Chasing zero, p.19
Chasing Zero, page 19
part #9 of Agent Zero Spy Thriller Series
“A dud,” he repeated. It was troubling enough that someone had circumvented Penny and shut down the countdown. But the bomb was a dud.
Zero rolled out from under the chair. “You’re sure, Todd?”
“I’m sure. That circuit board just fried itself. One of the wires must have doubled back on its own loop. Omer—you can stand up.”
The man shook his head slightly, still fearful, but Zero held out a hand. Omer took it, and though Zero trusted Todd he still found himself holding his breath as the man slowly lifted himself from the seat.
Nothing happened. No bomb exploded. Omer smiled wide and breathed an intense sigh of relief, as if he’d been holding it for hours.
“Let’s get out of here,” Zero told the team. “Omer, we can get you to a…” He trailed off as his eyes met the computer monitor.
The countdown had started up again, skipping ahead to its current position.
20:43:36…
20:43:35…
20:43:34…
“What the hell?” Strickland whispered.
Realization struck Zero like a brick to the head. Someone had turned off the countdown—because that same someone knew that the bomb was supposed to go off when it ceased. But the bomb was faulty. Which meant…
We’re being watched.
But how? Were there cameras? Or maybe through a—
The window to Zero’s left exploded suddenly, sending glass shrapnel bouncing off of him. The bullet entered Omer’s skull, and the man crumpled to the ground in an instant.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
“Sniper!” Zero shouted. But it was drowned out by a second shot, this one spinning Foxworth and sending him to the floor. “Chip!”
Strickland was on one knee, gun out in an instant, aimed out the window. Zero pulled the Glock 19 and saw it—a man with a rifle, on the flat rooftop of the adjacent villa.
The wiring of the bomb, the cessation of the countdown, a sniper watching. A failsafe to the failsafe to the failsafe.
Strickland fired several rounds as the sniper rolled away and out of sight.
“Did you hit him?” Zero shouted.
“I don’t think so. Omer?”
“Dead.” He spun toward Chip. “Foxworth?”
“I’m hit.” Chip sat up with a groan, holding his shoulder. “That hurt. I’m bleeding, but not bad.”
Zero frowned. A bullet strong enough to penetrate the graphene Chip wore was high caliber—a fact that he already knew based on the state of Omer’s skull.
“Stay with him!” he ordered Strickland. They needed to get to that man. They needed to know what he knew.
Zero holstered the Glock as he kicked away shards of broken glass from the shattered window frame and stood on it, bracing himself against the edges. He looked up; the lip of the flat roof was just out of reach. He was going to have to jump for it.
He looked down. If he missed, it was only an eighteen-foot drop or so. Right onto concrete. Still high enough to shatter both legs.
He took a breath, ejected mangled limbs from his mind, and jumped, reaching—his fingertips grazed and then grabbed the lip of the roof. For a moment he just dangled there, legs kicking, pulse pounding in his strained fingers.
With a grunt and a herculean effort, he pulled himself up and rolled onto the flat roof of the villa. The gun was out in an instant, aiming—but he didn’t see the sniper on the adjacent roof.
No, the man was already two villas away, running.
The span was eight feet at most. Not impossible, but an above average long jump for a human. And he wasn’t in the best shape he could have been.
“Screw it.” He quickly backed up several strides, got a running start, and leaped.
His heart was in his throat as the toes of his boots hit the adjacent rooftops. His arms windmilled for a moment, and then he forced his weight forward—first his hips, then torso, until his shoulders propelled him forward into a roll.
Then he was on his feet again, running. Another leap. Another opportunity to congratulate himself later on being forty and capable of a rooftop chase.
But the sniper had a lead on him, and seemed faster on his feet. Zero raised the Glock, took careful aim. He was just over fifty yards away.
He squeezed the trigger. Once. Then twice. The shots cracked in his eardrums. The sniper cried out and fell forward on the second shot.
The next rooftop, thankfully, was closer than the others, practically touching, and it took Zero only seconds to catch up to the fallen man. He was young, twenty-five if he was a day, with a black curling beard a sneer on his lips.
“Don’t,” Zero had the gun trained on him as the young man clearly thought about going for the rifle that had fallen a few feet from him. “I have questions for you, and they’re going to be difficult to answer with two bullets in you.”
The young sniper grunted in pain as he got slowly to his feet. “I will tell you nothing,” he said in Arabic.
“I think you’re going to surprise yourself… hey! Stop!”
The young man backed up a few feet, getting dangerously close to the edge.
Zero edged closer, both hands around the pistol. “Don’t…”
Without another word, the sniper turned and leapt from the rooftop, headfirst, in a swan-dive.
The sound of the impact made Zero’s stomach turn. He didn’t want to look, but he had to, and when he did there was absolutely no doubt that the man was dead. He heard shrieks and cries of pedestrians, some shouting in English and others in Greek, and knew the police would be called any moment. No time to search the sniper or to get himself involved in politics with local authorities.
Two minutes later he returned to the Fiat to find Strickland and Foxworth waiting for him inside. They pulled away immediately, putting distance between them and the screaming sirens behind them.
