Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  The thought had crossed his mind that they could detonate their bombs remotely. After all, that’s what he had done at Otets’s facility, using the suitcase bomb. They didn’t necessarily need a man at the site of the attack. The most important question on his mind, however, wasn’t how they would do it—it was why they hadn’t done it yet. The stadiums and sites were being emptied. It looked as if most of the spectators were already out. Any athletes and heads of state would have been among the first to be escorted from the premises.

  What was Amun waiting for? he wondered. The illusion of safety? Or would they give up on their plan if it had been foiled?

  No, he thought. They wouldn’t give up. They spent too long on this. They would have planned for this eventuality. But how?

  His gaze scanned the crowds, the structures, the news cameras, for anything that might seem amiss, as the motorcade inched closer.

  “What can we do to help?” Maria asked Baraf.

  “For one,” the Interpol agent replied, “we can get these media crews out of here. They can report from elsewhere. Their presence is making people believe their proximity is safe. Then we can establish barricades a suitable distance away…”

  Baraf continued talking, but Reid barely heard him. He was staring intently, his eyes narrowed as he scrutinized for any detail he might find that could help them.

  He found none.

  “Agent Steele?” Baraf was twisted in his seat, staring right at him. “How wide did you say potential blast radius was?”

  “Oh, um, sorry. Approximately forty to sixty feet, based on the explosives I saw being manufactured.”

  “So twenty-five meters minimum,” Baraf said to Maria. “Barricades on all three streets surrounding the entrance to the Olympic Park…”

  Again the Interpol agent’s voice became background noise to Reid’s thoughts.

  There’s something here.

  No—not something. Someone. Amun wouldn’t entrust their master stroke to some other faction. They wouldn’t remote detonate. They’d have someone here, maybe more than one, to ensure things were done properly.

  “I need to get into the park,” he said aloud.

  “Into the park? Why?” Maria asked. “Bomb units are inside, doing their sweeps. We’d be more useful out here…”

  “Stop the car,” he insisted. They didn’t have time to crawl through the people-choked streets.

  Baraf nodded to the driver and the motorcade stopped, right in the middle of the street and half a block from the entrance to the Olympic Park. Reid pushed his door open and got out. For a moment he stood beside the car, his gaze darting carefully as he picked apart the crowd.

  “Kent?” Maria got out as well. “What’s the plan?”

  He didn’t answer. He simply stared at a point in the crowd.

  For the briefest of moments, he could have sworn that he saw a glimpse of bleached blond hair, an angular chin—a familiar face.

  “Kent, what’s wrong?” Maria insisted.

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I could have sworn I saw…”

  The Amun assassin from the subway in Rome. But maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, making him see what he wanted to see. If he truly had seen him, the assassin was gone, vanished into the crowd.

  He was vaguely aware that Maria had continued speaking. “Kent? Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Sorry, no…” He had zoned out, staring at the throngs of people, searching for the blond head.

  “I said, we should split up, take different sides of the park, and…”

  There.

  Reid did a double-take. He hadn’t been imagining things at all.

  Standing about fifty yards away, leaning against a telephone pole and smirking directly at him, was the Amun assassin.

  As Reid stared back in disbelief, the blond man turned and began shoving his way through the crowd, back the way he had come—back into the Olympic Park.

  He was daring Kent Steele to come after him.

  And he did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  “Stay with Baraf!” Reid shouted to Maria. “Help him!”

  “Where are you go—Kent, wait!” Maria yelled after him, but her words were quickly drowned out as he sprinted forward, shoving people aside and edging through the crowd as best he could.

  He had spotted the assassin. He was certain of it.

  The only general admission entrance to the Olympic Park was a single double-lane road that cut directly through its center, between a tall sky-blue contemporary sculpture that had been erected for the occasion and a welcome center. Reid spotted a glimmer of blond hair vanishing behind the sculpture and pursued. His right hand kept instinctively reaching for the gun holstered beneath his jacket, and he had to remind himself that he was in a dense crowd and trying not to incite panic.

