by Jack Mars
He would have rolled his eyes if he hadn’t been in such a rush. Instead he dropped to his knees, sliding across the tile, and fired three shots. The FBI agents dove for cover. One of them cried out, but Zero didn’t wait around to see where he’d been hit. He leapt to his feet and ran up another flight of stairs, taking them three at a time.
As he reached the first-floor landing he heard the voices shouting, boots stamping, magazines locking into weapons behind and below him. It sounded as if there could have been a dozen of them.
And he was trapped in this building. The Division would have it surrounded. They had already called in the Feds and could call in the police as well. They didn’t have to tell anyone that it was Agent Zero, he realized; all they had to say was that an active shooter was in the building.
He kept going, aware of the aching protests of his legs but forcing himself onward, up the stairs to the second floor. The voices behind him grew further; they were likely forming a plan to trap him.
He slowed at the second-floor landing, leaning against the banister and catching his breath for a moment.
Cartwright is dead. The Division is going to pin it on me. They’ll have the documents. Maria and Sanders were apprehended. Iran is closing the strait.
Everything had gone completely to hell inside of an hour.
But I’m not caught yet. And I’m not giving up.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself onward, up the stairs again to the third-floor landing. He glanced upward, trying to determine how many stories this building was. It looked like five total; two more would take him to the rooftop, but that wasn’t a safe bet since they’d called in a helicopter the last time they’d chased him—
“Don’t move,” commanded a voice.
Zero turned and glanced down the third-floor corridor. He sighed in dismay. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
In the hall was a young man, mid-twenties at best, in boxer shorts and a white T-shirt and with a service pistol in both hands, aimed right at Zero.
“MPD,” the man announced. “Put the gun down, and show me your hands.”
Of all the buildings I could have chosen, I picked one with an off-duty Metro cop. Zero hung his head for a moment. “Just wait a second,” he told the young cop. “You don’t know what’s going on…”
“No?” His hands tightened around the gun. “Shots fired. Report of an active shooter over the scanner. At least three dead and three wounded so far. You want to tell me again that I don’t know what’s going on?”
Zero noticed a bead of sweat on the young man’s forehead. He heard the voices coming up the stairs, the heavy boots stomping their way up toward him.
“You ever fire that at someone before?” Zero asked quickly. “You ever shot anyone?”
“First time for everything,” he said back. But the bead of sweat rolled down his temple. His finger, Zero noted, trembled a bit on the trigger.
“Okay,” Zero said. The Division was getting closer. He held up his gun. “Just don’t do anything stupid.” Zero frowned then, looking past the kid and down the hall behind him. His eyes widened in shock.
There was, of course, nothing there. But the young cop saw the rapid change of expression and couldn’t help himself. He instinctively turned, just for a second, and checked his six.
Zero fired only once and hit the young cop in the leg. He yelped and flopped to the ground. Zero was on him in a second; he kicked the gun away, and then directed the young man’s hands over the bullet wound. “Hold it there, tight. Help is coming.”
Then he raised his Glock and fired down the hall at the oncoming Division mercs. A wave of them had reached the third floor. He fired until the clip was empty, and then snatched up the cop’s service pistol—a semi-automatic M17—and fired off three more shots. The Division backtracked down the stairwell, shouting behind them.
They’ll try to gas me, he knew. Unless I do it first. He glanced up and down the hall, and then scrambled for the fire extinguisher mounted in a small alcove. He tore it loose and, winding back like he was throwing a bowling ball, hurled it down the hall. It bounced twice in the time it took Zero to aim the M17. And then he fired.
The pressurized fire extinguisher exploded in a dense white cloud, completely obscuring the stairs, the landing, and the end of the hall. Zero heard the Division men coughing and cursing as they attempted to navigate the thick fog.
But it would only buy him a precious few seconds. One of these apartments was the young cop’s door. He tried the nearest knob. It was locked. So was the next one down. He ran across the hall and the door opened easily.
