by Jack Mars
Maria winced. “Mr. President. I want you to know that I take full responsibility—”
“For canceling a special session of Congress?” Rutledge interrupted. “For having me whisked onto Marine One, en route to some underground bunker?”
“Yes sir.” It was all she could think to say.
“New York is still an absolute mess. And there was no attack. The US Capitol is evacuated and being carefully swept. But they have found nothing, not a shred of evidence to support your claim. I don’t know if you understand the ramifications of shutting down the US government for even a few hours, Ms. Johansson, but I can tell you that they are extensive.”
Rutledge’s tone wasn’t particularly harsh or angry; it was rather calm, passive, like a tired parent repeating themselves for a hundredth time. “The media is reporting. The internet is abuzz with rumors. People are starting to notice, to connect the dots here. The entire point of involving you and your people was to keep that from happening. Now that it’s happened, responsibilities are being transferred.”
“Yes sir.”
“The FBI will be handling this matter,” he told her. As Shaw had already told her. As the confused agent who had no idea about CIA involvement had already told her. “Please make sure they have any and all intelligence, evidence, or communication that your team has gathered.”
Shaw’s words, no doubt, coming from the President of the United States. Rutledge knew nothing about gathering intelligence. It seemed that the CIA’s new director had less of a spine than Maria had previously thought. He wasn’t one to get his hands dirty; he was one to offer up CIA tech and promote cooperation and relay messages via a more powerful figure.
Her jaw ached. She hadn’t realized she’d been clenching her teeth so hard.
“Yes sir.”
*
“Doesn’t make sense,” Todd Strickland said quietly, his thick arms folded over his chest. “This fit. It all fit.”
“No.” Zero shook his head. He realized now they’d been too hasty, too distracted, too overzealous in assuming the Capitol would be the next target. It was certainly the most attractive target—but that was exactly why it didn’t fit. “If this was the plan all along, then the random attacks in Havana and Kansas would have been pointless. They showed their hand for a reason; this reason. To make us paranoid. To make us scurry to safety. To disrupt the status quo. It’s working.”
Todd shook his head. “To what end, though?”
Zero could only shrug. “Maybe… maybe to this end. Maybe to no end. They’ve vanished, and they don’t have to resurface, ever. Or maybe they show up somewhere randomly again, some place that doesn’t make any sense, just to keep us guessing. To remind us that they can be anywhere…” He trailed off as a thought formed in his head. They couldn’t actually be anywhere. The group responsible had no idea who was pursuing them, who was aware. Now that they had entered the US with the ultrasonic weapon, they weren’t leaving. They couldn’t risk it.
“Hey.” Maria approached them sullenly. She looked drained. “Just learned the hard way that having the most powerful man in the western world remind you that you failed is quite a blow to the ego.”
Strickland blew out a short breath. “We didn’t fail. We found the truck. We saw the woman. We almost had…” He stopped himself. Zero knew that it was for his benefit that Todd didn’t finish his statement; Zero was the one who had let her and the little girl get away.
We almost had her.
“We’re the only ones that saw her face,” Strickland continued. “Or Zero is, anyway. We’re still in a unique position to help.”
“And what?” Maria countered. “Go rogue? Defy orders from the President of the United States?” She snickered bitterly. “There was a time when that might have been my move. Kent’s too. But not this time.” She gestured with her head. “Come on. We’re going home.”
Maria trudged off, back toward the waiting black car that had brought them, and Strickland dutifully followed. It was almost laughable to Zero, a total boy scout like Todd suggesting that they keep going, ignore orders. Still, he wasn’t wrong. Zero had seen her face, in detail, through a rifle scope.
The boy stoops to pick something up. A piece of metal. A coin, perhaps…
“No.” Zero shook his head. He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t stand to be alone with himself right now. Not with this tempest in his head. Not with the knowledge, however manufactured it may be, that he was a hired killer.
“Kent?” Maria paused and looked over her shoulder. “What’d you say?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead he was stuck on something else that Todd had said, or had nearly said.
We almost had her.
Following the truck crash, Zero had the woman dead to rights. He was going to shoot, to wound her—but then the little girl had appeared.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t pull the trigger.
“Earth to Zero?” Strickland’s voice sounded far away.
He still didn’t know if the memories were his actual past or some manifestation. But one thing was perfectly clear, made so by a psychopathic Russian woman and her adolescent companion: he wasn’t that person anymore. He wasn’t an indiscriminate killer. If he was, he would have pulled that trigger without a second thought.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
People had the capacity to change. He’d proven that in his own life, even in ways he actually could remember. Time was that he and Strickland were enemies. Time was that he and John Watson were friends. Time was that Maria Johansson would have laughed at the very notion of her being CIA management.
People could change. There was darkness in his past, he was damn sure of that, and possibly much more than he even realized. But that was something he would have to deal with. Overcome. And move on.
“No,” he said again, louder. “We’re not done.”
Strickland grinned. “Finally, someone around here is talking sense.”
Maria sighed. “We have no leads. Nothing to go on.”
