Chasing zero, p.15
Chasing Zero, page 15
part #9 of Agent Zero Spy Thriller Series
He dropped to his knees as he practically shouted, “Tunnels!” His fingertips ran over the smooth concrete there, searching for a seam. “Goddammit, I should have thought of it earlier. Tunnels, below Jerusalem. Ancient ones, a whole network of them. From a number of civilizations. Romans. Canaanites. Like the catacombs under Paris, but bigger.” He was ranting now, but he didn’t care. His fingers found nothing, no seams, no edges. He pressed down on the concrete with his palms, even slapped at it in frustration, but to no avail.
“Zero…” Strickland said behind him. “You know that sounds…”
“I know how it sounds!” It sounded crazy. It sounded just as crazy as a body double standing in for the Palestinian president to murder the Israeli prime minister on a global platform.
He stood on the empty space and jumped with all his body weight, bunny-hopping around the square. He didn’t care if it looked crazy. He didn’t care, as long as it meant…
A corner of the slab shifted, only slightly, revealing the razor-thin seam.
“There!” Todd grabbed a broom and dropped to his knees. “Do it again!”
Zero jumped in the same spot, the far right corner, and the opposite corner nearest the door bounced just a bit, just enough for Todd to jam the tip of the broom’s handle beneath it. Zero breathed hard, not from exertion but from nervous excitement as the two of them pried up the perfect square, a slab of concrete two inches thick that had been meticulously crafted to fit the closet’s floor.
And below it was a round hole, barely more than two feet wide at Zero’s best guess. The hole appeared to go straight down for a short distance and then angled. A dim yellow light was visible somewhere down there.
“You were right,” Todd breathed. “Remind me to never call you crazy again…”
“I’ll save the ‘I told you so’ for later.” Zero sat himself at the edge of the hole and put his feet in.
“Wait! What about the rest of the team?”
“Todd,” Zero said quickly but somberly. “We have no radios. Dawoud and his people have a lead of several minutes on us. If you want to run and find the rest of the team, go now. But I’m going down there.”
“Then I’m with you,” Strickland said without hesitation.
Zero lowered himself into the hole. He had nothing to hold onto and had no choice but to let himself fall. The drop was only about eight feet, and from there the tunnel sloped downward, the ceiling low enough that he had to crouch as he carefully traversed an angle of about fifty-five degrees. A few yards later it opened wider, high enough for him to stand comfortably.
They dug through the maintenance closet and into this tunnel, he realized. It must have taken a week, if not more.
Todd joined him a few seconds later. “Whoa,” he whispered.
“Looks like an old quarry tunnel,” Zero told him. The ceiling overhead was vaulted, bolstered by weathered brick and wooden posts long grayed with age.
Strickland reached out to touch one but Zero grabbed his hand. “Don’t,” he warned. “These tunnels are extremely old. Touch nothing.” He looked down the length of it. Wan yellow lights had been stuck on the walls, round touch-lights by the looks of them. “We follow the light, and we move fast. Let’s go.”
They broke into an immediate sprint. Zero noticed the scuffled footprints in the dirt just ahead of them—Rutledge’s, he imagined, being forced to move through this musty old tunnel—but he didn’t stop to examine them. They were on the right track, he knew it.
Not two hundred yards down the tunnel his knee began to ache, an old injury flaring up at a horribly inopportune time. Strickland, on the other hand, was young and seemingly tireless. He slowed his pace a bit to accommodate Zero’s.
“Where do you think these lead?” Todd’s voice wasn’t even strained.
“Not… sure,” Zero told him. “But wherever the lights stop… that’s where we go.” He had to pick up the pace. They had to be fast enough to catch up. The captors were only as fast as their slowest person, and Rutledge wouldn’t be sprinting. Which meant they had to.
This is why they cut the power, he realized. They must have had someone on the outside with the ability to shut off the electricity to the Generali Building, maybe even the whole city block, for just long enough that they could make their escape through the maintenance closet unseen.
