by Jack Mars
Then—the Cleveland exploded.
The shock of it shoved Evan Crane to his side, the boom of it throwing his equilibrium and blurring the vision in his single good eye.
Impossible, he thought again. How much time had gone by between blasts? He wasn’t sure. Ten seconds? Fifteen maybe?
A harrowing thought gripped him and, for the first time since he was twelve years old, Evan Crane found himself in the grip of anxious hyperventilation. There was one boat remaining, and quite likely less than fifteen seconds to the same fate.
He climbed to his knees. “Our Father,” he wheezed, “who art in Heaven, hallowed be… thy name. Thy kingdom—”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What do you mean gone?!” President Rutledge stood up with such force that the chair behind him rolled back into the wall.
The Secretary of Defense closed his eyes solemnly, or perhaps remorsefully, but did not offer a further answer.
“The incident occurred seven minutes ago,” Tabby Halpern offered quietly. Across from her, the R&D weapons specialist, Dr. Michael Rodrigo, averted his gaze from meeting anyone’s eyes.
It was the usual suspects in the Situation Room, sans DNI Barren but with the preferable presence of VP Joanna Barkley, seated to Rutledge’s right at the rectangular table. And despite how preferable that presence might be, it didn’t deter from the fact that it was four o’clock in the morning Eastern Standard Time, and the president hadn’t yet slept a wink having to deal with this absolute mess.
Rutledge seethed. The incident occurred seven minutes ago. The incident? Three American warships destroyed—no, obliterated—in the span of forty-five seconds, and it was being referred to as “the incident.” Though perhaps that was at least minimally better than General Kressley’s pained assessment of the situation, which was to say they were simply “gone.”
“How many?” Rutledge paced the short width of the room for lack of anything more he could do. “How many men?”
Kressley cleared his throat. “Approximately eighteen hundred—”
“No, how many exactly?” the president demanded.
The general referred to a sheet in front of him. “One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three. Sir.”
“Jesus.” One thousand eight hundred and twenty-three Americans. Soldiers, officers, crew, pilots, engineers. Husbands, wives, brothers, daughters, parents.
This is a nightmare.
“Oman has already denied any knowledge or responsibility,” Tabby told the room. “Which we knew they would and have little choice but to believe them—”
“Was this the railgun?” Rutledge addressed the young doctor in the room, but couldn’t for the life of him remember his name, and in his anger resorted to snapping his fingers quickly in the man’s general direction. “You, was this the weapon?”
“Rodrigo, sir.”
“Right. Dr. Rodrigo, was this that?”
“I…” The doctor gulped. “I believe so, sir. The Aegis Combat System would have seen anything else coming.”
“Which means,” said the Secretary of Defense, “that whoever has it knows how to use it.”
Joanna Barkley spoke up. “So we have to consider the fact that it may no longer be in Somali hands. They could have already had a buyer in place before they stole it…”
“Or could have been hired by someone specifically to steal it,” Tabby agreed.
“We can’t discount the Somalis yet,” said General Kressley. “They are the known aggressor here. Once we start eliminating them as a possibility, we open it up to literally anyone—”
A Secret Service agent slipped into the room, so discreetly that Rutledge didn’t notice him until he was handing Tabby Halpern a folder, and he left again just as quickly and quietly.
Her eyes scanned the content in seconds. “Sir, the USS Pierce had a radar blip on a ship they suspected was the Somali vessel. The area in which the blip went dark was just searched; a Somali boat was found sunk a few miles off the coast of Masirah Island. Nine bodies have been recovered, all believed at the moment to be the Somali crew of the ship that stole the railgun.”
That clinched it. This situation, this “incident,” had just gone from nightmare to unfettered catastrophe. The Somalis were a scapegoat all along; whoever had the railgun could be anyone in the world.
But they can’t be anywhere.
“Then it was there, right?” Rutledge asked quickly. “The railgun must have been there. How far could they have gotten in seven minutes? We have people there right now, and resources, right? Get them searching. Get them on it, whatever they have to do—”
“Sir,” said the Secretary of Defense. “I assure you, they are doing exactly that in every capacity they are able.”
“Then find it!” Rutledge slammed a fist down on the table. Rodrigo and Tabby both jumped slightly. Barkley didn’t bat an eyelash.
“Mr. President,” she said, her gaze flat but not passive. “Jon. Calm down, please.”
“I’m sorry,” he breathed. He couldn’t lose his composure, not now. The Ayatollah of Iran was arriving in Washington in the morning, which Rutledge was still thinking of as “tomorrow” despite it being quite early the same day, expecting a historic meeting that was scheduled for that afternoon. His attaché was traveling ahead of him, due to arrive at JFK Airport and head directly to the United Nations Building to review the treaty.
Rutledge had been dealing with this mess for hours and was facing the very real possibility that he might not be able to greet the Ayatollah in person on arrival in DC, which alone would be a very bad look. He couldn’t risk another.
