by Jack Mars
The stun grenade that Alan had grabbed from Bixby’s lab must have been one of his experimental weapons. The intensity of it was easily five times that of an ordinary flash-bang. Even as Zero opened his eyes again he saw dark spots in his vision, and had to hold himself steady with both hands on the floor until the nausea and dizziness passed.
“Alan,” he said hoarsely. “Are you okay?”
“Nope,” Reidigger groaned. He sat up as well, wavering slightly with the loss of equilibrium. “Christ. I don’t know what the hell that was, but I want five more of them.”
At last Zero got to his feet, shaky as he was, and staggered over to where the others had just been standing. They were laid out on the floor, all five of them, including Kozlovsky. The Russian president was on his back, his eyes wide and unblinking, bleeding from both ears.
“Is he… dead?” Alan asked carefully.
“I don’t know—”
Suddenly Kozlovsky sucked in a deep, ragged breath. At the same time one of his arms shot upward, groping at nothing in particular, his thin fingers clawing at the air.
“I can’t see!” he moaned in Russian. “I can’t… I can’t…” His voice sounded odd as well. “I cannot hear! Someone help me!” He groped aimlessly, trying to roll over and faltering with his lack of balance.
Zero could see that the others had been similarly affected as their cries joined Kozlovsky’s. He didn’t know if the blindness and hearing loss would be permanent or not, but he certainly had no compassion to offer them.
“Zero!” Alan shouted behind him.
He spun to see Artem staggering toward the exit. Apparently the FIS agent had also tried to protect himself in the instant that the stun grenade had gone off, and was now attempting an escape. Alan lunged for him, but teetered off-kilter and rolled to the floor, his balance not fully restored.
Zero dropped to one knee and snatched up an AK-47 from one of Kozlovsky’s foot soldiers. He put it to his shoulder and aimed at the fleeing FIS renegade. But just before he took the shot, he remembered his faulty aim from earlier and tracked the barrel just slightly to the left.
He pulled the trigger, firing off a three-shot burst. All three tore into Artem’s back. The Russian mole yelped and fell forward on the lawn.
For Karina. And for Veronika.
“Nice shot.” Alan climbed to his feet again and shook his head gruffly. “I’m still a bit shaky on my feet.”
“We need to get out of here quick,” Zero said urgently. “Someone will have heard those shots.”
“And they probably heard that flash-bang in Brussels,” Reidigger noted wryly.
Zero ditched the gun, not wanting to be spotted carrying an automatic weapon, and the two of them hurried back out across the lawn to the truck. Sirens wailed in the distance, but Reidigger kept it at the speed limit as they drove away from the Chateau des Berges. Zero glanced back occasionally to make sure they weren’t being followed.
They were less than a full mile away when Alan voiced the concern that was on both their minds. “That was a bust,” he muttered. “What do we do now?”
Zero didn’t have an answer for that. FIS was compromised; so was the Secret Service. If the Russians had gotten to them, they could have people anywhere—Interpol, the CIA, possibly even disguised as police.
I thought I was over that sort of paranoia, he mused. But it wasn’t just paranoia; besides the man in the truck with him, there was no one Zero could trust. There would be no getting across borders. And to make matters the absolute worst, he was keenly aware that he might have just permanently blinded the president of Russia.
“Zero?” Alan pressed. “We need a destination, pal.”
Suddenly Alan’s suggestion of the Maldives was looking attractive. But when he rubbed his tired eyes, he saw her face behind his closed lids—he saw her the way he wanted to remember her, lying beside him in an inn in Liège, smiling, her hair hanging down over one shoulder with her head propped in her hand.
He couldn’t give up now. He had the earrings. That was all that mattered.
“FIS is out,” Zero said, working it out aloud. “We can’t risk the contacts we know. No CIA, no Interpol. No UN either; politicians can be bought.”
“NATO headquarters is in Brussels,” Alan offered, “but the US has announced its withdrawal. We won’t get any amnesty there.” He scoffed at himself and added, “Then again, we won’t get amnesty anywhere.”
But Zero barely heard it. At Reidigger’s mention of Brussels, a memory streaked through his mind, one he hadn’t thought about since his mind had been restored.
“Wait a second,” he murmured. “Alan, do you remember about five years back or so, we were on an op in Brussels? We were undercover, trying to find the client of a Belgian weapons smuggler.”
“Yeah, I remember. What about it?” Then Alan’s eyes widened under the brim of his trucker’s cap. “Are you thinking about Sutton?”
“Yes.”
Alan shook his head. “Are you insane?”
“No. Maybe.”
Back then, a little more than five years earlier, the CIA had lent the two of them, Zero and Reidigger, to United States European Command to assist with finding the arms smuggler’s customers before they received their purchase, a powerful warhead. They had liaised specifically with four-star General Raymond Sutton, whom Zero recalled as an impressive yet thoroughly apolitical military leader.
And if he’s still running things there…
“What makes you think he’ll listen to us?” Alan asked.