  Just beyond the entrance road were four checkpoints, hastily organized by the Federal Office of Police and Interpol, with lengthy lines of people filing out—at each checkpoint, officers briefly inspected the face and neck of each guest as they left the facility, many of them dour or sullen.

  He wouldn’t have tried to go right through a checkpoint with armed guards, Reid reasoned. To his left, around the huge blue wire sculpture, was the side employee entrance to a small stadium that housed the skating rinks.

  It was the only other way he could have gone.

  He hurried over and tugged on the door. It was open, but beyond it was darkness.

  Reid ventured inside. As soon as the door was closed behind him, he pulled out the Glock 27 from his shoulder holster and carefully stepped down a dim hallway. Compared to the daylight outside, it was dark, but emergency lights near the floor lit his way.

  The sounds of disgruntled spectators were all but drowned out from inside the building. It was almost entirely silent. His breathing was too loud, he thought, a dead giveaway to his location. Every footstep might as well be an earthquake to an assassin lying in wait.

  I should have told Maria to follow. I should have backup. I shouldn’t have come in here alone. There would be a hundred places for the assassin to hide, to lie in wait for Reid to wander into.

  Despite all these thoughts, he kept going further down the access corridor until it opened onto the main floor. To his left and right were the foremost rows of seats, arranged in a large oval around an ice rink. Center ice was illuminated overhead by powerful fluorescent lamps, casting the rink in eerie blue light. Everything else, however, was dark.

  The ice was empty; that much he could see. The only way to go was up. He took the stairs carefully, slowly, one at a time, with his gun leveled at a presumed center mass on the assassin.

  “That’s far enough.” The voice boomed, echoing over the rows of seats in such a way that Reid couldn’t tell what direction it came from. “Put the gun down.”

  Reid resisted the urge to whip around, to attempt to track the voice. Instead he kept his hand steady as his gaze flitted left and right for any sign of movement.

  “Why would I do that?” he called back. “So you can shoot me?”

  “I could shoot you now,” the voice said matter-of-factly. “I have a clear line of sight.”

  “Then why don’t you?” Reid challenged.

  A soft chuckle. “Because twice now I’ve tried to kill you with a gun, and both times some stroke of fortune saved you from me.” The assassin paused briefly. “You opened me with a knife and left me for dead. I think I ought to return the favor.”

  Reid scoffed. “You’re a lunatic.”

  “No, Agent. I’m much more than that. Now… put the gun down.”

  Reid swore softly under his breath. He saw no other option—either he could keep the gun, try to find the assassin, and possibly get shot… or he could put his gun down and possibly get shot.

  Slowly he lowered himself into a crouch and set the Glock down on the step.

  “And the other one,” said the echoing voice.

  “I don’t have another�
�”

  “Do not lie to me!” the assassin barked loudly. “You owe me more than that.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” Reid growled back.

  The assassin chuckled again. “Where is it? Ankle holster? Jacket pocket? Out with it.”

  Reid grunted in frustration, but he crouched again and pulled his second pistol, the small LC9, from his ankle holster. He set it beside the Glock and rose.

  “Good. Now, up the stairs.”

  Reid did so, until he came to a wide center aisle about halfway up the stadium, a thoroughfare between sections of the rink.

  “Stay right there,” said the assassin.

  From the darkness a silhouette took form. At first, in the dim lighting, it was just a shape, but as Reid’s eyes adjusted it became a man, and then a man with blond hair, a sharp chin, square shoulders. He was holding something aloft—a pistol.

  Reid didn’t need to see it to know that it was a silenced Sig Sauer.

  The assassin had him dead to rights for the second time that he could remember. If he pulled the trigger, there would be no more confusion between Reid Lawson and Kent Steele, because they would both cease to exist.

  “I figured you out,” Reid said, trying to sound confident. “Your plan is going to fail. How long did your people plot this out? Two years? Maybe more?”

