Phantom zero, p.18
Phantom Zero, page 18
Alan called, “Hey! Be careful! Watch out for the civilians!”
“I always am,” Zero replied. “Let’s go on the offensive. Take the left, I’ll take the right.”
“I’ll have to use my gun,” Alan warned.
“Then aim.”
He rushed to the right side. One of the skills he possessed that made him so deadly was the ability to almost instantly reach a sprint from a dead stop. It was incredibly difficult for people to react to that sudden burst of speed.
These mercenaries were no exception. A few did manage to get a shot off, but the bullets went very wide. The mercenaries on the ground floor cried out and stumbled backwards, but Zero ignored them. He leaped straight up to the upper floor, holstering his handgun and drawing his knife as he rolled over the fence.
He jammed his knife through the top of the first enemy’s skull. The man straightened, his feet jittering on the ground. Zero landed in front of him and kicked him into the two mercenaries behind him. They stumbled backwards, and Zero threw his knife at a woman behind them. The knife buried itself in her neck, and her gun slid from her hands.
Zero ran over the fallen enemies, grabbed his knife, and repeated the action, kicking the dead woman into the man behind her and knocking him over. He threw his knife into the eye of the man behind him, ran forward, and grabbed the weapon. He used the dead man’s body as a shield, drew his handgun and shot the last man on the second floor, then spun around and shot the mercenary he’d kicked the dead woman into.
The other two tried to fire back, but Zero was still holding their companion. He fired twice, both shots finding their mark.
Fire rocketed up his right leg. He looked down and saw a tear in his pants from the ankle to the hip. A thin line of blood welled along the skin underneath where the bullet had grazed him. It had struck his radio and ricocheted away, destroying the communicator in the process. That was why he didn’t suffer an injury to his upper body.
Another bullet chipped the toe of his left boot. The fighters on the ground floor were shooting up at him through the floor.
Zero threw the dead mercenary over the wall. The terrorists fired at the dead man, giving Zero the split second he needed to sprint back to the end of the floor and leap over the fence.
He did a front flip on his way down, throwing his knife at the nearest enemy as he fell. The knife buried itself to the hilt in the woman’s brainstem. She hit the ground at the same time as Zero landed on his feet. The other Meridian fighters turned toward Zero, but they were too slow. He ran forward and drove his shoulder into the first man, knocking him into his companion and sending both to the ground.
The mercenary behind him fired at Zero, but Zero dropped into a baseball slide. He fired again, and Zero rolled onto his right side and shoved himself upright. He slipped past another gunshot—this one from a woman standing at the end of the line—then spun around and elbowed her in the back of her neck. It snapped with a wet crack, and when she reflexively pulled the trigger of her handgun, she killed the man at the opposite end of the floor.
Zero picked the dead woman up and blocked a shot from the man in front of him, who was so disoriented his shot probably would have missed anyway. He dropped the dead woman and jammed his index and middle fingers to the third knuckle in the man’s eyes. They popped like grapes, and the man dropped his gun and released an earsplitting shriek.
Zero left him alive. He wanted the others to hear. He wanted them to see. He wanted that mercenary’s screams to let every other Meridian fighter know that they were overmatched. Agent Zero was here. They were dead already. The screams they heard were the symphony that would serenade their arrival in Hell.
The last surviving terrorist on the left side of the complex realized his doom. He looked at Zero with gibbering terror. Had he retained enough presence of mind to immediately surrender and offer to provide information on Meridian, he might have survived. Instead, he lifted his handgun in an instinctive attempt to kill the nightmare in front of him. Zero grabbed his hand, twisted it all the way around and shot the man with his own gun.
The screams continued for a few more seconds, until a gunshot silenced them. Zero turned around and saw Alan jogging over to him. He had a bruise over his right eye and a gash on his left shoulder that wept blood, but no serious injuries.
“That’s all of them,” Alan said. “We should get upstairs and get the girls. It would be better if we got out of here before the police arrived.”
