Assassin Zero

by Jack Mars

  He needed to call Tabby Halpern and get her to start making the necessary arrangements for the evacuation of New York. But for a moment he just stood there and struggled to gather his thoughts. The country needed leadership—but all he could think of was his former zeal for resignation.

  Now he stood on the precipice of what could very well be one of, if not the largest terror attack on American soil. How would he go down in the history books if he allowed that to happen under his brief watch? How would it look if he resigned immediately afterward? Putting Joanna Barkley behind the desk wouldn’t be perceived as a heroic move. It would look like cowardice. He would be the man who spent thirty-something days in office and managed to let the Russians trample right over them before putting it all promptly behind him.

  Rutledge shook his head like a wet dog. He had never been one to back down before, he reminded himself, and he wasn’t about to give in to the pressure of the position just yet. He dialed Tabby’s number and considered how to explain that they needed to evacuate more than three million people from Manhattan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  “No, no, no,” Angela scolded as she waved her arms like an air-traffic controller. “You cannot put designer handbags that close to the entrance. It’ll become a chokepoint. We want to get people in the door and moving, direct the flow of foot traffic.”

  Her young employee, Chloe, simply blinked at her. Chloe was twenty-three, an absolute wunderkind at accessorizing—but unfortunately had about as much common sense as a housefly.

  “We’re creating a lane here,” Angela explained gently. “People that risk Third Avenue on Black Friday are coming here to find something specific, so the hot-ticket items go over there.”

  “Right,” said Chloe. “Of course. Sorry, Angela.”

  “It’s fine, kiddo. Just get it done.”

  Angela stepped back and sighed as Chloe worked to wheel the rack away from the entrance. She wished she had more help; even with the offer of double time and a half, there weren’t many people that were willing to put in hours on the evening of Thanksgiving to make sure the store was ready for the Black Friday onslaught. After all, they would be all-hands-on-deck before sunrise.

  Some of them, like Chloe, had no idea what to expect. You couldn’t, not really; not until you’d seen it with your own eyes. But Angela had been on these front lines for most of her life, having spent the last twenty-two years in retail. In fact, aside from one glorious year when she’d been vacationing in Riviera Maya over the holiday, she had worked every single Black Friday since the time she was Chloe’s age.

  And every year, it felt like they opened earlier and earlier, which meant coming in to finalize their setup while the taste of turkey and cranberry sauce was still on her tongue. Even two hours earlier, when she’d arrived to unlock the store, there had already been a trio of women camped outside, sitting in folding chairs with blankets over their shoulders and sharing cocoa from a thermos.

  Unreal, she thought. If she didn’t have to work it, there was no way in hell she’d ever venture out on Black Friday.

  “Missy, hey.” Angela snapped her fingers twice at a thirty-something blonde who worked in women’s. “Help Chloe with those handbags, yeah? And I want scarves moved over there, closer to the registers. It’s supposed to be a rough winter; they’ll be a great impulse buy.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Boss. Angela bit her lip to keep the smile off her face. It had been a struggle, proving herself to be worthy of her title, but she earned it. Assistant manager to one of New York’s biggest and best department stores—maybe the best, if she could say so herself. If all went according to plan, she might one day have Tom’s job, and run the whole place.

  Then I won’t have to be here doing this anymore, she mused. The general manager of Macy’s, Tom Spitz, would be there by midnight when they opened their doors, but at the moment he was still home with his family.

  Angela crossed her arms, scanning for anything out of place or amiss. She still had to deal with the store’s second level, but here, just beyond the entrance, would be ground zero come time. Getting people in the doors and properly dispersed was integral—

  Her phone buzzed suddenly in her back pocket, accompanied by a shrill, blaring screech so loud that Angela jumped a little. It took her a moment to realize it was an emergency alert. Usually that meant an update on inclement weather or, god forbid, an occasional Amber alert for a missing child.

  And she wasn’t the only one that got it. From several directions around the mostly empty store she heard the screech of the alert as her employees received it too.

  Angela pulled out her phone to check it.

  Her face fell slack.

  “What the hell…?” she murmured.

  “Angela?” Chloe called to her hesitantly. “Is this real?”

  She didn’t answer, not at first. She was still in disbelief at the message. The emergency alert stated, in no uncertain terms, that the police were evacuating Times Square and its vicinity.

  She knew that it was real; it had come through the emergency alert system, and yet her first instinct was to disregard it. It was nearly Black Friday, for crying out loud. They couldn’t just leave.

  “Angela?” Chloe called again uncertainly.

  “Hang on,” she snapped as she dialed the manager’s number. But all she got in her ear was another blaring tone, this one telling her that the call couldn’t connect. “Missy?” She snapped her fingers twice. “You have Tom’s number? Try his cell.”

  Missy did so, but after a moment she shook her head. “Won’t go through. I bet everyone in a ten-block radius is on their phones right now, trying to find out what’s going on.”

  “Yeah,” Angela muttered. Why in the world would we be evacuated? She needed to know the nature of the emergency if she was going to be expected to make a judgment call. She opened the browser on her phone, but the connection was slow. “Somebody try to check Facebook or Twitter, see if anyone is talking about this.”

