Assassin Zero

“I think,” she said carefully, “that Sara might need more help than we can give her. I think she might need some professional help.”

Her dad nodded as if he already knew it—as if he’d been thinking the same thing himself, but needed to hear it from someone else. She squeezed his hand gently, reassuringly, and they let the silence reign over them. Neither of them knew what would come next, but for now, all that mattered was they were home.

CHAPTER THREE

Whoever named New York “the city that never sleeps” has never been to Old Havana, Alvaro mused as he wound his way toward the harbor and the Malecón. In the daylight, Old Havana was a beautiful part of the city, a rich blend of history and art, food and culture, yet the streets were jammed with traffic and the air was filled with the sounds of construction from the various restoration projects to bring the oldest part of Havana into the twenty-first century.

But at night… night was when the city showed its true colors. The lights, the scents, the music, the laughter: and the Malecón was the place to be. The narrow streets surrounding Calle 23, where Alvaro lived, was vibrant enough but most of the native Cuban bars closed down at midnight. Here on the broad esplanade at the edge of the harbor, the nightclubs stayed open and the music swelled ever louder and the drinks continued to flow in many of the bars and lounges.

The Malecón was a roadway that stretched for eight kilometers along Havana’s sea edge, lined with structures painted sea green and coral pink. Many of the locals tended to snub it because of the staggering tourist population, but that was one of the many reasons Alvaro was drawn to it; despite the increasingly (and irritatingly) popular Euro-style lounges, there were still a handful of places where a lively, addictive salsa beat combated the EDM from neighboring buildings.

There was a joke among locals that Cuba was the only place in the world where you had to pay musicians not to play, and that was certainly true in the daytime. It seemed as if every person who owned a guitar or a trumpet or a set of bongos set up shop on a street corner, music on every block accompanied by the rumble of construction equipment and the honking of car horns. But nighttime was a different story, especially on the Malecón; live music was dwindling, losing the fight to electronic music played through computers—or worse, whatever pop hits had recently been imported from the States.

Yet Alvaro did not concern himself with any of that, so long as he had La Piedra. One of the few genuine Cuban bars left on the seaside strip, its doors were still open—quite literally, both of them propped with doorstoppers so that the dynamic salsa music floated to his ears before he stepped inside. There was no line to get into La Piedra, unlike the long queues of so many of the European nightclubs. There was no swarming throng, six deep of patrons vying for the bartenders’ attention. The lighting was not dimmed or strobing, but rather bright to fully accentuate the vibrant, colorful décor. A six-piece band played on a stage that could hardly be called such, just a one-foot raised platform at the farthest end of the bar.

Alvaro fit in perfectly at La Piedra, wearing a bright silk shirt with a white and yellow pattern of mariposas, the national flower of Cuba. He was tall and dark-featured, young and clean-shaven, handsome enough by most standards. Here in the small salsa club on Malecón, he was not just a sous chef with grease under his fingernails and minor burns on his hands. He was a mysterious stranger, an exciting indulgence. A tantalizing story to bring back home, or a sultry secret to keep.

He sidled up to the bar and put on what he hoped was a seductive smile. Luisa was working tonight, as she did most nights. Their routine had become something of a dance in itself, a well-practiced exchange that no longer held any surprises.

“Alvaro,” she said flatly, barely able to suppress her own smirk. “If it isn’t our local tourist trap.”

“Luisa,” he purred. “You are absolutely stunning.” And she was. Tonight she wore a bright maxi skirt, slit high up one leg and accentuating the curves of her hips, with an off-the-shoulder white crop top just barely cresting over a perfect belly button pierced with a stud in the shape of a rose. Her dark hair cascaded like gentle waves over the gold hoops in her ears. Alvaro suspected that half the patrons of La Piedra came just to see her; he knew it was at least true for him.

“Careful now. You wouldn’t want to waste your best lines on me,” she teased.

“I reserve all my best lines especially for you.” Alvaro leaned on his elbows on the wooden bar top. “Let me take you out. Better yet, let me cook for you. Food is a love language, you know.”

She laughed lightly. “Ask me again next week.”

“I will,” he promised. “And in the meantime, a mojito, por favor?”