  “Nothing has failed,” the assassin said calmly.

  “Is that so? Then why didn’t you detonate yet?”

  “Oh, we will,” the blond stranger replied. “Very soon. Just… not where you think.”

  Reid’s expression fell slack. He felt that now-familiar ball of dread curdle in his stomach.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Reid couldn’t see his smile, but he could hear it in the assassin’s voice. “You took the bait. We led you here. Amun has given you to me.”

  I was wrong. Sion isn’t the target at all.

  The terrorist in New Jersey, his dying words weren’t a clue. They were a distraction, a way to incite an international panic while the real threat loomed elsewhere, ignored—and a trap, to get Kent Steele there alone.

  He had failed.

  The sick, tight sensation in his stomach worsened at the assassin’s hoarse chuckle. “You’re putting it together,” he taunted. “You see, Agent, Amun teaches us that every man has a purpose. We do many things in our lives, but we all have a singular reason for being. We can choose to ignore our purpose—but to do so is not to serve Amun. I have been given a purpose. And my purpose, simply put, is to kill you.”

  This man is psychotic, Reid thought. Or just completely indoctrinated.

  He shook his head slowly. “If this is my end, it’s yours too. There’s no way out of this for you. This place is crawling with agents and police and security. Even if you do kill me, you’ll never make it out.”

  “Agent, that’s the point. I kill you. I am killed in return. I will not accept being taken prisoner. I will serve Amun in my highest purpose.” The assassin held the gun up, showing it to Reid, and then set it down on the nearest seat. “Don’t you see? You are my destiny. And I… I am your reckoning.” He reached into his jacket and unsheathed a curved hunting knife. The blade glinted silver in the dim light.

  Now that the gun was off of him, Reid’s first instinct was to run, to make a dash for the exit, to warn Baraf and Maria that Sion was not the intended target at all. But the Sig Sauer was still within the assassin’s reach. Reid wouldn’t make it five yards before being shot in the back. He had to get the stranger away from the gun, at least enough so that he could make a break for it.

  “My reckoning? Is that what you think you are?” Reid forced a laugh. “I don’t even remember you. Whatever happened between us, you must not have left much of an impression. You’re not my reckoning. You’re just one more body I’ll have to leave along the way.”

  His ridicule did the trick. The assassin let loose a guttural yell as he lunged at Reid. He flipped the knife around and swung down in an overhand stab. Reid instinctively blocked it with a forearm, twisted his body as he crouched, and flung the assassin over his shoulder.

  The blond man landed on one knee and propelled himself back up, swinging the knife in a wide backwards arc. Reid leapt back, barely avoiding the blade—and tripped, toppling over the row of seats in front of the aisle. He hit the ground hard. Pain shot up his elbow.

  The assassin was on him again in an instant. There were fingers in his hair. His head was yanked back. Any second, he knew, the knife would be at his neck.

  Reid put up his hand to block it and caught the blade in his palm. He shouted in pain as his palm was slit open—but it was preferable to his throat. He shoved the blade up as he ducked beneath it, and then he planted both hands flat on the ground and kicked backward with as much force as he could muster.

  The blond assassin grunted as he took the mule-kick to the chest. His body left the ground for a moment, and then crashed over two rows of hard plastic seats. He groaned, pulling himself up slowly.

  Reid saw his chance. He dashed down the row toward the stairs and took them two at a time. He needed to get back outside, out in the open, back to Maria, tell her what he now knew…

  He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the assassin standing on the stairs, rearing back with the hunting knife, aiming to throw it.

  Reid tucked into a roll.

  The knife sailed just barely over his head, but he miscalculated the steepness of the stairs and lost control, tumbling down head over heels. His ribs hit the edge of a step and he lost his breath.

  The hunting knife clattered onto the ice and skidded to a stop.

