Shadow zero, p.15
SHADOW ZERO, page 15
Zero was telling the absolute truth, although he was projecting far more calm than he felt.
And it was daylight now. Still early, only a few minutes after sunrise, but daylight was daylight, and hours were hours, and miles were miles, and Zero was very unhappy that the light, the hours, and the miles hadn’t brought him to either of his destinations.
The terrorist shivered and wouldn’t meet Zero’s eyes. Zero balled his fist, but before he could launch another blow, Trent placed a hand over his fist. Zero snapped a glare to him, but Trent winked.
Zero frowned, but instead of explaining, Trent turned to the terrorists. He laid a hand on Abdulla’s shoulder and said, “Hey buddy, I need you to listen, okay?” in a soft croon.
The terrorist turned toward him with a wary expression.
Trent smiled, and it bothered Zero to notice how handsome he was even covered in dirt. Damn it, that’s not enough, though. Not for Maya.
That was Reid Lawson speaking, and while Zero agreed with every word, he couldn’t dwell on his irritation with his daughter’s beau. He ignored the feeling and focused on the interrogation.
“You have to start talking,” Trent said, still crooning. “This guy’s bigger and stronger than I am, and if I wanted to stop him from hurting you, I couldn’t. And I’ll be honest, buddy, I’m not sure I want to keep stopping him.”
Trent somehow managed to say that without sounding threatening. His tone was that of a concerned friend. The terrorist sighed and replied, “I… don’t know… anything.”
Zero took a step forward, but Trent planted a hand on his chest to stop him. “See, that’s a problem, Abdulla. If that’s true, then we have no reason to keep you alive. I’d rather keep you alive, but like I said earlier, I don’t want it as badly as I want you to tell us what we need to know. We need to know where our companion is. We need to know what’s going to happen with that data core. We need both of those things now, or we have to kill you and find out another way. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
The man looked between both of them. He licked his lips, and his eyes flicked to the left.
“No,” Zero said. “No lies. The truth, or I ignore my friend’s squeamishness and start taking pieces off of you.”
To emphasize the point, Zero drew his combat knife. The terrorist’s eyes widened. He licked his lips again and protested, “But I am fighting for my people.” His eyes hardened. “I am fighting for my people.” He glared at Zero. “Do your—”
Zero reached down and yanked the man’s pants down. The man’s eyes popped open again, and when Zero grabbed his jewels and held the knife to them, he shrieked, “No! No! I’ll talk! I’ll talk, please, please!”
Zero smiled and released him. He stepped back and wiped his hand on the shivering terrorist’s shirt. Behind him, Trent whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
The terrorist choked a sob, averting his eyes from Zero. Zero used the tip of the knife to lift the man’s chin, and the man flinched. “Hey,” Zero said. “Relax. It’s over. You still have your little buddies. If you want to continue to have them, I suggest you become a lot less brave a lot more quickly. Tell us what you know. Now.”
The man groaned. He muttered something in Swahili, then said in English. “The Koreans. We’re selling it to the Koreans.”
Zero’s eyes widened. He shared a sober look with Trent. It was pretty clear that Abdulla wasn’t talking about the South Koreans.
“When?” Zero demanded. “When is the sale taking place?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. Commander Bakari said five days, which would be tomorrow, but I heard him on the phone, and he said he was going to be rich by tomorrow night. That was last night, so he means this night.”
“Where?”
“Here. The buyers are coming here.” The terrorist sobbed. “Please. I was only trying to fight for my people. You know what that’s like. You know that means sometimes being a criminal.”
Zero’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t possible that this man knew who he was, but the fact that he’d struck so close to home made Zero suspicious.
“Where’s our companion? The female agent?”
Abdulla sighed. Then he chuckled. He lifted his eyes to Zero, and Zero nearly flinched when he saw the beatific smile the terrorist wore. “She’s gone. They’ve taken her back. We received the call to return to the base. That would only happen if Commander Bakari had his prize.” His grin widened. “I imagine he’s had his prize several times by now. Your women are thin, but they feel just as nice inside, don’t they?”
Zero’s lips pulled back from his teeth, but it was Trent’s knife that pierced Abdulla’s chest. Abdulla jerked and coughed, spewing blood, but he continued to laugh as he died.
When his head finally lolled forward—still wearing that deathly grin—Trent pulled his knife out and glared at Zero. “I only did that so you’d stop torturing him. We got what we needed already. There’s no point in torturing him further.”
He was right, but it rubbed Zero the wrong way to hear Trent scold him over this, especially after what Abdulla had just said. “Frankly, Trent, you need to get used to the brutality of this job. You don’t have to like it, but this is the kind of work that requires us to be even more brutal than our enemies.”
“I understand that,” Trent said tersely. “But we already had what we needed.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what he could have revealed if we’d kept working him.”
“Working him?” Trent shook his head. “I’ve seen enough torture in my life. I won’t be part of it.”
This time, Zero did roll his eyes. “If you’re looking for pity, you’re talking to the wrong person.”
