Dead Zero

by Stephen Hunter

  At first, after the turn off the brown lights of the band of highway called a “beltway,” they saw nothingness. Trees on both sides of the roadway, steep embankments, the hazy sense of lights, homes, civilization behind the screening, the traffic too fast, still too heavy, Bilal driving especially carefully, so tense he could hardly stand it now, so close, so soon.

  But then the trees broke in the dark, the river was clear off to the left, and beyond it, lit like some kind of theatrical production, lay the city itself.

  “It’s no Paris,” said Khalid. “The first time I saw Paris, oh, that was a sight. But it’s nice. So white.”

  The city loomed across the river and two sources of reflection helped it shimmer, the river beneath, the low clouds above.

  “Pah,” said Faisal. “It is a city. It is not magical. Know its name or not, it’s just another urban sprawl with a few monuments, more beautiful by night in its gown of lights than by day, which reveals its tawdry—are they expecting us? Look!”

  He pointed. Something was indeed happening. They saw a high, arched bridge ahead, spanning the river, and beyond it to the left a ridge, on top of the ridge two steeples and a collection of Gothic buildings, and somewhere above the buildings or just beyond them, a swarm of circling helicopters, a frenzy of searchlights knifing upward; and on the ground, intermittently visible through a maze of streets, much commotion as illuminated by the presence of a great many police lights blinking red-blue, on-off in great rapidity.

  “Perhaps it’s a festival of some sort,” said Khalid.

  “No, no, not with all the policemen,” said Bilal, at the wheel. “It’s probably some kind of civic catastrophe, a fire, a crime, something banal like that.”

  “I hope nobody was hurt,” said Khalid.

  “You are such a fool,” said Faisal. “These people bomb your country and kill your kin and occupy and defile your holy sites, they are infidel scum without souls, and yet you weep tears for a few of them caught in a brothel fire.”

  “Actually, they have never bombed my country, and I am not weeping, but I feel pain for anyone’s loss. Loss is loss; it is degrading and debasing, no matter the faith of he who loses. You would know that, Faisal, had you ever developed any sort of empathy, but you are far too narcissistic for—”

  “Narcissistic? Narcissistic! Do I spend an hour each morning patting my few remaining hairs this way or that? Do I secretly admire myself in every mirror, window, polished surface in America? Do I have a vocabulary of charming looks cultivated from debased Western movies? Khalid, give us ‘slightly angry but secretly pleased,’ please.”

  “You have seen a Western movie or two. You have lusted after the flesh they display so wantonly. I see your dried-up eyes in that ancient prune face as they follow a sixteen-year-old child in tiny shorts and undershirt. I see you make adjustments to your sudden erection, hoping that no one will notice. You’re lucky you didn’t get us all arrested—”

  “Old men!” screamed Bilal. “Silence! I am so sick of your bickering. Bicker bicker bicker, all the way across America. You hardly notice America, except for the ice cream—”

  “It is the buzzard who is obsessed with ice cream.”

  “I am no mirror-gazer, however, and my heart is true to Islam.”

  “Stop it!” screamed Bilal, aware that under the stress of the argument he had speeded up. He nervously eyed the rearview mirror for any sign of Virginia police, but saw nothing, and eased back well under the speed limit.

  “Silence. Just look at what you have come all this way to destroy. Face your destiny. Embrace your fate. Honor your God. Obey the text. And shut the fuck up.”

  To the left, on the other side of the river, the silver-and-white city sped by. It looked like a movie Rome. Its temples were marble with columns thick as old oaks, its rooftops flat, all of it lit by a genius with an eye for the play of light and shadow across glowing surfaces, all of it sunk magically into lushness, like the hanging gardens of ancient memory. It twinkled and blinked across the wide, dark, glimmering river, offering up its famous sights one at a time, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial, the high needle of the Washington Monument, a glimpse of the president’s mansion set in trees, just a smudge of white dignity in the dark, and finally that colossal dome, its flag rippling against the night wind, flashing blue-white-red signals as it furled and unfurled.

  “Do you see corruption, decadence, blasphemy?” asked Khalid.

  “Of course not. They keep them hidden. It is internal rot that threatens our world. But yes, they put on a nice show. It’s a handsome capitol, I give you that, but its beauty expresses not love but power, not peace but war, and a hunger to obliterate. I see in its grace and beauty our doom, if we do not destroy it first. In fact, its very hugeness inspires me to what I must do, not that I ever had a whisper of a doubt.”