Please be single and childless, Zero hoped as he closed the door behind him.
No such luck.
“Zach?” A young woman, pretty but looking frightened, dared to peek out of the bedroom. Zero had the gun up in an instant. She sucked in a terrified breath.
“Don’t scream,” he said quietly. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
She took a step backward, her eyes instantly brimming and lip trembling. “Is he alive?” she asked.
“Yes.” Zero hurried across the apartment to the window. “He’s hurt, but not too badly. Open this window for me, I’ve only got one hand.”
“No,” the woman said. She didn’t meet his gaze and tears fell down her cheeks, but still she refused his request.
“Seriously?” he blinked at her. “I’m trying to get out of your hair. Just open the window.”
A fist pounded on the door. “Shot another cop, Zero?” came a jeering voice. “Drop the gun and open it up, or we’re busting it down and opening fire.”
“My wife is in there!” the voice of the injured young cop screamed.
“I have a hostage!” Zero shouted back. He popped the latch on the window and tried to push it up with only one hand, but it hardly budged. “For god’s sake,” he pleaded with the young woman, “would you please just open the window?”
The glass exploded inward and fire scorched through Zero’s shoulder. He glanced up quickly to see a Division shooter on the adjacent rooftop, only slightly higher than eye level with him, reloading a bolt-action rifle.
Zero took aim as well, and squeezed off two shots in the one-point-five-second span that it took the shooter to reload. His head snapped back and he fell to the rooftop.
The bullet had barely grazed his shoulder, cutting open a gash that bled worse than it hurt. He turned back to the young woman to tell her to stay away from the windows.
Then the door to the apartment crashed open.
Zero shoved the woman backward, through the open bedroom door, and threw himself out the broken window. The skin of his thigh snagged on some broken glass as he rolled out to the fire escape and ducked, covering his head.
A fusillade of automatic gunfire thundered through the apartment, shattering windows and puncturing walls.
“The fire escape!” a gruff voice called.
Zero set down the M17, staying low behind the partial brick wall beneath the window, and waited. The instant he saw the barrel of an AR-15 come sticking out, he reached up, grabbed onto it firmly, and dropped his body weight. The Division merc came tumbling out after it. Zero dropped to his back and planted a foot on the man’s chest. In one swift motion, he sent the man over the railing and falling twenty-something feet to the alley below—but not before securing the AR-15 in his own hands.
Then he spun and emptied the entire magazine into the apartment.
It was not just a random spray of bullets. Zero brought the rifle to his left shoulder, cradling the barrel under his injured right hand, and fired off precision bursts of three rounds at a time. His mind instantly told him there were five targets in the apartment. He started at the left, fired off three shots, neutralized the target. In his periphery he saw a barrel tracking toward him. He deemed it the next highest threat and quickly took him out. Then the next. And so on. The action was mechanical, so much so that it might have been alarming if his amygdala wasn’t preoccupie
d with attention and memory.
It was a skill he didn’t know he’d had and now knew all too well. Shooting ranges, moving targets, rubber bullets firing back at him. Later, the real-life experience of firefights and raids. It would have been frightening to him if he wasn’t already aware, somehow, that he could do it and had done it before—which in a very bizarre way was even more frightening to him.
In seconds it was over. Five down. One man in the alley below him, screaming in agony at whatever had broken when he fell. In the hall, the downed cop groaning in pain. Down the hall, out of sight, more voices coming.
He tossed the AR-15 aside. Now what? They were just going to keep coming, and the longer he stayed here the more reinforcements they could call. There wasn’t a helicopter yet, but there could be soon.
Zero leaned over the railing of the fire escape and saw two men in blue jackets running down the alley toward the building, each with a pistol in hand. Were they really FBI, or Division posing as FBI agents? He couldn’t be sure, but he couldn’t stop and ask.
There was movement behind him. More of the Division was getting into cover around the door to the apartment. An arm swung through the frame and flung something out at him.
