Cold Barrel Zero (21 page)

WARD LIFTED THE
Italian menu. On the back, with a ballpoint pen, she had sketched Sandstone Falls on the New River Gorge. Green glanced over without letting her see his interest. She didn't like to show her work, but he could never get over it. One minute she would be arguing about
Bloodsport,
and then she would go quiet and start drawing with startling realism.

The water seemed to rush down the page. She began sketching a figure; a child's form slowly appeared on the cheap paper. Green knew his anatomy and could see every contour drawn true to life. She stopped at the neck and jaw.

She never drew faces. Everything was exploitable.

She stood up, held the paper to the blue flame of the range, and watched it burn near the sink. Her radio crackled, but no voice came.

“What's that?” Green said. “No one should be on the net.”

“Help.” It was a man's voice, strained, racked by pain.

“Help.”

“Go ahead.”

“It's Speed. I need help. I'm hurt. Where are you?”

“Speed, are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Yes. I need help. What's your location?”

“I say again,
Are you in some kind of trouble?
”

“I need help.”

She turned off the radio.
Are you in some kind of trouble
. They used the phrase as part of their coded communications. If a team member seemed to be under duress, he or she would be asked exactly those words, which would sound innocent enough to any captors. If the team member had been taken hostage, the response was
I'm doing all right
or
I'm not doing all right.
If free and clear, the response was
I'm doing good
or
I'm not doing good.
In this way, they could communicate with one another without tipping off the enemy.

The voice on the radio had said,
I need help;
whoever was on the other end of the line wasn't up on the codes. Ward had suspected it, but now it was confirmed. The man talking wasn't Speed, but he had his radio. She knew enough about Speed to realize that he wouldn't give it up alive.

He was gone.

“It's a trap! They must have been tracing us. We need to go, now!”

She lifted three bales of money, about a hundred pounds, and started for the truck.

“What about Cook?” Green asked.

“We'll get him last. The less time he spends moving, the more likely it is that he'll make it.”

They ferried the cash out to the box truck, stacked it, and strapped it against the walls. Green carried his under his good arm.

Ward checked her watch—eight minutes since the call. She thought of trace times, SWAT response, as she hustled back inside.

She grabbed an IV bag and put it at the foot of Cook's litter. “Can you get that end?” she asked Green.

“Yeah,” he said. He taped down the catheter with the improvised valve, then put the IV bag in his teeth and hoisted the litter with his good hand. Ward carried the other end.

 They loaded Cook into the back of the truck. Ward followed him in.

“Get the engine going,” she said, and she threw Green the keys. He snatched them out of the air and walked toward the cab. She cut a length of paracord and lashed the IV to the tie-down bars. As the truck shuddered to life, Cook opened his eyes.

“We going for a ride?” he slurred.

She put her hand to his cheek.

“Yeah. Sit tight.”

“How'd I do back there? In the firefight?”

“You made us all proud, Cook. You did great.”

“Did I tell you…”

“Tell me what, Cook?”

“About the corduroy…the corduroy pillows.”

“What? Cook, are you okay?”

“Wait, it's, ah…”

“Why don't you tell me later, Cook,” she said as she pivoted out of the back of the truck. “We've got to roll.”

“Okay,” he said, and he shut his eyes. “It's a good one. I think I got it this time.”

She slammed the back door shut and was about to turn when she felt something press against her temple. It was cold and round, about the size of a quarter: the muzzle of a gun. The man holding the pistol came around and pressed the barrel against her forehead. He was wearing a suit.

“Hands,” he said.

She raised her hands in the air, close to her temples, and to the gun. He took her sidearm.

Pfft.

A suppressed gunshot. She heard a cry and then a muted thump as a body hit the ground on the other side of the truck. Green. She held back the emotion and used the moment, the distraction, to swipe her right hand a few inches through the air as she stepped in the other direction.

The gun near her face fired. The blast from the pistol burned the skin of her cheek and ear and deafened her. The bullet gouged the side of her scalp. She grabbed the wrist of the man's gun hand, jerked it down and toward her. As he stepped forward to gain his balance, she threw her shin against the side of his knee and dropped all of her weight into it. The pop from a ligament, probably the ACL, sounded like a snap of the fingers. As he crumpled, she took his gun. He reached for hers, tucked inside his belt, but she kicked his hand, and her pistol went flying.

