by Jack Mars
As they rapidly approached it Zero realized that Carver wasn’t slowing down. He ducked his head as the motorcycle eked under the door and into the empty bay. Then Carver decelerated quickly, whipping the rear tire around as he did. Zero jumped off the back and slammed the garage bay door closed, grunting as he pushed it with one hand. Carver cut the engine and tugged off his helmet.
The sudden silence was deafening after the roar of the motorcycle and the echo of gunshots. Neither of them spoke for a long moment, listening intently for the sounds of sirens or engines approaching but hearing only the blood rushing in their own ears.
“All right,” said Carver at last. He kept his voice low, but still it echoed in the wide empty garage bay. “I think we’re s—”
Zero pointed the MP5 at the renegade agent’s nose. “Start talking.”
Carver put both his hands up around his ears, but he didn’t back down or shrink away. “I don’t expect you to trust me, but I just saved your life, killed two men, and gave you a gun. You think I did all that just to get you alone?”
“You couldn’t wait to get me alone before, back in the freight yard in France.”
Carver looked away. “I know. It’s no excuse, but I was following orders. I thought I was on the right side.” He glanced up and his somber gaze met Zero’s. “I was wrong.”
They were following an order, just like I was. Cartwright’s last words came back to him, uttered only a minute before the Division gunned him down. We’ve all been lied to.
Was Cartwright talking about Carver? Did he somehow know that the formerly rogue agent was coming to Zero’s aid?
“Please, just let me say what I came here to say,” Carver implored, “and then if you still want to shoot me, well… you’re the one holding the gun.”
“Tell me.”
“They’re going to pin Cartwright’s murder on you,” Carver told him. “They’re going to say that they heard gunshots, and by the time they got there it was too late. They’re making you out to be delusional. And then…” Carver slowly lowered his arms to his sides. “And then they’re going to kill him.”
“Him who?” Zero demanded.
“The president, Zero. They’re going to assassinate the president, and they’re going to make Iran the scapegoat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The barrel of the MP5 wavered shakily in his grip. His palm was sweating and his shoulder was already aching from the chase and the bullet that had grazed him. Zero slowly lowered the gun, trying to process what Carver had told him.
“Why? How?”
“You changed the game when you went to Pierson directly,” Carver told him. “Despite everything they try to tell him about you and your intentions, you still planted a seed of doubt in his head. He refuses to openly declare war on Iran. Now they’re closing the strait. It’s a huge wrench in their plot. And this was a very expensive plot, Zero. They’re not just going to give up on it.”
“But… killing Pierson?” He shook his head. He couldn’t conceive of a higher form of treason, of betrayal, of deceit. “Did you actually hear someone say that explicitly?”
“No.” Carver shook his head. “Of course not. I would’ve gotten it on audio if I could. Riker only alluded to it, but the message was clear to me.”
“When?” Zero asked, still shell-shocked.
“I don’t know. But it’s going to be soon. Pierson still thinks you’re dead, so now he’s back in DC. The attack just now wasn’t only to take out Cartwright; it was to confirm that you were here too. Riker knew you would come.” Carver looked away. “I was supposed to kill you.”
Zero rubbed his forehead with the back of his bandaged hand. “Do you know how they’ll do it? Anything more to go on at all?”
Carver shook his head ruefully. “No. I’m sorry. They’re very careful about the intel they let out. As soon as I realized what they were going to do, I came to you. We’ve had our differences—”
“You tried to kill me,” Zero corrected.
“I’m not denying it. But this is bigger than you or me. If they take out Pierson, then the VP will take office, and he’s in their pocket. It’ll be open season on the Middle East, and they’ll have the full support of the American people.”
And that’s what they’ll do with anyone who isn’t in their corner, Zero realized. Not just Cartwright or Pierson, but any high-ranking official who might be able to pull the rug out from under them—chief among them, Maria’s father on the National Security Council, who Zero already knew was not in on the plot. At least he hadn’t been two years ago.
The gravity of the situation was finally beginning to sink in. Everything that Carver was telling him made morbid sense: Kill the president, blame Iran, and get their war. It was a necessary circumvention that they hadn’t planned for but would still work to the same ends.
And there was no way in hell he was going to let it happen.
“I still don’t trust you, Carver. But I believe that you’re trying to do the right thing.” He held up the MP5. “I’m keeping this.” Then he gestured to the motorcycle. “And I’m taking that.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
“To stop it.” Zero strode over to the sports bike.
Carver scoffed behind him. “Jesus, you are predictable. Don’t you realize they’re counting on that? They know you’re not dead! They want you to try to get to Pierson! I’m telling you this so you can get as far away from here as you can. Get your girls and disappear.”
Zero spun on him. “And let Pierson die? Let them get their way? If they’re successful, it wouldn’t matter where I go. I’d be on the run forever. So would my daughters.”
“You can’t be Agent Zero. He’s not this stupid—”
Zero spun on Carver angrily. “What was that?”
“I just risked my goddamn life to get you out of there and tell you this!” Carver practically shouted. “Not just so you can march in there and put yourself in the line of fire!”
