Assassin Zero

by Jack Mars

  Then he swung a leg over the bike, shifted, and roared out of the lot to the southeast.

  He weaved in and out of traffic as he rushed to try to catch up to the perpetrators. He reasoned they must be in a truck, like the grocery box truck from Illinois, or perhaps a large van. He blew through a red light to catch up to a white windowless contractor van about fifty yards ahead. The local cops would certainly have their hands full with the attack that had just gone down and plenty better things to do than chase him.

  Zero came up alongside the van and peered in through the driver’s side window. The bewildered driver was a man with a beard in his forties or so. No redheaded woman. No child. No sketchy-looking Russian sorts.

  Damn it! Where’d they go? So far this woman and her comrades had tried so hard to stay under the radar. But now they had initiated a new attack, fled with the weapon still in use, and judging by how far ahead they had gotten, had as little regard for traffic laws as Zero did at the moment.

  Why? There was nothing to the southeast but more rural land and, eventually, the vast Chesapeake Bay.

  He saw another truck up ahead and raced for it. It was the only tactic he had; pausing long enough to contact Maria or Strickland wasn’t an option. But then a sign to his left drew his attention. It was a simple sign, advertising that this town, Prince Frederick, was the county seat of Calvert Cliffs.

  That was all. Now leaving Prince Frederick, County Seat of Calvert Cliffs.

  But it was enough for Zero to squeeze the motorcycle’s brakes so hard that the rear wheel came off the street. He turned it and expertly put the bike on its side as it came to a screeching, squealing stop.

  He knew where they were going. And now he had to make time to contact Maria.

  Zero tore the radio from his bag and hissed into it: “Maria? Todd? Come in! Anyone? Can you hear me?!”

  A hiss of static gave him his answer. Maybe their sonic protection, the earplugs, were still in. It could have been that they didn’t know the attack was over, that they’d landed too far away and were making their way to the parking lot and plaza, where they would find no terrorists and no Zero.

  And then they’d check.

  He pulled out his phone and rapidly punched in a frantic text message, one that he hoped not only made sense but immediately told them where he’d gone and what was happening.

  He wasn’t entirely right. There was something more to the southeast of Prince Frederick, built right at the edge of the peninsula, overlooking the bay. Zero had never been there, but he’d heard of it. Knew of it.

  Calvert Cliffs nuclear reactor.

  That’s what his text to Maria said.

  The first of the two-unit reactor at Calvert Cliffs was opened in 1977, owned and operated by a joint venture between American and French energy companies. The second had opened sometime in the nineties, along with a full update to the facility.

  There was one other thing that Zero knew about Calvert Cliffs. Despite it being built on a bluff overlooking the Chesapeake, nearly three million people lived and worked within a fifty-mile radius. The city of Annapolis. Some parts of Baltimore.

  And Washington, DC.

  The sonic weapon was never the point. It was a means to an end. A distraction. The redheaded woman and her people, they were planning to cause a meltdown. The ensuing fallout wouldn’t claim just dozens of lives like the attacks had so far. It would kill millions.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Zero pushed the motorcycle to the limits of what it was capable of as he raced southeast, following the green signs that pointed the way toward the Calvert Cliffs reactor. He wanted desperately to stop, to contact someone, to tell them what he now knew—the CIA, the FBI, the National Guard. Anyone. But he couldn’t drive the motorcycle one-handed while using a cell phone, and he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He was the closest. Anyone he could contact would take too long to get there.

  Maria would see his message. She would understand. She would send the cavalry.

  He turned the bike onto an access road that led to the facility. Signs warned him that this road was by authorized access only, yet he realized grimly that no one was trying to stop him.

  He understood now why they had attacked on a holiday. No one would expect something like this. The reactor’s staff, and by extension their security, would likely be on a skeleton crew.

  The motorcycle slowed as he reached a small guard house protecting a chain-link gate with barbed wire over the top. The guard lay on the ground, torso and upper half out the open doorway to the small square structure. There was no blood, no gunshot wounds, yet the man was discernibly dead.

