Decoy Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Mogadishu?” Rutledge repeated, bewildered. What the hell was a boat from Mogadishu doing in the South China Sea?

  “Sir,” Tabby elaborated, “the South Koreans have strong reason to suspect the railgun was stolen by Somali pirates.”

  Under the conference table, Rutledge pinched his own leg. No, he wasn’t dreaming this, though he wished he was.

  “Just to recap what we’re talking about here,” the president said slowly. “You’re telling me that pirates… have stolen an invisible ship… with an impossible weapon… from one of our closest allies… who were developing it in secret. And now those pirates have a two-day lead on us. Does that about sum up the situation?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Tabby nodded. “That is what we’re dealing with.”

  “I can’t handle this right now.” Rutledge rubbed his face with both hands. “And I don’t mean I’m incapable of doing so; I mean I literally do not have the time, energy, or mental capacity considering what’s on the line. You’re all in this room for a reason, and that reason is to handle situations like this one. So handle it.” He pointed toward his left, at Kressley. “Consider this full authorization to do whatever you have to do—drone flyovers, full satellite surveillance on every square foot of water between the attack site and Mogadishu. I want ships dispatched from Diego Garcia immediately and ready at a moment’s notice.”

  Kressley nodded, but Dr. Rodrigo spoke up again. “Sir, I’m not sure I truly stressed just how untraceable this ship will be—”

  Again Rutledge silenced him with a hand. “Doctor, your concern has been heard and noted.” Yet he knew he had little choice but to defer to the doctor’s expertise. They needed something more than just technology; he needed actual eyes out there. Someone looking for this boat. Someone he could trust to get the job done.

  “Shaw,” said the president. “I want him on this.”

  Director Shaw chewed his lip pensively for a moment, an expression that suggested he knew this was coming. “Sir, I’m not sure this sort of operation would be relevant to his expertise.”

  Rutledge bristled. “I apologize if that sounded like a request, Shaw. It wasn’t.”

  “If I may, Mr. President.” At last the man on the other side of Shaw, furthest from the president, spoke up. He was short in stature, five-seven at best, and looked like he could have been Shaw’s accountant. His nose and chin were angular, almost pointed, in a way that was reminiscent of a rodent. A rat, perhaps? No—a weasel was more like it, Rutledge thought.

  “And you are?”

  “Deputy Director Walsh,” the man said with a deep nod of his head. “I’ve been the head of the CIA’s Special Operations Group of Special Activities Division since early December.”

  Ah, thought Rutledge. Another carryover from the NSA, I’m betting. Shaw was hiring from his former agency; this Walsh person couldn’t have looked less CIA if he was wearing Bermuda shorts and Groucho Marx glasses.

  “We have a number of extremely qualified, highly trained agents who are ready to take this right away. In the next thirty minutes, we could have an entire team of former SEALs and Black Ops personnel en route to the attack site—”

  “Walsh, was it?” Rutledge interrupted.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “You’re Zero’s new boss?”

  Walsh sat a little straighter in his chair. “I am, sir.”

  President Rutledge stood from his chair and rounded the table until he stood beside—or more accurately, stood over—the much smaller man. Then he stuck out a hand.

  Walsh glanced nervously at Shaw before taking the president’s hand and shaking it gingerly.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said Rutledge. “I’m your boss’s boss’s boss. And I wasn’t asking. Call him. Or I will, and at the next meeting, someone else will be sitting in your seat.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zero pulled his SUV into the sprawling parking of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, the headquarters colloquially known simply as Langley for the unincorporated Virginia community in which it sat. Being a Sunday, the lot was at maybe a quarter capacity, which meant the perimeter of the parking lot was visible, surrounded by tall trees that shrouded even the blacktop from the outside world. In the springtime those trees were lush and vibrant green, but now they were leafless and skeletal, giving Zero the impression he was surrounded by a grim forest.

