Hunting Zero

What is that? Definitely not a car. Not loud enough to be a chopper or a plane…

Reid looked up as well, but he couldn’t tell what direction the sound was coming from. He didn’t have to wonder long. From over left field came a tiny object, soaring quickly through the air like a buzzing bee. Its shape was indistinguishable; it appeared to be white, but it was difficult to look directly at it.

The underbelly is painted in reflective coating, Reid’s mind told him. Keeps the eyes from being able to focus on it.

The object dropped in altitude as if it were falling from the sky. As it crossed over the pitcher’s mound, something else dropped down from it—a steel cable with a narrow crossbar at the bottom, like a single rung of a ladder. A rappelling line.

“That must be my ride,” he murmured. While the cops stared in disbelief at the literal UFO soaring toward them, Reid dropped the gun on the gravel. He made sure he had a tight grip on his bag, and as the crossbar swung toward him, he reached up and grabbed onto it.

He sucked in a breath as he was instantly swept into the sky, up twenty feet in seconds, then thirty, then fifty. The boys on the baseball field shouted and pointed as the flying object above Reid’s head retracted the rappelling line rapidly, gaining altitude again at the same time.

He glanced down and saw two more police cars screeching into the park’s lot, the drivers exiting their vehicles and looking upward. He was a hundred feet in the air before he reached the cockpit and settled into the single seat that waited there.

Reid shook his head in astonishment. The vehicle that had picked him up was little more than a small egg-shaped pod with four parallel arms in an X shape, each of which had a spinning rotor at the end. He knew what this was—a quadcopter, a single-person manned drone, fully automated and highly experimental.

A memory flashed in his mind: A rooftop in Kandahar. Two snipers have you pinned at your location. You have no idea where they are. Make a move and you die. Then, a sound—a high-pitched whine, barely more than a hum. It reminds you of your string trimmer back home. A shape appears in the sky. It’s hard to look at. You can barely see it, but you know help has arrived…

The CIA had experimented with machines like this one to extract agents from hot zones. He had been part of the experiment.

There were no controls before him; just an LED screen that told him their air speed of two hundred sixteen miles an hour and an ETA of fifty-four minutes. Beside the screen was a headset. He plucked it up and fit it over his ears.

“Zero.”

“Watson. Jesus. How did you get this?”

“I didn’t.”

“So Mitch,” Reid said, confirming his suspicions. “He’s not just an ‘asset,’ is he?”

“He’s whatever you need him to be for you to trust that he wants to help.”

The quadcopter’s air speed increased steadily, leveling out at just under three hundred miles per hour. Several minutes fell off the ETA.

“What about the agency?” Reid asked. “Can they…?”

“Track it? No. Too small, flies at low altitudes. Besides, it’s decommissioned. They thought the motor was too loud for it to be stealthy.”

He breathed a small sigh of relief. He had a trajectory now, this Starlight Motel in New Jersey, and at last it wasn’t a taunt from Rais that led him. If they were still there, he could put an end to this—or try to. He couldn’t ignore the fact that this would only end in a confrontation with the assassin, and keeping his girls out of the crossfire.

“I want you to wait forty-five minutes and then send the motel lead to Strickland and local PD,” he told Watson. “If he’s there, I want everyone else there too.”

Besides, by the time the CIA and police arrived, either his girls would be safe or Reid Lawson would be dead.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Maya hugged her sister closer to her. The handcuff chain rattled between their wrists; Sara’s hand was drawn up over her own chest, her hand gripping Maya’s on her shoulder as they huddled together in the backseat of the car.

The assassin drove, easing the car down the length of Port Jersey. The cargo terminal was long, several hundred yards by Maya’s best guess. Tall stacks of containers loomed high on either side of them, forming a narrow lane with no more than a foot of room on either side of the car’s mirrors.

The headlights were off, and it was dangerously dark, but it did not seem to bother Rais. Every now and then there would be a brief break between the cargo stacks and Maya could see bright lights in the distance, closer to the water’s edge. She could even hear the drone of machinery. Crews were working. People were around. Yet that gave her little hope; Rais had so far shown a propensity for planning, and she doubted they would come into view of any prying eyes.

