Day Zero

by Marc Cameron

  “I’m good,” she said, her voice detached, distant. She scooted closer so her thigh brushed his under the water.

  Bowen knew it was just so their conversation would be more private, but it still made him catch his breath. He hid it with a cough, he hoped.

  “Did anyone try to follow you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said honestly. It hadn’t really occurred to him to look for a tail, but he was pretty sure he would have noticed one had it existed.

  “Okay,” Garcia said, lips pursed as if mulling over one last time how much she wanted to tell him. “I need your help,” she finally said, “but I have to warn you again. It could get you in a lot of trouble.”

  “Trouble is my middle name.” Bowen smiled, hoping to tamp down the drama.

  “It’s ‘danger,’ Mango.” She smiled. “Danger is your middle name.”

  “Are you sure?” Bowen said. “Because I get in a hell of a lot of trouble.” He leaned back, draping his arms along the pool deck. They were close enough it was impossible to avoid touching one another and his fingers brushed the moist skin of her shoulders. “Anyway, I’m used to it. Trouble, I mean.” He coughed, clearing his thoughts. “So, what can I help you with?”

  Garcia leaned in close and let her head tilt sideways. Her damp hair slid across his arm. “Are you familiar with the IDTF?”

  Bowen gave a thoughtful nod. “Who isn’t?” he said. Mention of that agency alone was enough to sour anything positive about sitting in a hot tub with a beautiful woman. “President Drake’s new department of Internal Defense. Rooting out the bad apples in government and safeguarding the freedoms of all Americans . . . if you believe their press.” He turned to look her in the eye. “Which, as far as I can see, no one in the government does.”

  “Well,” Garcia said, eyes still flicking nervously around the crowded water park. “A couple of their goons did a black bag job on my house. The bastards even put a camera in my bathroom.”

  “Yeah,” Bowen chuckled. “I saw that. It’s already up on the Internet at Ronnieshowers.com.”

  She slammed a sharp elbow into his ribs. “Shut up.”

  “I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t joke. That’s a bad deal.”

  “Anyway . . .” Garcia’s chastening glare faded slowly. “They followed me to a gas station, so I knocked one of them out with a two-by-four and broke the other guy’s leg with his car door—”

  Bowen sat up straighter. Grimacing, he showed her the flat of his open hand. “I don’t think you should tell me stuff like that.”

  “If you’re going to help me, there are things you need to know.”

  “My drill sergeant used to tell us that some things are nice to know and some are nuts to know. Any alleged assaults against federal agents . . .” Bowen shook his head. “That’s just nuts for us to talk about.”

  “Gus.” She ignored him, big eyes blinking as she gazed across the water. “If you knew half the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t even bother to read me my rights before you carted me off to the electric chair. Jericho trusts you, so I trust you. I may as well come clean and confess. If you have to arrest me, so be it.” She glanced at him from downcast lashes, watching for a reaction. “Did you hear they got Virginia Ross last night?”

  Bowen gave her a slow nod as if he was still making up his mind on what to do. “It was all over the news,” he said.

  “I’ll bet.” Garcia quit talking as a blond man in his late twenties walked down the steps to enter the whirlpool. He was alone, in good shape, with a couple of scars on his right shoulder that looked like shrapnel wounds. Conventional wisdom said that if an IDTF agent had war wounds, they were likely to be in the back from running away or getting shot by his own guys.

  Garcia stood up, unwilling to take any chances. “Let’s swim,” she said.

  Water ran in silver rivulets down her body, following the swells and dips of her skin. Bowen had drawn dozens of different women and wasn’t the type to be easily overwhelmed by a girl in a bathing suit, but Veronica Garcia’s purple one-piece made it hard for him to swallow. It was as modest as humanly possible on a body like hers, but no wet fabric capable of being sewn into clothing was truly able to contain the parts of her that needed containing.

