File Zero

by Jack Mars

  “We’re going to run out of road,” Maria said, gripping the handle over her window. “They waited to see where we’d go. You know there’s going to be a roadblock before the next exit.”

  “I know,” Zero grunted. To their left was a concrete median dividing the two sets of lanes; to the right were metal guardrails. Neither side was an option. He was boxed into a corridor with cops behind him and, judging by the shining red brake lights he saw in the distance, Maria was right about a roadblock.

  He swerved onto the shoulder to veer around a car in the slow lane and then careened back to the asphalt. The cops stayed on pace, side by side, barely more than a few feet between them. Zero kept the rearview in his periphery as he veered left and right; each time he did, the headlights of the cruisers moved in sync with him.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. He was hoping to separate them, drive a wedge wide enough to get between the two cars, but they weren’t going to let him. They were going to run out of road in less than a mile.

  “Give me a gun,” Sanders offered.

  “Fat chance.” Maria pulled a Glock 17 from a handbag at her feet.

  “Wait,” said Zero. “Grab the wheel. And hold onto something.”

  Maria reached over and took the steering wheel in one hand, the other firmly gripping the handle over the door. Behind them, Sanders braced herself. Zero reached for the Sig Sauer he had tucked in his pants.

  Then he slammed the brake.

  The tires screamed and the brakes screeched as the car skidded. The acrid smell of burning rubber filled the cab almost immediately, and the two cruisers behind them, close as they were to each other, both slammed into the back of the black sedan.

  The trunk crumpled and the impact jostled Zero forward. He put his arms up as he bounced against the steering wheel. He shook it off as the force of the two cruisers continued to push their car forward, and then he leaned out the window and fired several shots at the two cars behind him.

  The gunshots cracked the night air. Oncoming cars swerved wildly at the sound, unsure of where the shooting was coming from but knowing what it meant. He avoided the windshields, and the cars were too close for him to shoot the tires. Instead he shot at the hoods in a rough approximation of the engine, hoping to hit a vital organ of the cruisers.

  Then he slung himself back into the car and slammed the gas again. The car lurched forward as he spun the wheel, fishtailing in a tight arc, and was off like a shot, going the wrong direction down the highway. He flicked off the headlights and rode the line between the lane and the shoulder to avoid oncoming traffic.

  A glance in the rearview told him that the cruisers were not disabled, but slow to resume the chase. He also caught a glimpse of Sanders. Her eyes were wide and her face had paled. “You all right back there?”

  “Surviving,” she murmured.

  “Zero, look out!” Maria grabbed onto the steering wheel and jerked it to the right as two cars ahead of them swerved sideways, forming a barricade.

  He clenched his jaw as the right side of the car scraped against the concrete median, throwing a shower of sparks behind them. He pressed the pedal to the floor; the engine roared and the car jumped forward. They slammed into the rear bumper of one of the perpendicular cars and pushed it out of their way.

  Shots rang out and smacked the driver’s side door. Zero instinctively put an arm up. As if that would somehow protect me against bullets, he noted wryly.

  “Suits and unmarked cars,” Maria reported, craning her neck for a look at the cars quickly getting smaller behind them. “Looks like Feds.”

  “Great,” Zero grunted. He weaved in and out from lane to shoulder to avoid the headlights ahead of him. “We have to get off this road before more come.” He saw only one way to do that. “What’s back there?” He pointed off the side of the highway, beyond the metal guardrail and the trees.

  “Um… on this stretch, that would be the Potomac,” Maria told him. Then she did a double-take as she realized why he was asking. “No. Don’t even think about it.”

  “Just hang on.” The red and blue flashers in the rearview were gaining again. The FBI cars were somewhere back there too, headlights going in the wrong direction to pursue them. And up ahead, less than a half mile away, were more oncoming police.

  They think I’ve only got two ways to go—forward or back. So let’s make a new way.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you drive.” Maria braced an arm against the dashboard. Sanders put both arms up to cover her head.