  He’d gotten the text message only a half hour prior—from an unknown number, of course, and with the simple message of Langley. 30 min. He didn’t need to know the number to know who it came from: his new boss, Walsh, a former deputy director at the NSA who was now heading Spec Ops Group. Or, he thought wryly, more likely from one of Walsh’s lackeys. The deputy director was a thorough delegator.

  Zero and his team had been used sparingly in the past few months, ever since the ultrasonic weapon and the near-meltdown of the Calvert Cliffs reactor. No, he corrected himself, not Zero’s team. Not anymore. Once upon a time he’d headed the team, but then he’d quit the agency, gone into retirement for more than a year. Circumstances and the threat of a lengthy prison sentence had forced him to return, and with Maria stepping down from deputy director last November, it was now her team to lead.

  Lately the most exciting op they’d been on was two days of surveillance on a suspected terror cell in Argentina that had turned out to be a camp of political refugees. They’d been doing grunt work, plain and simple, rookie stuff. Deputy Director Walsh and his old pal Director Shaw had a clear and undisguised disdain for Zero and his colleagues since the events of last November, and Zero had no reason to believe that today’s briefing would be any different.

  The deep rumble of a truck engine disturbed his thoughts, and a moment later a familiar ruddy pickup pulled in opposite him. The truck looked like it was old enough to have seen the Civil Rights Movement; its color could only be described as “rust,” and the noises that came from beneath the hood suggested it might collapse on its axles at any moment. But Zero knew that the truck was as much a ruse as its driver. That old bucket of spare parts could outmaneuver and outrun an Interceptor if it had to.

  Zero folded his arms and did his best to suppress the grin on his face as Alan Reidigger ambled out of the cab, his sour expression notable even behind the bushy beard and trucker’s cap. “Morning. They called you in on this one?”

  “Mm,” Alan grunted, clearly not happy about it. He’d been given the same ultimatum as Zero: come back to the CIA, or spend the rest of his life in prison. Not only did Alan despise the agency, but he made it his personal mission to use whatever opportunity he could to make lives more difficult. Case in point, he’d still refused to return as a full-fledged agent; on paper he was labeled an agency asset, which was something of a catch-all euphemism for an errand boy whenever they needed him.

  “Where’s Todd?” Zero asked.

  “You didn’t hear? Broke his arm two days ago, rock climbing.”

  “Huh. Some guys get all the luck.” Zero hadn’t spoken in a while to Todd Strickland, the youngest of their team. Strickland was only thirty, a former Army Ranger still boyish in facial features but chiseled from marble from the neck down. Had he not been recruited by the CIA he might have been cast as Captain America. “That’s too bad,” Zero quipped. “I like seeing the two of you stand next to each other. It’s like the before and after of a Special Forces vet.”

  “Ha-ha,” Alan said flatly as a sporty white coupe joined them. Maria slid out, her nostrils flared and blonde hair unusually flat on her head, still slightly damp.

  “Thirty minutes?” she said with a huff. “Got the message while I was in the shower. Didn’t even have time to blow-dry my hair.” She slammed the door shut. “We all know this is going to be a bullshit call anyway.”

  “You’re cute when you’re angry.” Zero took a step toward her, with the intention of a kiss, but stopped himself short. There were cameras, even here in the parking lot, and the less Langley knew about their person
al lives the better.

  Maria flashed him an understanding smile before turning and leading the way toward the main building of the Langley campus, Zero and Alan flanking either side.

  “You guys talk to Todd?” she asked as they walked.

  “Not lately,” Zero told her, “but I heard. Broke his arm rock climbing?”

  She let out a snort. “Please. Don’t believe that for a second. Our boy tripped on his cat going down the stairs.”

  Maria and Zero shared a laugh, and even Reidigger chuckled a little. Zero could hardly imagine the tough, ass-kicking combat veteran tripping down some stairs. They entered the building and strode across the marble floor, shoes echoing across the expansive atrium as they trod over the huge circular emblem embossed beneath their feet, a shield and eagle in gray and white, surrounded by the words “Central Intelligence Agency, United States of America.”

  “Walsh said to meet at his office,” Maria said over her shoulder.