  “Oh my god.” Chloe’s hand flew over her mouth, the other clutching her cell phone as she lifted her wide-eyed gaze to meet Angela’s. Apparently the girl had been one step ahead of her. “Someone just tweeted… they’re saying it’s a possible terror attack.”

  “Who said?” Angela demanded.

  Chloe shook her head. “Everyone. It’s all over. There was a leak from the mayor’s office.”

  That was all Angela needed to hear. A tingle of fear ran up her spine. She was a lifelong New Yorker, remembered 9/11 all too terrifyingly well. Black Friday be damned; if there was even a chance that something like that could happen again, she wasn’t about to endanger herself or the lives of her employees.

  “Missy,” she ordered, “get the guys out of the back room. Chloe, let everyone on the second floor know. We’re leaving.” The two women scurried off as Angela cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed: “Everyone! We’re locking up and getting out of here! Grab your things and meet at the front in five!”

  Despite her warning, it took nearly ten minutes for the seventeen employees in the store that evening to stop what they were doing, gather their belongings, run to the restroom, whatever else needed doing. But after a brief eternity the group huddled near the exit and around Angela.

  It was only then it occurred to her that she didn’t know where they were supposed to go. “Chloe, did anyone say where we’re evacuating to?”

  The girl shook her head. “They only said to get out of the city.”

  Angela scoffed. And go where? Jersey City? Queens? She had an aunt in Staten Island, but wasn’t even sure the ferry would be running.

  Chatter rippled through their small crowd, nervous talk of hurrying home for loved ones and pets, trying to get through to relatives elsewhere in the city. Despite whatever responsibility she felt toward them, Angela knew that she couldn’t be accountable for her employees; as soon as the doors were open, they would go their separate ways, at least until whatever
this turned out to be was over.

  “Listen up,” she said loudly. She was divorced, no pets, no children; no one she had to run home for. The job was her life—and in that moment, it made her desperately sad.

  “I understand a lot of you have family that you’re worried about. Me, I’m going to my car and heading for the Lincoln Tunnel. I can fit four others. Anyone who wants to can come with me.”

  At first no one took her up on the offer, gazes averted and murmurs rising about family and friends. Then Chloe slowly raised her hand.

  “I’ll come. I… don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Angela nodded. “All right. I’m in the parking deck on the next block. Everyone else, be safe. Be careful. And… I don’t know. Check in when you’re able.” She took the ring of keys, unlocked the tinted front doors, and pulled them open.

  They were met immediately by a cacophony of sound. An orchestra of car horns blared from bumper-to-bumper traffic, backed by the stampede of pounding feet as people strode briskly or even jogged down the choked sidewalks, bags slung over their shoulders and children in their arms. Hundreds of voices shouted to one another, most panicked and frightened, others angry and confused.

  “Jesus,” Angela murmured. It had been barely more than ten minutes, maybe twelve, since they’d received the alert. But things were different now. If there was a threat, no one was sticking around to see if it would happen.

  Her employees brushed past her, joining the chaotic throngs and disappearing into them, the night swallowing their features so that she quickly lost sight of them, just another moving part in a writhing mass.

  “Chloe,” she said as she locked the doors again behind her, “you go first. Walk in front of me so I can see you.”

  The girl did, joining the foot traffic with Angela right on her tail. They kept with the pace of the crowd—thousands of people, as far as she could tell—walking quickly as she wondered just how in the hell they were supposed to get anywhere in this traffic. And where were all these people planning on going? It wasn’t as if they could all just hike over the bridge…

  “Oh!” She gasped as something gave way beneath her foot. Her heel snapped, twisting her ankle painfully. She stumbled forward, scraping her knees and palms on the concrete. Her purse tumbled to the ground. She tried to stand quickly and was met with someone’s knees to the small of her back, forcing her back down again.

  “Chloe!” she shouted.

  “Angela?” The girl’s voice sounded distant already.

  “Move!” she shouted angrily to the sea of surging pedestrians. But they kept coming, no one paying her any mind, no one helping her up. She pulled off the broken shoe, and then the other for good measure, and tried to stand again. A man rushing past her bumped roughly into her shoulder, spinning her halfway around and almost forcing her again to the pavement.

  She cursed at him and reached for her purse, but two hands scooped it up quickly.

  “Hey!” she shrieked. “That’s my purse! Stop!” Angela pushed against the current of people, craning her neck to see who had snatched it up. “Somebody has my purse! Stop!”

  A few people looked at her, but no one stopped.

  “Chloe!” she shouted. She couldn’t see her anywhere. She was jostled again, shoved left and right. Finally she pushed her way through until her back was to a storefront window. Her vision blurred with tears. Everything was in that purse; she’d lost her wallet, her phone, her car keys, even the keys to the store… and now she’d lost Chloe too.

  She had no idea where to go or what to do.

  She winced as glass shattered somewhere, not far off. Shouts rose from the crowd. Angela hugged her arms over her chest, suddenly a lot more afraid.

  Things were going to get far worse before they got any better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  “Arms up,” Samara ordered in Russian.

