Day Zero

by Marc Cameron

  He’d made too big a splash in Japan to stay there, leaving a wide and lengthy trail of bodies in his wake while looking for the assassins responsible for shooting his ex-wife. Even with friends in Japanese law enforcement, security footage of his face had already made it onto every news feed and blog in Asia, branding him the murderer from the US who typified the Japanese view of American bloodlust and gun craziness.

  It killed him that he was too banged up to follow leads to Pakistan. He’d lived much of his life gutting it out through the pain. But this time was different. Miyagi took him to a doctor in Japan who asked few questions and patched him up well enough to travel. When Quinn argued or tried to do too much, she reminded him that “though a concentrated mind could pierce a stone, it was a long process.”

  Fellow OGA “Gunny” Jacques Thibodaux pointed out the reality that “that which does not kill us makes us weaker for the next thing that tries to kill us.”

  Quinn had needed a place to hide out, to heal from the many wounds he’d gotten in Japan—both physical and mental. His friends in the tiny Yup’ik Eskimo settlement of Mountain Village provided exactly what he’d needed.

  He’d made the long trip by oceangoing car hauler from Tokyo to Seattle, just one step ahead of Interpol. A barge going up the inside passage had taken him to Anchorage, where he’d caught an Era flight to the bush. He’d not chanced seeing his parents or his daughter, or going to any of his old haunts. They were all certainly being watched.

  Once he arrived in Mountain Village, Ukka’s wife and mother-in-law had tended to his wounds with traditional herbs as well as antibiotics they got from the clinic and school by feigning illness themselves. Of course, nothing went on without everyone eventually finding out in a close community like Mountain Village, called simply “Mountain” by locals. Soon, the entire village became accessories to the crime of harboring a fugitive. Few knew what he was wanted for, or his real name, but they knew he was wanted by the United States government, and that alone was enough of a reason for most to hide him.

  Ukka threw the skiff into reverse just before they scraped gravel. Quinn hopped to a clump of willows, using them to keep his feet on the slippery mud and vegetation along the eroding cut bank. Gnarled limbs and bits of wood from upstream littered the area from the recent “breakup” when thousands of tons of ice melted enough to crack and give way ahead of the pressure of meltwater building upstream. Great, frozen slabs scoured the riverbed as they were shoved downstream by the tremendous pressure that built up behind them.

  “Ukka,” Quinn sighed as he watched his friend jump to the bank beside him. “I’ll never be able to repay you for—”

  “So help me, Jericho”—the Eskimo shook his head—“you’re gonna make me cry. And if I start crying, the next thing you know, I’ll be picking berries and cutting fish with the women.”

  The Eskimo’s cell phone played the snippet of “Old Time Rock and Roll” that he used as a ringtone. He dug it out of his float coat.

  “This is James,” he said.

  He listened intently while Quinn scanned the hillside above them. Quinn switched on the dead contractor’s radio and stuffed the earpiece in his ear. He was tempted to say something cavalier, but thought it better to keep the new crew guessing as to what had happened to their river-based compatriots.

  Ukka’s face went white and he ended the call.

  “That was my neighbor,” he said. “Two of those bastards are heading for my house.”

  Chapter 5

  Langley, Virginia

  George Bush Center for Intelligence

  Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia looked away from the image on her computer and rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. A leaning tower of manila folders that she should have been analyzing sat precariously close to the edge of her desk. Each was striped and marked according to their classification level. She nibbled on the lipstick-stained straw sticking out of her cup of Diet Dr Pepper, taking a moment from the tedium of scanning the monitor for the last three hours.

  Sliding down to let thick, ebony hair fall over the back of her chair, Garcia looked around her cubicle. Apart from the purple stapler and a Far Side calendar, the only other decoration was a photo of her with Jericho tacked to the door of the overhead cabinet. It was early in their relationship, on a trip to Virginia Beach they somehow had been able to wedge between missions. Her canary yellow swimsuit accentuated long legs and a multitude of curves. The color was a perfect complement to her rich, coffee-and-cream complexion. Jericho wore blue bathing trunks and a rare smile, big enough to show his teeth.

  Garcia’s chair creaked as she leaned forward to touch the photo with the tip of a red fingernail, tracing the lines of Quinn’s bare chest and the many scars that mapped his body. She thought of something her Russian father used to say—“The way a man fights is the way he does everything else”—and that made her miss Jericho all the more. She kissed her finger, and then pressed it to Quinn’s bearded face. If they ever did have kids, the poor things were doomed to being hairy gorillas. Of course, you had to be in the same time zone to conceive a child, so even if they’d considered such a thing, the notion of it was as far as they would get.

  For all practical purposes, she was alone in the bullpen. The girl that sat in the cubicle to her right had already gone home for the day, and Nathan, the tall, blond drink of water who occupied the stall to her left was off picking up copies at the communal printer, which happened to be next to the desk of the tiny brunette who was his latest conquest. He would be gone awhile.

