Decoy Zero

by Jack Mars

  Zero set the Glock down and let out a low whistle. In the lowest tray of the footlocker was a compact submachine gun, an Italian-made Beretta PMX. The weapon was sleek, deadly, and admittedly alluring.

  “Wow,” Maria said over his shoulder. “That’s quite a collection. Is that a grappling hook?”

  Zero chuckled. “I guess our new friend Dr. León thought of everything.”

  “What’s this?” Maria reached into the center tray and lifted a square parcel encased in black nylon, about eighteen inches on each side and about four inches thick. Zero took it and turned it in his hands; whatever it was, it was dense but not heavy, and had two shoulder straps that connected with a third. The only identifying marks on it were three characters stenciled in white on the front of it. They said X1-B.

  Zero frowned. Why did that sound familiar? Then it came to him—the X1-A had been a prototype, a design of Bixby’s that comprised a sailcloth over an aluminum composite frame, compact enough to fit in a backpack when folded.

  “It’s a glider,” he told her. This must have been a new design, perhaps something that Bixby had been working on before his disappearance. Zero had used its predecessor himself when he and then-President Pierson leapt off the Queensboro Bridge before it collapsed. “Sort of a personal hang glider.”

  Maria scoffed. “What exactly does Penny think we’re going to be doing?”

  “What exactly do we think we’re going to be doing?” Zero shot a glance behind him at Reidigger, who was slumped in a leather seat, his trucker cap pulled low over his brow and his fingers laced over his protruding stomach. “You awake over there?”

  “Nope,” Alan grunted.

  “What’s in Addis Ababa?”

  “I know a guy.” Alan sat up in his seat and adjusted his cap. “We can’t just walk into a Somali pirate port without some very convincing cover. I know a smuggler who operates out of Addis Merkato in the city. Trades with the Somalis, occasionally brokers a buyer for their, uh, ‘acquisitions.’ The railgun might be on his radar. If it’s not, I think he could arrange to get us into the port undercover as part of his crew.”

  Maria nodded thoughtfully. “Okay then. That’s… a good idea, actually.”

  Reidigger eased back into his seat. “Saying ‘actually’ implies you expected the opposite.”

  “And this smuggler,” Zero interjected. “You’re on good terms with him?”

  “Was,” Alan muttered. “Once upon a time. Guess we’ll see where the chips fell. For now, let’s just say we’re not going to call ahead.”

  Zero and Maria exchanged a concerned glance. She shrugged slightly, indicating that she didn’t have anything better, when one of the satellite phones chirped.

  Maria reached for it. “It’s Penny. She’s just confirmed that three US Navy battleships have been dispatched from Diego Garcia and are headed west, towards Somalia.”

  Zero nodded. That confirmed their suspicions; Walsh knew damn well there would be nothing for them to find in Korea or in the Pacific Ocean. It also meant he probably had a good idea of where the jet was heading.

  He unzipped the black backpack and dumped the useless provisions onto the floor of the plane. “We can’t take all this stuff, and we don’t know what’s going to be necessary. So let’s split it up as best we can.” He reached for the Beretta PMX. It was a little too large to fit in the bag, so he broke down the barrel and stock and stashed all three pieces in the bag.

  He grabbed the X1-B, but then reconsidered and put it back in the footlocker. He wouldn’t need it, and it would take up too much space in his bag. Although—the glider had saved his life once before.

  Better to have it and not need it.

  He stuffed the nylon parcel into the backpack with the broken-down Beretta machine gun. They had two other bags and needed to consider all options. After all, they had no idea what they might have to do.

  A small part of him hoped the naval ships were successful and found the Somali thieves before they reached their port. Because if not, he and his team would have to walk into a literal pirates’ den.

  *

  Including the time zone difference and travel, local time was a little after eight in the morning when the Gulfstream set down on a runway at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa.

  “Stay with the plane,” Zero told Chip Foxworth. “No one gets in. Contact the US embassy here and let them know that the CIA is here on a brief stopover en route to another destination. Make it clear that there’s no operation going on here and no reason for concern.”

