Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

Then stop trying, her brain told her.

  She skidded to a sudden halt and at the same time dove into a crouch. Her pursuer didn’t see that coming. He collided with her hard, tripped over her crouched body, and went flying through the air. For a brief moment he was soaring over her.

  Then he hit the planks of the pier, face-first, with a sickening crash.

  Maya stood again. Her ribs ached where he had run into her, but she ignored it as best she could and took off in the opposite direction.

  I can’t keep running, she told herself. Need to find a place to hide. One of the open shops would be ideal. The man wouldn’t dare to assault her in front of someone else… would he?

  I can’t do that, she thought. I can’t put someone innocent in harm’s way because of me. She slowed her pace and looked to her left. She was near the entrance to Wonderland… the animatronic monkeys. She glanced back to see the man about fifty yards down the pier. He was only just now stirring, struggling to get up. He wasn’t looking her way.

  She quickly skirted toward the display of instrument-playing monkeys and hid behind it. He would expect her to run, to find someone and call the police. He wouldn’t expect her to hide in the same place she was supposed to already be.

  Maya struggled to control her ragged, panting breaths as she dared to peek around the edge of the small bandstand. The man staggered past, mere feet from her. His face was still red—dark red now, as blood ran from a wide cut near his hairline, down his cheek and neck. His eyes were furious and wild. In his right hand, he held…

  Maya froze in terror. For a moment, she forgot to breathe. The man held a silver gun, a pistol, keeping it tight to his side but his finger on the trigger.

  She had never seen a real gun before, and the very sight of it made her tremble. She couldn’t move, didn’t dare to breathe…

  Suddenly a hand grabbed her roughly by the hair. She yelped and instinctively tried to squirm away, but the hand held fast, yanking her head back violently.

  There was a second man, with deep mocha-colored skin. She could see his large frame, but not his face. He forced her head forward and her body followed, stumbling as he shoved her out from behind the display.

  “I’ve got her,” he called out to the first attacker. He spun, half-hiding his gun behind his body. The collar of his white shirt was soaked with blood. He leered at her murderously. “Where is the other?” the new assailant grunted.

  “Escaped,” said the one with blood on his face. “I can find her. We can make this one talk—”

  “No,” said the second man. “We have wasted enough time. We must go, now. We have one. She will suffice.”

  Suffice for what? Maya thought, panicked. She tried to squirm out of his grip. Her scalp burned as several hairs were pulled out by the root, but the man held her firmly. He began to drag her down the pier, in the direction the man had said his car was waiting. She had the distinct feeling that once she was in that car, there would be no coming back. She saw no other choice.

  “Help!” she screamed. As loud as she could, she shouted, “I’m being kidnapped!”

  The man holding her reached for something—then he showed it to her. A knife with a wickedly curved blade reached for her throat. “Shut up, girl,” he hissed, “unless you want to be opened.”

  Maya sucked in a breath and held it. She didn’t dare call out again. But she didn’t have to. From the nearest shop, a store that sold novelty T-shirts, a portly woman emerged, her brow knitted in the center with concern. She folded her thick arms against the winter cold and peered at the two men holding a teenage girl by the hair.

  “My god!” she exclaimed. “Let go of that girl right now, or I will call the police!” Even as she said it, the woman pulled a phone from her back pocket and had a thumb on the keypad.

  The man with the gun grunted again in a foreign language. He took the pistol from behind his back, raised it—

  “No, wait!” Maya heard herself shout.

  Two thunderous claps split the air, louder and more real than she ever would have imagined. Blood misted into the air from two holes in the woman’s chest. The cell phone clattered to the pier, followed a moment later by the woman’s body thudding dully to the planks—but Maya didn’t hear it. Her ears rang with the sudden, deafening gunshots.

  “Idiot!” hissed the man holding her.

  “She was going to call the police!” the first man said in defense.

  “Now they will come anyway! Come. Hurry up!” He tugged again on Maya’s hair, forcing her forward, but she barely felt it. Her legs were rubbery. They didn’t want to work properly.

