Threat Zero

by Nicholas Irving

  “Time to move,” he said to Hinojosa. He slid backward to the far edge of the roof, lowered himself down and grabbed his rifle from Hinojosa who nudged it to him. She was next and safely on the ground. Police sirens wailed presumably in response to the explosion. If the Team Valid members were detained and exposed, that was okay with him.

  Four police cars sped past them three streets over, the seesaw sound of the European and Asia emergency responders like a shrill bomb warning.

  “Let’s go,” Harwood said. “The oil company, you said. Get us there or tell me where they are so I can.”

  “Follow me,” Hinojosa said.

  Stone’s pained howling echoed through the streets. He was hurt. Harwood had no idea how badly but began following Hinojosa with the satisfaction that he had wounded both men who were trying to kill them. If he had gotten lucky and nicked a femoral vein on Weathers with the leg shot, then so much the better. He would bleed out and neither would likely pursue anytime soon.

  Hinojosa rounded the corner onto a busier street. She was running with a purpose in mind, knowing where she was going. A left, then two rights, never breaking stride, and then finally she darted into an open courtyard that fronted a low-slung brick office building. Behind the building though was a large corrugated metal warehouse. She dashed through an open gate, which led to the side of the building. As they turned the corner to the back, there were a dozen blue trucks backed up and off or onloading packages by way of a long loading dock. The cabs were truncated, not like the extended cabs with sleeping sections Harwood typically saw in America. Taut blue canvases were tied on either side of each truck, allowing the vehicle to operate as a flatbed or a fully enclosed cargo carrier. Sliding warehouse doors were up, twelve open mouths being fed by men shuttling boxes back and forth. The basics of logistics. Product in and product out. Exhaust fumes billowed, smelling sweet and noxious. Men shouted in a strange language. Everyone was focused on their task at hand.

  They ducked behind the raised cement loading dock.

  “Airport?” Harwood asked.

  “Yes. If we can get there, I have a contact.”

  “I think we bought time regarding Stone and Weathers, but not sure about who else is chasing us.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Hinojosa replied.

  Harwood said nothing. He nodded and thought. She was telling him that the U.S. government had communicated to Azerbaijan that she and Harwood were enemies of the state. The Team Valid mission was a liability now, he presumed. Something somewhere must have gone wrong. Maybe it was the tossed rifle in Crimea, or perhaps it was the giant cluster in Iran. Or maybe it was none of those things; it could be something different altogether. There was an apparent attempt to blame the Camp David Ambush on Samuelson. He would bet his entire paycheck that Samuelson didn’t have anything to do with that operation. That he was used as a pawn. Sammie’s traumatic brain injury had never fully healed. His connection to Carly Masters, who was murdered in the ambush, might be a clue, he didn’t know. Then there was the missing laptop. So much to unwind and he was driven to get back to the United States and figure it all out. Clear Samuelson’s name and protect Hinojosa, his only sibling.

  “That truck. I’m seeing a lot of FedEx boxes,” Harwood said. He pointed at the nearest vehicle. “They’ve finished loading. The driver is getting out to lock his ramp door.”

  Hinojosa nodded in agreement, though she seemed hesitant.

  “Need to move now,” Harwood said. The driver exited his vehicle on the side opposite them. The loader had turned his back and was walking into the warehouse. Harwood dashed to the passenger side door of the truck. Hinojosa followed. He opened the door and they both tumbled into the tightly confined space. There was no room to hide. The driver would be back in seconds and Harwood’s only option was to draw down on the man. He retrieved his pistol and handed it to Hinojosa, who handled it easily. Harwood removed his knife and pushed back into Hinojosa, creating as much room as possible for him to maneuver.

