Zero slapped himself, not gently, and urged himself to stay awake. Ten hours he’d been in the air now, passing through time zones until night turned to daybreak and melted into late afternoon like a sped-up video.
The sea plane he’d stolen from the port at Nassau was small, a white four-seater with a name stenciled down the side in black: Cassandra.
Who the hell names a plane Cassandra? he’d wondered. He had a lot of time to wonder on the long flight northeast. Like what might have been if last night hadn’t happened. What he and Maria might be doing right then, together, instead of one being alone over the Atlantic and one being dead.
There were no more tears, though. The time for that had passed.
There was desert below him now, for which he was only half thankful. On the one hand, it meant that he was drawing very near to his destination. On the other, Cassandra was almost out of fuel, running on fumes, and a crash in the desert would not be quite as forgiving as a hard water landing.
He’d torn out the plane’s transponder, so they couldn’t track him with that, but he was still visible in the sky and on radar. But he had not received any radio calls to identify himself or threats to blow him and Cassandra out of the sky. He assumed that was by virtue of where he was, the airspace he was occupying. Anyone watching the skies must have been used to strange planes arriving and departing from the middle of nowhere.
As he flew, he had time to wonder about a lot of things. He wondered what his daughters were doing. How they were feeling. They had each other to lean on right now; they didn’t need him to be there to grieve. He couldn’t even imagine how any of them would show their grief, couldn’t imagine it. They were all so different, all three of them, and different from him as well.
He wondered what Alan was doing, and Penny, and the rest of the team. He replayed those conversations in his head, the one with Alan, parts of which were missing from his memory, and the one with Penny, still fresh enough in his mind to heat his face with anger.
They thought they were helping him by not helping him. As if they knew better than he did what he needed.
He descended to just under a thousand feet as he reached the coordinates, passed by his destination, and circled back to align the plane with the narrow landing—if it could be called that. It was little more than a bumpy dirt road.
Every pilot he’d ever known shared the same saying: “Flying is easy. Landing is hard.”
He was about to see for himself how true it was.
Zero dipped the yoke and Cassandra descended, the ground coming up faster than he would have been comfortable with. It was tough, without the proper training, to determine just how close or far the ground actually was; it looked to him like he should have touched down by now, but he hadn’t, and then the wheels caught roughly on the dirt and he jolted in his seat. The plane bounced back into the air about twenty feet, and then back down again. Only one wheel touched, and the plane dipped precipitously to one side.
Zero gritted his teeth and shifted his weight; if it dipped too far the desert would easily tear the fiberglass wing right off the side. But then the other wheel came down, hard, bouncing him again, and he applied the brake as hard as he was willing.
“Whew,” he sighed as the sea plane rolled to a stop. Good thing he’d had the foresight to pick one outfitted with wheels; many of them had only pontoons as landing gear.
He powered down the plane and hopped out. The sun over the Moroccan desert was blazing in a cloudless sky, forming beads of sweat on his forehead in an instant and blinding him for a moment.
His vision cleared again to find him face to face with four Special Forces soldiers, all of them bearded and wearing sunglasses, equipped in full tac gear, with automatic weapons pointed at him.
“You guys really have to wear that stuff all the time?” he asked with a smile. “Must get real sweaty under there.”
In that moment, just outside of H-6 in the Moroccan desert, he decided to be Reid Lawson. Reid was easygoing, easy to talk to, genial. Reid Lawson wasn’t out to hurt anyone. He wasn’t chasing an assassin; he was only pursuing knowledge.
That’s what he was there for, after all.
The lead soldier grinned. He pushed the sunglasses up to his forehead and let his rifle hang from the strap over his shoulder. “Welcome back, Agent Zero. Been a while.” He motioned to the other three, and they lowered their guns.
“Sergeant.” Reid shook SFO Sergeant Jack Flagg’s gloved hand. Flagg was a former Green Beret, one of many who found civilian life to be less than appetizing, who had been shipped out to the desert to operate the CIA black site designated H-6. Flagg liked to call it the “Special Forces retirement village.” Ask any agent and they’d have a different name for it—Hell-Six, the least cozy place on Earth.
Flagg glanced over Zero’s shoulder at Cassandra. “You came here in that?” He chuckled. “Your visits always do brighten up my day.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have extra fuel lying around, would you?” Reid asked.
“We’ll fill ’er up, make sure she’s flight-worthy.” Flagg nodded to one of his guys, who trotted off immediately. “Walk with me, Zero.”
