Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Good. That’s why I need you to do something for me. When we get there, I want you to secure the vice president. Get her out of there. I can’t worry about her, you, and Krauss at the same time.”

  He expected pushback. He expected her to argue, to want to deal the final blow to the man who had killed her adopted mother, his wife, and had tried to kill both of them.

  “Okay,” was all she said.

  As they came up on Dar El-Salam General Hospital, he saw the glaring error in Strickland’s plan of inconspicuous locations, since this location had become anything but.

  “Watch out!” Mischa warned. Zero slammed the brakes. The roads outside and leading into the hospital’s campus were completely blocked with standstill traffic. Police had all four lanes stopped, attempting to make safe lanes for the myriad screaming ambulances carrying victims of the bombing.

  “On foot?” Mischa suggested.

  “Looks that way.” He pulled the Kia onto the shoulder of the road—right up onto a grassy patch, to avoid blocking the emergency vehicles—and the two of them hit the ground running. They ignored the shout of a nearby police officer and didn’t even glance back.

  The din was incredible. Cops shouted and drivers shouted back. Horns honked. Sirens screamed. Even the cries of the injured could be heard, and all of that was almost static to the chugging of low-flying helicopters, one of them taking off from the roof above the ER as another came in carrying the worst of the victims.

  “…to go?” Mischa shouted, or tried to, but Zero only caught the tail end of it over the noise.

  “What?”

  “Which way should we go?” she shouted louder as they approached the ER. They darted between two cars waiting to get into the parking lot, and Zero pointed. Todd had said the building was behind the ER, and since they were on foot, they had no choice but to go around.

  Zero’s lungs burned as their feet pounded the pavement, heading around the side of the wide building and the emergency room entrance. There was a mild incline with a concrete walkway choked with people; nurses and doctors scurrying in on-call, families who had gotten the call their loved ones were here. They navigated it as best they could, squeezing by people, muttering sorries and excuse mes, until the walkway opened up to a road-width that led to the outbuildings that formed the lesser campus behind it.

  He was out of breath. “Admin… building?”

  Mischa pointed. She was barely winded, it seemed. “There.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The sign says so.”

  Zero rolled his eyes as she took off at a sprint, and he did his best to keep up. The administrative building was a squat, one-story structure a few hundred yards behind the main hospital and the ER; its architecture was clearly older, probably belonging to the original few structures that had been built first, before the larger, newer complex. The entire building was beige-colored, with tall, rectangular windows and a sandstone-colored arch at its entrance.

  They came to a dead stop at the arch, each of them behind a column, and caught their breath. Mischa pulled out the Glock she had taken from Preston McMahon and handed it to him.

  “You’ll need this if the fight will be fair,” she told him.

  “Hopefully I won’t.” He had to remind himself that the goal was not to kill Krauss. But still, he took it. “Stay here a moment.”

  He left the cover of the wide column and crept across the vestibule.

  Then he stopped in his tracks.

  There was a body there, just outside the glass doors to the building. A man in a black suit, his eyes wide, his neck broken.

  Krauss was already here.

  With the amount of noise down at the hospital, no one would hear shouts or possibly even gunshots up here. They would simply join the cacophony.

  And if Krauss was here, that meant Penelope León was almost certainly not all right.

  He clenched his jaw and gripped the Glock tightly. “I’m going in. I’ll try to draw him off. Find another way in.”

  “Good luck.” Mischa darted off around the building. Zero took a breath and pulled open the door.

  *

  Joanna Barkley drew her trembling knees up from beneath the desk and tried not to breathe.

  She had always prided herself on remaining calm and composed in the tensest of situations. But the situations she had found herself in were ones of irate senators, sexist politicians, arrogant pundits, angry detractors.

  She’d never had to face down a crazed gunman before.

  Nothing about the last thirty minutes seemed real. First was the explosion, right in the middle of the carefully constructed Cairo Accord. The sound of it—no, the feeling of it was unlike anything she’d experienced before, freezing her, rooting her to the spot.

  Then her security detail was tugging at her arm, ushering her out, through the maze-like halls of the Cairo International Convention Centre, out an exit, into a waiting SUV. She was not given any answers about what had happened. And then the vehicle had delivered her here, to a small and unused administrative office behind a hospital.

  She had, at first, been impressed by the plan; the location was unremarkable. But slowly the noise grew, the sirens outside and the helicopters flying to and from the hospital roofs.

  When the first gunshot went off, it sent a shiver down her spine. In this empty building, it was impossibly loud. But out there, she doubted anyone would hear it or heed it. It might as well have been a car backfiring.

  Her detail was five people—had been five people. One was posted outside. Two more in the halls. Two more in the room with her. She saw the two of them die. Her heart broke at the thought of Agent Mendez, who had grappled with the gunman long enough for Barkley to run, to dash down the hall to an office with its lights off where she now cowered beneath a desk.

  That’s what she was doing. Cowering, while they died for her.

  Pull yourself together, Joanna. You will get through this.

  There were windows in this office, tall rectangular ones, and if she dared to climb out from beneath the desk she might be able to get one open and scramble out.