“That’s not entirely true.” Just before Maria had approached, right after her call with the president, Zero had been on the precipice of a thought—and now it came back to him. “I think I have an idea.”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Sara dug her bare heels into the sand. It was cooler than she thought it would be, but felt welcome on her throbbing ankle. She hugged her arms over her chest and shivered slightly. Even on the beach with the rising sun shining on her face, a late November morning was still chilly, and a breeze blew in from the ocean.
But that wasn’t why she shivered.
After her less-than-elegant escape from the rehab facility, she’d hobbled across the lawn of Seaside House and toward the beach. She kept to the shadows, eyes forward and alert, managing to avoid any trouble. It was late enough at night that the drunks, revelers, and thugs had all gone home. Still she stayed cognizant, and ducked back at any sign of headlights for fear that a curious cop might wonder what a teenage girl was doing out that late at night.
She reached the beach while it was still dark and walked a short ways along it, until the pain in her sprained ankle was too much to bear. She found a bench and set herself on it, finding relief in taking her weight off the injured foot for a short time. Despite her quest and the persistent nagging in her brain, she was exhausted, and couldn’t help but curl up with her backpack in her arms and nod off.
When she woke, the sun was just cresting on the horizon. Sara rubbed sleep from her eyes, stretched, and sat up—then cried out at the shockwave of pain that ran from her ankle up as she set the foot down on the ground. It was tender and swollen, turning purple.
She tugged off her shoes and socks and limped down to the sand, where she sat on her butt and dug in her heels until the cool sand sifted over the hurt ankle. It felt nice, though she could feel a strange warmth in the injury, and a pulsing sensation like her own heartbeat.
But she hadn’t forgotten her goal. She could have b
een back in Bethesda by now, back to her dad’s apartment by bus. Yet she was still in Virginia Beach, barely more than a few miles away from Seaside House.
She wondered if they’d look for her, the staff at the rehab facility. Would they call the police, on account of her age? They would certainly contact her dad—though, come to think of it, she had no idea if he was even back home or not from whatever derring-do the CIA had him on.
Derring-do? She almost laughed at herself. Thanks, Maya. Just another bizarre term she must have heard from her well-read sister. Sara wondered if they might try to contact her if they couldn’t reach her father. Maya would worry, but there’d be little she could do about it from New York. Sara had her cell phone on her, but she had turned it off. Her dad could track it. She didn’t know if anyone had tried to call her since her escape. It was likely they weren’t yet aware of her own derring-do.
And much like her dad, she was on a mission. Seated there on the beach with her feet bare and half buried in the sand, Sara glanced around. She was close to a skinny pier, maybe a football field’s length to her right, an old wooden thing that was more for the seabirds than for people, judging by the layer of white poop drying in the sun. Beyond the rickety old pier, she could see the hazy silhouette of the boardwalk less than a half mile in the distance, bathed in early morning fog.
Bingo. Boardwalks were attractive for two types of people: tourists and homeless. Virginia Beach had both in spades, and as much as she hated to stereotype, she knew that a hit wouldn’t be far or that difficult to acquire. She still had the fifty bucks in cash that Maya had given her. Hopefully it would be enough. Then she’d be broke, and she’d have to hitchhike back to Bethesda.
The more troubling concern was that she didn’t exactly know the protocol for this kind of transaction. Sara had always gotten her stuff from her former roommate, Camilla. She’d picked up on some of the lingo here and there, but she didn’t know how to… approach a vendor, so to speak.
Excuse me, sir? Good morning! Do you happen to sell drugs?
She laughed aloud at the thought.
Behind her, a middle-aged man and woman jogged by. A short ways down the beach, a scruffy-looking man with an unkempt gray beard dug through a wire trash bin. A young guy walked hurriedly through the sand, just out of reach of the incoming surf.
Sara arched an eyebrow at the youth. He looked to be just a few years older than her, with dark hair and olive-colored skin. Hispanic, perhaps, or maybe just deeply tanned. Despite the November weather he wore sandals and a gray hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves cut roughly off at the shoulders, exposing wiry arms with amateur tattoos down their length. He kept his hands in his pockets and glanced around constantly.
As he passed by Sara, his gaze flitted to hers. The boy had dark bags under his eyes. The time was very early for most, but she got the impression that it was simply very late for him—so late that the sun had irritatingly rose again.
Something sparked in her. She recognized that hurried walk, that nervous glance. The facial twitch that made his cheek jump almost imperceptibly when he had looked her way. He was walking parallel to the surf because no one could approach him from that side. He was heading straight for the rickety old pier.
Whether he was strung out or homeless or perhaps a combination thereof, Sara didn’t know. But she picked herself up, acting casual as possible, and brushed the sand from her butt. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and carried her shoes in her hand and she followed the boy. The pain in her ankle was immediate and throbbing. Her limp was pronounced.
But she had a strong feeling that this boy would have what she was after, and the need was stronger than the pain. The need was stronger than common sense. The need was stronger than the realization that if she was wrong, or if he was dangerous, or if he wasn’t alone, she was an unarmed sixteen-year-old girl who would not be able to run away.
