Trapping Zero

by Jack Mars

  “And then report back to them with everything we’ve found together?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I was only doing it to get intel, and then I was going to walk away—”

  “Do you really think they’re going to give you what you want if it means they’ll lose you as an asset?” he asked, his voice sounding harsher than he intended.

  Maria closed her eyes. “No. I suppose they wouldn’t.”

  As irritated as he was, it was hardly the time to argue. “Alright, so tell me about Russia,” he prompted instead. “How are they involved in this?”

  “I don’t know much,” she admitted. “The Ukrainians believe that Russia’s intent is to seize oil-producing assets in the Black Sea, and possibly more. The people I’ve been working with think they might even invade. The collusion with the US would mean that we don’t intervene. It can’t be happenstance that Russia has been slowly increasing their presence in the Middle East these last two years.” She glanced up at him.

  Reid had to agree; collusion or not, just the simple fact that the alleged Brotherhood members had been captured at the same time that he and Maria worked out the potential plot was extremely suspect.

  “There might be a way for us to confirm it,” he said. “Let’s head back to the house. You got a burner?”

  “In the glove box.” Maria started the car as Reid pulled out his own cell phone, and then popped open the glove compartment and dug out the burner phone.

  He glanced up briefly as they eased down the street past Cartwright’s house and he could have sworn he saw a silhouette in the window. But it could have just been his imagination.

  Reid punched a number from his own phone into the burner and made a call. It rang three times before Strickland answered.

  “Hello?” he said warily.

  “Todd, it’s Kent,” Reid said urgently. “I need a favor.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Do you think you could get in contact with your pal Sergeant Flagg at H-6?” he asked. “It would have to be discreet—non-CIA channels only. A personal cell, or a secure frequency, something like that?”

  “Hmm.” Strickland thought for a moment. “We have a few Special Forces friends in common. I’d have to make a few calls to some old buddies, but I think I could do it. And what would you like me to say to Sergeant Flagg?”

  “There are five new detainees on their way to H-6, if they’re not there already. Supposedly they’re the last five members of the Brotherhood.”

  “They were captured?” Strickland said in surprise.

  Interesting, Reid thought, how none of the agents on the op were informed of that.

  “I’m not so sure,” he told Strickland. “I need to know who they are and what, if anything, they’ve said so far. And I need to know five minutes ago.”

  “On it,” Strickland confirmed and hung up.

  Reid turned to Maria as she drove them back towards Alexandria. “What do you think the odds are that Flagg will be honest?”

  “To a fellow soldier? Probably pretty good,” Maria noted. “We just have to hope that—”

  Reid’s personal cell phone rang in his hand. It couldn’t have been Strickland calling back, not that quickly. He glanced at the screen and furrowed his brow. “It’s an international number. Should I answer?”

  Maria frowned, but nodded. As Reid’s thumb maneuvered over the green button, the ringing stopped.

  “That’s strange,” he said quietly. Who would be calling me from…? He reached into his pocket for the white business card there, pulled it out, and compared the number to the one displayed on his call log. Aha. He dialed Talia Mendel’s number from the burner.

  “Agent Zero?” she asked.

  “Hello, Talia.”

  Maria glanced over at him sharply. He almost smirked at the small hint of jealousy, and put the call on speaker for her benefit.

  “You’ve no doubt heard the news,” Talia said over the phone.

  “Just now,” Reid confirmed, certain she was talking about the capture of the Brotherhood members.

  “I don’t believe it either,” she said shortly.

  Reid exchanged a glance with Maria. “What makes you say that?”

  “There is a second ship missing from the port at Haifa,” said Agent Mendel. “A fishing vessel, part of a tour operator’s fleet. It wasn’t previously on my radar because it had been chartered earlier that day, before the attempted bombing. But it never returned.”

  “Was it equipped with GPS?” Reid asked.

  “It was. But it has been disabled.”

  Reid hesitated, determining how much he should tell Talia over the phone. “Agent Johansson and I have reason to believe that the Brotherhood is planning an attack on New York City,” he told her. “Tomorrow, during a parade. And… they are likely armed with weapons just as advanced as the submarine drone.”

  “I am getting on a plane,” Talia said immediately.

  Reid blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “Apprehending the remainder of the Brotherhood is my current directive,” she said. “So I will be where they will be.”

  “Wait,” Reid said quickly. The last thing he needed was the Israelis attempting to contact his superiors in the CIA. “Our agency… they don’t exactly agree with us. We’re keeping this discreet.”

  “Not a problem,” said Talia. “I am Mossad. I don’t need clearance to do my job. No one will know that I don’t tell. Keep this phone active; I will contact you when I arrive.” She promptly hung up.

  “I am Mossad,” Maria mocked in a mutter. “Someone thinks highly of themselves.”

  “She’s an ally,” Reid countered. “And we could use some friends right now.”

  The burner rang, showing an unknown number. He answered.

  “It’s me,” said Strickland. He did not sound pleased. “Just talked to Flagg. The good news is, the detainees did arrive—five Middle Eastern men with no identification or associative marks. The bad news is they’re not saying much. Ever.”

