File Zero

by Jack Mars

  The response was immediate chaos. Screams echoed throughout the surging crowd as they doubled their efforts to get off the bridge. Any NYPD or backup that was coming would have a hell of a time getting through, he realized.

  Raulsen rose slowly to his feet, staggering as a cameraman shoved his way past.

  Zero leveled the gun at him. “Don’t…”

  The Secret Service agent let out a roar and charged at him. Zero fired once, striking him in the shoulder, but Raulsen barely slowed. He swung his good hand wildly, blow after blow. Zero ducked and dodged as best he could.

  He didn’t want to kill Raulsen in clear view of the president and the Secret Service. As soon as the crowd dissipated, he’d be gunned down immediately. Though that’s probably already going to happen.

  He put up both forearms to block a hook and Raulsen swiftly drove a knee into his stomach. Zero grunted and staggered backward. But Raulsen didn’t let up; he brought one foot up and, while Zero was off balance, he kicked him in the chest. Zero’s hip hit a railing and he tumbled head over heels, landing painfully on the pedestrian footbridge.

  Raulsen vaulted over the railing and kicked the Sig Sauer from Zero’s hand before he could get it up in front of him. The gun skittered down the concrete walkway, several yards away. The Secret Service swung downward and landed a teeth-rattling crack across his jaw. Stars swam in Zero’s vision as he felt himself kicked again, turning him over. A thick arm snaked around his neck. He tried to tuck his chin in time, but Raulsen grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.

  Zero choked as his airway was cut off. He heard shouting behind him, the few Secret Service agents and NYPD officers that had remained behind to protect Pierson, but he had no idea where the president was. He tried to pry Raulsen from his neck, but he had only one good hand and felt the strength draining from it.

  Raulsen responded by squeezing harder. “I was supposed to let you live,” he hissed in Zero’s ear. “To keep you alive so you could take the fall. But then again, that bomb was supposed to go off, so I guess plans are out the window.”

  Zero struggled for breath as the edges of his vision darkened. It felt as if time slowed down as Raulsen choked the life from him. He heard the steady thrum of a helicopter’s rotors as an NYPD chopper flew toward the bridge from Manhattan. The screams of sirens as emergency vehicles fought the crowds to get to the president.

  I’m going to die here, he knew, but all he needed was another minute or two. Their plan had been thwarted. The bomb had not gone off. The cameras had caught nothing. And in moments, when SWAT and NYPD arrived, there would be too many witnesses to stage the assassination.

  He looked out over the East River, sparkling blue as the sun danced across its crests. There were worse views to die from. An orange and white Coast Guard skiff cut a swath through the river toward the bridge, sailing parallel to Roosevelt Island. Help was on the way.

  His daughters would be safe with Alan. Others would take up his cause. Keep fighting. Make sure that this was ended. And he, Zero, wasn’t going to die a presidential assassin.

  He heard a sharp hissing sound, almost a whistling, and before he could wonder if it was just in his head he saw an orange streak soaring skyward, trailing white smoke.

  The streak struck the side of the NYPD helicopter as it turned its nose toward the bridge. The chopper exploded in a fiery ball that somehow lit the afternoon brighter than the sun itself.

  “What the hell…” Raulsen breathed in his ear. His grip on Zero’s throat slackened, only slightly, as they both stared in abject bewilderment at the falling debris of the burning chopper.

  An RPG. A rocket-propelled grenade.

  Where did it come from?

  Zero sucked in a ragged breath, his throat and lungs burning horribly. “Raulsen,” he tried to say, but it came out as a choked gasp.

  He understood now. The RPG had been fired from the deck of the Coast Guard boat. The bomb in the podium—if there was even a bomb in the podium—wasn’t the plan at all. Raulsen was as much a pawn as Zero was.

  And as the thick arm around his neck fell slack, it seemed that the Secret Service agent was beginning to realize that as well.

  “Sons of bitches,” he murmured.

  Zero tried to raise his right arm, but it felt heavy, too heavy. The Ruger. His failsafe.

