Target Zero

by Jack Mars

  He knew from snippets of conversation that there would be three night nurses on the med-surg unit tonight, Elena included, with another two on-call if need be. They, plus his guards, meant at least five people he would have to deal with, and a maximum of seven.

  No one among the medical staff liked to attend to him much, knowing what he was, so they checked in fairly infrequently. Now that Elena had come and gone, Rais knew he had somewhere between sixty and ninety minutes before she might return.

  His left arm was held with a standard hospital restraint, what professionals sometimes refer to as “four-pointers.” It was a soft blue cuff around his wrist with a tight, white, buckled nylon strap around that, the other end firmly attached to the steel railing of his bed. Because of the severity of his crimes, his right wrist was handcuffed.

  The pair of guards outside were conversing in German. Rais listened carefully; the one on the left, Luca, seemed to be complaining that his wife was getting fat. Rais almost scoffed; Luca was far from fit himself. The other, a man named Elias, was younger and athletic, but drank coffee in doses that should have been lethal to most humans. Every night, between ninety minutes and two hours into their shift, Elias would call the night guard up so that he could relieve himself. While away, Elias would step outside for a cigarette, so that with the bathroom break meant he was usually gone between eight and eleven minutes. Rais had spent the last several nights silently counting the seconds of Elias’s absences.

  It was a very narrow window of opportunity, but one for which he was prepared.

  He reached beneath his sheets for the sharpened clip and held it in the fingertips of his left hand. Then, carefully, he tossed it in an arc over his body. It landed deftly in the palm of his right hand.

  Next would come the hardest part of his plan. He pulled his wrist so that the handcuff chain was taut, and while holding it that way he twisted his hand and worked the sharpened tip of the clip into the keyhole of the cuff around the steel railing. It was difficult and awkward, but he had escaped handcuffs before; he knew the catch mechanism inside was designed so that a universal key could open nearly any pair, and knowing the inner workings of a lock meant simply making the right adjustments to trigger the pins inside. He had to keep the chain taut, though, to keep the cuff from clanking against the railing and alerting his guards.

  It took him nearly twenty minutes of twisting, turning, taking short breaks to alleviate his aching fingers and trying anew, but finally the lock clicked and the cuff slid open. Rais carefully unhooked it from the railing.

  One hand was free.

  He reached over and hastily unbuckled the restraint on his left.

  Both hands were free.

  He stowed the clip under the sheets and removed the top half of the pen, gripping it in his palm so that only the sharp nib was exposed.

  Outside his door, the younger officer stood suddenly. Rais held his breath and pretended to be asleep as Elias peered in on him.

  “Call Francis, would you?” Elias said in German. “I’ve got to piss.”

  “Sure,” Luca said with a yawn. He radioed down to the hospital’s night guard, who was ordinarily stationed behind the front desk on the first floor. Rais had seen Francis plenty of times; he was an older man, late fifties, early sixties perhaps, with a thin frame. He carried a gun but his movements were slow.

  It was exactly what Rais had been hoping for. He didn’t want to have to fight the younger police officer in his still-recovering state.

  Three minutes later Francis appeared, in his white uniform and black tie, and Elias hurried off to the bathroom. The two men outside the door exchanged pleasantries as Francis took Elias’s plastic seat with a heavy sigh.

  It was time to act.

  Rais carefully slid to the end of the bed and put his bare feet to the cold tile. It had been some time since he had used his legs, but he was confident that his muscles had not atrophied to a state beyond what he needed them for.

  He stood carefully, quietly—and then his knees buckled. He gripped the edge of the bed for support and shot a glance toward the door. No one came; the voices continued. The two men hadn’t heard anything.

  Rais stood shakily, panting, and took a few silent steps. His legs were weak, to be sure, but he had always been strong when needed, and he needed to be strong now. His hospital gown flowed around him, open at the back. The immodest garment would only impede him, so he tugged it off, standing unabashedly naked in the hospital room.

