Decoy Zero

by Jack Mars

  Zero dared to peer around the crates. The pursuing Somalis were scattered in the thin white fog of smoke, most on the concrete, a few attempting to stagger to their feet but falling onto hands and knees. The form of Hannibal was unmistakable among them, lying flat on his back and unmoving. Zero wondered—and even hoped, at least a little—that the flash-bang had landed right at the smuggler’s feet.

  “Let’s go!” He and Alan tore off toward the large blue drum. But as they did, the high-pitched whine of a motor alerted them to a new pending threat as a narrow skiff roared toward the dock. The boat barely slowed as it pitched sideways, coming parallel to the dock so that the small crew, who had undoubtedly seen the flash-bang go off, leaped onto the concrete.

  Alan wasted no time. He grabbed his pack in both hands by the shoulder straps and swung it upward, connecting right beneath the chin of the fastest pirate and sending the man off his feet, smacking into the dock with a force that sent all air from his lungs. As another pirate drew in, Reidigger feinted with the bag and threw a solid jab across the man’s jaw.

  With Alan indisposed, Zero got low into a tackling stance and put a shoulder into the drum. It didn’t budge; it was definitely full of something, hopefully combustible, but at fifty-five gallons it weighed in at somewhere around four hundred and fifty pounds.

  “Any time now!” Alan bellowed as he grappled with a Somali wielding a chipped machete. Some of the lot they’d disabled with the flash-bang were getting back to their feet, staggering but coming around. They had seconds.

  Zero put both hands on the rusty lip of the barrel and pushed with all his might. His boots gripped the concrete, giving him traction as he gritted his teeth and leaned in with all his weight. The bottom edge of the drum slowly lifted, the contents inside tipping away from him, helping his efforts. With one final grunt, he pushed the barrel over onto its side. The rusting lid bounced away and the acrid scent of diesel fuel filled his nostrils as a wide pool spread rapidly over the dock.

  Behind him, Reidigger caught the pirate’s wrists as he chopped downward with the machete, twisting the blade out of the man’s grip and eliciting a sharp scream of pain as bones snapped. He shoved the pirate away and dug into a pocket.

  “Zero! Here!”

  An object sailed in an arc toward him and he caught it deftly.

  But when he looked down at it, he had no idea what he was looking at.

  The object was palm-sized, rectangular, made of shining metal. But it had no buttons, no levers, no pins or triggers to pull. He was fairly certain he’d seen one before, but could not for the life of him determine what exactly it was or what he was supposed to do with it.

  Oh no. The realization hit him worse than the pounding blast of a flash-bang. His memory was failing him. He’d forgotten whatever this thing was.

  “Zero!” Alan was beside him then, Glock 19 in his hand. He dropped to one knee and emptied his entire magazine, fifteen rounds, in the general direction of oncoming Somalis that Zero had barely registered in his confusion. “Give it!”

  Alan yanked the device back from him and flicked it open. The top half of it was on a hinge, Zero noted, cleverly hiding wheel and a fuse. Alan flicked the wheel, and a small flame leapt up; it was a wick, not a fuse.

  A lighter, Zero suddenly recalled dully. The device was a Zippo lighter.

  Alan flicked it, sending the Zippo and its flame tumbling toward the spilled fuel as he grabbed Zero by the scruff of the jacket and pulled him away. The heat was instant and intense as the fuel caught fire, spreading as quickly as the liquid itself had, flames dancing outward in every direction at once as they put as much distance as they could between them and the blazing fuel.

  And then the wooden crates caught.

  Zero had erroneously believed that the Somalis tackled Hannibal for firing at their would-be ransoms. But as the crates exploded, sending an enormous fireball skyward, and the shockwave of the blast sent Zero off his feet and down hard on the concrete, he realized that it wasn’t about them. It was about the explosives inside the crates.

  Zero gasped for air as he got to his knees, and then ducked again instinctively as another explosion blossomed behind him—a boat, the motor of which had caught and blew—and then a third, smaller blast from the skiff behind it.