She hauled him off the ground, threw her arm around his neck, and held him in front of her body, the pistol to his head. He covered most of her. The key was to keep moving now, to not give them time to line up the shot at her head where it stood out from behind his.

She moved to the side of the truck. The man in the suit stumbled along with her, crying out from the pressure on his blown-out leg.

A truck pulled up. The headlights blinded her. She shot out the right light and put four bullets through the window where the driver's head should be. Two more vehicles pulled up, with floodlights on the roofs. She took her time, emptied the pistol into where she thought the windshields were but couldn't see because of the glare. Glass shattered. She dropped the empty magazine. Three figures stepped into the light.

M4 carbines. These weren't cops. They looked like Special Operations guys or contractors. She was pinned down, outnumbered. She needed to play for time, get a better weapon.

She dropped the gun and pulled her knife in one motion, then flicked open the blade and pressed it to the man's throat.

“Let him go,” shouted a voice behind the lights.

Another man with thick black hair, wearing a suit and an open-collared shirt, came toward her.

“We will shoot the injured man in the truck, and then we will kill you. Drop the knife and we will not harm you.”

Her captive squirmed. Blood dripped down the blade.

“I'll let him go,” she shouted, “if you get care for the guy in the truck.”

“Of course,” he said as he sidled toward her. “Understood?” he shouted to the other men.

“Roger,” the voices came back.

She eased the pressure off the knife, lifted it, stepped back from her hostage. Once she was a foot away, there was a crack behind the lights. Her upper right arm exploded in a spray of blood. The pain drilled through her. She fought back with her good hand as they rushed her, gouging eyes, breaking someone's ribs in the scrum with a dropkick, but there were too many. They took her down, pressed her face into the grit on the asphalt, wrenched her arm up behind her back.

Others vaulted inside the truck. “We had a deal!” Ward yelled.

They lifted Cook by his arms and dragged him away. The catheter in his chest tore out.

“The tube!” Ward shouted. “He'll die!”

“It's the money! It's here!”

The man in the suit walked over. Ward heard someone call him Kasem. She watched him silently counting the cash. She couldn't see Cook anymore, could only hear him, trying to breathe.

“Is it all here?” asked Kasem.

“Looks like almost all of it,” said one of the soldiers. “Hayes probably used some to pay for operations.”

There were a few others like Kasem. They seemed like civilians, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern. They conferred quietly for a moment.

Flashlights moved on the other side of the truck. Ward could see Green, bleeding from his head onto the pavement. She watched as they hauled off the boxes, one by one, everything that she and Hayes had worked for. The money was gone.

“Great work,” Kasem said as he slapped the soldier on the back. The man walked away, and one of Kasem's colleagues pulled a silenced pistol from a holster inside his suit jacket and aimed it at the soldier's head.

Ward watched from the ground, and as the shooter tightened his grip, Kasem put his hand on the gun.

Not yet,
he mouthed.

CARO STOOD IN
the cell with Nazar. He held the knife at his side and lifted his encrypted phone to his ear.

Kasem gave him an update on his progress. “We have the shipment back. We'll need to pick the right moment to finish the rest.”

To eliminate Riggs's men. Caro had no doubt of his abilities. “As soon as you can.”

He ended the call. The money was his alone. It was time. He turned away from Nazar.

It never failed to amaze him about Americans, the unreason of their isolated country. The insane notion that they had sold to themselves, that there could be a life without pain. That they could bomb the children of the world but not one setback or want would ever burden theirs. That love was their weakness, and his opportunity.

He remembered the school, pictured the glass windows, the children's hands pressed against them, the excitement in their wide-open eyes that were inches from the glass.

This was the end. The new beginning.

He lifted the phone and typed the word that the Mechanic had been waiting for.

Vesper.

The Mechanic read it once more, then pulled the battery from the phone. It was well before dawn. He double-checked his detonators as Bradac bathed himself to prepare for heaven.