  The nib cap in his fist, he took a position just behind the open door, and he let out a low whistle.

  Both men heard it, apparent by the sudden scraping of chair legs as they rose from their seats. Luca’s frame filled the doorway as he peered into the dark room.

  “Mein Gott! ” he murmured as he hastily entered, noticing the empty bed.

  Francis followed, his hand on the holster of his gun.

  As soon as the older guard was past the threshold, Rais leapt forward. He jammed the nib cap into Luca’s throat and twisted, tearing a berth in his carotid. Blood sprayed liberally from the open wound, some of it splashing the opposite wall.

  He let go of the nib and rushed Francis, who was struggling to free his gun. Unclip, unholster, safety off, aim —the older guard’s reaction was slow, costing him several precious seconds that he simply did not have.

  Rais struck two blows, the first one upward just below the belly button, immediately followed by a downward blow to the solar plexus. One forced air into the lungs, while the other forced air out, and the sudden, jarring effect it had on a confused body was generally blurred vision and sometimes loss of consciousness.

  Francis staggered, unable to breathe, and sank to his knees. Rais spun behind him, and with one clean motion he broke the guard’s neck.

  Luca gripped his throat with both hands as he bled out, gurgles and slight gasps rising in his throat. Rais watched and counted the eleven seconds until the man lost consciousness. Without stopping the blood flow he would be dead in under a minute.

  He quickly relieved both guards of their guns and put them on the bed. The next phase of his plan would not be easy; he had to sneak down the hall, unseen, to the supply closet where there would be spare scrubs. He couldn’t very well leave the hospital in Francis’s recognizable uniform, or Luca’s now-blood-soaked one.

  He heard a male voice from down the hall and froze.

  It was the other officer, Elias. So soon? Anxiety rose in Rais’s chest. Then he heard a second voice—the night nurse, Elena. Apparently Elias had skipped his cigarette break to chat with the pretty young nurse, and now they were both heading down the hall toward his room. They would pass by it in mere moments.

  He would prefer not to have to kill Elena. But if it was a choice between him and her, she would have die.

  Rais grabbed one of the guns from the bed. It was a Sig P220, all black, .45 caliber. He took it in his left hand. The weight of it felt welcome and familiar, like an old flame. With his right he gripped the open half of the handcuffs. And then he waited.

  The voices in the hall fell silent.

  “Luca?” Elias called out. “Francis?” The young officer unclipped the strap of his holster and had a hand on his pistol as he entered the darkened room. Elena crept in behind him.

  Elias’s eyes went wide with horror at the sight of the two dead men.

  Rais slammed the hook of the open handcuff into the side of the young man’s neck, and then yanked his arm backward. The metal bit into his wrist, and the wounds in his back burned, but he ignored the pain as he tore the young man’s throat from his neck. A substantial amount of blood spattered and ran down the assassin’s arm.

  With his left hand he pressed the Sig against Elena’s forehead.

  “Do not scream,” he said quickly and quietly. “Do not cry out. Stay silent and live. Make a sound and die. Do you understand?”

  A small squeak erupted from Elena’s lips as she stifled the sob rising from it. She nodded, even as tears well
ed in her eyes. Even as Elias fell forward, flat on his face on the tiled floor.

  He looked her up and down. She was petite, but her scrubs were somewhat baggy and the waistband elastic. “Take off your clothes,” he told her.

  Elena’s mouth fell open in horror.

  Rais scoffed. He could understand the confusion, though; he was, after all, still nude. “I am not that type of monster,” he assured her. “I need clothes. I won’t ask again.”

  Trembling, the young woman tugged off the scrub top and slid out of her pants, removing them over her white sneakers, as she was standing in the pool of Elias’s blood.

  Rais took them and put them on, a bit awkwardly with one hand while he kept the Sig trained on the girl. The scrubs were snug, and the pants a bit short, but they would suffice. He tucked the pistol in the back of his pants, and retrieved the other from the bed.