  Greasy black smoke poured into the air from several sources as cargo caught fire and burned. Zero was only vaguely aware of the shouting voices, no longer sounding angry and pursuing but desperate and entreating as Somalis rushed to try to extinguish the flames burning their boats and collected bounties.

  “Come on,” Alan grunted suddenly, grabbing Zero by the elbow and hefting him to his feet. Together they stayed low, dashing from cover to cover, using the smoke and littered dock as cover to reach the chain-link fence line. “You hurt?”

  Zero didn’t feel hurt, but adrenaline was still surging through him in the wake of the fireball. But his forehead felt wet; he touched it with two fingers that came back stained with blood. It was a superficial cut, no pain but bleeding copiously. “I’m fine. You?”

  “Not hurt,” Alan replied as he fished his Glock out of the bag. “But curious.” He gave Zero a stern look that suggested they’d be talking about the Zippo incident once they didn’t have more pressing matters at hand.

  Together they stole along the fence, pistols out and ready, but unnecessary it seemed. The Somalis were busy trying to salvage what they could from the fire and explosions. Zero marveled at just how much damage it had done; it seemed like nearly half of this port had been destroyed, the fire still spreading, and he doubted that if there were any emergency services even available nearby that they’d be rushing to help the pirates.

  After about two tense minutes that felt much longer, they reached the orange Jeep that had brought them to the port—as well as the man who had driven it. Hannibal’s face was streaked with soot and he bled from both ears, as well as a cut over one eye as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  He didn’t even hear them coming.

  “Out,” Alan grunted as he pressed the barrel of the Glock to the smuggler’s temple.

  “Now hang on…” Hannibal started, before Alan grabbed him by the arm and yanked him from the door-less Jeep. The smuggler sprawled to the ground hard, his left hand immediately reaching for the empty holster at his hip before he seemed to remember that he’d lost his Desert Eagle. He grinned sheepishly and held his hands palm out. “You wouldn’t kill an old friend, now would you?”

  Reidigger clenched his jaw as he glanced up at Zero, indicating the choice. The smuggler deserved it for what he tried to do to them—but Zero wasn’t about to execute an unarmed man. He shook his head no.

  So instead, Alan shot Hannibal once through the calf.

  The smuggler yelped, both hands flying to the wound as blood ran between his fingers. “Son of a bitch!” he cried. “Oh, I think that hit bone.”

  Alan climbed into the driver’s seat as Zero rounded to the other side. “Wait, what about Maria?”

  “You really think she stuck around here?”

  “I don’t know, but we can’t just leave her—”

  “Look,” Reidigger said harshly. “If we stick around here they’re either going to come looking for us or others are going to show up. I doubt a place like this has any shortage of opportunists who would take advantage of the fire. In a situation like this, what would Maria do? What would you have done if you were her?”

  “I would…” Zero sighed. “I would get clear. Shake anyone following. Find a safe place to lay low, and then make contact.”

  “Exactly. So that’s what we’re going to do right now.” The Jeep’s keys were already in the ignition. Alan gave them a twist and the engine rumbled to life. Behind the noise, Zero heard the shouts of Somalis; a quick glance down the dock showed that the fire was petering out somewhat, and the pirates had noticed their hostages’ absence.

  “You’re not really going to just leave me here, are you?” Hannibal moaned, holding his sh
ot leg. “They’ll kill me!”

  “Maybe not,” Zero told him. “You know anyone that would pay your ransom?”

  Alan slammed the gas and the Jeep lurched through the fence, away from the port and out into Mogadishu, to find some place to lie low until they could find out what had happened to Maria.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Graphene?” Zero hissed quietly to them as the Somalis attempted to corner the three of them into an empty cargo container.

  Maria realized what he was asking; if the black backpacks that Penny had supplied them might be able to withstand a bullet if the shooting started. “Not sure,” she replied. “Worth a try…” She let the strap of it fall slack off her shoulder as if she was going to relinquish it to the approaching pirate.

  “Alan, with me. Split off,” Zero whispered.