“I’m sorry for the outburst.” He wheeled his chair back to the table, sat down, and straightened his tie. “I want the Fifth Fleet on this, as many resources as they can spare. Whatever it takes to find it. This thing got from the Pacific to the Arabian Sea in less than three days; in one more day it could reach any city in…”
He trailed off. He hadn’t even considered the possibility, but now that the railgun was in Middle Eastern waters it made all the sense in the world.
“Europe,” Barkley said quietly. “Any city in Europe.”
“Or Jerusalem,” Kressley added, “if we’re considering anti-Israel aggressors.”
“And at its maximum range of approximately two hundred miles,” said Dr. Rodrigo, “it wouldn’t even have to get close.”
“It’s time to alert the UN,” said Tabby. “I know you don’t want to, but you know it’s the right move.”
“It was the right move yesterday,” Rutledge murmured. As soon as they did that, the media would have the full story. But that was a paltry and selfish complaint in the face of lives lost and cities destroyed. If this weapon could take out three battleships with no effort, it could lay waste to any static target less than a couple hundred miles from the coast—which was where ninety percent of most populations dwelled.
“Do it.” He nodded to Tabby. “Have a statement drafted.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” She rose and rushed from the room.
Rutledge leaned back in his seat and rubbed his face. Through his fingers, his gaze fell upon the one man in the room who had not spoken yet—and at the moment it appeared that he had little desire to speak at all.
“Give Director Shaw and me the room please.”
The others dutifully stood from their chairs and filed out, closing the Situation Room’s double doors behind them.
“Where are Zero and his team?” Rutledge asked, skipping any pleasantries. “What are they doing about this?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say, sir.” Shaw folded his hands upon the table.
“You understand I am the president—”
“I don’t know, sir,” Shaw admitted. “Zero and his team were dispatched as you ordered. They were given explicit instructions by Deputy Director Walsh based on a carefully curated report of the situation, and they chose to ignore those orders.”
“So they’ve gone dark?” Rutledge aske
d, though only marginally familiar with the term from films and television. “You have no idea where they are or what they’re up to?”
“We know that the jet they took landed in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia. They left the pilot at Bole International Airport and he fled to the embassy there. His report claims that Zero coerced him to fly them to Ethiopia under… forceful means.”
“Forceful?”
“At gunpoint, sir.”
Rutledge frowned. That did not sound like the Agent Zero he knew… but the man’s tactics were not what anyone might call “refined.”
“From there, we lost them,” Shaw continued. “Any means we had to track them were left behind. However… there was an incident in Mogadishu very recently. I was briefed in the past hour about an explosion at a small port and several Somalis shot. It was a known pirate port. The source of the explosion and firefight, however, is not known.”
The president nodded slowly. If Shaw was to be believed—and Rutledge was not about to say that he was with any certainty—it was too much of a coincidence for Somali pirates to be attacked by an unknown force when a covert CIA team was out there searching for leads.
“Mr. President,” said Shaw. “You must understand how this might play out. We now know that the Somalis are not our targets. Agent Zero, however, is not aware of that, and whether he was behind this recent attack or not, he will continue his hunt for the pirates with no knowledge that they are being fished out of the Arabian Sea. We have no way to contact him. And we must avoid unnecessary incidents at any cost.”
“What are you suggesting, Director Shaw?”
“It’s not a suggestion. It is protocol, sir. The CIA—and by extension, the United States government—must disavow Agent Zero and his team.” Shaw sighed as if it genuinely pained him to say it. “That is, if he is even still alive. We have no way to know that the events on the port in Mogadishu didn’t claim his life.”
Rutledge didn’t like it. He didn’t like Shaw’s obsequiously bureaucratic approach; he didn’t like his obviously feigned dismay at denying any responsibility or support for Zero. But ultimately, he was right. If Zero had been looking for the stolen railgun and had gotten into some sort of trouble in the pirate port, he didn’t exactly handle it with panache. And the US could not afford the liability that might come with another incident.
“Do what you must,” Rutledge muttered.
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Shaw rose quickly and swept out of the room—no doubt to set about his task with speed, efficacy, and possibly some measure of satisfaction. Zero and his teammates were about to be cut off from the United States, at a presidential authorization, or something close to it.
If they’re even still alive. He could only hope they were.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Well, this is cozy,” Alan muttered.
“Sure is.” Zero chuckled, his voice echoing down the long culvert and back despite being barely more than a whisper. The concrete pipe was about five feet in diameter and an indeterminate length, receding into absolute darkness after about twenty-five yards or so. Zero and Alan sat facing each other with their backs against the curved wall behind them at the edge between darkness and vague silhouettes.
After stealing Hannibal’s orange Jeep, they peeled out of the pirate port and drove a few miles down the Mogadishu coastline, making erratic turns and doubling back a couple of times just in case anyone was following or watching. Eventually they ditched the Jeep on the side of a road and hoofed it for about half a mile, into a stretch of barren wilderness where they found a long-dried stream bed and the culvert.
“Since we’re waiting…” Alan dug into his black backpack and pulled out two miniature bottles of whiskey, just a few ounces each, and passed one to Zero. “Nicked ’em off the Gulfstream.”
