Threat Zero

by Nicholas Irving

  “Okay, well, where are we on getting my laptop back?”

  “Still working it,” he said.

  “Work harder. Somebody’s got it. I need it back. That’s your next task. If the newspapers and television cable shows and networks aren’t on fire with this by midday tomorrow, we need to apply more pressure.”

  No way was she going to burn Jessup or make Ravenswood think that she had another source of intelligence. She kept Ravenswood compartmented from Jessup. Of course, Jessup was all knowing. Jessup was big league, a general in the fight. Ravenswood was an infantryman, a pawn in her tactical skirmishes.

  “Out a little late for a boat ride, don’t you think?”

  She leveled a hard stare on Ravenswood that was not lost on him in the moonlight.

  “Think is right. Go out into the river and sit there and think. No phones, no Twitter, no Internet, just my brain. And my brain is telling me that you are spending too much time here and not enough time doing what I pay you to do. You can take that tweet and shove it up your ass if it doesn’t get things moving.”

  Ravenswood said nothing.

  “Am I clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am, all clear,” Ravenswood said.

  She gripped the Ruger tight in her hand. There would be a time for cutting her losses but that time was not now. With Jessup as Wizard of Oz, all knowing and all seeing, and Ravenswood the tactical operator, she had the means to provide a major broadside to the president.

  “Oh, and make sure they know that an American citizen is being targeted by Team Valid. A family member.”

  Ravenswood raised his eyebrows and nodded, then left the way he had most likely arrived, around the side of the estate.

  She smiled as Ravenswood blended into the darkness. The president would never see what was coming or where it came from.

  CHAPTER 14

  Harwood vaulted over a low brick wall that separated the guard tower from the sidewalk where he had been standing.

  Who was shooting at him and why?

  He had expected pressure from the police or military, but not some random shot from a hotel window. Sprinting through what appeared to be a well-preserved ancient city with low single-story square homes made of black bricks laid out like a small subdivision, Harwood felt the movement behind him. He zigged and zagged to avoid any shots that might have been coming his way, but he didn’t hear or sense anything other than a single person following him. Reaching the back side of the old city, he did his best pommel horse imitation and pushed up over the long brick wall, landing in some shrubs adjacent to a sidewalk on the opposite side. Traffic zipped along the roads now that the sun was up and it was probably approaching 7 A.M. local time.

  He saw a gap and darted across the busy highway, reaching the other side with the echo of blaring horns chasing him down an alley. After a series of turns through increasingly busy streets, he found a small park amid the modern towering skyscrapers that poked into the sky. Feeling vulnerable, he moved north toward what appeared to be a more residential section. Still sensing a presence behind him, he cut across traffic again only to see the woman who had been at the tower.

  It was Hinojosa.

  “Vick, stop!” she shouted.

  Harwood stopped on the sidewalk next to a six-foot-tall concrete wall. He didn’t know what was on the other side, but he could scale it if he needed to.

  “You’ve got ten seconds,” Harwood shouted.

  Hinojosa ran toward him. Harwood gripped his pistol but didn’t remove it. He scanned the skyscrapers where millions of people could see them. He felt exposed, a sharp contrast to the mountains of Iran.

  “Hurry,” she said as she approached. She darted past him and he turned to follow, wondering if she was the rabbit leading him into an ambush. She seemed to know where she was going, checking her phone every block, every turn. She was probably using GPS, Harwood figured, which made her trackable by whomever might have been shooting at him.

  They ran into a hostel, up a flight of stairs and into a room. Two bunks, one made and one unmade, were on either side of the small room. The room smelled of dirty laundry and stale sheets with a lingering odor of rotten fruit. A gray dividing curtain was pushed all the way back to the window along a steel pole that ran the length of the ceiling. They were on the third floor. Thirty-foot drop out of the windows, if they opened, which seemed questionable.

  Hinojosa grabbed him by the shoulders. They were both breathing hard from sprinting through the morning streets of Baku. Her brunette hair fell around her shoulders. She looked at him with wide, questioning eyes. Her grip was firm.

