Target Zero

by Jack Mars

  Khalil held out his hand, and Omar took it. It was warm and smooth in his. The Imam closed his eyes and his lips moved with silent words.

  “Imam?” said Omar in a near-whisper. “Should we not face Mecca?”

  Again Khalil smiled broadly. “Not this day, Omar. The one true God grants me a request; today, I face you .”

  The two men stood there for a long moment, praying silently and facing each other. Omar felt the warm sunshine on his face and, for the silent minute that followed, he thought he felt something, as if the invisible fingers of God were caressing his cheek.

  Khalil knelt slightly as they stood in the shadow of a small white airplane. The plane could fit only four people and had propellers over the wings. It was the closest Omar had ever been to one—other than the ride from Greece to Spain, which was the only time that Omar had ever been in a plane, either.

  “Thank you for that.” Khalil slipped his hand from the boy’s. “I must go now, and you must as well. Allah is with you, Omar, peace be upon Him, and peace be upon you.” The older man smiled once more at him, and then he turned and stepped up the short ramp onto the plane.

  The engines started, whining at first and then rising to a roar. Omar took several steps back as the plane pulled forward down the small airstrip. He watched as it gathered speed, faster and faster, until it rose into the air and eventually disappeared.

  Alone, Omar looked straight up, enjoying the sunshine on his face. It was a warm day, warmer than most this time of year. Then he started the four-mile hike that would take him into Barcelona. As he walked, he reached into his pocket, his fingers gently but protectively wrapping around the tiny glass vial there.

  Omar could not help but wonder why Allah had not come to him directly. Instead, His message had been passed along through the Imam. Would I have believed it? Omar thought. Or would I have thought it just a dream? Imam Khalil was holy and wise, and he recognized the signs when they presented themselves. Omar was a youthful, naïve boy of only sixteen who knew little of the world, particularly the West. Perhaps he was not fit to hear the voice of God.

  Khalil had given him a fistful of euros to take with him into Barcelona. “Take your time,” the older man had said. “Enjoy a good meal. You deserve this.”

  Omar spoke no Spanish, and only a few rudimentary English phrases. Besides, he wasn’t hungry, so instead of eating when he arrived in the city, he found a bench looking upon the city. He sat upon it, wondering why here, of all places.

  Have faith , Imam Khalil would say. Omar decided he would.

  To his left was the Hotel Barceló Raval, a strange round building adorned in purple and red lights, with well-dressed young people coming and going from its doors. He did not know it by its name; he knew only that it looked like a beacon, attracting opulent sinners as a flame attracts moths. It gave him strength to sit before it, reinforcing his belief so that he would be able to do what must come next.

  Omar carefully took the glass vial from his pocket. It did not look like there was anything inside it, or perhaps whatever was in it was invisible, like air or gas. It didn’t matter. He knew well what he was supposed to do with it. The first step was complete: enter the city. The second step he performed on the bench in the shadow of the Raval.

  He pinched the conical glass tip of the vial between two fingers and, in a small but swift movement, snapped it off.

  A tiny shard of glass stuck in his finger. He watched as a bead of blood formed, but resisted the urge to stick the finger in his mouth. Instead, he did as he was told to do—he put the vial to one nostril and inhaled deeply.

  As soon as he did, a knot of panic gripped his gut. Khalil had not told him anything specific about what to expect after that. He had simply been told to wait a short while, so he waited and did his best to remain calm. He watched more people enter and leave the hotel, each dressed in lavish, ostentatious clothing. He was very much aware of his humble garb; his threadbare sweater, his patchy cheeks, his hair that was growing too long, unruly. He reminded himself that vanity was a sin.

  Omar sat and he waited for something to happen, to feel it working its way inside him, whatever “it” was.

  He felt nothing. There was no difference.

  A full hour went by on the bench, and then at last he rose and walked at a leisurely pace northwestward, away from the purple cylindrical hotel and further into the city proper. He took the stairs down to the first subway station he found. He certainly could not read Spanish, but he didn’t need to know where he was going.