She would have to do something herself to keep them from leaving.

The clock in the car’s center console told her it was four in the morning. It had been less than an hour since she had left the note in the toilet tank of the motel. Shortly thereafter, Rais had stood suddenly and announced that it was time to go. Without a word of explanation, he led them out of the motel room, but not to the white station wagon in which they’d arrived. Instead he led them to an older car a few doors down from their room. He seemed to have no problem as he jimmied open the door and put them in the backseat. Rais had tugged off the cover of the ignition column and hotwired the vehicle in a matter of seconds.

And now they were at the port, under the cover of darkness and drawing near to the northern tip of land, where the concrete ended and Newark Bay began. Rais slowed and put the car in park.

Maya peered beyond the windshield. There was a boat there, a fairly small one by commercial standards. It couldn’t have been more than sixty feet long end to end, and was laden with cube-shaped steel containers that looked to be about five feet by five feet. The only light on that end of the dock, other than the moon and stars, came from two sickly yellow bulbs on the boat, one on the bow and another at the stern.

Rais turned off the engine and sat there in silence for a long moment. Then he flicked the headlights on and off, just once. Two men emerged from the boat’s cabin. They glanced his way, and then disembarked down the narrow ramp between the ship and the dock.

The assassin twisted in his seat, staring directly at Maya. He said only one word, drawing it out slowly. “Stay.” Then he got out of the car and closed the door again, standing only a few feet from it as the men approached.

Maya clenched her jaw and tried to slow her rapidly pulsing heartbeat. If they got on this boat and left shore, their chances of ever being found again would be diminished significantly. She could not hear what the men were saying; she heard only low tones as Rais spoke to them.

“Sara,” she whispered. “You remember what I said?”

“I can’t.” Sara’s voice broke. “I won’t…”

“You have to.” They were still handcuffed together, but the ramp to board the boat was narrow, barely more than two feet wide. They would have to remove the cuffs, she told herself. And when they did… “As soon as I move, you go. Find people. Hide if you have to. You need to—”

She didn’t get to finish her statement. The rear door was yanked open and Rais peered in at them. “Get out.”

Maya’s knees felt weak as she slid out of the backseat, followed by Sara. She forced herself to look at the two men who had come from the boat. They were both light-skinned, with dark hair and dark features. One of the pair had a thin beard and short hair, and wore a black leather jacket with his arms folded across his chest. The other wore a brown coat, and his hair was longer, around his ears. He had a paunch that protruded over his belt and a smirk on his lips.

It was this man, the chubby one, that circled around the two girls, walking slowly. He said something in a foreign language—the same language, Maya realized, that Rais had spoken over the phone in the motel room.

Then he said a single word in English.

“Pretty.” He laughed. His cohort in the leather jacket grinned. Rais stood there stoically.

With that one word, a comprehension crept into Maya’s mind and tightened like icy fingers gripping a throat. There was something far more insidious happening here than simply being taken out of the country. She did not even want to think about it, let alone fathom it. It couldn’t be real. Not this. Not to them.

Her gaze found Rais’s chin. She couldn’t stand to look at his green eyes.

“You.” Her voice was quiet, quavering, struggling to find the words. “You’re a monster.”

He sighed gently. “Perhaps. That’s all a matter of perspective. I need passage across the sea; you are my bartering chip. My ticket, as it were.”

Maya’s mouth ran dry. She did not cry or tremble. She just felt cold.

Rais was selling them.

“Ahem.” Someone cleared their throat. Five pairs of eyes snapped to attention as a newcomer stepped into the dim glow of the boat’s lights.

Maya’s heart surged with sudden hope. The man was older, perhaps in his fifties, wearing khakis and a pressed white shirt—he looked official. Under one arm he held a white hard hat.

Rais had the Glock out and leveled in an instant. But he did not shoot. Others would hear it, Maya realized.

“Whoa!” The man dropped his hard hat and put both hands up.

“Hey.” The foreigner in the black leather jacket stepped forward, between the gun and the newcomer. “Hey, is okay,” he said in accented English. “Is okay.”

Maya’s mouth fell agape in confusion. Okay?

