Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  “This is suicide,” Mischa said as she settled back in her chair, seemingly unperturbed by the notion but merely remarking it aloud. She’d heard Strickland’s end of the call; Zero had patched it into their headsets. “He said it himself; security is tight as can be. Perhaps Krauss could have found a way, but he is not Krauss anymore.”

  “Exactly,” said Zero. “That’s why we don’t need to think like Krauss. We need to think like Bright. Now, we have a small advantage here in that Bright doesn’t know that we know about the accord. Problem is, we know almost nothing about what’s going down. Who would the possible players be?”

  “Israel and Palestine,” Mischa noted. “They already have a treaty in place with each other, and with the United States.”

  “Right. Plus Iran and Saudi Arabia,” he added.

  “Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait,” Mischa counted off on her fingers.

  Zero was impressed. “Been watching the news?”

  “Reading the paper,” she admitted.

  “That entire region is Bright’s bread and butter,” Zero said. “Just about every faction he’s funded comes out of there or attacks there or both. So he’d have very good reason to disrupt the accord. What’s the best way to do that?”

  “He’s proven to be partial to bombs.”

  That was true; Bright’s people had already blown up Third Street Garage and Zero’s former home in New York, presumably on his orders.

  Yet he had to trust that Strickland and his new team had a strong handle on the situation at the signing of the accord. Someone like Krauss wouldn’t be able to get within a hundred yards of them without being arrested—or shot, as Todd had made very clear. They would have thoroughly swept the area, the buildings. As Mischa noted, it would be suicide.

  Unless that’s his intention? Sacrifice Krauss to stop the accord? Send him in as a suicide bomber?

  No—that didn’t quite fit. Bright had taken a sickening delight in his new pet, “S.” He doubted Bright would just blow him up. In fact, if he had to guess, he would assume Bright had big plans for mind-controlled Krauss, even after this was done.

  I don’t make killers, Bright had said on the phone. I control them.

  I provide order to chaos.

  They couldn’t strike while the accord was happening. At least not where it was happening.

  What would Bright do if he couldn’t get to them where they are?

  What would you do? he asked himself.

  “Get to them where they will be,” he murmured.

  “What’s that?” Mischa asked.

  He didn’t answer, not at first. Get to them where they will be. And he was pretty sure he knew where that was. The more he rolled it around in his head, the more it made sense.

  “I… I think I know where he might strike,” Zero said. “Not where they are. Where they will be.”

  He’s moved on to… “others.”

  That’s what Bright had said when Zero demanded to know who Krauss’s next target was.

  Others. Of a less conspicuous nature.

  Others. More than one.

  “And where will they be?” Mischa asked.

  “Ever been to Cairo?” he asked her as he adjusted their heading.

  “No, I have not.”

  “There’s only one place visiting heads of state would be invited to stay after the accord is signed.” And if he wasn’t mistaken, it was less than ten minutes from the current location at the Cairo International Convention Centre.

  “And if you’re wrong?” she asked.

  “Well… then at least you’ll be able to say you’ve seen a real palace.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sara sat atop a stack of folded green mats against a far wall of a wide, high-ceilinged room. She knew that this particular room was sometimes used for a gymnastics class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or used to be. On Wednesdays there was a women’s self-defense course taught there. She snacked on some crackers; she’d raided the cabinet in the daycare room and found some food and a bottle of water and then she’d climbed up the stack of thick green mats, the kind they’d unfold for high school wrestling matches, and she sat up there swinging her feet as she ate for the first time in more than a day.

  She wasn’t even really hungry. But she knew she needed to eat.

  She was feeling better, much better than she had earlier, when the shock of the explosion had gripped her mind. Going back to the house had been insane; it barely felt like it had been her decision, looking back.

  So she’d left there, and without any other place to go and not wanting to put anyone in unnecessary harm, she’d come here, to the community center.

  The first time she’d ever stepped foot in this place was for an art class. Painting landscapes in watercolor and bowls of fruit in oil. It had been something to take her mind off of all the terror and the drugs and her escape from rehab and dropping out of school and… well, everything. Then she’d met Maddie, the queen-bee soccer mom who organized Common Bonds, and she’d started attending the women’s trauma group.

  Then she’d stopped attending, because Maddie started catching on to the fact that Sara was beating the hell out of guys who assaulted the group’s members.

  The community center had been closed for two weeks now after a lice outbreak required a complete fumigation, cleaning, and replacing of furniture. When Sara had arrived the night before she’d found a cleaning crew there. They’d left a single entrance unlocked. It had been easy enough to slip in, hide in a closet, and wait for them to leave. Once she was sure they were gone she crept to the front desk and turned on the computer. She saw that the cameras in the place were closed-circuit and she was able to shut them off pretty easily. As long as she didn’t leave, she wouldn’t trip the alarm.

  And she had no intention of leaving.

  She wasn’t the least bit tired. In fact, just the opposite, she felt well rested. She roamed the community center’s halls, rifling through cabinets, peeking in on rooms. She went into the familiar art room and took a seat at an easel, but no inspiration came. She snuck crackers and water from the daycare room and climbed the stacks of mats.

