Hunting Zero

by Jack Mars

  “And Maria…?” Mitch asked.

  “Left her behind,” he replied simply.

  Mitch paused again. Then he said, “I’ve got a chopper nearby. But no pilot.”

  Reid thought back to just a few days prior, when a helicopter took him and four others over the Mediterranean Sea toward a cruise ship to stop the outbreak of mutated smallpox. He had watched the pilot, and realized that he knew how to fly.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  *

  Seventy minutes later, Reid set a decommissioned medevac chopper down on the ninth-hole fairway of a Slovakian golf course. His hunch had been correct; his hands worked the controls seamlessly, working the cyclic and anti-torque pedals in near-perfect concert, the knowledge of flight returning to him entirely in the moment.

  He powered down the helicopter and climbed out with a groan. He was still in a lot of pain from his fight with Rais, but he had also had plenty of time to think on his flight from Croatia to Bratislava. And though his thoughts were fairly jumbled and complex, layers of problems upon other problems that would, eventually, require resolution, he had come to two conclusions.

  The first was one that he had already established: he was going to get his girls back safely, come hell or high water. The second was that he would break every skull that got between him and them, no matter who it was or which side they claimed to be on. There were no sides, not anymore; there was only right and wrong.

  They think they’ve seen a rampage. I’ll give them a rampage.

  It was just after midnight local time when he set the chopper down and abandoned it there on the green of a golf course attached to a five-star hotel in the ritzy end of the Slovakian capital, known more for its shopping and tourism than for its rich history. Bratislava was one of Europe’s smaller capitals, but Slovakia’s largest city, with still-standing castles settled along the Danube River.

  The hotel that he was looking for was called the District, a posh luxury accommodation only a few blocks from where he had set down. There was no one on the golf course at this time of night, but people had undoubtedly seen it flying low across the sky. Most might not think twice to see a medical helicopter overhead—but there would be more than a few questions when it was found on the fairway.

  He took up the field kit and hurried in the direction of the District. As he walked, trying to ignore the pain in his aching limbs, he unzipped the bag and rooted around in it. As Maria had promised, there was an orange prescription bottle with no label but containing a handful of pills that he recognized as hydrocodone. He stuffed the bottle in his pocket; he wouldn’t be taking any painkillers now, not when he needed to keep his head clear, but he felt better about having them.

  Also in the bag he found the three shots of epinephrine, narrow tubes with stubby capped needles wrapped in plastic. Those he pushed into his back pocket. He also took the liquid adhesive in case his wound split open.

  There didn’t seem to be anything else that would be useful to him in the med kit, so he dropped the rest of the bag into a trash bin on a corner—along with the burner that Maria had given him. He did not want to be tracked, not by the agency or by her, and at the moment he didn’t trust that she wouldn’t try to follow.

  Then he strode the remaining half block to the District.

  The five-star hotel was twice as tall as it was wide, looming large and vain over its neighbors, the exterior alternating in silver and black stripes all the way to the top, sixteen floors up. He slowed his approach as he neared the revolving glass entrance. He could only imagine how he would look to the high-profile clientele and staff inside—his face bruised, lacking luggage, and wearing jeans with minor blood spatters on them.

  He passed by the entrance and skirted around the building until he found a small loading bay for deliveries, down a side street off the main boulevard. Beside the rolling garage-bay door was another entrance, a steel door with a small button beside it. He pressed it, and from inside came a loud and angry buzz.

  Reid pressed it a second time and waited. A few moments later the door pushed open, only a few inches, as a confused young bellboy peered out at him.

  “Môžem ti pomôcť?” the bellboy asked in Slovak. May I help you?

  “Tak ľúto.” Reid surged forward, elbowing open the door as the other arm snaked around the bellboy’s neck, cutting off both his ability to cry out and the blood supply to his brain.

  So sorry. Reid checked left and right as he applied the sleeper hold to the bellboy. There was no one else on the loading bay, not this late at night. In seconds, the young man in his arms was unconscious. Reid carefully lowered him to the ground and took his ID badge.

