Trapping Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #4)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Is it possible that the world’s best CIA agent can be the world’s worst father?” Reid asked once the Gulfstream had reached cruising altitude, leaving from Zurich and heading southeast towards Baghdad and the site of the bombed embassy.

He felt awful for having left his girls again—while on a trip that was supposed to be their time together. And the more he thought about it, the more he hated the agency and Riker for giving him only minutes to make such a decision.

“I’m sorry,” Maria replied, “did you just say ‘world’s best agent’? Did I miss some kind of awards ceremony, or did you get that off a coffee mug?”

Reid smirked slightly. “I’m just going by what everyone keeps telling me.”

Maria let out a short laugh and squeezed his shoulder. “You are not the world’s worst father. You made a difficult decision; someone was going to be disappointed one way or another. If you had a normal life you would still have to balance your family with everything else… this is just a more extreme version of that.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Thanks.” He couldn’t dwell on that now, not when there was work to be done. “So what have we got?”

Maria scrolled through the briefing file on a touch-screen tablet beside him. “Looks like the group that claimed responsibility for the bombing calls themselves ‘the Brotherhood.’ They’re a faction of former Hamas that were ejected from the Gaza Strip and headed east.”

“They were too extreme for suicide bombers and jihadists?” Reid mused.

“Not so much extreme as dirty,” Maria remarked as she read the case file. “Seems they detonated a bomb-making facility when American troops tried to infiltrate it. Killed more than a dozen of their own and far fewer of ours. But no one has heard from them in years, not until…”

“Until what?” he asked, craning his neck to read over Maria’s shoulders. He saw what she was looking at; the group had also been the ones to kidnap a trio of Israeli journalists in Iraq.

“They released a video,” she said quietly as she passed the tablet to Reid. “They put it online. Take a look.”

Reid took the tablet and pressed the screen to play the video. In it, a shaky camera focused on a young Israeli man, his face bloodied, his hands tied behind his back. He appeared to be in some dank concrete cell, or perhaps a basement. The man behind the camera growled harshly at him in Arabic to speak. His voice tremulous, the journalist announced that the Brotherhood was taking responsibility for the bombing of the embassy. That they were led by a man called Awad bin Saddam, and that the Israeli’s two friends had already been killed.

The frightened young man finished by saying that there would be more attacks, and that the Brotherhood would not stop until their “divine purpose” was complete. Then the grainy picture cut out just as abruptly as it began.

“That was my op,” Maria murmured when the video came to an end. “Before I came to see you, I was tracking those journalists. I didn’t find anything.”

“I’m sorry,” Reid offered. He remembered her own words to him, feeling like a lifetime ago: You can’t save everyone.

Maybe not, he had said. But we can try.

Maria sighed. “Is this Brotherhood ringing any bells in your head?”

“Nothing,” Reid admitted. No new memories had returned to him about any operation or run-in that he and Reidigger might have had with these insurgents. “I’ll let you know, though.”

“In the meantime, orders are to rendezvous with Strickland and an attachment of Rangers at the embassy,” she told him. “Hopefully we’ll get some kind of bead on them.” She paused for a moment before asking, “What’s the deal with that, by the way? Strickland asked for you?”

Reid shrugged. “We’re friends now.”

Maria smirked slightly. “This is the same Strickland that was sent to keep you from finding your girls, right?”

Reid nodded. “We came to an understanding.” He leaned back in his seat and added, “Maybe you’d know that if you ever returned any of my calls.”

*

Reid had imagined what they might find when they arrived at the bombing site, but nothing he had conjured in his mind came close to the reality. The former embassy had been a three-story structure the width of nearly half a city block, but in its place now was simply an enormous pile of rubble, each blackened and charred piece of debris nearly indistinguishable from the next.

“Jesus,” Reid murmured. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the horror of it all, watching as emergency personnel, American and Iraqi alike, worked to sift through the debris. Most of the survivors had been found by now; those that might have been survivors were likely no longer so, not under all the burnt-out detritus. It was difficult to tell those that were doing the rescuing from those that had been rescued, each face soot-streaked and filthy, some bleeding from wounds, others staring vacantly in a way that suggested they had either been in the blast or had seen too much of its effects.