  Eventually she dared herself to go into the room with the door that had a single piece of white paper taped to it with some words printed in black ink. The paper said:

  Common Bonds

  Sharing Trauma, Sharing Hope

  She stood there for a long time in the empty room. Then she took a metal chair from the rack in the corner and she unfolded it and set it near the center of the floor. She grabbed another chair, and another, until she had about ten chairs in a semicircle facing the windows.

  Sara sat in the one farthest from the door and closest to the windows. She eyed up the empty chairs and visualized the women who used to sit in them, and maybe still did sometimes.

  She reached into her pocket for her phone and powered it on. But she didn’t try to make any calls or send any texts or even check her voicemails. Instead she put it on silent and slid it under her chair face-down.

  Then she sighed, and she began.

  “My name is Sara Lawson,” she told the empty chairs. “I’ve been coming here for a while. Or… I used to. And I never shared. Not much, anyway. I sat here, and I listened to the stories that the other girls told. I used their stories, to try to fix myself, I guess. Like it was going to give me some kind of purpose. I guess you could even say I kind of… stole their stories. Or at least tried to make myself a part of them.”

  She scoffed at herself. “Anyway. Seeing as I might be dead soon, this seemed like as good a time as any. To share.”

  So she shared. To an empty room, to nine vacant chairs, to the darkness of the community center, she shared. She wasn’t sure how long she talked for, but she shared it all. She talked about her mother. She shared the grief of her loss. She opened up about her trauma, her addiction, her attempts to get clean, her overdose. Her trafficking experience, about seeing the girl called Jersey shot before her eyes. About the lie
s she’d been told and the lies she’d told.

  “For a long time, I guess I thought I could get over it. Like, I could just power through it and things would just be okay again. But I’m not okay. The truth is, most of the time I don’t really care if I live or die. I’ve even…” She trailed off, her throat dry. But she had to say it. She had to share it. “I’ve even thought once or twice that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to die. But I couldn’t do that.”

  Then she heard it, in the silence of the community center, over the dull roar of blood rushing in her own ears, she heard an engine.

  “At least not to myself,” she said. She stood from the chair and peered out the window to see a black van rolling up to the community center.

  It stopped abruptly. A door slid open, and six men climbed out quickly. They wore black vests and boots and carried guns, and they split off into teams of two and separated.

  They were here. It was time.

  “I’m not just going to sit around and wait anymore,” she told the room quietly. “If this is how it happens, then… this is how it happens.”

  There were people who wanted her dead. There were people who wanted her family dead. Running and hiding was an option, but it wasn’t living. It wasn’t a life.

  But… she certainly wasn’t going to give herself up.

  She had no intention of making it easy on them.

  Sara opened the door and treaded down the hall to the front desk. Behind it, she kicked off her sneakers so she was just in her socks. On the desk there she’d left the small black pistol with the silencer, the one she’d taken from Alan.

  She crouched behind the desk and its computer, and she waited.

  The auxiliary lights blinked off, throwing her into near-complete darkness. The streetlights in the parking lot were snuffed out a moment later. They were cutting the power. No alarm would trip.

  She squeezed her eyes shut for several seconds and then opened them again, let them adjust to the darkness. She wasn’t worried. She knew the center’s layout well.

  Then she heard it—the high-pitched crack of a single pane of glass. From where? Not the main entrance. The single-doored side hall, past the daycare room.

  She heard the footfalls of their boots as they approached. Always boots with men like them. Why boots?

  Sara crawled forward slightly on her hands and knees beneath the desk. There was a small round hole at the back of it, for the computer cables that she’d already yanked out. She put an eye to it like a peephole and watched as four dark figures reached the end of the corridor, where it branched in two directions. One of them motioned with two fingers to his left, and two of the men split off that way. The other two turned to the right and stalked forward, their guns up.

  She waited, counting in her head. One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi. Then she crept out from beneath the desk. Sara stayed low, her socks completely silencing her footsteps as she stole after the two men who had gone right, toward Common Bonds. They were maybe fifteen feet ahead of her when she raised the gun and fired.

  Sara squeezed off three shots in quick succession. In the otherwise quiet community center, there may not have even been a silencer on the gun; the shots were muffled but loud. Even at this close of a range, it was dark and she’d never been all that great of a shot.

  One missed. One hit a man square in the back of his thick black vest. He grunted and stumbled forward a step. The third hit the second man at the base of his neck. He yelped and fell.

  “Contact!” The man she’d hit in the back spun, off-balance, and fired. Automatic gunfire split the air, much louder than her shots, louder than she thought anything could be.

  But she was already running. Three quick shots and she ran, sprinting down the hall. Her ears rang even after the shooting stopped.

  “She went this way!” a voice shouted. Boots pounded the tiled floor.

  But Sara was already skirting noiselessly through an open door. She’d spent the night roaming the community center, poking around every room—and making sure every door was unlocked and open just a few inches.