“Thanks.” He could always count on Alan to keep the mood casual, even when he knew Zero was worried. And he was worried—they had already attempted to call Maria on the satellite phone to no avail. There was no point in trying again; if she was in danger or trying to be sneaky, a ringing phone would not help her. Protocol dictated they find a spot to lie low and stay put until they got a call back from her and established a rendezvous point.
If we get a call back from her.
He pushed the thought out of his head and unscrewed the cap. “Cheers.” The liquor was syrupy on his tongue and burned at the back of his throat in the best possible way.
“So. You want to talk about it?”
Zero winced. He was afraid that Alan was eventually going to ask about the incident back at the port.
“Not really.”
“Hm,” Alan grunted. He took a second swig from the tiny bottle, comically small in his thick hand. “Even so, I think we should. I don’t ask for much. I’m asking for this.”
Dammit. He knew this would come sooner or later. The man who had done so much for him and asked nothing in return was calling in the favor at last—and all he wanted was the one truth that Zero didn’t want to give.
It was nothing but fair to tell him. His simple failed recollection of how a Zippo worked could have killed them both.
Zero finished his own tiny bottle and tossed the dead soldier into the darkness, where it clattered twice and rolled as he wondered where to start and just how much he’d have to say.
“Not everything came back,” he began. “I thought it did, when my memories returned. But then again, I wouldn’t have any way of knowing if something didn’t, right?”
He chuckled a little. Alan did not.
Zero cleared his throat. “New things pop up from time to time. Not often. Some stimulus, or even necessity will bring it on.” He decided to gloss over the still-unconfirmed memories that had resurfaced of his time as a CIA assassin and skip ahead to the important part. “And, on the flip side of the coin… other stuff gets lost sometimes.”
“What kind of stuff?” Alan asked.
“Well, like how to work a Zippo.” It was much more than that; the lighter had been entirely foreign in his hand, just a rectangular silver box that held absolutely no meaning to him at the time. “I don’t even know when I lost it. I could have forgotten it months ago, and never would have known it because I never had a need to—”
“But you needed to,” Alan interjected, not harshly but firmly. “There aren’t many times that a lighter is going to mean life or death, but here it could have. When you needed it, it wasn’t there. Has that happened any other times?”
Zero didn’t respond at first. Back in November, he’d forgotten how to load a Glock—but that happened in Bixby’s lab, not in a firefight when he needed it most. Still, the fact that it had happened then during an innocuous moment meant it very well could happen again in a confrontational one.
“No,” he said at last. “Other times it’s been pretty innocent stuff. I, uh…” There was a loose pebble near his hand and he picked it up, desperate for anything that didn’t require looking Alan in the eye. “I forgot Kate’s name.”
Reidigger blew out a breath. “Sorry,” he murmured. If anyone knew how devastating it would be to Zero’s mental and emotional function to forget the mother of his children, it was Alan. “What about Guyer? Did you talk to him?”
“I did. He ran some tests, but he doesn’t know why this is happening or if it’ll keep happening.” That part was actually a lie; the Swiss neurosurgeon had in fact told him that it would keep happening, and likely increase in severity until Zero’s own brain deteriorated to the point that it killed him.
But there was no way in hell that Zero was going to admit that to his best friend in a dirty culvert in Mogadishu in the middle of an op. It was the right audience, but not the time or the place.
“Are you compromised?” Alan asked point-blank.
Zero looked up sharply to find his friend scrutinizing his face, studying him for any sign that he was being untruthful, while at the same time asking if his impairment might put him or the team in a vulnerable or dangerous position.
Of course I am.
“Of course I’m not.” He stared right back at Reidigger, hoping he wasn’t giving anything away. “You know me. If I thought for a moment that I couldn’t do this, I wouldn’t be out here.”
Alan nodded slowly. “Good. Because it’s not just your life on the line, you know.”
Zero’s nostrils flared. He didn’t need to be reminded that he had teammates, or manipulated to give an emotional reaction, and he was about to say so when the satellite phone chimed.
He snapped it up quickly. “Zero.”
“It’s me.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Maria, thank god. You okay?”
“I’m fine. Sorry I missed your call; I was on a very noisy dirt bike. You guys good?”
“We are. Where are you? We’ll come to you.”
“I can’t stay here,” Maria told him. “Just stopped to make the call. Can you get to Hannibal’s plane?”
Zero thought for a moment; they’d headed in the relative direction of the plane with the Jeep, so they couldn’t be more than a mile or so from the airstrip. “Yeah. But why the plane? We can’t leave now. We haven’t even found the right port, let alone the weapon—”
“I’ll explain when you get there.” Maria ended the call.
“You ready to hoof it?” he asked Alan.
Reidigger climbed to his feet with a grunt, crouching beneath the sloping ceiling of the culvert. “After you.”
“Wait.” Zero put a hand on the bigger man’s forearm. “Are you going to say anything to Maria?”
Alan hesitated for a moment, and then shook his head. “But you should.”
*
Less than twenty minutes later they arrived back at Hannibal’s Cessna 206 without incident, other than a few wary glances from windows and passing vehicles. Zero was as surprised that they weren’t met with resistance as he was that the plane was still there; he could only surmise that the smuggler had not made it out of the pirate port alive.