  “Is that true?” the pilot asked.

  “Probably not,” Reidigger grunted as they disembarked.

  They caught a taxi outside the central terminal and Alan sat up front, directing the driver to Addis Merkato. Zero marveled at the city outside the window; in a lot of ways it wasn’t all that dissimilar to an East Coast city, the dense downtown in the distance packed with tall buildings and surrounded by waning urban sprawl. The major difference was that everything here seemed so colorful. Every corner was vivid and bright, not bland and concrete like he was accustomed to seeing in places like DC and New York. Even the citizens’ clothing seemed more vibrant than he was used to, yellows and reds and greens in every shade.

  Traffic felt as if it crawled along, a symphony of honking horns and shouting voices muted only by the taxi’s closed windows, throngs of people weaving alongside and in front of cars.

  I guess jaywalking’s a popular thing here, he mused.

  “You know,” he said casually to Maria, “the Ethiopians use a different calendar than most of the world. They’re technically about seven years behind us, in a way.”

  Maria smiled quizzically. “Is that so, professor?”

  “Yeah. They use a calendar based on the Eritreans, rather than the Gregorian, but they disagree on the year that Jesus was killed—the year the rest of us started counting up from zero. Well, there’s more to it than that. There’s also the Coptic influence to consider, but in simplest terms—”

  Maria pressed a finger against his lips. “Not that it isn’t fascinating,” she told him gently, “but I need you to put your game face on.”

  He nodded and kissed her finger lightly. She was right; it had been months since he’d done anything he would call legitimate fieldwork, and this was serious. They were going into this place blind, with no previous intel other than Alan’s word.

  Soon after, they arrived at their destination and Alan paid the driver. Addis Merkato was a considerable sight to behold; it was Africa’s largest open-air market, if not the world’s. A sea of people undulated before them like flocks of migrating starlings, heading this way or that among the seemingly endless rows of colorful stalls. Many of the stalls were shoddily fashioned from plywood, with discarded steel for ceilings when it rained. Others were little more than tables with an umbrella to supply some shade. Not that it was needed in February; the sun was out, but the weather was a cool fifty-five degrees.

  Zero zipped his black jacket about halfway up. He’d pulled it from the footlocker, courtesy of Penny León, but he wasn’t sure if it was reinforced with a layer of bullet-stopping graphene mesh or not.

  It would generally be better if I didn’t have to find out.

  Alan led the way through the market. Despite his size, he navigated the crowd easily, slipping between and around people without pausing even a beat, his direction as purposeful as if there was a map in his head.

  Zero couldn’t help but wonder what exactly Alan had been doing in the two-year interim that he was missing. He’d vanished shortly after the memory suppressor was installed in Zero’s head, and later resurfaced as the enigmatic mechanic Mitch, but he’d never opened up or spoken about the time in between. Clearly he’d been busy traveling and making connections, given the vast network of underground contacts he had. Gone was the round-faced jovial-yet-capable agent Zero had known years ago. Alan still joked, and he still cared deeply for his friends and went out of his way to prove it. But o
ften it felt like genuine mirth had drained from him.

  Reidigger turned left suddenly and entered a wide stall displaying a number of Oriental rugs in a dizzying array of colors, hanging from lines strewn like a spider web overhead. He weaved around them until they reached the rear plywood wall of the stall, hanging on which was the ugliest rug Zero had ever seen, an off-white thing with brown patterns swirling in a random way that made it appear as if it came already stained. Alan pushed it aside like a curtain to expose the narrow opening behind it and squeezed through.

  Zero followed, Maria behind him, into a small courtyard of sorts, most hidden behind a box of stalls around it. “Courtyard” wasn’t quite the right term; it was a square patch of dirt with a large white tent in its center that Zero quickly realized was made from a used parachute.