  Rather than walk to the steps at the other end of the whirlpool, Garcia put both hands on the concrete and pressed herself up, bringing one knee and then her entire body onto the pool deck in one smooth motion. It would have been easy for her to look like a wallowing seal, but she pulled it off like a dancer. Standing, she reached back to adjust the seat of her swimming suit, and then tilted her head to wring the water from her hair. Her movements carried an innocent allure that Bowen suspected she wasn’t even aware she possessed.

  The new guy in the pool followed her with his eyes, but that was likely a function of watching her curves try to escape the bathing suit rather than any thought of seeing her arrested. Bowen’s Montana-born grandfather would have described her body as a litter of puppies trying to squirm their way out of a gunnysack.

  Never turning to see if he was behind her, Ronnie stopped long enough to rent a yellow tube from a kid under a big umbrella. Oblivious to the other teenage boys with gaping mouths, she told the kid at the register to keep his change. Bowen found himself wondering where she’d gotten the money from to pay him in the first place.

  A moment later, Garcia tossed the tube into the water and slipped smoothly into the long ribbon pool that wound its way through the entire water park. Known as the “Lazy River,” there was just enough current that swimmers could hang on to their big tubes and drift along without expending any energy.

  Apparently satisfied it was safe to talk again, Garcia draped her arms over the tube, breasts mashed against the yellow plastic, and waited for Bowen to join her, which he did.

  He pulled himself up across from her, legs trailing in the cool water, steering them so they moved sideways and neither had to drift backwards. If gunfighters swam in lazy rivers, this was the way they did it.

  “Nice necklace.” She nodded at the black pearl hanging from the chain around his neck. “Looks real.”

  “Hmmm,” Bowen grunted. “It is.”

  “Doesn’t really fit the rest of your profile,” Ronnie said, half to herself. “There must be a story behind it.”

  “So, what is it you need from me?” He repeated his question from the whirlpool, changing the subject. The last thing he was going to do was talk to this spy chick about his past.

  She nodded and got down to business, obviously realizing they weren’t that close.

  “Marshals usually end up with federal prisoners once they see a judge, right?”

  “That’s right,” Bowen said. “But things are a little muddy on that front lately with the IDTF sticking their noses in everything. I’m assuming Director Ross will have some kind of in-camera hearing with only the ID agents and the judge in attendance. And that’s if they have a hearing at all. The stories about these guys would give you chills.”

  “I’m sure,” Garcia said. She waved a hand under the water, toying, watching the trailing whirlpool as she spoke. “But you could find out where she’s being held, right?”

  “I can try,” Bowen said. “For all the good it will do. I’m guessing you’ve lost your friends in high places if you’ve gone outlaw like Quinn.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Ronnie said. “My friends in high places don’t have even have friends anymore. But you let me handle that end when the time comes. I’d appreciate it if you can just find out where she is. I’ll take it after that.”

  “Of course, I’ll help you.” Bowen smiled. “If only for the chance to go swimming with you again.” Bowen had never been very good with gray areas. If someone needed their ass kicked, he kicked it. If they needed arresting, he arrested them and let the courts figure out the rest. But something was different here. He’d sensed a sea change the moment he’d set foot in Japan when he’d first been assigned the
fugitive warrant for Quinn. Washington had always been full of powerful forces that could rip a person to pieces if they took a wrong turn. Bowen couldn’t put his finger on it, but sometimes, he wondered if he was still working for the good guys.

  Ronnie looked back at him across the tube, seeming to realize he was coming to grips with the situation. He rubbed a wet hand across his face, resolving to march forward at full speed if he was going to march. “Who do you think is behind all this?” he said.

  “The President,” Ronnie said without a moment’s hesitation. “And I don’t just think. I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s a pretty bizarre thing to be sure of.” Bowen watched her eyes for any sign of doubt.

