Dead Zero

by Stephen Hunter

  “There’s no proof.”

  “There will be tomorrow. When we see Dombrowski.”

  “I’ll tell DC, we’ll get her service records and bio. You run the interrogation.”

  “I will.”

  “But if she stonewalls, I don’t know where we’ll be.”

  “I have the key to unlock her. Susan Okada left a message on my phone. She found out there is just such a program and she found out the name. It’s called Pentameter.”

  FBI HQ

  TASK FORCE ZARZI WORKING ROOM

  FOURTH FLOOR

  HOOVER BUILDING

  PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  1750 HOURS

  Doris in records must have worked overnight, and she was very good. By late the next afternoon, she’d come up with a list of possibilities, based on the investigation into Graywolf run by the Bureau some years back on the issue of illegal shootings during security operations in Baghdad. That shook out seventeen names. Of the seventeen, she ran down and accounted for fifteen; it was the last two who seemed to have disappeared and she’d run each for known accomplices, and cross-referenced those to come up with a third. She researched them all, made the calls, put the packages together, and got it to him fast.

  He thanked her, and retreated to his office while outside agents ran down Ray tips or just relaxed after the stress of playing security guard while Zarzi was doing his fabulous TV bits. Nick didn’t want it known what he was looking into, because people talked to people who talked to people. He opened the files.

  Faces. One of the great mysteries of law enforcement: what do faces tell you? Do people look like their characters or look unlike their characters? Nick tried to read the faces. But the faces, so common to men of high vitality and action orientation, were blunt, mute, almost flat. Zemke, Anthony, was feral and quick, but well muscled, an ex-Ranger with combat in the Raq, a street cop in Sausalito, California, after his time in the service finished. Four years with Graywolf, three in Baghdad as a security specialist, cashiered over certain irregularities in expense accounts. Last know address “c/o Black Cat Cafe, Kabul,” evidently the spot where the mercs hung and drank and looked for odd pickups from the town’s many intelligence shops.

  Then there was Crane, Carl, twelve years U.S. Army, Airborne Ranger, Fifth Special Forces, demo, commo, and first aid, aka “Crackers the Clown” for his stony, humorless demeanor, just a medium-size guy with enough combat in his background to have won a war, any war, single-handed. Silver Star, DFC, Bronze with two combat valor indicators, CIB, three tours in the Raq, one in ’Stan. It came apart on allegations of rape, him married, with two kids and a loving wife in Jupiter, Florida. The next three years were Graywolf, then again a whiff of scandal and separation. He was interviewed twice, deemed uncooperative on the issue of indiscriminate shootings while commanding a Graywolf security unit but, as he pointed out, none of his principals ever got his hair mussed.

  Finally, Adonis. Or maybe Hercules. This one was really interesting. Michael C. “Mick” Bogier, considered his senior year the number one or two high school linebacker in America. Heavily recruited, he settled on the football factory at Alabama as the straightest road to the pros, but six games into a stellar freshman year he got drunk at a fraternity party, took his high school girlfriend on a ride in the yellow ’Vette some alumni “loaned” him, wrapped it, himself, and her around a tree. Neither the car nor the girl survived, the tree was also totaled, and Mick left school. He tried juco, Divisions II and III, Canada, played some pickup ball, got into drugs and partying in L.A. while trying to become “an actor,” and finally enlisted after 9/11. For a while he’d found his niche: fast-tracked to Special Forces, he was sniper qualified, demo and commo cross-trained, a natural combat leader, a real Sergeant Rock. Decorations up the wazoo and it seemed he’d stay Green Beret for his twenty and morph into security consulting. But then along came Graywolf and their $200,000 sign-up bonus and Mick, who’d never been rich, and thought the NFL would make him so and was thus bitter about vanished chances, couldn’t say no. He should be running the joint now, the poster boy contractor with the lean face, the thick burr of blond hair butch-waxed to crew cut attention, the god’s body, the smarts, the guts. But he too had let his shooters go wild on the streets of Baghdad protecting various bigs. He was quietly let go, though with a bonus, and stayed in the Green Zone, where he acquired a reputation. He was suspected of a number of things, selling drugs and guns, trying to export dope (interviewed twice by DEA in Baghdad); that town finally got too hot for him and he took the picture show to Kabul, became a go-to guy for a number of drug lords with security problems, supposedly banked $4 or $5 mil in Switzerland, knew everybody and everything, and if you absolutely positively needed it done in Kabul by Tuesday, Mick Bogier was your guy.