  Zero yanked the wheel to the left and angled the car directly toward the guardrail at seventy miles an hour.

  This type of guardrail, he knew, was designed to slow a vehicle down if it was veering off the road. They were specifically tested for a dispersion of energy. They were not, contrary to popular belief, made to sustain a direct impact. In fact, most modern guardrails were mounted on wooden posts for that precise reason—to break if a car hit one head-on.

  The black sedan smashed into the guardrail and a twenty-foot section of it broke, like driving through a fence. The car rolled over it, bouncing its passengers violently. Zero’s head smacked the roof of the car. A horrible grinding noise told him that the steel rail had torn something out of the undercarriage.

  But the momentum of the car carried it forward, down a slight embankment and into the trees. He steered as best he could over stones and ruts in the grass, directing the car between tall, thin-trunked firs. They were eighty feet from the highway before he finally stopped.

  “Go,” he told them breathlessly. “Get out and get lost. Both of you.”

  “What?” Maria exclaimed. “No, we’re not leaving you—”

  “There’s no time. They’ll see the brake lights from the highway. Go with Sanders. Get the documents. I’ll find you.”

  Sanders unclipped her seat belt and pushed the door open, but Maria didn’t move. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to lose them.” He tried to have some conviction in the words, but the truth was that he wasn’t certain he’d make it out of this. But if he could at least distract their pursuers, Maria could get away. She could retrieve the documents, and he knew she would stop at nothing to get them into the right hands.

  “Didn’t we just have this conversation?” Maria argued. “It’s not you against the world.”

  “I know that.” He reached over his body and squeezed her arm with his good hand. “But I need you out there. If anything happens to me someone else needs to keep this going. We’re of no use to anyone if we’re both caught.” He saw in the rearview that the red and blue flashers had come to a stop at the top of the embankment, where the sedan had burst through the guardrail. Several pairs of headlights were clustered close together, and he could see figures passing in front of them. “There’s no time to argue. Just—”

  Maria grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him close, pressing her mouth against his. It took him by surprise; he didn’t even get the chance to return the kiss before she pulled away. “See you soon.” She grabbed up her black handbag, pushed the door open, and hurried out into the night after Sanders.

  Not two seconds after she’d left a spotlight swept over the sedan from the embankment behind him, half blinding Zero as he glanced in the rearview.

  They’ll have to pursue me on foot. He reached for the door handle when something jumped in the side mirror—headlights, bouncing and then angling downward.

  “Oh, shit.” A black Jeep with powerful halogen high beams and thick-treaded tires rumbled down the embankment toward him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The headlights in the rearview mirror leveled out as the Jeep reached the bottom of the embankment, the chassis bouncing on powerful shocks. Zero could hear voices over its engine, shouts of people following the vehicle on foot, likely cops and Feds alike.

  “All right,” he murmured to the car, “just need you to go a little further. Please don’t die on me.” He eased his foot off the brake and the black
sedan rolled forward. Bright red warning lights blared on the dashboard—the engine was getting hot, he was leaking oil, tire pressure was low, and he’d lost power steering—but he ignored them and pressed his foot gently on the gas.

  The car’s engine groaned, but it held. He drove forward deeper into the trees, navigating carefully and with some difficulty. It was no easy task to steer one-handed without power steering, and with the headlights off the trees appeared quickly. Still he gave it a little more gas and dared to speed up to twenty-five.

  The Jeep behind him roared closer, but the people on foot wouldn’t be able to catch up to him at this pace. Then he heard another sound, over the Jeep’s engine; it was the rotors of a helicopter. No sooner did he recognize the sound than a powerful spotlight shone down from above, bathing a section of the forest in fragmented blue light filtering down from between the canopies of the fir trees. The spotlight swept left and right, and then finally caught his car.

