Target Zero

by Jack Mars

  He had been allowed on the top deck of the Jade Star , wearing the decontamination suit, and had watched with his teammates as a tugboat pulled the cruise ship toward Valencia. They anchored about a mile off the southern coast of Spain so that the World Health Organization could facilitate transport of the equipment necessary to scrub the ship clean of the virus.

  Reid, Baraf, Maria, Barnard, and Watson had been taken by helicopter, under the cover of night, to a WHO facility in northern Spain. They were taken to separate clean rooms, where they stripped out of the yellow hazmat suits and scrubbed thoroughly with near-scalding water, emulsifiers, and decontaminants. Their graphene-reinforced clothing had been left behind on the ship, along with their shoes, guns, and phones. Reid was issued the white scrubs, and then blood and saliva samples were taken. Finally he was led to an all-white room with three walls made of glass. Despite its bright and clean appearance, it felt like a cage.

  But the cot was comfortable enough, so he caught a few hours of much-needed and well-deserved sleep. When he awoke it was to the sound of his door sliding aside as a young technician told him, “Congratulations, Agent. You’ve been cleared.” As the tech turned away he added, “Though you are a bit hypoglycemic. You should probably eat something.”

  It was good advice; Reid was starving. But the first thing he did was find the nearest exit, gulp some fresh air, and enjoy the Spanish sunrise. It was not a warm morning, but the chill in the air was welcome after the last fifteen hours. He stretched as he wandered around the grounds. Along the side of the building he found a few stone benches, and as he headed toward them he was quite surprised to see that the only person seated there was a very familiar—and very welcome—face.

  Maria was dressed in plainclothes, not the white scrubs that he had been issued, and sat on the bench poking randomly at a phone as he approached. There was a black duffel bag under the bench, behind her feet. It looked like she was leaving.

  “Hey.”

  She looked up and smiled wide. “Hey yourself.”

  “They let you out before me?”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t the one caught in the pantry with a virus-wielding terrorist.”

  He chuckled. “Did you get an update? On what’s happening out there?”

  “I talked to Cartwright.” She sighed. “Where do I begin?”

  “The virus…?”

  “Sealed and safely remitted to WHO headquarters in Geneva,” she told him. “By now it’s probably locked away in an underground vault, I bet. They’ll work on a vaccine, in case there’s more of it out there.”

  “Good.” Reid took a seat beside her. “What about the outbreak?”

  “Mostly contained. There are still a few reported cases as recently as a couple hours ago, but the WHO is on it. Since we’ve found the virus, several countries in Eastern Europe have lifted their travel bans, with increased security at ports of entry. The US hasn’t yet reopened, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “And Khalil?” Reid asked. He wanted to know if the Imam had survived the gunshot to the stomach. “Is he…?”

  “In custody. They have him in Morocco, giving us everything.”

  Morocco. The CIA black site, Hell-Six. Reid knew the sort of interrogation tactics that went on there, had even been a part of them, and despite how horrific they could be he had no remorse for Khalil. Not after what he had done, what he had tried to do.

  “Based on his info,” Maria continued, “Interpol raided a Lebanese facility about, oh, three hours ago and detained nine more of the Imam’s followers. And soon we should have the locations of any associated terrorists in the States.”

  “Huh.” It seemed that while Reid was in quarantine, the agencies around the globe were quite busy. “So, what… all’s well that ends well, then?”

  “You don’t sound so pleased for someone who gets to go home,” she noted.

  Home. He wanted desperately to get back, couldn’t wait to see his girls again. “But that’s not where you’re going,” he said, gesturing toward the bag beneath them.

  “I was going to tell you,” Maria said softly. “Rais is still out there. Russia didn’t close their land borders.”

  Reid scoffed. “I can’t believe they would send you right back out after everything we’ve been through…”

  “I volunteered,” she told him. “It’s important. To you, and to me too. As long as he’s out there, no matter where he is, he’s still a threat.”