“You don’t need to worry about what I’m going to do.” Zero stepped closer to him until their noses were only inches apart. “What are you going to do with this, Carver? Are you going to run and hide somewhere too, hope this all just passes and no one figures you out? Or are you going to help?”
Carver struggled to meet his gaze. “Help how?” he asked quietly.
“Do they know you’ve turned on them?”
“No. Not unless someone can identify me at the shootout. The only two that I know saw me are dead.”
“Then go back to them,” Zero said, “and try to figure out what their play is. How they’re going to do it.”
“I’ll need a number to contact you.”
Zero shook his head. “I still don’t trust you, remember? You give me a way to contact you.”
Carver nodded slowly. “All right, Zero. I will.” He huffed a breath. “Never really thought I’d live all that long anyway.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a white card with a number printed on it and nothing else. “Reach me here. Don’t check in too often.”
Zero pushed the MP5 back into the leather saddlebag of the motorcycle and then mounted it, noting with irritation the pain in his legs and left knee. “One more thing. Johansson and Sanders were taken into custody by the Division. Try to find out where they are.”
“Sure,” Carver muttered. “No sweat.” He strode over to the motorcycle and held out his left hand. “When all this is over, I hope we’ll be square. I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
Zero hesitated, but he shook Carver’s hand, pumping it once in the air. “If you’re telling the truth, then yeah. We’ll be square.” He pushed the helmet over his head and started up the bike while Carver hefted the garage door up enough for him to get out. The engine roared, and the motorcycle took off like a shot out into the industrial complex.
His mind raced just as fast as the pistons beneath him. They won’t try to kill Pierson in the White House, he reasoned. They’ll do it in public, wher
e they can make up an easier story about how Iranian terrorists might have gotten to him.
He needed to know where the president was going to be, and fast.
Zero piloted the motorbike about three miles east, parallel to the waterfront and closer to DC, keeping an alert eye all around for cops and black Jeeps. Finally he slowed and parked in the small lot of a public park, leaving the helmet on the bike seat and walking among the trees as he made a call on the burner.
Strickland answered midway through the first ring.
“Either you’re three hundred miles west,” he said flatly, “or you found the tracker in the car.”
“Sorry,” Zero told him, “but I told you I didn’t want to be followed, and you’re predictable. I’ve got a situation. A dire one.”
“Are you saying you need help?” To Strickland’s credit, he kept the tone of amusement out of his voice.
“Yes. I need help. I need you and Watson to meet me at the Third Street Garage in Alexandria. I’ll be waiting.”
*
Carver closed the rolling garage door behind the motorcycle and waited until the high-pitched whine vanished in the distance. Alone in the cavernous bay, he pulled out his phone and made the call.
“Yes?” Deputy Director Riker answered the phone curtly.
“It’s done.”
“He bought it?”
“Seems that way,” Carver told her. “He ran off to do something about it. Just like you said he would.”
“Good. Does he trust you?”
Carver scoffed. “Of course not. But I promised him intel. I need something to give him when he calls. The two women that were caught, Johansson and the other one… He wants to know where they are.”
“For now? They’re at Langley Air Force Base at the moment, being put on a plane bound for H-6. But I don’t suspect they’ll be there for long.”
“Why not?” Carver asked.
But Riker didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I’ve got something for you to give him. Tell him who’s going to do it. Tell him who’s going to be the one to pull the trigger on the president.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
“Mmph.” Maria groaned as she came around. Her senses were dulled, her vision fuzzy. She smelled diesel fuel and felt a rumbling beneath her. She was sitting on a hard bench seat, in a dimly lit corridor.
She tried to move her arms and metal bit into her wrists. Her hands were cuffed tightly behind her back.
“Welcome back,” Sanders muttered from beside her. She was cuffed as well.
Maria winced at the pain in her cheek and jaw. She remembered walking away from the meeting with Cartwright. She remembered getting about two blocks away before the black Jeep screeched to a halt in front of them. The Division had found them. She had freed her Glock and fired off several shots while she and Sanders ran for it.
Then she had turned a corner, and the last thing she remembered was the butt of an automatic rifle speeding toward her head.
Now the two of them were seated in the back of a cargo plane, military by the looks of it, to a narrow bench seat bolted to the side of the hold. A thick-necked soldier in a drab green shirt and fatigue pants stood nearby, a rifle cradled in his arms as he kept watch over them. Three other soldiers tugged a supply pallet up the ramp of the plane on a jack.
She worked her jaw around in slow circles to make sure nothing was broken. “How’s my face?” she asked. Her words were slightly slurred with the pain and the haze of recent unconsciousness.
“It’s looked better,” Sanders admitted. “Do you have any idea where they’re taking us?”
“Yup,” Maria murmured. “I sure do.” She was certain they were going to Hell Six in Morocco, the CIA black site where the agency dumped people they wanted forgotten.
“Hey,” the soldier growled. “No talking.”
Maria shot him a glare as the other three soldiers parked the stacked pallet a few feet from them and then headed down the ramp for another. She didn’t have to ask where they were; she knew they’d be at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia. It wasn’t uncommon for H-6 prisoners to be transported by cargo plane during supply runs to the black site.
