Chasing zero, p.29
Chasing Zero, page 29
part #9 of Agent Zero Spy Thriller Series
The man jumped a little at the sudden ringing of a phone. He frowned in irritation that whoever it belonged to was not answering—and then realized it was his phone, ringing from his bag.
The burner? He had only ever made calls from it, never received one. Who could this be? A survivor, perhaps. Another who could join him, and rebuild.
“Alo,” he answered cautiously.
“English?” the man asked. “It is nothing personal, I just prefer it.”
He frowned deeply, panic knotting in his chest at how this number had been acquired. But he switched to English all the same. “Who is this?”
“I could ask the same question,” the man said. His accent was European. German, it sounded. “And you would tell me ‘no one.’ Though in another life, you were Al Najjar, were you not?”
Hang up. End the call. No good can come of this.
But his curiosity won out over his panic. “What do you want?”
“Money,” the German said simply. “I know that your organization was funded by a businessman who called himself Mr. Shade. My resources indicate that Shade is now incarcerated—which is putting it mildly. But I also know that you still have access to the funds he had allocated to you and your… former partners. May they rest in peace.”
The man who used to be Al Najjar hesitated. How did this European know about Shade, or the money?
“Are you still there, née Al Najjar?”
“I am. Go on.”
“I want twenty-five million euros,” said the German. “And for this price, I will kill Agent Zero for you.”
Al Najjar laughed. He could not help himself; the notion itself was abject lunacy, and the seriousness with which the German stated it only made it more laughable.
“You are laughing,” the German noted.
“You are insane. And I am hanging up—”
“Krauss,” he said quickly. “You have heard this name?”
The man paused. “…I have,” he admitted.
“I am him,” said the German.
Krauss. He had heard the name mentioned in some circles, in relation to certain deaths, ones that remained unsolved as far as any governments or authorities were concerned. Deaths that had toppled regimes and built empires.
But he had assumed that Krauss was the name of an organization, not a single man.
“How do I know you are telling the truth?” he asked the German.
“You have only my word. But I have your telephone number, do I not? Your former name. The name of your financer. His location. The names he has given up. And—I know the name that haunts your dreams at night.”
The man shook his head. “None of that matters. Even if I did believe you, I do not have twenty-five million. Nowhere near that.”
“No, you do not. But as I said, I have names. Mr. Shade financed several groups like yours. And like yours, they too are afraid of the American bogeyman. Find them. Pool your resources.”
“How?”
“Go to Beirut. There is a Kiwi there named Dutchman—”
“A Kiwi?”
“A New Zealander,” said the German. “Named Dutchman. He will put you on the path. I will be in touch. And when you have my twenty-five million, I will hunt and kill Agent Zero. Godspeed.”
The German ended the call.
The man who used to be Al Najjar sat there for a long moment, the phone still in his hands. He knew he should ignore it, forget the call ever happened. Continue on to Ankara. Hide.
But what if the clerk at the duty-free was Agent Zero? What if the passenger behind him on the plane was Zero? What if he was already there, in Ankara, lying in wait?
He felt no shame in feeling fear, but great shame in living in fear. So he rose, and he headed toward the ticket agent to change his flight to Beirut.
EPILOGUE
“Well. This is just sad,” Maria said with a sigh.
“What’s that?” Zero asked, but he didn’t look up from the kitchen counter. He was carefully stuffing bell peppers with a blend of tomato sauce and sausage, intent on getting the recipe right this time. Last time he’d just used ground beef and they’d come out too bland. Italian sausage, he had decided, was the way to go.
He’d taken over most of the cooking, with occasional help from Sara, since Maria’s left arm was in a sling where a bullet had winged her three days prior in the Libyan Desert.
The memory of it was already like a dream. Rutledge was home, and safe; the plot had been thwarted. War had been averted. And they had settled right back into domestic life as easily as changing clothes. Strange, how simple it was. Though it helped a lot that he had Maria there, and Sara, and even Mischa to come home to.
“Our guest list.” Maria sat at the island with a pad of paper before her and a pen touching her bottom lip. Since she was limited physically, she had taken to wedding planning in the meantime. “It’s eighteen people long and I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone else.”
Zero shrugged. “Eighteen sounds nice. Small and intimate.”
“That’s including plus-ones.”
He laughed. “Okay. Maybe that is a little sad. Did you put the girls’ Aunt Linda down—”
A dull crash from below them interrupted him. Zero sighed, pulled open the basement door, and shouted down the stairs. “What’s going on down there?”
“We’re painting,” Sara called back.
“Yes,” Mischa agreed. “Painting.”
“Then what was that crash just now?” he asked.
“…We’re aggressively painting,” Sara called back, obviously holding in a laugh.
