Hunting Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #3)

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

No, no, no… As Reid leapt across the orange carpet of room 9, it felt as if his legs couldn’t move fast enough, as if every muscle was straining to react at an impossible speed. He had to get to the port.

He understood now. The cars, the change of directions, even the murder of the woman in the rest stop bathroom—all of it would confuse the authorities, make Rais look desperate and meandering, as if he didn’t know what he was doing.

He knew damn well what he was doing. He was taking Reid’s girls to Europe—and from there, god only knew where. With a twelve-hour lead, they could be anywhere in the world. Away from the jurisdiction of the police and feds. Away from him…

He scooped up his bag without pausing and kept running, parallel to the row of motel rooms toward the office at the end. He barely heard the sirens, wasn’t even cognizant of their blaring wail until he was suddenly awash in headlights.

Three police cruisers screeched into the narrow lot of the Starlight Motel. Reid blinked in their glare as officers poured from them, unseen behind the bright headlights, shouting so many warnings at him at once that not any one of them was intelligible.

He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop, not now. Reid sprinted onward, around the corner of the motel and behind it. As George had said, there was a dirt bike waiting, faded with age and looking worse for the wear.

Reid leapt onto it, slinging his back securely over one shoulder. He squeezed the clutch and kick-started the engine. It sputtered once and then came to life in a high-pitched whine, strong and robust beneath him. Despite its appearance it seemed that the clerk had taken decent care of the parts that mattered.

The pursuing officers came around the corner, their rapid footfalls drowned out by the roar of the bike’s engine. They held their hands out in front of them in warning. Two went for their guns.

Reid released the clutch and twisted the left handlebar, fully opening the throttle. The bike bucked so hard he nearly fell off, but he leaned into it at the last moment and the dirt bike sprang forward toward the officers like a shot, forcing them to scatter and leap out of the way.

He barely slowed as he reached the street, swinging the back end of the bike out and stabilizing with his right foot. Over the siren cry of the engine he heard another sound, faint but recognizable—the steady approach of a helicopter. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him a black Huey alighting in the parking lot across the street from the Starlight, the same lot that the quadcopter had delivered him to.

Agent Strickland had arrived, but Reid was not wasting time waiting around. He shifted and tore at the throttle again, this time hanging on securely as the bike streaked forward. He was certain that at least one of the cruisers would try to give chase, but he wasn’t concerned about that—he had a lead on them and the bike was at least 250cc, and despite the lack of speedometer he knew it was capable of up to a hundred, maybe a hundred and ten miles an hour.

It also had no headlight, and he had no helmet, but he couldn’t let that stop him. He hurtled through the industrial park as fast as he was able, the only vehicle on the road at that time of night.

He knew the way to Port Jersey. In the daytime, with traffic, it might have taken fifteen minutes to get there. At night, with no one around, ten minutes. On the dirt bike, doing an impetuous triple-digit speed, Reid got there in five.

Even so, it was the longest five minutes of his entire life. Every horrible thought that could invade his mind did so—his daughters smuggled out of the country. Never seeing them again. Never finding them. Fates worse than death, for both him and them.

It doesn’t make sense. Rais wants me to find him. Doesn’t he?

The burner phone sat heavy and obvious in his pocket. He wanted desperately to call Watson, to alert the police and the CIA and the FBI and whoever else possible about Port Jersey, to have a veritable army crash down upon the port and sweep every corner for any sign of his daughters.

The marine terminal of Port Jersey was a long, U-shaped cargo-handling harbor on the southern edge of Newark Bay, with a view of the Bayonne Bridge. To its north were Jersey City and the Hudson River; northwest was the island of Manhattan. But to the port’s southeast was Lower Bay and, from there, the open Atlantic.

They’re not out there, he told himself as he entered the port. They’ll be here. I’ll find them.

The dirt bike screamed past the dockworkers’ parking lot and kept right on going, down the long rows of bright rectangular containers until the congestion of cargo would no longer allow him access. He slowed enough to lay the bike down, leapt off, and sprinted on foot as the bike continued to skid right into the side of a steel container.

The seaport was still alive despite the hour; powerful fluorescent lights on poles lit the docks while crews continued to work loading and unloading ships by crane and forklift. A huge freight ship sat in the comparably small harbor, a dry-bulk cargo barge nearly as large as the cruise ship Reid had been on just two days earlier. The cargo ship was laden with a seemingly impossible number of containers, stacked so high and deep to the point that it was hard to tell whether the crews were working to load it or offload it.

As he ran toward the ship, the bright lights, and the dockworkers, he yanked out the burner phone and called Watson. It rang four times before a recorded message told him that a voicemail box had not yet been set up for the number.

