Trapping Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Assuming it’s the type of submarine drone I’m familiar with,” Bixby said through the speaker of the satellite phone, “it’ll be coming in pretty hot, at a speed of about forty-five knots—that’s about fifty miles an hour. The Parasite is much faster than that in the air, but once it hits the water your top speed is going to be less than half of that, so you’ll have to get ahead of it. Let me do a quick calculation here to see just how far…”

  Maria barely heard him, focused as she was on the river. She was getting quite adept with the Parasite, using only the fingertips of her thumb and index finger on the control stick, making minute adjustments to its altitude and shifting the trajectory.

  “I don’t see anything from the south,” she noted. “I’m going to turn it around and check north—” She stopped abruptly as a small, thin streak of red suddenly appeared on the mostly blue screen in front of her. It was moving fairly quickly, even in relation to the Parasite’s speed.

  “Oh my god,” she murmured. “Bixby, I’ve got visual.” There was no doubt about it; the orange-red heat signature on the screen was too small to be a boat, and moving too fast to be anything but the submarine drone. “I see it! It’s about…” She locked onto it with the Parasite’s tacheometer. “It’s about seven hundred yards from the tunnel, heading right for the Manhattan side.”

  “Moving at its top speed, impact will be just under thirty seconds,” Bixby rattled off, his voice rising an octave in panic. “Get in front of it, now.”

  “How far?”

  “Um…”

  “Bixby!” Maria hissed.

  “At least two hundred yards,” the engineer guessed. “No, two fifty.”

  Maria pushed the control stick forward so hard she was afraid she might break the thin metal rod. The Parasite shot forward, towards the drone, the distance closing quickly towards two hundred and fifty yards.

  Icy fingers of genuine fear gripped at her throat, making it harder to breathe. We don’t say goodbyes, she had told Kent. Not now. Not ever. On every operation throughout her entire career she had been fully aware that it might be her last, and she prepared herself mentally and emotionally for that possibility.

  But this was different. Her life was not at stake; she was safely seated in the backseat of a silver luxury car roughly a quarter-mile from the intended point of impact, watching a red blip on a screen that represented a bomb capable of killing several thousand people—including Watson. Including Agent Mendel.

  Including Kent.

  Maria’s lung burned as she realized she had been holding her breath. She sucked air through her nostrils as the distance wound down to two hundred and fifty yards. Then she switched the view to the Parasite’s digital camera and aimed the drone downward towards the surface of the East River.

  “Submerging now,” she said, her voice sounding eerily calm, as if not her own.

  The image on the screen shook violently as the drone hit the water. For a moment she could see nothing but bubbles; then the screen flickered to black. “Shit,” she muttered. “Lost the camera feed.” She switched back to infrared and scanned for the submarine drone.

  Her view was almost entirely blue, growing darker as the drone plunged further into the East River’s depths. Bixby was right; she lost almost all speed, pushing the control stick as far forward as possible and still feeling as if the Parasite was struggling along. She pulled slightly to the left and the drone’s trajectory curved in a wide arc.

  If the submarine changes course, I’ll never be able to catch it…

  “Johansson?” The engineer’s urgent voice cut into her thoughts. She had nearly forgotten about Bixby. “Remember, fifteen yards is the minimum required distance to disable the drone, and you’ll have only seconds to port with it.”

  “Right.” Maria held the stick forward as the Parasite chugged ever downward, trying to match the depth of the submersible drone. She didn’t have a visual on its heat signature, but the tacheometer’s distance reading was closing fast, now under two hundred yards. “It’s coming…” she warned.

  “Listen carefully,” Bixby said quickly. “When it’s within fifteen yards of the Parasite, press and hold the green button to the left of the control stick. Then press ‘control-enter’ on the keyboard. That will disable the submersible’s frequency—hopefully long enough to port with it.”

  The distance closed to under a hundred yards. “Then what?” Maria asked.

  “Let’s just take this one thing at a time,” Bixby told her.

