Shadow zero, p.2
SHADOW ZERO, page 2
She bit her lip softly. Her other younger sister, Sara, had endured some horrible experiences when she was not much older than Mischa was now. Sara’s beauty wasn’t at fault for the actions of the horrible men who tried to traffic both of them and the other men who tried to take advantage of her while she struggled with addiction and trauma due largely to that misadventure. That was entirely the fault of evil men who felt they had the right to own whatever and whoever they wanted. Still, seeing Mischa transition from childhood to adulthood brought back bad memories.
She’s not Sara, and you’re not the same person you were four years ago. Besides, Sara’s doing just fine.
Mischa noticed Maya’s stare and misinterpreted the reason for it. “Thank you for breakfast, Maya.”
Maya blinked and pushed her dark thoughts from her mind. “Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”
“It is acceptable,” the former sparrow replied.
Maya and Trent shared an amused look. Mischa had adjusted well to life in America, but she hadn’t lost the stoic pragmatism of the child agent they had met three years prior. Mischa was trained from birth to be an assassin for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the formidable SVR. She had been adopted by Maria Johansson, their father’s second wife, shortly prior to their marriage.
Maya’s smile faded. She didn’t think about her father as often now, but when she did, the memories were always bittersweet. To most of the world, he was known as Agent Zero, the specter of American justice and vengeance that struck terror into the hearts of the nation’s enemies, without and within. To a few close friends, he was Kent Steele, the coldly brilliant man who was almost singlehandedly responsible for the safety of the world’s innocent, though of course, almost no one knew that. To his former colleagues and students at the various universities at which he’d taught, he was Reid Lawson, the strict but fair educator whose passion for world history was infectious and charming.
To Maya, he was all of those things and more. He was her dad, a man who had been far from perfect but who had fought with all of his might to keep his family safe and prepared for a world that would stop at nothing to tear them apart. He had made the ultimate sacrifice for that family and that world.
Except…
She shook her head. No. No except. Her father was dead. Clinging to some false hope given to her by a possibly mad scientist was foolish.
“Hey, honey, you okay?”
Mischa made a face at Trent’s pet name but continued to eat her breakfast. Maya smiled at Trent and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just got lost in thought for a moment.”
Trent gave her an understanding smile and placed a hand over his. “I get it. It’s hard for me too.”
Maya kept her smile but pulled her hand away from his, shoveling a bite of bacon into her mouth so it wasn’t obvious that she just didn’t want him to touch her. Trent tried hard to be empathetic, and he was, but sometimes he just said really stupid things.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re all doing well. I’m following in his footsteps, Sara has the normal life she’s always wanted, and Mischa is actually going to graduate high school.”
“Assuming I don’t burn the place down first,” Mischa said irritably.
Maya shared another look with Trent. Coming from Mischa, that wasn’t necessarily a joke. “What’s going on?” Maya asked.
“I spend all day with foolish children learning things I already know from foolish teachers. Actually, I spend most of the day hearing things that aren’t true and… how is the phrase? Swallowing my tongue.”
“Biting your tongue,” Maya corrected. “And I know it’s hard, but I am so proud of you for doing this anyway.”
Mischa sighed. “Yes, I know. You’ve told me many times.”
“And I’ll say it again,” Maya insisted. “I’m proud of you. I know it’s hard pretending to be normal when you’re not.”
“Why must I pretend to be normal?” Mischa asked. “Remind me again why I must hold myself back when I am capable of being an agent just like you? Better than you, even.” As an afterthought, she added, “No offense.”
Maya pursed her lips and reminded herself that while Mischa was indeed far more capable at some things than anyone else alive, she was also a fifteen-year-old girl and prone to the attitude issues from which all teenagers suffered. “Because you need to have a childhood.”
“I am having a childhood.”
“A real one,” Maya replied.
“Am I not real?”
“A normal one,” Maya insisted.
“I thought it was all right to be different. That’s what my teachers say.”
Trent pointed his fork at Maya. “She’s got you there, honey.”
Maya glared at him. He whitened a shade and focused on his plate.
She turned back to Mischa and sighed. How did she explain to Mischa the dangers of having her childhood interrupted? How could she tell her that Sara had very nearly lost her life—in more ways than one—because of what happened during her childhood? How could she explain that Mischa needed to be more than a deadly spy in order to have a fulfilling life?
In the end, she fell back on her old standby. “It’s what Dad wanted for you. A normal childhood, a normal education. When you become an adult, if you still want to be an agent, there will be a place for you. But right now, you need to be a kid.”
“How do you know what Zero wanted?”
“I just…”
Maya’s phone rang, interrupting her reply. She sighed heavily, then sighed again when she saw the number.
“It’s Todd,” Trent offered helpfully.
She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Gee, you don’t say?”
Deputy Director Todd Strickland was the head of the Executive Operations Team and Trent and Maya’s boss. He was also one of her father’s closest friends, or had been. The fact that he was calling her during breakfast on her first day off in weeks didn’t bode well.
She stood and walked to the living room to answer. Mischa called from the table, “I don’t know why you always do that. I can hear you.”
Maya rolled her eyes and didn’t dignify that with a response. She answered the phone. “Hey, Todd. What’s up?”
“I need you two at headquarters ASAP.”
Maya’s smile faded. Todd sounded tense, strained. She hadn’t heard him talk like that in years, not since before her father died. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk about it over the phone. Please get here as soon as you can.”
“Yep,” Maya said. “On our way.”
“Is everything okay?” Todd called from the kitchen.
She shook her head at him through the doorway, then said, “I’ll see you soon,” and hung up.
She returned to the kitchen to see Mischa finishing the last of her breakfast. She realized ruefully that she had barely touched her own. “Okay, Trent, break’s over. Todd needs to see us at the ranch.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Trent said. “You want to drive or me?”