  The driver’s door opened. The man opened and ignited a Scorch Torch butane lighter and held it to the tip of a half-smoked cigar. He puffed a few times and cigar smoke billowed all around him. He shut the flame and dropped the lighter into the pocket of his blue work shirt. He was wearing black dungarees and brown square-toed work boots that would serve him well in a street fight. He looked down and lifted his left foot onto the platform before hoisting himself into the truck in a well-practiced move. He was a stocky man with thick forearms and a wide neck. His eyes focused on his foot placement then the steering wheel. His large hand reached out and gripped the wheel as he pulled himself into the driver’s seat in a smooth move that had him slamming shut the driver’s door with his left hand simultaneously. He puffed on the cigar, smoke filling the cab now.

  His head snapped to the right and he shouted something that sounded like, “Sam kimsan!” He reached for the cigar, grabbed it and tried to stab it into Harwood’s face, but Harwood’s hand was a cobra striking. His left hand clasped the man’s considerable forearm, the orange tip of the cigar inches from his face, and his right hand thrust the knife toward his neck. Harwood pushed the driver’s hand back toward his own face and before the cigar tip reached him, he dropped it into his lap and the tip slid into his crotch. The man’s face contorted in pain as he stood up and the cigar rolled beneath his ass onto the seat. Harwood forced the man down, as Hinojosa reached over and grabbed the cigar, tossing it from the window.

  “Drive,” Harwood said. His voice was calm, forceful. The man’s eyes bulged out and flitted from Harwood to the windshield. “Drive,” Harwood reiterated. He tapped the steering wheel with the knife and then pointed it straight ahead, indicating the direction he wanted the man to drive. Hinojosa’s hand shot forward with a wad of cash. The top bill was yellow and purple with the numbers and letters: 100 MANAT. There appeared to be at least ten in the stack. One thousand manat? Harwood had no idea how much that might be. Judging by the man’s wide eyes, it was a decent chunk.

  “Manat. One thousand,” Hinojosa said.

  After some hesitation, the man moved his eyes from the money to Harwood and reached out as he had most likely done a million times to crank the engine, shift the gear, pump the clutch, and press the accelerator pedal. The truck lurched forward with a jerk. Harwood pressed the tip of the knife against the man’s neck and said, “Drive!”

  He had no idea if the driver understood any word he said, but the intent was obvious. The truck began rolling smoothly forward along a feeder road away from the busy warehouse. Another truck passed by them from the opposite direction. The oncoming driver was too busy navigating the narrow lanes to notice Harwood and Hinojosa.

  “Harada?” the driver said. His eyes were set in the distance. It was a question and the only question he could possibly be asking, Harwood figured, was: Where did they want to go?

  “Airport,” Harwood said.

  The man seemed to understand as he nodded and kept the truck rolling toward the gated entrance. Harwood’s throat tightened when he saw the guardhouse with a uniformed man on the opposite side, checking the incoming vehicles. There was no truck in front of them in the exit lane and Harwood had no idea if the driver was typically required to stop and provide a bill of lading or invoice. He had done enough moves in the military to know that the paperwork was always triple checked despite the fact they still lost half your stuff.

  “Drive,” Harwood said, pressing his back against Hinojosa and the rear of the cab. In case the guard came to the exit side he wanted to be coincident with the line of sight. Also, he wanted Hinojosa to have a clear shot at the guard, should he climb up the platform and look in.

  The driver slowed at the narrow passage lane that, once they were beyond the gated entrance, would provide them some freedom of maneuver. He continued slowing. Harwood repeated, “Drive. One thousand manat.” The man slowed some more. He reached onto the dashboard and retrieved some papers, nodding at Harwood, holding them up as if t
o say, “Just let me drop these off like I’m supposed to.”

  Hinojosa lifted the pistol over Harwood’s shoulder, aiming it at the man. He felt her arm resting on his shoulder while the hand with the money rested on his leg. The man glanced at Harwood to show him the papers again and his face froze when he saw Hinojosa aiming his pistol at his face. For a second, it appeared he would drive the truck into the guard shack.

  “Drive!” Harwood said.

  The man focused, corrected, and slowed some more. The truck came to a stop. The man handed the papers over through the window to an outstretched hand. Normal transaction. Done a thousand times a day. Nothing to see here. Still, Harwood pressed the knife into the man’s throat just beneath his jawline. Some words were exchanged. The knife pressed deeper.