  Zero didn’t have to be a nuclear physicist to tell what had happened here. The unsuspecting guard had seen the truck or van or whatever sort of vehicle they were in approaching, and in the next moment had gotten a point-blank blast from the sonic weapon.

  They never turned it off. That’s how he had been able to track it with the sonic detection meter in Prince Frederick, until they’d left its range. They drove right into the reactor site with the sonic weapon powered up, silently and invisibly blasting anyone in their way. As for the physical barriers, the gate was twisted and crumpled, obviously rammed by something large enough to flatten it.

  A short burst of automatic gunfire jarred him out of his thoughts. It was short-lived, five or six rounds, and then all was silent again. Zero scanned the facility beyond the gate. There was a second checkpoint, another crashed gate, and then an expansive lot. Beyond that was the assortment of buildings that made up the nuclear facility, one of them standing dominantly larger and boxy over the rest, and behind it the two wide, domed white structures that were the reactor units.

  Zero brought up the sonic detection meter and scanned. The blip registered a signal and told him: 240. Two hundred forty meters from his current location.

  He fit the electronic earplugs into his ears. As he kick-started the motorcycle again, there was no sound; just a high-pitched whine in his head and the rumble of an engine beneath him. He tore across the parking lot, keeping his eyes open and his hands tight on the handlebars.

  A thought occurred to him, possibly too late: his motorcycle was loud. Anyone would hear it coming—assuming they could hear anything at all. The perpetrators, the people behind the sonic weapon, would need ear protection as well.

  But if there was more shooting, Zero wouldn’t hear it. If anyone was taking shots at him, he wouldn’t know unless he was hit.

  As if to illustrate his point, a man ran into view not a hundred yards in front of the motorcycle. As Zero rounded the corner of the parking lot that took him adjacent to the buildings, he saw the sandy-haired man running from the large, boxy structure. He wore a white lab coat, its coat tails billowing behind him as he flat-out sprinted toward the cars.

  The man dared to glance over his shoulder, right at Zero for just a moment. He must have heard the motorcycle engine. There was no sound, at least not to Zero, as the man’s body jerked. Blood blossomed into the air like a mist and he fell forward, onto his stomach and face, as silent bullets pounded into him from behind.

  Zero slammed the brakes and put one foot on the asphalt. There was little question to the source of the shots. A brown delivery truck sat double-parked at the curb outside the largest structure, in the fire lane. A man stepped out from behind it. He wore all black, head to toe, including a mask and visor. He held a long, dark assault rifle in his hands, barrel pointed downward as he strode toward the downed researcher.

  The assailant prodded him with the gun, making sure he was dead.

  He didn’t even look at Zero. He couldn’t hear the motorcycle.

  So Zero gunned the engine and flew at the black-clad commando with a mounting speed that matched his fury at shooting an unarmed scientist.

  The motorcycle was less than thirty feet away when the commando finally saw the movement in his periphery, limited as it was by the mask and visor he wore. It also kept Zero from seeing the panicked expre
ssion that was likely on the man’s face in the final seconds before impact, but he could imagine it. He’d seen it before.

  Then two hundred forty pounds of steel slammed into the commando, throwing him an impressive several yards and bouncing over him a second time as Zero leapt and rolled away from it, keeping his arms clutched close to his body.

  The impact hurt, but he didn’t waste a beat. Zero pulled the Ruger from its ankle holster as he jumped to his feet and fired four shots into the delivery truck, punching tiny holes in its side as he ran parallel to it and the entrance to the administrative building beyond.

  Three more black-wrapped commandos jumped out of the back of the truck. One gripped his upper arm where Zero had tagged him with an errant shot. The other two gripped automatic weapons.

  Dammit.

  Zero threw himself forward, tucked into a roll, and dragged his knees into his chest behind a concrete planter perpendicular to the building entrance. He knew they were shooting at him. He couldn’t hear it, but he could feel the chips of concrete flying by, stinging his face.

  Silence is going to get me killed.

