Jack Mars - Target Zero

Rais grabbed one of the guns from the bed. It was a Sig P220, all black, .45 caliber. He took it in his left hand. The weight of it felt welcome and familiar, like an old flame. With his right he gripped the open half of the handcuffs. And then he waited.

The voices in the hall fell silent.

“Luca?” Elias called out. “Francis?” The young officer unclipped the strap of his holster and had a hand on his pistol as he entered the darkened room. Elena crept in behind him.

Elias’s eyes went wide with horror at the sight of the two dead men.

Rais slammed the hook of the open handcuff into the side of the young man’s neck, and then yanked his arm backward. The metal bit into his wrist, and the wounds in his back burned, but he ignored the pain as he tore the young man’s throat from his neck. A substantial amount of blood spattered and ran down the assassin’s arm.

With his left hand he pressed the Sig against Elena’s forehead.

“Do not scream,” he said quickly and quietly. “Do not cry out. Stay silent and live. Make a sound and die. Do you understand?”

A small squeak erupted from Elena’s lips as she stifled the sob rising from it. She nodded, even as tears welled in her eyes. Even as Elias fell forward, flat on his face on the tiled floor.

He looked her up and down. She was petite, but her scrubs were somewhat baggy and the waistband elastic. “Take off your clothes,” he told her.

Elena’s mouth fell open in horror.

Rais scoffed. He could understand the confusion, though; he was, after all, still nude. “I am not that type of monster,” he assured her. “I need clothes. I won’t ask again.”

Trembling, the young woman tugged off the scrub top and slid out of her pants, removing them over her white sneakers, as she was standing in the pool of Elias’s blood.

Rais took them and put them on, a bit awkwardly with one hand while he kept the Sig trained on the girl. The scrubs were snug, and the pants a bit short, but they would suffice. He tucked the pistol in the back of his pants, and retrieved the other from the bed.

Elena stood in her underwear, hugging her arms over her midsection. Rais noticed; he plucked up his hospital gown and held it out to her. “Cover yourself. Then get on the bed.” As she did what he asked, he found a ring of keys on Luca’s belt and unlocked his other cuff. Then he looped the chain around one of the steel railings and cuffed Elena’s hands.

He set the keys on the farthest edge of the bedside table, beyond her grasp. “Someone will come and free you after I’ve gone,” he told her. “But first I have questions. I need you to be honest, because if you’re not, I will come back and kill you. Do you understand?”

She nodded frantically, tears rolling over her cheeks.

“How many other nurses are on this unit tonight?”

“P-please don’t hurt them,” she stammered.

“Elena. How many other nurses are on this unit tonight?” he repeated.

“T-two…” She sniffled. “Thomas and Mia. But Tom is at break. He would be downstairs.”

“Okay.” The name tag clipped to his chest was about the size of a credit card. It had a small photo of Elena, and on the reverse, a black stripe running its length. “Is this a locked unit at night? And your badge, it is the key?”

She nodded and sniffled again.

“Good.” He tucked the second gun into the waistband of the scrub pants and knelt by Elias’s body. Then he tugged off both shoes and wiggled his feet into them. They were somewhat tight, but close enough to make an escape. “One last question. Do you know what Francis drives? The night guard?” He gestured to the dead man in the white uniform.

“I-I’m not sure. A… a truck, I think.”

Rais dug into Francis’s pockets and came out with a set of keys. There was an electronic fob; that would help locate the vehicle. “Thank you for your honesty,” he told her. Then he tore a strip from the edge of the bed sheet and stuffed it in her mouth.

The corridor was empty and brightly lit. Rais held the Sig in his grip but kept it obscured behind his back as he crept down the hall. It opened onto a wider floor with a U-shaped nurses’ station and, beyond that, the exit to the unit. A woman in round spectacles with a brunette bob typed away on a computer, her back to him.

“Turn around, please,” he told her.

The startled woman spun to find their patient/prisoner in scrubs, one arm bloodied, pointing a gun at her. She lost her breath and her eyes bulged.

“You must be Mia,” Rais said. The woman was likely around forty, matronly, with dark circles under her wide eyes. “Hands up.”

She did so.

“What happened to Francis?” she asked quietly.

“Francis is dead,” Rais told her dispassionately. “If you wish to join him, do something brash. If you want to live, listen carefully. I am going to leave through that door. Once it closes behind me, you are going to slowly count to thirty. Then you are going to go to my room. Elena is alive but she needs your assistance. After that, you may do whatever it is you’re trained to do in a situation like this. Do you understand?”

The nurse nodded once tightly.

“Do I have your word you will follow those instructions? I prefer not to kill women when I can avoid it.”

She nodded again, slower.

“Good.” He circled around the station, tugging the badge from the scrub top as he did, and swiped it through the card slot to the right of the door. A small light turned from red to green and the lock clicked. Rais pushed the door open, shot one more look at Mia, who had not moved, and then watched the door close behind him.

And then he ran.

He hurried down the hall, tucking the Sig into his pants as he did. He took the stairs down to the first floor two at a time, and burst out a side door and into the Swiss night. Cool air washed over him like a cleansing shower, and he took a moment to breathe freely.

His legs wavered and threatened to give out again. The adrenaline of his escape was wearing off rapidly, and his muscles were still quite weak. He tugged Francis’s key fob from the scrub pocket and pressed the red panic button. The alarm on an SUV screeched, the headlights flashing. He quickly turned it off and hurried over to it.

They would be looking for this car, he knew, but he wouldn’t be in it for long. He would soon have to ditch it, find new clothes, and come morning he would head toward the Hauptpost, where he had everything he would need to escape Switzerland under a fake identity.

And as soon as he was able, he would find and kill Kent Steele.

Reid was barely out of the driveway on his way to meet with Maria before he called Thompson to ask him to keep watch on the Lawson home. “I decided to give the girls a little independence tonight,” he explained. “I won’t be gone too long. But even so, keep an eye out and an ear to the ground?”

“Sure thing,” the old man agreed.

“And, uh, if there’s any cause for alarm, of course, head right over.”

“I will, Reid.”

“You know, if you can’t see them or something, you can knock on the door, or call the house phone…”

Thompson chuckled. “Don’t worry, I got it. And so do they. They’re teenagers. They need some space now and then. Enjoy your date.”

With Thompson’s watchful eye and Maya’s determination to prove herself responsible, Reid thought he could rest easy knowing the girls would be safe. Of course, part of him knew that was just another example of his mental gymnastics. He’d be thinking about it the whole night.

He had to bring the GPS map up on his phone to find the place. He wasn’t yet familiar with Alexandria or the area, though Maria was, thanks to its proximity to Langley and CIA headquarters. Even so, she had chosen a place that she had never been to before either, likely as a way to level the playing field, so to speak.