Jack Mars - Trapping Zero

A knot of panic tightened in his stomach as he spotted the back of Sara’s blonde head across the lodge floor. Behind her was a man in a black parka, following her—or perhaps guiding her away.

He strode over quickly, fists balling at his side. His first thought was immediately of the Slovakian traffickers. They found us . His tense muscles were ready for a fight, ready to take this man apart in front of everyone. Somehow they found us here, in the mountains.

“Sara,” he said sharply.

She stopped and turned, her eyes wide at his commanding tone.

“You okay?” He looked from her to the man following her. He had dark eyes, a five o’clock shadow, ski goggles perched on his forehead. He didn’t look Slovakian, but Reid was not taking any chances.

“Fine, Dad. This man asked me where the bathrooms were,” Sara told him.

The man put up both hands defensively, palms out. “I’m very sorry,” he said, his accent sounding German. “I did not mean any harm—”

“You couldn’t have asked an adult?” Reid said forcefully, staring the man down.

“I asked the first person I saw,” the man protested.

“And that was a fourteen-year-old girl?” Reid shook his head. “Who are you with?”

“With?” the man asked in bewilderment. “I’m… with my family here.”

“Yeah? Where are they? Point them out,” Reid demanded.

“I-I don’t want any trouble.”

“Dad.” Reid felt an arm tug at his. “That’s enough, Dad.” Maya tugged at him again. “He’s just a tourist.”

Reid narrowed his eyes. “I’d better not see you around my girls again,” he warned, “or there will be trouble.” He turned away from the frightened man as Sara, bewildered, headed back towards the sofa.

But Maya stood in his path with her hands on her hips. “Just what the hell was that?”

He frowned. “Maya, you watch your language—”

“No, you watch yours,” she shot back. “Dad, you were speaking German just now.”

Reid blinked in surprise. “I was?” He hadn’t even realized it, but the man in the black parka had apologized in German—and Reid had simply picked it up without thinking.

“You’re going to freak Sara out again, doing things like that,” Maya accused.

His shoulders slackened. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just thought…” You thought the Slovakian traffickers had followed you and your girls to Switzerland. Suddenly he recognized how ridiculous that sounded.

It was clear that Maya and Sara were not the only ones that needed to recover from their shared experience. Maybe I need to schedule a few sessions with Dr. Branson , he thought as he rejoined his daughters.

“I’m sorry about that,” he told Sara. “I guess I’m just a little overprotective right now.”

She said nothing in response, but stared at the floor with a faraway look in her eye, both hands wrapped around a mug as it grew cold.

Seeing his reaction and hearing him bark angrily at the man in German had reminded her of the incident and, if he had to guess, just how little she knew about her own father.

Great , he thought bitterly. Not even one day in and I’ve already ruined it. How am I going to fix this? He took a seat between the girls and desperately tried to think of something he could say or do to return to the cheerful atmosphere of only moments ago.

But before he had the chance, Sara spoke up. Her gaze lifted to meet his as she murmured, and despite the conversations around them Reid heard her words clearly.

“I want to know,” his youngest daughter said. “I want to know the truth.”

Yosef Bachar had spent the last eight years of his career in perilous situations. As an investigative journalist, he had accompanied armed troops into the Gaza Strip. He had trekked across deserts in search of hidden compounds and caves during the long hunt for Osama bin Laden. He had reported from the midst of firefights and air raids. Not two years earlier, he had broken the story of Hamas smuggling drone parts across borders and forcing a kidnapped Saudi engineer to reconstruct them so they could be used for bombings. His exposé had inspired higher security at borders and increased awareness of insurgents seeking better technology.

Despite all he had done to risk life and limb, he had never found himself in more danger than he was in now. He and two Israeli colleagues had been covering the story of Imam Khalil and his small sect of followers, who had unleashed a mutated smallpox virus on Barcelona and attempted to do the same on the United States. A source in Istanbul told them that the last few of Khalil’s zealots had fled to Iraq, hiding somewhere near Albaghdadi.

But Yosef Bachar and his two compatriots did not find Khalil’s people; they had not even reached the city before their car was run off the road by another group, and the three journalists were taken hostage.

For three days they had been kept in the basement of a desert compound, bound at the wrists and kept in the dark, both literally and figuratively.

Bachar had spent those three days waiting for their inevitable fate. These men were most likely Hamas, he realized, or some offshoot thereof. They would torture and eventually murder him. They would record the ordeal on video and send it to the Israeli government. Three days of waiting and wondering, dozens of horrid scenarios playing out in Bachar’s head, felt just as tortuous as whatever plans these men had for them.

But when they finally did come for him, it was not with weapons or implements. It was with words.

A young man, not twenty-five if he was a day, entered the subterranean level of the compound alone and turned on the light, a single bare bulb in the ceiling. He had dark eyes, a beard trimmed short, and broad shoulders. The young man paced before the three of them, on their knees with hands bound in front of them.

“My name is Awad bin Saddam,” he told them, “and I am the leader of the Brotherhood. The three of you have been conscripted into a most glorious purpose. Of you, one will deliver for me a message. Another will document our holy jihad . And the third… the third is unnecessary. The third will die at our hands.” The young man, this bin Saddam, paused his pacing and reached into his pocket.

“You may decide who will carry out which task between yourselves if you wish,” he said. “Or, you may leave it to chance.” He bent at the waist and placed three thin lengths of twine on the floor before them.

Two of them were approximately six inches long. The third was trimmed a couple inches shorter than the others.

“I will return in half an hour.” The young terrorist left the basement and locked the door behind him.

The three journalists stared at the trimmed, fraying lengths of rope on the stone floor.

“This is monstrous,” said Avi quietly. He was a stout man of forty-eight years, older than most still working in the field.

“I will volunteer,” Yosef told them. The words spilled from his mouth before he thought them through—because if he did, he would likely hold them behind his tongue.

“No, Yosef.” Idan, the youngest of them, shook his head firmly. “It is noble of you, but we couldn’t live with ourselves knowing that we allowed you to volunteer for death.”

“You would leave it up to chance?” Yosef countered.

“Chance is fair,” said Avi. “Chance is unbiased. Besides…” He lowered his voice as he added, “This may be a ruse. They may still yet kill all of us anyhow.”

Idan reached down with both bound hands and scooped the three spans of rope in his fist, gripping them so that the exposed ends appeared to be the same length. “Yosef,” he said, “you choose first.” He held them out.