojosa said.

  But he had never mentioned that to Hinojosa. How the hell did she know about that and who exactly was she?

  Her phone purred with an in
coming call. She looked at it and tried to conceal it from Harwood.

  “Bronson’s calling you?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Sirens wailing from all corners of Washington, D.C., woke Sloane Brookes.

  She was disoriented and confused until she remembered that she had fallen asleep in Ravenswood’s guest bedroom at his Wharf penthouse as opposed to taking her helicopter back to her Virginia estate.

  The floor-to-ceiling window showed the Potomac River snaking to the southeast. Reagan National Airport—where her Sikorsky S-76 luxury chopper sat idle—was just south of the river. She thought about her pilots, who were holed up in Crystal City at the ready.

  Anxiety boiled in her throat, clenching, making it hard to breathe. While the sirens were just random noises, her instinct told her they were related to the mission she had directed earlier. That’s right, she had directed a mission to kill a man. That thought scared her, now. In the early morning darkness, innocence attempted to reemerge, a white bridal gown on a prostitute, perhaps. Her power and ambition demons were resting, fueling, and preparing for the long game, the presidency. The innocent child was scared, though, without residence, having been evicted long ago. The tough façade of the brave, scheming woman rested in her makeup kit in the bathroom.

  What was the mission?

  She needed to focus. Fight-or-flight syndrome was kicking in. She reached for her clonazepam bottle but then remembered this wasn’t her bed or nightstand. She had an emergency stash in her purse, which sat on the sofa across the room. She had no idea if Ravenswood had made it back or not. She knew that he dealt with seriously evil men to get their work done, but always kept a distance. She had no need or desire to know.

  She checked her phone, which sat on the nightstand, the battery almost drained. How had she forgotten to plug it in and charge it? The evening began to come back to her in pieces. The late-afternoon text to meet with FBI Agent Deke Bronson. Their dinner and drinks. Sex on the balcony captured on video by Ravenswood.