Luisa turned to make his drink, and Alvaro caught a glimpse of the butterfly tattooed on her left shoulder. So went the pasos of their dance, the steps of their own personal salsa; compliment, advance, reject, drink. And repeat.

Alvaro tore his gaze from her and glanced around the bar, swaying gently along to the rapid and animated music. The patrons were a pleasant mix of music-loving locals and tourists, mostly American, generally peppered by some Europeans and the occasional group of Asians, all of them seeking the authentic Cuban experience—and with a little luck, he would become a part of someone’s experience.

Down at the end of the bar he caught sight of fiery red hair, porcelain skin, a pretty smile. A young woman, likely from the States, mid-twenties at best. She was there with two friends, each seated on barstools on either side of her. One of them said something that made her laugh; she tilted her head back and smiled wider, showing perfect teeth.

Friends could be a problem. The redheaded woman wore no ring and appeared dressed to attract, but it would be the friends who ultimately decided for her.

“She’s pretty,” Luisa said as she set the mojito down in front of him. Alvaro shook his head; he hadn’t realized he’d been staring.

He shrugged one shoulder, trying to play it off. “Not nearly as beautiful as you.”

Luisa laughed again, this time at him, as she rolled her eyes. “You’re as foolish as you are sweet. Go on.”

Alvaro took his drink, his heart breaking just a little more each time Luisa spurned his advances, and went in hopes of seeking the solace of a pretty redheaded American tourist. His methods were well-practiced, though not entirely foolproof. But tonight Alvaro was feeling lucky.

He sauntered along the bar, passing the girl and her two friends without giving them a glance. He took a position at a high-topped table in her line of sight and leaned against it on his elbows, tapping a foot rhythmically to the music and waiting, biding his time. Then, after a full minute, he glanced casually over his shoulder.

The redheaded girl glanced back, and their eyes met. Alvaro looked away, smiling shyly. He waited again, counting to thirty in his head before he looked back at her. She looked away quickly. She was watching him. That was all he needed.

As the song came to an end and the bar erupted in applause for the band, Alvaro plucked up his mojito and approached the girl—not too quickly, shoulders back, head high and confident. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

“Hola. ¿Bailar conmigo?”

The girl blinked at him. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered gently. “I don’t speak Spanish…”

“Dance with me.” Alvaro’s English was flawless, but still he exaggerated his accent to seem more exotic.

The girl’s cheeks flushed crimson, almost matching her hair. “I, uh… don’t know how.”

“I will teach you. It is easy.”

The girl smiled nervously and—as he expected—looked to her friends. One of them gave her a small shrug. The other nodded enthusiastically, and Alvaro had to keep his smile from broadening into a grin.

“Um… okay.”

He held out a hand and she took it, her fingers warm in his as he led her to the dance floor, little more than the foremost third of the bar where the tables had been pushed outward to make room for the two dozen or so likeminded patrons who had come for the music.

“Salsa is not about getting the steps right,” he told her. “It is about feeling the music. Like this.” As the band began the next song, Alvaro stepped forward with the beat, rocking on his back foot, and moving back again. His elbows swayed loosely at his sides, one hand still in hers, his hips moving with his steps. He was by no means an expert, but had been gifted with natural rhythm that made even the simplest pasos appear impressive.

“Like this?” The girl imitated his steps stiffly.

He smiled. “Sí. But looser. Do like I do. One, two, three, pause. Five, six, seven, pause.”

The girl laughed nervously as she fell into step, loosening up as she became more confident in the movements. Alvaro bided his time, not moving in just yet, waiting for the song to end and another to begin before he gently put a hand on her hip, both of them still moving to the beat, and said, “You are quite beautiful. What is your name?”

The girl blushed deeply again. “Megan.”

“Megan,” he repeated. “I am Alvaro.”

The girl, Megan, seemed to loosen up further after that, succumbing to the charm of a dark, handsome stranger in an exotic land. He had her right where he wanted her. She dared to move closer, closing her eyes, feeling the music as he had instructed, her hips swaying with each small salsa paso closer and away—not as shapely or pleasant as Luisa’s hips, he noticed, but attractive all the same. Alvaro knew from experience not to move too quickly, to let the music and her imagination take its hold first, and then…

He frowned as a sensation trembled through him. It was unusual for the pulse-pounding electronic dance music from the club next door to be heard through the walls, but he could have sworn that he heard it.