  Then he went in search of the way up.

  Sixteen. That was the number that Maria had written on the paper, beneath the name of the hotel. It wasn’t a room number; it was a floor. The top floor, the penthouse suite, which—in a place like this—was generally only accessible by those with a key.

  Or by the employees-only freight elevator. It wasn’t difficult to find the double-wide steel box that would take him to his destination. He scanned the bellboy’s keycard over a sensor and the doors whooshed aside for him.

  He pressed the button for the penthouse and pulled one of the epinephrine shots from his back pocket. As the elevator rumbled upward, he peeled off the plastic and popped the cap from the tube, exposing the short needle.

  Reid couldn’t recall ever having done this before, but knowledge trickled into his mind like an open sieve. An intramuscular injection in the lateral thigh results in a more rapid onset and faster rise of blood levels. He took his jeans down enough to expose the upper portion of his outer thigh.

  You can’t be serious, Maria had said. But he was deadly serious. He was going to get some answers, and in order to do that, he had to be able to move.

  An ordinary EpiPen, the kind people carried around in case of bee stings or food allergies, administered a zero-point-three-milligram dose of epinephrine. The CIA field kit shots yielded a maximum dose of ten times that, three milligrams of synthetic epinephrine, the chemical compound that most people knew simply as adrenaline.

  He took a breath, and then he jammed the needle into his thigh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  At first, nothing happened. The elevator continued its ascent toward the penthouse, climbing up past floor eight, floor nine, floor ten… Reid dropped the needle to the floor and buckled his pants, concerned that perhaps there was something wrong.

  His heartbeat tripled its pace in a millisecond. He shot one hand out to steady himself against the wall of the freight elevator as every muscle in his body contracted, relaxed, and then spasmed again. His vision went blurry for a moment as his pupils dilated to twice their size, and then came back into focus, sharper than before.

  He gasped. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His rushing heartbeat pounded in his ears like a kettledrum. Fingers twitched involuntarily. The pain was still there, but it was distant, like a memory or the physical manifestation of déjà vu.

  Suddenly the elevator was moving too slow, far too slow. He could climb the shaft faster than this. He had to move, now, to get out of this steel box. The epinephrine high would only last for a few minutes.

  At long last the elevator doors opened and he stepped out instantly, scanning left and right. He felt as if he saw everything in a single glance; he was in a kitchen, in the penthouse suite. The freight elevator was cleverly disguised as a wide oak cabinet, slightly recessed into the wall. But it didn’t hold his interest, and neither did the kitchen. There was no one here.

  Sounds—a man’s voice, deep, coming from another room. Reid stalked quickly into a dining room, across the open floor plan to a parlor, adjacent to which was a bedroom.

  Little could have prepared him for what he found there.

  He took in everything at once, his gaze flitting around the expansive bedroom like a hummingbird and piecing together each individual sight like a heinous mosaic.

/>   Three girls in various states of undress. One on the floor. Drugged or unconscious. At least one of them clearly… Jesus, she can’t be any older than Maya. A teenager.

  One man, on the bed in a pair of silk boxer shorts. Fat. Hairy. Mid- to late forties. Gold chain. Thick mustache with a ridge of black hair. Surprised to see me. Obviously affluent. Looks like the kind of guy that gets his way—no matter what his way might be.

  He saw it all in an instant as he crossed the threshold to the room. Every muscle and sense was on overdrive; he could smell the man’s cologne, mingled with his body odor. His breath… grapes. Red wine. There was another scent, one that he couldn’t put a label to.

  It was a pheromone. It was fear. These girls are terrified. Afraid for their lives.

  The time it took Reid to gather all of the sensory information from the room was the same amount of time that it took the fat man in his boxer shorts to recover from his surprise long enough to shout at him in Slovak.