  Maria did not like the idea of splitting up, especially not in a foreign city that none of them knew how to navigate, but she knew what he was trying to do—or at least she thought she did. He and Alan would make a break toward the water and in Agent Zero fashion, cause some sort of massive distraction while she slipped away to find somewhere safe for them to reconvene.

  “When?”

  “Now!” Zero and Alan split to the right, as she’d assumed they would. Maria darted the other way, slinging the backpack up in front of her face and bracing for a hail of bullets.

  But none came. Instead she heard the furious shouts of pursuing pirates as she ducked around the side of the boxcar-sized container and sprinted its length. They were chasing, not shooting—and she supposed that if she’d had a moment to think about it, it made sense. No one paid ransom on a corpse.

  No one pays ransom on disavowed CIA agents either, she mused as she ducked around the rear corner of the container and skidded to a stop. She slung the backpack over her shoulder and held her breath until the barrel of an AK-47 came into view. No one had taught pirates to clear corners; Maria ducked low, beneath the barrel, as she stepped out from behind her cover and sprang up again, right in the pirate’s face. As she did she wrenched the rifle from his hands, inadvertently smacking the man under the chin with it as she did.

  Holding the dazed pirate up in front of her like a shield, she propped the AK on his shoulder and aimed at his two compatriots who followed. They both froze in their tracks; they wouldn’t shoot their own in the back any sooner than they would risk hitting her, their bounty.

  Maria shoved her pirate captive backward and he fell limply into the other two in a tangle of limbs. She sprinted off again, still clutching the AK, and dove behind the relative safety of a pallet stacked higher than she was tall with what looked like aluminum ammo boxes. In any other situation, the irony of hiding from gunfire behind a supply of unspent bullets might have been laughable, but here it only served as a reminder. She popped the magazine from the AK—and then she laughed, though it was bitterly.

  The rifle wasn’t even loaded.

  Suddenly a single booming shot rang out from elsewhere on the dock. Not an automatic weapon; if she had to guess, it was Hannibal’s Desert Eagle.

  Be careful, guys.

  There were voices then, shouting to each other in a language she didn’t understand as she unzipped her bag and withdrew her Glock 19. Having seen the empty AK-47, she really didn’t want to have to resort to it, but as the voices drew closer, clearly formulating a plan that involved surrounding her, she had to remind herself that these men would attempt to hold her ransom to a government that would do little to nothing to get her back.

  As she tried to determine which side would be best to cover, a sudden, sharp blast rang out like a single peal of thunder inside her own head, so startlingly loud that her heart skipped a beat.

  A stun grenade, she realized. She couldn’t help but wonder how desperate Zero and Reidigger’s situation was but hoped it was now improving. She had yet to improve her own, but maybe this was the chance. If the blast distracted the pirates half as much as it did her, she had a few seconds to spare.

  Maria pushed off from the pallet of ammo boxes and broke into a flat-out sprint toward the fence.

  They’re not going to shoot me, she said in her head as she pumped her legs over the concrete as fast as they would go. She hurtled the remains of a collapsed wire crate and spotted a jagged hole in the chain-link fence ahead. Behind her the voices were angry but distant. As she ducked to scoot through the gap in the fence she dared to glance back and saw three of them, all armed, chasing her at a rapid clip.

  The leg of her jeans snagged on a sharp spoke of wire in the fence’s hole. She pulled it hard to free herself, tearing not only denim but skin as a sharp pain seared in her shin. But she’d had much worse and still might before the day was over. Once through, she broke into a sprint again, heading straight across open ground toward a residential area about a hundred fifty yards away.

  To call it a “residential area” was being polite. She entered a veritable shantytown, comprised of a handful of concrete, flat-topped buildings that were either crumbling or had been bombed out, most of them missing entire walls and roofs, some of those patched with corrugated sheet metal or even just fabric and others simply open to the elements. In between and around the buildings were makeshift tents, not unlike Hannibal’s parachute tent in the Addis Merkato, and an occasional stack of the boxcar-like containers that she and her teammates had nearly been forced into, here piled two or even three high haphazardly.