  “What the fuck, Valerie. You have me dumped in Iran? What did you tell Stone and Weathers?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything. They got an independent message from somewhere to do that,” she countered. “They’re here. They just tried to kill me.”

  “They shot at me!” Harwood said.

  “That was my room. I booked it yesterday when you left for Iran. I need to tell you something,” she said, still panting.

  “So tell me. They’re chasing us, I’m sure.”

  “Me, too. I’m Sammie’s sister. I’m a target of Team Valid. They’re trying to kill me because the president has ordered them to,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t Sammie ever tell you about him going with Dad and me going with Mom after the divorce?”

  That was all the verification he needed, because Samuelson had told him that. While the information was probably easily obtainable, there was no reason why she would lie to him and make herself a target.

  “Okay, I’m processing this. Yes. He mentioned that. But you’re an FBI agent. The president can’t just have you killed,” Harwood said.

  “Come on. You’re the Reaper. You know that you guys can kill anyone. Foreign or domestic if it’s in the national interest.”

  Something caught in Harwood’s mind but then slipped away. Everything was moving too fast. “Okay, where do we go? How do we get out of here?”

  “I paid for this room as a backup when I got to town, knowing that they could probably trace my credit card reserving the room near the Maiden Tower. Stone beat my door down and came after me. I was prepared and dashed out of the room before he knew what was happening. Of course, Weathers was in the lobby, so I escaped out the back and ran across the street when I saw you.”

  “Okay, we’re alive. So what’s your plan?” Harwood asked, feeling time slip away.

  “I’ve got one,” she said. “We just need to get to the BP headquarters. From there we can hitch a ride.”

  There was the slightest creaking sound in the hallway.

  Harwood retrieved his pistol and stepped in front of Hinojosa, putting himself in between her and the door. He pulled her to the wall that would give him a clear shot the second someone pulled at the door.

  The door opened swiftly, and a couple came stumbling into the room, obviously drunk from a long night. Harwood lowered the pistol as they fell onto the bed without noticing, or at least commenting on, Harwood and Hinojosa. Harwood kept his eyes trained on the door and the hallway beyond. He saw a shadow falling toward them, pushed forward by a flickering bulb twenty meters away beyond the stairwell.

  Harwood closed the door as a bullet splintered the wood. He twisted the useless button on the doorknob, grabbed the sheets from the bed, and tied a quick square knot connecting the sheets and wrapped one around the frame of the bed. He pried open the window, using his knife to break free the jamb that had been sealed shut by paint and years of disuse.

  The window was large enough for him to scan the exterior. The sheets would get them halfway down. From there it would be a well-executed parachute-landing fall onto what looked like a back alley behind the hostel. Across the street an adjoining road split the backs of other buildings, as if this were a garbage truck run. He tossed his rucksack to the ground and turned toward Hinojosa.

  “Hey, man, what the fuck,” the man said in a thick east European ac
cent. “Can’t a guy get laid?”

  Harwood turned his pistol on the couple and said, “In five seconds a murderer is going to come crashing through that door. Either come out with us or take your chances.” Then to Hinojosa, “Go, now.”

  He helped her out the window and watched as she shimmied down the sheet, which pulled the bed frame all the way to the wall. She suspended herself from the end and let go, falling to the street and rolling then popping up as she retrieved her own pistol. She swept left and right and nodded at Harwood up above.

  The door splintered open.

  Stone. Standing there with his outer tactical vest laying atop chicken plate body armor. He was breathing hard. Quick eyes scanned the room, most likely assessed the couple frozen on the bed to be no threat, then focused on Harwood, who was halfway out the window. He had his feet wrapped around the sheets like a performer at Cirque du Soleil, which freed up his hands to snap off two quick, but loud, pistol shots at Stone. The back of his mind was scratching with the question, Where is Weathers? The shots burned holes in the tactical vest and seemed to knock Stone back a notch. He was sliding down the sheets using one hand, keeping the pistol and his eyes aimed upward.