  Garcia took another quick sip of her Dr Pepper, and then turned back to the computer monitor. Resting an elbow on her desk, she began to scan the screen again while she pondered how odd it was that an intelligence agency that was so steeped in secrecy and compartmentalization would have a communal printer. Government cutbacks bordered on the bizarre. There were so many things about the present administration that were absurd. The new president had clamped down on everything and everyone with all the paranoid efficiency of communist East Germany. Garcia herself had been given the names of five people in the agency on whom she was to provide “vetting overwatch.” She was certain her name was on at least two other agents’ lists. Overzealous, even heavy-handed government employees were rewarded rather than constrained. Jericho Quinn and anyone else who’d ever stood in the way of the new administration were being hunted down, or, as in Ronnie Garcia’s case, sidelined to a life of busywork.

  Citizens followed like sheep because President Hartman Drake, a victim of a terrorist attack himself if you believed the papers, gave them what they wanted—free health care; snarky, populist sound bites; and the drumbeat of war with anyone who dared cross American policies.

  But not everyone marched in lockstep. A sizable underground had sprung up in the aftermath of President Clark’s death. Quinn, Garcia, and others who had worked directly for the former president’s national security advisor, Win Palmer, knew the incoming administration was behind the assassination of Clark and the Vice President. There was just no way to prove it, yet.

  Garcia clicked her mouse, switching screens. Her breath caught in her throat when the image loaded. She looked away, blinking to clear her eyes, then back to check again.

  It was highly pixilated from being enlarged several times over, but it was definitely the needle in the digital haystack she’d been searching for. Dr. Naseer Badeeb, the mastermind of a plan to bomb the wedding of the former vice president’s daughter, stood chatting with a man with a heavy black beard. But neither of these men were the most important find. Garcia clicked her mouse, enlarging the photo as much as she could without losing it completely. It was impossible to prove without enhancing the image, but Garcia was certain the young man standing behind Badeeb was Hartman Drake—the President of the United States. He was younger, in his early teens, but there was no mistaking the condescending sneer and vaporous look in the boy’s eyes.

  “Way to go, Miyagi,” she whispered, full lips tremblin
g slightly as they formed the words. In the right hands, the photo could finally be something—something that could end this mess and bring Jericho home.

  Lost in thought over how to proceed, Garcia nearly jumped out of her skin when her group supervisor walked up behind her and cleared his throat.

  “Thought we agreed you wouldn’t put that up until I went home for the night.” Bobby Jeffery nodded toward the photo of Garcia and Quinn standing in the surf at Virginia Beach.

  “So apparently,” Ronnie sighed, “keeping a picture of one of America’s most wanted fugitives is against CIA office policy.”

  “Apparently,” Jeffery said. “Not to mention I have to keep all the straight guys in the office from trying to get a snapshot with their cell phone of you in your yellow string bikini.”

  “It’s not a bikini,” Garcia scoffed.

  “Well, give the guys here five minutes with Photoshop and it’ll be less than that.”

  Garcia put the photo in her lap drawer and spun in her chair to face her boss. She wanted to get rid of the image on her way around but decided it would look too guilty. She left it up, as if it was routine.

  “I appreciate it,” Jeffery said in his easy Georgia twang. If voices could grin, his did. As far as bosses went, he was likeable enough—a little aloof, but Garcia knew she shared that same quality.

  He stood at the opening to her cubicle, his conservative striped tie hanging like a crooked noose around an unbuttoned collar. He was only a few years older than she was, but the way he kept his wireframe glasses low on his nose gave him the look of a favorite uncle.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” Garcia said, gathering her wits. She forced herself not to shoot a look toward her computer screen. An image of the sitting president associating with a known terrorist was enough to put any good CIA agent on the guilty edge. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jeffery said. “But something, that’s for sure. I just got a priority call from our friends over at Fort Meade.” He gave a noncommittal shrug, but his eyes stayed locked on her. “Some ID guy wants to have a chat with you.”

  Garcia forced a smile.

  “They asked for me by name?”

  Jeffery nodded. “Afraid so.”

  Stationed at Fort Meade in the offices of the National Security Agency, the Internal Defense Task Force was a government bureau formed by the new administration to root out moles and terrorists inside the government. Considering the assassination of the two top leaders in the nation under the very noses of the FBI and Homeland Security, this expansion of government was an easy sell to the American public.

  Of course, Garcia could see the irony in the formation of such a unit by the President, who was now the highest-ranking mole in the government.

  Other intelligence and enforcement agencies spoke of IDTF in hushed tones, if they spoke of them at all. Like the devil, if you admitted their existence, ID agents seemed to appear out of nowhere. Garcia wasn’t alone in thinking of them as vicious Orwellian dogs from Animal Farm—with President Drake as Napoleon.

  Much like Winfield Palmer had organized his team using OGAs or Other Governmental Agents, the IDTF had handpicked its operatives from the NSA, CIA, and FBI, choosing, it seemed, those most bent on getting ahead in their careers at all cost.