  A bearded man stood at the tent’s entrance. He had six inches and sixty pounds on Zero easily, and eyes so dark they were almost black. His zipped-up track jacket was tight enough against his torso to make out the unmistakable bulge of a machine pistol holstered under his left armpit.

  “Is Hannibal in?” Alan asked gruffly.

  The man said nothing in response.

  “Tell him Mitch is here to see him.”

  The guard turned slowly and disappeared into the tent.

  “He didn’t look very happy to see you,” Maria whispered.

  “Yeah,” Alan agreed. “He must be new.”

  A moment later the guard pulled back the flap of the tent and stepped aside to admit them entrance. Zero set his jaw as he followed Alan inside.

  The tent was spacious, several degrees warmer than the open air, and dim, the only light provided by the glow of the sun outside. Directly in front of them a man sat at behind a simple wooden table, scribbling in what appeared to be a ledger of some sort. Beside his ledger, conspicuously, was a Desert Eagle.

  Maria was right, Zero thought at the sight of the large gun. I need to get my head in the game.

  The man behind the table wore a collared shirt that had likely been white once, now stained with sweat and streaks of dirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows to reveal thick forearms and several tattoos. He sported a thick beard on his chin, but no hair on his lip, giving him the aspect of some kind of menacing Mennonite.

  But that wasn’t what stood out about him the most. Zero noted the odd angle at which he clutched the pen, pinched between his thumb and forefinger—because the two center fingers of his right hand were missing.

  The smuggler, Hannibal, set down his pen and rose from his seat, a grin slowly spreading wide as he did. “Mitchell! My friend. It has been too long. To what do I owe this surprise visit?”

  He spoke with an accent that was difficult to place—not Australian, but something close. New Zealand, Zero assumed. But more concerning was the obviously false saccharine charm that he was laying on too thick.

  “Hannibal.” Reidigger nodded. “I need a favor. We need to get into Hamar Port.”

  “Hamar?” The smuggler stroked his chin. “You have business with pirates, Mitchell?” He grinned wide again. “You should know you could just come to me for all your extralegal needs.”

  “We’re looking for something,” Reidigger told him. “A boat was stolen from South Korea. Small. Fast.”

  Hannibal frowned as Zero studied his face carefully. Alan was careful not to mention the weapon, and Hannibal was either a stellar liar or had no idea what he was talking about. If the latter was true, it meant that the Somalis had not yet gone through the usual channels to offload it. And that meant that they still had time… or that the railgun had been stolen for another purpose.

  “You could get us in there as part of your crew,” Alan continued. “Nothing’s going down. We just want to scope it out.”

  “Hmm.” Hannibal stroked his shaggy chin again thoughtfully. “I could do that, yeah. But, uh, what’s in it for me?”

  “You owe me,” Alan said forcefully. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” Hannibal held up his right hand to show the two missing fingers, fleshy patches grown over the half-inch of stub left in each digit’s place. “But they still took from me.”

  Zero wasn’t sure what they were talking about and this wasn’t the time to ask, but he could at least surmise that Alan had helped the smuggler out of a jam at some point, one that could have cost him his life—and it seemed that Hannibal thought the removal of two fingers was equivalent.

  “I can get you to Hamar Port,” Hannibal said. “I can get you to the docks. Hell, I can get you face to face with any crew that operates out of there. But again, I’ll ask: what’s in it for me?”

  Zero knew they didn’t have much to offer. It was unlikely he would accept a couple of submachine guns as payment when the guy likely traded weapons daily. They had the Gulfstream, but they weren’t in a position to give that away in what would be the most one-sided transaction in the history of transactions. He had some money saved, but lacked access to it from Ethiopia…

  “You’re hiding here,” Maria said suddenly. Zero turned to her; she had her arms folded casually, non-defensively, staring Hannibal down coolly.

  “Sorry?” the smuggler asked.

  “You’re hiding here,” she repeated. “You’re a wanted man. I’ll tell you what I can give you. I can expunge your record from the CIA database.”

  Hannibal’s eyes flickered wide. “You’re CIA?” To Zero’s left, the guard bristled, and the smuggler’s gaze fell on the Desert Eagle on the table.

