Zero Day

by Jan Gangsei

  “How is the progress with Shi?” Karl said.

  “I’m still searching for it,” Addie said. “But I’ll have it,” she added quickly. “By the end of the week. I promise. It’s just been a little more difficult than I expected.” Her voice wobbled.

  “I know you can do it,” Karl said, and gently touched her arm. “Is something else bothering you?”

  Addie set her cue stick across the felt of the table. “Yes,” she said. “They say they actually found David and Helene? I don’t understand.…”

  “I know,” Karl said. “The FBI worked faster than I expected. There’s nothing to worry about, though.”

  “What do you mean?” Addie said, her voice betraying her again with its quiver.

  “Just trust me,” Karl said. “I’ve taken care of things.”

  “How?”

  “It’s probably better that you don’t know,” Karl said. “Sometimes too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

  Addie was well aware of that fact. A noise came from somewhere outside the room. Addie had to steady her legs, keep herself from running.

  “We’ve closed down the chat room,” Karl continued. “I’m concerned there may have been a breach.” Karl watched Addie, as if gauging her reaction.

  “Oh?” she said as nonchalantly as possible, legs still shaking.

  “I’ve set up a Burnchat account instead.” He reached into his pocket and handed Addie a small piece of paper. “Contact me through this as soon as you’ve found Shi.”

  “Okay,” Addie said.

  “And have you forgotten the reason for this reunion?” Karl asked. Addie flushed as Karl pulled something else from his pocket. A digital camera—what she would have received in Virginia if she hadn’t missed the handoff. He gave it to Addie as well. “For prom. You know what to do.”

  “Take pictures?” Addie said, raising an eyebrow.

  Karl didn’t laugh. “It’s a diversion,” he said. “The device inside will cause a small explosion, but it won’t be lethal. It will just appear that way. Like the one in the Reagan Building. We’ll extract you right before it goes off. And…”

  Addie nodded, her lips pressed together. She didn’t need him to say the words. She knew what was supposed to happen. “I’d better get back to my room now,” Addie said, finding it difficult to talk. “I don’t need anyone to get up and notice I’m gone.”

  “Very good,” Karl said. But as Addie began to walk away, he caught her by the arm. “Just one more thing, little one,” he said. “That boy you were with in the Green Room?”

  “Darrow?” Addie said, heartbeat accelerating.

  “Yes, Darrow,” Karl said. “I suggest you keep your distance. I know he seems nice. But he’s an ambitious young man. Don’t let yourself be a means to an end.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Addie said as she slipped from Karl’s grasp.

  She headed toward the door.

  “I wish you could have known her, Lilla,” Karl said.

  Addie slowed, turning back to Karl. Her heart ached at the haunted look in his eyes. “So do I, Father.”

  “Nothing can undo the past, little one. All we can do is learn from it.” His gaze turned hard. “I know you won’t let her down.”

  Darrow sat in his car on G Street, a block from the White House, exactly half a mile away. The reception had ended an hour earlier, but he’d made up an excuse—he needed to stick around and finish a project before he went home. Instead, he’d driven around the corner and parked alongside the Old Ebbitt Grill, where a few late-night diners were still filtering in and out of the popular restaurant.

  Darrow slinked in his seat as a couple passed, peering into his car. The black receiver on the center console next to him was in plain view. Darrow covered it with a file folder and chastised himself for being stupid. In fact, it was starting to feel like bugging Addie may have been one of his all-time stupidest moves. All he’d heard so far was his friend saying good night to her parents, water running, feet shuffling. She was probably asleep now and not even wearing the necklace anymore. He should just go home.

  Suddenly, the receiver crackled to life. Darrow heard something again. A door opening and closing. Light footsteps. Raspy breathing. Darrow sat at attention and cranked the volume. But the sound quality was terrible. Harper hadn’t been kidding. He closed his eyes, as if that might somehow improve his hearing, and listened as voices broke through the static.

  “Hello,—” crackle, crackle.