  The man rapped the door twice, causing Hinojosa to tense. He felt Hinojosa’s forearm go rigid and her body jump. Harwood hoped the door knocks were the standard signal that everything was good to go. The driver carefully turned and pushed the gearshift, easing through the gate. Harwood’s stomach unclenched with every revolution of the wheels, every shift of the gears, and every increase in acceleration.

  They were on the highway, blending with other cars and trucks, heading east. Harwood always had a good sense of direction ingrained in his DNA. Even as a kid on the foster farm, he studied the sunrise and sunset, comparing summer to fall to winter to spring. Etched in his hard drive were the cardinal directions and the ability to wake up and automatically know his north from south, east from west. When he had run away after killing Lindsay’s attacker in the barn, he ran south, then west into the mountains, and finally found a lady willing to give him a ride. He didn’t have a gun or cash to pay the woman, but she seemed kind enough to drop him in Hagerstown. From there he slipped into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where he caught a train to Cleveland, Ohio. After that, he rode with a group of college kids to Chicago where he lived in a homeless shelter for two years, attended high school, and graduated with his GED. He never heard from his foster mother. She had either buried the man on her property or called the cops and they couldn’t find him. His guess was that she dug a hole big enough for Lindsay and her assailant and used the tractor with some chains to drag them both into the grave, covered it up, and planted some seed on top. Foster kids were common runaways and so Lindsay wouldn’t be missed. It made Harwood sad to think about her forever interred with the man who tried to rape her and then killed her.

  Blue signs with airplanes on them began appearing on a regular basis. They had been on the road for twenty minutes. Harwood had kept his eyes on the driver. He had made no sudden moves to get his cell phone, press an emergency signal, or secure a weapon. For all Harwood knew, the airport was on his route and he was going to make an easy one thousand manat.

  “Where do we want to go?” he asked Hinojosa over his shoulder. “We’re getting close.”

  “Arco Petroleum. I have a contact. They have a milk run to Dulles every other day,” she whispered.

  Harwood had mostly flown in military airplanes, often jumping out of them onto runways similar to the one here in Baku. The ground sloped away from them as the road followed a peninsula away from the big city of Baku to a more remote area full of prairie grass and sand-colored dirt. The road upon which they were traveling fed into the typical airport road network. Rental car returns. Arrivals. Departures. Some signs had English words on them. The runway was long with a single axis, from north to south, the prevailing winds most likely coming off the Caspian Sea.

  “Over there,” Hinojosa said. She was pointing at the big green-and-yellow sign near the south end of the runway.

  In the rearview mirror a motorcycle raced alongside the truck. The driver looked to the right with curiosity, or perhaps hopeful that it was the police. A quick glance told Harwood that it was Weathers. There was a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his left leg and a rifle strapped across his chest. Brazenly zipping through the streets of Baku, Weathers appeared hell-bent on killing Hinojosa and him. The mirrored face shield on the helmet prevented confirmation that it was Weathers, but the leg wound appeared to be from a shot and not a blast, which should have done much more damage.

  And it meant that there had to be a redundancy tracker somewhere on either him or Hinojosa. There was an off chance that the gate guard at the warehouse called the police and Weathers intercepted the call, but then they would have seen police vehicles, also. This full-court press to prevent his escape first from Iran and now Azerbaijan meant that he and Hinojosa knew something that Stone and Weathers’s superiors, whomever that might be, had to keep secret at all costs.

  Weathers lifted his left hand, which held a pistol, and fired it. The passenger window shattered along with the mirror, which was their only way of detecting his location. Harwood was already in the process of switching seats to protect Hinojosa when the glass blew into his face. He shook his head and leaned out of the window to return fire.

  Weathers had fallen back and looked like he was going to change lanes and attack the driver’s side. Harwood fired three rounds, center mass of the motorcycle, which Weathers was using for protection by leaning over, chest parallel to the fuel tank and helmeted head just above the handlebars. It was a big-engine racing bike, though Harwood couldn’t tell which make or model. All that mattered was it was working for Weathers.