Not heard, he realized—felt. He felt a strange thrum in his body, difficult to discern and even harder to describe, so much so that his immediate assumption was the heavy bass from the too-powerful speakers of the next-door club. His redheaded dance partner opened her eyes, her face creasing in a concerned frown. She felt it too.

Suddenly the entire club shifted—or it seemed like it did as a wave of dizziness crashed over Alvaro. He stumbled to the side, catching himself on his left foot before he fell over. The American girl was not so lucky; she fell to her hands and knees. One by one the musicians of the band stopped playing, and Alvaro could hear the groans and frightened gasps of La Piedra’s patrons, backdropped by the dim pounding of the bass from next door.

Whatever this was, it was affecting everyone.

A powerful headache prodded at his skull as nausea bubbled up within him. Alvaro looked sharply to his left in time to see Luisa fall behind the bar.

Luisa!

He managed two steps before the dizziness cascaded again, sending him stumbling into a table. Glass crashed to the floor as he overturned it. A woman screamed, but Alvaro couldn’t seem to locate it.

He fell to his hands and knees and crawled, determined to find Luisa. To get them out of there, even if he had to drag them both along the floor. But when next he looked up, all he could see were vague shapes. His vision blurred. The sounds of the panicked bar fell away, replaced by only a single high-pitched tone. The vibrant colors of La Piedra dimmed, the edges of his periphery turning brown and then black, and Alvaro let himself slump to the floor, nauseous and dizzy and unable to hear anything but the tone before he lost consciousness.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jonathan Rutledge did not want to get out of bed.

It was, to be fair, a terrific bed. Fit for a king, as well as king-sized—although, he mused to himself in those early morning hours, perhaps it would be more fitting to call it president-sized.

He groaned as he rolled over and instinctively reached for the empty spot beside him. Strange, he thought, how he still stuck to his side of the bed even when Deidre was out of town. He was astounded by how quickly she had taken to her new position; currently she was on a circuit through the Midwest, lobbying for funding of art and music programs in public schools, while he pushed his face further into a down pillow as if it might drown out the sound that he knew was coming any moment.

And with that, the phone at his bedside rang again.

“No,” he told it. It was Thanksgiving Day. The only things on his schedule were to pardon a turkey, pose for some photos with his daughters, and then enjoy a nice, private meal with them. Why were they bothering him at the crack of dawn on a holiday?

A sharp knock at the door startled him. Rutledge sat up, rubbed his eyes, and asked loudly, “Yes?”

“Mr. President.” A female voice floated to him through the thick door of the White House master suite. “It’s Tabby. May I come in?”

Tabitha Halpern, his Chief of Staff. She couldn’t be bringing good news this early, and definitely not coffee.

“If you have to,” he muttered.

“Sir?” She hadn’t heard him.

“Come in, Tabby.”

The door swung open and Halpern entered, dressed smartly in a navy blue pantsuit with a crisp white blouse. She took two brisk steps inside and then paused just as suddenly, casting her gaze at the carpet, seemingly uncomfortable standing over the president while he was still lying in bed in silk pajamas.

“Sir,” she told him, “there’s been an… incident. Your presence is required in the Situation Room.”

Rutledge frowned. “What sort of incident?”

She seemed hesitant to say. “A suspected terror attack in Havana.”

“On Thanksgiving?”

“It occurred late last night, but… technically yes, sir.”

Rutledge shook his head. What sort of deviants planned an attack on a holiday? Unless… “Tabby, does Cuba celebrate Thanksgiving?”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. Is there time for coffee?”

She nodded. “I’ll have some brought up immediately.”

“Great. Tell them I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Tabby turned on a heel and marched out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her and leaving Rutledge grumbling under his breath about the injustice of it all. At long last he swung his bare feet out of the bed and stood, stretching and groaning again and wondering, for what must have been the ten thousandth time, how he had ended up living in the White House.