They fell in step and headed toward the fenced-in perimeter of Hell-Six. The grounds had been built to look, from the sky or the ground, like a military forward operating base in the Moroccan desert. The site was one huge square, taking up a few acres, surrounded entirely in chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire. Canvas hung from most of the fence, but was tattered and flapping in the breeze in some places. Beyond the fence were a number of semi-permanent canvas tents and three rows of squat, domed steel structures.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Flagg asked as he opened the gate for him.
“I need to visit one of your guests. A recent check-in, goes by Mr. Shade.”
“Oh, we all know Mr. Shade. Never seen this place break like a man quite like that before. The things he offers us to let him out...” Flagg laughed. “Just last week he told me there’s a sixty-million-dollar yacht in the Mediterranean with my name on it if I let him out the gate. Just out the gate. Like he’d survive a day out there in the desert.”
Reid forced a chuckle of his own. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Mr. Shade was used to the, uh, ‘finer’ things in life. Doesn’t know any other way than to try to buy people.”
Literally. One of the many dark deeds that Shade had his claw into, before his incarceration, had been human trafficking.
“Well, let me show you to his suite.” Flagg gestured toward the stout rows of steel domes and led the way.
He found it remarkable how easy it was to smile, to banter, to chuckle. As if he hadn’t watched Maria’s murder just the night before. As if he hadn’t cried and struggled and howled. All he had to do was pretend he was someone else—anyone who wasn’t Agent Zero.
“Say,” Reid asked, “I suppose you guys don’t get a lot of news out here, huh?”
“Not really,” Flagg admitted. “And when we do, it tends to come late. Why, something interesting happen out there in the real world?”
Reid shrugged. “Nah. Just curious. You have a bottle of water handy? I haven’t had anything to drink the whole flight.”
“Sure.” Flagg shouted to a nearby soldier patrolling around the steel domes. “Hey, Sanchez! Hit me with the top-shelf stuff.”
The soldier pulled a bottle of water from a satchel slung over his chest and tossed it in an arc. Flagg caught it and handed it off to Reid. “A bit warm, sorry. Anyway, this is it, Mr. Shade’s new home.” They came to a stop in the shadow of one of the many nondescript, depressingly dull steel domes, and the sergeant pulled open the thick, creaking door. “You want me to come in there with you?”
“No thanks.” Reid flashed him a smile. “I’m good. Won’t be but a few minutes.”
“All right. Holler if you need anything.”
Reid entered the dome and pulled the door shut behind him. It stank inside, like urine and earth. There were no windows and no other way out besides the steel door. At its peak the ceiling was ten feet high and illuminated with a single bare forty-watt bulb hanging from two wires and hooked to a generator. The floor was packed dirt, the desert sand having been scraped away before placement.
The only thing inside the dome, other than the bare bulb overhead, was an iron grate in the floor, about three feet square. From beneath this grate came a rustle of movement.
“Flagg?” whispered a timid voice from below. “Is th-that you, Flagg? Did you… did you think about it, Flagg? Did you?”
Reid ignored the plea and reached for the iron grate. With a grunt of effort, he pulled it open like a trapdoor set in the ground. The grate opened on a small underground room, little more than a hole dug out with an excavator, about eight feet deep with a slanted wooden ladder leading upward.
“Come on,” Reid prodded. “Come on up.”
Slowly the man climbed out. Last time he had seen Mr. Shade, he was wearing a white tuxedo with his dark hair slicked back. That was five and a half months ago.
The sad shell of a man that climbed out of the hole was rail thin, his cheekbones jutting in his face. His dark hair was tousled, filthy, and turning gray. He wore the unofficial uniform of Hell-Six inmates: a sleeveless brown tunic and brown shorts that were almost comically baggy on his thin legs.
Mr. Shade reached the top of the ladder and grunted as he pulled himself onto the dirt floor of the dome. He stood then, shoulders hunched, eyes cast downward, trembling slightly. At last he looked up, and his eyes widened in surprise.
“Y-you… you’re him. Right? Are you him? Agent Zero?”
“Yes.”
The man nearly collapsed with the sigh he heaved. “You… you could help me get out. You could get me out! You could tell them, tell them to… they have to listen to you, right? They have to. They have to!”
Agent Zero wanted to wrap his hands around the man’s thin throat and squeeze. He wanted to break Shade’s limbs. He wanted to knock the teeth out of his head and shove his fist in his mouth until he choked to death on it.
But this was not a job for Agent Zero.
“Here,” said Reid, holding out the bottle of water. “Drink.”