“Grenade out!” the man shouted as the cylinder soared through the window and bounced at Zero’s feet.
It wasn’t a smoke grenade, as he’d expected.
It was an actual, live fragmentation grenade.
Zero kicked at it, sending it careening off the fire escape. It was halfway to the ground before it exploded. He dropped to the metal grating and covered his head. Below him, the men running down the alley were very suddenly running the opposite direction at the very notion of raining grenades.
He scrambled to his feet and ran for the metal stairs—not to go down, but to head up. His feet pounded the steps as he headed for the fourth floor of the building, past windows that he thought might explode with bullets at any moment.
Can’t stay here, he reasoned. Can’t go back down. Have to find another way.
At the fourth-story fire escape level, he glanced over the railing and saw the rooftop of the adjacent building, where the dead sniper lay. It was about twelve feet away and maybe a ten-foot drop.
I can make that.
Before he had time to rethink it, he climbed onto the iron railing of the fire escape, steadying himself carefully and lowering into a crouch. “Okay,” he murmured. “Ready, and…”
Bullets pounded the fire escape from directly below him. Sparks flew as they bounced off of metal. Zero covered his head and swayed dangerously forward, threatening to lose his balance and fall out over nothing. He waved his arms backward and arched his back, struggling to regain stability.
There were two of them below him on the fire escape, firing directly upward.
He had no time to steady himself. He pushed off with both feet and launched himself out over the void between the two buildings.
And for the briefest of moments, it looked like he was going to make it.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Zero hit the rooftop at his midsection, folding in half over it and then sliding backward. He clawed desperately at the roof’s edge with his only good hand while pain shot up his injured right as it slapped uselessly against stucco.
Just as he was about to lose his grip and slide right over the side, his hand closed around a stubby vent pipe. It gave slightly but held, though his body hung uselessly over the side, fully exposed to the two Division members on the fire escape behind him.
He waited for the impact of bullets to smack into his back, the searing pain to tear into him. But when he heard the next thunderous crack, it didn’t come from behind him.
It came from above him.
He squinted up at the figure, but the still-rising sun was practically blinding from this angle. Whoever it was on the rooftop with him had the dead sniper’s rifle in his hands and had fired off a single shot. With a rapid shink-click-clink, he reloaded and aimed again. A second shot fired. A male voice cried out, and then fell silent.
Two hands wrapped around his arm then and pulled, heaving Zero up onto the rooftop. Pain roared through the shoulder that had been shot—grazed, really—as Zero flopped onto the horizontal rooftop, catching his breath and waiting for the pain to lessen.
He looked up.
Then he sprang to his feet, staggering only slightly, and pulled the Ruger LC9 from his pocket.
“Zero, wait—”
He aimed the gun at Agent Carver. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t shoot you right here.”
“I’ll give you three,” Carver said quickly. “I’m unarmed—this gun is empty. I just helped you. And you’re still being pursued. It’s going to be seconds before they get into this building and up here.”
Zero’s finger twitched on the trigger. He very much just wanted to fire; Carver had turned on him, lied to him, and tried to kill him twice now.
But when he glanced over his shoulder he saw the two Division men dead on the fire escape. Carver had shot them both, helped Zero up onto the roof, and then dropped the rifle. At the moment the tall agent had both hands up, palms out and empty.
Why? Just what the hell is going on?
“They killed Cartwright,” he said breathlessly.
“I know.” Carver appeared remorseful. “He’s not the only one. It’s too much, Zero. I know what they’re up to now, and I need your help. I could have killed you easily.”
Zero clenched his teeth hard enough that they felt like they might break. If this was a trick, it didn’t make much sense. Carver was right; he could have easily killed him just now. He could have shot him. He could have just stomped once on his hand and watched him fall.
“How do we get out of here?” Zero asked quickly.