  “Let me come with you.” He said it quickly, almost reflexively.

  “No.” She smiled. “You need to go home to your girls. I can see it in your eyes.”

  He nodded, not saying anything. She was right. He wasn’t ready to jump into another op.

  “Are you going to call them?” she asked.

  “I can’t. A building fell on my phone.”

  She smirked and held out hers. “Go ahead. You know you want to hear their voices.”

  “Thanks.” Reid took the phone and dialed Maya’s number. The line rang once, twice, three times, and then went to voicemail. He frowned—but then reminded himself that he had promised not to be so overbearing. There were a thousand reasons she wouldn’t be right near her phone at that moment. He resisted the urge to call again and instead he typed out a text.

  It’s Dad. I’m okay. Coming home soon. Love you both.

  As he handed the phone back to Maria, it chimed with a new text. She read it to him. “Glad to hear it. We’re fine here. Hope everything is okay.” Maria scrunched up her nose. “What does that mean, ‘hope everything is okay’?”

  Reid frowned. Maya knew, or at least partially knew, why he had to leave—but he couldn’t very well admit that to Maria. “Well, they, uh…” He cleared his throat. “They think I’m on a weekend getaway with you.”

  Maria laughed. “Good cover. Maybe sometime we can make that actually happen?”

  “Yeah. That would be nice.”

  Her phone chimed again. She checked it and said, “That’s my ride. I have to go. But I’ll see you around, Reid.” She leaned in and kissed him, only briefly.

  “You’ll keep in touch, right?” he asked. “Especially about Rais?”

  “Of course I will.”

  As she rose and headed toward the front of the building, he called out to her. He couldn’t let her leave without at least mentioning the thing that had been gnawing at the forefront of his mind. “Hey… I remembered something.”

  She paused questioningly.

  “And it’s something that… well, it might spell trouble for a lot of people. Maybe most of all for me.”

  Maria regarded him evenly. “This job teaches you a lot of things,” she said at last. “But number one of them all is that you can’t trust anyone but yourself.”

  “Even you?” Reid asked.

  She shrugged one shoulder as if that was an answer.

  “But… what if I find something worth saying?”

  “Then you take it straight to someone who can do something about it,” she told him. “Two years ago you knew all this. Now I’m just reminding you. Don’t talk to anyone about it. If you go digging, do it alone. And if you find something, you make damn sure the people you tell are people in your corner.”

  He hesitated to ask, but he needed to know. “Are you in my corner?”

  “Always.” She winked, gave him a small wave, and disappeared around the building.

  Reid swallowed the lump in his throat. He had wanted nothing more for the past fifteen hours of near-isolation than to talk to someone, Maria or Watson or even Cartwright, about the conspiracy, about his memory, and about Carver’s actions.

  But once again he felt alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  Ashleigh Riker’s heels clacked rhythmically against the concrete of the parking garage as she paced slowly, waiting for her meeting. She was at the furthest end of the third deck, where there were the fewest cars and a convenient blind spot from cameras.

  She heard footfalls echoing and
glanced up to see the director striding toward her. He took his time, intentionally not looking as if he was in a rush to get anywhere.

  “I just got off the phone with DNI Hillis,” Director Mullen said as a greeting. He kept his voice low to keep from reverberating in the largely empty space. “The president thanks you personally for your involvement. Spec Ops Group is yours. Congratulations, Deputy Director.”

  Riker smiled with half her mouth. The promotion was welcome, but not at all unexpected. “Thank you, sir.”

  “But I’m guessing that’s not why you asked me to meet you here and leave my phone behind,” Mullen mused. This was not the first time they had met like this.

  “Agent Carver called in,” she told him. “On my personal line. He claims that Steele remembers.”

  If Mullen had any reaction, he didn’t show it. “How much does he remember?”

  “Unclear.”

