Code Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel

by Jonathan Maberry

“I will repeat that order, Sergeant. If he does not strike me, or if you believe his strike is either deliberately weak or deliberately misaimed, you are to kneecap the effing cunt. Is that clear?”

  “As glass, Major.” Dietrich raised his Glock and pointed it at McIlveen’s left knee. Dietrich’s hand was as steady as a statue.

  “Ma’am,” protested McIlveen.

  Courtland looked up at him. “Prove to me you’ll follow a woman’s orders. I want you to punch me in the face. I want you to knock my effing teeth out. I want you to break my effing neck, you effing overgrown cock. Do it right now.”

  Bliss’s breath caught in her chest. She grabbed Hu’s hand and squeezed it.

  The big sergeant had no choice, so in the absence of retreat he attacked and swung a punch that was powered by his entire body. All his mass and muscle, all his confusion and anger, all his training and skill. He threw it fast and he threw it well, right at Grace Courtland’s jaw.

  And then he was falling.

  Bliss couldn’t understand what had happened.

  There was a confusion of movement and Major Courtland’s left hand seemed to blur. The meaty after-echo of impact bounced across the floor a split second before the big man dropped heavily to his knees, his hands clamped around his throat, his face turning a dreadful red. Courtland stepped sideways and hit him again, the side of her balled fist crunching into McIlveen’s skull just behind his ear. His eyes rolled up and he flopped face-forward onto the floor and lay as if dead.

  Mr. Church sighed and brushed lint from his sleeve.

  Gus Dietrich holstered his pistol, his eyes roving over the faces of the line of startled men.

  Between them, Major Courtland straightened. She snapped her fingers again and a pair of EMTs came running from behind where Bliss and Hu stood. They crouched over the fallen soldier, who was now making hoarse croaking sounds.

  Courtland walked over to a second man. “What is your name?”

  The man stiffened. “Master Sergeant Mark Allenson, Marine Force Recon.”

  “Do you have any issues about taking orders from a woman,” asked Courtland, “or about obeying those orders without question?”

  “I do not, ma’am.”

  “Hit me.”

  Allenson moved like lightning, hooking a vicious short right into her ribs.

  Courtland blocked it with a chopping downward elbow block. Allenson hissed in pain and stepped back, clutching his hand to his chest.

  The major smiled at him. “Allenson, henceforth you are my second in command. The rest of you, fall out and hit the showers.”

  The men stared at her, their eyes darting from her to Allenson to McIlveen and back again. Then they began moving off, at first with slow and uncertain steps, and then nearly running to the exit that led to the shower rooms. As they passed, Mr. Church quietly said, “Welcome to the DMS, gentlemen.”

  Bliss was riveted, transfixed, her body flushed with an almost erotic electricity. The way those men—those huge, terrifying, powerful men—now stared at Major Courtland was so delicious.

  There was so much power in the room, and so much of it belonged to that woman.

  To a woman.

  Artemisia Bliss studied Courtland and she wished she could stab her hands into the woman’s chest and tear out that powerful heart.

  And eat it.

  Consume it.

  Be it.

  Her entire body trembled.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Starbucks

  140 East Forty-second Street

  New York City

  Sunday, August 31, 7:19 a.m.

  I made two stops on the way to work.

  The first was the Starbucks on East Forty-second, where I double-parked in a tow-away zone. Coffee is more important than parking regulations. Ask any of my fellow caffeine addicts.

  The barista flashed me a big smile as I came in and was already pouring my venti bold by the time I got to the counter. This was the Starbucks I frequented every time I was in New York. I was a confirmed regular, on a first-name basis with the staff and a nodding acquaintance to a bunch of frequent-flyer customers.

  The barista set my cup down.

  “Hey, Emily,” I said as I stepped to the counter, “any chance you could put that in an IV drip?”

  “Sorry, Joe … they still won’t let us go intravenous.”

  “Barbarians.”

  “No argument,” she said. “Is Rudy coming in today?”

  “Heading over to pick him up now.”