He closed the door again. “You know what? I don’t want to know.” It seemed like the two had bonded during their time alone. He wasn’t about to question it, unless one of them got hurt.
“There’s still the big question of where,” Maria said.
“A beach in the Bahamas,” Zero said right away.
She laughed at him. “We can’t get married on a beach in the Bahamas.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” She tapped the pen against her lip again. “You know, I actually don’t know why not.”
His cell phone rang then, displaying his eldest daughter’s name. “One minute,” he told Maria. “Hey, sweetheart. How are you?”
“I’m good,” Maya answered, her voice sounding a little more chipper than normal.
“How’s school?”
“School is… great. Hey, Dad, has the dean called you?”
He frowned. “No. Why? Should she have? Is everything okay?”
“Oh yeah. Everything is great. There’s just… um, there was an opportunity,” she told him. “Remember when I was able to test out of my senior year of high school? Well, they offered me the same chance to do that here. At the academy. And I did… and I passed.”
Zero’s frown deepened. He was starting to get lines around his eyes. “You’re telling me that you tested out of your final year of West Point?” From the island, Maria smirked a little and shook her head. “I didn’t know that was a thing they allowed.”
“It’s brand new,” Maya said. “They just started. But anyway, Dean Hunt and I had a meeting, and she had another opportunity for me. Advanced training, down in D.C. So… I’ll be coming home, as soon as next week.”
Zero blinked. “Advanced training,” he repeated. “Uh-huh.”
He didn’t believe it for a second.
But you know what? As long as no one’s hurt, I don’t need to know.
“So you need me to come get you?” he asked.
“Nope. It’s all taken care of. I’ll call you when I’m heading back—”
“Just one quick question,” he interjected. “Does this have anything to do with you taking a two-thousand-dollar cash advance on your credit card?”
“…Testing fees,” she told him.
“Testing fees.”
Nope. Don’t want to know.
“Okay then. We’ll see you next week.”
“Love you, bye!” Maya hung up.
Zero frowned at the phone.
“Secrets?” Maria asked.
“Secrets,” he confirmed. “And speaking of, I have a lunch date tomorrow.”
Maria raised an eyebrow. “One that I’m not allowed to know about?”
He smiled. “Just visiting a friend.” It wasn’t a lie. He had made a promise, and he intended on keeping it.
“Okay. Just don’t forget, we have the…” Maria trailed off. “The other thing, tomorrow afternoon.”
“I won’t forget.”
They both fell silent. Chip’s funeral was tomorrow.
His body had been recovered from the scene, cremated, and sent to his sister and nephew in Austin. As far as they were concerned, Chip had died in a plane crash. An engine malfunction in a small commuter jet. He had been the only one aboard. The manufacturer was settling with the family for a hefty sum, which Zero knew was not actually coming from any airplane manufacturer but the federal government.
“I should…” He gestured back to the unfinished tray of stuffed peppers behind him.
A moment later he felt Maria’s good arm wrap around his waist and her head rest on his back. “You know,” she told him, “it wasn’t your—”
“Don’t.” He said it quietly, not forcefully, but still didn’t want to hear it. “Please. Don’t say it.”
She had already told him that it wasn’t his fault, probably a dozen times now. Strickland had said it. Reidigger had said it. Even the president had said it.
And he knew it wasn’t. He hadn’t asked Chip to come with him that day. He hadn’t asked him to step forward and claim to be Agent Zero.
But the simple fact was that Zero was alive, and Chip wasn’t. It hadn’t been his fault, not directly, but it was because of him.
And he would have to live with that.
*
The next day Zero dressed in a dark suit and stuffed a tie in his pocket so that he could go directly to the funeral afterward. It would be a token ceremony, in a church but without a casket or body. People who knew him would say nice things about him. Zero would not. Maria would not. Todd and Alan would not, because as far as anyone was aware, they had not worked together on a covert operation to rescue the President of the United States.
If anyone asked how they’d known Chip, he had been their pilot a few times. A charming fellow. Always pleasant. Always joking. Doing great impressions and making up wild stories.
But first, he had a promise to keep.
It took him twenty-eight minutes to get to the cul-de-sac and the two-story colonial where Seth Connors was staying—or being kept, was more appropriate. Zero had texted yesterday morning about the visit and Seth had responded with a simple message: Looking forward to it.
He knocked on the door and waited.
He knocked a second time.
After the third knock without a response he tried the knob and found it locked, so he circled around to the rear, to the patio where they had talked once before. Not there, either.
He gave the sliding patio door a tug and found it opened easily.
Maybe he’s in the shower or something, Zero thought, already knowing that wasn’t true.