  So do it, she told herself. If Jon Rutledge could survive in the face of being kidnapped and taken to the desert to die, she could climb out a window.

  She crawled forward on her hands and knees, out from under the desk. She stood, checked her surroundings, and kicked off her black heels.

  As slowly and silently as she could, she opened the blinds over the rectangular window.

  Then she took a step back, as her shoulders slumped in a deflated sigh.

  There was no latch. This was just a pane of glass. The window didn’t open.

  Joanna spun at the sound of footfalls in the hall. The door was the only exit of the office. She had nowhere to go. Maybe she could break the glass, throw a chair through it…

  The figure appeared in the doorway. He took a step inside, the gun an extension of his silhouette, as if it was a part of him. The open blinds cast light on his face, and Barkley almost gasped. His lips were cracked and broken. There was dried blood on his cheeks. His sandy hair was disheveled, and he had a nasty gash on the side of his neck.

  The man looked demonic.

  “You,” he said. His voice was low, just barely tinged with some kind of accent. “It’s your fault we’re here.”

  “Please,” said Barkley. She put both hands up. “I don’t know what you want, but I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Perhaps not intentionally,” he said, “but we are all here because of you. The people in that hospital are there because of you. I am here because of you. This…” He outlined the scar on his neck with his free hand. “This is here because of you.”

  “I don’t even know who you are,” she pleaded.

  “Neither do I.” He raised the gun, and Joanna Barkley shut her eyes.

  *

  Zero was kneeling to check the pulse of a downed Secret Service agent in the hall when he heard the footfalls. He quickly s
crambled to the corner and peered around it to see Krauss, with Alan’s silver Sig Sauer in one hand as he stalked the hall, his back to Zero.

  He could do it. He could shoot him, right then, in the thigh or the back, nonlethal. Put him on the ground but not kill him. They were at a hospital, after all.

  But when he peered again Krauss had vanished. He’d entered a room. There were voices. Not just Krauss. A female voice.

  Barkley.

  She’s alive.

  Zero ran then. He sprinted down the length of the hall, and when he reached the open doorway he didn’t stop to bring the pistol up or to aim, but instead threw himself at Stefan Krauss.

  They collided. A shot went off. Glass broke. Barkley screamed.

  The two of them hit the floor and rolled.

  Zero still had the gun in his grip. He brought it up, assuming Krauss would get to his feet, but then the assassin threw himself forward with a primal cry and forced him back to the ground. The air rushed out of his lungs as Krauss straddled him, swinging wildly, pummeling him with both hands. It was all Zero could do to keep his hands up to protect himself. The blows were savage, unhinged; most of them glanced off his forearms but some got through. A fist knocked against his chin. Fingernails raked the skin from his cheek.

  Krauss was different this time. He was animalistic, ferocious. Gone was the unassuming assassin who used guile, aliases, and subterfuge to get to his targets. This man was part beast. He’d lost whatever had made him, him.

  Zero grunted as he flexed a leg, wedging a knee between them as best he could. He pushed hard, putting some space between them. Krauss growled and swung, slamming the butt of his palm into Zero’s temple. Stars exploded in his vision.

  A shot went off, thunderous and startling. Krauss howled and rolled away. He leapt to his feet, holding an injured shoulder, and dashed for the door.

  Joanna Barkley, wide-eyed and panting, held the Sig Sauer in both hands.

  “Thanks.” Zero scrambled to his feet. There was no time to catch his breath. “Stay here.” He wiped blood from his cheek and ran after Stefan Krauss.

  *

  Mischa had just found the rear entrance of the administrative building—locked, of course—when she heard the gunshot, heard the glass break. But she couldn’t tell from which direction it came. She ran around the building, searching for a broken window. She found it, and peered through it to find the Vice President of the United States standing in an otherwise empty and unlit office, her shoulders heaving, holding Alan Reidigger’s gun.

  “Hello,” said Mischa through the shattered window.

  The vice president spun, startled.

  “Where is Zero?”

  “Um…” It appeared as if the vice president was in some state of shock. “Ran off. He chased that man.”

  “I see. Well, you’re supposed to come with me. We have a vehicle nearby. I will make sure you’re safe until we can deliver you to the authorities.”

  The Madam Vice President blinked at her. “But… you’re just a girl.”

  Mischa frowned at that. “Considering your accomplishments in your relatively short career so far, not to mention championing feminism as a cause, I think suggesting I am ‘just’ a girl is reductive at best, insulting at worst.”

  “What?”

  Yes, the vice president was certainly in some state of shock.

  “I am Zero’s daughter,” Mischa said.

  “Oh.” The vice president put out a hand. “Okay then, let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  Zero burst through the doors of the administrative building and scanned left and right. He spotted him, loping along quickly, holding his shot shoulder as he ran toward the concrete walkway that led down to the entrance of the emergency room at Dar El-Salam.

  He gave chase, wishing that saving the world didn’t require so much running.

  Krauss was heading toward the hospital. Toward dozens of cops and security guards, families and patients. Of course he was; Zero couldn’t open fire in a crowded hospital. Krauss was counting on that.