The technical answer was a simple one. Five weeks earlier Rutledge had been the Speaker of the House—and a damned good one at that, if he could say so himself. He had gained a reputation over his political career as a man who could not be bought, who stuck to his moral code and did not sway from his beliefs.

But then came the news of former President Harris’s involvement with the Russians and their plan to annex Ukraine. With the incontrovertible evidence of an interpreter’s recording, impeachment proceedings went dizzyingly fast. Then, with minutes to midnight before Harris’s definitive ousting, the president threw a hopeful Hail Mary for a reduced sentence by implicating his own VP. Vice President Brown folded like a lawn chair, pleading no contest to having knowledge of Harris’s involvement with Kozlovsky and the Russians.

It happened in the span of a single day. Before Rutledge had even finished reading the transcript of Brown’s testimony, Harris’s impeachment was approved by the Senate, and the VP resigned with a trial pending. For the first time in US history, the third man in line, the Speaker of the House, would take the seat in the Oval Office—Democrat Jonathan Rutledge.

He didn’t want it. He had assumed that leading the House of Representatives would be the pinnacle of his career; he’d held no aspirations to go any higher than that. And he could have stated those four little words that would have made all the difference—“I decline to serve”—but in doing so he would have been letting down his entire party. The President Pro Tempore of the Senate was a Republican from Texas, about as far right on the political spectrum as one could go in the democratic system.

And so Speaker Rutledge became President Rutledge. His next step would have been to nominate a vice president and have Congress vote them in, but it had been four weeks since his inauguration and he hadn’t done so yet, despite mounting pressure and criticism. It was a very careful deliberation to make—and after what the last two administrations had done, there weren’t exactly people lining up around the block for the job. He had someone in mind, the sharp California senator Joanna Barkley, but his time in office thus far had been so tumultuous that it seemed controversy and scrutiny awaited him around every corner.

On any given day, it was enough to want to give up. And he was keenly aware that he could; Rutledge could nominate Barkley as his VP, get the vote of approval from Congress, and then resign, making Barkley the first female president of the United States. He could justify it by the whirlwind of events surrounding his rise to the office. He would be lauded, at least he imagined, for putting a woman in the White House.

It was tempting. Especially when waking to news of terror attacks on Thanksgiving Day.

Rutledge buttoned up a shirt and knotted a blue tie, but decided to forgo a jacket and instead rolled up his sleeves. An aide wheeled in a cart with coffee, sugar, milk, and assorted pastries, but he simply poured himself a mug, black, and carried it with him as two stoic Secret Service agents silently fell in step beside him as he strode toward the Situation Room.

That was just one more thing he had to get used to, the constant accompaniment. Always being watched. Never truly being alone.

The two dark-suited agents followed him down a flight of stairs and along a hall where three more Secret Service agents were posted, each nodding in turn and acknowledging him with a murmur of “Mr. President.” They paused outside a pair of oak double doors, one of the agents taking a post with his hands clasped in front of him while the other opened the door for Rutledge, granting him access into the John F. Kennedy Conference Room, a five-thousand-square-foot center of command and intelligence in the basement of the White House’s West Wing, known more commonly as the Situation Room.

The four people already present stood as he rounded the table to take a seat at its head. To his left was Tabby Halpern, and beside her, Secretary of Defense Colin Kressley. The Secretary of State and Director of National Intelligence were notably absent, having been sent to Geneva to speak to the UN about the ongoing trade war with China and how it might impact European imports. In their stead was CIA Director Edward Shaw, a severe-looking man whom Rutledge had never actually seen smile. And beside him was a blonde woman in her late thirties, professional but admittedly stunning. A glance at her slate-gray eyes lit a glimmer of recognition; Rutledge had met her before, at his inauguration perhaps, but he couldn’t recall her name.

How they all had assembled so quickly, dressed impeccably and so seemingly alert, was beyond him. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as his mother used to say. Rutledge suddenly felt downright slovenly in his rolled shirtsleeves and loosely knotted tie.

“Please, have a seat,” Rutledge said as he lowered himself into a black leather chair. “We want to give this matter the attention it deserves, but there are places we’d all rather be today. Let’s get right into it.”