  Khalid sighed.

  “Who knew the old buzzard with the horny eyes had a little bit of poetry left in him? Yes, Faisal, that is what I see too. I see and feel in my dreams the need to destroy it as well.”

  On that, and that alone, they agreed.

  UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM SUV

  P STREET

  GEORGETOWN

  WASHINGTON, DC

  2208 HOURS

  No interrogation.

  “That’s why he did it,” Bob said. “He was telling us, ‘I won’t give up my bosses for anything. They don’t deserve me,’ he was saying, but he was doing it by the code of the mercenary, a lot harder to live up to, so he says, than the code of a marine sniper. He didn’t seem to get that right to the end, Cruz outbraved him.”

  “Cruz is one hundred percent real, no doubt about it,” said Susan Okada. “He’s as real as Swagger.”

  “He’s a lot realer than me,” Swagger said. “He didn’t make the mistake of getting old.”

  “But I will,” said Cruz.

  “And thank you,” Susan said to Swagger, “for not jumping to the conclusion that these anonymous bosses were Agency,” she said.

  “I just learned how to stay on your good side. Maybe it’s not the Agency. But it’s someone with the power to do things and hide from the consequences. It’s someone who gets to snipe without taking no incoming. He’s the bastard I want.”

  “Maybe this is the night.”

  “If not tonight, tomorrow,” said Bob.

  “Swagger always gets his man,” said Nick.

  Now they were clustered at the Ford Explorer that the Unidentified Contractor Team had used on its mission. It was shot to pieces, with no window or door or panel unperforated, no tire inflated, on top of a puddle of leaking internal fluids and a spew of glass frags and twisted metal shrapnel.

  “Looks like Bonnie and Clyde’s last ride,” somebody said. “And guess what’s inside. The same swag. Look at what these boys were carrying.”

  The evidence recovery team busily photographed and tagged the loot: one Barrett .50 M107 rifle with Schmidt & Bender scope, four 9-mm semiauto pistols, one Sako TRG-42, one .338 Magnum bolt-action rifle with Schmidt & Bender 10× tactical scope and a custom Gemtech suppressor, two M4 carbines with Aimpoint or EO Tech optics, at least five thousand rounds of various types of ammo, a Schmidt & Bender spotting scope, dual-spectrum night vision goggles, any number of Motorola mini-radio units, several cells, a half dozen or so SureFire flashlights, some yogurt, some chewing gum, some prophylactics, several bottles of amphetamines, some—

  “Look, Mr. Memphis,” said Cruz, “I hate to tell you your business or anything, but I’m not seeing much urgency here. We’re just standing around kind of laughing at all the crap these guys had. But doesn’t that tell you something? Top-of-the-line stuff, all of it, the very best. The Marine Corps isn’t that well equipped. And the fact that even this late in Zarzi’s visit, whoever it is is still sending trained men with high-value tech at risk to protect him, because they don’t think the FBI and the Secret Service are up to it. To me, it all points to the idea that something is yet to happen, and they
are therefore locked into a total protective response, even one at some risk. So I see the seconds tick away and nobody seems to care.”

  “Earth to Cruz,” said Nick, “evidence collection is the basis of any criminal case, and mistakes made during it can jeopardize the outcome of the prosecution. These evidence technicians are highly trained, methodical, the best in the world. They must be allowed to work, and when they clear what they recover, it will be turned over to us.”

  Cruz said nothing but was clearly not satisfied.

  “Okay,” said one of the technicians, coming up to Nick, “this is it, right? This is what you’ve been waiting for?”

  “That’s it,” said Nick.

  “One Thuraya SG-2520 state-of-the-art satellite phone. Tagged and printed, sign on the dotted line, your possession noted in evidence chain, scratch your initials into it with a key or something, and you will sign it in when you are done, according to regulations, right, Mr. Assistant Director?”

  “Yep,” Nick said. He looked over at Ray, then to Susan and Bob, as he scratched a crude NM into the plastic. “I think you’ll find this interesting. I’ll put it on speaker and cut all you guys in too. Folks, it’s showtime!”

  An assistant brought Nick a cell. He punched a button, waited.

  “Agent Jeffrey Neal, Technical Support Division, Quantico,” came the voice.