  Reid winced in pain and tried to catch his wind again. The assassin had lost his knife, for the moment, but he might still be armed. Reid glanced up to see the blond man limping down the stairs after him. The tumble over the seats must have injured him.

  Good. That’ll slow him down. Though I’m not faring much better.

  His ribs were most certainly bruised. His palm was bleeding amply. His left knee throbbed. He wasn’t sure he could outrun the assassin down the access corridor through which he had entered the building, and that was the only sure exit he knew of.

  The knife. Get to the knife.

  Reid forced himself to stand, bounded down the last few steps, and leapt out onto the ice. He slid on his knees across the recently resurfaced rink and grabbed the hunting knife by its ivory handle.

  The assassin wavered at the threshold to the rink. Reid hoped he wasn’t sure-footed enough to take the fight onto the ice. He stood carefully, maintaining his footing, daring the assassin to come join him.

  The blond stranger took a cautious step forward. He wobbled slightly, holding his arms out for balance. Reid could see his face clearly under the powerful overhead lights that lit the ice. Again a strange familiarity struck him, though he couldn’t quite place it.

  Then he looked the assassin in the eyes.

  Curious—Reid was certain they had been a cold, icy blue back in the subway in Rome. But now they were green, a deep green, like the color of a dense forest.

  The recognition struck him like a high-voltage shock to the brain. A vision flashed—a face, that same face he was staring at, but with dark hair, the shadow of a beard, the angular chin, and those green eyes.

  A train station in Denmark.

  A name came to him. “Rais,” he murmured aloud.

  The assassin smiled wide. It was neither pleasant nor threatening; if anything, it was triumphant. “You remember, Agent.”

  Rais. A new vision flashed: the assassin standing over him, gleeful, pointing the barrel of a gun at Reid’s forehead.

  “My face was different then,” said Rais. “But I knew you would remember.”

  “You’re the one I was after,” Reid said quietly. “When I… back when…”

  Back when he was on the warpath, shortly after Kate’s death. When Agent Kent Steele went on his spree, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, grief-str
icken and desperate to lose himself in the hunt. Memories flooded back to him, and with them came an intense headache at the front of his skull. He tortured anyone who might have information. He promised them amnesty for intel, and then he killed them anyway.

  The agency had tried to call him back in. He ignored them.

  He had been chasing the assassin, and…

  Another vision—a train station in Denmark. He had tracked the assassin and found him just before he boarded a train bound for Munich. They fought. They were both bloodied; they beat each other half to death. But ultimately Rais had him on his back with a gun to his head.

  The assassin had pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired. Kent slipped a knife from his boot. Stabbed his would-be assassin in the gut and dragged the knife up, splitting him open.

  He left Rais there to die.

  “I found you… I killed you.”

  But it had brought him neither satisfaction nor answers, and Rais had not died.

  A satisfied smirk played on the assassin’s lips. That was all he wanted, for Reid to remember him.

  “As Amun, we endure,” Rais said. “As I said, it is my destiny to kill you.”

  “You’ll try.”

  Reid’s grip tightened around the hunting knife as the assassin surged forward. He expected Rais to waver on the ice, but his boots somehow gave him purchase on the slick surface.

  Reid realized it too late. Rais had planned for this, had specifically lured him here, to the rink. The assassin wore some sort of traction boots, while Reid was hopelessly unsteady.

  He swung the knife upward as Rais drew near, but his movements were jerky. His swing went wide and Rais blocked it easily. The assassin’s fist connected with Reid’s jaw in a vicious uppercut. Stars swam in his vision. He had barely seen the blow coming, being too distracted by maintaining his balance.

  Reid barely felt the second fist connect with his cheek. He heard a clatter—the knife slipping from his grip.

  The blow sent him reeling, so he went with it, pushing with his heels and propelling himself backward. He hit the ice hard and slid about ten feet. Rais had been prepared to throw a third punch, but it hit nothing, and his momentum drove him forward. He staggered and fell to his limbs on the ice.