  It was Addie. But what had she just said? It had sounded like “Peter.” Who was that? And why was Addie talking to him? Someone outside the car laughed loudly, and Darrow couldn’t hear the response of whoever Addie was talking to. He held the receiver directly to his ear and heard a man’s voice, but the man was clearly farther away from the bug, and harder to understand. Addie’s and his words were also punctuated by a strange sound—a clacking, crashing noise that happened in small bursts. Between the sounds, Darrow picked up that the man wanted to know if Addie had something yet. More clacking noises; the receiver sputtered.

  Darrow pulled it from his ear and fiddled with the dials. It sputtered a few more times and went silent. Finally, after several minutes Darrow got it working again, and the man’s voice broke through. He said something about prom. Prom? The receiver crackled and popped, the sound fading in and out. Darrow banged it, hard, trying to process what he’d been hearing. Something was going to go down at the Cabot prom?

  A thump on the side of his car jolted him out of his thoughts. Darrow looked to his left, just in time to see a girl with a long blonde ponytail on a Vespa skidding sideways away from his door. The scooter wobbled and the girl put down a foot, stopping a few yards ahead. Darrow leapt from his car, concerned.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Are you okay?”

  The girl glanced over her shoulder at Darrow. He could barely make out a set of big brown eyes beneath the rim of her black helmet. She studied him a moment, then sat upright and sped off. Darrow spun around and looked at his car—a huge scratch ran along the driver’s side door.

  “Hey!” he yelled again. “Come back here. You hit my car!”

  Straight ahead, the girl on the Vespa accelerated, taking a sharp right into an underground parking garage on the corner of 14th Street. Seriously? Darrow balled his hands into fists and gave chase. She’d probably just done a couple thousand dollars’ worth of damage to his custom paint job. His mom would have his head. No way could he let that girl just ride away.

  Darrow raced down the sidewalk into the garage, and came to a dead stop. It was dark, lit by a half-dozen fluorescent tube lights that flickered and buzzed, the only sound in the near-empty place. Darrow scanned the dim garage and shivered. It was about ten degrees colder in here than outside. A single row of delivery trucks sat parked against the far wall. The rest of the concrete structure was empty. The Vespa was nowhere in sight.

  Suddenly, Darrow heard the echo of screeching tires. He took a step toward the sound, only realizing a moment too late the foolishness of running blindly into an abandoned parking garage in downtown D.C. at night.

  A hand clamped over Darrow’s mouth and nose, cutting off his breathing. Darrow swallowed a scream, hands reflexively balling into fists. But before he could put up a fight, the cool blade of a knife pressed against his neck.

  “Don’t even think about it,” a man’s voice said.

  The hand over Darrow’s face released its grip slightly, and Darrow gasped for air. His heart raced, along with his thoughts. He was about to become one of the city’s grimmer statistics. Mugged in a dark garage. Or worse. What the hell had he been thinking?

  “Hey, I don’t want any trouble,” Darrow said. “Wallet’s in my right front pocket. Take it. It’s yours.”

  The man let out a laugh, low and sinister.

  “I don’t want your wallet.”

  Darrow began to lose sensation in his legs. What did this guy want, then? To kill him and leave him on the floor of this g
arage? His body kicked into fight-or-flight mode, muscles twitching. His senses went into overdrive; he became acutely aware of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, the man’s jagged breath on the back of his neck. Darrow only had one shot to get away. He’d go for a stomp on the foot, coupled with a well-placed elbow to the ribs. Buy himself enough time to make it back onto the sidewalk up ahead. Darrow willed his body to relax and prepare to attack.

  Suddenly, the point of the knife pricked his skin. A warm trickle of blood ran down Darrow’s neck, staining the crisp white collar of his tuxedo shirt. He jerked up straight and let out an involuntary gasp. The man leaned forward and whispered in Darrow’s ear.

  “Stay away from Addie Webster,” he hissed.