  She grunted in frustration and slowly about-faced the Parasite. She had visual on the drone, the orange-red blur approaching rapidly from the south. At the Parasite’s current depth, it appeared that the submersible would pass directly overhead.

  “Fifty yards…” she noted, surprised by the nervous pitch of her own voice. “Forty. Thirty. Twenty…”

  Maria jammed her finger down on the green button as she released the control stick and pressed the two keys with her other hand. She held her breath, holding all three keys down simultaneously.

  The torpedo-shaped heat signature rushed by on her screen—and kept on going.

  It didn’t work.

  Her throat tightened, fingers trembling on the keys.

  It didn’t work.

  “Johansson?” Bixby practically shouted. “Maria?!”

  “It didn’t work,” she murmured aloud. “It kept going. It didn’t stop.”

  “It’s not going to stop,” the engineer said quickly. “Inertia. Is it slowing?”

  Maria grabbed the control stick and turned the Parasite to see the orange-red shape. “It…” The tacheometer’s distance was winding back up from zero—but much slower than it should have been. “It is. It’s slowing!”

  Bixby let out a whoosh of a sigh. “Good. You disabled the frequency; it’s dead in the water, but not for long. Get the Parasite over to it and I’ll read out the porting sequence.”

  It worked. Good god, it worked. She was suddenly aware of her heart thumping in her chest, as if it had just restarted.

  “Give it to me,” she said as pushed the control stick, guiding the glacially-moving Parasite to the slowing submarine.

  “It’s Alpha-Niner-Romeo-Zero-Zero-Charlie,” Bixby read, enunciating each syllable carefully. “You got that? Alpha-Niner-Romeo-Zero-Zero-Charlie.”

  “Got it. I got it.” Maria punched the porting sequence into the keyboard. Her view on the infrared screen shifted as the Parasite lolled on a forty-five degree angle. “What’s it doing? It’s moving on its own…”

  “Let it work,” Bixby told her. “It ports automatically and clones the frequency. In a moment, you’ll have full control of the submersible.” He let out a short laugh of relief. “Congratulations, Agent Johansson. You just stopped a major terrorist attack on US soil.”

  “I’ve never been that scared in my life.” Maria covered her face with both hands and breathed into them. “I have to call Kent. But first, what do I do with this thing?”

  “Any drone we design that carries a payload has a disarm command. Let me find it,” Bixby told her. “In the meantime, just guide it away from the tunnel.”

  “Yeah.” The Parasite finished porting and Maria gently angled the control stick back and to the left. The drone, attached to the submersible, glided forward and decreased its depth; she now had control of it, just as Bixby had promised. She piloted it parallel to the long, thick heat signature that was the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and then turned it away and southbound towards the open water of the East River.

  “What…?” Maria’s brow knitted tightly as her jaw fell slack.

  What she was seeing was impossible. Through the cool blue hue of the water she saw another heat signature—orange-red, thin and narrow, and harrowingly familiar.

  “There’s another,” she said in nearly a whisper. “Bixby, there’s another drone.”

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  “What?!” the engineer exclaimed.

  “There’s a second one!” M
aria shoved the stick forward, sending the submarine drone hurtling towards the new threat. “Another submersible drone, nearing the Queens side of the tunnel.” The freezing tingle returned to her spine. That was their plan—not one, but two drones. Take out each side of the tunnel and leave the people inside to die. She had no weapons left; the Parasite drone could not detach from the first submarine or else control would return to the Brotherhood, wherever they might be.

  That’s not completely true, though. I do have a weapon. She had a submarine at her disposal.

  “Bixby,” she said evenly, “I’m going to try to crash this drone into the other one.”

  The engineer was silent for a moment. “That might work,” he murmured at last. “What’s the distance?”

  “Um…” It was difficult to tell. She locked onto the second drone and read her distance from it as eight hundred and fifty yards, closing fast. But the best she could estimate from drone to tunnel was only that the distance was shorter than hers. “It’s too far. I don’t think I’m going to make it. What do I do? Bixby, what do I do?”