He gritted his teeth and briefly considered throwing the phone in anger before he jammed it back into his pocket. He hurried toward the first two men he saw. Both were wearing hard hats and bright yellow vests, one leaning against a dormant forklift while the other climbed up into the seat. Reid reached into his jacket as he ran over to them and pulled out the photo of his daughters, the one of them on vacation with him in Florida.

“Have either of you seen these girls?” he asked, waving the photo in their face.

The two confused men glanced at each other and then back at him. “Here?” one of them asked. “Sorry, pal, we haven’t seen any girls.”

Reid moved along, walking quickly among the crews as they worked. Anyone who wasn’t actively doing something had the photo shoved into their bewildered noses. “Have you seen these girls? Around here, at the port? Any girls at all?”

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Can’t say I have, buddy.”

Reid nearly shouted in frustration as he spotted a trio of men standing outside a white trailer, sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. He strode over to them. “I’m looking for two teenage girls,” he said, showing them the photo. “There’s reason to believe they might have been here. Have any of you seen them?”

The largest of the trio, a black man with a shaved head, scratched idly at his chin and said, “Look around, guy. This ain’t exactly a place for kids.”

Reid took a breath, trying to calm himself. “They weren’t… they didn’t come here by accident or choice. They were kidnapped. They’re missing.”

The large man sighed and shook his head. “Damn. I’m really sorry about that. But… we ain’t seen any kids around here. If we did, we’d tell you. Hell, we’d probably call the cops.”

Reid stalked off wordlessly, half angry and all desperate. His breath quickened; he felt slightly dizzy. The cargo port seemed impossibly huge, with hundreds—likely even thousands—of containers, drums, steel boxes, and crates piled high around him. Suddenly those stacks looked like skyscrapers, lording over him from above.

Mild nausea washed over him as he thought, What if they’re in one, right now? What if they’re here, locked away somewhere? Could that have been Rais’s game—to hide the girls, force him to look one way while Rais took a different tack? It didn’t make sense to him, but he had to acknowledge that he wasn’t thinking straight.

If they were here somewhere, he wouldn’t have a prayer of finding them. He was one man. There was a lot that Kent Steele could do, but searching the entire industrial port alone was not among them.

I could call the police. I could even call Riker. He had already defied the CIA, tampered with evidence, and broken laws. Not to mention that he was definitively on Riker’s bad side—if she knew he was meddling, he’d land in a jail cell in the best-case scenario. But the police had already caught him in their headlights back at the Starlight Motel. His image had undoubtedly been captured by dashboard cameras, which meant that Strickland and the CIA would know in minutes that Kent Steele was doing precisely what the agency didn’t want him to do.

Doesn’t matter now, he determined. Whatever fate would become of him, blacklisted or arrested or even sent to some godforsaken hole like H-6, it would be more than worth it if it meant his girls were safe.

He pulled out the burner and flipped it open, ready to call someone, anyone—but the phone rang in his hand. He answered it immediately.

“I need help,” he said desperately. “I’m at Port Jersey, and I can’t find them, not alone…”

“Kent.” The voice on the other end of the line was not Watson, as he had expected. It was soft, feminine, and familiar. “It’s me.”

“Oh god. Maria.” He said her name like a sigh. In that moment, despite everything, hearing her voice was a relief—maybe an infinitesimal one, but no less welcome. He felt a lump rising anew in his throat. “Maria, the girls, they’re gone…”

“I know. Watson sent me a message. Kent, I’m so sorry.”

He breathed into his free hand. “Where are you?”

“Ukraine,” she told him. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to contact you. It’s not easy finding a secure line around here.”

“Maria, it was him. I know it was him.”

“I believe you,” she said. “But the agency doesn’t. They still have me chasing false leads out here…”

“Because of Riker,” he said scornfully.

“That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is getting those girls back to you. What are you doing at Port Jersey?”

“I found a message,” he told her. “It was from Maya, in her handwriting. It said to come here. It also said ‘Dubrovnik.’”

“Croatia,” Maria said quietly. She was silent for a moment. “All right. Kent, I’m going to do whatever I can to help you. Finding Rais is my op, and there’s nothing more important to me right now than the safety of those girls. But this is going to be the hard part. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes. I’m listening.”

“Kent… your girls are already gone.”

Reid put a fist to his mouth as a sob bubbled up through his throat. “No.” His voice cracked behind his closed fist. “They’re not. They’re not gone. You don’t know that.”

“How long has it been since they were taken? Kent, how long?”

“Um.” He thought hard, but the numbers seemed muddied and confusing. “I don’t… I don’t…” He took a deep breath. “Thirty-two hours, maybe. Thirty-two to thirty-six.”

“Right.” Maria paused a moment before continuing. “Rais is a psychopath, but he’s not an i***t. We know that. If he wanted the girls out of the country, they’re already out of the country.”