  He saw a shadow lean over the windowsill and squeezed off two more shots as suppressive fire. Soon he was suspended with one hand from the sheet, his left deltoid feeling the pull of his body weight. He pushed his feet and knees together and released. The ground caught him and he rolled, popped up, and scanned to find Weathers leveling a silenced M4 rifle at them. Harwood fired two more shots, scooped up his rucksack, and raced across the street to where Hinojosa had already found protection. She leaned around the corner and fired two rounds at Weathers and then two at Stone in the window.

  Weathers had come from another location. If he had been set up, they would be dead. Harwood had seen him shoot and he was lethal. They had been lucky to be one step ahead of Weathers and Stone. He watched Stone turn his head toward Weathers, which meant he was moving toward them, he presumed. Firing two more suppressive shots at Stone, he grabbed Hinojosa by the wrist and slung his rucksack over his shoulder.

  “We have to move,” he growled.

  In a flash, they were racing around the corner of a narrow gap between two homes. Brick mortar sprayed into his face as one of the Team Valid members fired again. They raced fifty meters, turned left and angled away from the two assassins.

  “It’s either you or me, but one of us has a tracker somewhere,” Harwood said through rapid exhales. He was in good physical condition and could run for miles with his rucksack. He always trained with two twenty-five-pound weights in his ruck, among other things. The weight today was about the same, though he had no plates in his ruck at the moment.

  After fifteen minutes of zigzagging through the dilapidated homes of the northeastern part of the city, they entered a barren, fenced lot that had some dirt pushed up at the end. Grass was growing from the construction lot berms and the land looked unused for weeks if not months. A rusty bulldozer was parked to the right, its blade resting on the ground like a slack jaw.

  Harwood led them behind the berms, opened his ruck and assembled his SR-25 in record time, popped the bipods, snapped the scope into place, and aimed toward the gate.

  “Go through everything you’ve got. Phones, watches, your little backpack, everything and check. I cleaned out my ruck on the way up from Iran. Found one and tossed it. I don’t think it’s me.”

  Hinojosa slipped a small black backpack off her shoulders, dumped it and pawed through the contents.

  “Money, passports, identification, chick stuff, headphones, and some protein bars, nothing else.”

  “Check the pockets. You’re looking for—”

  “I know what I’m looking for, Vick.” She was frustrated, worried.

  “Okay, then find it.”

  “Nothing,” she said after rummaging through the pockets.

  Harwood thought. “Why did you bring headphones?”

  “Always travel with them. Bose noise-canceling.” She stopped, unzipped the container, retrieved the headphones and played with the battery well.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Keep looking to see if they put a backup somewhere else. Doubtful. The more they put on you, the greater chance you’d find it. But it’s kind of like checking for ticks. Might be everywhere.”

  She spent another five minutes going through everything and repacking her bag.

  “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  Harwood removed some fishing line and C4 explosives from one of the outer pockets of his rucksack. He rigged a tripwire, stuffed a blasting cap in the explosives, put the tracker on the berm, scraped a thin layer of dirt over it, tied the fishing line to the chain-link fence behind them, and said, “Be careful. You trip that line it’ll pull the baseball card out of the clothespin. The clothespin has two thumbtacks that will send current through this copper wire and battery to the blasting cap. The blasting cap will ignite and detonate the C4. Might not kill you, but could take off a limb.”

  Hinojosa was in the prone. The fishing line was a meter to her right. Harwood stepped over her back, lined up behind his rifle, saw no movement to their front. It would only be a matter of time. Harwood guessed that Stone and Weathers would steal a couple of Vespas and home in on their location in minutes if not seconds. He retrieved a pair of wire cutters from his rucksack and some work gloves.

  “Use this,” he said, pointing at Lindsay, his rifle. Hinojosa slid over, and looked through the sight. “I’m going to cut a hole and we’re going out the side.”

  Harwood low crawled to the chain-link fence twenty meters away from the berm. Using the work gloves and wire cutters he had a three-foot-by-three-foot hole cut in the fence, lifted the cut out and snagged an open piece of wire over the chain link above the gap, holding the cutaway portion up. Vegetation crawled up the fence, effectively providing a screen in either direction. He cleared the leaves and twines from the gap he had created, stuck his head through. There was a row of homes across the street. The cut opened directly onto a sidewalk that was maybe four feet wide. The route of egress would be precarious, but it was better than nothing. With the sun shining brightly, there was no concealment upon which they could rely.

