Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  “I got greedy.” Bixby tried to chuckle, but instead coughed again. Blood bubbled from his lips. “Stealing… files. They tracked me.”

  “Files. You have them? Evidence of what they were doing?”

  Bixby groaned. “Had.” His eyes rolled. Zero held his breath, thinking this was the end. But no; Bixby was looking at something. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d first entered the kitchen, but there was something else on the floor, just barely touching the puddle of blood that had flown from the engineer.

  It was a tiny USB drive. Or it had been. Someone had stomped it into pieces.

  Zero hung his head. He’d come here for evidence to put away Bright and Shaw and Krauss and expose them to the world. Instead he found a dead end and a dying friend.

  “Tell me what to do,” Zero implored him. “I don’t have anywhere to go from here. You must have found something. Please.”

  “Bright,” Bixby rasped. “Mr. Bright…”

  “We know about Bright. We know he put a suppressor in Stefan Krauss—”

  “Listen, please.” Bixby’s grip on his arm tightened. Zero was surprised he still had that much strength left in him. The engineer lifted his head off of Zero’s arm, and in a moment of lucidity he said, “Zero, I found something. Something I wasn’t meant to see. A classified file, about the Cairo Accord. He’ll try to stop it. He’ll need to stop it.”

  “What is it? What’s the Cairo Accord?” Zero’s mind raced but it didn’t jog anything. He glanced up at Alan, who merely shook his head. Clearly he hadn’t heard anything about it either.

  He felt Bixby’s head upon his arm again. When he turned back, his old friend let out a long sigh. The tension left his neck and shoulders. The grip on Zero’s arm waned; the hand fell away. His eyes were already closed.

  Zero slowly slid his arm out from beneath Bixby and rose to his feet. “We can’t leave him here like this. We’ll have to call someone.”

  “I understand how you feel,” Alan said carefully, “but we’d be compromising this location—”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  He’d lost yet another. Kate, Sean Cartwright, Karina Pavlov, Chip Foxworth, Guyer, Seth Connors, Maria, Bixby… their names lived in his head, their faces swam in his vision.

  When would it end?

  Would it ever end?

  Or was this his fate, to keep losing those close to him, to watch friends and family and lovers die while he was forced to keep going?

  A phone rang.

  All three of them glanced at each other in alarm. It rang again. It took Zero a moment to realize that the ringing was coming from Bixby’s shirt pocket. He pulled out an old flip phone, a burner, the bottom edge of it stained with blood.

  Unknown caller.

  He answered it, but said nothing.

  “Hi, Zero.” The voice was male, deep, didn’t sound like it was much older than he was. “Do you know who this is?”

  “I can guess.”

  There was authority to the voice. It wasn’t threatening but it wasn’t casual either. This was the puppeteer. The asset. The Voice.

  “Mr. Bright.”

  “That’s right,” said Bright. “Listen, I’m sorry about your friend, but he was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Zero promised. His hand trembled around the phone.

  “Come on now,” said Bright. He sounded a little impatient. “I was expecting more interesting conversation from you. Let’s not be a stereotype.”

  “Zero,” Alan whispered harshly. “We need to get out of here.”

  “You know about Krauss,” Bright said, “and you know about me. That makes you a liability. But if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now. Hell, I could have just bombed that apartment and ended it here.”

  Zero tensed. Bright was, unfortunately, right; he’d been so concerned finding Bixby that he hadn’t even considered they could be walking right into a death trap.

  “But I don’t want that,” Bright continued. “See, I have the doctor’s files on you. I know what’s going on in your head. Personally, I think it’s a much more fitting death than a bullet or a bomb. Still, personal feelings aside… I could help you. We could come to an arrangement.”

  Zero scoffed. “I’d never accept anything from you. You’re a terrorist.”

  Bright sighed. “I thought someone as smart as you would have a more evolved perspective. The world isn’t black and white, Zero. It’s gray. You want to think of me as this villain, like I’m the big bad wolf. But how many lives have you taken for the people that signed your paychecks? How many families have you broken up? How many homes destroyed?”

