Jack Mars - Hunting Zero

Suddenly a monophonic ring tone blared out from the burner phone beside Rais. Sara jumped slightly in her arms with the high-pitched intrusion.

“Hello.” Rais answered the phone flatly. “ Ano. ” He stood from his chair for the first time in three hours as he switched from English to some foreign tongue. Maya knew only English and French, and she could recognize a handful of other languages from single words and accents, but she didn’t know this one. It was a guttural tongue, but not altogether unpleasant.

Russian? she thought. No. Polish, maybe. It was no use guessing; she couldn’t be sure, and knowing wouldn’t help her understand anything that was being said.

Still, she listened in, noting the frequent usage of “z” and “-ski” sounds, trying to pick out cognates, of which there seemed to be none.

There was one word that she managed to pick out, however, and it made her blood run cold.

“Dubrovnik,” the assassin said, as if by way of confirmation.

Dubrovnik? Geography was one of her best subjects; Dubrovnik was a city in southwestern Croatia, a famous seaport and popular tourist destination. But far more important than that was the implication of the mentioned word.

It meant that Rais was planning to take them out of the country.

“ Ano ,” he said (which seemed like an affirmative; she guessed it to mean “yes”). And then: “Port Jersey.”

They were the only two English words in the entire conversation besides “hello,” and she picked them out easily. Their motel was already close to Bayonne, a stone’s throw from the industrial Port Jersey. She had seen it many times before, crossing the bridge from Jersey into New York or back, stacks upon stacks of multicolored freight containers being loaded by cranes onto vast, dark ships that would carry them overseas.

Her heartbeat tripled its pace. Rais was going to take them out of the US by way of Port Jersey to Croatia. And from there… she had no idea, and no one else would either. There would be little hope of ever being found again.

Maya could not allow it. Her resolve to fight back strengthened; her determination to do something about this situation came roaring back to life.

The trauma of watching Rais cut the woman’s throat in the rest stop bathroom earlier that day still lingered; she saw it whenever she closed her eyes. The vacant, dead stare. The pool of blood nearly touching her feet. But then she touched her sister’s hair and she knew that she would absolutely accept the same fate if it meant Sara would be safe and away from this man.

Rais continued his conversation in the foreign language, chattering in short, punctuated sentences. He turned and parted the thick curtains slightly, only an inch or so, to peer out at the parking lot.

His back was to her, probably for the first time since they had arrived at the seedy motel.

Maya reached out and very carefully pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. It was all she could reach, handcuffed to her sister and without moving from the bed. Her gaze flitted nervously to Rais’s back, and then to the drawer.

There was a Bible in it, a very old one with a chipped, peeling spine. And beside it was a simple blue ballpoint pen.

She took it and closed the drawer again. At almost the same moment Rais turned back. Maya froze, the pen clutched in her closed fist.

But he did not pay her any attention. He seemed bored with the call now, anxious to get off the phone. Something on the television caught his attention for a few seconds and Maya hid the pen in the elastic waistband of her flannel pajama pants.

The assassin grunted a halfhearted goodbye and ended the call, flinging the phone onto the armchair cushion. He turned toward them, scrutinizing each in turn. Maya stared straight ahead, her gaze as vacant as she could make it, pretending to watch the newscast. Seemingly satisfied, he took his post on the chair again.

Maya gently stroked Sara’s back with her free hand as her younger sister stared at the television, or perhaps at nothing at all, her eyes half-closed. After the incident in the restroom at the rest stop, it took hours for Sara to stop crying, but now she simply lay there, her gaze empty and glazed. It seemed she had nothing left.

Maya ran her fingers up and down her sister’s spine in an attempt to comfort her. There was no way for them to communicate between each other; Rais had made it clear that they were not allowed to speak unless asked a question. There was no way for Maya to relay a message, to create a plan.

Though… maybe it doesn’t have to be verbal , she thought.

Maya stopped touching her sister’s back for a moment. When she resumed, she took her index finger and surreptitiously drew the slow, lazy shape of a letter between Sara’s shoulder blades—a large S.

Sara lifted her head curiously for just a moment, but she did not look up at Maya or say anything. Maya hoped desperately that she understood.

Q, she drew next.

Then U.

Rais sat in the chair in Maya’s peripheral vision. She didn’t dare glance over at him for fear of seeming suspicious. Instead she stared straight ahead, as she had been, and drew the letters.

E. E. Z. E.

She moved her finger slowly, deliberately, pausing for two seconds between each letter and five seconds between each word until she spelled out her message.

Squeeze my hand if you understand.

Maya did not even see Sara move. But their hands were close, on account of being cuffed together, and she felt cool, clammy fingers close tightly around her own for a moment.

She understood. Sara got the message.

Maya started anew, moving slowly as possible. There was no rush, and she needed to make sure that Sara got every word.

If you have a chance , she wrote, you run.

Do not look back.

Do not wait for me.

Find help. Get Dad.

Sara lay there, quietly and perfectly still, for the entire message. It was a quarter after three before Maya finished. Finally she felt the cool touch of a thin finger on the palm of her left hand, nestled partially under Sara’s cheek. The finger traced a pattern on her palm, the letter N.

Not without you , Sara’s message said.

Maya closed her eyes and sighed.

You have to , she wrote back. Or there is no chance for either of us.

She didn’t give Sara an opportunity to respond. Once she had finished her message, she cleared her throat and said quietly, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Rais raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the open bathroom door on the far end of the room. “By all means.”

“But…” Maya lifted her shackled wrist.

“So?” the assassin asked. “Take her with you. You have a free hand.”

Maya bit her lip. She knew what he was doing; the sole window in the bathroom was small, barely large enough for Maya to fit through and wholly impossible while handcuffed to her sister.

She slid off the bed slowly, prodding her sister to come with her. Sara moved mechanically, as if she had forgotten how to properly use her limbs.

“You have one minute. Do not lock the door,” Rais warned. “If you do I will kick it down.”

Maya led the way and closed the door to the tiny bathroom, cramped with both of them standing in it. She flicked on the light—fairly certain she saw a roach skitter to safety beneath the sink—and then turned on the bath fan, which droned loudly overhead.

“I won’t,” Sara whispered almost immediately. “I won’t go without—”

Maya quickly held a finger to her own lips to signal for quiet. For all she knew, Rais was standing right on the other side of the door with an ear to it. He did not take chances.