“Dead,” Zero told them before they could ask. “Jumped from the roof before I could get any answers. But the perpetrators must have been in touch with him. Someone was—someone stopped that countdown in the hopes the bomb would go off.”
“Why?” Strickland asked. “Just to kill whoever found Omer?”
Zero shook his head. Why indeed? Because…
Because they don’t care if the countdown is stopped, or the website is taken down.
It was another diversion. They knew that the first way to track them would be to find the source of the site and whoever was behind it. Omer was a patsy. The world had already seen the countdown; it was likely being tracked in real time by a thousand websites and media outlets. Even if the original countdown was stopped, it would continue elsewhere.
All of this was so that we would hit a dead end.
But they hadn’t. Not entirely.
“Where to?” Chip asked.
“Back to the plane,” Zero told him. “How’s the shoulder?”
“I’ll live. Barely penetrated.”
Zero pulled out the satellite phone. “Did you try to contact Maria and her team?”
“Tried and failed,” said Todd. “They should be in Sofia by now. Likely went silent.”
He shook his head. If their experience was anything like the one in Nicosia, his friends might be walking into a similar trap.
He called Penny.
“I’m seeing emergency services near your location,” she answered by way of greeting. “You guys all right?”
“We’re fine enough. But Maria, Alan, and Mendel might not be. I want you to get a message to them, let them know to be aware for traps. Especially bombs.”
“Sure thing. Where are you headed?”
“Cairo,” Zero told her. “What’s the update on our friend Chubb and the Secret Service?”
“They’re en route to Nicosia as we speak,” Penny replied. “Should I presume they’ll find themselves cleaning up a mess?”
“Two messes. And a thoroughly dead end—for them, at least.” For a moment he had a pang of doubt. To have more hands on deck could be beneficial. But those were men he didn’t know, hadn’t worked with before, and after the episode on Air Force One with the Ayatollah of Iran and a rogue agent, he wasn’t ready to let unknowns in on his plans. Besides, he’d worked with guys like Chubb before. They were tough, and thorough, and believed in justice—which meant they were the type who would waltz in with handcuffs, throw around threats, and demand answers.
What he had planned required a little more subterfuge than that.
“Penny, I need everything you can find on an underground businessman that goes by the name ‘Mr. Shade’ in Cairo. It seems he has some holdings in the Caymans.”
“I’ll start digging ASAP,” Penny confirmed. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“Not sure yet,” Zero told her. “But I have a hunch he might be bankrolling this operation.”
And we’re going to go pay him a visit.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Maria couldn’t help herself. She glanced at the phone’s screen for what must have been the fourth time inside a minute.
She had synced the website’s countdown with the timer app on the phone Mendel had provided. She knew she should but she wished she hadn’t. Every second ticking by was another grain of sand in a vast hourglass that would never be flipped.
20:19:22…
20:19:21…
20:19:20…
She tore her gaze from it and darkened the screen. Ahead of her, Talia Mendel drove the black sedan, a loaner from a contact of her passenger, Alan Reidigger.
One of these days Maria would sit down with Alan and have a long chat about how he had forged relationships with half the world’s underbelly during his two years of being dark. For now, she was thankful for it. He had a car waiting for them before the wheels of the Learjet had touched down.
Sofia was a gorgeous city. Funny, to her, that so many Americans seemed to think of this part of the globe, Eastern Europe, as being third-world. There was so much history and culture here, from still-standing Roman amphitheaters to a rich museum scene. The Cathedral Saint Aleksandar Nevski was particularly striking, layered sea-green domes rising above one another into the sky.
Zero would love it here.
She hoped they were okay, and that Nicosia had provided a lead on the president’s whereabouts. No one had tried to contact her yet. She’d call them after this was done.
She found herself wondering too if Mischa would like it here. And then, had the girl ever been on a vacation before? On a beach? Had she ever walked through a museum, or dined at a restaurant?
Focus, Johansson.
“Alan?” she asked. “Location?”
“Still static,” he reported. He was monitoring a GPS blip on a smartphone in his hand. It was the mobile device from which the bot accounts had launched when the countdown began. Since then, several more posts had gone out, in seemingly mechanical intervals, every half hour according to Penny. But the location of the device hadn’t changed. Whoever was behind it had stayed put for the last… what was it? Three hours and forty-two minutes?
Don’t look at it again, she told herself.
There was still time. Lots of time.
Mendel slowed the car as they arrived near their location. Even through the trees Maria could see the bell tower and the dome of the central cathedral.
“We’re sure this is the place?” she asked.
“We’re sure,” Alan confirmed.
Sveta Troitsa, this place was called. A nineteenth-century Bulgarian Orthodox monastery turned church turned museum turned historic landmark.
And whoever they were looking for was inside.
“What do you think they’re playing at, hiding in an old church?” she wondered aloud.
“If I had to guess?” Alan turned in his seat with a slight grin. “I’m guessing they don’t think we’ll do what we’re about to do in such a holy place.”
Mendel got out first and popped the trunk. Maria joined her just in time to see the Mossad agent hefting an Israeli-made IWI Tavor-21, a reliable bullpup assault rifle that was standard issue for Israel Defense Forces.