“What do you think these lights are wired to?” Todd asked suddenly.
“Huh?”
“These lights. They’re wired together, see? Which means they’re drawing power from somewhere. If we knew where, that might give us an indication of where they’re going… Zero, you okay?”
Zero slowed to a trot, and then to a halt, panting. He saw what Todd was suggesting; each of the lights had a thin silver line of filament connecting one to the next. He reached out for one, and gently tugged it from the tunnel wall. It came off easily; the adhesive on the back of the round light wasn’t strong and the plastic fixture only weighed a few ounces.
But the filament wasn’t attached to the battery-powered light. It was attached to the small device behind the light.
Panic surged in Zero’s chest and threatened to push bile up into his throat.
“Are those explosives?” Strickland took a step back.
“We have to go back. Now!” He took off anew, back the way they came. The captors had wired the tunnel with plastic explosives. Small charges. But more than enough to take down the ancient tunnel. And if they reached their destination before Zero and Strickland did…
From far down in the distance, farther than the dim yellow lights reached, a boom like thunder echoed to them.
Then another.
And another.
“Go!” Zero shouted. He didn’t have to say it twice. Strickland turned on the speed and outpaced Zero by ten yards in seconds. Then twenty. Zero ignored the searing pain in his knee as the chain reaction boomed behind them like peals of thunder in his chest.
We can make it, his brain told him, and he wanted to believe it, because in that moment there was not a thought more terrifying than dying under tons of rock and rubble in a collapsed tunnel beneath Jerusalem.
“Zero, let’s go!” Strickland shouted behind him. As if words of encouragement could make him go faster.
We can make it.
The booms were closer, spanned only a couple seconds apart from one another. Zero didn’t want to look back—but he did, and he saw the dark cloud of dust and death less than fifty yards behind him.
The tunnel creaked and groaned, threatening to come apart around them at any moment.
He can make it, Zero realized.
I’m not going to make it.
Strickland reached the incline and bounded up it with the speed and grace of an Olympian. Just like that, he was gone, on the surface, and Zero was alone, racing against an explosion that was, literally, hot on his heels.
He could feel increased heat behind him. A resonant boom that he felt far more than he heard. His feet hit the incline and he leapt up in a crouch, one step, two steps. There was Strickland’s hand, outstretched, reaching down.
He leapt up. His fingers wrapped around Strickland’s. The final charge exploded behind him as he was lifted up, only slightly, and then thrown forward, and then he lost all sense of direction entirely. His hand lost its grip. Dust choked him. Darkness enveloped him. Something solid pressed against him. There was no pain, and as he lost consciousness he was dimly aware that there might not ever be any pain again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sara awoke with a groan to the blaring sound of the alarm on her cell phone. She cursed at it, turned it off, and saw that she had a notification. A text from her friend Camilla, who was in rehab on the shore.
The text said: Omg, did you see the news? The Israel thing?
Sara tossed the offending device on the carpet. She was decidedly not a political person, and even less a morning person. Never had been. There was a sanctity to sleep, one that she understood even though her father and sister didn’t seem to see it. They were often up before the sun. Heathens.
For a moment she entertained the notion of rolling over and going right back to bed—there was only one window in the basement, and she’d covered it with thick curtains so that it could feel like any time of day that she wanted it to down there. But then she remembered why she had set the alarm in the first place, and with another groan, and another curse, she forced herself to stand.
She had made a promise to her dad to look after the girl. More importantly, she had made an arrangement to get paid, the sum of which would put her more than halfway to her goal of a brand-new electric bicycle, the motorized kind that didn’t require pedaling if she didn’t feel like it.
Sara trudged up the stairs, intent on visiting the bathroom for her morning ritual of teeth-brushing, yanking a comb through her tangled blonde hair, and washing off the eye makeup that she perpetually forgot she had on the night before. But this morning she paused at the top of the basement stairs.
Mischa looked up at her from the sofa, a book open on her lap. The girl looked fresh as a daisy, fully dressed, her hair combed and parted.