  “Who are you?!” the man demanded indignantly. “What are you doing—”

  In response, Reid strode to the bed in two quick steps. As the fat man desperately tried to clamber away, Reid grabbed the edge of the bed sheet—Egyptian cotton, two-thousand-thread count—and yanked it upward and outward. The man cried out as he tumbled off the farther end of the king-sized bed, landing in a heap of hirsute limbs.

  Reid tossed the sheet to the two frightened girls who had scurried to the corner. “Cover yourselves,” he said in Slovak, “and stay put. Don’t move.” Then, for good measure, he repeated it in English. He couldn’t be sure they were Slovakian.

  “Help!” the fat man shouted. Rather than try to stand, he screamed from the floor. “Help me!”

  A door opened elsewhere in the penthouse. The fat man was not alone. Reid spun on a heel and strode out to meet whatever new threat was present. His hand grabbed at whatever weapon it could find within reach—the drawer of a bureau—and tugged it loose without breaking his stride to the parlor.

  Two men. Black suits. Not traffickers—bodyguards.

  The pair of men rushed into the suite from the front door. They were armed; each had a hand snaked inside their suit jacket, reaching for a shoulder holster. Reid flung the drawer overhand at the one closest to him and it struck the man square in the face before he could get a hand up to stop it.

  The second bodyguard had his weapon free, aiming—a silenced Walther PPK, Reid noted. But the safety is still on. Amateur. He put one foot on an exquisite marble coffee table and leapt into the air toward the guard, swinging one foot out to deliver a crushing blow to the side of the man’s head. He bounced off the wall and crumpled to the floor.

  Click. Reid heard the snap of a safety and immediately dropped into a crouch as two silenced shots flew over his head. The first guard had his gun loose. Blood oozed from his nose and snarling lips as he tried to track the movement with his barrel.

  Reid tucked into a roll diagonal to the guard and came up directly beside him, nearly shoulder to shoulder. As the man tried to bring his gun around, Reid struck at the forearm with a flat hand, forcing him to drop his weapon, and then delivered a flurry of short but powerful punches to his torso. The stunned guard stumbled backward. Reid grabbed the man’s face with one palm and helped him the rest of the way down, bouncing his head off the edge of the marble table.

  He quickly double-checked to ensure that neither man was moving—they weren’t—before snatching up both pistols. One of them he tucked into the back of his pants.

  The other he brought with him back to the bedroom.

  “Answer!” the fat man shouted into a cell phone, crouched partially behind the bed. “Answer!”

  Reid took careful aim and fired once. The silenced PPK barked and the cell phone flew away from the man’s ear, along with the top half of his middle finger. He screamed and gripped his bleeding hand. One of the girls shrieked.

  “Calm down,” he told them in English. “Put your clothes on. I’m not going to hurt you.” Turning back to the affluent man in his underwear, he added, “I am going to hurt you. Stand up.”

  The fat man stayed at his spot on the floor, one hand wrapped around his injured one. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” he grunted in pain. “Do you know who I am?”

  Reid leaned forward, dangerously close to the man’s puffy face. “Do you know who I am?” he asked quietly.

  “N-no,” he stammered. “I have never seen you before in my life.”

  “That’s right. You haven’t.” Reid glanced over his shoulder. One of the girls was getting dressed while the other was helping the third off the floor. He tossed them the bellboy’s keycard. “This will get you down the freight elevator in the kitchen. Take it and go directly to the police. Don’t stop for anything or anyone.” He knew there might be some information to be gained from the girls, but he doubted it was much. Besides, to them, he was an assailant with a gun. The terrified trio had likely dealt with enough of those to last a lifetime.

  The information that he really wanted was in front of him.

  “Get on the bed,” he ordered.

  The fat man scoffed. “You will be a dead man if you touch me.”

  Reid sighed and shot off two of his toes.

  The man wailed and rolled onto his side. Behind him, one of the girls stifled a scream and ran out of the room. The other girl scooped up their friend as best she could and half-dragged her toward the door.

  The fat man whimpered, writhing on the floor. Reid leaned over again, now that they were alone in the room, and spoke softly. “You will be a dead man if you don’t tell me what I want to know. If you do, you might get out of here with the rest of your fingers and toes.”