As Rais slowly lowered the gun, the thin man reached into his leather jacket and produced a crumpled manila envelope, folded on itself in thirds and taped shut. Something rectangular and thick was inside it, like a brick.

He handed it off as the official-looking man scooped up his hard hat.

My god. She knew damn well what was in the envelope. This man was being paid off to keep his crews away, to keep that area of the dock clear.

Anger and helplessness rose in equal measure. She wanted to shout at him—please, wait, help—but then his gaze met hers, for just a second, and she knew it was no use.

There was no remorse behind his eyes. No kindness. No sympathy. No sound escaped her throat.

Just as quickly as he had appeared, the man retreated back into the shadows. “Pleasure doing business,” he muttered as he vanished.

This can’t be happening. She felt numb. Never in her entire life had she ever met someone who would stand idly by while children were clearly in harm’s way—and accept money to do nothing.

The chubby man barked something in his foreign tongue and made a vague gesture toward their hands. Rais said something in response that sounded like a succinct argument, but the other man insisted.

The assassin looked annoyed as he fished in his pocket and pulled out a small silver key. He grabbed at the chain of the handcuffs, forcing both their wrists aloft. “I’m going to take these off of you,” he told them. “Then we’re going to get on the boat. If you wish to make it back to dry land alive, you’ll stay silent. You’ll do as you’re told.” He pushed the key into the cuff around Maya’s wrist and opened it. “And don’t even think about jumping into the water. None of us will go after you. We will watch you freeze to death and drown. It would take only a couple of minutes.” He unlocked Sara’s cuff, and she instinctively rubbed her sore, reddened wrist.

Now. Do it now. You have to do something now. Maya’s brain screamed at her, but she couldn’t seem to move.

The foreigner in the black leather jacket stepped forward and grabbed her upper arm roughly. The sudden physical contact broke her paralysis, jarring her into action. She didn’t even think about it.

One foot swung upward, as hard as she could muster, and connected with Rais’s groin.

As it did, a memory flashed across her vision. It took only an instant, though it felt much longer, as if everything had slowed around her.

Shortly after the Amun terrorists had tried to kidnap her in New Jersey, her father had pulled her aside one day. He had to stick to his cover story—they were gang members abducting young girls in the area as part of an initiation—but still he told her: I won’t always be around. There won’t always be someone there to help.

Maya had played soccer for years; she had a powerful and well-placed kick. A hiss of breath escaped Rais as he doubled over, both hands flying impulsively to his crotch.

If someone attacks you, especially a man, it’s because he’s bigger. Stronger. He’ll outweigh you. And because of all that, he’ll think he can do what he wants. That you don’t have a chance.

She jerked her left arm downward, quickly and violently, and pulled free of the leather-jacketed man. Then she launched herself forward, into him, and knocked him off balance.

You don’t fight fair. You do whatever you need to do. Crotch. Nose. Eyes. You bite. You flail. You scream. They’re already not fighting fair. You don’t either.

Maya twisted her body back around and, at the same time, swung one thin arm in a wide arc. Rais was bent at the waist; his face was about eye level with her. Her fist smashed into the side of his nose.

Pain immediately splintered through her hand, starting at the knuckles and radiating up the length, all the way to her elbow. She cried out and grabbed at it. Even so, Rais took the blow hard, nearly falling to the dock.

An arm snaked around her waist and pulled her backward. Her feet left the ground, kicking at nothing as she thrashed both arms. She hadn’t even realized she was screaming until a thick hand clamped over her nose and mouth, cutting off both the sound and her breath.

But then she saw her—a small figure getting smaller. Sara ran, back the way they had come, disappearing into the darkness of the cargo stacks.

I did it. She’s gone. She’s away. Whatever fate would befall Maya now didn’t matter. Don’t stop running, Sara. Keep going, find people, find help.

Another figure shot forward like an arrow—Rais. He sprinted after Sara, also vanishing into the shadows. He was fast, much faster than Sara, and had seemed to recover quickly from Maya’s blows.

He won’t find her. Not in the dark.

She couldn’t breathe with the hand gripping her face. She clawed at it until the fingers slid down, only slightly, but enough for her to suck air in through her nose. The chubby man held her fast, one arm around her waist and her feet still off the ground. But she didn’t fight him; she fell still and waited.