  “Because they’re dead,” Reid forecasted sourly.

  “They were DOA at H-6. Supposedly they had concealed cyanide capsules in their molars,” Strickland told him. “Kent, just what the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll tell you, but not over the phone,” Reid said. “Go to my house. The girls will let you in. Tell Maya to contact Watson and get him there too. Johansson and I will be there soon.”

  “Got it. See you then.” Strickland hung up.

  “That clinches it,” Maria said solemnly. “You’re right. Something’s going off, and a lot of people are trying to make it look like it’s not.” She glanced over at him. “Why’d you call on Watson?”

  “Because we need a team if we’re going to New York,” he told her simply. There were no two ways about it; if they wanted this stopped, he would have to be there personally. But he couldn’t handle it alone, and they would need more than just allies. “Do you have a secure line to reach Bixby?”

  “I could get it,” she replied. “Why?”

  “Because we’re going to need equipment,” Reid said. “Off the books.”

  “You want to steal a bunch of stuff from the CIA?” Maria smirked. “Now that’s the Kent Steele I know.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  “There should be a turn up here to the left,” Reid told Maria. “That’s the meeting place.” Maria flicked off the headlights as she turned onto a tree-lined dirt road behind a suburban development just a few miles outside of Langley. Next to her, Reid held his cell phone with the GPS open, directing her to the coordinates that the CIA engineer had given them.

  About five hundred yards further on the dirt road, a gray van was parked with its lights off between two large oaks. Maria cut the engine and popped the trunk as Reid got out of the car. For a long moment, there was no sign from the van; it seemed as if it was empty or had been abandoned, but then at long last the side door slid open and Bixby hopped out, wearing a wide grin.


  “Isn’t this exciting?” he said by way of greeting. “A clandestine meeting in the woods! Is this how you guys feel all the time?”

  Reid smiled and shook the engineer’s hand. “I think you need to get out of the lab more often, Bixby. Thanks for coming.”

  “Sure, anything for a friend.” He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. “So, what do you need? I’ve got a little bit of everything.”

  Reid looked beyond him. The van was jam-packed with all sorts of equipment, much of it in cases and nylon bags. He turned to Maria. “What do you think?”

  “Well,” she shrugged, “we’ve got four people to stop a large-scale terrorist attack on the biggest metropolitan hub in the world, so… everything. We need everything.”

  “What’s the weapon?” Bixby asked.

  “We don’t know,” Reid told him honestly. “But we have a hunch or two.”

  The engineer blew out a breath. “Then we have a lot of work to do. Let’s get started.”

  *

  It was almost an hour later before they got into Maria’s car and left the dirt road again, the trunk now stuffed with four large canvas duffels filled with equipment.

  All the tech that R&D can buy, Reid thought. Hopefully it’s enough.

  Bixby had fully loaded them with potentially worthwhile gadgets, and even given a cursory training course in how to use them, but still Reid was concerned about the likelihood of finding five men in a city of eight million.

  Maria was oddly silent on the drive back to Reid’s house, possibly considering the same thing.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just thinking about how we keep getting ourselves caught up at the ground-zero of this kind of stuff. In Davos, on the cruise ship with the virus, and now this.” She shrugged. “I’m wondering how many times we can get away with it before luck runs out.”

  “You don’t think we can do it?”

  “Doesn’t really matter if I think we can or not,” she said simply. “We’re still going to try. We have a responsibility.”

  Reid nodded. He didn’t know what to say to that; he knew his own moral code, and it dictated that the mere knowledge of something like this was enough that he couldn’t turn a blind eye to it. Even if Cartwright was on the level, even if those five men that were dead on arrival at H-6 really were the remnants of the Brotherhood, and even if every force in the entirety of New York was aware of a potential threat, it still wouldn’t keep him away.

  He thought of a famous quote from the parliamentarian and philosopher Edmund Burke. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  “You ever think about what it might be like if it wasn’t?” Maria asked, jarring Reid from his thoughts.

  “If it wasn’t what?”

  “If it wasn’t our responsibility,” Maria said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean… sometimes I wonder what it would it be like if I really was just an accountant from Baltimore. And then I think about how boring and tedious that would be.” She let out a slight laugh at herself. “Sometimes boring and tedious sound really attractive.”

  Reid smiled sadly. He didn’t have to wonder; he had spent nearly two years under the blissful ignorance of the memory suppressor. He knew exactly what it was like to just be a professor and father of two. And if somehow he could go back to that, and let someone else worry about the rest of the world and all the iniquity in it, he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t say no.

  “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “I could use a little boring right about now.” They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  Back at his house, Strickland and Watson waited up with the girls. The six of them convened in the living room as midnight approached. Maya brought Reid a fresh cup of coffee and he took a seat in an armchair facing the other three agents.

  “Thanks for waiting,” he started. “Obviously there’s a situation, and we don’t have a whole lot of time to deal with it. But first there are some things you need to know.”

  “Come on, Sara,” Maya said gently. “Let’s go to the other room.”

  Reid nodded appreciably at her as she led Sara out of the living room. He didn’t want them to hear what he had to say.