  “That’s different,” Zero murmured. “I stop killers. You make them.”

  Bright scoffed. “Make them. Right. Are we going to ignore how you started your own career? I know all about the CIA’s dark agent program. I don’t make killers, Zero. I control them. What do you think the world would be like if people like Krauss, or Amun, or the Brotherhood were allowed to operate unchecked? I provide order to chaos. I give them structure. If you really think about it… I’ve given you purpose. You’re a living legend. But—and let’s be honest with ourselves here—you’re not getting any younger. Your own brain is melting down. The FBI, CIA, and Interpol want to bring you in. Not to mention a half-dozen police departments. Tell me: what’s going to happen to your daughters if they get to you?”

  “Zero,” Reidigger warned uneasily. “Hang up. Let’s move.”

  But he ignored it. A red-hot fury ignited within him at the sound of a man so callously, so cavalierly threatening the lives of his family. “No deal. Krauss can come find me. I’ll kill him first. And then I’m coming for you.”

  Bright chuckled. “Krauss isn’t going to come find you, Zero. The ego on you! He doesn’t even know who you are. He’s moved on to… well, let’s just say ‘others.’ Of a less conspicuous nature.”

  “Who?” Zero demanded.

  “Please. I’m not going to make it that easy on you.”

  “Then why are we even talking?”

  “Honestly? I wanted the chance to speak with you, in case you get yourself caught or killed,” Bright said. “But… I’m also stalling you. Speaking of, tell your friend I like his hat.”

  Zero turned. “Alan, down!”

  Reidigger spun. A shot cracked. The window broke.

  Alan grunted, and he fell to the floor.

  Zero dropped the phone and leapt forward, tackling Mischa. The two of them crashed into the coffee table, splintering it. He rolled away with a groan.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “I am. See to him.”

  “Stay down.” Zero crawled over to Alan and rolled him over with some effort. Reidigger winced and held his shoulder. Blood ran between his fingers. “Let me see. Move your hand, let me see.”

  “We should have just left.” Alan grimaced as he pulled his hand away from the shoulder.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Zero took a look at the wound. The bullet had hit not two inches from his heart, no more than a half-inch from a lung. He was lucky. If he hadn’t moved in the instant before the shot went off, he would be dead.

  “A shooter on an adjacent roof,” he said to Mischa. They could have fired from a window, but the angle of impact and ease of accessibility suggested one of the surrounding low-slung roofs. “Can you draw his fire without getting shot?”

  Mischa nodded. “I’ll have to use your friend. The dead one.”

  Zero opened his mouth to protest, but closed it in favor of having a conversation later about tact. “Do what you have to. Give me a ten-second lead.”

  “Got it.”

  He crawled toward the door of the apartment. It wasn’t until he was in the corridor again that he stood, and then he dashed across it, down the stairs, and through the courtyard and its vibrant flowers. At the stone archway he paused, pulling the Glock from his jacket.

  Eight… nine… ten.
>
  He heard two shots, accompanied by breaking glass. The short scream of a bystander. He dared to peek out from the archway and quickly scanned the rooftops. The sun being behind them made the glint of a barrel all the more evident.

  Zero raised the Glock, and he fired at the sniper twice. The shots were loud, louder than the suppressed rifle. He wasn’t expecting to hit anything. But he also wasn’t trying to.

  The barrel pulled back. The sniper was fleeing.

  Zero dashed out into the open piazza in pursuit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Zero tucked the gun away as he sprinted the span of the Piazza Mattei. He turned the corner at Via dei Funari to get around the building before the shooter could reach street level. There were quite a few people out on the street, many of them running for cover at the sound of the gunshots, others searching frantically for a source. There were cell phones in hands everywhere he looked. Too many of them taking videos when they should have been calling the police or just getting clear.