  “Agent Neal, Assistant Director Nick Memphis, we’ve recovered, as you suggested we might, a highly sophisticated satellite phone. Care to open it up for us?”

  “That’s what I’m here for, sir.”

  “Tell us what to do.”

  “Describe what’s on the screen.”

  Nick turned the instrument, which looked like a cell any kid in a mall carried, except that it had an aerial folded telescope-style inside. Like any cell, it had the small screen above the keyboard where a message glowed.

  “It says ‘Enter Unlock Code.’”

  “Okay. Obviously we don’t have the unlock code. So we’ll be going back door, no offense meant to all you gay special agents out there in FBI land.”

  “Neal, I’m the head comedian. I’ll make the jokes, okay? Your job is to laugh at them.”

  “Got it, sir. I want you to keyboard the number 667723 onto the screen and then hit the star button three times. Do it slowly and carefully. This number was inserted in the CPU by the subcontracted Israeli development team as a request from Mossad. Very few people know about it.”

  “Got it,” said Nick, punching in the numbers and stars.

  In a second “Unlocked” came onto the screen.

  “Okay,” said Neal, “now go to ‘Dialed Calls.’”

  Nick punched the choice on the screen menu.

  “There’s only one number here,” Nick said. “It’s got a 206 area code.” Nick read him the number.

  “Seattle,” said Neal. “They have set up a few remote relay points. Need a sec to trace them. But first, I’m going to put you on hold while I call the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in DC. They’ve been alerted. They will issue a numbered Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant that will enable us to legally trace the linkages and come to the destination phone.”

  “Excellent,” said Nick, listening as the phone went dead. “See, Cruz, this stuff can happen pretty fast if you know what you’re doing.”

  “Okay, I was wrong,” said Cruz.

  “I’m glad you see the error of your ways and I don’t have to have Gunnery Sergeant Swagger kick your ass.”

  “I may do it anyway, on general principles,” Swagger said. “Dumb bozo goes into that icebox unarmed to face a man paid to kill him.”

  “What an idiot,” said Nick. “Oh, and by the way, that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen a man do in my life. I’m betting Swagger thinks the same and I bet these guys do too.”

  “Here, here,” said a number of the clustered special agents and SWAT pros.

  “He’s got guts, he ain’t got no sense at all,” muttered Swagger.

  “Somebody’s sure cranky tonight,” Nick said. It seemed true—all Swagger had said to Cruz on the way over was stuff like, “That was a really stupid decision. You risked your life for a hostage and endangered what we’re trying to do. You don’t own your life, Sergeant, the Marine Corps does. It’ll give you permission to die, and it hasn’t,” and the younger man merely shook his head, almost in comic disbelief.

  Neal came back on. “Okay, I’ve got the warrant, my next call is to Frontier Communications in Seattle, and with the warrant, they’ll tell me where we’re going. Give me a few minutes.”

  It went to silence again, and then—

  “Okay, Director Memphis, I’m finally through the bounces. It went from Seattle to Oklahoma City to Charleston before it arrived in Washington, DC.”

  “Good work, Neal.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet. Now we have some real magic coming up.”

  “Is he trying to get on the Comedy Network?” somebody asked.

  “Typical IT guy,” Nick said. “Smarts off to everybody, sucks up to nobody.”

  Neal came back.

  “The phone number ties to an AT&T cell phone. Our FISC warrant means that we have full cooperation from AT&T and I have them working at level ten, the most dedicated and urgent level of compliance. Oh, I love it when a plan comes together. Now we’re going to use a special program developed by the former technical head of a British security company. We can turn on our bad guy’s cell from here in Quantico, going through AT&T. Once it’s surreptitiously on, it not only broadcasts its GPS location but also sends a unique signature that we can track. The tracked signal is actually more accurate here in DC than the GPS coordinates and updates more frequently. Next call: National Reconnaissance Office and ask them—tell them—to direct their satellites to this area to listen for the signal and start a multilateration calculation to pinpoint the cell phone. They’ll come back with a longitude-latitude that we can easily translate into an address. And there’s your boy. Total elapsed time, seventeen minutes, a new record.”

  “Good work, Neal,” Nick said, then turned to the crew:

  “All right, people. Let’s get convoyed up. We’re going to make a big bust.”