The martyr prayed, butchering the Arabic pronunciations. While in prison, Bradac had heard that Muslims got better food and he'd converted, though the Islam of his understanding was barely recognizable to the bomb maker.

The Mechanic helped him into a North Face jacket. It was winter, and brown slush melted on the curbs. The parka that concealed the explosives would not be out of place.

He handed Bradac the distraction charge, a small U.S. Postal Service box, and then gave him a last once-over.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Let's go.”

He kissed him on both cheeks and pressed the switch on the wall. The metal door rolled open, clanging and echoing in the cavernous space.

The journey to the target would take some time. They drove off in the Mechanic's sedan and made their way through the hills of Prince George's County. The capital lay below them, and the red lights at the top of the Washington Monument watched them like two unblinking eyes.

TWO MORE BULLETS
ripped through the steel. I glanced over, and through the doorway I could see Speed's body, the buried tracers still burning. Shots hissed by. We clambered on our knees along the concrete. And then the shots stopped. Hayes must have drawn the fire, or Moret had silenced the guns with her sniper rifle.

This was battle as I remembered it. Thirty seconds after our last order, and we were in chaos and darkness, separated from our commander, with zero situational awareness, my nerves running like I had just mainlined epinephrine.

The gunshots picked up again from where we had left, and I heard voices coming for us. I could see men prowling along the route we had taken to enter the complex. They spread out along the razor-wire fence. The only way out was through one of the industrial buildings. Gunfire flew over our heads. Guards ran at us from the docks.

“Kelly, this way, come on!”

I turned, and she was ten feet away, messing with a jerrican. They would take her any second.

“Kelly, what the—”

A wall of fire leaped up between her and them, and she came sprinting toward me.

“What'd you say?” she asked.

“Never mind. Great work.” I pointed to the building.

We ran for it. Every few seconds I could hear the snap of a .308 round and groans from behind us. Moret was up there with her rifle, silent and unseen, holding them off.

We rounded the side of the building. I threw the door open. It was some sort of power station. Heavy equipment churned in long rows, and a low throb shook the concrete floor.

I started working my way toward the far side. If we found an exit there, it would put us past the razor wire and leave only a short run to the outermost chain-link fence.

We crept along the edges, wary of guards. A door to my right creaked open. I counted five flashlights, five men, as I took cover behind a boiler.

Kelly ducked down, six feet away. I raised my hand:
Five of them.
She nodded.

Flashlights crossed the echoing space. It was a systematic search. I peered around the edge, watched them come. I waited for the right moment, then waved Kelly over. She crouched next to me. The footsteps came closer. I could hear the men breathing, the rattle of their gear. I readied my carbine, Kelly her MP7, and waited. They stopped just on the other side and began to spread out. They would come around our corners any second.

“What's that?” one asked. “Say again.” It was his radio. I couldn't make out the transmission.

One man stepped into view. I aimed my carbine center mass, brought my finger against the trigger. The fight was two against five, and they were better armed and in better practice. But we had to try.

He started to turn.

“Move out of here,” one said.

“What's up?”

“They've got a damn sniper and one of their guys is loose near the docks. They can't kill him.”

Hayes.

“They need help. Back to the
Shiloh
.”

My man moved toward them.

We waited. My heart pounded; I opened my mouth wide to keep my fast breaths from making any noise. I heard them step away, then heard the creak of the door opening.

Kelly and I looked to each other. I squeezed her thigh.

“You stay here,” one said.

“Sure.”

The door closed. A flashlight beam swept over our heads.

The man's footsteps were relaxed, but he was moving along the perimeter. He would find us any second.

I reached down against the corrugated-aluminum wall and found a stripped screw and a hex bolt. It would have to do. I would distract him, take him from the side.

I signaled it to Kelly.

Something was wrong. She was blinking too much, looking around as if she were trying to force her eyes to focus.

Are you okay?
I mouthed.

She gave me the A-OK.

You sure?
I mouthed.

She nodded.

I eased around our boiler and pitched the bolt. The clang of metal on metal echoed through the dark. The man's feet scuffled, giving away his position, and I could discern his outline. He turned and started walking toward where it had landed, oblivious to me as I crept along.