  With some effort, he lifted his catcher’s mitt–sized hand, broken and throbbing and wrapped in layers of steel and gauze, and he rested it on his right shoulder.

  His ring finger twitched, feeling the curve of the trigger of the LC9 he had concealed inside the dressing.

  Then he pulled it.

  The shot was startlingly loud in his ear, loud enough to send a rattling report through his own body. His hand burned in pain instantly, every broken bone and severed tendon screaming. The end of the wrapping blew outward, sending white bits of gauze into the air like confetti.

  Raulsen’s arm fell away from around his neck, and his body slumped to the concrete.

  Zero caught his breath, panting as he glanced over his shoulder. The bullet had caught Raulsen just beneath the right eye and out the other side.

  “Get up,” he muttered to himself. There was still a threat.

  A hail of gunfire split the air from behind him, jarring Zero into action. He pulled himself behind a thick metal trellis as sparks flew from the impact of bullets. The handful of NYPD officers and Secret Service agents fired on him from the opposite side of the bridge, hidden behind the concrete barricade.

  He couldn’t stay there. They’d flank him and take him out in seconds. But if he moved, they’d fire. Zero hazarded the briefest of glances around the railing, and then ducked back again as a shot bounced off the metal mere inches from his face.

  The black presidential car was still there and not going anywhere fast. The EMP grenade would have knocked it out. Pierson was likely inside it.

  He looked out over the river and saw, a hundred and thirty feet below, the hijacked Coast Guard skiff had slowed. From bridge height he could see figures on the deck, reloading the long shoulder-fired surface-to-air weapon with another missile.

  “Get off the bridge!” he tried to shout, but the intermittent gunfire drowned him out.

  The figure on the small boat lifted the RPG, aiming it upward at a sharp angle.

  Aiming it at him.

  Zero launched himself from his position. The choice between bullets and a warhead was not a choice at all. He heard the telltale hissing of the rocket approaching as he sprinted, or tried to sprint, down the pedestrian walkway.

  He didn’t get far. The RPG struck the Queensboro Bridge with a detonation that forced every muscle in his body to go lax. He felt the heat on his back as the force of the explosion threw him forward.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Zero caught the concrete with both elbows and a shoulder. He rolled twice, end over end, as rubble rained down on him.

  Slowly he managed to roll himself over. Everything hurt. One by one he wiggled each limb to make sure that nothing was broken, beyond the nine bones that had been previously. He groaned as he pulled himself to a seated position on the pedestrian walkway. His vision swirled; he was woozy, disoriented.

  White smoke drifted in his periphery. He heard sounds, but they seemed distant. People shouting in both pain and fear. Horns blaring. A deep, resonant creaking that he felt in his bowel.

  Pierson. Zero climbed to his feet and staggered forward into the smoky haze. His foot caught on something and he stumbled, nearly falling again. It was a Secret Service agent, or half of one. His eyes stared up at Zero unblinking.

  He felt dizzy again and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. It came away slick with blood. He was concussed, to say the least. Possible skull fracture. He’d deal with that later. He stumbled forward again, and then stopped just as suddenly as he saw the extent of the damage.

  “Jesus,” he murmured. The RPG had struck the upper level at an angle and blown away two and a half lanes. The e
normous hole was like a gaping mouth in the Queensboro Bridge with exposed rebar teeth. He could see clear down to the lower level, where great chunks of concrete had fallen and crushed cars. There were people down there, screaming, running, struggling to free themselves from the snarled mess of traffic and destroyed vehicles.

  He had seen this sort of devastation before, in what felt like a lifetime ago. Another bridge, much smaller, spanning a narrow river in Kuwait. An RPG had destroyed the entire bridge with a single shot, killing more than two dozen who had been trying to cross it.

  A Koronet anti-tank missile, he knew. One of the strongest RPGs available, capable of penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank.

  The bridge groaned, and Zero took two quick steps back as a section of unstable concrete fell away and caved in the roof of a car. The windows exploded outward. Zero looked away, hoping desperately that the car was empty.