  “Does he want … the drink?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  Emily half turned to another barista and rattled off the name of the unholy alchemical abomination Rudy Sanchez insists is the perfect morning cup of wonderful. “Iced half-caf ristretto quad grande two-pump raspberry two percent no whip light ice with caramel drizzle three-and-a-half-pump white mocha.”

  No one with testicles should be allowed to drink that.

  No, check that, it’s not a gender thing. No one with any self-respect should want to drink it.

  “On it,” said Jared, the boy who shared the morning shift with Emily. I could see him square his shoulders like a rat catcher about to leap into a nest of vermin.

  I ordered egg sandwiches for us—not forgetting the fur monster in the car—and a paid with a scan of my smartphone.

  Emily gave me a tentative smile. “How is Rudy? How’s he doing?”

  I knew that her question wasn’t an idle one. Like everyone else who ever met Rudy, Emily was concerned about how his recovery was coming along. People cared about him. He was that kind of guy. I could have an I-beam through my chest and maybe I’d get a nod. Rudy gets a hangnail and everyone wants to mother him.

  To be fair, Rudy was worthy of the concern, and he had been pretty badly mauled when the Warehouse was destroyed last year. He and Church were lifting off from the helipad on the roof when the bombs went off. The blast threw the chopper into the bay. Rudy now wears an eye patch and walks with a limp.

  “He’s auditioning for the role of Captain Jack Sparrow for the Broadway version of Pirates of the Caribbean,” I told her.

  She laughed. It took her a moment, though, because jokes like that can come off as insensitive. God knows I would never be insensitive. Ahem.

  “Tell him I said hi,” said Emily dubiously.

  While I waited in line for Rudy’s drink, I felt my phone vibrate, indicating an incoming text. A grin began creeping onto my face because I knew it had to be from Junie. Rudy is a borderline Luddite who has no idea how to text; Top and Bunny would call; and, let’s face it, Church isn’t the kind to text his BFF about last night’s rerun of How I Met Your Mother. I’d only ever gotten texts from Junie and they tended to be pretty saucy. She loved doing that when she thought I was in some high-level meeting.

  Oh, Junie, you vixen.

  So I wore a wolf’s smile when I unlocked the screen and read the message.

  YOU COULD BE A WINNER!

  OR A LOSER.

  MAYBE BOTH.

  There was no signature and instead of a sender’s name there was only a capital letter A. That’s it.

  I think I said something like “What the fuck?”

  The people around me waiting for drinks shot me looks. One lady in a fussy business suit actually made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head in disapproval.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  I typed “Who is this?” into the reply box and sent it, but I got nothing back. So I forwarded the message to Bug with a request to trace the sender.

  Back in the car I gave Ghost his sandwich, which he took apart and ate in pieces. Bread, cheese, turkey bacon, egg. I’ve never known another dog that eats like that. If he were a kid he’d be one of those who can’t have his peas touching his mashed potatoes.

  The dog will spend an entire evening licking his nuts, but when it comes to breakfast he’s as dainty as a Bryn Mawr socialite.

  Rudy was waiting curbside for me.

  He was we
aring khakis and a Polo shirt, Italian loafers with no socks, a gold watch, and Oakley sunglasses tucked into the vee of his shirt. Circe had begun to dress him like a Ken doll. But it was better than some of the outfits I’ve seen him pick, including his favorite electric-blue bike shorts. He was smiling and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because he saw his best bud slowing to a stop. Maybe the newlyweds had enjoyed a morning wake-up call of the kind that kept putting a smile on my face. Rudy wiped his mouth, and I’ll bet a shiny nickel he was removing a smudge of lipstick.

  Rudy limped around to the passenger door, leaning heavily on a cane with a carved parrot head. It was one I’d given him. I figured anyone with an eye patch needed a parrot. I also bribed Bug to reprogram Rudy’s phone so that the ring tone said, “Arrrrr, Arrrr.” Rudy had so far not managed to remove the pirate sounds.

  I leaned over and opened the door for him. As soon as he was in, he reached back to scratch Ghost on the head, earning a quick lick across his knuckles. Then Rudy fairly lunged for the Starbucks drink as if he were a man dying of thirst and this were the purest water.