  She had just witnessed a murder. An innocent person. And it was her fault.

  Her throat was tight and her face felt numb. An awareness spawned at the back of her mind—these two men were willing to do whatever they had to do to take her away from here. No police were coming for her. No one was here to save her.

  Her one saving grace, her only thought of solace, was that at least Sara was safe. Maya hoped against hope that her sister would stay there, hidden in the large plastic UFO of the twelfth hole…

  “Move!” the man barked in her ear. Her feet dragged uselessly against the pier. “Walk, or else I will—”

  Two more intense cracks pealed over the Wonderland pier. The body of the man holding the gun jerked and fell backward. Maya blinked in shock. She had no idea what had just happened, but the man holding her seemed to know. He waved the knife back and forth, looking around wildly.

  “Don’t!” he shouted. “I’ll cut her open, I will—” He moved to press the knife to Maya’s throat, but before the blade reached her a third gunshot split her eardrums. The man’s head jerked back. The fingers in her hair spasmed, pulling more follicles out by the roots… then they slackened and fell away.

  Maya’s breath came raggedly. Tears stung her eyes. Through her blurry vision she saw a shape, climbing up onto the pier from the beach side. She wiped at her eyes. It was an African-American man, holding a gun up with both hands, the barrel of it pointed downward as he hurried over to her, looking left and right as he did.

  “Katherine Joanne,” he said to her.

  “Wh-what?” she stammered. Her brain felt like it had short-circuited.

  “Maya, I’m Agent Watson. Katherine Joanne—that’s the account you contacted your father with. Are there more?”

  “A-agent?” Agent of what?

  “Maya.” Watson looked her right in the eye. “Are there more, or did you only see two?”

  “Two,” she said shakily. “Only two.”

  “Okay.” Watson knelt beside the body of the tan-skinned man that had been holding her. He tugged the collar of the man’s coat and inspected his neck. Then Watson pressed a finger to his ear and spoke. “I’ve got Maya. Two assailants down. They’re not Amun; they must be from one of the factions under their thumb.” He glanced up at Maya again. “Where is your sister?”

  “She’s… hiding…”

  “Where?”

  Maya pointed. “That way. About two blocks that way.”

  “Okay. I need you to show me where.” He pressed his finger to his ear again—Maya could see that he was wearing a wire, a transparent lead trailing down into his collar. “Carver, bring the car around to the Ninth Street entrance. We’ll meet you there.” He took Maya gently by the shoulder. “I need you to show me, okay? Don’t worry. You’re safe now.”

  Maya flinched at his touch. Her eyes threatened more tears. She had just seen three people shot in the span of a minute. This new person—Agent Watson?—said she was safe, but as long as he was holding a gun, she didn’t feel all that safe.

  They both turned suddenly to the sound of a pained groan. The first assailant, the one with the gun, wasn’t quite dead. He lay on his back, bleeding out onto the planks, squirming in agony. He coughed flecks of blood onto his shirt.

  “Does not matter,” he murmured. “You will still be too late.”

  Agent Watson aimed his gun at the downed as
sailant, though it didn’t seem like the man was ever getting up again. “Too late for what?” Watson demanded.

  The man somehow managed a grin. “The ground will split open… with the heels… of their feet.” He laughed, and then winced in pain.

  While Maya watched, the man’s muscles slackened. He stopped moving. His eyes, though, stayed wide open, and the hint of a grin remained on his lips as he died.

  She shuddered and looked away.

  “Come on,” Watson said quietly. “Show me where your sister is, and we’ll get out of here.”

  Maya nodded and led the way down the pier toward the mini-golf course where Sara was hiding. She still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. But as her brain started churning again, recovering from the shock of what she had just seen, she began to form a much better idea of what her dad might be involved in.

