William Weber - Zero Day

“You saying Jakes knows who took the girl?” Nate asked. “If so, what are the chances we can talk to him?”

“Whoa, amigo!” Sanchez said, waving his hands in the air like a man trying to clear away bad weed. “Weren’t you listening? Jakes isn’t gonna help us, man. He’s the one who took that little girl.”

Nate felt a crushing weight settle over his chest. “But what does he want with Dakota? She’s nothing but an innocent child.”

“It’s not her they’re after,” Five answered. “It’s the girl’s uncle. Some dude named Roger. Word is, the guy’s sitting on an arsenal of military-grade weaponry. Not only full autos. I’m talking fifty-cal machine guns and sniper rifles. Mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The works. The guy was a freak and spent years building up enough to keep a man like Jakes in power for a long time.”

“They wanna use her as a bargaining chip then?” Nate said, putting the pieces together.

“Something like that,” Sanchez replied, stirring his vodka with the tip of his finger and then licking it. “They searched the guy’s home in town and didn’t find a thing. Word is, he’s got a cabin somewhere in the countryside. They think that’s where he keeps the bang-bang stuff.”

Nate rubbed his chin. “I see.” Finding the girl in a cage and then getting attacked on the way to Rockford was suddenly taking on a whole new significance. “And if the girl doesn’t lead Jakes to her uncle’s stockpile, what then?”

Both men looked down. “It won’t be good,” Sanchez said. “If she’s lucky, she won’t suffer too much before they kill her.”

That sinking feeling again, only this time it was blended with dread and served on ice. “I was worried you were gonna say that.” Nate had a serious decision to make. On the one hand, he could go find his family and pretend like none of this had ever happened. Or he could add one more item to the list of bad choices he’d made in life.

Saving Dakota won’t bring your sister back.

The words kept bouncing off the narrow confines of Nate’s mind like that white digital ball from Breakout . Atari classics aside, he was beginning to realize there wasn’t really a decision to be made. If he left Dakota to die a miserable death, he surely would not be far behind her. Guilt and shame had a way of gnawing at your soul. And as it was, Nate was clinging to the few ethereal scraps that remained of his own connection to a higher power. He remembered that look of surprise on the young girl’s face when he’d told her she was worth rescuing. But deep down, he also knew the decision had already been made the second he found her missing.

Nate’s eyes gleamed with anger and determination. “Where can I find Jakes?” he asked.

Both men looked at him as though he had lost his mind.

“You don’t just go talk to Jakes,” Five said, his voice resounding with no small amount of fear. “Not without an appointment, and even then…”

“Five is right, man. I mean, whatchu gonna do? Show up and demand he turn the girl over? You’ll be dead before the sound of his laughter reaches your ears.”

“I’m not gonna ask him,” Nate told them. “I’m gonna go in there and take her.”

“Man’s got a deathwish,” Five said, talking about Nate as though he wasn’t even there.

“What’s more, both of you are gonna help me.”

“Ha!” Sanchez said, clapping his hands together. “Now you’ve really gone off the deep end, amigo.”

“Just like me, both of you were cops at one time,” Nate said. “Are you telling me you’re ready to stand by while a young girl is murdered by a madman?” His burning glare, like two hot coals, passed from one man to the next. Neither of them could look him directly in the eye. “I see you’ve made your choice. I just hope you can both live with it.” And with that Nate rose and walked out.

He got all the way to the front door before Sanchez caught up with him. “Listen, man, you know I would like to help you.”

“This is my fight,” Nate replied. “I get it. Maybe it’s best if I do this alone.”

“If there’s anything else I can do to help…”

Nate’s eyes rose to meet Sanchez’s. “Actually, there might be.”

An hour later, they arrived at Sanchez’s place, a quaint two-story home that featured a long driveway and a detached garage out back. Out front was a snow-covered porch with a swing and a set of summer chairs, also buried by the elements. The only thing missing were kids building snowmen in the yard. Speaking of which, they hadn’t seen a soul on the streets since leaving Five’s opulent, if tacky, colonial-style mansion.

They led the horse to the garage out back and set him up with a few fistfuls of hay and a half-dozen carrots. After they were done, the two men headed inside. Nate paused briefly to stomp the snow off his boots near the entrance, leaving them by the door.

“Where’s Suzie?” he asked, regretting the question practically the second it had escaped his lips.

“Suzie’s long gone, man,” Sanchez said, hanging his jacket on a nearby hook. “She left me last year. Took the dogs and everything.”

“No way! I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know.”

Sanchez ran his hands down the front of his face and let out a deep sigh. “How could you? It was right after we worked the Macomb job together.”

Nate nodded. He remembered like it was yesterday. The wife of an upper-class businessman had thought her husband was having an affair. What she didn’t know was that he had more than another woman on the side. The guy had an entirely separate family—two families, in fact, and he’d been splitting his time between each of them. A real multitasker, that was what Sanchez called him. But the job had chewed up months of their time putting all the sordid pieces together. Suzie must have grown tired of spending evenings and nights alone. It was something of an occupational hazard, one might say.

“Worst part about the whole thing,” Nate told him, referring to the work they’d done for Mrs. Macomb, “was how she blamed us for what we’d found. Like we were making it up. She was the one who hired us, for God’s sake.”

Sanchez grinned, but there was pain behind his eyes. “Kill the messenger, right?” He stuffed his hands in his pocket and looked around. “Let me show you the stuff.”

Nate followed his friend into the basement. It was nicely finished with a dark wood floor and a drop ceiling, but that didn’t change how cold it was on their feet. Removing his phone, Nate shined the way with the flashlight app. They stopped before a work bench strewn with tools. Above it was a rack with three long rifles. The one in the middle caught his eye: H&K G36 with x3 optical sights and tac light on the front rail. It was a civilian version of the famous German assault rifle. Gas-operated, normally with a thirty-round mag (5.56×45mm NATO), Sanchez had outfitted this baby with a hundred-round drum magazine.

“You okay parting with the H&K?” Nate asked.

“She’s my pride and joy,” Sanchez admitted, “which is precisely why I think you should take her. I’ve always got the Colt AR and the SR-25.” The latter was a semi-automatic sniper rifle that used the larger 7.62×51mm NATO round.

Nate removed the G36 from the wall mount, then stared through the scope at the light bleeding in through the basement’s single window. The duplex crosshairs would do just fine.

“I got something else for you,” Sanchez said, reaching beneath the work bench and coming out with a package wrapped in opaque plastic. “Might stop you from getting your head blown off in the first five minutes.” He handed it to Nate, who tore it open. Inside was a set of MARPAT overwhites, essentially winter-themed camo he could put on over his existing clothes. A roll of white tape on the table could also be used on the rifle to keep it from sticking out.