  “There might be a way,” he said. “Get as close as you can, and then…” The engineer paused. “And then detonate.”

  “What?” Maria kept the drone on course towards the new threat, not daring to take her eyes from the screen. “You want me to blow it?”

  “Aim it downward, towards the floor of the river. With any luck, the shockwave from the blast will set off the second drone…”

  “Will that work?”

  “I… I don’t know,” he admitted. “If you’re close enough, as close as you can get before it hits the tunnel, then maybe.”

  “What if it’s too close? Will it damage the tunnel?”

  “I don’t know, Maria,” he said honestly. “But I can’t think of another way.”

  As the distance between drones closed, her supposition from moments earlier became painfully apparent. She definitely wasn’t going to make it; the second drone would strike the tunnel before she could reach it.

  She set her jaw resolutely. Back in Israel, when Kent took the first submarine drone out to sea away from the USS New York and detonated it, the ensuing blast had been strong enough to rock the battleship, even from several hundred yards away.

  This will work, she told herself. The real question was whether or not the drone would be too close to the tunnel… but there was no time to speculate. She was closing in on the second drone, less than two hundred and fifty yards out now, while it raced towards the Queens end of the Midtown Tunnel.

  Too close. It’s getting too close. It’s now or never.

  “If anyone up there is listening,” she whispered aloud, “please let this work.”

  Maria pushed the control stick forward, sending the host drone plummeting down towards the bottom of the East River.

  She heard no explosion; she felt no seismic wave. The drone struck the floor of the river and presumably detonated, her only indication being that the screen flickered and went dark.

  “That’s it,” she said quietly. “It’s done. It detonated. How do we know if it worked?”

  “We don’t,” Bixby told her. “Not yet.”

  Maria shoved the guidance system off her lap and half-stumbled out of the car. Her legs felt weak and shaky. Outside, cars continued to honk as drivers shouted at each other. There were people on foot, dozens of them, heading in her direction—they were evacuating the tunnel—but otherwise there was no evidence that her plan had worked. There was no sign of the drone having been stopped, no indication that the opposite side of the Midtown Tunnel, more than a mile away, hadn’t been struck by a powerful bomb.

  “Johansson?” She heard the small voice through the open car door as Bixby called out to her through the phone. She grabbed it up. “Listen to me. The Parasite does more than just take over another drone; when it ported, it should have been able to ascertain a rough location of the transmission.”

  “You mean… it can tell us where the Brotherhood is hiding?”

  “Yes,” Bixby confirmed. “I’ll walk you through it, and then you have to go find them. They had two. There might still be more.”

  *

  Reid concentrated with a laser-like focus on the narrow concrete walkway before him as he increased the motorcycle’s speed to thirty, and then forty miles an hour. Talia held fast behind him. They would be at the Queens side of the tunnel in moments, but Reid couldn’t consider much beyond that; he was far more concerned with the three-inch margin of error he had on each side of the bike’s handlebars that separated them from a grisly misfortune.

  Still, he couldn’t shake the image of the little girl and the young mother from his mind. It would take them several minutes to reach the tunnel’s Manhattan exit, and he was keenly aware that the impact could come at any second, that anytime now the Midtown Tunnel might collapse around them and they, along with anyone else still down there, might be crushed under tons of concrete, steel, and water—

  The ground beneath the bike’s tires quaked as suddenly as a heart attack. Every muscle in Reid’s body seized, as if realizing before his brain that they were too late. The tunnel groaned violently with the impact.

  Though it happened in an instant, it felt to him as if the crash took several minutes. First the front tire of the motorcycle veered, yanking the handlebars with it. He couldn’t react in time; the front end struck the metal railing to their left, while the back tire kicked out and skidded against the curved concrete wall to their right. The bike slid sideways like that for a few feet, until the handlebars snagged in the railing and stopped the bike dead at forty-five miles an hour.