Zero nodded. As he and Alan climbed the stairs to Sara’s apartment, the adrenaline of the fight receded, and he considered the consequences of what had just happened. The residents here had just seen a large group of criminals arrive to attack one of their neighbors, then seen two men mow several of them down in a pickup truck before taking the rest of them out in hand-to-hand combat. This was McLean, Virginia. CIA headquarters was less than five miles away. People would speculate, and they’d be right.
But that was a problem for later. Zero just wanted to get his daughters and get to safety. They’d take one of the Meridian vehicles. If there was a GPS tracker that told Meridian where it was, Alan could disable it.
Zero knocked on Sara’s door. “Sara? Mischa? It’s Dad. It’s okay now. You can come on out.”
There was no answer. Zero’s eyes fell to the bullet holes in the door. He swallowed. “Guys? Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“Just break it down,” Alan said.
Zero lifted his leg and kicked hard. The door split in two, flying inward and ricocheting off of another open door just past the apartment’s small kitchen.
Zero stepped inside and called again, “Sara! Mischa! Are you here?”
“I don’t see any signs of a fight,” Alan said. “They might have seen the terrorists approach and gone out the back.”
Zero sighed and opened the bedroom door. Sure enough, the back window was open. Zero nodded. “Yeah, they went out the back. Damn it.”
“I mean… they had good reason to.”
“Yes, thank you, Alan,” Zero said drily.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Mischa. No answer.
A chill ran through his spine. Come on. No more. We fought. We won. It’s over. Please.
He called Sara. No answer. The blood drained from his face. “Alan, can you track their phones?”
“No, I told you, Mischa disabled those trackers.”
“Check again, please. Maybe she turned them back on when she realized they were under attack.”
Alan pulled his phone from his pocket. His hands flew over the screen. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his face. Zero watched one bead travel directly over the bridge of his nose and hover on the tip for a moment before falling onto Alan’s thumb. Alan didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah,” Alan said. “I have Mischa’s phone. She’s by the Giant Food.”
Zero nodded. “Okay. Let’s go to the Giant Food. Grab keys off of one of the mercenaries,” Zero said. “We’ll take one of their vans.”
“Sure you don’t want a truck?” Alan asked, climbing through the front door.
“Do I look like I give a shit right now?”
“Sheesh, I was just making a joke. Let a man use some humor to stave off dread, yeah?”
Zero didn’t want to hear humor right now. He didn’t want to stave off dread because he didn’t want to admit that they had a reason to feel dread. Damn it, they had won! It was over! Why weren’t the girls still here? Why couldn’t they be done?
A cold voice chuckled in his head. Come on, Reid, Kent Steele said. When has it ever been that easy?
Zero’s jaw tightened. The echo of distant sirens reached his ears. Of course the police would be here now.
Alan plucked a set of keys from one of the dead Meridian fighters. He held it up and clicked it until a Ford Maverick flashed its headlights. “All right, so a sedan pretending to be a pickup. That’s fine, right?”
“I sincerely don’t care, Alan.”
The two of them jumped in the truck, and Alan pulled smoothly out of the neighborhood. The sirens and lights were coming from the right, so he turned left and accelerated away, taking care to drive normally and not exceed the speed limit. This truck was newer and cleaner than the other Meridian vehicles and would pass as an ordinary civilian car, hopefully allowing them to avoid interest from pursuing law enforcement.
Zero tapped his fingers on his leg and told himself that everything was all right. They would go to the supermarket, pick up his daughters, and go home.
He told himself that, but in reply, he only got more of Kent Steele’s mocking laughter.
You know better, Reid. It’s never that easy. Your daughters were born in blood, and that’s how they’ll die.
“Shut up,” he whispered. “Just shut up.”
“What?” Alan asked.
“Nothing. Just drive.”
Alan turned the corner and accelerated, risking a little more speed now that they were away from the scene of the firefight. He looked at Alan’s phone, at the blinking red dot that represented Mischa’s phone. They were so close. If they could just survive a little longer.