“Hey,” Maria told her, “we’re here to get information, not fight off a battalion.”
“It is better to have it and not need it, yes?” Mendel gestured toward the long black case before her. “I have two, if you’d like.”
“No. Thanks.” She had a Sig Sauer holstered under her jacket, and hoped she wouldn’t even need that. They were looking for one man with a mobile device. And though he might be armed, their goal was to interrogate, not blast him full of holes.
They approached the church from the west. The architecture might have been beautiful had it not been for their reason for visiting, but now wasn’t the time to stop and admire. Maria wasn’t expecting to encounter anyone other than their perp and any friends of his; the church was waiting on government funding for a restoration project and had been for three years.
“Mendel,” she said. “Around back. Alan, with me.”
Talia split off, the Tavor cradled in her arms, while Maria and Alan approached the wide main entrance. She positioned herself alongside the door and pulled the Sig Sauer, and then nodded to Alan.
He reached for the door. To their surprise, it pulled open easily. Unlocked.
A tingle went up her spine. Unlocked meant welcoming, and welcoming—in these situations—often spelled trouble.
Still she spun and entered the atrium, pistol up, tracking quickly left to right. “Clear.”
Alan followed, passing her, taking point to the second set of doors. They repeated the process, again finding them unlocked, and Maria clearing the lengthy nave.
It appeared empty.
Still she stepped forward slowly on the carpet of the central aisle, checking the left rows of pews while Alan stepped in time with her, checking the right.
Stained glass windows depicted saints and angels. The ceiling was an ornate mural of various biblical figures. The front altar and apse bore a life-sized statue of Jesus on the cross. But they heard nothing, saw no one in the cavernous cathedral.
Maria got down on one knee and checked beneath the pews, in case someone was hiding. No one there.
She heard footsteps and whirled around, the gun up. Mendel appeared from a door off the north transept.
“Clear.” The Israeli said it quietly but still it echoed in the room.
“Over here,” Alan announced. The two women hurried to his position, staring down at a pew about two-thirds to the front altar.
Lying there was a cell phone.
Maria spun quickly. “Whoever it was already ran. Or he’s hiding. I’ll check the exits. Alan, you check the—”
“Hold on one moment.” Talia picked up the cell phone and tapped the screen.
“We don’t have time for this,” Maria argued.
“Just… wait.” Mendel scrolled, frowning. “Aha,” she said after a moment. “Very clever.”
“What is?!” Maria demanded. “He could be getting away—”
“There is no ‘he.’ Social media apps are open on this phone. The posts that have been traced to this place were prewritten and set to go live on timed intervals.” She turned the screen to show them a list of composed but not-yet-transmitted posts.
Maria shook her head. She didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t exactly up to date on social media, and had no idea that was something someone could do. “Then that means…”
“Yes. Dead end.”
“They wanted us to come here,” Alan grunted. “To waste time chasing nobody.”
Maria wanted to kick something, a pew perhaps, but it didn’t feel right. “At least shut it down.”
“Already have,” said Mendel.
“Let’s take it with us. We can see what else might be on it.” She pulled out her phone to try to contact Zero and his team, hoping that Nicosia had panned out better than Sofia had. She dialed his phone and hit the green send button. But all she got was a warning.
“Airplane mode?” She scoffed loudly and waved the phone in Mendel’s face. “You gave me a phone that’s been on airplane mode?”
Mendel merely shrugged. “You did not check first?”
Maria cursed under her breath as she turned it off. And then balked as several new voicemails rolled in. “Christ, they’ve been trying to call me…”
Alan tensed suddenly beside her like a bloodhound with the scent of a fox. She did too, trusting his instincts, and an instant later she heard the screech of tires just outside the church.
Then car doors slammed, and shadows fell over the stained glass windows. The shadows of hasty men with weapons in their hands.
“You turned off the media accounts,” Maria whispered.
“Yes.” Mendel’s grip on the Tavor tightened.
“And that turned them on to us.”
“It would seem.”
They’d been nearby. Waiting for someone to come after the phone.
“Alan, flank left! Mendel, cover the entrance—”
The stained glass window closest to them exploded inward. Maria dropped instantly to the pew, turning as she did, and fired the Sig Sauer twice into the chest of the man climbing through it.
Even as she did, another window exploded. The doors to the nave were kicked in. Talia’s Tavor shrieked in a rapid burst.
Maria rolled to the floor and crawled quickly to the aisle. Across from her, another window was shot in, and a man leapt through it—right into the path of Alan Reidigger. He fired twice into the assailant, grabbed him by the black vest, and tossed him back out the window.
How many? She didn’t know. But there had been a back entrance, and someone needed to cover it…
Too late. As Maria stood, she saw herself face to face with three men who had crashed through the transept door, raising their guns in her direction.
“Down!” Mendel shouted, and before Maria had even hit the carpet the Tavor screamed again as the Mossad agent emptied the clip into the trio.
Shells rattled against the floor and pews, and then fell silent.
“Clear?” Maria asked.
“Clear,” Alan huffed.
“Clear,” said Mendel. She propped the Tavor on one shoulder. “I saved your life just now, you know this.”