  She stared back at him, lips trembling with the heat of pure conviction. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the Speaker of the House came within an inch of stepping into the presidency once before because of a bomb a year ago, and then both the President and VP are assassinated a short time later so he gets another chance? There has never in our history been another assassination of both a sitting president and VP—and now we have one near miss and a bull’s-eye during the same administration with exactly the same players.”

  Bowen shrugged. “It wasn’t the Speaker’s fault someone killed the President and VP on the same day.”

  “I’m positive it was,” Garcia said. “And look at what he’s doing with the country. Do you think Clark would have put so many thugs in high-level government positions?”

  “Washington is full of thugs,” Bowen said. “People like that are drawn to money and power.”

  “I can’t argue that,” Garcia said. “But you have to agree that there are more in place now than ever before. The Secretary of Labor has known contacts with organized crime in Chicago. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was twice accused of sexual harassment of female subordinates. The Secretary of State is a moron and the Secretary of Defense is an avowed isolationist who can hardly order pizza without threatening to kick the delivery boy’s ass. Does that sound like the kind of people that should be running a government?”

  “Look,” Bowen said, “if the President is leading some secret cabal, it seems impossible that he’d have so many co-conspirators with his same ideology. From what I’ve read, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and even the Baader-Meinhof gang may have been highly organized, but in the end, they couldn’t even agree on what to have for lunch, let alone find enough like-minded guys to run an operation as large and unwieldy as a presidential administration within the United States.”

  “That’s the beauty part.” Ronnie brushed a lock of damp hair out of her face. “They wouldn’t have to share the same ideology. Have you ever had a bad boss?”

  “Of course.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Well,” Bowen said, “it was a she, and the people above her in rank eventually tuned her up.”

  “Exactly my point,” Ronnie said.

  They floated under a series of metal teapots raining water down on their heads. Elbows hooking the tube, Ronnie wiped her face with both hands and looked at him. “Think about it. What if the man at the very top turned a blind eye to bad behavior? Imagine the worst bully in your office, and then imagine him with all authority of a Nazi SS officer or East German secret policeman. He wouldn’t have to share the President’s ideology—because he has one of his own that is equally rotten. It really doesn’t matter what that ideology is. It still benefits Drake’s plan.”

  Bowen sighed. All this talk about ousting a sitting president made him wonder how he’d do in prison.

  “And exactly what do you believe that plan to be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Garcia said. “But it’s not good. Just imagine all the things you could do to bring down the nation if you were the president of the United States.”

  “I’m not that much of an imaginer,” Bowen said, though the entire story made more sense than he’d like to admit. “I am going to help you though. Those Internal Defense guys are the kind of people I cannot abide.”

  “Thank you.” Ronnie smiled. Her eyes fluttered, half shut as if she was on the verge of drifting off to sleep. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”

  “Listen,” Bowen said, “I’m sorry for being so flip about those guys putting a camera in your bathroom. That’s pretty twisted. I shouldn’t have made light of it.”

  “No big deal.” Garcia gave him another killer smile. “Anyhow, it’s a conscience like that that will keep you from getting recruited by the IDTF.”

  She shoved Bowen backwards as they approached a large waterfall that fell in a roaring curtain from a fake stone arch across the Lazy River. Garcia was on her back now, and strong legs propelled her toward the falls. Her feet cleared the surface so he caught delicious glimpses of her painted toes. Just before she disappeared behind the falls, she flipped onto her belly. Her butt arched out of the water as she dove below the surface to vanish under the silver curtain.

  Bowen kicked the tube through the falls, just seconds behind her. His mind worked double-time, pondering ways he could prolong this conversation, thinking of when they might meet again.

  But when he pushed the yellow tube into the calm water, Ronnie Garcia was gone.

