by Jack Mars
She was more than halfway there when she saw the door swing open. A flash of light. She backpedaled, or tried to, but her socks lost purchase on the waxed floor. She slid, her feet flying out from under her, as the man fired a burst in her direction.
Pain shot through her arm as she raised the Glock. Even as she slid she brought it up in both hands, her arm searing, and pulled the trigger. Once, three times, five, eight—she wasn’t sure how many times she shot, but she didn’t stop, not even when the gun and flashlight fell. Not until he fell, face-first, to the polished hardwood.
Sara breathed hard and set the gun down. A bullet had caught her right arm, had torn at her bicep. She touched it and sucked a breath through her teeth. Even in the darkness of the gym she could see it was bleeding badly.
And the pain.
God. It hurt so much.
The tears came then, suddenly and powerfully. She couldn’t stop them. Her vision blurred, and she drew her knees up on the gym floor, and she cried. Not because of the pain in her arm, but because of the pain in her head and in her heart.
What am I doing here?
Why did I do this?
I don’t want to die.
Not here. Not now. Not alone.
“I don’t want to die.” She sniffed, and wiped her eyes.
And you won’t.
“I won’t.” Sara forced herself to her feet.
Five down.
“Just one more.”
They’d called him Sid. He was waiting for her to make a run for it.
Sara left the Glock there. She wiped her face again and pushed through the gymnasium door. She made her way to the daycare room and retrieved the bulky silver pistol from the cabinet. It felt unwieldy in her hand, but powerful.
Then she headed for the main entrance. The van was out there, and the man would likely be too.
She dared to glance out the glass door. He was there all right, standing not twenty-five feet from the door, just in front of the van. The moon hid behind clouds and obscured his features, but not the gun he cradled in both hands.
He was looking right at her. Waiting. There was nothing to hide behind out there. No way to trick him or lead him elsewhere. He looked patient, like he would wait all night for her to come out if need be.
There were other exits. If she could get to one before he could, she could flee. Make a run for it…
The man turned suddenly, awash in headlights. He put one hand up to shield his eyes, and in that moment Sara saw his face, a thin beard, squinting eyes.
In the moment she thought, He doesn’t look like a Sid to me.
But it was just for a moment, because an instant later a car smashed into Sid. It hit him at the waist, folded him in half over the hood. Then the car hit the brakes, and Sid kept going, tumbling end over end across the parking lot like a stone skipped on a lake.
Sara’s breath caught in her throat. The car idled there for a moment, and then the passenger-side door flung open, and someone climbed out. They ran to the entrance of the community center. They had no gun and pressed both their palms flat against the glass.
“Sara!”
She pulled the door open and practically fell into Maya’s arms. Her sister hugged her back, tightly but briefly. “You okay?”
“Mostly.”
“You’re bleeding…”
“I said mostly.”
“Come on.” Maya urged her toward the car. “We have to move, now.” She helped Sara into the backseat of the silver sedan. There was a young guy behind the wheel that she didn’t recognize.
“Let’s go,” Maya told the driver. He nodded once and the car lurched forward. “Sara, this is Trent. Trent, this is my sister.”
“A pleasure,” said the driver.
“Whose car is this?” Sara asked.
“Not sure.” Maya shrugged out of her jacket.
“How did you find me?”
“Your phone.” Maya passed the jacket back to Sara. “Here, tie this around your arm until we can get it cleaned. We got off a plane from France less than thirty minutes ago. Looks like you turned your phone on about fifteen minutes ago or so.”
“My phone,” she said. “I left it back there. They’ll know… the police, or whoever comes. They’ll know I was there.”
“I think they’re going to know either way.” Maya sighed. “There’s no easy way to say this, but… we’re not safe, not from anyone. I don’t know where Dad is, or Mischa, or Alan. Until we hear from someone, it’s just us. We’re on our own, completely.”
Sara eyed up the driver.
Maya noticed. “We can trust Trent. They probably want him dead too, at this point.”
“Yay for me,” he muttered.
“Trent knows a place we can lay low. We’ll clean you up, get some rest—”
All three of them jumped slightly at the sudden, deep boom that shook the car’s windows. Sara twisted in her seat to see an orange fireball pluming in the air, black smoke billowing over it.
The van. A bomb. Just like the garage. Another minute of hesitation and Sara would have been caught in that blast. She’d be dead.
Maya must have sensed what she was thinking. She felt her sister’s hand on hers. Maya twisted in her seat, reaching back. “We’ll keep each other safe. We’ll find them.”
Sara nodded. She knew now what she had refused to acknowledge for months. For years, even. She couldn’t do this on her own. Neither could Maya. Or her dad, or Mischa.
“We will,” she promised.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
By the time Zero landed the Cessna, the Cairo Accord was international news—which, oddly, worked in their favor. He knew they’d never get within sniffing distance of Cairo’s main airport, so instead he directed the jet toward the small Bijam Airfield, about twelve miles northeast of Egypt’s capital, and radioed a distress signal for a loss of cabin pressure.