For several long moments the dock was quiet. The droning of machinery at the other end of the port echoed in the night, likely drowning out any chance of Maya’s screams having been heard. She and the two men waited for Rais to return—the former praying desperately he came back empty-handed.

A short shriek shattered the silence, and Maya’s limbs went limp.

Rais emerged from the darkness again. He had Sara under one arm, the way one might carry a surfboard, with his other hand clasped over her mouth to quiet her. Her face was bright red and she was sobbing, though her cries were muffled.

No. Maya had failed. Her attack had done nothing, least of all get Sara to safety.

Rais stopped a few feet short of Maya, staring her down with pure fury in his bright green eyes. A thin rivulet of blood ran from one nostril where she had struck him.

“I told you,” he hissed. “I told you what would happen if you tried to do something. Now, you’re going to watch.”

Maya flailed again, trying to scream, but the man held her tight.

Rais said something harshly in the foreign tongue to the one in the leather jacket. He hurried over and took Sara, holding her still and keeping her silent.

The assassin unsheathed the large knife, the one he had used to murder Mr. Thompson and the woman in the rest stop bathroom. He forced Sara’s arm out to one side and held it firmly.

No! Please don’t hurt her. Don’t. Don’t… She tried to form words, to scream them out, but they came out only as shrill, muffled cries.

Sara tried to pull away as she wept, but Rais held her arm in a white-knuckled grip. He forced her fingers apart and wedged the knife in the space between her ring and pinky fingers.

“You’re going to watch,” he said again, staring directly at Maya, “as I cut off one of your sister’s fingers.” He pressed the knife to skin.

Don’t. Don’t. Please, god, don’t…

The man holding her, the chubby one, muttered something.

Rais paused and looked up at him irritably.

The two had a quick exchange, not a word of which Maya understood. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; her gaze was locked on her little sister, whose eyes were clenched shut, tears running down both cheeks and over the hand that held her mouth tightly.

Rais growled in frustration. At long last he released his grip on Sara’s hand. The chubby man released his grip on Maya, and at the same time the one in the leather jacket shoved Sara forward. Maya caught her sister in her arms and hugged her close.

The assassin stepped forward, speaking quietly. “This time, you’re lucky. These gentlemen suggested that I not damage any merchandise before it gets to where it’s going.”

Maya trembled from head to toe, but she didn’t dare move.

“Besides,” he told her, “where you’re going will be far worse than anything I might do to you. Now we’re all going to get on the boat. Remember, you’re only good to them alive.”

The chubby man led the way up the ramp, Sara behind him and Maya right behind her as they stepped shakily onto the boat. There was no use in fighting back now. Her hand throbbed with pain where she’d struck Rais. There were three men and only two of them, and he was faster. He had found Sara in the dark. They had little chance of making it out on their own.

Maya glanced over the side of the boat at the black water below. For just a split second, she thought about jumping; freezing in its depth might be preferable to the fate that awaited them. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t leave Sara. She couldn’t lose her last ounce of hope.

They were directed to the stern of the ship, where the man in the leather jacket took out a ring of keys and unlocked the padlock on the door of a boxy steel crate, painted a rusty orange.

He swung the door open, and Maya gasped in horror.

Inside the crate, squinting in the dim yellow light, were several other young girls, at least four or five that Maya could see.

Then she was shoved from behind, forced inside. Sara was too, and she fell to her knees on the floor of the small container. As the door swung behind them, Maya scrambled to her and wrapped Sara in her arms.

Then the door slammed shut, and they were plunged into darkness.

CHAPTER NINE

The sun set quickly in the overcast sky as the quadcopter raced north to deliver its cargo, one determined CIA operative and father, to the Starlight Motel in New Jersey.

His ETA was five minutes. A message on the screen blinked a warning: Prepare to deploy. He glanced out the side of the cockpit and saw, far below, that they were soaring over a wide industrial park of boxy warehouses and manufacturing facilities, sitting silent and dark, illuminated only by the dots of orange streetlights.