  Elena stood in her underwear, hugging her arms over her midsection. Rais noticed; he plucked up his hospital gown and held it out to her. “Cover yourself. Then get on the bed.” As she did what he asked, he found a ring of keys on Luca’s belt and unlocked his other cuff. Then he looped the chain around one of the steel railings and cuffed Elena’s hands.

  He set the keys on the farthest edge of the bedside table, beyond her grasp. “Someone will come and free you after I’ve gone,” he told her. “But first I have questions. I need you to be honest, because if you’re not, I will come back and kill you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded frantically, tears rolling over her cheeks.

  “How many other nurses are on this unit tonight?”

  “P-please don’t hurt them,” she stammered.

  “Elena. How many other nurses are on this unit tonight?” he repeated.

  “T-two…” She sniffled. “Thomas and Mia. But Tom is at break. He would be downstairs.”

  “Okay.” The name tag clipped to his chest was about the size of a credit card. It had a small photo of Elena, and on the reverse, a black stripe running its length. “Is this a locked unit at night? And your badge, it is the key?”

  She nodded and sniffled again.

  “Good.” He tucked the second gun into the waistband of the scrub pants and knelt by Elias’s body. Then he tugged off both shoes and wiggled his feet into them. They were somewhat tight, but close enough to make an escape. “One last question. Do you know what Francis drives? The night guard?” He gestured to the dead man in the white uniform.

  “I-I’m not sure. A… a truck, I think.”

  Rais dug into Francis’s pockets and came out with a set of keys. There was an electronic fob; that would help locate the vehicle. “Thank you for your honesty,” he told her. Then he tore a strip from the edge of the bed sheet and stuffed it in her mouth.

  The corridor was empty and brightly lit. Rais held the Sig in his grip but kept it obscured behind his back as he crept down the hall. It opened onto a wider floor with a U-shaped nurses’ station and, beyond that, the exit to the unit. A woman in round spectacles with a brunette bob typed away on a computer, her back to him.

  “Turn around, please,” he told her.

  The startled woman spun to find their patient/prisoner in scrubs, one arm bloodied, pointing a gun at her. She lost her breath and her eyes bulged.

  “You must be Mia,” Rais said. The woman was likely around forty, matronly, with dark circles under her wide eyes. “Hands up.”

  She did so.

  “What happened to Francis?” she asked quietly.

  “Francis is dead,” Rais told her dispassionately. “If you wish to join him, do something brash. If you want to live, listen carefully. I am going to leave through that door. Once it closes behind me, you are going to slowly count to thirty. Then you are going to go to my room. Elena is alive but she needs your assistance. After that, you may do whatever it is you’re trained to do in a situation like this. Do you understand?”

  The nurse nodded once tightly.

  “Do I have your word you will follow those instructions? I prefer not to kill women when I can avoid it.”

  She nodded again, slower.

  “Good.” He circled around the station, tugging the badge from the scrub top as he did, and swiped it through the card slot to the right of the door. A small light turned from red to green and the lock clicked. Rais pushed the door open, shot one more look at Mia, who had not moved, and then watched the door close behind him.

  And then he ran.

  He hurried down the hall, tucking the Sig into his pants as he did. He took the stairs down to the first floor two at a time, and burst out a side door and into the Swiss night. Cool air washed over him like a cleansing shower, and he took a moment to breathe freely.

  His legs wavered and threatened to give out again. The adrenaline of his escape was wearing off rapidly, and his muscles were still quite weak. He tugged Francis’s key fob from the scrub pocket and pressed the red panic button. The alarm on an SUV screeched, the headlights flashing. He quickly turned it off and hurried over to it.

  They would be looking for this car, he knew, but he wouldn’t be in it for long. He would soon have to ditch it, find new clothes, and come morning he would head toward the Hauptpost, where he had everything he would need to escape Switzerland under a fake identity.