She switched to Ukrainian as she asked, “How many outside?”
“Besides the four soldiers, there were two Division men in the Jeep that brought us here,” Sanders answered in Ukrainian.
“That’s all? Just two?” She frowned. The Division and CIA might not know who Sanders was, but Maria would have thought that she’d be a higher security risk than just two men.
“The others ran off while we were still in Georgetown, after something else.”
Cartwright. Maria hoped he was all right. Their meeting had been a trap. They had been watching, letting it happen, and it was more than likely that they now had the documents in their possession.
“I thought I told you to shut up,” the soldier snapped.
“Or what?” Maria challenged in English. She turned the uninjured side of her face toward him. “Are you going to make me symmetrical?”
The soldier curled a lip and hoisted his rifle in both hands, but didn’t point it at her.
“Can you get out of those?” she murmured to Sanders in Ukrainian.
“I am working on it.” Maria heard a slight pop as Sanders dislocated a thumb, all without the slightest grimace or wince. She couldn’t help but be mildly impressed. “Can you slip yours?”
“Too tight,” Maria told her. “But I’ll manage.”
Sanders scoffed. “Too tight? I thought you were a CIA super-spy.”
“Shut up!” The soldier brought his rifle to his shoulder, his face growing red.
There was chatter on the plane as the three other soldiers pulled another pallet up the ramp, idly talking about a baseball game from the night before. One of them glanced over, noticed that the guard had his rifle aloft, and grinned.
“What’s the matter, Burnside?” he taunted. “These ladies giving you grief?”
“They won’t shut their damn mouths,” he grunted.
“Don’t go shooting up the plane now.” The three soldiers chuckled as they headed back down the ramp. “Two more pallets and we’ll be done.”
The thick-necked guard lowered the rifle, but continued to scowl down at Maria. “Keep it up,” he warned her. “Because I’m making this trip with you.”
“That so?” Maria smiled up at him sweetly.
“Mm-hmm.” He nodded, leaning over and sneering in her face. “And that means I’ll be there to watch them pull your teeth out, one by one, with a pair of pliers—”
Sanders vaulted up from her seat in an instant and whipped the vacant handcuffs around Burnside’s neck. She put both knees into the small of his back, looped her fingers in the closed cuffs, and bared her teeth as she leaned her body weight backward.
The big soldier’s tongue lolled out of his mouth as he choked. The AR-15 fell from his grip and clattered to the floor of the plane as he fell backward. Sanders grunted as his weight fell upon her, but she kept the tension on the chain biting into his throat.
Maria wasted no time. She lifted her butt and quickly maneuvered the handcuff chain down past her thighs, her knees, and then her ankles. With her hands now in front of her, she snatched up the AR-15.
“Don’t kill him,” she hissed. Burnside’s face was turning purple.
“What?” Sanders asked in bewilderment. “Why not?”
“He’s just an Army grunt following orders. Don’t kill him.”
Sanders scoffed, but she released the pressure on the handcuff chain. The soldier sucked in a ragged gulp of air just before the Ukrainian spy dropped an elbow on his temple. Maria passed off the assault rifle to her—it would do her little good with her wrists cuffed together—and relieved the unconscious soldier of his sidearm.
“Yo, Burnside!” The three other soldiers were coming up the ramp again with the pallet jack. “Those ladies still giving you a hard time?”
Maria spun around the
supply pallet with the pistol raised while Sanders went the opposite way with the assault rifle. “Hands on your head,” Maria ordered.
“Jesus—” one of them started.
“Quiet,” Maria ordered. “Hands on your head and get on your knees.”
The three soldiers did as they were told. None of them were carrying weapons as they loaded the plane.
“Are those two Division guys still out there?” she asked quickly.
One of the soldiers gulped and nodded. “They said they’d stay until the plane took off.”
“Stay here,” Maria ordered, “just like this. You move, you die.” She turned to Sanders and said in Ukrainian, “We’ll have to move quickly. You shoot. I’ll drive.”
“Oh, so I can kill these two then?” Sanders asked.
“Fire away.” Maria led the way quickly down the ramp with Sanders right on her six, the AR-15 against her shoulder.
The two Division members stood near the rear bumper of their black Jeep, chatting idly. One of them glanced up and saw the two women striding down the loading ramp. A lit cigarette fell from between his lips.
Sanders fired off a burst of three rounds and ended him. His buddy jumped, startled by the sudden gunfire. He was cut down before he even realized what was happening.
Maria scanned the runway. There were always military planes parked on the Langley AFB tarmac—fighter jets, Warthogs, cargo planes—but there didn’t seem to be anyone in the vicinity.
Still, someone would have heard the shots, and the soldiers on the plane wouldn’t stay still for long. Maria jumped into the driver’s seat of the Jeep. The keys were dangling from the ignition. Sanders slid in beside her, and Maria gunned the accelerator.
A quick glance in the rearview mirror as they sped away showed her the three soldiers running out of the plane, waving their arms and shouting for help. They wouldn’t be alone for long.