  They would definitely have a lot to talk about when she saw him again—though if what she had been through with the two would-be kidnappers was any indication, she couldn’t be certain that she would ever see her father again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Reid regained consciousness slowly. There was an intense headache at the front of his skull and he wasn’t sure where he was. He had been dreaming—if he could call it that. He had heard his daughters’ voices, happy and giggling. He’d heard sounds of waves gently crashing on the surf. He heard Kate’s light, wonderful laughter, and then a slight nervous edge to her voice as she called out to Maya to watch her footing on the breakwater. He heard all the sounds of a family outing to the shore from years earlier, but he saw nothing. Only darkness. It was as if he was blind. He desperately wished to see the delighted faces of his girls, the content smile on Kate’s lips. But he saw nothing, just black.

  Then he woke, and his head throbbed, and he forgot for a moment where he was. He was seated in a cream-colored seat in a narrow cabin—right. He was aboard the Gulfstream. They were still in the air, he could tell by the pressure in his ears. He tried to rub his head, but his right wrist snapped taut after only a few inches.

  He was handcuffed to the plush armrest.

  His vision was fuzzy and he felt mildly nauseous. Despite the many questions on his mind, he rested back in the seat for a moment and closed his eyes, waiting for the feeling to pass.

  “Here.” Maria’s voice. He opened his eyes slightly to see her holding out a bottle of water. “The nausea will pass.” She spoke quietly. She almost sounded ashamed.

  He took the water with his uncuffed left hand, opened it, and drained half the bottle. Then he asked, “Why?”

  “Believe me,” she said, “it was the last thing I wanted to do. And as much as I don’t care much for Cartwright at the moment, he was right. We couldn’t have you losing control again. Protocol Delta was necessary.”

  His mouth felt like it was full of cotton. He drank the rest of the water. His head began to clear, and he suddenly remembered the peril that had caused Maria to drug him in the first place. He sat up quickly, ignoring a fresh wave of headache pain. ““The girls? What have you heard?”

  “They’re safe, Kent. We found them.”

  He breathed an enormous sigh of relief. “Tell me what happened.”

  “They met Watson and Carver at the rendezvous point. There were… complications, but neither of them was harmed,” Maria explained. “They’re in a safe house in northeastern Maryland.”

  “I want to talk to them.”

  “I just sent a message to Cartwright that you’re awake,” she said. “He has to patch you in via a secure line that goes through Langley. It’ll just be a minute.” Then she added, “But they’re safe, Kent.”

  Reid took several deep breaths. The nausea was passing. His vision was clearing too. He wanted to be angry at Maria, but he couldn’t find the energy or, frankly, the motivation. “I wasn’t losing control,” he said simply. “I’m not that guy anymore. I was just doing what any parent would do.” He looked her in the eye. “Do you have children? In your… other life?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Then you wouldn’t understand, he wanted to say.

  Instead he asked, “How long have I been out?”

  “About five hours,” Maria told him. “We’re still en route to return to Zurich. We should be there soon.” A cell phone rang. Maria answered it, murmured a few words, and then handed it to Reid. “Someone wants to talk to you.”

  He put the phone to his ear.

  “Dad?”

  Reid closed his eyes in an effort to extinguish the threat of tears. That one word, just the sound of Maya’s voice, and it was as if all his worry and mental anguish was exhaled from him. “It is so good to hear your voice, sweetheart. You okay?”

  She was silent for a long moment. “I… don’t know. I think I will be. I… saw some things.”

  “I’m so sorry, baby.” He wanted to ask her what she’d seen, but now wasn’t the time. They would talk later, when they were together again. She deserved that much.

  “When will you get home?” Her voice cracked as she asked the question, and his heart broke anew.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Soon, I hope. But you’re safe, and that’s what matters most to me. Can I talk to your sister?”

  “She’s sleeping,” said Maya. “The, uh, events of the morning really drained her.”

  “Let her sleep,” said Reid. “Put Watson on the phone, would you?”

  “Sure.” She added tightly, “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, Maya.”