  Reid was thrown over the front of it, his body sailing through the air and over the railing. He was at least partially cognizant that Talia’s arms were no longer around his waist.

  He managed to get both arms in front of his face as he struck the roof of a car, bouncing off of it as the windows exploded outward. The last thing he saw before his vision went black was the dark shadows of the pavement rushing up to meet him.

  *

  Awad bin Saddam stared at the two black screens. His jaw was clenched tight enough to crack teeth. His fists balled stiff enough for the fingernails to bite into the skin of his palm.

  There had been an object, some tiny heat signature in the water that was picked up briefly on Ahmed’s screen. Moments later his guidance system went dark, well before the drone strike on the Manhattan side of the tunnel. Not more than a minute later, Hassan’s screen blackened abruptly, the drone less than a hundred yards from the Queens side.

  Awad did not know what happened, but two things were clear. First was that neither of the drones had hit their intended target. The second was that someone out there was aware not only of their presence, but of their plan.

  The Libyan, he thought bitterly. The Libyan was captured, and he sold us out.

  His fury rose slowly, coming to a boil from deep within him as he stood there, staring, until he was quaking with anger.

  “What… what happened?” Ahmed dared to ask. “Did it work?”

  Awad snatched up the silver pistol on the tabletop before him and shot Ahmed in the forehead, splattering blood and brain matter across the walls of the cabin. Ahmed’s body slumped to the floor and Awad kicked it in the ribs, over and over, hurling curses in Arabic as he pummeled the recent corpse.

  Then, his chest heaving, he spun and leveled the gun at Hassan. The coward winced, his eyes squeezed tightly and hands up in front of his face.

  No, Awad thought. You may still need someone to abet your getaway. Surprisingly, Hassan had not yet outlived his usefulness.

  Awad dropped the pistol on the table and sat heavily in Ahmed’s chair. He shoved the now-useless guidance system out of the way and pulled up the third unit, the one that would control the final drone—the drone that was only supposed to strike, according to his plan, after the first two had found their targets.

  “I will do it myself,” he grumbled as he keyed in the
ignition sequence. The screen flickered to life; the drone was resting in the water at a point where Upper Bay met the East River. Once activated, Awad toggled the control stick to ensure the drone was working properly. The response was sluggish; the signal was weak, but it was there.

  “My father,” said Hassan quietly.

  “Hmm?” Awad did not look up from the controls. “Speak up.”

  “My father,” Hassan said again, though he did not raise his voice. “Did you kill him?”

  “What?” Awad finally looked up from the controls and his eyes narrowed. Hassan stood mere feet away—and in his grip he had the silver pistol that Awad had laid upon the table. He held it slack at his side.

  “No,” Awad said carefully. “Of course not. Abdallah bin Mohammed is responsible for the survival of the Brotherhood. For years he kept us safe. I owe my life to him, as do you—”

  “Yet I cannot take you at your word.” Hassan did not meet Awad’s gaze; he stared at the floor of the cabin. “You lied when you said he named you to lead us. You lied when you said you shared with him this grand plan of yours. You lied when you said he endorsed it.” Hassan shook his head. The hand that held the pistol trembled. “Now, I am ruined. My family’s fortune squandered. Our compound has been raided and seized. The only two members of the Brotherhood remaining stand here. Your plan has failed, Awad.”

  Awad stood suddenly, his face contorting in anger. “There is yet time!” he shouted.

  “No. They know of us. They know we are here. They will come.” Hassan’s lip quivered. “No one will know our names.” He raised the pistol, the barrel leveling at Awad—but it kept moving, upward, until it was tucked beneath his own chin.

  “Hassan—”

  He pulled the trigger, blowing the back of his own head against the ceiling of the boat’s cabin. Hassan’s head snapped back as his body fell forward, smacking dully against the floor.

  Awad winced slightly with the report. “Coward,” he muttered at the floor. Then he dropped himself back into his chair and before the controls of the remote guidance system.