  The director was silent for a moment. “Let’s stay alert for any chatter. We’ve got a few friends in the NSA that can help with that. Have Carver stay dark until we can clear the air—a few weeks, maybe more. Where’s Zero now?”

  “On his way back here with Watson and the CDC doctor.”

  Mullen nodded solemnly. “Debrief him and see if he’ll talk about it.”

  “And if he doesn’t? If he keeps quiet and digs deeper?”

  “Make a contingency,” Mullen told her. “Something here, on our turf, something we can control.” The director shrugged. “Terrible accidents happen every day.” He turned and walked away, back the way he had come.

  *

  The other two men were already buckled in when Reid boarded the Gulfstream. He took a seat across the aisle from Watson and in front of Barnard. The engines whirred to life as he strapped himself in.

  “How’s the shoulder?” He gestured to the blue sling around Watson’s neck and arm.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  Reid nodded. Then he leaned over again. “Listen… I think I owe you an apology.”

  Watson abruptly held up his good hand. “You don’t owe me anything. Not an apology, nor an explanation.” He settled into his seat and closed his eyes.

  “What about you, Barnard?” Reid twisted in his seat. “We made a pretty good team. Have we inspired you to volunteer for more bioterrorism ops with the CIA?”

  “Actually, Agent Steele,” Barnard replied as he shifted in his seat, “considering the events of the last forty-eight hours, I plan to apply for the very next laboratory position that opens with the CDC. With any luck, I’ll spend the rest of my career in very quiet and very un surprising conditions.”

  Reid laughed. He settled into the plush, inviting chair and closed his eyes.

  He was going home. It would still be Sunday by the time he got back; even with the debriefing, the six-hour backward leap in time zones would likely put him home—and back to his daughters—by lunchtime.

  *

  Maria pushed open the door to the ladies’ room at Boryspil International Airport in Kiev, Ukraine. It was a brief stopover to refuel the plane; she had slipped away under the pretense of getting something to eat. And she was famished, but that wasn’t the reason for her visit to the main terminal.

  She entered a stall and opened her purse, removing her CIA-issued phone and a plastic waterproof baggie. She sealed the phone inside it and placed it gently into the toilet’s rear tank for safekeeping. It would only be for a few minutes.

  Then she casually made her way to gate nineteen and sat, choosing a plastic chair a decent distance from the passengers waiting to board their flight.

  Less than a minute later she felt a pressure at her back as someone sat in the opposite-facing chair behind her. The man cleared his throat loudly and opened a newspaper in front of his face.

  “Marigold.” He spoke in Ukrainian and his voice was husky, as if he was perpetually getting over a cold.

  “Don’t call me that,” she muttered in the foreign tongue.

  The man chuckled to himself softly. “Report.”

  “He remembers,” she said simply.

  There was a very pregnant pause before the man asked, “Steele? Are you certain?”

  “He didn’t say so. Not overtly. But I could see it in his eyes. And another agent attacked him, out of nowhere.”

  The man sighed. “This could spell trouble for us.”

  Maria hesitated. “Or… he could be an ally.”

  The man behind her scoffed loudly.

  “He nearly had it figured out before,” Maria said in a harsh whisper. “He just needs to remember, and to retrace his steps…”

  “He is CIA.”

  “He didn’t trust them before, and even less now,” she argued. “He has no allegiance to them.”

  “And where do his allegiances lie, hmm?” the Ukrainian man asked. “With you, I suppose?”

  Maria huffed. “Possibly.”

  “You’re letting your emotions get the best of you,” the man warned.

  She felt her face grow hot with anger. “I am perfectly in control of my emotions,” she hissed. “And I’ll remind you that I’ve gotten a hell of a lot farther than anyone else.” She took a deep, calming breath. “Look, I’m on the trail of the assassin. If I bring him in, I believe I’ll fully gain Steele’s trust. He already believes I’m doing it for him, to help keep his family safe.”

  Aren’t you? she wondered. But she kept it to herself.