  He bought a ticket using the euros Khalil had given him and stood on the platform idly until a train came. Still he did not feel any different. Perhaps he had misjudged the nature of the delivery. Still, there was one last thing for him to do.

  The doors whooshed open and he stepped inside, moving nearly elbow to elbow with the boarding crowd. The subway train was quite busy; all of the seats were taken, so Omar stood and held onto one of the metal bars that ran parallel to the train’s length, just over his head.

  His final instruction was the simplest of all, though also the most confusing to him. Khalil had told him to board a train and “ride it until you cannot anymore.” That was all.

  At the time Omar was unsure of what that meant. But as his head began to prickle with sweat, his body temperature rising, and nausea rose in his stomach, he began to have a suspicion.

  As minutes ticked by and the train rocked and swayed over the rails, his symptoms grew worse. He felt as if he might vomit. The train lurched to a stop at the next station and, as people climbed aboard or disembarked, Omar dry-heaved violently. Passengers skirted away from him in disgust.

  His stomach felt as if it had tied itself into a painful knot. Halfway to the next station he coughed into his hand. As he pulled it away, his trembling fingers were moist in dark, sticky blood.

  A woman standing beside him noticed. She said something sharply in Spanish, speaking rapidly, her eyes wide in shock. She pointed at the doors and chattered away. Her voice grew distant as a high-pitched whine began in Omar’s ears, but he could tell that she was demanding that he get off the train.

  As the doors whooshed open once again, Omar stumbled out, nearly falling over on the platform.

  Air. He needed fresh air.

  Allah help me , he thought desperately as he staggered toward the stairs that would lead up to the street level. His vision grew blurry with tears, his eyes flooding involuntarily.

  His insides screaming in pain, sticky blood on his fingers, Omar finally understood his role as the Mahdi. He was to deliver pestilence upon this world—starting by eliminating his own sins.

  *

  “¡Perdón! ”

  Marta Medellín scoffed as the young man bumped into her roughly. He appeared to have little to no regard for others on the street. As he approached, dead-eyed and shuffling, his left shoulder dipped and collided with hers, and she hissed out a harsh, “Excuse me !” in Spanish. Yet he paid her no mind and continued on.

  Having raised two boys herself, Marta was no stranger to calling out rude behavior. The way this boy staggered suggested he might have been drunk, and yet he looked to be barely an adult! Shameful , she thought.

  Ordinarily she would not have given the rude youth a second glance—he didn’t deserve her attention, bumping into her like that and not apologizing—but then she heard a cough; a deep, chest-rattling, hawking hem of a cough that, to someone in her position, drew immediate and acute notice.

  Marta turned at the sound of it just in time to see his legs give out. He collapsed onto the pavement as passersby cried out in surprise or jumped back. She, on the other hand, rushed over and knelt at the boy’s side.

  “Señor, ¿puedes escucharme? ” Sir, can you hear me? His breathing was shallow, coming rapidly through his open mouth. His face was ashen and his eyes half-closed. She checked his pupils—fully dilated. His forehead was burning up; his temperature must have been at least a hundred and two, maybe higher.


  Several people had paused, gathered in a semicircle to see what was going on. “Someone call an ambulance!” Marta demanded in Spanish. Hospital de l’Esperanca was very close. She knew the EMTs could be there in less than two minutes. She shrugged out of her thin fleece jacket, balled it, and placed it under the boy’s feet to promote circulation and hinder shock.

  “Sir,” she said again, “can you hear me?” He said nothing. He was younger than she had first guessed, a teenager at best, too skinny, practically swimming in an oversized sweater. But he did not seem feeble enough to be incapacitated by an ordinary disease. Could be the flu , she thought. It hit harder in some than others, even otherwise healthy men and women.

  She put her hand in his. It felt damp and clammy. “Please squeeze my hand if you understand me.” In response, the boy turned his head to the side and let loose another violent, racking cough.