The landing was a bumpy one—he heard Mischa audibly gasp for the first time that he could ever recall—and they scrambled out of the jet before any help could arrive. The two of them made a run for it in the opposite direction from the low-roofed terminal, across open ground, over a chain-link fence that surrounded the furthest runway, and toward a nearby residential area.
He had Mischa wait on a corner with the burner as he snuck into the small parking garage of an apartment building. He stole quickly along a row, trying door handles until he found one that was unlocked, a late-model Kia. Two minutes later it was hotwired, and Mischa jumped in beside him, poking at the touch-screen of the burner.
“What’d you find?” he asked her.
“This is… impressive,” she admitted. “The Cairo Accord was kept completely secret until today. A summit involving nine countries. Their leaders are convened currently at the convention center to sign the accord.”
All of them. That was the answer to who was involved. All of them were in one place, and that place had been completely locked down. But if Zero’s hunch was right, it wasn’t the only place they’d be gathered.
He drove as quickly as he dared due southwest, toward central Cairo and the stadium. But that wasn’t their destination.
“Would you like to share what you’re thinking?” Mischa asked him.
Had the situation not been so dire, he might have laughed at her candor. “The Heliopolis Palace. That’s where we’re going. It’s one of three presidential palaces of Egypt. Not only is it the closest to the accord, but it’s also where visiting heads of state stay while they’re here. It was built in 1908 as a hotel, actually, the grandest hotel in all of Africa at the time—”
“Zero,” Mischa interrupted, “I’m sure you know much about its history, but let’s keep it limited to necessity.”
“Sorry.” He tended to rant when he was nervous—and he was nervous. The heads of nine countries, including the United States, would sign the Cairo Accord, and most likely be the guests of the Egyptian president at the Heliopolis Palace. While he had no doubt security would be tight, t
he perception would be that the threat had passed, that the endeavor had been successful—that no one would dare strike at them there, not after the accord.
But Bright would.
In one fell swoop he could throw half a continent into chaos. And once the finger-pointing began, Bright could manipulate it to his liking, place blame wherever he wanted, even if it was the work of only one man who didn’t even fully know what he was doing.
Zero swerved around a truck going too slow for his liking and back into the left lane. “Let’s think. If it’s Krauss, and it’s a bomb, what’s the likeliest delivery method?”
“At the garage, it was a van,” Mischa pointed out.
“In New York, it was a package.” But that seemed unlikely; packages to the presidential palace would be carefully scanned and checked.
But so would delivery vehicles. And Krauss would have no way to personally ensure that the bomb made it inside the building.
Think, Zero. If you had to get a bomb inside a presidential palace, to take out foreign heads of state, how would you do it?
It would have to be a powerful bomb.
Or… it would have to be multiple bombs.
But that didn’t get him any closer to figuring it out.
He gripped the wheel tightly in frustration as the palace came into view. And for only the second time ever that he could recall, he heard Mischa audibly gasp.
“Wow,” she said quietly. “It looks like something out of a storybook.”
She wasn’t wrong. The Heliopolis Palace had been an architectural marvel when it was built more than a hundred years earlier, and still was one today. The front of the structure featured a wide, round reception hall that resembled a miniature Colosseum; behind that was the Central Hall, the dome of which stretched skyward in a golden spire that peaked above the rest of the palace. The Heliopolis had been designed as a four-hundred-room hotel, in the lavish style of Louis XIV and partially inspired by Italian architecture.
It looked like something out of a storybook—and they would never get even close to within its walls. Zero slowed the stolen Kia as they drew near and he could see that security at the palace was significant. The roads surrounding it had been closed and barricaded; police cars and Egyptian military personnel were in force on the grounds as they rolled past.
Zero took the Al Ahram road to the next block and parked the car in the lot of a post office. They walked briskly back toward the palace and joined a small group of tourists snapping photos across the street from it. The gates that accessed the main entrance to the Heliopolis were closed, military standing guard.
It seemed that was as close as they were going to get.
“We could call someone,” Mischa suggested. “Todd Strickland, perhaps. Tell him your theory.”
“I don’t think he’s going to hear me out again.” Zero shook his head. They were here, and it appeared there was no way in. Not for him—and not for Stefan Krauss, either.
What if you’re wrong?
He wanted to be wrong. But it wouldn’t mean that anyone was any safer; it would mean only that Bright would attempt something else, something he hadn’t considered.
Or what if he was right, and they were too late? What if Krauss had already come and gone?
No—Bright would have his lapdog wait around, watch it happen, make sure it unfolded in the way it was supposed to. He wouldn’t leave it to chance.
“Think, Zero,” he urged himself. The crowd of onlookers across the road from the palace was growing, people lining the street. It seemed that it had become common knowledge that the members of the Cairo Accord would be coming here, to the Heliopolis Palace, and that these people would soon have a front-row seat to a parade of foreign leaders making history as they entered these gates.
He wasn’t wrong. This had to be it.
He turned to Mischa. “How would you do it?” It felt outright wrong to ask, but the girl had some experience in situations like this one. “If it was you, and you were trying to get bombs into the palace, knowing that security would be everywhere, how would you do it?”