I moved fast, catching glimpses between the equipment. At the end of the next row, I had a clear shot. His rifle was down.

I took aim. I had him.

Then I heard a thump to my right, where Kelly was.

Shouldering his rifle, he shouted, “Who's there?” and took off toward Kelly's cover.

I moved alongside, praying the grating electric buzz from the machines would mask my steps.

I turned to Kelly and saw only a flash: her on the ground, bleeding from her ear. After a head injury, bleeding from the ear could mean a fractured skull.

The man came around her cover, but before he could see her, I aimed and shouted: “Drop it and lay on the ground!”

He froze for an instant, then began to turn my way with the rifle. I shot four times, the last as he began to fall. I sprinted over, kicked his rifle away. He was down, shot twice in the chest, once in the upper thigh, and once where his trapezius met his neck. The thigh shot had happened as he was falling back.

He was gasping for air. The chest rounds had hit his plate body armor, knocked the wind out of him. I pulled the flex cuffs from his belt and cinched his hands. He would be out long enough for me to check Kelly.

She lay beside the transformer, up on one elbow, looking confused but breathing.

“Thank God,” I said. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and eased back. “Get him.”

The man tried to push himself along the ground with his one good leg.

I stood over him. Blood slicked the fabric of his pants and his fatigues. I was reacting more than thinking. The only things driving me were the vision of Kelly hurt, the knowledge that he had done it, and the heft of the carbine in my hand.

“Please,” he gasped. “Please.”

I remembered this feeling, the animal need to kill.

He backed against the wall until he could go no farther, grunted at the pain. I raised the gun. He shut his eyes as tight as he could.

A gunshot would draw the attention of the other guards. I brought the Heckler & Koch around hard, driving the stock into his temple, and he slumped over.

As he turned his face up, I drew my knife.

“No, God. Please,” he said, holding his hands up in front of him.

I grabbed his shoulder, brought the knife up, and sliced off the collar of his shirt. I stuffed it in his mouth.

Kelly had pulled herself up and was leaning on the transformer. She was still alert. I checked her ear. The earlobe was lacerated, probably from her fall.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don't know. I just…my vision kind of narrowed. And then I guess I fell.”

“You blacked out. Postconcussive syncope. It's common after a head injury. Can you walk?”

She took a step. “Yeah, yeah. I feel fine.”

Her pupils were reactive, and I rattled off the cognitive tests: What day is it? Where are we? Who's the president?

She passed the tests and I decided she was all right for now. I turned back to the guard. The trap shot was through the muscle, clean. I slit open his pants near the thigh injury and probed the wound. A lot of muscular damage and blood oozing, but the femoral vessels were okay. I opened my trauma kit, pulled the QuikClot, cut two pieces, and stuffed one deep into each wound.

He screamed through the fabric between his teeth. “You're welcome,” I said, and taped his mouth shut. He could have avoided the pain if he had dropped the gun when I'd told him to.

I walked back to Kelly.

“Okay,” I said. “Let's go.”

We crossed the building and found the rear door. It opened to two hundred meters of scrub and a steep climb between us and the chain-link fence.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“You think you can run?”

“Definitely.”

We started out and were clear halfway across when the ground exploded to our right. I could barely hear the gunshot. It was a marksman, far off, putting down accurate fire. Kelly moved ahead of me. The dirt puffed up at my heels.

A running target in the dark was a hard shot for anyone. I scanned the fence ahead. If we stopped or tried to climb, we would be easy marks. I ran faster, felt my lungs burning for air. Another bullet whistled close. I cut right.

The fence loomed twenty feet away, ten. I pulled my knife and sprinted for the corner. The sniper closed in. I barely stopped, just slashed in one long stroke through the paracord and threw my body into the fence.

It gaped open.

I stepped back. Kelly hurled herself through.

I followed.

Bullets sparked off the fence behind us as we ran along the access road. Headlights blazed ahead, coming for us, fast. I raised my gun. Then I heard the radio.

“Byrne, it's Moret. Do not shoot. Hop on.”

She pulled alongside; we jumped in rolling, and the truck took off into the night.