  He wouldn’t be able to hear if they stopped shooting or resumed shooting. He wouldn’t be able to hear if they were planning to flank him or if they were shouting at each other to take cover or retreat or toss a grenade.

  He had no choice. He had to do it.

  Zero tugged the sonic earplugs from his ears. Then he winced immediately, ducking his head and covering his face at the report of a short burst from an assault rifle. It was a sound he’d heard a thousand times, maybe more, but would also scare the hell out of anyone going from near-absolute silence to ear-splitting gunfire.

  A male voice called to him. “Come out now! Move here!”

  Zero frowned. The man spoke Russian, and sounded passably fluent, but his word choice and odd accent told him that the speaker was not native.

  It hardly mattered. He was outnumbered, out-gunned, and most definitely not coming out. He gripped the LC9 in a sweaty hand, waiting for another burst of shots. Waiting for an order for the three men to flank him, take him out. To toss a grenade.

  But no. Instead came a simple and direct order in Russian: “Turn it on him!”

  Zero’s eyes widened in shock as the meaning behind those words registered. He scrambled for his earplugs, but he couldn’t find them. They’d bounced from his hand when he’d taken them out and the shooting began.

  He’d been in firefights. He’d been in raids with bombs going off in every direction. He’d been aboard boats that were torpedoed and helicopters struck by RPGs. At least in those scenarios, there was something to see, something to hear—something to potentially avoid.

  The sensation struck his body in an instant. His muscles seized as a seemingly unnatural force, as invisible as it was silent, reverberated through him. He wanted to cry out but his throat constricted, his mouth wide open as if in a yawn. He tried to focus but his eyes vibrated intensely, blurring the world into a smear of vague, bland colors.

  His insides roiled. His stomach flipped with nausea. He fell to his hands and knees. He was vaguely aware that he’d dropped the Ruger as he vomited. He felt as if his entire body was about to be vibrated apart into a million pieces.

  This is it. This is how I die. Not with a bang, or a blast, but in utter and complete silence.

  Then there was a sound—no, there were sounds, out there, somewhere, but they were distant and distorted, as if someone had slipped earmuffs over his head. The sounds didn’t matter. He was in agony, at the mercy of the sonic weapon and completely unable to do anything but roll over and die.

  He thought of Sara. Even though he couldn’t see, her angelic face filled his mind’s eye as if she was there. It was strange, in that moment, that he was capable of any sort of lucid thought, but despite the pain permeating every part of his being, a calm came over him and he thought only of her. Maya would be all right. She was strong and capable. In that moment before what he was certain would be his death, he thought of Sara, and he sent up an unsaid prayer that she too would be happy, healthy, and safe.

  CHOOM!

  He definitely heard that. A coughing chug erupted, the unmistakable sound of a powerful gun.

  CHOOM! It came again, thunderous and deep despite his waning hearing. There was something else there too, a rattling sound, like a snare drum behind the deeper and intermittent bass drum of a gun blast.

  And then, as if the heavens themselves had seen fit to answer him, he sucked in a gasping breath. His body collapsed onto pavement. His eyeballs ceased their frenetic vibrating, and though nausea still racked his gut, the dizziness began to subside.

  The attack stopped. Or was stopped. And the sounds that came back suggested a fierce firefight.

  Zero reached up shakily and gripped the edge of the concrete planter, still crouched behind it for safety from bullets. He dared to peek out. A black car had arrived, its doors thrown open, stopped not fifteen yards from the brown delivery truck. Two figures took cover behind it. A flash of blonde hair. A shorter, stocky man.

  Maria.

  Todd.

  She had the downed Russian’s assault rifle in her hands, providing cover fire on the truck and the commandos. Strickland held a twelve-gauge shotgun, police-issue by the look of it. He racked the slide and pulled the trigger.

  CHOOM!

  Buckshot peppered the side of the truck, and Zero sluggishly put it together. They’d received his message. They’d come running. Strickland must have hit the ultrasonic weapon, incapacitated it enough to cease the attack on his body.

  He couldn’t have been in the sonic blast for more than a few seconds for him to still be alive. Yet it had felt like an eternity.