  He reached the entrance of the apartment building, a heavy outer door of black wrought iron rungs with a solid wooden one behind it. As he pulled open the outer door, the wooden door opened inward, and Zero suddenly found himself face to face with an equally startled man with a square jaw, wearing a black skullcap, a bag slung over his shoulder.

  The shooter. There was no doubt.

  Zero lurched forward to tackle him, and the shooter had the same idea. Their skulls knocked together hard. Zero’s vision went hazy for a moment, brown and fuzzy at the edges, as he reeled backward. The shooter seemed to recover first, as he shoved Zero back, sending him toppling to the paved sidewalk, and made a run for it down the avenue.

  He staggered to his feet and went after him. The shooter was bigger than him, stockier, but slower too. Zero shook the fogginess from his skull and upped his pace, gaining quickly. The block had emptied fairly quickly, but up ahead the sidewalks were more crowded.

  Until the shooter turned in what looked like a glance backward. He raised his arm, a pistol in his hand, and fired off two shots.

  Pedestrians screamed. Zero instinctively crouched and covered his head. A bullet smacked the street sign two feet to his right.

  The shooter took off running again, shoving people aside. Zero broke into a sprint, reaching into his jacket as he did.

  Son of a bitch! The Glock was gone. It must have tumbled out of his jacket when the two men had collided. He was unarmed.

  But he did have an advantage; he knew these streets. As the shooter ran down the next block ahead, Zero hung a left at Via di Ambrogio, headed south toward the library, then swept to the right and dashed down a narrow walkway between two buildings. He cut right again as he came out the other side—just as the shooter was reaching the corner.

  The man was looking behind him, glancing back for Zero. Instead he came at him from the shooter’s left, throwing himself into him and sending them both tumbling into the street.

  He braced himself for the impact but it still hurt as they hit the pavement and rolled. Cars honked; brakes screeched. Zero leapt to his feet in time to see a red Fiat coming straight for him. He skirted out of the way a second before being run over, the driver’s profanity-laced Italian shouts Doppler-effecting past him.

  The shooter scrambled on his hands and knees for the pistol that had fallen from his grip. Zero rushed forward, kicking out toward his chin, but the man saw him coming and stopped the foot with both hands. He twisted, and Zero twisted with it to avoid getting his ankle broken. He hit pavement again, this time on his shoulder, and grimaced.

  But the pistol was close. The shooter reached for it. Zero wasn’t fast enough to grab it first, so instead he swatted at it. The gun slid away from both their grasps, and slid into a sewer grate.

  The shooter wasted no time grieving the lost weapon. He clambered to his feet and took off across the street, jumping to avoid an oncoming car. Zero staggered after him, across the avenue, down the block, into another intersection. Drivers honked as they slammed their brakes and swore loudly in Italian, but Zero paid them no mind. He kept his eyes on the shooter ahead.

  He already had a feeling where the man would try to go.

  The shooter’s cap came loose and fell from his head as he ran cater-corner across the intersection and toward the entrance to the Rome Metro tunnel. His shock of messy black hair vanished as he barreled down the stairs.

  Zero followed. He knew these stairs. He knew this station. He’d been there before, pursuing Agent Morris after he’d taken a shot at him in the Italian apartment.

  He vaulted the turnstile, ignoring the wide-eyed Italians who shouted scornfully after him. There was no train at the platform, and no sign of the shooter.

  Restroom. Just a short distance down the platform was the white door to a men’s room. He had no gun. The shooter had a rifle. But it would be close quarters. He’d have to hit hard, fast, and avoid getting shot.

  Zero shouldered the door open and dropped into a roll. He ignored the wet, dirty floor of the bathroom and came up on his feet near two faucets, a fist raised, as the man before him jumped back in bewilderment.

  It wasn’t the shooter. A portly man in a brown blazer gaped at Zero, backing toward the door, his fly still open as he retreated from the urinals.

  Not him. Which meant…

  He tried to spin toward the two stall doors behind him when he felt the blow land. Something like a fist, but more solid slamming into him—into his shoulder, and not the back of his neck and spine, as he’d turned just enough to avoid what might have been fatal. Still it sent a shock of pain up his neck and down his arm, and he dropped to a knee.