“They sank the whole damn ship just to kill the captain,” Maria murmured.

“What’s that?” Reid asked, hardly hearing her words as he stared at the c*****e.

“Whoever these insurgents were, they were definitely thorough in making sure their congressional targets were destroyed.” Maria shook her head, and Reid could tell she was thinking the same as he was—the cold brutality of it all was almost too much to bear.

A familiar figure waved to them as he trotted over. Agent Todd Strickland had on a button-down that might have been blue once, though it was stained in soot and dust. He wore jeans and a Glock holstered on his hip. His military fade-cut was growing out a bit, it seemed, and he had two days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks.

“Zero,” he said as he shook Reid’s hand. “I couldn’t believe it when they said you were en route. It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise,” said Reid. “You remember Agent Johansson?”

“I do.” Strickland shook her hand as well. “Glad to have you two aboard.”

“What do we know so far?” Reid asked, surveying the wreckage of the embassy behind the younger agent.

“Not much,” Strickland admitted. “EOD swept the area and didn’t find any more explosives. The INIS is in full cooperation with us, but they don’t know any more than we do at the moment.”

Reid nodded. The INIS—Iraqi National Intelligence Service—was an organization established in 2004, after Hussein’s regime, in cooperation with the CIA to gather intel on anyone threatening national security. Up until the bombing of the embassy, it seemed the Brotherhood had slipped under the radar.

“We were told we’d be meeting with a detachment of Army Rangers,” Maria noted.

“Yeah. About that.” Strickland’s voice sounded strained. “There’s been a… hiccup.”

Even as he said it Reid noticed someone approaching in his periphery. A man strode towards the three of them, carrying an AR-15 in his arms—but that was hardly the most disconcerting thing about him.

Reid couldn’t believe the size of him; the guy had to be six-three, if not taller, dressed entirely in black with combat boots on his feet and a ball cap backwards on his head. The muscles in his forearms stood out in sharp relief against the tactical vest over his expansive chest. A quick survey of the man’s equipment told him that he was carrying no fewer than four guns—at least that Reid could see. The lower half of his face was mostly obscured by a thick, dark beard, and on the left shoulder of his black shirt was a triangular gray patch with the black silhouette of a coiled snake.

“The Division,” Maria muttered, making no attempt to hide the disdain in her voice. “I’d recognize that patch anywhere.”

The man paused a few feet from them, glancing at each in turn. “Name’s Fitzpatrick,” he grunted, hefting the AR-15 with the barrel pointed downward.

“Fitzpatrick,” Reid repeated. The man was military, or formerly so at least; the way he held the gun, the stock aloft with his index finger straightened against the trigger guard, the tension slack in his shoulders, suggested he’d had training. “Is that a first name, or a last name?”

“Just Fitzpatrick.”

“Zero,” Reid said, holding his hand out. Fitzpatrick cradled the rifle against a forearm and reached out with his other hand, squeezing Reid’s fingers in a vice-like grip.

“Is that a first name, or a last name?” One corner of Fitzpatrick’s mouth dragged up in a small smirk.

“Last name,” Reid told him. “First name is Agent, to you.” Reid pulled his hand back and flexed his fingers, refusing to be intimidated by the (much) larger man. He gestured to the AR-15. “You really think you need to be carrying that around like that? This is a search and rescue operation.”

“Well.” Fitzpatrick sniffed. “My job is security, Agent Zero. This tends to help keep things secure. You never know if those towelheads will come back around.”

Maria scoffed. “Please,” she muttered.

Fitzpatrick ignored her and turned to Strickland. “Anyhow, my guys have a perimeter up, keeping eyes and ears open. You can catch me on the squawk-box when y’all are done standing around.” He nodded to each of them in turn, and Reid definitely noticed that his gaze lingered on Maria for several seconds too long. “Ma’am.”