Shade took the bottle graciously and tilted it back. He drank greedily, water running over his lips and darkening the front of the tunic.
“Th-thank you.” He was breathless when it was empty, and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Now. Please. Tell me what you want. Anything. Money. Cars. I have a yacht in the Mediterranean, if you can help me…”
“Listen to me, Shade,” said Reid. “What I want is far more valuable than any of that. I want information.”
“Yes. Yes, I have information. Anything.”
“Sit. Please.” Reid gestured to the dirt floor. He lowered himself first, sitting cross-legged, and Shade sat too with a slight groan. “You remember those people that took the president. The Palestinian faction.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“And there were others you were funding.”
“Yes,” Shade whispered. “There were others.”
“Okay. This is what I need to know: where would those people go if they needed to hide?”
Shade frowned. “Hide from what?”
Zero came out, just for a moment, as his gaze hardened and he said: “Hide from me.”
Shade gulped. “I’m afraid I’m not sure.”
“Are you sure you’re not sure?” Reid glanced into the hole beneath the grate. “Last time I saw you was in a penthouse suite. This doesn’t look quite as pleasant.”
“Please… I’ve told them everything. Everything.”
“Not everything, Shade. Not this. Where would they go? I need to know. And that is the only way you’re getting out of here.”
“Okay.” Shade closed his eyes. He rubbed his temples, gently at first, and then harder, and then actually smacked himself on the sides of the head with both fists. “I don’t know!”
Reid sighed. “All right then. I’ve spent too much time coming here already. Back in the hole…”
“No!” Shade leapt up and backed away quickly, until he hit the opposite side of the dome. “Please, no.”
“I need a place, Shade. I need a place, and I need to believe you. Or it’s back into the hole…”
“Ankara!” the man cried. He fell to his knees and put both hands over his face. “Ankara. Ankara.”
Reid frowned. “In Turkey?”
“Yes. There was… a deed. A deed to a property. It passed my desk… maybe a year and a half ago. They had me put it in the name of one of my companies… so it wouldn’t be traced back to them. A safe house. They wanted a safe house.”
“The address?”
“I d-don’t know… but it would be listed. Yes. It’d be listed, as the Ankara headquarters for, for SMI Limited.”
“SMI Limited,” Zero repeated. “That’s all you know.”
“Yes. That’s it. I swear it. I swear. Now please.” Shade crawled on his knees and actually put his hands around Zero’s leg. “Please. Get me out. You said you would. Get me out.”
“About that,” Zero told him. “I lied. I’m not getting you out.”
Shade looked up in a blend of terror and confusion. “What? What? You said… you can’t lie!”
“Sure I can. It’s fifty percent of my job.”
“No!” Shade wailed. He grabbed onto Zero’s leg again with both hands.
“Shade, you trafficked teenage girls. You funded terrorist operations that resulted in innocent casualties. You smuggled weapons and armed insurgents. And those are just the ones we know about.” Zero leaned over, bending at the waist, so that he was close to Shade’s ear when he added, “You’re never getting out of here. You’re going to die in this hole.”
“No—”
Zero grabbed him by one thin arm and hefted him up easily. Then he shoved him, hard, and the man tumbled backwards into the pit. He landed with a groan and immediately scrambled for the ladder, but Zero was already swinging the iron grate shut. It clanged into place.
“Get me out!” Shade shouted. “Please, get me out!”
Zero headed for the door, but then paused. “Oh, Shade. One more thing. The cars? The money? The yacht in the Mediterranean? You can stop offering them to people. We found it all. We seized everything. You have nothing left. Anyway, have a good one.”
Shade wailed as Zero pushed out through the steel door, back out into the Moroccan late afternoon sun. As soon as the door was closed behind him, Shade’s wails were cut off.
The domes were soundproof. Made sense; couldn’t have the shouts and cries of three dozen prisoners haunting the camp day and night.
He looked around for Flagg but the sergeant was nowhere to be seen. So Zero headed back the way he’d come, toward the gate. He was heading to Turkey next, it seemed, a much shorter trip than flying to Morocco. He wasn’t sure what he would find there, but if Shade thought it was enough information to buy his freedom, Zero would check it out.
And God have mercy on whoever I find there.
He exited the gate and stopped suddenly.
Parked right behind the sea plane was another plane, a jet, larger but not very large itself. He knew that plane; he’d been on that plane several times before. It was a sleek Gulfstream G650, a sixty-five-million-dollar jet owned by the CIA.
He hadn’t heard it land—because the steel domes were soundproof.
But someone was here.
Someone was here for him.