“Hayes?” I asked.

“He went into the water. We're going to get him.”

“Speed?”

“He's dead.”

I saw the
Shiloh
moving across the black water of the bay. Our only salvation, Nazar, was locked in the hold of that ship. And we had lost her.

Hayes dived pencil-straight into the water. He swam with a combat sidestroke, barely bringing his mouth and nose above the surface. From the shore, he was almost invisible.

The lights passed over him. Bullets splashed to his right. He dived and swam fifty meters below the surface, and then something began to shake his guts like heavy bass.

A boat was coming.

He came up and took three long breaths before the light found him, then dived again, straight into the path of the oncoming boat, drove himself lower until he hit the muck of the bay bottom. The churn of the propellers was deafening and getting louder. The currents pulled him toward the blades.

He fought them and came up in the furrowed wake on the far side.

It was a tug.

He reached for one of the thick lines hanging from the bumpers. It ran through his hand, scorching his palm as he slammed into the barnacles along the hull. He got his hands into one of the tires and hung on as the ship chugged toward open water.

Blood trickled into his eye. He caught his breath, watched the port recede, and saw the point ahead. He let go and stroked toward the black rocks and crashing surf.

“The point, I'm on the point.”

Moret put the radio down and we sped along the breakwater. Hayes ran out and jumped in the truck. I listened to the scanner and helped her skirt the roadblocks. They had called out everyone: state and local police, some National Guard, Customs and Border Protection.

They didn't have a description of the truck, but we needed to change our look, ditch the cap and swap plates. We pulled under an overpass alongside a dry concrete culvert. Tarps and shopping carts were scattered along the gravel banks.

I set to work in the bed of the truck, under the cap, stitching up Hayes's eyebrow. The police scanner chattered in the background.

“The
Shiloh
?” he asked.

“Gone,” Moret said.

“Riggs's men got Speed's body. We need to switch radio keys,” he said. “Find another way to get back to Ward and Green. As long as we have the money—”

“It's gone,” Moret said.

“What?”

“I intercepted a radio call. His men found the safe house. Took the money. Ward, Cook, and Green were overwhelmed.”

“Christ,” Hayes said.

“You all right?” Moret asked.

“Hang on.” He leaned over and turned up the scanner.

“National terrorism advisory system has issued an imminent threat alert. Heavy weapons units deployed around US Bank Tower. Vehicle restrictions in place for LAX and Port of Long Beach—”

“It's starting,” Hayes said. “Samael's attack. He was waiting until he got the money back. They're all on the ship?”

“Yes. That's the last thing Ward confirmed.”

“Why is Riggs going along with Samael?”

“I don't know,” Hayes said.

“Is there a way to take them down?” I asked.

“We have the gear. The RHIB we picked you up in, the Drägers. It's all cached. Foley. Foley saved us.”

I looked out the rear window. A few of the homeless men and women were gathering, taking an interest in our presence.

“There's a way onto that ship?” I asked.

Hayes nodded.

“And off?”

Hayes looked at me. “Unlikely. This is our last chance. We'll leave everything out there. I can't ask you to give that up. We've got a few caches left: money, IDs. Take it, Byrne, and run.”

I took a deep breath, looked to Kelly, sitting in the passenger seat. I counted the stitches threaded through her skin.

I was done running.

“I don't want you to have any illusions,” Hayes said. “This isn't about clearing our names. If we fail, we'll go down as terrorists, traitors, maybe even take the fall for whatever they're planning. Even if we live, they may hunt us for the rest of our lives.”

I hadn't been living these past two years, just dying on the installment plan, trying to make things right. If we didn't stop Riggs and Samael, a lot of people were going to get hurt. I could do some good here. If I was going to throw my life away, I might as well make it count.

I watched Kelly rest. I would miss her. But I didn't want to think about it too hard. I was exhausted beyond reckoning. In the end, it was selfish. I was going to find the man who had hurt the people I loved and take him down.

“I'm in,” I said.

He put his hand on my shoulder and was about to speak when Moret turned with a Toughbook laptop in her hand. She held it out to Hayes. “You need to hear this,” she said. “They have your wife and daughter.”