  Chapter 38

  IDTF agent Roy Gant bounced on his feet behind a scrawny oak, a hundred meters to the west of the water park. He was a heavy guy with a big belly that the tree did little to hide—but he had bigger problems than that now. He’d been assigned to follow the deputy marshal, didn’t know why, didn’t care—especially once he’d had the happy accident of stumbling on this meeting with the girl. Every ID agent within two hundred miles of the Beltway knew what she’d done to Lindale and Maloney. They all wanted to get her in their crosshairs. Gant had literally jumped up and down like a kid on his birthday when he’d realized he had Garcia in his sights. He’d called it in right away so he could bask in the praise of his superiors, giving none of the credit to his partner, a former FBI agent named Miller.

  And now the girl had disappeared.

  “Tell me you have eyes on,” Gant said into the small mike attached to his iPhone.

  “That’s a negative,” Miller said, from his vantage point fifty meters away, nearer the parking lot. “I never did have a clear view. You get all the credit for this one.”

  Gant stomped his foot. They should have been closer, but how was he supposed to know he’d need a pair of swimming trunks in order to blend in? Besides, he was not a small man and if he’d stripped down to his shorts, some wise guy might have harpooned him as the great white whale.

  “Keep watching the parking lot,” Gant said. “She’ll have to leave the area sometime.”

  “What about the deputy?” Miller said. “He’s a hard one to miss with that head full of gray.”

  “You’re tryin’ to tell me Veronica Garcia is easy to miss?” Gant snapped.

  “No,” Miller said. “I’m telling you that I have a visual on Bowen. If we can’t find the girl, I say we stay with him. She met him once. She’ll meet him again. Looks to me like they may have a little thing for each other.”

  Gant leaned against the rough bark of the tree, steadying his arms as he played the binoculars back and forth among the crowd. He searched frantically for any sign of the curvaceous Latina. His heart rose for a moment when he saw a girl in a dark swimsuit and large white hat—until she scooped up a little kid and took him to the wading pool.

  “I am so screwed,” Gant muttered to himself. She couldn’t have just vanished—but that is exactly what she had done. Backup teams were speeding in his direction at that very moment, ready to make him a hero when they swept in and arrested Garcia. “Forget the deputy,” he said to his partner. “Keep looking for the girl. She has to be here. She’s the priority.”

  “Roger that,” Miller said, the shrug evident in his tone. He’d received none of the credit, so he wasn’t about to share any of the blame. “Just sayin’, the deputy is walking to his car right now.”r />
  “Is he by himself?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then forget him,” Gant said, fighting back the rising panic. “Keep looking for her.”

  “You want me to slam a car door on your leg?” Miller said. “It worked to get Lindale out of hot water when he lost her.”

  Gant chewed on the inside of his cheek as he kept up his search with the binoculars—and seriously considered Miller’s offer.

  Chapter 39

  Alaska

  A faulty gear indicator on the Alaska Airlines plane carrying Tang Dalu and his team from Las Vegas to Anchorage kept them on the ground in Seattle an hour longer than planned. His entire team was sweating by the time they made it to the North Terminal. They reached security with less than fifteen minutes until boarding, which, Tang supposed, helped their cause. The Anchorage TSA officers, though watchful as ever, showed a modicum of compassion and hurried them along so they would not miss their flight.

  The last-minute change in plans had set everyone on edge, but their rushed demeanor had masked their nervousness. Ma Zhen, the most pious among then, attributed the delay to the will of Allah. Tang wondered why this same Allah that would reach down with his merciful finger to break a tiny gear light had not chosen to save his daughter. The others might be doing this as part of some personal jihad. Tang had other reasons.

  Anchorage International’s North Terminal was minuscule compared to the Las Vegas airport, with only eight gates—and the massive Airbus A380 took up two of them. All two stories of her loomed outside the windows like a great white whale with her nose to the glass. At once bloated and sleek, the “super jumbo” was the largest plane in the sky. The Global CEO’s wife was French, giving him the impetus to stray from their usual fleet of American-made Boeing 747s, making this Airbus an even richer target in the eyes of the man from Pakistan. Bringing it down would not only destroy the company that had gambled on something European, but enrage American nationalism.