by Jack Mars
It was barred from the outside somehow.
A cold chill ran up her spine. She slapped her palm twice on the door and shouted, “Hey! Is anyone out there? Hello!”
She scurried to her locker to get dressed. If she was going to figure a way out, it wasn’t going to be dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. The locker was ajar a few inches, just as she’d left it. But her clothes were gone. The locker was empty.
“Son of a bitch,” she murmured.
And then the laughter began. A slow tittering, so unexpected that Maya’s shoulders jerked in a startled quiver. The voice was definitely male, young, and bounced around the empty locker room, making it difficult to tell where it was coming from.
Time was that Maya would have been scared witless, standing there in a towel and unable to escape. But that’s not who she was anymore. Instead her fists balled at her sides as she loudly demanded, “Who’s there?!”
“What’s the matter, Lawson?” the voice taunted. She didn’t recognize it and couldn’t quite tell where he might be.
“Can’t find your clothes?” A second voice. Then more laughter—there was at least two of them. Maybe three.
She padded on her bare feet to the end of the row of lockers and quickly peered around the corner, just in time to hear the squeak of a sneaker and see a flash of someone stealing out of view. They laughed again. Her first instinct was to give chase, but she stifled it and took a deep breath. There were four rows of lockers, plus the showers and bathroom stalls. Too many places for them to hide.
Instead she stood her ground, there at the end of the row of lockers with a view of the shower entrance. “Don’t tell me you guys actually stayed behind and skipped the holiday just to mess with me,” she taunted. “That’s pretty pathetic.”
“Pathetic?” the first voice repeated. “Says the girl who never goes home.”
“We actually thought you’d left,” said a third voice. There were three of them. “That would have been a real kick to the balls. But then you popped up, didn’t you?”
She didn’t bother to tell them that she had left, and had just returned early. It didn’t matter, in the scheme of things.
But how did they know…? Suddenly Maya remembered the boy she’d seen in the corridor outside the gym, the skinny first-year. He had seemed spooked to see her and scurried off fast—probably to tell these guys he’d spotted her. Maybe he was even the one who barred the locker room door from the outside.
A now-chilled drop of water slid down her back, reminding her that she was wearing only a towel, locked in there with three vindictive boys. She was already angry, and the sudden vulnerability of her awareness only made her angrier.
“You don’t scare me,” she declared, her voice loud and even. “So you can keep hiding. Or you can come on out, and we can settle this.”
From down the row of lockers, a boy stepped out. Maya glared at him; he was a couple inches taller than her, with a buzz cut and a thick neck. She recognized him as Randolph something-or-other. One of Greg’s third-year pals.
Something long and white dangled at Randolph’s side, hanging from his right fist. It took her a moment to realize it was a long white tube sock, half as long as her arm, the end of it weighed down with something…
Locksocking. That’s what this was. It was a form of hazing made popular by a Kubrick war movie back in the eighties, in a scene where an unruly cadet gets beaten with bars of soap stuffed into the ends of tube socks. But usually the victim was immobilized, held down with a blanket…
Or a bath towel. The only thing she was wearing at the moment.
There was movement to her right as a second boy stepped out from the showers. He was taller, lankier; a fourth-year that she had seen around, but didn’t know. He too held a long sock weighed down with soap. And then to her left, the third voice, a dark-haired boy a bit on the chubby side that Maya didn’t recognize.
Greg wasn’t among them. Whether he had sent them to do this or if they were just trying to gain his favor, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter much either. She directed her attention forward, to Randolph, as he took two steps toward her down the row of lockers. His lips curled into a cruel smirk as his gaze swept from her eyes downward, past the towel, to her legs, and back up again.
“Greg was a lucky guy,” he said, taking another step forward.
She stifled a shudder. Suddenly it wasn’t a beating she feared from these three. She did not at all like the way Randolph was looking at her, the way they had waited until after she’d showered, and stolen her clothes, and locked her in there with them…
They wouldn’t, she told herself. They’re just trying to scare me. They wouldn’t dare.
“You know, there are no cameras in here,” Randolph said casually, as if reading her mind. “No faculty around. Hell, there’s nobody in this whole half of the building. Someone could scream bloody murder and no one would hear it.” He smirked again. “No one but us.”
He took another small step forward. He was close enough that if Maya took one big stride, she could reach him with a fist. But she didn’t move, not yet. She caught a whiff of something acrid and strong—whiskey? Something alcoholic on his breath. These boys had been drinking. That could make them unpredictable, more dangerous.
“I won’t,” she murmured.
“Sorry?” Randolph sneered. “I didn’t catch that.”
She glared at him as she repeated louder, “I won’t scream.”
He grinned. “We’ll see.”
The tall fourth-year boy made the first move. He took a sudden step forward, his gait long, and brought the sock-cudgel up over his shoulder. Maya didn’t hesitate. Instead of moving out of the way, she stepped forward and stopped his swing with one hand. With her right, she rabbit-punched him in the throat with two knuckles.
The boy sputtered as he staggered backward. Behind her, Randolph was moving fast. Maya spun and struck out with a fist, but the stout boy kept moving and she missed him by an inch. He swung the sock into her ribs.