  And as soon as he was able, he would find and kill Kent Steele.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Reid was barely out of the driveway on his way to meet with Maria before he called Thompson to ask him to keep watch on the Lawson home. “I decided to give the girls a little independence tonight,” he explained. “I won’t be gone too long. But even so, keep an eye out and an ear to the ground?”

  “Sure thing,” the old man agreed.

  “And, uh, if there’s any cause for alarm, of course, head right over.”

  “I will, Reid.”

  “You know, if you can’t see them or something, you can knock on the door, or call the house phone…”

  Thompson chuckled. “Don’t worry, I got it. And so do they. They’re teenagers. They need some space now and then. Enjoy your date.”

  With Thompson’s watchful eye and Maya’s determination to prove herself responsible, Reid thought he could rest easy knowing the girls would be safe. Of course, part of him knew that was just another example of his mental gymnastics. He’d be thinking about it the whole night.

  He had to bring the GPS map up on his phone to find the place. He wasn’t yet familiar with Alexandria or the area, though Maria was, thanks to its proximity to Langley and CIA headquarters. Even so, she had chosen a place that she had never been to before either, likely as a way to level the playing field, so to speak.

  On the drive over, he missed two turns despite the GPS voice telling him which way to go and when. He was thinking of the strange flashback he’d now had twice—first when Maya asked if Kate knew about him, and again when he smelled the cologne that his late wife had loved. It was gnawing at the back of his mind, so much so that even when he tried to pay attention to the directions he quickly grew distracted again.

  The reason it was so bizarre was that every other memory of Kate was so vivid in his mind. Unlike Kent Steele, she had never left him; he remembered meeting her. He remembered dating. He remembered vacations and buying their first home. He remembered their wedding and the births of their children. He even remembered their arguments—at least he thought he did.

  The very notion of losing any part of Kate shook him. The memory suppressor had already proved to have some side effects, like the occasional headache spurned by a stubborn memory—it was an experimental procedure, and the method of removal was far from surgical.

  What if more than just my past as Agent Zero had been taken from me?

  He didn’t like the thought at all. It was a slippery slope; before long he was considering the possibility that he might have lost memories of times with his girls as well. And even worse was that there was no way for him to know the answer to that without restoring his full memory.


  It was all too much, and he felt a fresh headache coming on. He switched on the radio and turned it up in an attempt to distract himself.

  The sun was setting by the time he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, a gastropub called The Cellar Door. He was a few minutes late. He quickly got out of the car and trotted around to the front of the building.

  Then he stopped in his tracks.

  Maria Johansson was third-generation Swedish-American, and her CIA cover was that of a certified public accountant from Baltimore—though Reid thought it should have been as a cover model, or maybe a centerfold. She was an inch or two shy of his five-eleven height, with long, straight blonde hair that cascaded around her shoulders effortlessly. Her eyes were slate-gray, yet somehow intense. She stood outside in the fifty-five-degree weather in a simple navy-blue dress with a plunging V neck and a white shawl over her shoulders.

  She spotted him as he approached and a smile grew on her lips. “Hey. Long time no see.”

  “I… wow,” he blurted. “I mean, uh… you look great.” It occurred to him that he had never seen Maria in makeup before. The blue eye shadow matched her dress and made her eyes seem nearly luminescent.

  “Not so bad yourself.” She nodded approvingly at his choice of apparel. “Should we go in?”

  Thanks, Maya, he thought. “Yeah. Of course.” He grabbed the door for her and pulled it open. “But before we do, I have a question. What the hell is a ‘gastropub’?”

  Maria laughed. “I think it’s what we used to call a dive bar, but with fancier food.”

  “Got it.”

  Inside was cozy, if not a bit small, with brick interior walls and exposed wood beams in the ceiling. The lighting was hanging Edison bulbs, which provided a warm, dim ambience.

  Why am I nervous? he thought as they were seated. He knew this woman. Together they had stopped an international terrorist organization from murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of people. But this was different; it wasn’t an op or a mission. This was pleasure, and somehow that made all the difference.