  With that, he pulled the knife away and sucker punched Darrow in the side, knocking him to the ground. Darrow stayed frozen there on the cold concrete, hyperventilating, listening as the man’s footsteps receded into the bowels of the garage. Darrow pulled himself shakily to his feet and stumbled out to the sidewalk. He pressed his fingers to his neck and drew them back, staring in shock at the smudges of blood across the tips. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t.

  Instead, he stood there, trapped by his own racing thoughts. What was Addie involved in? Even worse, what could he possibly do about it? He reached for his phone to call for help, and realized in his haste he’d left it in his car. He took an unsteady step down the sidewalk. He’d never felt so alone as he did in that moment, staggering down G Street, blood congealing on his neck. Not even the night he’d sat in a cold jail cell, waiting for his mother to bail him out. At least then, he’d known someone had his back. Now, all he could feel was the burn of unseen eyes watching his every move. They’d found him here; they could find him anywhere.

  He walked faster, slid back into his car, and slammed the door shut. As he hit the lock, the phone he’d left sitting on his center console buzzed. Darrow glanced down. An anonymous message flashed across the screen and Darrow recoiled, swallowing the scream welling up in his throat.

  It was a picture of his mother, looking elegant in her deep blue gown from tonight’s reception, walking up the brick steps to the front door of their Georgetown row house. A simple message was typed beneath:

  We won’t warn you twice.

  It was late and Michael was tired, but he couldn’t sleep. Besides, he preferred to avoid the crazy Manhattan crowds. During the day, this place would be crawling with people: tour groups, curious passersby, sometimes even people like him. It was better now, without the clicking cameras. The obnoxious chatter. He preferred the peace and stillness of nighttime. He sat quietly, hands folded in his lap, on a wooden bench just across from her.

  Sometimes, Michael felt like talking to his mother. But not tonight. He wasn’t sure he needed to, anyway. Ever since he was a little boy, Michael had been convinced his mother could hear his thoughts. That’s what mothers did—they comforted without words. They loved unconditionally. Michael ran his fingers through his thick brown hair—his mother’s hair—and thought about what he would say.

  I’m scared, Mother. We’re so close to reaching our goals. But I’ve had to do some things that frighten me. I can live with what happened to the man. I think. But not what might happen to her…if she doesn’t fix things. I’m afraid of what Father will ask me to do. I’m afraid of losing…

  Michael was interrupted by someone stumbling up the sidewalk. He turned to see a drunk guy tripping over his own feet, a near-empty bottle clutched in his hands. As he passed Michael’s bench, the guy teetered sideways. The bottle fell, rolling to a stop in front of Michael. The guy staggered on, oblivious, talking to himself.

  Michael leaned over, picked up the bottle, and chucked it in the trash. This was no place to be littering. People could be so disrespectful.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said.

  Michael leaned back and closed his eyes, pulling his trench coat around himself. When he was young, he used to imagine how she’d answer. But somewhere through the years, he’d lost the sound of her voice. He wasn’t even sure he’d ever known it at all. The only thing that remained in Michael’s memory was a melancholy tune, the dark outline of a face humming over his crib when he couldn’t sleep.

  You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray…

  A siren wailed on some distant street. A dog barked and a cat screeched. The plaintive sounds of the city at night. A crowded yet lonely and empty place.

  You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you…

  Michael stood, eyes filled with tears, and approached the slick marble wall. Just beyond, the crater that had once been a busy subway station had been turned into a park, the train long ago rerouted. But this place would never be anything other than a mass graveyard in Michael’s mind. More than a thousand innocent people were buried under the newly planted grass and sapling trees. The sprouting daffodil bulbs couldn’t mask the fact that this was the site of one of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil. It was hallowed ground, and Michael would never set foot on it.

  He reached his hand out and ran his fingers across the letters engraved in the black marble of the sprawling monument before him:

  SUSAN ERLANDER

  Michael blinked back his tears and stood tall.

  “I wish I could have known you, Mother,” he said. “But I will make things right. You know I will. For you.”

  He glanced higher up the wall to the inscription that ran across the top, along with the date nearly fifteen years ago that he was too young to remember, but would be seared in his mind forever. The anniversary was coming up. April fifteenth.