  Why did they bail on Kabul? War was their business and business was good. The three had entered the U.S. five months ago, via Miami International after taking the soft way home via Istanbul, then England, then the hop to Florida. State noticed and flagged, DEA noticed and flagged, and now and then Miami Vice checked up on them but just found three rich bruisers having fun getting drunk and laid. They disappeared from Miami just about the time . . . the Zarzi thing started up.

  These were guys who could blow the shit out of a building or cut down nine unknown men, not for fun but because that was their job, they were being paid nicely for it. But who would hire them? They worked an exclusive world, mostly servicing intelligence agencies, international criminal entities, the odd billionaire who could buy his way in and needed some dirty deed done dirt quick and to hell with the expense.

  Question of the day: who are they working for?

  Wouldn’t it be nice to talk to these gentlemen and see what they’ve been up to? he thought, and tried to figure out how to do it. What tales they could tell . . .

  But he had nothing, except some vague confirmation of Swagger’s claim of “contractors.” He didn’t have enough to book them, he didn’t have enough to APB them, he really didn’t even have enough to look for them. But he could put out a low-priority law enforcement request for any and all information regarding them to be forwarded to this headquarters, and maybe that would turn something up on the three stooges of death.

  HENDERSON, NEVADA

  13255 MAGNOLIA

  HOME

  0915 HOURS

  THE NEXT DAY

  It was a small house, with gravel for a lawn and a cactus for a bush. One story, flat roofed, one of dozens like itself in a huge subdivision of Henderson, itself a subdivision of Vegas, laying out under a baking, bleaching sun. A Honda Civic was parked in the driveway and a half-scraped-off AF AND SOAR! sticker curled off the bumper, which, intact, had presumably declared JOIN THE USAF AND SOAR!

  They knocked, and a young woman in a pair of gym shorts and a tank top answered the door in a bit, a pair of recently removed earpieces hanging around her neck from an iPod clipped to her shorts. Her hair was cropped short, naturally blond, and her skin beautiful, although, unfortunately, she was not. But she was certainly pleasant and looked kind without the intimidating beauty that scared so many off.

  “Ms. Dombrowski?” Chandler asked, flashing her badge.

  Badges are always bad news, even when they’re not. Dombrowski stepped back as if hit, blinked, lost all confidence, and said, “Uh, yes?”

  “I’m Special Agent Chandler and this is Investigator Swagger. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re looking into events in the 143rd Expeditionary Wing ops center at Creech a few months back. May we speak with you for a bit, please?”

  Chandler had the warm but no-bullshit, no-refusal part of police-work down pat, and the young woman, her face closing off even more darkly, stepped back to admit them.

  “I’m sorry I’m sweaty,” she said, “I was on the bike.” Then she launched into a pointless explanation of how she was due at Borders at eleven, then at the Center at eight, and she didn’t have time to ex
ercise except in the morning except it was getting harder and harder and . . . but she didn’t really care and neither did they.