  From his vantage point, he saw a black-clad commando rounding the truck near the front fender, trying to get the drop on their assailants. Zero stood suddenly. He was wobbly on his feet and nearly fell, but grabbed onto the planter for support. He had no idea how many rounds were left in the LC9, but brought it up anyway.

  Track your aim to the right, he reminded himself.

  He fired two shots. The gun bucked in his hand. The first shot struck the man in the neck. The second, in the side of his black helmet. He fell limply.

  The shooting ceased. He saw four bodies. He had struck one with the motorcycle. Were there more? He had no idea.

  “Zero!” Strickland shouted. He racked a round into the shotgun, grabbed it by the meaty stock, and hurled it into the air. It somersaulted twice lazily in a high arc as the last black-helmeted man standing jumped from the back of the truck. He brought the automatic rifle up, aiming straight ahead—straight at him.

  Zero dropped the Ruger and caught the shotgun in his arms. He flipped it around and fired it once, one-handed. The recoil stung his arm. The stock jumped back, glancing off his ribs. The commando took the shot straight to the chest. His body flew backward as if he’d been hit by a car, right back into the rear of the truck.

  Silence again.

  Zero waited. He cautiously glanced left and right. There was no movement, no sound.

  “Clear.” His voice came out choked and hoarse.

  The rear doors of the truck were open, and beyond them, amid cardboard boxes that had never been delivered, was the root of their problems. It was an admittedly ugly thing, a wide dish welded to a steel dolly that also held a large cube with leads extending from two terminals.

  A battery. It must have been. Blue sparks crackled from the terminals where Strickland’s shot had damaged it.

  Zero pumped the shotgun once more and aimed it point-blank at the battery. The gun coughed. The battery exploded in a white flash that left black spots in his vision for several seconds.

  “Are you okay?” Maria’s voice, behind him.

  “Yeah.” The spots subsided, but Zero didn’t turn just yet. He was distracted by the body lying on the floor of the truck, the man he’d blasted in the chest with the shotgun. The man’s black visor and mask had come off partia
lly when he fell, askew on his face. Zero reached for it and tugged it off.

  He blinked at the face for several seconds.

  “Zero…?” Todd asked cautiously.

  The commando was not Russian. He was clearly Asian—and by Zero’s more-than-educated guess, he was Chinese.

  “Check them,” he said. It hurt to talk. “Not Russian. Chinese.”

  Maria frowned as she knelt toward the nearest dead commando. “He’s right. They’re not Russian.”

  “This is a set-up.” Zero hopped down from the back of the truck as he put it together. The Chinese, the trade war with the US that threatened their economy… the Chinese were attempting to frame the Russians with the sonic attack. To what end?

  To instigate a war. The Chinese had weapons and supplies that the Russians would want. Nothing was as profitable as being on the paying end of a major conflict.

  The woman. He had seen her himself, and she was most definitely not Chinese. He looked around frantically for her amongst the bodies that lay strewn around the truck. He saw three downed guards in green fatigues, guns still in their hands. Their unmarred bodies suggested they had received the full brunt of the ultrasonic weapon—and their horrified death masks suggested they had not died well.

  “The woman,” he said. “We have to find her.”

  “Wait,” Maria insisted. “You’re bleeding.” She gestured toward her mouth.

  Zero gently touched two fingers to his own mouth and they came back smeared with red. Suddenly he was aware of the copper taste at the back of his throat. Something inside him was bleeding, but there wasn’t time to determine what.

  “Backup?” he asked.

  “I called everyone there is to call on the way over here,” Maria said quickly. “They’re en route, but no one can get here fast enough. Local PD was advised to deal with the Prince Frederick situation—they’re out of their depth on this one.”

  Zero grunted. They were, as it tended to happen, on their own.

  “Split up. Find her. I think she means to force a meltdown. There’s a girl with her.” It pained him to say it, both literally and figuratively, but he did anyway. “Consider both hostile. Maria, take the administrative building.” He gestured to the boxy structure before them. “Strickland, to the east. I’ll take west. Radios on. If you see something, say something.”