“This way.” Carver took off across the rooftop toward the far side. Bullets rang out behind them, blasting pieces of stucco around them. Zero weaved as he dashed across the roof in a serpentine pattern. At the other end, tied around a thick turbine vent, was a coil of black nylon rope. Carver kicked it over the side and it unfurled to ground level. He grabbed onto one of the two devices threaded through the top of the rope—a double-pulley rappelling device with a rubber-gripped handle.
“See you down there.” Carver went first, as if proving to Zero that it was safe. He simply jumped over the side, the device slowing his descent as he zipped toward the ground.
Zero hesitated. Do I follow? What if this is a ruse to get to me? That didn’t make sense either; Carver had just killed two Division members in cold blood. He knew about Cartwright. Maybe he finally realized that the Division had their own agenda, and what all of it ultimately meant for the world.
He didn’t have time to wonder. Zero stuffed the LC9 back into his pocket, grabbed onto the thick handle, and leapt out after Carver. The rappel device slowed his fall to about ten feet per second; when he reached the ground he bent his knees with the impact to avoid injury.
Then he looked left and right for Carver, who seemed to have disappeared.
An engine roared from nearby, and a motorcycle fishtailed out from behind a dumpster. Carver tossed him a helmet. “Here. Get on.”
Zero hesitated. He had no idea where Carver would take him if he got on the motorcycle.
Carver scoffed. “Fine. Take this.” He reached into a black leather saddlebag and pulled out an MP5 machine pistol. “Make us a path.”
Zero pushed the helmet over his head. He heard shouting voices, approaching quickly from the southern end of the alley. Two men rounded the corner, pistols in hand—not the Division, but uniformed police officers. He instinctively raised the MP5 and fired off a short burst, not directly at them, but just over their heads. They both threw themselves to the ground as bullets pelted the brick behind them.
He saved my life, and then he armed me. This would either have to be one hell of an elaborate ruse, or Carver was really trying to help him. I hope I live long enough to regret this. He jumped on the back of
the bike and wrapped his right arm around Carver’s waist.
The motorcycle spun, and then Carver shot up the alley to the north at an easy forty miles an hour. He barely slowed as he turned the corner.
Zero balked. There were no fewer than half a dozen police cars blocking the street outside the apartment building, plus three black Division Jeeps and at least two unmarked cars that he could see.
But that was all he saw, because an instant later Carver fishtailed out onto the avenue and then opened the throttle. Zero was almost bucked off the bike as it leapt forward, to seventy, and then eighty. Carver veered around cars and twice mounted the sidewalk, sending pedestrians leaping out of the way and screaming.
His heart jumped into his throat. He didn’t like not being the driver, not being in control, but he had to remind himself that Carver was just as well trained as he was—well, nearly so. He let Carver focus on what was in front of them, and twisted around to glance behind them.
Sirens whooped as two cruisers and a black Jeep screamed after them. They were fast, but not nearly as maneuverable as the motorcycle. Just for good measure, Zero raised the MP5 and fired a few short bursts at the front grilles. Sparks flew and a tire blew out on one of the cruisers, sending its front bumper careening into the one beside it.
The motorcycle jerked to the left to avoid a slow-moving car and once again Zero nearly slipped off. He clenched his arm tighter around Carver’s waist; his broken hand flared in fresh pain.
Carver took the next left too fast, leaning far too hard and almost laying the bike on its side. Zero gritted his teeth as he leaned in the opposite direction, throwing his weight to counterbalance the falling bike. The motorcycle righted itself, and they took off like a shot again. Zero dared to look over Carver’s shoulder and saw the speedometer’s needle reaching one hundred. They zoomed by morning commuters as if the cars were sitting still. A glance behind him told him they’d lost the Jeep.
Carver pulled another sharp turn onto a mostly empty street and opened the throttle again. Zero knew this road; it led to an industrial complex not far from the waterfront. Carver slowed to sixty, and then turned into the parking lot of a long warehouse-type building faced with several wide, rolling-door garage bays. He headed straight for one that was partially open, only about five feet from the ground.