She cried out as it struck her, the pain intense and immediate, sending her to her knees. It was not a bar of soap inside the sock; it was heavier, felt like lead. As her knees hit the tile, the tucked corner of her towel came loose. She grabbed at it, holding it over her chest as she scrabbled away from them, pushing her feet against the floor and sliding backward on her butt.
“Doug, you idiot!” Randolph scolded as the fourth-year boy coughed and held his throat. “I told you to be careful!”
Maya slid backward frantically until her back hit the other wall. She was mere feet from the door, but she knew it wouldn’t open. As the three boys advanced on her, she tucked the towel back in and started to rise to her feet.
As she did, she spotted the scars on her bare calf. The thin white lines that had healed but would never go away, in the shape of letters where she had carved a warning to her dad, just before being drugged by human traffickers.
A memory surged through her head, powerful and visceral, one that she had worked so hard to keep back.
She flailed her arms and legs, her eyes closed tightly, as the man clambered atop her. Some of her blows connected, but her limbs were still weak from the drugs and they bounced off harmlessly. He pressed his body weight upon her, forcing her legs still. His hands scrambled to keep hers steady.
The man leered down at her, a maniacal glint in his eyes. A pit of horror solidified in her stomach…
The train. The traffickers. A man had attempted to rape her, and she had told herself then: Never again.
When she looked up, she saw a similar maniacal glint in Randolph’s eye. The boys’ shadows fell long over her, a wall at her back. Nowhere to run. They weren’t giving her a choice.
But she wouldn’t be the victim. She wouldn’t be the one screaming.
*
Hello?
Maya blinked. Her hands hurt. The locker room around her was hazy.
Someone in here…? Jesus Christ.
No, it
wasn’t hazy. Her eyes were blurry with tears. She was crying.
Are you okay?
The voice sounded distant, but familiar. Then someone was in front of her, crouched beside her. A shape… a man.
She shoved him away frantically and scrambled backward, her back hitting the wall.
“Wait!” He put his hands up defensively. “Hey. It’s me. It’s Melvin.”
Maya wiped her eyes. The old janitor was there, wide-eyed and very confused. He’d opened the door to the locker room. He saw…
Randolph was on the floor on his back, bleeding from his nose and mouth. His eyes were clenched shut and his breathing was shallow. One of his friends, the chubby one, was on his side facing away from Maya and sobbing in soft moans. The third boy, the fourth-year, was behind her. He was on his stomach with his arm twisted behind him at a wholly unnatural angle that made her nauseous. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
“What the hell happened here?” Melvin asked in disbelief.
“Is he…” Maya’s voice was tremulous and weak. “Is he alive?”
Melvin quickly knelt and checked the tall boy’s pulse. “Yes.” He pulled out a cell phone and dialed 911. “We’re going to need an ambulance…”
She held the towel loosely over her. There was blood on it. Was it hers? She looked at her trembling hands. The knuckles were raw and bleeding.
She had blacked out. She had made the conscious decision not to be a victim again, and some kind of animal instinct had taken over. She could not remember anything about what had happened, what she had done, or how much time had passed. It felt like it could have been hours, but her hair was still damp, clinging to her shoulders. Minutes at best.
“Hey,” Melvin said gently. “They’re on their way. I’m going to have to call the dean. Are you hurt?”
“I-I don’t think so,” she said in a whisper.
At least not physically. But she hadn’t felt so unsafe, so violated, since being kidnapped. And in a place where she was supposed to feel secure. Even worse, she had lost control. She could have killed someone. In the moment, she wasn’t worried about the dean, or what the academy might do. She was afraid—afraid of herself, what she was capable of, and the darkness she now knew was inside her.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
“Still nothing!” Zero reported over the headset, half-shouting over the gusts that blew in through the open side door of the Sikorsky HH-60M, the late November wind chilling him to the bone. The helicopter was a decommissioned Black Hawk, now serving as a medical evacuation chopper on loan from New York Presbyterian. Maria sat in the copilot seat and Strickland in the rear behind Zero as they swept as low as the pilot dared over Times Square.
Zero held the sonic detection meter that Bixby had given them, the device that looked like a miniature radar gun with a scooping plastic dish aimed downward toward the city. It was tuned into a low-frequency range that would pick up the ultrasonic weapon—but only if it was actually there, and only if the perpetrators were using it.
The evacuation efforts had been declared an utter catastrophe and all but abandoned. Anyone who wanted to leave the city could try, but the bridges and tunnels were still clogged, no thanks to several accidents from fleeing citizens. The National Guard had been pulled back. They weren’t forcing anyone to leave who didn’t want to—especially since the ensuing panic had caused four deaths, potentially more as reports came in, and that wasn’t to mention a currently incalculable amount in property damage.
Zero and his team had been in the air for two hours now, scanning and finding nothing. On the ground, FBI agents from the Jacob K. Javits office did sweeps on foot, with help from whoever the NYPD and fire department could spare.
No one had found a thing, not a scrap of evidence to support the potential terror attack. Yet Zero held his tongue. An “I told you so” wouldn’t do anyone any good; he knew Maria would already be torturing herself over it.