  They sat, she in a chair, the two interlocutors on the sofa. Coffee? No. Juice, water, any sort of liquid, no. Now what was this all about? And finally, “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “No,” said Chandler. “We’re simply being thorough. Allegations have been raised about a certain missile shot. Maybe it wasn’t even that, just a random explosion in a city full of them. But another agency has requested we examine, and so we have to. We were in the ops center yesterday and spoke to all the pilots on duty at the time in question, Colonel Nelson, and the battle management officer, Captain Peoples. You were the only one not present, and as you were in the area, we decided to complete the interviews for the record. You are not a ‘person of interest,’ nor at this time is any legal action contemplated against you. Possibly that will change, and if it does, you will be duly informed and given the opportunity to retain counsel.”

  She nodded grimly.

  She swallowed.

  Then she said, “I can’t tell you anything.”

  “Well, that’s not a good start,” said Starling, stagily disappointed.

  “If there are any infractions or any crimes or any anything, they are my doing alone and I am guilty of them and nobody else is. I will not testify against any colleague or superior officer. If you have evidence against me and are going to indict me or subpoena me or anything, I will not testify or offer a defense. If I have to go to prison I will go to prison. I’ve thought this through carefully and that’s all I’ve got to say. You seem like nice folks and I don’t think you’re here to hurt me but that’s the way it has to be.”

  “Whoa,” said Swagger. “We’re not here to bust you, Ms. Dombrowski. Ma’am, nobody wants you in jail. I already handed out my share of parking tickets, so I met my quota, and I shot a couple of rustlers in the driveway, so I don’t have to bring nobody in today. We just want to talk informally about events of that duty tour and see where that leaves us.”

  “It will leave me in jail,” she said. “I killed thirty-one people that day for nothing, and it’s something I’d like to forget, but if it is determined that I’m to be punished, then I will be punished. That’s all I have to say.”

  There was silence in the room.

  Chandler looked at Swagger, nodded, and got up and left.

  The older man and the young woman were alone.

  “Why are you here?” the young woman said. “I’d think you would have concluded it might work better with a female interrogator. Empathy, gender identification, feminine bonding and understanding, all that.”

  “Well, you and I have something in common that cuts much deeper than gender or any of that other stuff. And that is that we killed for the king. We were the royal assassins. We loved it, we enjoyed how special it made us, we liked the way the room quieted when we walked in. But there came a time when we looked at it, and thought, why? Why did that have to happen? Did it do any good?”

  She shook her head, not in denial but in recognition.

  “What were you?”

  “Gunnery Sergeant, USMC. Sniper. Vietnam, seventy-three to seventy-five, until I was hit bad. Ninety-three kills on the record, many more off the record. Like you I put a crosshair on something and sent a package into it and watched it die. Like you I said it was for the good of the country, or at least each man I killed wouldn’t kill an American kid, and like you, at the end, I thought to myself, well, what the hell? Who am I? Why was I so good at it, and if it was so right, how come I see faces every night? You ride an exercise bike, I crawled up in the mountains of Arkansas and stayed drunk for twenty years before I finally came back to the world.”

  She just stared at him.

  “I wanted to fly fighters,” she finally said. “I wasn’t good enough. So I ended up with the next best thing and I never knew the price I’d have to pay.”

  “You killed some people. So it goes. The world can be a wicked place, you and I both learned that the hard way. So let me tell you, for what it’s worth from a fella who’s faced the same bad demons as you, they don’t go away, but over time they soften and over time you realize that yes, there are boys who grew to be men and fathers and citizens because you done your killing. You can say, well, what about them people you killed, they might have grown to be men and fathers and citizens and made their contribution to their place too, and I say, I can only worry about so much, and I chose to worry about other marines, just as you did. No, it ain’t easy, and those of us who take the responsibility to press the trigger and fire the bullet or the missile, a little of us dies each time, but it does mend, heal, soften, go away, and you do get your life back slowly and are capable of contributing again.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I hope so.”