  644 CEDARCROFT NW

  NEAR BETHESDA

  WASHINGTON, DC

  2325 HOURS

  It was a big house, the kind in which most American kids dreamed of growing up. Secluded among trees on one of DC’s most exclusive streets, it had turrets, gables, dormers, balconies, a screened-in front porch, a free-standing garage, a gazebo, a pool, formal gardens, the American dream.

  “Security team, deploy,” Nick said, and from the dozen or so unlit federal vehicles arrayed down the street, SWAT teamers slipped out and began to slide off into the trees and bushes to surround and control the dwelling.

  “Do you recognize it?” asked Bob, looking to Susan’s serene face as she took in the details of the house.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So which guy is it?”

  “It’s none of them.”

  Nick said: “You three stay put. I’ll handle the arrest with my people. We’ll repair to the Hoover Building and begin the interrogation. We’ll go all night and through tomorrow if necessary. If he’s lawyered up, it may take a while.”

  “I want to be there,” said Cruz.

  “Me too,” said Swagger.

  “I have to be there,” said Susan.

  “Marine guys,” said Nick, “full frontal self-discipline. No anger, no unprofessionalism, no screaming, no punches thrown. I insult you by saying that, but I don’t want any trouble with this bust. Do you read me?”

  Silence meant they did.

  Then a message came into Nick’s earpiece, telling him the security teams were holding in place.

  “Okay,” said Nick, “now my people will make the pinch. Could you call him, Susan? Get him on the phone so he doesn’t notice us pulling up. I worry about suicide in cases like this, or suicide by cop or something.�
��

  “This guy isn’t committing suicide,” said Susan.

  Nick handed the phone over, got out of the vehicle, waving, as six agents from the car behind came out to flank him, and they headed up the walk.

  Susan punched the button on the phone.

  “Talk to me, talk to me,” came the voice. “Did you make it out clean? I hear sirens and the TV is full of craziness. Did you get him? Where are you?”

  “Hello, Jared,” she said, “it’s Susan Okada. No, they didn’t make it out clean. They are in hell, actually. And no, they didn’t get him. And we are right outside with a warrant for your arrest. Jared, don’t do anything stupid. Get ahead of the prosecution and maybe somehow you can survive this.”

  “How about lunch tomorrow?” he said.

  FBI HQ

  FBI INTERROGATION SUITE 101

  HOOVER BUILDING

  PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  0010–1900 HOURS

  Who would have guessed? Jared Dixson was a stand-up guy. He wouldn’t budge. Handsome, diffident, supercilious in that annoying upper-class, so-Ivy way, heavily ironic; underneath, he was a steel ideologue. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He waived legal representation. He even went so far as to enjoy the claim that it was he who’d ordered the Pentameter shot using poor Jack Collins’s computer codes.

  “Jack’s the jerk from World War Two,” he said. “I mean, he thinks he’s still a frogman. IQ, maybe thirty-five on a good day. Annapolis, old SEAL, all he-man Afghan Desk, straight out of the movies and Kipling before that. Hello, dummy! Wake up, smell the flowers. You need somebody with smarts, a view on strategy, a vision of what should be. Hmm, I think I described myself rather well there.”

  He wasn’t bluffed by legal threats.

  “Do whatever you want,” he said to Nick and his assistant Chandler, as Okada, Swagger, and Cruz watched on closed-circuit TV. “Bring any charges you want. Subpoena anybody you want. I don’t care. Some things are worth spending the rest of your life in prison for, and getting the guys out of Afghanistan is one of them. You can say: ‘He tried to murder a marine sniper team.’ I suppose it’s true and I’ll bet that marine sergeant would like to strangle me about now. Maybe that would be fair. But I would argue: national defense in the trenches is murky, bloody business. No way to recall the team. Nothing personal, but I could not stand by and watch our soon-to-be most valuable asset on the ground get taken out by a sergeant and a lance corporal. Ugly decision? Hell, yes. Hello, it’s what we do. Ugly is our specialty. But consider this: since we had his unit’s commo tent bugged and the team on satellite, I could have set Whiskey Two-Two up for capture by the Taliban. That would have been the easy way for me but not for them: interrogation, torture, eventual beheading. Instead, I opted for mercs who would do the job cleanly. No pain, no torture, no degradation. Why, I should win the goddamned Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. My only mistake: who knew that marine kid was Sergeant Rock and Superman combined?”