  “Sir, I need to know if you have any preexisting conditions, or if you are taking any medications,” she said as clearly as she could. At the same time she checked his wrists and neck for a medical bracelet or necklace and found none.

  He murmured something softly, something that Marta could not hear. She bent over, close to his mouth, as he said it again.

  “Imam…” said the boy in barely above a whisper. “Imam Mahdi…”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she told him. “Is that your name? Do you speak Spanish?”

  Sirens screamed down the block and traffic parted as the ambulance approached. Marta stood as two men jumped out of the vehicle. One of them prepped a gurney while the other hurried over, seemingly surprised to see her.

  “Marta?” he said. “You made the call?”

  “He collapsed right next to me on the street, Ernesto. He’s burning up, barely responsive. We need to get him to the ER.” The EMT, Ernesto, knelt beside the boy and checked his vitals. “BPM is around one-ten,” Marta told him. “Airways unobstructed. Pupils dilated, temperature is at least one-oh-two.”

  Ernesto attempted to get a response out of the young man, but he too was unsuccessful. He and the younger EMT, Nicolás, strapped him to the stretcher and secured it into the back of the waiting ambulance.

  “Marta, need a lift?” Nicolás asked as he headed for the driver’s seat.

  “Thanks.” She climbed into the back with Ernesto. Ordinarily that would be frowned upon, but as an emergency room nurse she was in a position to assist if necessary. “Let’s get him on a fluid bolus right away. Do you have antivirals handy?”

  Ernesto shot her a grin as he prepped an IV line. “Did you want to take this one?”

  She smirked back at him. “I’m sorry. It’s habit. Please, go ahead.”

  The sirens came alive again, shrieking their warning as they roared toward the ER entrance of Hospital de l’Esperanca. Ernesto pushed fluids as Marta peered into the boy’s face. Whatever he was in the grips of had his face contorted, every line and wrinkle showing—a sign of pain. As his muscles slackened and his face smoothed, it was all the more apparent that he was just a child.

  “What do you think?” Ernesto asked.

  She shook her head. “At first I thought flu, but now… it may have gone ignored and progressed to pneumonia. He was coughing before, a deep, awful cough. There is certainly some fluid in his lungs—”

  Suddenly the boy coughed again, a single sharp bark that sprayed spittle over Marta’s face. Her hand instinctively reached to wipe it.

  Flecks of red smeared on her fingertips.

  “Dios mio ,” she murmured. “He has blood in his lungs. Call ahead, let them know.”

  The ambulance screeched to a halt outside the ER and the rear doors were immediately pulled open by a pair of nurses, both surprised to see Marta clambering out. “Take him in, I’ll be right there.” She stepped aside and let them work; policy was still policy, and she was not yet on the clock.

  She took her balled-up fleece jacket and wiped her face thoroughly. She was fully vaccinated, by mandate, so she doubted she needed to worry. Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to get a booster once the boy’s illness was identified.

  Marta frowned. The parking lot seemed busier than usual, more active. To her left, a middle-aged man was approaching, supporting a woman who seemed barely able to walk. Her face was ashen, her eyes barely open. The man, presumably her husband, spotted Marta standing there in her scrubs and badge, and called to her.

  “Ayudame ,” he pleaded. “Por favor. ” Help me. Please.

  She rushed toward him, and then leapt back with a cry as an oncoming car sped past, screeching to a halt beside the parked ambulance.

  What is going on? she thought desperately.

  She heard another screech of tires, and then a loud, startling crunch—a car entering the ER lot had hit another, slamming into its rear bumper as they both raced toward the hospital.

  Marta paused and scanned the parking lot. Cars were pouring in. People shuffled across the pavement, coughing and moaning in pain. An elderly man, not twenty meters from her, wiped blood from his lips.

  “My God,” she said again. Her fingers absently touched her face. It was clean of the boy’s blood, but that was the least of her concerns right now. She knew what this was.

  This was an outbreak.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Deputy Director Shawn Cartwright glanced at his wristwatch as he strode quickly along the carpeted West Wing corridor. It was just after five o’clock; less than twenty minutes earlier he had been sitting at his desk at Langley, finishing some paperwork and hoping he might make it home in time for dinner for once.