  He low crawled back to the berm. “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. Go crawl through that hole and I’ll cover you.” He cinched his ruck tight and said, “Take this, please.”

  Always reluctant to separate himself from the tools of his trade, Harwood wasn’t going to waste any time getting to the fence once Hinojosa was through. She hefted the ruck on top of hers and did a half duckwalk to the opening, knelt, dropped his ruck, slid through, and then pulled his ruck through the gap. She was beyond the fence and presumably securing the opposite side. He collapsed his bipods and ran sideways with his weapon at eye level, spied the fence in his periphery, and lowered himself through the hole.

  He crawled backward into the gap, pulled his rifle through, and then reached up and pulled the lip of fence down and secured it to conceal the cut.

  Hinojosa was waiting.

  “Quick, this way,” she said.

  Harwood turned and followed her, grabbing his ruck as he ran. They went left and then turned behind the fence, winding up maybe thirty meters from the berm. There were three dilapidated homes that appeared vacant, their backs abutting the fence. Harwood held a finger to his mouth. The high-pitched whine of the Vespa echoed down the streets from opposing sides. Harwood climbed the side of the flat-roofed home, crawled across the muddy roof, and set up his rifle. He didn’t have a clear shot through the fence because the vegetation was dense and had overgrown the top of the razor wire to provide an effective screen. Still, he caught bits and pieces of the berm they had hidden behind.

  He did have a view of the opening at the far end of the vacant lot. Anyone coming through would be in his crosshairs. But he knew that Stone and Weathers weren’t stupid. There was no way they were going t
o step into the ambush. With that thought, he turned and whispered to Hinojosa, “Up here.”

  Reaching over, he lifted her up and they centered themselves on the rooftop. No less than a minute later, Harwood caught a flash out of his periphery. Then it was gone.

  Stone’s voice said, “Cutting a hole in the back now.”

  Hinojosa tensed. Stone was one house over working the wire cutters on the fence just as Harwood had only minutes before. They couldn’t hear Weathers’s response because they were most likely using earbud push-to-talk radio communications. Harwood and Hinojosa remained frozen in place, listening as Stone worked the wire cutters.

  Across the empty lot, Weathers came into view. He was crouched low, holding his rifle at eye level, sweeping and scanning in a 180 arc. He found refuge along the fence in a small depression where he set up overwatch for Stone breaching the fence. Harwood knew if they didn’t move Weathers was unlikely to see them. He steadied his breathing, not daring to shift his bipod and make a noise that might alert Stone to their location. He had the tactical advantage of surprise at the moment and wanted to maintain that.

  Stone popped through the gate and rolled to one knee. He was just in Harwood’s field of view.

  “No joy this side of the berm. Still tracking them here?” Stone said. His voice carried over the fence to the rooftop. Stone was still low crawling, unable to see on the opposite side of the berm. Weathers must have reported that his side was clear, even though he was still twenty meters away.

  Harwood exhaled and moved his head slightly to begin adjusting his eyesight to the scope. Stone was standing up and walking now, holding his rifle at eye level, scanning much the same way that Weathers had from the opposite side.

  Which was why he didn’t see Harwood’s improvised explosive device. The explosion was like a mini nuclear weapon. Stone yelped and actually flew a few feet into the air before landing on his back. There was blood. Weathers was frozen in place for a moment, which allowed Harwood to draw a quick bead on him center mass and squeeze off a double tap from the SR-25. Two bullets center mass. He remembered that Stone had been wearing body armor and assumed Weathers was also when he saw the man stumble, look down at his chest, grimace in pain, but break into a full sprint. Harwood let him and fired two more shots, one which appeared to hit Weathers’s leg. The former Marine Force Recon sniper spun, fell to one knee, lifted his rifle, and snapped off a fusillade of rounds in Harwood’s direction.