“Hmm.” Her small face scrunched up in thought. “Luggage, I would imagine.”
“Luggage?”
“Yes. The accord is attended by dozens of foreign leaders and diplomats. They do not handle their own luggage; that would have been taken from the planes to the palace by porters. And while I don’t know this for sure, I imagine a king or president’s bags are not searched.”
“I…” He wanted to scoff at the suggestion, but he couldn’t bring himself to. “Mischa—you might be a genius.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“We need to call someone,” he told her. “Todd first. If he won’t take it, then we’ll have to find someone who will…”
He trailed off as an eager young passerby jostled his shoulder, not watching where they were going. Zero half-spun and regained his balance, threw the pedestrian a glare that they didn’t see—and then his face went slack.
Through the growing swarm of people, he caught a glimpse of sandy, disheveled hair. A jaw with a few days’ growth on it. Just a glimpse, nothing more.
Krauss.
Zero shook his head roughly and looked again. He wanted so badly for it to be him, but it could have been his brain playing tricks on him. It had happened before.
But the man was gone just as quickly as he’d appeared.
“You still have that knife?” Zero asked quickly. “Give it here.”
“I do.” Mischa slipped it from her pocket and handed it to him discreetly. “Why?”
He knelt in front of her, looked her in the eye, and spoke urgently. “Listen to me. You stay right here. Do not move from this spot. Not an inch. You call whoever will take it. Todd, Penny, the police, emergency services, whatever you have to do. Put in an anonymous bomb threat to the palace if you have to. Just don’t move. Understand?”
The look in her eye suggested she didn’t, not fully, but she nodded once. “Where will you go?”
“Just to check on something. I’ll be back.”
He couldn’t tell her the truth, or else she would try to follow, and he wouldn’t put her in that kind of harm. They said they would do this together, but Krauss was arguably more dangerous now than he’d been before—and he wasn’t the same Krauss that had killed Maria.
Zero would handle this on his own.
He slipped the knife into his pocket and pushed through the crowd in pursuit of the man he was fairly certain was Stefan Krauss.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Zero shoved his way to the street corner before he could see in any direction over the growing sea of people outside the presidential palace. He scanned quickly left to right, but saw no one that resembled Krauss. His shoulders slumped in disappointment. It was a mirage, nothing more…
Unless it wasn’t.
Maybe he was wrong about all of this. Maybe there was no big plot about to happen here in Cairo. Maybe Bright had nothing at all planned. In his career, Zero had been wrong more often than he’d been right. He’d worked as much off of conjecture and educated guesses as he had actual intel, oftentimes under duress and a ticking clock.
He could have been wrong. But maybe he wasn’t.
Zero checked for oncoming cars before stepping out into the street. He took a deep breath and as loud as he could over the din of the nearby crowd he shouted, “S!”
He looked around quickly, and he shouted again. “S!”
Halfway up the block, a familiar face spun at the sound of what he thought his name was.
Zero spotted him. For a moment, they merely stared. There was no recognition in Krauss’s expression. But there was something else there, and it looked like fear. Fear he had been discovered. In Zero’s own chest, a familiar cold fury returned at the sight of Maria’s murderer, and he was certain it was apparent on his own face.
Then Stefan Krauss turned and sprinted up the block.
Zero took off after him. There was pain in his legs bu
t he ignored it, sidling past people as he ran. “Stop him!” he shouted, pointing. “Stop that man!” But passersby just looked at him like he was crazy.
Up ahead, Krauss skidded to a stop, nearly falling over, and pushed through a shop door. Zero was there three seconds later. He paused at the door, panting, realizing that Krauss could have a gun, could try to get the drop on him.
Zero pulled the Sig Sauer that Alan had given him. He shoved the door open and, just like the subway bathroom in Rome, he shoulder-rolled into the store, coming up on one knee with the gun level.
It was a clothing store, full of colorful Egyptian fabrics and trends. And Krauss was nowhere to be seen.
Zero climbed to his feet as a female clerk emerged from the rear of the shop. He quickly hid the gun behind his back.
“I am sorry, sir,” she told him in Arabic, “but we are closing early. On order of the government.”
He glanced left and right. Krauss was here somewhere. “I followed a man in here,” he said in her native tongue. “He is dangerous. You need to leave.”
She frowned at him. “I saw no one else.”
“He’s here.” Zero took his hand from behind his back. The woman’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the gun. “I will not hurt you, but please leave.”
She didn’t need to be told again. She kept her eyes on the gun as she sidled past him, and then fled onto the street.
He assumed she would go to the police. That was good. He needed only to stall Krauss for a short while.
“Where are you, S?” He stalked forward, keeping the gun level, keeping alert for movement in his periphery. “Krauss. That’s your name, your real name. Stefan Krauss. You’re a killer. A murderer-for-hire. But you knew that already, right?”
He paused, listening. Krauss might have already made a run for it, through a back door, or a window.
No. He was listening. Zero just knew it.
“You can feel it, even if you don’t remember. You said it last time we met. You had a suspicion you weren’t a very good person. And you’re not—”