  “Wait.” Maria held up her hands to show she was unarmed and wasn’t reaching for anything. “Yes. I’m Agent Johansson with the CIA. This is Agent Zero. We’re working with Mitch as a specialist. We need to get into that port. If you can get us in there, I can wipe your record. You won’t have to hide in a tent in a crammed marketplace anymore.”

  Hannibal seemed to be torn between grabbing his gun and taking the offer. At last his smile returned, and he waved the guard back with one hand. “Mitchell,” he laughed. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into, working with the CIA?” To Maria he said, “I’ll take that offer. Obviously a man like me operates on his word, and I expect my colleagues to do the same. What did you say that name was?”

  “Agent Maria Johansson,” she said clearly.

  “Maria Johansson. Two s’s, I assume?” Hannibal flipped open his ledger book and scribbled her name down. “Our verbal agreement dictates that if you screw me on this, I’m going to send men to hunt you down and kill you.” He said it casually, almost jokingly, but in the moment Zero’s most primal instinct was to leap over the table and strangle him for such a crass threat.

  But he restrained himself. Instead he said a single word in Russian: “Wait.”

  Hannibal blinked at him. “Sorry, didn’t catch that?”

  Good. He doesn’t speak Russian.

  “You know you can’t do that,” Zero said quickly to Maria in Russian. “You don’t have the authority, the access, or the skills. No offense.”

  “I don’t,” she countered in the foreign language. “But Penny does.”

  “Will she, though?” Maria was betting on her own life and putting everything down on a young woman they’d just met. “She took a risk on us. You think she’ll do that for him?”

  “Hey,” Hannibal snapped, shaking a finger at them. “I don’t like that. Makes me think you’re having second thoughts.”

  “No second thoughts,” Maria confirmed. “A deal’s a deal.”

  Hannibal held out his hand over the table—his right hand, the one missing two fingers. Maria took it confidently and shook it.

  The grin spread again across the smuggler’s face, one that Zero was quickly recognizing as shit-eating. “All right, friends. Let’s go to Hamar Port.” He plucked up the Desert Eagle and slid it into a holster at his hip before rounding the table.

  Before leaving the tent, Hannibal paused for a moment, looking Zero up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “Are you really
Agent Zero?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Huh.” The smuggler chuckled. “Thought you’d be taller.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Maya cursed herself for taking the Lincoln Tunnel into the city. Some event or concert had just finished at Madison Square Garden and traffic was brutal, even this late at night. She cursed and honked with the best of the New Yorkers, struggling to move the Skylark even a few feet at a time for more than an hour, all the while fully aware that she could have walked it faster than she was driving.

  The fire-engine Buick got more than a few looks, stares, and wolf-whistles while she sat frustrated in traffic. At least she hoped it was the car.

  It was after eleven p.m. by the time she reached the Upper East Side and her destination. She parked across the street from the address in the CIA file for Dr. Howard Bliss, a handsome three-story brownstone that Maya could only guess was valued north of three million. Out of all the street-facing windows there was only a single light on, and she couldn’t tell if it was because the residents were home or because they’d left it on.

  Now what? She supposed she could sleep in the car, wait for morning, or even follow the doctor when he left for his clinic. But she wasn’t the least bit tired; quite the opposite, actually. She was wired, and she hadn’t come all this way to just wait.

  Before getting out of the Skylark she dug around in her rucksack for the Glock she’d taken from the kitchen back in Bethesda. It wasn’t until it was in her hand that she realized how completely ridiculous she felt even holding it.

  What am I going to do? Threaten a doctor at gunpoint? I won’t need it.

  Even so, she found herself ejecting the magazine and tucking both it and the gun into her purse. Then she got out, strode across the street, and before she could think twice about it, forced her thumb to press the doorbell.

  She heard nothing. Was it working? Or was it inaudible from outside? Were the doctor and his family asleep in there? If they were, how might he react to such a rude awakening?