  The man did not speak for a long moment. “Prove you can do it first,” he said finally. “Then we will consider it. But if this fails, it will be on your head.” He abruptly folded his paper, stood, and stalked away.

  Maria sat there alone for a full minute, her hands tented at her mouth. She sighed. “I’m so sorry, Kent.” But it has to be this way.

  Then she stood and hastily went to retrieve her phone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  Reid got into his car in the CIA parking deck and just sat there a moment with his hands on the steering wheel. His limbs ached. His forearm hurt where he’d nearly been shot, and his chest hurt where he’d nearly been stabbed. Both spots were badly bruised, particularly his arm, which was swollen and dark purple. He had so much running through his head that he feared his skull might split in two.

  The debriefing with Riker had lasted two and a half hours. It had started out well enough—a call from President Pierson to personally thank and congratulate Agent Steele on a job well done—but immediately following that was a thorough grilling from Ashleigh Riker. He painstakingly detailed the entire ordeal twice to her, only to circle back around to Agent Carver’s bizarre attack.

  Reid was careful not to make any mention of his memory or any conspiracy theories. He simply stated and restated that Carver’s attempts on his life were sudden, mysterious, and unjustified. Riker assured him that they would find the renegade agent and bring him to justice.

  Despite her promises, Reid was fairly certain that Riker at least knew about the cover-up, and was possibly even in on it. Either way, she was not to be trusted. She would be keeping her eye on him, he knew.

  And for the foreseeable future, he would have to keep glancing over his shoulder.

  He considered just packing up again, taking the girls, and leaving. Tell no one. Just go somewhere . But he knew he couldn’t do that. The agency would have little trouble finding him if they wanted to.

  And he needed answers to the dozens of questions that were swimming in his head.

  Reid sighed as he powered up his personal cell phone, the one he’d left behind at Langley before the op, for the first time in two days and waited a minute or so for it to boot up. He had a few emails from students—right , he remembered, I have to give a lecture tomorrow —and only one voicemail, from Kate’s sister, Linda, in New York.

  He didn’t really feel like speaking with Linda at the moment, but he listened to the voicemail as he pulled out of the deck, just in case it was something urgent.

  “Hey, Reid!” Linda’s cheerful voice s
aid through the phone. “Just wanted to let you know that I got a call from a lawyer in New York, something Rothstein, who said that you were entitled to some kind of settlement from back when, uh, Katie passed…”

  Reid smiled sadly. Linda had trouble saying the word “death” when it came to her little sister. He could relate; he did too, even after two years.

  “He couldn’t share details, but it was about the medical personnel who tended to her. Apparently some money’s coming your way? It sounded like good news, so I gave him your info. I wanted to follow up and make sure he got in touch. Give me a call when you can, and give my love to the girls. Bye!”

  “Hmm.” He couldn’t remember anything about a settlement. A class-action suit, maybe? Had he opted into something around the time that Kate passed, and forgotten about it? It was entirely possible; everything had happened so quickly that it was all a blur in his mind. And it wasn’t that long thereafter that the memory suppressor was installed in his head.

  Either way, he didn’t have any missed calls or voicemails from any lawyers. Besides, it was the weekend; if he was going to hear anything, it would probably be on Monday.

  But as he got on the highway, taking the quickest route home, he found he couldn’t get the thought of Kate out of his mind—and the memory he’d nearly forgotten about for the last two days.

  “Why do you have this, Reid?”

  That’s what she had asked in his memory about the gun she’d found. He hadn’t stopped long enough to think about it while on the hunt for Khalil and the virus, but now it came creeping back into his brain, along with the question that had been doing laps in his conscious three days ago. Did she know about me?

  “It’s just for protection,” you lied to her.

  “I’m sorry, Katie,” you told her.

  After she left for work that morning, you retrieved the other eleven guns you’d hidden through the house.

  Reid’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. Traffic was light, but he felt tension brewing in his chest.