“Because…” Zero started. Because back then, the two of them had discovered that the arms smuggler’s clients were a pair of AWOL American soldiers suffering from PTSD and delusional episodes. Zero and Reidigger had detained them, and the CIA wanted them brought directly to H-6. But Sutton saw it differently. He appealed to Zero himself to defy his agency and keep the men at Chièvres Air Base in Belgium, where they would be under lock and key but also get the help they obviously needed. “Because,” Zero said, “I believe he’s a man of integrity. This is an issue of potential war, and if he’s still the man I remember, then he may be the best shot we have at getting someone to listen to us.”
“Uh-huh,” Alan said lowly, clearly hesitant. “Zero… you understand that would require us to turn ourselves in, right?”
“Yeah.” He looked out the window as the Belgian countryside rolled by. “I do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Sara didn’t like this part of town. It was the type of neighborhood that Camilla would call “super sketch.” The kind of place where stories of girls like her getting grabbed and stuffed into vans and never heard from again were prevalent.
But she needed it.
After the altercation with Tommy, the threat of being kicked out of the co-op loomed heavily over her head. If she got the boot, she would be homeless. There were no two ways about it. She barely had any money to her name. She’d be on the streets.
She’d begged Camilla for the name and address of her guy. Camilla didn’t have enough on her. Sara’s nerves were jangled; she needed more.
She found the address even though one of the numbers on the front of the house was missing, a white silhouette in its place. She stepped up three creaking steps to a porch that held, for some reason, a rusted washing machine. The siding was grimy with age and algae. The screen in the door was torn and hanging half out of the frame.
She knocked.
A dog barked from inside, a deep and threatening woof.
“Shut up,” warned a male voice. Then the door opened, and the guy scowled down at her. He was tall, taller even than lanky Tommy, wearing a tank top over heavily tattooed and well-muscled arms. He had a wispy, unruly beard and a bruise under his left eye.
“What you want?” he demanded.
Sara cleared her throat and straightened her back as she said, “I’m looking to buy.”
“Buy?” He scoffed at her. “Buy what, fuckin’ Girl Scout Cookies? Fuck out
ta here, little girl.” He started to close the door in her face.
“I’m a friend of Camilla’s.”
The dealer paused. “You know Camilla?”
“I’m her roommate.” Though maybe not for long.
He thought about it for a moment, the door half-closed. “Yeah, all right. Come on.” He pushed the door open again and she stepped inside. “You best not be a narc.”
“I’m not,” Sara assured him. She was standing in a small living room of the rowhouse, the brown and well-worn carpet a sharp contrast to the huge flat-screen TV and video game systems. There was a game paused on the television, a controller sitting on a black leather sofa whose arms had been chewed up, presumably by the dog she’d heard earlier.
“What you need?” he asked.
“A few grams,” she told him.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that. You want an eight-ball?”
“I… I don’t know what that is,” she admitted.
The guy grinned. “Where the fuck Camilla meet you? The high school?”
“I dropped out,” she told him flatly.
He nodded. “Yeah. Me too. Went and got my GED. Way easier than dealing with that shit.”
Sara almost rolled her eyes. She could just imagine what Maya would say if she learned that her little sister’s drug dealer had gotten his GED when she hadn’t yet.
“An eight-ball is three and a half grams,” he told her. “It’s called that ’cause it’s one-eighth of an ounce.”
“Um. Okay. Yeah, then that.”
“Stay right there.” The dealer disappeared into the adjacent room, which Sara could see was a small kitchen. A drawer slid open; there was some clanking, and then he came back with a tiny baggie. “I know it don’t look like much, but I stand by all my stuff. It’ll do it for you, I promise.”
He was right; the baggie didn’t look like much, but it would have to do. Sara reached into her purse for her wallet. “And how much…?”
“It’s two hundred.”
She balked, and then immediately felt a deep sting of guilt for all the drugs she’d let Camilla give her. “Shit,” she murmured. “I don’t have that much.”
“You need to hit an ATM or something?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve got about forty bucks to my name right now.”
The dealer sucked air through his teeth. “Sorry, girlie. But forty ain’t enough to get you there.”
Sara sighed. The thought of going home with nothing made her skin crawl, made her hands tremble. But she said, “Okay. Thanks anyway,” and turned defeatedly toward the door.
“Hang on a sec.” The dealer rubbed his wispy chin. “There might be something we can do. You know this area pretty good?”
She nodded. “Yeah, pretty well. I work at the Swift Thrift, so sometimes I do pickups for them. All over town.”
He looked her up and down in a way she did not at all like. “Young white-bread lookin’ girl like you, all innocent. I think we could cut a deal.”
She frowned. “What kind of deal?”
“Nothing big. You move some stuff for me. Pick it up here, bring it somewhere else. They give you money, you bring it back here. That’s all.”
Trafficking, she thought. He’s talking about trafficking. Just the very thought of the word sent a shiver down her spine and the cold memories of the Slovenian traffickers that had kidnapped and nearly killed her. It was almost enough to make her want to turn and walk right out of there.
Almost.
“…Cops are always suspicious ’bout a guy like me.” She hadn’t even realized the dealer was still talking. “I get hassled just going down to the corner to buy smokes sometimes. But you? You could get anywhere. Even some of them higher-end type of people, the downtown folks.”