Reid leaned against a cargo container and sank slowly against it, coming to a seat on the concrete. “How am I supposed to find them?” he asked quietly.

“It’s not just you. It’s us—all of us. We’ll find them. But I need you thinking clearly. If his plan was Port Jersey, he would have put them on a boat, right? How long would it take for them to get to Dubrovnik?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he pressed his fingers against his closed eyes. Maybe when I open them again none of this will be happening.

“Kent?” Maria said sternly. “How long?”

Reid thought for a moment. “Um… six. Six to seven days. No, eight. They would have to travel across the Mediterranean. Eight days.”

“Right. Up to eight days to get there, and they’ve been on a boat for one, at most. So we alert the agency. Have them find the manifests for any ship heading to Dubrovnik that left in the last twelve hours. We get the Coast Guard involved. We get you on a chopper, if we need to. We can stop that boat long before it ever reaches Europe.”

“Yes. Okay. We can stop it.” Reid wiped his eyes and took a long, calming breath. He knew Maria was right; his girls were already gone. If Rais’s plan was to get them out of the US, he wasn’t going to let Reid learn that if there was anything he could have done to prevent it.

“I’m going to help you find them as best I can from here,” Maria told him, her voice strong and even and comforting. “First we need to get a message to Watson—”

“I tried to call him. He didn’t answer.”

“All right, I’ll get a message to him,” she assured him. “Let him contact the agency; he has resources that can keep you out of this. You don’t spend a decade in the CIA without making some friends.”

And some enemies, Reid thought bitterly.

“I’ll keep in touch as best I’m able,” she continued. “For now, don’t go too far.”

“I have nowhere else to go,” he told her sardonically, looking out over the dark water of Lower Bay. Somewhere out there, perhaps hundreds of miles away by now, were his little girls…

“Just stay dark and keep out of trouble for a little while. We’ll be in touch soon, I promise.”

“Okay. Thank you, Maria. Really.” Reid ended the call and rubbed his face. He wanted to say more—I don’t know what I would do without you—and he immediately regretted not saying it. Talking with her didn’t make the actual situation better, nor did it make him feel much better about it, but he knew that she would come through in whatever ways she could. And as usual, she was right. He had to control himself, get a grip, think clearly, stay focused.

But first, he had to get himself somewhere that he could stay out of the public eye, even if for only a short time… No, he thought. He was in this deep, and now his girls were offshore. The time for subterfuge had past. He had Cartwright’s office number in Langley; it wasn’t a secure line, but it was more than likely the CIA was already well aware that he was on the trail. He couldn’t keep relying on people like Watson, Mitch, and Maria to stick their necks out for him and his daughters, no matter how much they wanted to help.

He flipped open the phone and dialed Cartwright’s number.

“Hey, excuse me.” A male voice startled Reid before he could press send. He glanced up to see an older man coming his way, mid-fifties or so. He looked official, wearing khaki pants and a white button-down shirt. He took off his white hard hat as he approached and tucked it under one arm.

Reid snapped the phone shut and stood up from the asphalt.

“I’m the site supervisor here,” the man told him. “You need some help?”

“No. No, I’m… I’m fine.” He was, of course, very far removed from “fine,” but he said it nonetheless in an effort to avoid further attention.

“All right. Listen, I can’t have you around here freaking out my guys when they’re running heavy machinery. But if there’s something you need, you can talk to me.”

Reid nodded. He tried to keep his voice even as he spoke. “I’m looking for a couple of kids. They were abducted yesterday, and I have reason to believe they were here… that they might have been taken out of the country from this port.”

The supervisor put a hand on his hip as he shook his head sadly. “I feel for you. I do. But nobody has seen any children around here. If they did they would’ve reported it to me. Now I can check with the daytime crew, if you want. Come on back to the office. I got a pot of coffee going, and I can make a call or two.”

“No, it’s fine.” Reid had a feeling that no one would have seen the girls coming or going—and if they had, they were unlikely to offer it up. There was, however, another way the supervisor might be of help. “You know the schedules, right? Arrivals and departures? Can you tell me the last boat that left port bound for Croatia?”

The supervisor frowned. “We don’t service that route here,” he told Reid. “We get boats from up and down the east coast, plenty to the UK, even as far as Genoa, Palermo, Malta. But none of our ships are on routes to Dubrovnik.”

“I understand,” Reid said. His heart rate quickened. “You know… on second thought, a cup of coffee sounds really good. Do you mind? Might calm the nerves a bit.”

“Sure. Come on.” The supervisor waved for him to follow, back toward the docks and the unloading ship.

Reid wasn’t interested in coffee. But he was very interested in the supervisor’s choice of words, because Reid hadn’t once mentioned Dubrovnik.