  She didn’t stay there. This room had a second door that connected to the next room over, the wide, high-ceilinged room that was sometimes used for a gymnastics class and a women’s self-defense course.

  She scrambled up the stack of folded green mats and laid herself flat.

  One down. She was pretty certain the man who’d taken a bullet to the neck was dead, or would be soon.

  The stomp of boots came closer. A harsh, angry voice ordered, “You, through there. You—clear this room! Radio Sid, tell him she’s armed.”

  She peered over the side of her tall stack of mats as the barrel of a gun pushed through the partially open door. Her dad had showed her how rooms were cleared, and it wasn’t typically by looking up.

  Sara carefully aimed, and she squeezed the trigger, just once, just as the man stepped through.

  The man’s head jerked back and he fell.

  “Wilson!” a voice screeched.

  Sara was already moving, sliding off the mats and running across the room. She shoved through the door and back out into the wide hall but didn’t stop. Instead she ran straight across its width and into the men’s room on the opposite side.

  Then she stopped. It was pitch-black in there, no windows, no auxiliary lights, no moonlight. But she’d spent the night roaming the community center, memorizing its layout.

  Out in the hall she heard the harried voices. “Where’d she go?”

  “Son of a bitch, she got Wilson!”

  Two down.

  “Nobody said she’d have a gun…”

  “Shut up! She’s just a kid. She got lucky—”

  “She ain’t just a kid. This is Zero’s kid. Pair off, watch your backs. You—head that way. Me and Taggert will check the gymnasium.”

  The boots faded. Sara caught her breath. She was surprised to find that her heart rate felt… not normal, but not pounding. Not beating out of her chest like she might have expected.

  She liked the small black pistol with its long barrel, but she had no idea how many rounds were still in it and it was too dark to check. So she carefully set it on the sink, and then she reached underneath it for the hammerless revolver she’d stowed in the wastepaper basket.

  She’d spent the night roaming the community center, poking around every room—not just making sure every door was unlocked and open, but planning a route. Hiding weapons.

  The revolver had six shots, was fully loaded, needed no cocking. It was point-and-shoot. Simple. Her kind of gun. It had a bit of a kick to it, more so than the small black pistol, she knew from prior use, but it also had more power behind it.

  Sara counted her footsteps in the dark, crossing the bathroom, and then she reached and felt the door. The community center had two pairs of bathroom, and this bathroom had two exits, one that emptied out into the hall and the other that connected to the locker room.

  She pushed the door open and listened. She didn’t hear anything. The locker room connected to the gymnasium, with its full-size basketball court, but she wouldn’t be going there. The angry voice had said they’d be searching it. Besides, it was the largest room in the center, nothing but open space.

  Sara stalked forward in her socks. There were three rows of lockers, their doors open, one row against each wall and another in the center, cutting the room in half. The row of lockers was six feet high, too high for her to see over—too high for anyone to see over. Each row had a low wooden bench between it, attached firmly to the concrete floor.

  She maneuvered slowly to the second-to-last locker in the center row, and she wedged herself inside it. It was a tight fit, but there was just enough space to move her arm and point the gun, if she kept her elbow tight to her body.

  Then she waited.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  The door to the gymnasium squeaked loudly on its hinges, as she already knew it would.

  “Locker
room,” one of the men whispered.

  “No shit,” said the other flatly. “We should call Sid in.”

  “Someone needs to watch the lot. In case she makes a run for it. Go that way.”

  Sara held her breath. At least one of them would walk right by her. Any moment…

  “There’s another door here.”

  “Check it.” The voice was close. Right around the corner.

  A flashlight beam shined on the wooden bench in front of her.

  Shit.

  She hadn’t counted on that.

  It was too late to improvise. Leaving her hiding spot would certainly get her killed.

  She could hear the man’s breathing as he stepped forward.

  If this is how it happens, then… this is how it happens.

  She slowly maneuvered her arm as best she could with the revolver tight in her hand, and she pointed the barrel at the open door of the locker.

  The flashlight beam swung.

  Sara pulled the trigger. The revolver kicked in her hand. The report was a satisfying pop echoing in her head.

  “Gah!” The man made a sound, one of surprise or pain or both. The flashlight beam bounced but didn’t fall to the floor. She fired again, through the door, and a third time, punching holes in the thin metal.

  Finally the flashlight fell, and Sara clambered out of the locker. The flashlight was attached to his rifle. It, the gun, and he were on the floor.

  She dropped to the ground as the door to the bathroom was kicked open. Another flashlight beam bounced off the walls as she rolled beneath the wooden bench.

  “Bitch!” the man shouted as his light fell over the dead man. “Where are you?!”

  Sara answered by shooting him in the shin.

  He screamed. His leg gave out. He pulled the trigger as he went down and bullets tore up the ceiling. Sara rolled again and finished him with one more shot.

  She’d used five rounds. She quickly navigated to the far row of lockers, closest to the gymnasium, and traded the hammerless revolver for the Glock she’d hidden in the bottom of one. The last gun, the big silver one she’d taken from the man at her house, was hidden in the cabinet of the daycare room. It might as well have been a mile away.