  “Not sure how you can tolerate that toxic waste,” I said.

  He took a sip, sighed, and cocked his eye at me. “Not sure why, after all these years, it still bothers you.”

  “Getting kicked in the nuts still bothers me, too.”

  “My masculinity is not endangered by my choice of beverage.”

  “How sure are you about that?” I asked. “It’s not exactly a manly man drink, Rude.”

  “And a big cup of dark coffee is? Have you considered everything implied by your choice, Cowboy?” he asked mildly. His accent is cultured Mexican in a good baritone. Always reminds me of Raul Julia from the old Addams Family movies.

  “There’s nothing implied. I like a big cup of dark, strong coffee.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah—what?”

  “You like a ‘big’—suggestive of size inadequacies; cup of ‘dark’—an unintentional reference to your chronic disconnect from social normalcy, i.e., having a dark side that you are both proud of and fear; ‘strong’—again we see fears of inadequacy and an infantile attempt to demonstrate strength through proxy; ‘coffee’—said defensively as if all other forms of caffeinated drinks are somehow less so, and such a state only reinforces the fact that you want people to believe you’re strong because your coffee is. Really, Joe, it’s textbook, and it paints you as a weak, sad man. I pity you.”

  “I have a gun,” I said, “I could shoot you.”

  “Intense feelings of male inadequacy often manifest as threats or acts of desperate violence.”

  “Ghost,” I ordered, “kill.”

  Ghost looked up from his sandwich and gave me a pitying look.

  I turned back to Rudy. “Yeah, well at least I’m not trying to get in touch with my inner tween girl with that drink.”

  “Perhaps I am,” said Rudy, “but I, at least, will admit it.”

  “Fuck you.’”

  “A cogent argument, very well put.”

  I put the car in gear and we drove off.

  After we’d gone a couple of blocks, I said, “How are you doing, brother?”

  “Good.”

  “The leg?”

  “Meh.”

  “Meh?”

  “I’m aware of when the weather is changing.”

  “Dude,” I said, “after all the stuff I’ve had broken, I can tell when the weather’s changing in the Dakotas.”

  “I defer to the human crash test dummy.” He sipped his glop. “But to answer the question, the leg is about the same. We’re discussing a surgical option, but it’s unlikely to substantially improve things, so I’ll probably opt out.”

  I nodded. “Sucks.”

  “It sucks,” he agreed. “But it is what it is.”

  That was a big part of Rudy’s philosophy. I was still juvenile to believe in the “cowboy up and walk it off” approach to pain and injuries. Rudy was more adult and he was a realist. His leg was never going to be prime again and no amount of personal rah-rah stuff was going to change that. The severity of the nerve damage also meant that he probably wouldn’t drive a car again, not unless he got one that was modified for a left-foot driver. In that and other more fundamental ways, Rudy was permanently marked by the violence of our world.

  In the rearview mirror I caught him checking me out, watching my eyes. Doing the kind of thing that made him a good shrink.

  “How is Junie?”

  “Doing good.”

  “The nausea, the disorientation—?”

  “She’s going through a phase. She says it’ll pass.”

  “What about her latest panels?”

  “We’re waiting for those,” I said.

  Rudy gave me an assessing look. “Many people find waiting for the results of chemotherapy to be emotionally and psychologically corrosive.”

  “Kind of an understatement.”

  “Paranoia and doubt tend to crop up in a number of ways, Joe. Left unaddressed they can lead to bad decisions and poor judgment. They can do damage to each individual involved in the process as well as to the strength of the couple’s relation—”

  “Uh-uh. We’re not having that kind of trouble, man.”

  As I said it I heard the unintentional emphasis I put on that. Rudy caught it at once.

  “Do you need to talk about something else?”