  “Great,” he groaned as he wrenched the wheel to swerve around a thin tree just ahead. It was a tight fit; the trunk of the tree swiped off the passenger-side mirror. “Even better.”

  He glanced in the rearview for the Jeep and saw its bouncing headlights in pursuit of him. Gaining steadily. Who was in it, he didn’t know—and didn’t much want to find out.

  Shots rang out. The rear windshield exploded, scattering bits of glass throughout the cab. Zero winced and shielded his face, but did not slow. Instead he pushed the pedal harder, daring to jump to thirty-five. The helicopter’s spotlight still had the car engulfed, so he flicked on the headlights. There was no hiding from them.

  More shots pierced the night, sharp and jarring even over the sounds of the helicopter and the approaching Jeep. He heard metal smack against metal. They’re shooting indiscriminately. So much for taking me alive.

  The gears ground horribly under the hood as he tried to speed up again. The car refused; in fact, the engine sputtered and clanked. “Hold out,” he begged it. “Just hold out a little longer.”

  There was no such luck. The engine clanked twice more and died. The car rolled another twenty feet or so and then slowed to a stop.

  “Dammit!” He awkwardly reached over himself and twisted the key in the ignition to the off position, and then tried to turn the engine over again. It chugged once, but failed. “Come on!”

  Wait a second. Zero paused and looked around quickly. He heard voices shouting out there in the dark woods, but he did not hear the roar of the Jeep’s engine. There’s no way I lost it. They must be out there somewhere…

  As soon as he thought it, powerful floodlights kicked on to his left, nearly blinding him. The waiting Jeep roared and rumbled rapidly toward him.

  All he could do was cover his head as it slammed into the side of the sedan. The entire left side of the car lifted from the ground and then came crashing back down with a stupendous bounce that sent Zero’s head once again smacking into the roof.

  He groaned as the Jeep backed up several feet. The engine revved, seemingly ready for a second ramming. Instead it idled, and he heard the sound of a car door opening and closing.

  Zero reached down past his hip for the seat lever and pulled it. The driver’s seat fell backward, the headrest hitting the bench seat in the rear as several pistol shots cracked. The bullets whistled over him and blew out the passenger-side window, passing through the space where his head had been only a second earlier.

  He lay back like that for a moment, though it felt like an eternity, just listening. The Jeep’s engine rumbled in park. The helicopter hovered over the trees, illuminating the sedan from above. Voices shouted in the distance as people on foot caught up to them.

  Then a twig snapped. Footfalls, getting closer. A male voice called out, singsong: “Zero? You dead yet?”

  I know that voice. Where do I know that voice from?

  He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. The footfalls stopped, and the voice called out again. But this time, it wasn’t to him. It was to someone with him in the Jeep. “Hey. Give me that SAW. I want to make good and sure.”

  Zero’s heart raced. SAW, he knew, stood for “squad automatic weapon.” An M249 light machine gun. It’ll shred this car in seconds—and me with it.

  He had to take a risk. Gripping the Sig Sauer in his left, he popped up, took a half second to aim, and fired off three shots. Sparks flew as he hit the Jeep’s hood. One of the headlights blew out. In the suddenly dim light, he saw a figure crouch instinctively, hitting the deck.

  He squinted in the darkness as the figure slowly looked up at him. They locked eyes for the briefest of moments.

  The man was tall, lean, with angular features and sandy hair. Zero did know him; he had last seen that face when it was trying to kill him in the freight train depot of Marseille-Saint Charles, France.

  Carver. Watson’s former partner. A man who had fled for his life from Zero and, allegedly, the CIA was going to track down and bring in.

  Agent Carver sneered and scrambled to his feet. “The SAW! Give me the SAW!”

  More shots rippled from the darkness of the trees. Zero ducked back again and covered his head, unsure of where they were coming from. Bullets slapped the grille of the Jeep and blew out its other headlight as Carver once again flopped to the dirt.