  And he wouldn’t. He needed Krauss alive. Even if he wasn’t the man he’d been before, that information was still in his head. He knew how to find Bright. He knew what Bright had done.

  He reached the walkway and battled the flow of foot traffic, not bothering to apologize this time as he shoved and elbowed past people. Krauss disappeared into the hospital, and Zero pursued.

  As soon as the automatic doors opened, Zero realized just how difficult this would be. The ER was jam-packed with people, crying out, shouting at each other, shouting at nurses, sitting everywhere, including the floor, as EMTs brought in new injuries on stretchers.

  He desperately looked left and right. There was no sign of Krauss.

  Where would he go?

  Zero pushed his way to the far side of the unit just in time to see a pair of elevator doors closing. He jumped toward them, hoping to get a hand in there, to stop them, but not fast enough.

  Up. He’s going up.

  He stopped a passing nurse by the shoulder. “Stairs? I need stairs.”

  “No, uh, no English,” she told him apologetically, and then sidled past him.

  He spun, looking every direction. There—a door, and the universal zigzag symbol for stairs. He pushed through the door and took them two at a time, as fast as he could.

  His own footfalls were echoed in the stairwell. No, not echoed. He stopped, and the other set kept going.

  “Krauss!”

  The footfalls above him stopped.

  He was there, on the stairs, heading up.

  “Krauss,” he said. “I… I can’t imagine what’s going on in your head. But I can relate, at least on some level. You don’t know who you are. I do. I know who you are.”

  He listened, but no response came. Only silence.

  “You may not remember them,” he said, “but there are things in your head right now. Memories, and they can come back. You have information about who did this to you. I want to take that person down. I think you do too.”

  “You can’t help me.” His voice didn’t sound angry, or confused; it was a statement, nothing more.

  “I shouldn’t want to help you. I should want to see you dead. But… as it turns out, you might be the only one that can help me now, too.”

  The stairs were silent for a long moment.

  “Everything is jumbled,” Krauss said from above him. “That woman? The mastermind. I thought… I thought she would be the woman on the beach.”

  Zero winced. He leaned against the banister.

  Of all the things to remember, he remembered her.

  “The woman on the beach… she’s dead. You killed her.”

  He shouldn’t want to help this man. He should have wanted to see him dead.

  “Let me help you…”

  “I can’t trust you,” Krauss said. “Or anyone. Not even myself!”

  Feet pounded the stairs again over his head.

  “Dammit!” Zero surged upward. He reached the third floor. His legs burned. He got to another landing, and then up another short flight to the fourth floor.

  How tall is this hospital?

  Above him, a door was shoved open. Zero gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep going. He reached the door, and the end of the stairs.

  He was at the rooftop access.

  He readied the Glock and pushed out onto the roof. The sound of a helicopter assaulted his ears; the wind of the spinning blades ruffled his hair. Krauss was there, yanking the pilot out of the cockpit, throwing him down.

  Zero had a clean shot. He aimed…

  A flight nurse leapt out of the helicopter and ran, right into Zero’s line of fire.

  He grunted and dashed forward as Krauss climbed into the pilot’s seat.

  Does he remember how to fly a helicopter? If it had been among Krauss’s talents before, was it still?

  He got his answer a moment later when the skids lifted off from the rooftop.


  Krauss could not get away again. He couldn’t let him go a third time, not when so many lives had been lost and more were on the line.

  Zero had no choice. He dropped the gun, and he jumped, and he wrapped both arms around a skid as the helicopter leaned sideways.

  He body swung with the momentum. His legs kicked out, and suddenly they weren’t just a few feet off the ground, but several stories as the edge of the hospital roof fell away.

  Zero clung with both arms. He had to hold on.

  Above him, the cockpit door shuttered in its frame, unsecure. Krauss leaned over and glared at him, the dried blood on his face and neck making him look maniacal.

  He piloted the helicopter over the parking lot, over the lanes of gridlocked traffic, over Cairo. It was all Zero could do to hang on to the skid; falling now would be a death sentence.

  What was your plan here, exactly? The sardonic voice in his head, oddly, sounded like Sara.

  The wind tore at him. The rotors above were deafening. He maneuvered one arm over the skid, around it, and grabbed a fistful of his jacket in the best locking position he could get to under the circumstances.

  That gave him a free hand. With it he reached up, and he grabbed onto the edge of the door frame of the cockpit.

  The door swung again, and it smashed against his fingers.

  He cried out and let go, his arm swinging.

  This isn’t how you die, said a voice in his head.

  He’d heard that voice before. It was his own, and in the past it had been reassuring, affirming. But here, now, hanging one-armed from the skid of a helicopter with a homicidal maniac at the helm, things looked pretty goddamn bleak.

  Zero gritted his teeth, and he reached up again. He grabbed the frame of the cockpit door. Before it could swing shut again, he pulled himself up, daring to let go of the skid with his secured arm.

  The door swung again, smacking against his back. It hurt, but he ignored it. A foot found purchase against the skid, his upper body facing Stefan Krauss.

  Zero couldn’t let go. Krauss couldn’t take his hands from the controls.