  Though rank-and-file citizens believed something with the innocuous name of Internal Defense Task Force was akin to a government Internal Affairs, that job fell to various OIGs or Offices of Inspector General. In reality, the IDTF was more like an American version of the Stasi, who had considered themselves the “Shield and Sword” of East Germany. Even agents within both the ultrasecret NSA and CIA saved a particular reverence toward those in the IDTF.

  Ronnie remembered a CIA instructor at Camp Peary pointing out that in their heyday, the KGB had employed 1 agent for roughly every 5,800 Soviet citizens. The Nazis had 1 Gestapo operative for every 2,000 citizens in countries they controlled. But, using full and part-time operatives, the Stasi had 1 agent for every 6 East Germans.

  The IDTF’s organizational chart was classified, but they and the administration that created them were both in their infancy, so she assumed the new bureau was yet in the middle of empire building. It would not be long before they were up and running at full strength. There were plenty of people in government willing to stomp others to a bloody pulp in order to get ahead, as well as those who just enjoyed seeing other people squirm. Recruitment wouldn’t be all that difficult.

  Jeffery put a hand on the small of his back and arched, looked up at the ceiling to stretch. “Listen,” he said, “these guys are as much about witch hunts as anything. You have to watch what you say. Understand.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Anything you want to tell me about?”

  “Nothing I can think of,” Garcia lied. “Probably just another routine bunch of questions about my old boyfriend.”

  She nodded toward the lap drawer where she’d put Jericho’s photo and then kicked back in her chair, trying to look relaxed. Inside, her gut was doing backflips. She’d taken an endless number of precautions, but obviously that was not enough. With offices at NSA and who knew how many agents on the CIA payroll, the IDTF had fingers in everyone’s pie.

  They might not yet be as well staffed as the dreaded East German Shield and Sword, but at least one of them had focused on Garcia. Considering what she was a part of, any sort of scrutiny would be a bad thing indeed.

  Chapter 6

  Washington, DC

  The White House

  Former Oregon governor Lee McKeon used the back of a slender hand to rub the skin of his furrowed brow. He ignored the quizzical looks from David Crosby, the President’s disheveled chief of staff. The Veep was being vocal at yet another meeting in the Situation Room. No surprise there, considering nothing would ever get accomplished if it were otherwise. POTUS ran meetings in the Cement Mixer—but this particular POTUS had had a difficult first five months negotiating the pitfalls and intricacies of his new job.

  President Hartman Drake was a fireplug of a man, barely five-seven, but broad shouldered and narrow hipped. He never missed an opportunity to take off his suit jacket to display thick arms that bulged against a starched white shirt. He had full hair and an easy smile that endeared him to voters of both genders, but especially the women. He’d used bow-tie bluster and sex appeal to bluff his way through Congress—but that was the bush league. McKeon saw he needed a considerable amount of help not to destroy everything they’d worked for now that a series of highly choreographed events had made him commander in chief.

  The worst part was that Drake was completely numb to the fact that he was doing such a poor job.

  McKeon hadn’t thought being vice president would be so agonizingly difficult to stomach. He stood over six and a half feet tall with a gaunt face, narrow shoulders, and a bony, knock-kneed build. Though his name was Scottish in origin, his face held the dark complexion and East Indian features of someone from the subcontinent. Amber eyes narrowed with a hint of the almond shape of his Chinese birth mother. A self-proclaimed Chindian, he introduced himself as someone of Chinese and Indian descent. The world knew him to be adopted by a wealthy couple from Portland. According to his birth certificate, he’d been born in Salem, Oregon, in the good old US of A. His tall and gangly appearance brought a picture of Abraham Lincoln to the minds of the voters. He was willing to court wealthy donors and spout populist sentiment, but more than that, he possessed a certain magnetism, a soothing way that drew people to him and made them feel as if he had nothing but their best interest at heart. It had taken him to the governor’s mansion the year of his fortieth birthday.

  He’d needed a little more help to become the vice president—as had the new commander in chief. But his father—the real one, not Old Man McKeon—had paved the way for that to happen long before Lee McKeon was ever born—while he was still known as Raza Badeeb.

  Dr. Naseer Badeeb had been placin
g children from his orphanage in the remote Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan into American families for two decades. These children, well indoctrinated to hate America for the beast that it was, grew up in quiet suburban homes, went to school, got married, and moved up in society. The children always went to extraordinary families who saw to it they received outstanding educations. Many rose to the highest levels of government. The doctor was no longer around to enjoy the success of his labor, but he’d known intuitively how to prepare things so they would come to fruition later. McKeon had once heard his father say that the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. It broke his heart that he’d never really gotten to know the man. But that only doubled his resolve to carry on his father’s legacy.

  “What are my options?” the President asked, kicking back at the head of the long table and gazing at the myriad of television screens on the walls as if he was watching the Super Bowl instead of attending a high-level intelligence briefing from his National Security Council. Known as the NSC, these advisors included the Joint Chiefs, the secretaries of defense, state, and treasury, the director of national intelligence, and the national security advisor. All were men, all white, and all, but for the Secretary of Defense Andrew Filson, were brand-new appointees. A new man sat quietly in one of the royal blue high-back chairs along the wall. Only McKeon and the President even knew who he was.