*
Maya ran.
She ran every morning that she was able. But most days she ran at a brisk jog, enough to maintain an eight-minute mile. Building stamina and strength. Conditioning her body.
Today she ran.
She didn’t time herself or count the laps as she sprinted around the West Point track. She simply ran. Her muscular legs sprang powerfully with each step, clearing several feet with every bound forward. The cold air whipped at her face, tears stinging her eyes.
It was the cold air. Nothing else.
The events of the night prior were a bizarre, vague haze. Three boys had accosted her in the girls’ locker room after a shower. She blacked out. She came around when Melvin the janitor barged in. He found the boys badly beaten and broken. He found Maya, in only a towel that used to be white, covered with blood that wasn’t hers.
Then she cried. Her vision blurred with tears, and when it cleared again she was in the dean’s office alone. It was quiet. It was dark. She was in shorts and a gray T-shirt. Someone had brought her clothes. Some of the blood had been cleaned from her. It was still there though, on her hands, in the wrinkles of her knuckles and the creases of her fingernails.
Not her blood.
There were voices, adult voices, stern and low. In the hallway. Their words were lost to her.
She cried again.
She hated that, the crying. It was weakness. Even before West Point, Maya had always hated crying in front of people. It told them she was vulnerable.
She told herself all manner of stupid things. That the tears were the weakness leaving her body. But that wasn’t true. She was a dichotomy: a foolish little girl who thought she knew everything when she knew nothing. A monster who let the demons of her past overwhelm her to the point of nearly taking a life.
Those boys, they had made threats. They had assaulted her. Her ribs still ached from the one successful blow they had gotten in. That was one thing that she remembered from the night before: the dean told her that the weapons those boys had, they were long tube socks each with a heavy padlock stuffed in the end. It seemed they had taken locksocking quite literally.
When it was still night, she had cried and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. She was alone; there was no one around to see her tears. But still she hated it.
Eventually the dean, Brigadier General Hunt, came in. She wore jeans and a green sweater. She sat down. She patted Maya’s knee. Maya remembered thinking, despite everything, how strange it was to see Dean Hunt in anything other than her uniform.
The dean asked: “Who can we call?”
Maya thought about it.
“Don’t call anyone.”
She was an adult. This was her life. Her fight. Her dad, if he was around, would come running. Swooping in and saving the day. Unless he was still out there somewhere, swooping in and saving someone else’s day.
She didn’t need saving.
“Don’t call anyone,” Maya had said.
At some point she’d fallen asleep. When she woke, she was still in the dean’s office. Still alone. Her back ached from the uncomfortable position she’d slept in, curled in the seat of a leather armchair.
She didn’t know if she was allowed to go anywhere. She didn’t know what would happen to her. Would there be charges? Would she be allowed to stay in school? How bad was it, what she had done to those boys?
Even though she was only in shorts and a T-shirt, Maya went outside. There were no guards, no MPs, no administrators keeping her there. She shivered in the early November morning cold. She walked out to the empty oval track.
Then Maya ran.
Sweat poured from her brow. She gulped cold air like a fish out of water. Her legs continued to bound forward even as the muscles shrieked in protest. But she ran. Tear stung her eyes. She screamed then, as she ran, the sound of it both breathless and full at the same time.
Then she slowed. She walked. The pain came now, fresh and raw. A burning in her side. Her throat. Her lungs. Her legs. Her ribs, where a padlock-stuffed in a tube sock had smacked her.
Even if there we
re no charges, and even if she was allowed to stay in school after what happened… even if she was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing because she had been attacked, what sort of life would she have there? She’d already gone and pissed off half the male population of the academy. Those boys had friends. The events of last night might very well go and piss off the other half. She’d be a pariah.
It was infuriatingly unjust. All she wanted to do was excel and mind her own business. Yet it seemed that everyone wanted to step in her way. All because some petty jealousy had congealed into anger in the wrong people.
If she stayed, there would be more to come. She knew it. Dean Hunt could make the worst example of those three. She could expel them, or even bring criminal charges against them. She could bar them for life from any sort of military service in the United States. Ruin them and their futures.
She would do little but make martyrs out of them.
It wasn’t fair.
Maya heard a chiming sound, a strange sort of high-pitched ringing that was as familiar as it was jarring. It took her a moment to realize that it was her ring tone. But she didn’t have her cell phone. Did she? She patted her shorts before realizing dully that they had no pockets. She followed the sound, jogging to a nearby bench.
Her phone sat there, still ringing, the screen lit with a number she didn’t recognize. For a moment she just stared at it. She had brought it to the locker room with her last night. Had someone brought it to the dean’s office for her? Had she brought it out here with her? She couldn’t remember.
You’re cracking up, Lawson.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Maya Lawson?” It was a young woman with an irritatingly peppy voice.
“Speaking. Who’s this?”
“My name is Penelope, calling from Seaside House Recovery Center.”
Oh no. Whatever Penelope had to say could not be good.
“What’s happened?” Maya demanded.