  He saw his shots create some sparks before the motorcycle disappeared behind the truck, which was doing about 50 mph. They were two miles from their destination and would be necessarily slowing down soon. He had to shake Weathers, so he leaned back across Hinojosa and the driver, who shouted something unintelligible.

  Weathers was coming up tight on the driver’s side, left hand aiming the pistol at Harwood’s head, right hand revving the throttle to gain on them. The driver let go of the steering wheel and pulled his arms from underneath to overtop Harwood as Harwood was one-third out the window steadying his pistol. The grip was warm in his hand. His aim was steady. He squeezed the trigger just as Weathers fired two shots at him, both pinging off the steel cab next to his face. Harwood’s shots hit the motorcycle gas tank. Fuel was spraying everywhere. Harwood fired into the machine, trying to create a spark or have the hot lead ignite the gas, but those tricks only worked in the movies.

  Still, the gas was all over Weathers. Remembering the cigar, Harwood leaned back in and snatched the lighter from the driver’s shirt pocket. He snapped it open, locked the flame in place, and leaned back out as Weathers was roaring toward them. The lighter was heavy, solid steel encasement. They were doing sixty miles an hour and about to hit heavy traffic coming into the airport. Weathers’s gun was up and firing.

  Harwood tossed the lighter, calculating Weathers’s speed, their speed, and the slipstream of the truck. The lighter hit the handlebar, flipped into the air like a field goal hitting the goalpost crossbar. Weathers’s helmet moved just enough for Harwood to know that his opponent saw the danger he was in. Weathers used his pistol hand to swat at the lighter. He connected and it skittered into the street.

  A spark of flame, though, caught on his hand and began to climb up his arm, as if he were a Hollywood stunt actor. Weathers was shaking his arm vigorously, yet the flame continued to eat at the gas. The motorcycle caught on fire.

  Harwood aimed his pistol.

  The driver swerved to avoid traffic, giving Harwood no shot.

  “There!” Hinojosa shouted at the driver. She pointed at the Arco Oil hangar just inside the airport fence line.

  The driver swerved to make the turn and slowed as he followed the cloverleaf. He pulled up to the gate, which was closed. Harwood snagged his rucksack from the passenger well as he and Hinojosa jumped from the truck. The driver wasted no time in backing away, turning and heading most likely to the nearest police station.

  Hinojosa pressed the intercom box and said, “Valerie Hinojosa for Emmanuel, please.”

  After a few seconds, a hurried voice came on the intercom.

  “Valerie
, the plane is about to take off!”

  “We are here. Tell them to stop,” she said.

  The gate opened, and they ran toward the hangar. This was a United States company, but it was still sovereign Azerbaijani land. They weren’t in the clear yet.

  The man who must have been Emmanuel came out of the hangar driving a golf cart. Hinojosa and Emmanuel exchanged a look, something that was not lost on Harwood. He looked over his shoulder. Nothing coming, yet.

  They jumped in the golf cart and Emmanuel raced them around the side of the building to the Airbus A300 that had a pushback tug tow bar connected to the front landing gear. A man was opening the door and another was driving the stairwell to the door.

  Harwood and Hinojosa were up the stairs and into the cargo airplane that was outfitted with three rows of empty personnel seats. Behind those were pallets with equipment strapped atop them. He dumped his rucksack in one of the seats, studied the aircraft.

  The plane pushed back, taxied, and screamed down the runway.

  He looked out the small window. Blue lights were circling an accident on the highway to the airport. Weathers. Did he make it out alive? And where was Stone?

  All that mattered now was that Weathers and Stone weren’t on this airplane.

  Harwood turned his head, never one to discount the improbable. Stone wasn’t in the seats and no one appeared to be hiding among the pallets. To be sure, he walked to the rear of the aircraft, inspecting behind each one. The pallets contained pipes, cables, and engines. This was a maintenance run back to the United States.