  Maria holstered her Glock. There weren’t many people around, at least not outside, but those who were eyed her suspiciously. She couldn’t have been more of an outsider if she’d had green hair and glowed in the dark. She didn’t speak the language and doubted many of these native residents spoke much, if any, English. There was no pleading with anyone for shelter or warning them to remain indoors in case shooting started.

  This is their life, she realized horridly. Extreme poverty and a stone’s throw from a pirate port. Even as she thought it she spotted a young girl, wearing an oversized T-shirt cinched at the waist like a makeshift dress and playing with a rag doll. For some reason, despite lacking any similarities at all, the girl reminded her of Mischa, still held in a cell on a sublevel of Langley.

  But her thoughts were interrupted by an explosion, even louder and more pronounced than the flash-bang had been. She spun, wide-eyed, to see a fireball topped with black smoke roll up into the sky barely more than a couple of football fields’ distance from her position, but there was too much in the way for her to see the source.

  Not that she needed to. Obviously the boys had blown something up. She could only hope it wasn’t themselves.

  The citizens of the shantytown screamed, shouted, and scurried off the narrow intersecting streets at the deep tremble of the explosion, which a moment later was followed by a second, and then a third smaller blast. A chain reaction on the port. She paused then, in a narrow alley of the shantytown, torn between running for cover and returning to the bombed port to find Zero and Alan.

  Stick to protocol, she told herself. Get safe, and then make contact.

  But the sudden evacuation of bodies on the streets made Maria an even more visible target than she already was, which was evidenced by a short gout of automatic gunfire and a stone façade exploding a few feet from her head.

  Two Somalis stood down the narrow alley from her, no more than twenty yards—an easy shot. They hadn’t been trying to kill her, just scare her. But they could have hit someone else; in fact, Maria quickly glanced behind her where she had seen the young girl playing with the dingy doll. Thankfully she was gone, probably having scurried inside when the explosion occurred.

  The pirates barked angrily at her, now and then tossing out a command in English: “Stop!” “Stay!”

  Like hell.

  They had the drop on her, guns aimed if they felt like filling the alley with bullets, so she didn’t even try to raise the Glock. Instead she took three big, quick steps backward, as not to give the impression that she was fleein
g, and then sidestepped around a corner.

  The Somalis shouted again as they rushed forward.

  A car with broken windows sat on its rims beneath the second-story window of the closest concrete building—not a window, per se, but rather a square opening cut into the side of the building and loosely covered with a sheet for a curtain. Maria bounded onto the car’s hood, and then its roof, which was so badly rusted she feared for a moment that it would give way beneath her weight, but it held enough for her to leap upward and grab the sill of the opening with both hands.

  With a tremendous grunt she hefted herself up and tumbled into the window headfirst, rolling on a shoulder and coming up on one knee with her Glock snapped up in both fists. Then she immediately lowered it.

  The two small children in the room stared back at her in terror.

  Outside the window, the pirates who had pursued her were shouting to each other, no doubt wondering where she could have gone. She put a finger to her lips to indicate silence from the children, two boys, no older than eight or nine. Then she smiled, hoping to come off as non-threatening.

  The younger of the two took a deep breath, and shrieked at the top of his lungs.

  Dammit! Maria was on her feet in a heartbeat, shoving through a thin door into another room of whatever sort of living space this was, bursting out into a corridor, feet pounding against loose floorboards that squealed beneath her in protest, as if they too were calling out to the pirates. The corridor ended in stairs leading downward, and daylight through a doorway. But as soon as her foot touched the top stair, a shadow fell into the doorway and a Somali holding a machine pistol glared up at her.

  “You!” he bellowed. “You stop!” He pointed the gun at her.

  Pop-pop!

  It took two seconds, if even that. The instant she saw the barrel tracking upward toward her, she raised her pistol and squeezed off two shots in quick succession. The first hit center mass, just below the heart. The second, just under the left eye, piercing the zygomatic bone.