  The car. He glanced left and right, and then spotted it: the black presidential town car was to his right, teetering precipitously on the edge of the chasm. It had been overturned in the explosion, resting on its roof.

  He rushed over to it and yanked on the rear door handle. It refused to open. “Help!” he shouted. But the emergency vehicles had stopped in their tracks; the bridge was unstable.

  He yanked on the door handle again. Where are the jets?! he thought furiously. Protocol for a situation like this one would be to immediately deploy fighter jets to eliminate the Coast Guard ship. It would take them no more than three or four minutes to arrive—but he had the feeling that whoever was responsible for calling in the air strike was purposely delaying it.

  Zero was on his own.

  He put one foot against the side of the car and wrenched on the door handle as hard as he could with one hand, teeth gritted and pain screaming through his limbs. Finally it popped free, sending Zero to the ground once again.

  He peered into the cab. A body was lying on the floor—the roof, in this case—and facing away from him.

  “Mr. President,” he panted. The body didn’t move. “Pierson.” He reached in and grabbed the man by the shoulder.

  “Oh.” Pierson groaned as he rolled over. His eyes immediately grew wide at the sight of his would-be rescuer. “Zero. How are you alive?”

  I ask myself the same thing pretty often. But instead he said, “We have to move. Now.”

  “You’re trying to kill me,” Pierson murmured.

  “No, sir. I’m the only one trying to save you right now. We don’t have time; we have to go—”

  Another cacophonous explosion rocked the bridge, sending Zero sprawling onto his back. He winced, waiting for fire to consume, or for the bridge to fall apart beneath him. When it didn’t, he dared to get to his feet.

  A wave of nausea roiled over him. The second RPG had struck the lower level, blasting a wide hole between bridge and water. Zero had seen some truly awful things in his life, but the sight of cars careening over the edge, falling away over one hundred and thirty feet of nothing and smacking the water, innocent people still inside them, made fury and disgust bubble up inside him.

  They’re not going to stop. The bridge groaned again; Pierson’s car shifted slightly as the concrete beneath it threatened to fall away.

  “I’m sorry,” Zero said urgently, “but we have to go.” He reached into the cab, took hold of the president’s collar, and hauled him out of the car. Pierson cried out, cradling his arm over his midsection.

  “I think my wrist is broken.” Pierson rolled over and got to his knees. He looked up at Zero, his gaze desperate and confused. “Why? Why is this happening?”

  Because of me. If he hadn’t gone to Pierson first, if he had just worked from the shadows and stopped this himself, this wouldn’t be happening.

  No. He refused to blame himself for the deaths of innocent people, of police, or for the attempted murder of the president. These people were going to do whatever they needed to do to enact their plan, one way or another. He wasn’t going to die on this bridge, and he wasn’t going to let the president die either.

  “Come on.” Zero hauled Pierson to his feet. “Look. Look down there.” He pointed down the length of the bridge, toward the Queens side. A little less than a half mile away was an armada of emergency vehicles, spanning the bridge’s width but not daring to go further while rockets were flying. “That’s your rescue, okay? That’s where we’re going. Run. Don’t stop. Don’t turn around. Got it?”

  Pierson nodded frantically, soot streaking his terrified face.

  “Good. Let’s go.” He grabbed Pierson’s sleeve and pulled him along at a jogging pace. The president limped, favoring his right leg and holding his broken wrist against his body.

  Zero knew that any moment, another RPG would hit the bridge. They can’t see us from below. They don’t know where we are. They don’t know if the president is still alive or not.

  Those thoughts were hardly comforting, particularly the last one; if the assailants didn’t know if they’d successfully taken Pierson out, they wouldn’t stop their assault until help arrived.

  “Don’t stop,” he prodded in a puffing breath. “Keep going. Eyes forward…”

  He heard the hiss of another rocket and yanked on Pierson’s sleeve, pulling the president closer. As the explosion thundered behind them, Zero covered Pierson’s head with both arms. The RPG struck a tower support less than twenty yards behind them, throwing metal shrapnel in every direction and sending both men flat to the ground again.

  Suspension cables snapped as the bridge groaned in protest. The tower twisted slowly, leaning over their heads.