“Hello.”
“Uh, good morning,” Sara said. “Been up long?”
Mischa looked at the wall clock. “One hour and forty-three minutes.”
“Yup. Maya will just love you,” Sara muttered as she headed to the kitchen to put on some coffee. “What are you reading?”
“A history of the Magyars. I found it on a shelf in the… that other room…”
“The den,” Sara told her. “And that’s interesting to you?”
Mischa nodded.
“You know, you could have turned on the TV or something. The remote’s right there on the table,” Sara offered.
“American television is propaganda,” Mischa said simply.
Sara snorted. She was about to say that suggesting American television was propaganda sounded, in itself, like propaganda. But that reminded her too much of her older sister. So instead she said, “Sure. What isn’t, these days?”
She fixed herself a cup of coffee—two sugars, no milk—and joined Mischa in the living room, sitting in an armchair opposite her. “I’ve got the car. What do you want to do today?”
“I would like to read this book,” Mischa said simply. To anyone else it might have sounded like a passive-aggressive brush-off, and in fact at first it did to Sara, but something about the girl’s tone made her think twice. It was just a fact; she wanted to read that book.
“Sure. Okay.” Sara tapped a finger against the cup. She supposed she could just leave the girl there to read and go about her own business. Maybe do some painting. Watch TV down in the basement on the little flat-screen.
She glanced at the clock. There was a Common Bonds meeting that morning, in less than an hour. She would have very much liked to attend it. Mostly to hear if Lisa had had any further difficulties with the Mustang owner. Or if he had said anything to her about the crazy girl who had busted his windows out and threatened him with a hammer.
But she had promised her dad to keep an eye on Mischa. Not to leave her alone. What was it her dad had said?
Don’t take her anywhere I wouldn’t take you.
“Hey,” Sara said. “I have somewhere to be this morning. Would you like to come along? You can bring the book.”
*
Sara drove her dad’s SUV to the community center, only a twelve-minute drive away from home rather than the forty-five minute bike ride it often took. Mischa sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window, her expression as impassive as ever but occasionally asking questions.
The sort of questions that really made Sara wonder about this girl.
“That man.” Mischa pointed while they were stopped at a red light. “What is he doing?”
“Uh… he’s putting out decorations for St. Patrick’s Day,” Sara told her.
The girl frowned.
“You know. Leprechauns? Green beer? Luck o’ the Irish?” Sara was starting to worry about having to explain things like this to her.
“Leprechauns are not real,” Mischa said softly.
“Well, no. Neither is Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but that doesn’t stop us.” She winced immediately. Did this girl still believe in Santa Claus? If so, Sara had just gone and blown that lid for her. “You… sorry, do you believe in Santa Claus?”
“Of course not. Santa Claus is a fiction of Western Christian culture based on a combination of the Dutch Sinterklaas and the Germanic god Wodan, who led the Wild Hunt at Yuletide.”
Sara turned slightly to face the driver’s side window so that Mischa would not see her mouth the word wow. For everything this girl knew that she shouldn’t know there seemed to be a counterpart that she didn’t know but should. It was as if… well, it was as if she’d been terribly sheltered for most of her life with nothing but books. And as soon as she had the thought, it suddenly made a lot of sense.
“Mischa,” she asked, “what was it like? In the….” She stopped herself from saying “loony bin,” or “nut ward,” but even “psychiatric hospital” didn’t seem appropriate for some reason. “In the place, where you were?”
The girl sighed as she stared out the window. “It was quiet. And lonely. There was only one man there that would take care of me, and he did not speak to me often. Maria was the only one who would visit me. I did not trust her at first. But I grew to like her. I suppose it made sense, in a way, that I would come to live with her. It didn’t seem like it at first. It does now, though.”
It was Sara’s turn to sigh. “Wow,” she said aloud this time. “That sounds… well, I’m sorry that happened to you.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived at the community center, Mischa took it all in with the curiosity of an animal being introduced to a new habitat. The rest of the group was already present when they entered, including Maddie, who looked as irritatingly perfect as usual despite the hour.