  The shooter had the rifle out of the bag but it was turned around in his hands. He’d struck Zero with the stock of it like a club. He must not have had enough time to reload it before Zero barged into the restroom.

  The onlooker fled the bathroom as the shooter reared back for another strike, this time aiming the rifle’s butt at Zero’s forehead. He swung his good arm as it came toward him, knocking the stock aside, and pushed off from his kneeling position.

  Zero’s skull, right where his hairline began, connected with the shooter’s nose at an upward angle. The only force it took was the strength to stand, pushing his entire body weight behind it. He felt the shooter’s face give way under his head, heard the crunch of bone. The shooter staggered back, bleeding profusely from his smashed nose, and collapsed to a seated position on the toilet.

  His head slumped, and he didn’t move.

  “Dammit.” Zero wanted answers, but he’d gone and knocked the man out cold—at least he hoped that was all he’d done. But he couldn’t wait around and find out. There had been a witness, and soon there’d be police.

  Zero took the rifle, stowing it back in the canvas bag, and hurried out of the restroom.

  *

  “How is he?” Zero asked as soon as he was back at the safe house.

  Mischa knelt beside the couch. Alan was lying on it, his eyes closed.

  “Alive. Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “I’m fine. But our shooter’s not. And I didn’t get any answers out of him.” He sighed. “We can’t stay here. Bright knows about it. We shouldn’t even be here now.” He had passed by the police on his way back to Piazza Mattei, who were on their way to the subway station where they’d find the shooter. Zero had rubbernecked with the passersby—keeping one’s head low in a situation like that was a great way to look guilty—and eventually found his way back to the piazza, where he’d done a quick sweep for any other surprises before heading back inside.

  “I managed to remove the bullet,” Mischa reported.

  Zero was impressed; he wasn’t aware that field medicine was among her talents. “With what?”

  She showed him the paring knife in her pocket, the same one she’d sliced Shaw’s ear with.

  “Sorry I asked. Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s lost a lot of blood, but the site is
clean and I believe it has mostly stopped,” she told him. She’d cut the collar and part of the sleeve of Alan’s shirt open and cleaned the wound with a first-aid kit that had been hiding somewhere—likely in the bathroom, the same place where Maria had once tended to Zero’s injuries. Still, the white compress over his shoulder was mostly red. “He’ll need painkillers. And a sling. He won’t be able to use this arm if the wound is to heal properly.”

  “We should take him to a hospital.”

  “Like hell,” Alan murmured. His eyes were still closed.

  “Alan, this is a serious injury—” Zero tried to argue.

  “I’ve had worse,” he interrupted. His voice wasn’t strong but there was conviction behind it. “No hospital. Too easy to find me there. Might as well shoot me now.”

  “You can’t travel,” Mischa told him. “And you cannot stay here.”

  “I know.” Alan grimaced. “Where’s that burner? The one Bixby had.”

  Zero had dropped the phone in the kitchenette. He retrieved it, noting not only that Bixby’s body had been moved out of the way but that Mischa had covered it with a sheet.

  He gave the phone to Alan, who didn’t make any calls, not right away, but gripped it in his fist. “You two go. Find whatever this Cairo Accord is, save the day, all that jazz. I’m gonna call in a favor. I’ll get an extraction from here and lay low. I’ll call Penny if I need anything.”

  Zero shook his head. “I don’t like leaving you here. It feels like we’re abandoning you.”

  “No worries.” Reidigger grunted in pain as he dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “Take this, you’ll probably need it more than me. Mischa, grab my gun, yeah?”

  He rolled onto his side as best he could, with another grunt of pain, and Mischa loosed the Sig Sauer he had stowed in the back of his pants.

  “Thanks.” He set the gun and the phone on his belly and sighed. “Much better. That thing was poking me. Take that too—”

  “You might need it,” Zero protested.

  “I won’t,” Alan promised. “Take it.”