  Mischa put her thin arms up straight overhead, and Samara tugged off the blue hooded sweatshirt with the word BROOKLYN across the front. The girl stood there in her jeans and white T-shirt, a small amount of blood staining the collar from a superficial cut on her neck. Her arms were bruised, and likely her chest as well from the seatbelt. But it didn’t appear that anything was broken.

  “Leg out,” Samara said. Mischa lowered her arms and put her left leg out in front of her, and then slowly back to the floor. “Good. Now the other.”

  The girl winced slightly as she lifted her right leg, and then gritted her teeth quickly to try to hide it.

  “What is it? A cut?”

  “It’s fine,” the girl murmured. “Just hurts.”

  Samara nodded curtly. “Go wash up.”

  Crashing the truck had not been part of the plan. She had fully expected the Americans to locate the missing grocery truck, but not as quickly as they had. Her plan was to head north, to lead the authorities to Springfield, Illinois, and abandon the truck there—not only to waste their time and efforts, but in the hope that they would draw some wild parallel between it and the small town in Kansas, lead them on a false lead that other Springfields might be the next attack.

  But they had located her quickly. What they did not know was that she had a frequency scanner in the truck, and had heard the correspondence to a local Air Force depot requesting an immediate helicopter. From there she had been forced to improvise.

  After the crash, she and Mischa hurried from the scene, cutting across two residential backyards and hiding in a pair of garbage cans alongside someone’s garage. The police would expect her to flee, she assumed; they would set up roadblocks, check vehicles, be on the lookout for the Russian woman with the fiery red hair. So they waited, long enough for Samara’s legs to cramp in the stinking trash can, crouching in an inch of muck at the bottom of it, taking shallow breaths through her mouth.

  She heard cars passing by. She heard the squawk of a radio as police searched the neighborhood. No one thought to peek inside the garbage cans, and Mischa stayed utterly silent. At long last, after about two hours, Samara dared to lift the lid. Night had fallen, and there was no one in sight. She helped Mischa out of the other can, and the two of them clung to the shadows as they stole among the homes. She spotted one with no lights on inside, jimmied open the back door easily, and held her breath—but there was no alarm.

  Once inside, she located a telephone and made a call to a number she had memorized. She told the man on the other line the address at which they could be found, and then she checked the girl over for injuries.

  They had been very fortunate that neither of them was seriously injured. And their plan had still worked, as far as it could have; the Americans would find the cell phone she had left in the truck and would believe that New York City was their next target.

  As Mischa washed up in the bathroom, Samara went to the kitchen sink and splashed water on her face. They left the lights off, in case of vigilant neighbors. By her best guess, this home belonged to a couple with one child, a girl, likely a bit older than Mischa. It was far more house than three people needed.

  So disgustingly American.

  She wondered briefly what had happened to the man who was clinging to the grocery truck in the moments before the crash. The lunatic had leapt out of the helicopter and onto their roof. Even after all Samara had been through, she had never quite seen anything like that. With any luck, he had been thrown from the side, injured or possibly killed.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked as Mischa reappeared in the dark kitchen.

  The girl shook her head as she stared at the tiled floor. Something was bothering her, and Samara could guess what it was.

  “You missed the helicopter. You had a clear shot.”

  “It moved,” the girl murmured.

  “Yes,” Samara said flatly. “Helicopters move. What have I taught you? What have we trained for?”

  “Aim where your target will be. Not where it is.”

  “That’s right. And you lost the gun as well. If they recover it, they will have
your fingerprints. They will be on file with the Americans forever.”

  Mischa reached a small hand into the pocket of her jeans, and then opened her fist. The Tootsie Roll, the one Samara had picked up at the parade, lay in the palm of her hand. She held it out, giving it back.

  “No,” Samara said. “Eat it.”

  Mischa hesitated.

  “Go ahead.”

  But the girl did not. Instead she closed her hand around it and returned the candy to her pocket. It was a test, and they both knew it. She did not deserve the treat.

  “They’ll be here soon,” Samara told her. “Go upstairs. There is a girl’s room. Find different clothes. Be quick.”

  Mischa turned and dutifully headed up the stairs. Samara desperately wanted to turn on the television, to see what was happening, but she didn’t dare. Instead she went to the foyer and rifled through a coat closet until she found a dark suede jacket and a baseball cap with some sports team’s logo on it. She put on both. A minute later, Mischa returned wearing fresh jeans and a thick green sweater that was slightly too big for her.

  The two of them stood there in the dark foyer in silence, watching through the front window for another sixteen minutes, until a truck rumbled to a stop directly in front of the house. It was another box truck, this one brown with yellow letters on the side—a package delivery company.

  Samara opened the front door carefully and glanced about. She didn’t see anyone. The two of them strode quickly to the truck, where the Asian man behind the wheel, dressed in a brown uniform, nodded stoically to them. They brushed past him and climbed into the rear as the truck pulled away from the curb.

  Their other three cohorts were there, wearing their black masks with dark tinted lenses, seated on stacks of undelivered packages. In the center was a box much larger than the rest.