“And what would that get me?” she asked.
“I’ll give you a cut. Five percent. And if you want product, we’ll take it out of that.”
She thought about it. Five percent on the eight-ball she was going to buy would only be ten bucks; hardly worth it for running all over town. “Ten percent,” she countered, “and I’ll do it.”
The dealer scoffed. “You think this is a negotiation? I’m making an offer, and that’s that.”
“Then no thanks.” She turned and reached for the door.
“Seven and a half,” he said behind her. “And I’ll pretend not to be pissed off every time I have to use my calculator to figure that shit out.”
She paused, pretending to consider it, and then turned back to him and nodded. “Deal.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Sara.”
“I’m Ike.” He shook her hand, and then held the eight-ball out to her. “Consider it a sign-on bonus.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Reidigger parked the old truck a short distance from the gated entrance to US Army Garrison Benelux. The location of the small base was technically Brussels, though the capital city proper rose about a half mile in the distance.
Zero inspected the layout from behind his closed window. It was a far cry from the types of military installations he was more accustomed to seeing, places in the desert with twelve-foot-high fences topped with barbed wire, guards armed to the teeth, anti-aircraft weapons always at the ready to stall some threat. The Brussels base was comparatively pleasant, surrounded by a simple chain-link fence, beyond which were grassy fields and paved pathways, stout red barracks, and a beige administrative building which, if he recalled correctly, was where they would find General Sutton.
“Are you sure about this?” Alan asked. He too was craning his neck toward the window, watching a platoon jog in formation in fatigue pants and Army-tan tees.
“No,” Zero replied honestly. “So let’s go do it before I change my mind.” He pushed out of the truck, and Reidigger followed, albeit with a heavy sigh.
The base’s entrance was a one-lane-wide gap in the fence, a small guard booth, and a tollbooth-style lever arm painted cautionary yellow. A young MP peered out of the booth at them. He had a sidearm, but made no motion for it as they approached. Instead he took a step out of his small booth and held up a single hand.
“Hold up, please.” He looked them both up and down. Zero couldn’t imagine how they must have looked to him, dirty and bloody and bruised. “This is a US military installation, sirs.”
“We know, son,” Alan said, amused. “That’s why we’re here.”
“We need to speak to General Sutton,” Zero told him. “It’s an urgent matter.”
The MP frowned deeply, and for a moment Zero’s heart sank. It had been too long; this was no longer Sutton’s post.
But then the young soldier asked, “What sort of business do you have with the general?”
“None yet,” said Zero candidly. “I need a message delivered to him. I need you to tell him that Agent Zero is standing at the gate.”
“Who?” The soldier glanced from Zero to Alan and back again.
“It’s not that hard, son.” Alan took a step forward, smiling politely. “Pick up that phone in there, and tell General Sutton that Agent Zero is here to see him. Trust me. He’s going to want to hear this.”
*
“I don’t believe this.” Four-star General Raymond Sutton stroked his smooth chin, shaking his head in disbelief as he stared down at the two tiny pearl studs in his opposite palm. He looked almost the same as Zero remembered; tall, proud, barrel-chested, well-maintained despite his fifty-plus years. But at the moment, he looked conflicted.
“Believe it, sir.” Zero sat beside Reidigger on a bench seat in Sutton’s austere office, against a far wall. Both of them had their wrists cuffed in front of them, and two armed MPs stationed directly on either side of the bench.
Even though he had already recounted the episode to the general, Zero repeated: “Those are recording devices, sir, and on them is a conversation captured by the interpreter of the secret meeting that was held between Harris and Kozlovsky.”
Sutton closed his fist around th
em gingerly. “Let’s just say that I believe you for one minute. Why in the hell would you bring them here? To me?”
“Because,” Zero said simply, “a few years ago, we worked together briefly. You proved yourself to be trustworthy; to do the right thing over blindly following an order.”
“Yes,” the general said distantly. “I remember that. I remember you.”
“When we found ourselves with no other options, your name came to mind,” Zero explained. “So we’re surrendering to you, and you alone. What happens next is in your hands.”
“Literally,” Reidigger added, gesturing toward the earrings in the general’s fist.
“You should know that this has already been called in,” General Sutton informed them. “The CIA and the government are aware that you’re here.”
“We understand, sir. But we cannot let those earrings fall into anyone else’s hands—”
The door to the office flew open as an overzealous soldier practically spilled through the door, cutting Zero off. “Sir! There’s a call for you on line two. Urgent. It’s… well, it’s the president.”
Sutton blinked. “The president?”
“Yes, sir. President Harris, sir.”
Sutton exchanged a glance with Zero, and then rounded his desk and plucked up the phone. “This is General Sutton.” His gaze lowered to the floor. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. That is correct, sir.” Then Sutton frowned deeply. “…What Russians, sir?”
Russians?
Sutton stretched the cord of the phone as far as it would go as he yanked the blinds open over his office window.
Reidigger let out a low whistle. Outside the chain-link fence was a veritable convoy, Humvees and SUVs and sedans, rolling to a stop just beyond the gate of the small base.