  A moment later, a deep male voice answered. “It’s Watson.”

  “What can you tell me?” Reid asked.

  Watson lowered his voice—for Maya’s benefit, Reid guessed. “Two assailants, both dead. We ran recognition on them. One was Turkish, the other Afghani. Neither was Amun, but I’m sure they were working with them.”

  “Do you know how they got to the girls?” Reid asked. “Were they watching the whole time, or were they sent?”

  “That’s the strange part,” said Watson. “The first one approached the girls and tried to gain their trust… posing as me.”

  Reid understood immediately what that meant. Amun had people in the United States, but more than that, whoever was leaking information from the CIA was still doing so somehow. It was the only explanation for how Amun would have known that Watson and Carver were being sent to the pier that morning. “I see,” he said. “Stay on your toes. If they knew about that, they may know the location of the safe house.”

  “No one’s getting in,” Watson assured him. “We’ve got a whole squad at our backs.”

  Reid nodded. “Thank you for taking care of them.”

  “Wait, Zero, there’s one more thing,” Watson said. “The Turkish guy, before he kicked it, he said something. It wouldn’t have stuck out to me if it wasn’t so odd. He said, ‘The ground will split open with the heels of their feet.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

  Reid blinked. There was a glimmer of recognition in the words, as if he had heard them somewhere before, but he couldn’t immediately place it. “Not really,” he said. “But I’ll look into it. Thanks again, Watson.” He hung up, his brow furrowed.

  Maria noticed. “You don’t look very at ease for a guy who just found out his daughters are safe.”

  Reid shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s…” He trailed off. Where had he heard that strange phrase before? The ground will split open with the heels of their feet. It sounded like something he had read before, or maybe even cited in a classroom.

  The phone rang in his hand. He answered.

  “It’s Cartwright,” the deputy director greeted. “You okay, Zero? You calm?”

  “I’m fine,” Reid said shortly. He had several choice words he wanted to share with Cartwright about his Protocol Delta, but he held his tongue. “You heard Watson’s report?”

  “I did,” Cartwright said dejectedly.

  “Then you know what it means. Someone is still l
eaking intel to Amun. Has the NSA started tracking CIA correspondence?”

  The deputy director scoffed. “I imagine they have by now, but it’s not like they’re going to tell us, ‘Hey, we started listening in on your private conversations.’”

  “Well, whoever it is has found another way to get information out. We need to let Directors Mullen and Hillis know. We need to look closer at the higher-ups. And Johansson and I may have to go dark.”

  The ground will split open with the heels of their feet. He couldn’t get it out of his head. He had definitely heard it before. But where?

  Cartwright sighed. “Let’s not jump to anything hastily. Come back to Zurich, and we’ll figure this out.”

  Reid shook his head. “There’s nothing for us to do in Zurich. We need to find our next lead.” The only problem was that they had failed with the fake Sheikh Mustafar, and he had no idea where to go next. He didn’t want to return to Zurich empty-handed and start anew from square one. He didn’t want to sit in a conference room and debate options with superiors. He wanted to find Amun and discover their plot, but the only possible surviving lead he had was finding the assassin, the blond stranger who had attacked him in the Rome subway station. If there was a way to draw the assassin out of hiding, Reid would risk it. But he had no clue where the man might be or what channels he got his information through.

  The CIA mole, perhaps, Reid thought. If Cartwright helped him make his whereabouts known, maybe that could flush the assassin out of hiding. It would be extremely risky and require making himself vulnerable…

  The ground will split open with the heels of their feet. It tugged again at the back of his mind.

  “Agent Steele,” Cartwright said sternly. “I am giving you a direct order to return to Zurich, so unless you can give me a good reason why you wouldn’t—”

  “You want a good reason?” Reid interrupted. “Because I’m not entirely sure the leaks aren’t coming from you.” He hung up.

  Maria blinked at him, the hint of a smirk on her lips. “I bet that felt pretty good,” she said. “Do you really think it could be him?”