“Who was that, and why is he here?” Reid demanded as soon as Fitzpatrick was out of earshot.

“The Division,” Maria explained. “And who they are depends on who you ask. They call themselves a private security organization. Others might call them mercenaries. Still others might call them a bunch of guys high on testosterone and gunpowder.”

Reid’s brow furrowed. He had heard that name before, the Division, though he was struggling to recall if it was a memory of his or something he had read somewhere. Then it came to him: “I heard about them in the news, what, last year? They helped put down a rebel uprising in Liberia?”

“A ‘rebel uprising’ to one is an underclass sick of the established regime to another,” Strickland said as he watched Fitzpatrick stride away. “Every member of the Division is former military. You need to have done at least two tours in a hostile zone to even be considered.”

“You don’t commiserate?” Maria asked. “Aren’t you a former Ranger?”

“Yes I am,” said Strickland, “but that doesn’t mean I like the way they do things.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even know they would be here until I landed. I was expecting an outfit of Rangers, and instead I got them. What do you think? Why the change?”

Reid could think of a few reasons why, and every single one of them ended with Riker and the higher-ups in the CIA being up to no good. “I don’t know,” Reid said, not offering his thoughts aloud, “but we should assume they might have a slightly different agenda than we do.”

Maria nodded her agreement. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to request Kent to come along on this op,” she noted to Strickland.

The young agent frowned. “I didn’t request him. Like I said, I couldn’t believe it when they said you were coming. You know I wouldn’t have asked you to leave your daughters.”

Reid scoffed and ran his fingers over his hair. This felt wrong and was getting more so by the minute. And if Riker lied about Strickland, then she might have lied about the other part too. Had he actually ever encountered this Brotherhood before? Without his memory, he wouldn’t know—and Reidigger, the only person he was allegedly with, was too dead to ask.

“Maybe you should go,” Maria said as if reading his mind. “Get out before this starts.”

Reid shook his head. “That would look suspicious. It might prompt someone to act rashly. Besides, I’m not leaving you two with those guys.”

“Is there something I should know?” Strickland asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Nothing you’d want to know, trust me,” Reid told him. He wasn’t about to implicate Strickland into the “who-knows-what” ordeal of the still-shrouded conspiracy. “Look, for now, we’re here to do a job, so let’s get it done. We’ll watch each other’s backs. We’re not responsible for whatever those mercenaries do, as long as they’re not doing it to us. What do we know so far?”

“Well,” Strickland said, turning his attention towards the rubble of the former embassy, “we know the explosion was centralized, likely in the maintenance level just under the first floor. It was strategically placed to take out load-bearing walls; you can see how the outer walls crumbled inward.”

Reid’s mind flashed onto a memory—not a new one, but one from the previous week. He had just used almost the same words when he had given the lecture about the Gunpowder Plot, the attempt to blow up the House of Lords with thirty-six barrels of powder just to kill one man.

“Anything known yet about the type of explosive?” he asked.

“Bomb techs have been on scene since it happened,” Strickland told them. “All evidence points to C-4, and a lot of it. They’re estimating about a hundred and forty pounds’ worth.”

“Jesus,” Maria muttered. “Sounds like overkill.”

“Sounds like hedging a bet that they got their targets,” Reid corrected. A hundred and forty pounds meant that it wasn’t a suicide bomber or an unwitting participant that carried the bomb in; it would be far too heavy and conspicuous. “So the explosives were already here, and since C-4 is detonated with an electrical charge, it’s a good bet it was set off remotely.”

“Or someone set it and ran like hell,” Maria offered.

“Not necessarily,” said Strickland. “The embassy’s cameras live-feed to an off-site database. Footage shows that one of the missing Israeli journalists was discovered only minutes before the explosion.”

Reid stroked his chin. “You think he carried the detonator in for them?”

“Not willingly,” said Maria, “but it’s possible they put something on him that would activate the bomb.”

“So they could have smuggled the bomb in earlier,” Reid thought aloud, “and then waited for their moment… waited for the congressional delegation to arrive before sending the journalist in to set it off.”