  They’re going to bring the whole bridge down. “Back!” Zero ordered, tugging Pierson to his feet. “Go back!” He pulled the president as the tower leaned dangerously and toppled, smashing concrete with tons of steel and cracking straight through the upper level.

  Zero stared, slack-jawed, as their only exit was demolished. The path between them and Queens was gone.

  He felt a hand clutch desperately at his arm. “What do we do, Zero? What are we going to do?”

  There was only one thing they could do, only one way out from there. It was the very last thing that he wanted to do, but they were left with no choice.

  “We have to jump.”

  Pierson’s face drained of color as he shook his head. “No. No, Zero, no, we can’t. The fall will kill us.”

  The president was only half-wrong. A trained cliff diver or a Navy SEAL could make the jump from that height. Even Zero had made similar leaps on more than one occasion. But for someone untrained like Pierson, leaping into water from a hundred and thirty feet would be the equivalent of jumping from fifty feet onto cement.

  Wait. Zero had nearly forgotten about the backpack that Bixby had given him. He muttered a thanks to the prophetic inventor as he tore off his jacket and tossed it aside. “See this?” he said quickly as he clipped the straps together over his chest. “It’s a… it’s a parachute.”

  Pierson blinked several times. “You brought a parachute?”

  “Yes,” Zero lied. He wasn’t about to tell the president that he was hinging their survival on the efficacy of a prototype hang glider small enough to fit in a backpack. “So we’re going to jump, together, and we’re going to be okay. But you need to hang onto me.”

  Pierson shook his head again. “Zero, I can’t jump. I can’t…”

  “Just listen!” he snapped. “If you fall, make sure you fall feet first and keep your back as straight as possible. Breathe out. Clench everything. Do you understand?”

  “Zero, I can’t do it. I can’t.” The president was rambling, his head twitching back and forth, his gaze terror-stricken. “I can’t. I’ll die.”

  Zero grabbed Pierson by the lapels and shook him. “You’ll die here!” he hissed. “Is that what you want?”

  “No!” Pierson yelped.

  “Then come on.” He pulled Pierson back toward the blown-out tower support, a jagged hole on the side of the bridge exposed t
o the East River below. “When we reach the water, we’ll swim to Roosevelt Island. It’s only a couple hundred yards.” He looked down, and suddenly doubted his plan.

  One hundred and thirty feet was a long drop.

  A bitter realization struck him: If this glider doesn’t work, maybe I will be responsible for killing the president after all.

  He couldn’t think like that now, nor could he afford to wait and consider their options any further. It was now or never.

  “God help us,” Pierson murmured. He reached out and gripped Zero’s arm.

  “We jump on three,” Zero told him. “One… two…”

  The hissing of the rocket drowned out the finale of his countdown. An RPG struck the lower level of the bridge not thirty yards from their location, startling them both and shaking the ground they stood on.

  Time felt as if it slowed down as Pierson’s legs quaked and buckled. The president lurched forward, his arms flailing but finding nothing on which to gain purchase.

  “No!” Zero bent his knees as Pierson tumbled out over nothing. Then he catapulted himself from the bridge as hard as he could, reaching out with both hands. His arms wrapped around Pierson as they fell together, rolling in midair over and over as the wind tore at them.

  Zero had no choice but to let go with one hand. He ripped at the cord by his right shoulder. He heard the glider unfurl behind him, saw in his periphery a sky-blue sailcloth expand on either side of them.

  The glider caught the breeze, yanking hard on both of Zero’s shoulders. He grunted and held as tightly as he could onto Pierson as their descent slowed, gliding on a forty-five-degree angle downward.

  “Don’t let me go!” Pierson shouted.

  Zero gritted his teeth, struggling to maintain a hold and steer the device at the same time. Then he heard a sound that immediately caused his stomach to turn. The aluminum frame groaned.

  This isn’t designed for two adult men.

  As soon as he thought it, the frame buckled. The glider folded inward, the sailcloth flapping wildly. Pierson cried out again as they half-fell, half-glided in a tight spiral down to the East River.