Zero regretted the jibe a moment later when Trent flinched and stared at Zero with a look that was just hurt enough not to be hateful. “Pity? You think I want your pity?”
Zero sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“No, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t act so high and mighty, like you’re the seasoned veteran, and I’m just a stupid kid who isn’t cut out to be a spy or to be your daughter’s lover.”
“I didn’t say—”
“No, you didn’t. Because you weren’t here. For two fucking years! You were off God knows where living some quiet little life acting like the job was done just because you were done with it. Meanwhile, your daughter and I have been fighting to make sure that the world you created doesn't fall apart. Meanwhile, your other daughter is fighting every day just to smile without the help of a needle. Meanwhile, your youngest daughter has no friends because she spent her life learning how to kill people while other girls were learning how to sing dance, and play.
“Guess what, Zero? The love of my life is stuck in some rotting cell at a terrorist’s compound. The woman I love more than anything else is either dead or being tortured for information so that terrorist can sell a superweapon to an even more dangerous terrorist. The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with dragged me behind the wreckage of a satellite than fought her ass off to keep those terrorists from finding me and finishing the job because when the going gets tough, she doesn’t fake her own death and piss off to nowhere. She fights. I fight. So take your judgment and shove it up your absentee ass.”
Zero’s lips thinned, and his eyes narrowed. He wanted to explain himself. He wanted to remind Trent that it was because of him that Sara had fallen into drugs and Maya had chosen a life of danger. Mischa had been born into the life of an assassin, but having the world’s number one target as her father wasn’t helping. He had left to protect them, and it wasn’t his fault that even when he was as good as dead, danger found his family against his will.
But this wasn’t the time to argue. “You’re right. I have no right to judge you. I’m sorry. All I can do is be here now and help now. And we will get Maya out of there. You have my word on that.”
"Your apology and five bucks will buy me a hot dog," Trent spat. "As for your word? I guess we'll see." He looked up at the sun, now a comfortable three inches above the horizon and beginning to lend heat to the jungle's moisture. "We'll go back at night. In daylight, we're too outnumbered, even with you. At night, we have a chance to find Maya and rescue her if she's…" He pressed his lips together. "We'll get that data core too."
Zero noted the even with you. That sparked a fresh current of worry.
He’d done well so far. Despite being out of shape and very rusty, he’d managed to hold his own.
But he hadn’t really been tested yet. The fight coming up would be a real fight, one that would require him to be at the top of a game he hadn’t played in years. Would he be able to keep up when it really counted?
I guess we’ll see.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The morning found Maya well-rested, well-fed, and well-watered. What it didn’t find her was well-prepared. She had nine pounds of aardvark jerky, but she wasn’t going on a hike, and her destination wasn’t close to the river, so having nothing to hold water was a problem.
Aside from that, there were her injuries to consider. None of them were serious, but now that her hunger and thirst were sated, her bruises were far more painful. Her abdomen was swollen enough that it hurt to breathe, and both of her shoulders ached desperately, a pain that became a piercing scream when she exerted her arms. On top of that, her fall had damaged her worse than she realized. Several spots on her back were tender to the touch, and she had a welt on her head above her left ear.
Perhaps the worst injury was to her right knee. When she woke after napping through the last few hours of the night, the joint was swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Twenty minutes of massaging and flexing it gently, and she was able to put weight on it, but she limped noticeably, and she had a two-hundred-foot climb straight up, a hike of at least a few miles, and a fight against overwhelming odds ahead of her.
And she was going back. Waking to her battered body hadn’t blunted her resolve. Too many millions of lives depended on her for her to give up.
Trent's smile flashed across her mind, and pain worse than anything she'd suffered physically nearly doubled her over. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the tears to wait. She could mourn for him later. She had work to do.
A small voice in her head reminded her that she didn’t know for sure that he was dead. He could still be out there looking for her or maybe waiting for the cavalry to arrive so he could rescue her.
But she didn’t want to get her hopes up. With those hopes came a million reasons why he couldn’t have survived, and she didn’t want to wrestle with those feelings right now.
So, after another drink of river water and a breakfast of aardvark jerky, she set about making tools for the coming day and night.
First and foremost, she needed weapons. All she had was the dagger she had taken from Azaan. The knife was of surprisingly high quality, but it was only good for very close quarters. She needed some sort of ranged weapon, and she wanted the knife to have a little more reach.
The ravine provided her with good raw materials. No trees grew down here, but wind and rain had washed branches down. She selected several branches of rich brown hardwood that had resisted rot and dryness and remained strong and sturdy despite being separated from their mother trees.
One of the branches was five feet long and thick, with a knot at one end that vaguely resembled a knob. She would use this as a walking stick. She chose four other branches for their thinness and straightness. These she whittled with the knife, smoothing out any bumps or angles and sharpening one end to a point. Four throwing spears weren't much ammunition for ranged weaponry, but none of the wood here was suitable for making a bow, and the aardvark's bones were too small and brittle to serve.
A final branch, shorter but stouter than the throwing spears, she selected as a thrusting spear, lashing her knife to the end using fibers stripped from reeds growing at the riverbank.