  “And if you’re not talking about it because you think you have to ‘protect’ some people, let me tell you, that cat’s out of that bag. We know about Pentameter. We know about the top-secret, possibly illegal, fast-shoot leader-killing program that can be called up and executed in seconds and then ceases to exist. We know they used you to put a thermobaric Paveway into that hotel and that thirty-one souls went wherever they went, and no big bad leader died that day. But you didn’t kill them people. You lived up to your honor, your tradition, your family’s tradition”—Swagger knew Dombrowski’s father had been a lieutenant general in the Air Force and a Phantom jock in Vietnam, her grandfather a one-star general who’d done fifty (two tours) over Europe in the Sixth Air Force in World War Two, she’d graduated third in her class at the academy—“and you acted in a warrior’s good faith. You were used, but it happens, and you have to go on.”

  “But,” she said, “in war, collateral happens. Wrong place, puff of wind, your finger slips, you misread a map, anything, and innocent people die. You live with it because that’s the process of war and it’s big and sloppy and cruel and you put it behind you. This was different. I was told to shoot, I rode the bomb down because Paveway isn’t a fire-and-forget system, so you have to actually fly it into the target. You’re in the nose. I saw that roof get bigger and bigger and bigger and then disappear in the flash. It happened because of me. And I checked the papers, I checked with everyone I knew: no, no leader went down, the intelligence was wrong, so let’s pretend it didn’t happen. You know, if the Israelis send a missile through the wrong window, they pay off and apologize. Here, we just pretend it hasn’t happened and we walk away from it. It’s not right.”

  “And that’s why you left the service?”

  “And broke my parents’ hearts and ended up selling books at Borders and working a rape hotline at night.”

  “I’m betting you could get back in. They need people like you. You’re the best, and you make the service and the nation better for your participation.”

  “Are you a recruiter?”

  “No. I’m after whoever ordered a Pentameter hit that day. Someone high in government did it for reasons we haven’t figured out yet. Yes, he killed those thirty-one but he done some other killing too, for some policy goal that he’s the only one who’s aware of. He’s the bastard I’m hunting.”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” she said.

  U.S. 270

  COLUMBUS, OHIO

  1650 HOURS

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON

  The state trooper’s light flashed red-blue, red-blue and he hit some kind of klaxon device, an unpleasant sound not unlike the Israeli antiriot psy-war technologies. Bilal guided the van to a halt on the shoulder.

  “What is it, Bilal?” asked Professor Khalid.

  “I don’t know,” said Bilal. “You two sit there and keep your foolish mouths shut. This man does not want to be engaged in your dialectics. He is beyond enlightenment. When he sees that I am Muslim, he will want to arrest me and impound the vehicle. He will find what is in the back and we will be put on trial and treated like amusing dogs for the infidels. Then you will spend the rest of your l
ives in a Western prison and you will have contributed absolutely nothing.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Dr. Faisal. “That would be most unfortunate. I would not go to heaven. Although it is meaningless to the apostate, as he is not going to heaven under any circumstances, the circumcised dog, and I—”

  “Faisal,” said Khalid, “your hostility is pointless when directed at me. Save it for—”

  “Be quiet, the both of you. Worthless, yakky old men, all the time with the yakking, I almost hope he does arrest us so I can get some peace and quiet.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Faisal.

  “Use the jug,” said Bilal.

  “It’s not that one. It’s the other one. A jug is of no use.”

  “Then just hold it. That’s all we need, shit all over everything for this big American hero to smell.”

  He tried to gather himself. The Ruger .380 with a Velcro strip adhesived to its slide was held in place by another Velcro strip wrapped around his forearm. He could draw and shoot in a second. Yet what would that accomplish? Broad daylight, highway, the middle of America, top speed sixty-two mph. They certainly weren’t getting away with anything, much less getting away, period.

  Finally, presumably after checking their Arizona plates with HQ, the trooper lumbered out of his vehicle, stopped to hitch up his belt, then ambled forward to the van window. Bilal watched him advance, placed his wallet out on the empty seat next to him so that the officer could watch him reach for it, then set his hands at ten and two on the wheel, and concentrated on holding still.