  “You fool,” the man gasped. “I am—”

  “I don’t care who you are,” Reid interrupted. “I don’t care how much money you have, or what sort of power or influence you believe in. There is only one thing I care about, and that is my daughters.”

  The fat man’s gaze met his, eyes wide and fearful.

  “Yes. That’s right. The men that supplied you with these girls have my daughters. Both of them. Teenagers.” A noise reached his ears; Reid lifted the pistol and, without taking his eyes off of the naked man before him, fired twice at the open doorway. The bodyguard he had kicked in the head caught both bullets in center mass. He fell forward on the carpet. “I’m not sure what more I have to do to prove that I’m very serious. But I can get creative.”

  The man on the floor wheezed another breath, and then another—no, Reid realized. He’s laughing. The fat man was chuckling between hissing, pained breaths.

  “Was something funny about that?” Reid demanded.

  “Yes,” the man rasped. “You… you idiot. You have just murdered a member of Slovenská Informačná Služba.”

  What? Reid balked. SIS? If this man was telling the truth, then the bodyguard was not merely a bodyguard at all, but an agent of the Slovak Information Service—the country’s version of the CIA.

  “You’re lying,” he challenged.

  “No,” said the man. “I am Filip Varga, the Slovakian representative of the European Commission.”

  Reid sat heavily on the edge of the bed. The epinephrine was starting to wear off, the pain and exhaustion creeping back into his limbs twofold.

  Worse, the man on the floor missing three digits was one of the twenty-eight members of the governing body of the entire European Union.

  And worse still, Reid had told him that he was the father of two trafficked girls. If the CIA or Interpol caught wind of this—and they undoubtedly would—they would know that he assaulted one of the highest-ranking officials in Europe, short of a president or prime minister.

  “Filip.” Reid stood from the bed and crossed to the opposite wall, where a long mirror hung in an ornate black frame. “I don’t have much time. And I need information. This doesn’t stop with you; you’re just a roadside attraction.” He swung out an elbow, shattering the glass. “I’m into thi
s pretty deep. There’s no stopping now.” Reid sifted through the broken glass on the floor and pinched a narrow shard between his fingers.

  “What… what are you going to do?” Varga asked in alarm.

  Reid rubbed his face as he approached the man on the floor. He was so tired, aching, run-down. He still had two shots of epinephrine, but he couldn’t risk another so soon; he could give himself a heart attack.

  “I’m going to ask you a question,” Reid told him. “If you’re telling the truth, I’ll ask another, until I’m satisfied. If you’re lying—and I will know if you’re lying—I’m going to cut your face.”

  Varga blanched, the color draining from his cheeks. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said in a horrified whisper. “You know who I am, what this could mean for you…”

  Reid flicked the shard of glass out in a halfhearted swipe, but still enough to scrape the skin off of Varga’s forehead. The cut immediately pooled with blood as one chubby hand rushed up to feel it, smearing red across his face.

  “I would dare,” Reid said. “And I don’t care who you are. You’re a rapist, and a pedophile. Here’s my first question: I want to know how you contact them.”

  Varga wiped at his forehead again. “There is a phone number…”

  “What is it?”

  “It… it was in my phone. You shot it.”

  Reid groaned. His exhaustion was making him irritable. “And if you lost your phone?”

  “It is in my home, on the other side of Bratislava. Written on a scrap of paper in my safe.”

  He didn’t have time for that. Besides, it could be a runaround, an attempt for Varga to get out of this. “Next question. How do they bring the girls to you? They bring them here for you, or do you meet elsewhere?”

  “Here,” said Varga breathlessly. “Always here. In the penthouse. They bring them up…”

  “You expect me to believe that human traffickers just march underage girls across the lobby of a five-star hotel?” Reid was growing angry, irritable from his own pain and his lack of answers. The shard of glass trembled in his fingers, a half-inch from Varga’s face.