  “Alright,” he said to the three other agents in the room once the girls were gone. “All of you deserve the truth about why we’re here—the whole truth. So… here it is.”

  He told them everything—or nearly so. He told them of his suspicion that the five men captured in Syria were not the Brotherhood at all, and that a large-scale attack was planned on the city of New York the following day. He told them about seeing the remote guidance system in Bixby’s lab, and his belief that the weapon was supplied to the Libyan arms dealer by their own government. He told them the little he knew about the conspiracy to declare war on the Middle East, and that he believed this attack would be the catalyst for it.

  Finally, he told them about the possible collaborators in their own agency—almost certainly Deputy Director Riker, likely Director Mullen, and possibly even Cartwright.

  When he was finished, he paused for a moment to let the gravity of the situation sink in. Then he said, “If you need proof to believe any of this, I’m going to disappoint you. I don’t have a shred of evidence to back up any of these claims. The people behind this have been extremely careful, and this has been in the works for a long time.”

  “Why now though?” Strickland asked. “What makes this an opportune time for them?”

  “Election year,” Watson murmured pensively. All eyes turned to him, though he stared at the coffee mug on the table in front of him. “The current administration needs support between now and November if they want to stay in power for a second term. Nothing drums up patriotism quite like a successful campaign against a hostile nation.”

  “And there’s a lot they could do with another four years,” Maria added.

  Reid hadn’t considered that, but it made sense; he was only a college student himself during the events of September eleventh, but he vividly recalled the leaping approval ratings in the wake of the attack and the overwhelming support from the American people during the ensuing War on Terror.

  “So what’s the play?” Strickland asked.

  Reid sighed. “That’s part of the problem—I don’t know. I do know that I have a trunk full of equipment and an able body, and that I’m going to New York tonight to try to prevent this.”

  “Two,” Maria corrected. “Two able bodies.”

  “I’m in,” Strickland said without hesitation.

  “Of course,” Watson agreed. “Can’t ignore something like this.”

  Reid smiled. “Thanks John. But I was kind of hoping you’d keep an eye on the girls for me. I caught that Division creep, Fitzpatrick, following me earlier. I can’t leave them alone.”

  “True,” Watson agreed, “but if what you’re saying is even remotely true, you need all the help you can get. We can bring them to Mitch on the way. He’s got a safe house that’s out of agency hands.”

  Reid hesitated, but Watson was right. They needed all hands on deck here, and Mitch was trustworthy. The burly mechanic was a CIA asset, an expert at procuring transportation of nearly any sort, and he had helped Reid out plenty before. “Okay,” he finally relented.

  “So that makes four,” said Maria. “Four people to discover and stop a major terrorist attack.”

  “Maybe five,” Reid noted. “And we may not need to actually stop it ourselves; our top priority is finding evidence of it. A single member of the Brotherhood, a weapon, a detonator—anything that could prove our case would be enough to get the feds and NYPD on our side, and from there we can get anyone and everyone involved to prevent it from happening.”

  “Still,” said Strickland, “it’ll be a needle in a haystack.”

  “From what I hear, you’ve found a few needles in your day,” Maria said with a shrug. Reid had nearly forgotten th
at Strickland was, by all accounts, an excellent tracker. He had honed his skills as a Ranger pursuing terrorists through the Middle East; it was the main reason he had been assigned by the CIA to find Sara and Maya back in March.

  “It’s four hours from here to New York,” Reid said as he stood. “That’s plenty of time for us to plan this out effectively.”

  “Mitch could get us a faster ride,” Watson offered. “A chopper, maybe…”

  Reid shook his head. “We can’t afford to attract any attention to ourselves, and landing a helicopter anywhere near the city would certainly do that. Besides, keeping an eye on the girls will be plenty helpful enough. In the meantime, we need to stay as under-the-radar as possible. Leave your personal cells here; we’ve got satellite phones and radios in the car. Do whatever you’ve got to do to prepare. We head out in five.”

  Reid stood then, and headed into the kitchen alone and put his empty mug in the sink. He leaned against it with both hands and sighed heavily.

  He heard soft footfalls behind him, and then small arms wrapped around his torso from behind. A head leaned against his back. He smiled and clasped both of Sara’s hands in his. “I have to go again,” he said gently. “But you’ll be in good hands. You’ll be safe.”

  “Will you?”

  There was no way he could answer her honestly, but sometimes, he realized, lying was a necessary evil. “Of course I will. You listen to your sister, okay?”

  “I will.” Sara squeezed him tighter. In the reflection of the small window over the sink, Reid could see Maya standing in the entrance to the kitchen.

  “Give me a minute with Maya, would you?”

  Sara released him and headed into the living room, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen. She didn’t have to say anything. He could see it in her eyes—he had seen it before, in the weeks between the incident and their trip to Switzerland. He wasn’t sure he was ready to let go of them as his little girls, but they were ready to be more than that now.

  “I know you don’t want me to treat you like children,” he told her. “But—”

  “I know,” she interjected softly. “It’s okay. Go do what you have to do.”