Thus equipped, Maya enjoyed a final meal of aardvark jerky and drank her fill of the river water. That would have to be enough to sustain her until the job was over.
She lashed her spears across her back with reeds and looked around for a way out of the ravine. There weren’t many options. The easiest route appeared to be to follow the river for several miles until the ravine widened into a slope.
She wasn’t going to do that. It would take far too long and leave her much farther from her destination than before.
That left climbing straight up. Looking at the slope where she had fallen, she could see a path, but it would be difficult. And by difficult, she meant hellish. Several places would require climbing up with hands and feet over rock faces. Others would require using her walking stick as an anchor in dirt so she didn’t slip and fall back down to the ravine.
She sighed and said, “Okay, Specter. Time to put on your big girl pants.”
Then she started up the slope.
The first ten feet showed her just how challenging the climb was going to be. The rock here was slick with moss that fed off of the moisture from the dew that condensed at the bottom of the ravine. The first time she tried to climb, her foot slid, and she barked her shin on the rock. The second time, she made it halfway up, and her other foot slipped, twisting her injured knee and sending a crisp jolt of pain through her right leg.
She cursed and forced herself to continue. If she allowed her knee to swell again, she wouldn’t be able to climb.
Each step following those two mishaps was agony. Once she scaled the rock, she came to her first long slope of loose dirt. In order to gain any traction at all, she needed to jam her walking stick two feet into the dirt, pull herself up, dig her feet in to brace herself, then pull the walking stick out and jam it into the dirt again.
After repeating that motion a few times, her shoulders and back reminded her that they were hurt too. Before she had made it halfway up the slope, her entire body pulsed with agony.
“Come on, Specter,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “You’ve got this. You’ve got this.” She wasn’t sure if repeating this over and over made a difference, but it gave her something to think about other than her pain.
Halfway up was another rock face. This one was more difficult than the first. No moss ruined her traction here, but the rocks jutted out over the ravine forming an undercut. Maya had to jam her fingers into grooves in the rock to lift herself up, an action made more challenging by the need to keep from dropping her walking stick. Her feet scrabbled for purchase on the dirt below, and once, she felt her balance tip as gravity threatened to pull her backwards down the slope.
She cried out and pulled herself forward. Her upper body slammed into the rock, and when her head smacked the surface as well, her body buzzed with an electric pain that nearly short-circuited her nerves.
“Bitch!” she hissed. “God damn it.”
She gritted her teeth and forced each breath out through them until the pain subsided enough that she could continue. She looked up and sighed. There were no more handholds. The rock was smooth up until the top of the face, which formed a flat ledge about eighteen inches wide. Even that was split down the middle, and the gap was nearly two feet wide.
It was also two feet above where she was hanging. She considered her options. Once more, none of them were good. She could either try to back down, move to the side of the face and climb back up, or she could jump and hope she could somehow catch the edge of the rock in between the gap and pull herself up.
An idea came to her. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but she had to do something. Her arms were beginning to shake, and she could feel weakness spreading from her elbows to her wrists. If she lost her grip now, it was a long way down, and she didn’t fancy her chances of surviving another fall.
Here goes nothing.
She lowered herself a few inches, gathered her strength, and pulled up with all of her might. At the peak of her thrust, she released the rock, spun the walking stick around and threw it over the ledge. She grabbed the stick through the gap and held it tightly.
She cried out when her shoulders absorbed the full weight of her body as it fell. Her fingers slid around the wood, but she held on, gripping the stick like a pull-up bar.
“God,” she hissed.
She took a deep breath and pulled herself upward. When she shifted her wrists to switch from pulling up to pushing up, the walking stick wobbled, nearly throwing her back down the slope, but she regained her balance and got her legs up, one on either side of the gap.
She lifted her walking stick, threw herself against the dirt and gasped. Her entire body trembled with exertion. She allowed herself a moment to recover from that exertion and the accompanying terror of nearly falling to her death, then looked up.
She had thirty feet to go to reach the top. The dirt here was firmer than below, and there were roots sticking up from the ground. If she could place her feet correctly, she should have an easier time scaling this last bit.
She gave herself one more minute of rest to let the trembling in her arms subside. Then she jammed her walking stick into the dirt and resumed the journey.
Three times, she slipped. The last time, she slid backwards ten feet—half of the distance she had traveled after leaving the rock ledge.
“Come on, Maya. You’ve got this. You can do this.”
She pulled her thrusting spear loose and used it and the walking stick like ice picks, jamming them one over the other in the dirt and pulling herself up. When possible, she placed her feet on roots or packed dirt and propelled herself upward, but the last thirty feet of her climb remained mostly an upper-body exertion.
When she finally lifted herself over the lip of the ravine, she cried out with relief, exhaustion and triumph all at once. She rolled onto her back, spread-eagled, and stared up at the canopy, breathing heavily and letting her entire body relax.
“That… has got to be… the hardest… thing I’ve done.”
It wasn’t, really. She had endured far more painful and challenging circumstances than a little climb up a ravine. Still, in terms of percentage of physical potential used, it had to rank near the top.