  WE HOLD YOU IN OUR HEARTS. WE WILL NEVER FORGET.

  Voices echoing in the hallway outside Addie’s room awakened her from a deep sleep. The shades were still drawn, but Addie could see pale light slanting in from the tall windows. It must be morning. Early. She heard a soft rap on her bedroom door, and the handle twisted slowly open.

  “Addie?” her mother whispered. “Are you awake?”

  Addie stayed still, pretending to be asleep. Her head was pounding and she didn’t feel like getting up. She listened as her mother clicked the door shut and started talking to someone just outside.

  “No,” she said. “She’s not up. Do you think I should wake her?”

  A slight pause. The president’s voice answered. “No, let her sleep. But make sure to get her as soon as she wakes up. I want to make sure we see her first, before the news.…”

  Addie’s heart began to thump, and her palms grew cold and clammy. Had someone heard her sneak up to the game room? She thought she’d been so careful…Wait, news? Addie held her breath and listened, but the hallway had grown quiet.

  She waited a beat, then crept from bed, grabbed her computer, and slipped back under the covers. She flipped the screen open and with trembling fingers launched the browser, hoping to figure out what her parents were talking about. What she found made her heart seize up in her chest. A breaking-news item flashed red across her home page:

  Alert: Standoff at West Virginia compound of David and Helene Brown enters fifth hour.

  Addie clicked on the link and a video screen popped open. A young reporter, blonde hair in a ponytail, stood at the edge of a dirt road holding a microphone. Helicopters circled above her head, causing her blue Windbreaker to ripple. It was barely daylight, the sky an eerie blue-gray. Addie notched up the volume.

  “We’re here live at the West Virginia compound owned by David and Helene Brown, where an intense standoff has been under way since just after midnight. According to our sources, the Browns are believed to be affiliated with a fringe neoconservative political group known as Judgment Day. No official word yet why the FBI descended on this remote property in the middle of the night, but anonymous sources have told CNN that the raid may be connected to the Adele Webster kidnapping.”

  Addie’s head went from pounding to dizzy. She gripped the edges of the computer and took small, shallow breaths.
The reporter continued.

  “While we wait for new developments, let’s go back to Brian in the studio for a look at what Judgment Day is and why its members may have drawn federal interest.”

  The reporter’s face shrank to a small rectangle in the corner of the screen, which was then filled by a dark-haired man sitting at an anchor’s desk.

  “Thank you, Amy,” he said. He turned and looked directly into the camera. A graphic appeared behind him: the scales of justice. But in place of a blindfold, Lady Justice had a tattered American flag wrapped around her eyes. In place of a sword, she gripped an automatic rifle. The words JUDGMENT DAY were scrawled in blood red across the image.

  “Here’s what we know,” the news anchor continued. “This is a radical conservative group that traces its origins to the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. The group formed in response to what it saw as a conspiracy to cover up what they believed was the true mastermind behind the attack: the U.S. government itself.”

  The image behind the anchor switched to side-by-side pictures of a middle-aged man and woman. The man’s head was shaved, but he had a long beard. The woman had dirty-blonde hair pulled into a severe ponytail. She wore no makeup and had a stern look on her face. Addie recoiled from the screen, heart racing. The anchor continued.

  “Formerly led by David and Helene Brown, Judgment Day garnered a hundred or so followers in its early years, but dwindled to just a handful of widely distributed supporters in the last decade. The Browns live here with their three children.…”

  The image switched again to a live aerial shot of a secluded compound surrounded by trees and a tall metal fence. Addie began to grow nauseous.

  “They are living almost entirely off the grid here,” the anchor said. “No connection to municipal water, sewage, or electric utilities. They raise their own livestock, grow their own produce. Sources say they are believed to be stockpiling weapons and survival gear. But no one really knows the Browns. Even in this rural town, where people pride themselves on their live-and-let-live attitude, the Browns are seen as loners and outsiders, only coming out of their compound to stock up on supplies at the local feed and grain store.”