Of course, fate didn't care about Zero's feelings. The wheel turned without regard for the seeds ground to powder underneath its path. All Zero could do was hope, pray, and prepare for the next predator lurking around the corner.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Maya looked around for a way to Keller but saw nothing. She stalked to the terrified terrorist who had told them Keller was upstairs. His lips trembled, and his breath hitched. Maya didn’t feel lovely about picking on a disarmed and clearly frightened person, but the only other option was actually killing an unarmed man, and she wanted to avoid that if possible.
“How do I get upstairs?”
“Don’t tell her,” the other handcuffed terrorist said miserably. “You’ll just go to prison.”
“He’s right,” Maya said. “You will go to prison. But if I tell my superiors that you helped us stop this, you’ll get a minimum-security apartment. You’ll have creature comforts. With good behavior, you’ll even get to go outside under escort. Believe me, it’s better than the fate that awaits you if you don’t talk to me.”
The first man swallowed. “There’s an elevator on the back wall. You have to type a code into a computer to open it.”
“Talon.”
Trent dropped in front of one of the computers.
“What’s the code?”
The guard recited it. It was a fifteen-digit password composed of random letters, symbols, and numbers. Maya glanced curiously at the man. “How did you know that?”
“I was supposed to be one of his angels. Me and Gail.” He thrust his chin at the unconscious terrorist leader. “I was going to manage the Site of Revelations after the Lightbringer ascended.”
The other terrorist scoffed. “God, that seems stupid now.”
Maya didn’t argue. She heard the hiss of a door opening behind her and looked that way to see a hidden panel in the wall slide out of the way.
She ran into the elevator and pressed the button. The elevator rose for a few seconds, then came to a jarring halt. It’s door panel chimed and Keller’s voice mocked, “Did you really think I’d let you take the elevator to my office?”
Maya gritted his teeth through his laughter. One of the oldest rules of special operations was never to take an elevator for the precise reason of avoiding the very situation in which she found herself now.
But what was she supposed to do? There was no staircase, and his glass was bulletproof. They had used all of their grenades, and even if they hadn’t, she didn’t want to destroy Keller’s computers until she was sure she could stop the deployment of the OWLS’ nuclear payload.
Her earpiece buzzed. “Maya, I’m trying to crack into the elevator controls,” Trent said. “But he’s pushing me out. I don’t think I can keep up.”
“What about the jamming? Can you stop that so we can call Penny?”
Cackling laughter came over the intercom. “Your friend in Washington has already lost repeatedly to me. What makes you think she can help you now?”
Keller was losing what little of his sanity he had left, but that wasn’t going to help them right now. Maya looked up at the roof of the elevator and formed a plan. “Short out the elevator’s circuits,” she told Trent. I’m going to get in another way.”
“What?” Keller exclaimed. “No—”
The elevator shuddered. Then the lights winked out. Maya fitted her goggles over her eyes and switched to night vision. Even that couldn’t help in the utter blackness of the elevator, so she pulled her flashlight, turned it to its dimmest setting, and set it on the ground pointing at the opposite corner. The night vision made the light almost too intense, but she could still see the maintenance access panel in the roof above.
She pulled her vest off, stripped out of her shirt, and put the vest back on. She tore a strip of cloth from her shirt and used it to lash her combat knife to the front of her rifle barrel. She shoved the tip of that makeshift bayonet into the gap between the panel and the ceiling and worked it through the gap until the hatch popped open. The opening revealed a short shaft and a set of double doors leading into Keller’s office.
She tossed her rifle and bayonet through the hole, then jumped. She grabbed the top of the elevator with her fingertips and pulled herself up. The elevator’s roof was about four feet from the floor of Keller’s office. She jammed her knife through the opening and twisted. The doors resisted, and rather than snap her blade, Maya worked the rifle back and forth. The door creaked and a crack slowly widened in between them.