  Then he received the urgent call, and then came the police escort, and then the White House.

  Walking along a pace in front of him was Director Mullen, head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mullen was fifty-six, his shining bald head ringed with a ridge of gray hair. Ordinarily the director was very good at obscuring his mood, but this afternoon he seemed keen not to waste any time on pretense. His posture was rigid and his gait quicker than Cartwright would have imagined it could be.

  The black high heels clacking against the floor behind him belonged to Assistant Director Ashleigh Riker, a former intelligence officer who had worked her way up the chain. Mullen had brought her along because she was being vetted for the position of deputy director, specifically to head up Special Operations Group—an idea that Cartwright was very keen to enact, since Spec Ops had been temporarily absorbed into his jurisdiction, Special Activities Division, ever since the former deputy director, Steve Bolton, had been outed as a traitor. He had also been missing for the past month. Cartwright presumed—no, he hoped —Bolton was dead. He deserved nothing less for what he had done.

  Cartwright had no idea what this emergency meeting was about, but he was smart enough not to ask. He knew he wouldn’t be told anything outside of the Situation Room.

  The three CIA superiors paused outside a pair of oak double doors, guarded by two stoic Secret Service members in sunglasses who checked their credentials before granting them access.

  As they did, Cartwright leaned toward Riker and said in a whisper, “Mouth shut and ears open. You’re about to meet a whole lot of important people.”

  She nodded as Mullen led the way into the John F. Kennedy Conference Room, a five-thousand-square-foot center of command and intelligence in the basement of the White House’s West Wing, known more commonly as the Situation Room.

  Seated around the twelve-person conference table were several faces familiar to Cartwright—White House Chief of Staff Peter Holmes, Press Secretary Christine Cleary, Secretary of Defense Quentin Rigby, and the Director of National Intelligence John Hillis. There were a few others that Cartwright didn’t immediately recognize, likely National Security Council members. Regardless, the very presence of those he knew lent to the potential gravity of whatever situation they were about to be told.

  At the head of the long, dark table was a man whom Cartwright had met on a handful of occasions before, and not one of them e
ver pleasant. At forty-six years old, President of the Unites States Eli Pierson was fairly young for his office, with a head of thick brown hair that had not yet been grayed or thinned by his three years in office. President Pierson was not a career politician, but rather a business magnate who had been elected on a platform of significant trade reform and a viable plan for sustaining the United States’ nonrenewable resources.

  “Mr. President.” Mullen briefly shook hands with Pierson, who did not rise from his chair.

  “Sir.” Cartwright greeted him in turn, as did Riker.

  “Have a seat,” said the president. “Thank you all for coming so quickly. As this is an urgent matter, I’m going to turn it directly over to Director Hillis for briefing.”

  “Thank you, sir.” DNI Hillis rose and buttoned the top button of his dark blue suit jacket. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, and Cartwright definitely noticed that his usually sharp eyes looked weary. Hillis pressed a button on a small black remote and the widescreen monitor mounted on the furthest wall of the Situation Room flickered to life, showing an office elsewhere with two men seated side by side, patched into the briefing via satellite. On the wall behind them was the blue and white logo of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

  A slight shiver ran up Cartwright’s spine. The involvement of the CDC could mean only one thing—a biological agent. But where? I haven’t heard anything.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Hillis began, “at approximately oh-two-hundred local time, a viral outbreak occurred in Barcelona, Spain, which is ongoing as we speak. The World Health Organization is on-site and working to contain the outbreak. The first known case, or what the CDC would refer to as ‘patient zero,’ was admitted to Hospital de l’Esperanca about”—he glanced at his wristwatch—“three hours and fifteen minutes ago. As of about twenty minutes ago, the entire city is undergoing lockdown. All airports are closed; all roadways are being blockaded. Federal law enforcement in Spain is under pressure from the European Union to temporarily close their borders.”