He found Connors in the living room. He wasn’t sure where he had gotten the gun, but guns weren’t hard to come by in their line of work. There was a suppressor on the end of it to stifle the sound. A single shot, to his own temple. Seth had laid down plastic, on the floor and on the sofa, where he had fallen in such a way that he could have been lounging if his eyes weren’t still open.
Zero sighed and shook his head. This was no way for anyone to go—though he couldn’t fully relate to how haunted Seth had been by the fragmented memories of a past life he knew almost nothing about.
“I’m sorry,” Zero whispered. “I know it was hard.”
He knew he had to call this in, but he didn’t want to be here when he did. There was a mini-mart up the road a bit with a working pay phone; he could be anonymous from there…
He paused. On the coffee table was a sticky note, just a small yellow square stuck to the glass.
It was short.
I’m sorry.
More came back. Couldn’t do it anymore.
Thanks for being there when you could. Dillard.
He read it again, and then a third time. It felt like it was meant for him, but that final word, “Dillard,” was unfamiliar. It looked like a sign-off. A CIA alias that had come back to his mind? Had Connors been too confused to remember who he was? Or was there an intended recipient other than Zero?
He wasn’t sure. He stuffed the note in his pocket and gently closed Seth’s eyes with two fingertips. He wiped the doorknobs clean of his prints, and then he got back in his car. For a moment he just sat there. He had to report a suicide and go to a funeral.
He was alive.
Seth wasn’t.
Chip wasn’t.
He slammed a fist on the steering wheel. Then again, and again, until the knuckle of his middle finger split. He grabbed the wheel with both hands and, with the windows up, he screamed as long and loud as he could, at no one and nothing but everything. It fell into the void, his scream, along with every other thing he’d ever done that meant nothing as long as lives kept ending around him.
Then he took a deep breath, in through his mouth and out through his nose. He wiped his knuckle clean with a tissue from the glove box. He took the crumpled note from his pocket and read it once more.
Thanks for being there when you could.
Dillard.
The name meant nothing to him.
But… maybe that was the point.
Had Seth Connors remembered something more, something that could help Zero? Was this his way of leaving a clue, but cryptically, just in case someone other than Zero had found him first?
Zero was alive.
Seth wasn’t.
Chip wasn’t.
Was Dillard? He didn’t know. But as he started the car and pulled away from the colonial house on the cul-de-sac, he vowed to find out.
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!
VENGEANCE ZERO
(An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #10)
“You will not sleep until you are finished with AGENT ZERO. A superb job creating a set of characters who are fully developed and very much enjoyable. The description of the action scenes transport us into a reality that is almost like sitting in a movie theater with surround sound and 3D (it would make an incredible Hollywood movie). I can hardly wait for the sequel.”
--Roberto Mattos, Books and Movie Reviews
VENGEANCE ZERO is book #10 in the #1 bestselling AGENT ZERO series, which begins with AGENT ZERO (Book #1), a free download with nearly 300 five-star reviews.
When a minor terrorist group, looking to make its mark, aims to take out a “soft target” in the United States—one relatively unguarded yet which can be hugely damaging to the U.S.—the race is on for Agent Zero to discover their object and stop them before it’s too late.
Yet Zero faces his own battles: when he is targeted for assassination and someone close to him ends up the victim instead, it sends his life into a downspin, and allows him only course of action: vengeance.
Will Zero be able to save the target—and himself—before he spirals out of control?
VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10) is an un-putdownable espionage thriller that will keep you turning pages late into the night.
Book #11 (ZERO ZERO) is also available.
“Thriller writing at its best.”
--Midwest Book Review (re Any Means Necessary)
“One of the best thrillers I have read this year.”
--Books and Movie Reviews (re Any Means Necessary)
Also available is Jack Mars’ #1 bestselling LUKE STONE THRILLER series (7 books), which begins with Any Means Necessary (Book #1), a free download with over 800 five star reviews!
VENGEANCE ZERO
(An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #10)
Jack Mars
Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising six books; and of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising ten books (and counting).
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (book #1), which has over 800 five star reviews, is available as a free download on Amazon!
Jack loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.Jackmarsauthor.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!
BOOKS BY JACK MARS
LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES
ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)
OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)
SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)
OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)
PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)
OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)
HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)
FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES
PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)
PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)
PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)
PRIMARY GLORY (Book #4)
PRIMARY VALOR (Book #5)
PRIMARY DUTY (Book #6)
AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES
AGENT ZERO (Book #1)
TARGET ZERO (Book #2)
HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)
TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)
FILE ZERO (Book #5)
RECALL ZERO (Book #6)
ASSASSIN ZERO (Book #7)
DECOY ZERO (Book #8)
CHASING ZERO (Book #9)
VENGEANCE ZERO (Book #10)
ZERO ZERO (Book #11)
Jack Mars, Chasing Zero