“Good morning, Sara!” she said in a way that made the teen want to wince. “And who is this charming young lady?”
“This is Mischa,” Sara introduced. “My…”
Hell, might as well get used to it.
“My stepsister.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mischa. I’m Madelyn, but everyone calls me Maddie.” She shook hands with the girl. “And how old are you?”
“I am twelve, ma’am.”
“I see. So polite!” The smile never left Maddie’s face as she lowered her voice and said, “Sara, are we sure that Mischa should be here? She’s quite young, and some of the subject matter here can be… well, I don’t need to tell you.”
“She’s very mature for her age,” Sara insisted. And she wasn’t lying, not really. “Besides, she brought a book. She won’t even be paying attention.”
A flicker of doubt crossed Maddie’s face, even though the smile remained. Sara could see that she wanted to argue it further, but it was starting time and the rest of the women had already arranged their seats in a circle. “All right,” Maddie said at last. “Mischa, why don’t you grab a seat over there, sweetie.”
Sara led her to a spot near the corner and set up a chair for her. “Just sit here, okay? This won’t take long.”
“What is ‘sweetie’?” Mischa asked quietly. “Is this a term of endearment?”
“Good grief,” Sara muttered. “Yes, it is. Just sit here and read your book, okay?”
She joined the rest of the women in the circle of chairs, shooting a glance over at Lisa as she did. The young woman was noticeably different. She still wasn’t wearing much makeup, but there was more color in her cheeks today. More of a shine to her hair. And if Sara didn’t know any better, she was sitting up straighter in the chair, more attentive.
“Welcome, everyone,” Maddie greeted. “We have a new member visiting today. Group, this is Stephanie.” She gestured to a young woman seated beside her. Stephanie was strikingly pretty, with strawberry-blonde hair and a puffy white winter vest. She couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than Sara, if that. “Now Stephanie, I want to thank you for joining us. The way this works is very simple. Whoever holds the seashell gets to speak. We try our very best not to interrupt while they’re relating their experiences to the group.”
Sara tried hard not to roll her eyes at the comment that was clearly meant for her.
“When the speaker is done, we’ll ask the group if anyone has shared experiences, hurdles they’ve overcome, that are similar to theirs,” Maddie explained. “In this way, we form common bonds through our shared traumas. It’s our tradition that new visitors get the opportunity to speak first, but it’s entirely up to you.”
She won’t. First-timers never spoke. They sat and they listened and if they came back, they eventually shared. But not the first time. Herself included.
“Sure, what the hell.” Stephanie shrugged. “I’ll talk.” Maddie handed her the scalloped seashell, and the girl crossed her legs. “Uh, okay. I’m Stephanie, hi. I’ll be twenty next month. I, uh… I guess I’m here because I can’t afford a therapist.” She let out a small nervous laugh, though no one else did. “Okay. So I guess I’m here because I was seeing this guy for a while. Until pretty recently, actually. And he’s older, like twice my age. But he liked me. And he had money. Bought me stuff. Treated me good… mostly.”
Her voice lowered in pitch as the young woman shifted uneasily in her seat. “The thing was that when he wanted… you know, ‘it’… he would get it.” Stephanie stared at the floor and added, “One way or another.” She cleared her throat. “I was still in high school when we met. I thought that it was… normal. For it to be that way. So I always kind of gave in. But not so long ago I met some new friends, and they helped me see that it wasn’t. Normal, that is. And, uh, I broke it off with him. He threatened me and my family. Cut me off completely. I’ve got nothing now.”
Stephanie fell silent for a long moment. “I wish I could say I was rid of him. But he still calls. DMs me on my socials. My mom says he’s parked outside their house before. I just… I don’t know how to get rid of him.” She shook her head, and then she hastily pushed the seashell back into Maddie’s hands. “I think that’s enough sharing for now.”