  Maria. It must have been her, unless the cops and agents were firing blindly in the dark. He was glad for the assist, but wished she would just get herself clear.

  He reached over himself again and awkwardly twisted the key in the ignition. “Come on,” he grunted. “I need help here.” The engine chugged a couple of times, but choked and died. “Just a little further. Come on!” He twisted the key anew, so hard he thought it might break off in the ignition column.

  The engine wheezed and kicked over, sending a strong burning odor through the air vents. It sounded like a wounded animal, but it stayed on.

  “Thank you,” he sighed. He pulled the selector into drive and pressed the gas. The car lurched, threatened to stall out for a moment, and then rolled forward. He pulled the wheel to the right with his one good hand, edging closer to a thick stand of trees.

  A salvo of automatic gunfire slammed into the back of the car. Taillights burst and Zero winced, keenly aware that a single bullet to the gas tank would be the end of him. He gritted his teeth and took a chance, slamming the pedal down. The car lurched between two trees. Branches bent and snapped; the trunks on either side scraped and groaned against the panels, but the car squeezed through. The front driver’s side tire bounced against a large stone and sent Zero smacking against the steering column. His injured hand throbbed with pain, but he did his best to ignore it and pushed forward.

  The Jeep’s rumbling faded. It’s too big to get through. At least he hoped. But he had another problem: voices. They were getting closer. The stall and brief altercation with Carver had allowed the cops and agents on foot to gain some ground, and they weren’t far.

  He leaned out the window with the Sig Sauer, doing his best to keep the car on a straight path with his knees, and fired three shots into the darkness. He had no idea where the voices were coming from, but as the echoes of the blasts dissipated he heard panicked cries fleeing away from him.

  Where is it? he thought desperately. Where is the river? The Potomac was supposed to be on the other side of this stretch of woods. He didn’t have a plan once he reached it; well, he did, but it was simply to drive the car straight into it, jump out, and let the current carry him downstream until he was able to climb out on the other side. The Potomac runs parallel to the stretch of I-95 where I jumped the barrier; it shouldn’t be this far—

  “Shit!” He pressed his entire weight on the brake pedal. The car was slow to respond, brakes squealing horribly, white smoke pouring out from under the hood. Zero groaned as he yanked the wheel to one side. The car slid with it, coming to a stop at the edge of a cliff.

  He panted. Glancing out his window showed him that he’d brought the car to a stop less than two fe
et from the sheer drop of about sixty feet to rushing water below.

  “Great,” he muttered breathlessly. “That’s great.” His getaway plan had been soured by a sheer drop into the river.

  Otets. He remembered the Russian mobster, not from his life before but from only a few months prior, before he had truly known who he was. He had driven a car right off of a cliff with his prisoner, and they’d both jumped before the car hit the water.

  The rotors of the helicopter roared closer as it sought him again, the sweeping spotlight making him squint in the sudden blue light.

  I could do it again now. It would, perhaps, be his best option. Take the plunge, literally, and drive into the river. The helicopter would catch it all. Would it be enough for them to assume he was dead? A man presumed dead could get a lot farther than one being pursued by every law enforcement agency in the nation.

  “Okay,” he told himself. “Let’s do it.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and then shifted the car into reverse, hoping it had just enough life left in it to go over the edge.

  With the headlights out, he didn’t see the Jeep coming. By the time he heard the roaring engine, he had just enough time to look to the right, through the shattered passenger-side window, before he saw the black shape of it barreling toward him.

  The cow-catcher on the front of the Jeep slammed into the side of the sedan and sent it hurtling sideways over the cliff. The last thing Zero remembered was putting his hands over his head, bracing his arms against the roof of the car as it flipped, over and over, plummeting sixty feet. The car struck the river’s surface. Then everything was black.

  *

  Agent Carver stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the dark water of the Potomac River rushing by below. The helicopter hovered overhead, its powerful spotlight illuminating the exposed underside of the battered sedan as it sank.