Jack Mars - Assassin Zero

“Perfect.” Finally some semblance of relief came. He trusted that the doctor would know what to do—or at least be able to explain what was going on in his head. “Text me the details, and I’ll see you then.”

“I shall. Adieu , Agent Steele.” Guyer hung up, and Zero sat heavily on the edge of the bed. His hands were still shaking, and his bedroom floor was a mess of strewn nostalgia.

Maybe it was just a fluke , he told himself. Maybe the dream rattled me and it was just a brief bout of waking forgetfulness. Maybe I panicked for nothing.

Of course he didn’t truly believe any lie he might tell himself.

But despite whatever was happening in his head, life had to go on. He forced himself to stand, to pull on a pair of jeans and a shirt. He replaced the items back into the security box, locked it, and pushed it under the bed.

In the bathroom he brushed his teeth and splashed some cold water on his face before heading down the hall to the kitchen—just in time to see Maya closing the oven door and setting the digital timer.

Zero frowned. “What’s this?”

She shrugged and pushed the sweeping bangs from her forehead. “Just putting the bird in the oven.”

He blinked. “You’re cooking the turkey? Is that something they teach you at West Point?”

Maya smirked. “No.” She held up her phone. “But Google does.”

“Well… okay then. Guess I’ll just get myself some coffee.” He was again pleasantly surprised to find that she’d already made a pot. Maya had always been as independent as she was intelligent, but this almost seemed to him as if she was trying to pull some weight around. He couldn’t help but wonder if she was feeling as helpless about Sara’s situation as he was; maybe this was her way of showing support.

So he decided to stay out of her way and let her do what she would. He took a stool at the counter and stirred his coffee, trying to push the morning’s unpleasantness out of his mind. A few minutes later Sara trudged her way into the kitchen, still in pajamas, eyes partially open, her red-blonde hair tousled.

“Morning,” Maya said cheerfully.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Zero chimed in.

“Mmph,” Sara grunted as she dragged herself to the coffee machine.

“Still not a morning person, huh, Squeak?” Maya ribbed gently.

Sara grunted something else, but he saw the hint of a smile on her lips at the sound of her childhood nickname. He felt a warmth inside him that wasn’t just the coffee; this was a feeling he had lacked for some time, the feeling of truly being at home.

And then, naturally, his cell phone rang.

The screen showed him that it was Maria calling and he winced. He had forgotten to text her the time and address to come today. Then he panicked all over again; it wasn’t like him to forget something like that. Was this another symptom of his ailing limbic system? What if he hadn’t actually forgotten, but it had been pushed out, just like Kate’s name had?

Calm down , he commanded himself. It’s just a little absentmindedness, nothing more.

He took a breath and answered the phone. “I am so sorry,” he said immediately. “I was supposed to text you, and it completely slipped my mind—”

“That’s not why I’m calling, Kent.” Maria sounded somber. “And I’m the one who should be sorry. I need you to come in.”

He frowned. Maya noticed and mirrored his expression as he rose from the stool and sought the relative privacy of the adjacent living room. “Come in? You mean to Langley?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I know the timing couldn’t be worse, but we have a situation and I need you in this briefing.”

“I…” His first instinct was to refuse outright. Not only was it a holiday, and not only was he still dealing with Sara’s recovery, but Maya was visiting for the first time in a long time. Throw in an ample helping of terrifying memory loss and Maria was right; the timing couldn’t be worse.

He almost blurted out, “ Do I have to? ” but held his tongue for fear of coming off as petulant.

“I don’t want to do this any more than you do,” Maria said before he could think of any way to refuse. “And I really don’t want to pull rank.” Zero read that part loud and clear; Maria was reminding him that she was his boss now. “But I have no choice. This isn’t coming from me. President Rutledge asked for you personally.”

“He asked for me?” Zero repeated dully.

“Well, he asked for ‘the guy that cracked the Kozlovsky case,’ but close enough…”

“He could have meant Alan,” Zero suggested hopefully.

Maria chuckled halfheartedly, though it came out as barely more than a breathy sigh. “I’m sorry, Kent,” she said for the third time. “I’ll try to keep the briefing short, but…”

But this means I’m being sent into the field. The subtext was plain as day. And worse, there was no excuse or defense he could give to turn it down. He was under the CIA’s thumb for what he’d done, now more than ever—and he couldn’t very well say no to the president, who was for all intents and purposes his boss’s boss’s boss.

“Okay,” he relented. “Give me thirty minutes.” He ended the call and groaned softly.

“It’s all right.” He spun quickly to find Maya standing behind him. The condo wasn’t big enough for him to actually take the call privately, and he was certain she could ascertain the nature of the conversation even hearing only his side of it. “Go, do what you have to do.”

“What I have to do,” he said plainly, “is be here with you and Sara. It’s Thanksgiving, for crying out loud…”

“Apparently not everyone got the memo.” She was doing the same thing he tended to do; attempt to diffuse the situation with gentle humor. “It’s okay. Sara and I will take care of dinner. Get back when you can.”

He nodded, grateful for her understanding and wanting to say more, but ultimately he just murmured “thank you” and headed to his bedroom for a change of clothes. There was nothing more to say—because Maya knew just as well as he did that his day would be much more likely to end on a plane than it would sharing Thanksgiving with his daughters.

If anyone were to consider the phrase “Middle America,” the images they conjured would likely be shockingly close to that of Springfield, Kansas. It was a town surrounded by gently sloping farmland, a place where the cows outnumbered the citizens, so small that one could hold a single breath while driving clear through it. Some would find it idyllic. Some would call it charming.

Samara found it disgusting.

There were forty-one towns and cities in the United States named Springfield, which made this town not only unremarkable, but particularly uninspired. Its population hovered around eight hundred; its main street consisted of a post office, a bar and grill, a mom-and-pop grocer, a pharmacy, and a feed store.

For all of those reasons and more, it was perfect.

Samara pulled back her bright red hair and bunched it into a ponytail, exposing the small tattoo on the back of her neck, the single simple character for “fire”—which transliterated in Pinyin to Huŏ, the surname she had adopted after defecting.

She leaned against the commercial box truck and examined her fingernails, biding her time. She could hear the music from there, teenagers and young adults playing poorly while marching to the beat of a rattling snare drum. They’d be at her location soon.

Behind her, in the cargo area of the truck, were four men and the weapon. The attack on Havana had gone surprisingly well, easy even. With any luck, the Cuban and American governments would believe it to have been a testing ground, but their weapon had been tested plenty already. The purpose of the Havana attack was much more than that; it was to introduce chaos. To sow confusion. To present the illusion of a fair warning while making the powers-that-be scratch their heads and wonder.