  With any other friend that would be an invitation to unload now, on the drive to work, or maybe later over a beer. But Rudy was more than a shrink, he was the senior medical officer for the DMS and it was his job to offer counseling to the staff. Just as it was his job to evaluate each field agent to determine whether we should go back out or hang up our guns. I have a rather long and complicated history of psychological and emotional trauma. Mentally, I’m paddling a canoe alongside the crazyboat. Rudy helped me find my balance and to use the dark, splintered fragments of my mind. But he kept his eye on me. We both feared the day when my inner demons would slam the door to lock him out, and trap me inside.

  It took some effort to get it out, but I finally nodded and said, “Yeah, we could do an hour.”

  He looked relieved. “I’m free most of this afternoon. Two o’clock?”

  “Two’s fine.”

  “Tell me this much,” he said, “is this a personal matter or is it her?”

  “Her.”

  He nodded. We both knew that we weren’t talking about Junie Flynn. Or Violin. This was about the Asian girl I’d strangled and drowned on a cold night in Baltimore.

  “Two o’clock, then.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  With that settled, there was no need to talk about anything now. Nothing heavy, at least. It was a sunny, beautiful morning in the Apple. My day was likely to be a walk in the park, interviewing and evaluating potential new recruits.

  Nothing stressful.

  Nothing to worry about.

  At two o’clock I’d unlock the Pandora’s Box in my head and let Rudy clean it all out with Clorox.

  Then I’d go home to Junie.

  It was all going to work out, I told myself.

  Everything was going to be fine.

  So why did I suddenly sit upright and stare out the window of my car as two teenagers with hoodies and backpacks slouched by? They were skinny, and one had the skull from the Misfits on the back of his hoodie, and the girl had the A-for-Anarchy symbol stitched in sequins on the front of hers. Both of them had dark sunglasses. He wore Doc Martens and she had a pair of orange Crocs. They each wore iPods and mouthed silent words in time with whatever was blasting in their ears.

  They began to cross just as my light turned green, making me and everyone behind wait. That was clearly intentional, and I began rolling down my window to growl something at them, but Rudy touched my arm.

  “Don’t feed it,” he said mildly.

  “Feed what?”

  “Their desire to provoke you.”

  “If it’s what they want, the
n I’m fine with—”

  “Listen to yourself, Cowboy. They’re a couple of kids who do something like this, dress that way and inconvenience people, for a very specific reason. They are forcing you to notice them and to acknowledge their existence by reacting to them.”

  “They could have done that by handing out flowers instead of blocking traffic.”

  “And maybe they would have felt silly or maybe it didn’t occur to them. This is their way of spray-painting their name on the world.” He shrugged. “Let them have their power. It shouldn’t diminish us, Joe.”

  The kids passed, and the girl turned and smiled at me. It was a strength smile, almost a knowing smile.

  My cell rang and I took the call. Bug.

  “Hey, Joe,” he said, “I had Nikki do a traceback on that text you got.”

  “And—”

  “According to your phone provider’s records, no such text was ever sent.”

  “Umm … how’s that work?”

  “Don’t know. Glitch in the system?”

  “If I were a normal guy working a normal job I’d buy that. Keep checking.”

  “Will do.”

  As I hung up, Rudy asked, “Problem?”

  “Not sure,” I said. Then laughed. “Nah. It’s nothing.”

  Interlude Five

  Beranger Sporting Equipment

  Outskirts of Cheyenne, Wyoming

  Five Years Ago

  “Is it safe?”

  It wasn’t the first time Artemisia Bliss asked that question, but it was the first time someone took the time to answer.

  “It is now,” said the big man with the gun. Major Samson Riggs was tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome in a weathered Matthew McConaughey way. Older than her by almost two decades, but square-jawed, blue-eyed, and built like a fitness trainer. He offered her a hand that was tanned but crisscrossed with scars.

  Riggs offered his hand to help her out of the armored SUV.

  The air was filled with smoke and the rhythmic thump of helicopter blades. Various tactical vehicles sat at crooked angles in front of a four-story brick warehouse. A sign outside said that this place manufactured tennis rackets. It did not. Some of the things it did manufacture lay sprawled and broken in the tall grass. On paper their designation was rather bland, even by military standards. Enhanced drones. In reality they were terrifying.