“But how would they have gained access to the building?” Strickland asked. “Unless it was an inside job.”

“Maybe.” Reid doubted that, or rather he didn’t want to believe that, but it was a viable notion. “A place like this keeps logs of who comes and goes, right? Maria, let’s get on the phone with the agency and have a tech look into that list, and find out if anyone doesn’t belong.”

Her phone was already in hand. “On it.”

While Maria called in the analysis, Reid folded his arms and looked out over the horrible scene again as rescue workers with excavation equipment attempted to extricate any potential survivors. He found himself wishing he could do more to help—but preventing something like this from happening again elsewhere was the best thing he could do, he realized.

Not unlike Maya’s own thoughts about her future.

Reid rubbed his temples. He wondered what they were doing at that moment, Maya and Sara. Moreover, he wondered what they were thinking. Maya would forgive him, in time. It was Sara that he was more concerned about. She told him that he should go, but how much did she mean it? What if she had only said that to call his bluff, to see if he would keep his promise?

He pulled out his phone and opened the application that showed him two overlapping yellow dots, the tracking devices that had been implanted in each of his daughters. According to the app, they had made it back to Engelberg just fine in the company of Agent Watson. He was relieved to know they were safe; the implants were proving useful.

Then he looked up, and was jarred from his thoughts as he caught sight of a bearded man in all black, the Division leader called Fitzpatrick, hefting his AR-15 with his elbows out. It looked as if he was watching Reid, staring right back at him. Perhaps he was. Perhaps that was his entire purpose for being here, to watch Agent Zero… and act if necessary.

“Guys,” Maria said suddenly. “Got something, listen to this.” She put the phone on speaker as Reid and Strickland huddled closer. “Go ahead.”

“I’m reviewing the embassy’s maintenance records of the last several days,” said the lilting female voice of a CIA tech. “Electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and the like. Their logs auto-updated to government databases every twenty-four hours. It seems that the last contractors to access the maintenance level was two days before the bomb went off—three men from a plumbing company there to fix a burst pipe. There’s nothing else for a whole week prior, save for the cleaning crews.”

“And they had no reason to go into the maintenance level unless it was an inside job,” Strickland noted.

“True,” said the tech. “But something struck me as odd about that job from two days prior. The work order was time-stamped in the system only thirty minutes before they arrived. So they’re either the fastest contractors in the Middle East, or…”

“Or it was fake and entered into the system so they could get into the embassy,” Reid interjected.

“Precisely,” the tech agreed. “At a glance, everything checks out. They would have rolled up to the gate with a legitimate work order. Their company was vetted, their identification was in order, and background checks were fully updated in the embassy’s archives. There were no red flags. But I dug a bit deeper… there’s no actual contract on file with this company, and no evidence that they’ve ever done work at the embassy before.”

“I’m willing to bet no one has ever worked with them before anywhere,” said Maria. “But how did they get the explosives inside? Wouldn’t their truck have been searched?”

“The work order called for a twelve-foot section of pipe to be replaced,” the tech explained. “Eight inches in diameter.”

“Big enough to hide a hundred and forty pounds of C-4 inside,” Strickland noted.

“So someone entered all this information into the embassy’s database,” said Reid. “Can we find out who did it? That’ll give us a starting point.”

“That is admittedly a bit beyond my ability,” the tech said, “but I know a guy. There’s a Danish hacker on retainer with the CIA. Let me reach out; if he’s available we could have a name and location in minutes.”

“Thanks.” Maria ended the call. “We’ll need transport ready when we get an answer. Something fast.”

“I can have a Black Hawk here in fifteen minutes,” Strickland said.

Reid nodded. “Let’s update INIS. Then radio Fitzpatrick, let him know we’re heading out as soon as we get a call back.” He looked out past the wreckage to the tall man in black carrying the AR-15.

There was no doubt about it; the mercenary was definitely watching Reid. He had the distinct feeling that Fitzpatrick and his men were going to spell some sort of trouble.

He added to Strickland, “And I’m going to need a gun.”