He unzipped the black duffel bag sitting in his lap. Inside he found two holsters and two guns. Reid struggled out of his jacket in the tiny cockpit and put on the shoulder rig that held a Glock 22, standard-issue—none of Bixby’s high-tech biometric trigger locks like he had with the Glock 19. He pulled his jacket back on and tugged up the leg of his jeans to attach the ankle holster that held his backup weapon of choice, the Ruger LC9. It was a compact pistol with a stubby barrel, nine-millimeter caliber in a nine-round expanded box magazine that stuck out just an inch and a half further than the grip.

He had one hand on the rappelling crossbar, ready to disembark from the manned drone as soon as they reached a safe altitude and speed. He was just about to tug the headset from his ears when Watson’s voice came through it.

“Zero.”

“Nearly there. Just under two minutes—”

“We just got another photo, Kent,” Watson cut him off. “Sent to your daughter’s phone.”

Icy fingers of panic gripped Reid’s heart. “Of them?”

“Sitting on a bed,” Watson confirmed. “Looks like it could be the motel.”

“The number it came from, can it be traced?” Reid asked hopefully.

“Sorry. He already ditched it.”

His hope deflated. Rais was smart; so far he had sent photos of only where he had been, not where he was. If there was any chance of Agent Zero catching up to him, the assassin wanted it to be on his terms. For the entire ride in the quadcopter, Reid had been nervously optimistic about the motel lead, anxious that they had might have caught up to Rais’s game.

But if there was a photo… then there was a good chance they had already moved on.

No. You can’t think like that. He wants you to find him. He chose a motel in the middle of nowhere specifically for that reason. He’s baiting you. They’re here. They have to be.

“Were they okay? Did they look… are they hurt…?”

“They looked okay,” Watson told him. “Upset. Scared. But okay.”

The message on the screen changed, blinking in red: Deploy. Deploy.

Regardless of the photo or his thoughts, he’d arrived. He had to see for himself. “I have to go.”

“Make it quick,” Watson told him. “One of my guys is calling in a false lead at the motel matching Rais’s and your daughters’ description.”

“Thanks, John.” Reid pulled off the headset, made sure he had a tight grip on the rappel bar, and stepped out of the quadcopter.

The controlled descent of fifty feet to the ground was faster than he anticipated and took his breath away. The familiar thrill, the rush of adrenaline, coursed through his veins as wind roared in his ears. He bent his knees slightly on approach and touched down onto asphalt in a crouch.

As soon as he released the rappel bar the line zipped back up to the quadcopter, and the drone buzzed away into the night, returning to wherever it had come from.

Reid glanced around quickly. He was in the parking lot of a warehouse across the street from the dingy motel, dimly lit by only a few yellow bulbs outside. A hand-painted sign facing the street told him that he was in the right place.

He scanned left and right as he hurried across the empty street. It was quiet here, eerily quiet. There were three cars in the lot, each spaced out along the row of rooms facing him—and one of them was clearly the white SUV that had been stolen from the used car lot in Maryland.

It was parked right outside of a room with a brass number 9 on the door.

There were no lights on inside; it didn’t seem like anyone was staying there at the moment. Even so, he dropped his bag just outside the door and listened carefully for about three seconds.

He didn’t hear anything, so he pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster and kicked the door in.

The jamb splintered easily as the door flew open and Reid stepped inside, the gun level at the darkness. Yet nothing moved in the shadows. There were still no sounds, no one crying out in surprise or scrambling for a weapon.

His left hand felt along the wall for a light switch and flicked it on. Room 9 had an orange carpet and yellow wallpaper that was curling at the corners. The room had recently been cleaned, insofar as “cleaned” seemed to go at the Starlight Motel. The bed had been hastily made and it reeked of cheap aerosol disinfectant.

But it was empty. His heart sank. There was no one here—no Sara or Maya or the assassin that had taken them.

Reid stepped carefully, looking over the room. Near the door was a green armchair. The fabric of the seat cushion and back was slightly discolored with the imprint of someone who had sat there recently. He knelt beside it, outlining the shape of the person with his gloved fingertips.

Someone sat here for hours. About six-foot, a hundred and eighty pounds.

It was him. He sat here, next to the only point of entry, near the window.