  Zero frowned. That was atypical for a briefing environment; typically those were held in one of the conference rooms, an innocuous enough term for a room that had been swept thoroughly, debugged, and was wired with transmitters to scramble any unwanted cellular and radio signals.

  Something about all of this, from Reidigger’s inclusion to meeting in Walsh’s office, felt to Zero like it was not going to be a run-of-the-mill grunt-work operation.

  “Say, Alan,” Zero said quietly as Maria handed her badge to a security guard at the entrance to the corridor and stepped through the metal detector. “Did you happen to get that part I ordered?” He knew that Alan would pick up on the meaning; he wanted to know if his hacker contact had compiled the information on CIA-affiliated neurosurgeons.

  “Not yet,” Alan said gruffly. “Couple of days.”

  Zero nodded as he stepped through the metal detector’s frame, and then Alan, each scooping up their personal belongings again before heading to Walsh’s third-floor office.

  But when they arrived at his door, Zero was surprised to see their boss of the last few months emerging, locking the door behind him with a briefcase in one hand and a manila folder under an elbow.

  “Ah,” he said flatly. “Agents.” His spine stiffened and the chest beneath his suit and tie puffed slightly. It was a reflexive move that Zero had noticed almost every time he interacted with Walsh; the deputy director was almost a half-foot shorter than him, and seemed to draw himself up whenever standing beside Zero.

  “Sir,” said Maria. “Are we going elsewhere for this?”

  Walsh frowned. “For what, Agent Johansson?”

  “The briefing, sir.”

  “No, no need to go elsewhere.” Walsh set down the briefcase and held out the manila folder to her. “Here.”

  “What’s this?” she asked without taking it.

  “That is a sealed envelope, Agent.”

  “I see that, sir,” Maria replied just as tartly. “But why are you handing it to me?”

  “Because I’d like you to take it,” Walsh said, his tone clipped.

  This was a game and Zero knew it. There was no love lost between them and Director Shaw. The man had clear disdain for the way that they defied orders and still got results—or perhaps more appropriately, defied orders in order to get results. Shaw was as much about authority as he was about being recognized as one. And since Walsh and he were cronies, their new boss did not much care for their tactics either. The two of them had attempted to inundate them with subpar assignments, trying to break them like wild horses, and it seemed that failing that, they’d resorted to passive-aggressive pettiness.

  “This is your briefing,” Walsh said at last, still holding the envelope. “You will take it. You will go downstairs to R&D, where the necessary gear for this operation has been apportioned. You will then—”

  “But Bixby’s gone,” Zero blurted out. He hadn’t been down to the subterranean lab since November and Bixby’s disappearance, and had no idea that it was still in use.

  Walsh bristled at the interruption. “Yes, Agent Zero. We are well aware that our former head engineer has turned traitor and gone AWOL. But that does not mean we simply shut down the department that he used to run.”

  Zero clenched his jaw to keep his tongue behind his teeth. Walsh was trying to push his buttons; Bixby was no traitor, and it was no secret that he and Bixby had been friends. If they knew, or even suspected, that Zero had seen him as recently as he had, he’d find himself in a pit in Hell Six before lunchtime.

  “As I was saying,” Walsh continued, “you will take this. Retrieve your gear. There is a jet waiting on the government runway at Dulles. Once you are wheels-up, only then should you open the briefing package, and follow its instructions to the letter. Am I clear?”

  “Sorry,” Reidigger grunted, digging a pinky into his ear. “Didn’t catch that middle part.”

  “You’re clear,” Maria said. She snatched the envelope from him. “Sir.”

  “To the letter, Agents.” Walsh plucked up his briefcase and nodded to them. “Happy hunting.” He strode past them toward the elevators.

  “Ass,” Maria muttered.

  “Hunting?” Zero said. He eyed the envelope in Maria’s hand. This wasn’t how briefings were handled. This wasn’t how information was shared. Something was amiss here, and it was in that envelope.