“We should sweep outward,” Strickland suggested into the radio. “Spiral pattern outside the Times Square area, in case they’ve moved on, changed their plans…”
“Negative,” the pilot replied. “Winds are picking up. There’s a storm front moving in. We’re going to have to set it down, at least until this passes.”
“We can help with the ground search in the meantime,” said Strickland. Zero knew the young agent was eager, maybe even overzealous to find these people after their argument on the jet. It was beginning to feel like each of them had something to prove.
“No,” Maria countered. “We’ve got more than two hundred people on the ground looking. The three of us aren’t going to make much of a difference. We need to get some rest, and when the storm passes… we’ll pick it up then.” Her gaze flitted over her shoulder at Zero for just a moment.
He was well aware what was going on in her head. They wouldn’t be getting back on the helicopter after the storm. He had been right; the phone in the truck was another distraction, intentioned to force them into action and incite panic. It had worked like a charm.
No matter how he mulled over the details they knew, he could not for the life of him determine where these people might go next. All he knew was that it wasn’t New York.
Then where the hell are they?
*
The helicopter returned to LaGuardia as the rain began to fall, and the three of them holed up in one of the dozen or so hotels surrounding the airport. Zero wasn’t even paying enough attention to heed the name of it. There were three rooms waiting for them, though he had seen over Maria’s shoulder that she’d nearly booked only two on her tablet before recognizing her mistake and getting him his own.
They split off down the corridor, agreeing to reconvene in three hours, which was the best approximation of the storm passing. It wasn’t until he was inside with the door closed behind him, in the still and silent room with its welcome and well-made bed that he realized just how exhausted he was. It was not yet midnight and they had gone from Virginia to Vegas to Illinois to New York in the span of a single day.
He set down his gear bag, pulled off his jacket and shoulder holster, and sprawled onto his back on the bed. A shower would have been nice, but he didn’t think he could muster the energy. Instead he closed his eyes for a brief respite from the outside world.
As soon as he did, an image of the Bosnian boy flashed through his mind. It came involuntarily, unwelcomed and intrusive.
In his crosshairs, the boy stooped to pick up a coin. A fortunate find, mere moments before he would be murdered.
And then there was the Dubai businessman, the back of his skull spattered across a hotel lobby in half an instant.
Zero sat up as the rain began to come down heavier, lashing at the window. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not until he knew more; not until he could ascertain whether these were actual memories or his fragmented mind playing tricks on him. If they were real, then there must be something in his head to connect them, something to make sense of what he was doing and why.
He had tried meditation before, back when most of his memories of the CIA were still lost to him. He had gotten fairly adept at it; if nothing else it helped to calm his mind, and on a couple of occasions had even helped him recover fragments of lost memory. Zero arranged himself as comfortably as he could in an upright position on the bed, legs crossed beneath him, and took a long, deep breath. He let it out slowly as he relaxed his muscles, feeling the tension run from his shoulders. He counted to ten, and then tried to blank his mind…
A crashing peal of thunder startled him back to reality. Outside the wind howled and the rain fell heavier. He wasn’t going to have much luck meditating in a violent storm. With a groan he rose from the bed and went to the small bathroom to splash water on his face—but he paused, glancing down at the bathtub. It gave him an idea, though he wasn’t sure it would work.
He plugged the tub’s drain and turned on the faucet. As it filled with warm water, Zero took off his clothes, leaving them and the Ruger LC
9 on the sink. When the tub was half-full, he turned the water off, closed the bathroom door, and turned off the light.
There were no windows in the bathroom, so he was immediately plunged into darkness. He took two small, careful steps and climbed into the tub, lying back as comfortably as he could with his legs bent and his knees up. The temperature was near perfect on his sore muscles, and he felt himself relaxing almost instantly.
He had only ever read about sensory deprivation and its effects on the mind, and he knew just as well that his makeshift setup was less than ideal—but still he had to try something. The basic concept was that the removal of stimuli from multiple senses (in this case, sight and sound) and by creating a uniform stimulus to his senses of scent and touch, his mind would be more conducive to meditation.
At least he hoped.
He reclined carefully in the tub, leaning back until his head was in the water, and then up over his ears. The sounds of the raging storm outside fell away, replaced only by the dull roar of his own blood rushing through his head. He didn’t close his eyes, but he didn’t need to. He stared straight up, where the ceiling was overhead if he could see anything at all in the pitch dark bathroom, and focused in his even breathing.
Finally, in spite of himself, he forced his mind to return to the memory. The burnt-out building. The rifle against his shoulder.
He rounds a corner four blocks north. He’s walking home alone. Eyes cast downward at the ground. You have the shot—
In the dark and deafening silence, Zero could almost feel the trigger under his finger.
The boy’s face lights up as he spots something on the ground and bends to pick it up. It’s shiny. A piece of metal—a coin, perhaps. He looks pleased as he sticks it in his pocket.
You have the shot.
He could see the boy’s soft brown eyes through his crosshairs.
You know from your briefing package that he is nine years old.
Your finger compresses the trigger. You take your shot…