“No!” Keller shrieked. “God damn it! Not now!”
Finally, the door gave. Maya jumped through it, and Keller shot her, snarling as he pulled the trigger of a snub-nosed handgun. The small-caliber bullet smacked into her vest and knocked her back through the door onto the elevator. She winced at the double bruise of the shot and the fall, then growled and aimed her rifle at him.
He shrieked and dropped to the floor just before she fired. Her bullet ricocheted off the glass, and he shrieked again.
“I’m coming up,” Maya told him. “If your gun is still in your hands, I’m going to kill you.”
“You don’t understand!” Keller cried. “Please!”
“Go to hell.”
She jumped through the door. Keller was still holding the handgun. He made a noise like a cow being branded and lifted it toward her.
She didn’t kill him. Not yet. She might need him to stop this attack. Instead, she slammed the butt of her rifle onto his nose. He cried out and dropped his handgun. She kicked it away and looked at the computer. A status bar told her the takeover of the NSA satellites was complete. They were repositioning so they could broadcast data to the world, bringing his website online and making everyone’s personal information publicly accessible.
More concerningly, there were less than two minutes remaining before the OWLS satellites were in position and Keller could bombard his home nation and kill millions to achieve his revenge.
“Stop the attack,” Maya commanded, pointing her rifle at him. “Now.”
“Please,” Keller said. “Let me explain.” With his broken nose, it sounded like, “Led be eggspled.”
“Fuck your explanation,” Maya snapped. “Do it now.”
Keller swallowed. “Please. Think about your life. Think about how much pain is caused because others control information. Others tell you what you can and can’t know. Others decide what they reveal and what they keep secret.”
“I’m not going to let millions of people die to put one over on the government. Stop the attack now.”
Keller looked at the screen. His lips trembled.
Then his eyes hardened. He thrust his chin up at her. “Kill me. I’m prepared to face judgment.”
Maya stepped forward and smacked his temple with her rifle butt. Keller’s eyes rolled back in his head. Maya cuffed him and dragged him to the opposite side of the room. Then she turned back to the computer.
Forty seconds until OWLS satellites were in position. Shit.
She looked at the keyboard. It was a standard QWERTY unit, so that didn’t tell her anything. She tried typing ABORT into the command bar, and when she pressed ENTER, it asked for a passcode.
Okay, so she was on the right track. She just had only thirty seconds to figure out the passcode. God, I hate this shit.
She swallowed her anxiety and tried LUCIFER. That didn’t work.
ONE MORE ATTEMPT BEFORE COMMAND FUNCTIONS ARE LOCKED.
“One more, are you kidding me?”
She ran her hands through her hair and tapped her fingers on the desk. Twenty seconds. No time to even call downstairs and ask Trent to sweat Jana some more. She just had to guess.
What would Keller use? What was another word for Lucifer? Satan? Beelzebub? Father of Lies? Probably not that one. Something about gifts. Something that painted him in a positive light.
She thought of the website name, the SITE OF REVELATIONS. She knew that Lucifer was called the Son of the Morning, but there was another name, something that had to do with revealing things.
Ten seconds.
The name hit her like a baseball to the chest. This was the culmination of all of Keller’s plans. This was his chance to show the world his face, to make them see him as he saw himself.
And how did he see himself? By the same name that his followers saw him.
She typed in LIGHTBRINGER and hit enter just as the 0:01 switched to 0:00.
For a second, nothing happened. She held her breath, wondering if she had gotten the answer right or if she had just witnessed the start of civilization’s collapse.
Then the screen flickered. A dialog box informed her, ABORT INITIATED. ATTACK SEQUENCE TERMINATED. RETURN CONSTELLATION DOD22D9Y TO PREVIOUS POSITION AND FUNCTION? Y/N.
Maya released the breath she’d been holding and wiped sweat from her brow. She clicked the Y option, and the computer informed her that the DoD satellites Keller had taken over would be returned to their previous function.