  “Come on.” Maria led the way back to the bank of elevators and pressed the down arrow. Once inside the car, she swiped a keycard and punched in a sequence of floor buttons on the panel. The elevator rumbled in the shaft, taking them down to one of several underground levels beneath Langley.

  The elevator ride was entirely silent; all of them knew that there were cameras and mics sensitive enough to pick up even whispers. It felt like it took forever, but at last the doors opened onto a hall with cinderblock walls painted gray. There were no windows, and only bare fluorescent bulbs lit their way. The facades to the left and right were interrupted occasionally by heavy steel doors.

  They weren’t even three steps out of the elevator when Maria said, “Hang back a sec.” She stuck a thumb into the corner of the flap and tore the envelope open. “I’m not waiting around to see what we’re walking into. Never have before, not starting now.”

  Zero grinned. The same devil-may-care, anti-authority traits that made her a great agent had also made her come to loathe the position she’d briefly held as deputy director. It helped that those same traits had an extra benefit of making her twice as attractive.

  Maria tugged a sheaf of white paper from the envelope, twelve to fifteen pages tops, three-hole punched and tidily fastened with brass brads. To Zero it looked like a book report, or a paper he might have gotten from one of his students when he was a professor of European history, in what felt like a lifetime ago.

  She thumbed through the first few pages, scanning quickly. “Huh.”

  “Huh?” Zero mimed.

  “Looks like South Korea made a weapon. Put the weapon on a boat. A couple days ago they lost the boat and the weapon.” Then she laughed in a half-chuckle, half-scoff. “To Somali pirates?”

  “Pirates?” It was the first time Reidigger had sounded even slightly interested since they’d arrived. “Sounds fun.”

  But Zero had other questions on his mind. “What weapon?”

  “A railgun,” she said thoughtfully. “A plasma railgun.”

  Zero frowned. He wasn’t exactly familiar with railgun tech, but by way of a rudimentary fling with physics he was fairly certain that such a thing wasn’t supposed to be possible. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound legitimate.”

  Maria’s gaze lifted from the paper to him. “We stopped an anarchist group with weaponized smallpox they’d mined out of a millennia-old glacier, and you’re going to question this?”

  “Fair point,” he conceded. “What’s the rest?”

  She flipped the next few pages, her frown increasing with each one until finally she murmured, “Son of a bitch.”

  “Hmm?” R
eidigger asked. He and Zero both leaned over her shoulder to see what she was seeing. It was a list—a lengthy bulleted list, in bold typeface.

  “Instructions,” Maria said. She snapped the sheaf shut. “Actual step-by-step instructions of how they want this operation handled. They want us to go to South Korea. Charter a boat. Take it out to the coordinates of the weapon’s testing site, where it was last seen, which is in the middle of the damn Pacific Ocean…”

  “There won’t be anything to find,” Zero interjected. They’d lose precious time, entire days, going out there for nothing and they were already behind on this.

  “I know,” Maria agreed. “Because they don’t want us to find anything.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Alan admitted.

  But Zero did. “This wasn’t their idea.” Judging by Walsh’s demeanor and the instructions in the envelope, he could assume that the decision to send them must have come from someone else—and if he had to guess, he’d bet it was his new pal President Jonathan Rutledge. The president had personally lauded him for his efforts in stopping the ultrasonic attacks, and had even invited him back to the White House twice (though on both occasions, Shaw suddenly had some urgent matter for Zero to handle).

  “Rutledge,” he told them. “Rutledge forced their hand on this.”

  “This is exactly why I didn’t want to come back to the agency.” Alan tugged off his trucker’s cap and ran a hand over his matted hair. “So our bosses would risk national security to make us look bad?”

  “Not necessarily.” Maria was studying the report again. “This weapon was stolen thousands of miles from here. A boat of that size would never make it to US shores. And since we’re talking Somalis, they’d likely bring it back to their home port and organize a buyer. This weapon doesn’t seem like a threat to the United States. They’ve also got drones, Navy ships, satellites, the works looking for this thing. So… yeah, they can afford to make us look bad.”