Tabby nodded to Shaw, who folded his hands atop the table. “Mr. President,” the CIA director began, “at 0100 hours last night, an incident occurred in Havana, Cuba, specifically near the northern harbor shore in an area called the Malecón, a popular tourist spot. In a span of approximately three minutes, more than one hundred people experienced an array of symptoms, ranging from dizziness and nausea to permanent hearing loss, vision loss, and, in one unfortunate case, death.”

Rutledge stared blankly. When Tabby had said a suspected terror attack, he’d assumed a bomb had gone off or someone had opened fire in a public place. What was all this about symptoms and hearing loss? “I’m sorry, Director, I’m not sure I follow.”

“Sir,” said the blonde woman beside him. “Deputy Director Maria Johansson, CIA, Special Operations Group.”

Johansson, right. Rutledge suddenly recalled meeting her, as he had thought, the day of his inauguration.

“What Director Shaw is describing,” she continued, “is indicative of an ultrasonic weapon. This sort of concentration on a limited area in such a finite period of time creates parameters narrow enough for us to assume this was a targeted attack.”

That did little to explain anything to Rutledge. “I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling like the dunce of the room. “Did you say ultrasonic weapon?”

Johansson nodded. “Yes, sir. Ultrasonic weapons are typically used as nonlethal deterrents; most of our Navy’s ships are outfitted with them. Cruise ships use them as defense against pirates. But based on what we know happened in Cuba, what we’re seeing is much larger in scale and more potent than what our military employs.”

Tabby cleared her throat. “The police in Havana collected reports from at least three eyewitnesses who claim to have seen a group of masked men loading a ‘strange object’ onto a boat in the aftermath of the attack.”

Rutledge rubbed his temples. An ultrasonic weapon? It sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. It never ceased to amaze and confound him the creative ways humans dreamed up to hurt and kill each other.

“I assume you don’t believe this is an isolated incident,” Rutledge said.

“We would love to assume so, sir,” said Shaw. “But we simply can’t. That weapon and the people behind it are out there somewhere.”

“And the nature of this attack,” Johansson picked up, “appears random. We can’t discern a motive to target Havana or a tourist destination other than ease of access and escape, which in a case like this generally indicates a testing ground.”

“A testing ground,” Rutledge repeated. He had never served in the military, nor had he ever been employed in intelligence or covert operations, but he was fully aware what the deputy director was suggesting: this was the first attack, and there would be others. “And I suppose I should also assume that some of the victims were American.”

Tabby nodded. “That’s correct, sir. Two suffered permanent blindness. And the lone casualty was a young American woman…” She consulted her notes. “Named Megan Taylor. From Massachusetts.”

Rutledge was not prepared to deal with this. It was bad enough that he hadn’t yet nominated his vice president, a decision he had been floundering on because he didn’t trust himself not to resign immediately. It was bad enough that he was under a microscope, from not only the media but practically the entire world, because of the indiscretions of his two predecessors. It was bad enough that China’s new and seemingly irrational leader had sparked a trade war with the US by imposing ever-climbing tariffs on the massive amount of exports manufactured there, which was forecast to cause leaping inflation and, in the long term, potentially destabilize the American economy.

It was bad enough that it was Thanksgiving, for Christ’s sake.

“Sir?” Tabby prodded gently.

Rutledge hadn’t realized he’d been lost in his own head. He snapped out of it and rubbed his eyes. “All right, brass tacks: do we have reason to believe the United States might become a target?”

“Currently,” said Director Shaw, “we should operate under the assumption that the US will be a target. We can’t afford not to.”

“Any intel on who’s behind this?” Rutledge asked.

“Not yet,” Johansson said.

“But this doesn’t quite fit the MO of any of our Middle Eastern friends,” offered General Kressley. “If I was a betting man, I’d put hard cash on the Russians.”

“We can’t make any sort of assumptions,” said Johansson firmly.

“Given our recent history,” Kressley argued, “I’d call it an educated guess.”

“We are an intelligence agency,” Johansson fired back across the table, even wearing a thin smirk as she did. “And as such, we’ll gather intelligence and work on facts. Not guesses. Not assumptions.”