“Me. Definitely me.” Among Trent’s less charming habits was a tendency to drive like terrorists were after him even when he was only navigating through D.C. area traffic.
She looked at Mischa. “Sorry kid. You’re gonna have to take the bus.”
“That’s all right,” Mischa replied. “I should blend in, right? Fifteen-year-olds don’t like when their family takes them to school. It crunches their style, no?”
“Cramps their style,” Maya said. “And… sure. Have a good day.”
“Okay.”
She started up the stairs, and Maya called, “Bye. Love you.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Maya rolled her eyes, but a bit of her smile had returned. Never change, Mischa.
She joined Trent in the living room. He reached for the keys to their Toyota Highlander, and she smacked his hand and took them herself. “I drive,” she reminded him.
“Right. Sorry.”
CHAPTER TWO
“How serious are we thinking?” Trent asked as soon as Maya started the car.
“Serious enough that he called on our off day sounding like the world was falling apart,” Maya said. “I think we’re looking at an actual problem here.”
“He didn’t say anything over the phone?”
“No, he said he couldn’t talk over the phone.”
“Hmm. I wonder if China finally decided to do something truly stupid?”
"Wouldn't surprise me. See if there's anything on the news that might clue us into what's happening."
The news obviously wouldn’t spill the details of a classified assignment, but usually events on the surface hinted at currents underneath. Maya liked to keep abreast of world news to have an idea of what might be happening beneath the surface that would eventually turn into work for the two of them. The CIA, of course, had actual intelligence channels, but sometimes those channels were better at finding things happening now than they were at predicting things that would happen in the future.
“I’m not seeing anything that jumps out at me,” Todd said. “More posturing bullshit in the South China Sea, a vague threat of serious consequences if the U.S. doesn’t stop backing Taiwan’s independence, a response from the U.S. that our concern is safe international trade… Yeah, and both nations are still signing the trade agreement the president has on the table, so just bullshit.”
Maya frowned. “Well, that’s not good. That means that this is something emergent.”
The past two years had been fairly quiet for the CIA. There was the usual international intrigues with China and Russia, the slightly less intriguing rivalries with allied nations, and the occasional minor scuffles in the Middle East, but nothing to write home about.
Judging by Todd’s tone, this was something to write home about. Maya couldn’t hide a touch of excitement at the prospect of a real mission. She was no longer Maya Lawson. She was Agent Specter, the CIA’s fastest-rising star and the youngest fully operational field agent in the organization’s history.
These transitions always disturbed her. One of the hardest things to accept when her father was revealed to be more than just the mild-mannered professor she knew was that the same man who played dolls with her and helped her with her math homework when she was a child also tortured and killed people for the world’s premier intelligence agency. Bad people who deserved what they got and needed to receive that fate for the safety of the innocent, but still. Most girls didn’t have to go to bed at night wondering if their dad was bleeding out in a back alley somewhere in Eastern Europe or tearing fingernails out of a terrorist’s hand in the Middle East or racing against time to disarm a nuclear bomb before Paris turned into glass and dust.
Of course, she had joined her father when they all raced against time to prevent six nuclear bombs from turning six of the world’s major cities into glass and dust. It was that mission—opposing the enigmatic Mr. Bright and his co-conspirators in the CIA—that had ultimately taken his life and left Maya as the head of their thrice-broken family.
He would be proud of her. She knew that. She had become one of the greatest agents in the CIA’s history, nearly as great as he was. She had saved the world from destruction several times over. She’d done all of this while helping Sara establish herself in a life apart from this world and keeping Mischa in check. She wasn’t just a great agent, she was a great caregiver.
But she feared this change that took place whenever she was called upon to serve. How long could she do this before she slid down the same path her father slid and became dangerous to everyone around her, good and bad?
“Babe.”
Maya stiffened and smiled apologetically at the slightly annoyed guard at the main entrance to Langley. She showed the guard her ID badge. He glanced at it, then waved her through.
She took a deep breath, and before Trent could finish the idiotic question he started to ask, she replied, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that,” he said. “I’m not sure if I believe it.”
She sighed again and gave him a longsuffering look. “Trent, I love you more than life itself. I really appreciate your concern, but what I need right now is for you to back off a little bit. Let’s go talk to Todd, then go save the planet. I’m fine.”
Trent, thankfully, didn’t push. “All right. As long as you know I love you.”
“I wonder sometimes, but mostly, I believe you.”
“See? It’s crap like that that makes me think you’re not doing fine.”
Maya smiled as she pulled the SUV up to the entrance to the recently christened Steele Building. She really did love Trent. He was her anchor, both in her professional life and her personal life. As long as she had him, she remained firmly planted on the right side of sanity.
She handed the keys to the waiting valet, who would park the Highlander in the secure parking garage on site, then walked into the Steele Building.
The Steele Building—named after her father, obviously—served as the headquarters of the Executive Operations Team. When the team was first formed, it consisted of her father, Todd, Alan Reidigger, and a few other agents handpicked by her father. They had no headquarters and no official mandate but instead operated under the direct authority of the President.
That first experiment had proved problematic for numerous reasons, not the least of which being that the President by necessity couldn’t know a lot of what the CIA was involved in and that those who could know all too often turned out to traitors, including the Director of National Intelligence, David Barren, who also happened to be Maria Johansson’s father.
This second experiment was working out far better so far. With the fall of Mr. Bright and the arrest of most of the Intelligence Community’s senior leadership, the traitors appeared to have been rooted out of the Agency. The Executive Operations Team had been folded back into the CIA’s Special Activities Center—the former Special Activities Division—and the current leadership was both fiercely loyal to the people of the United States and willing to be hands-off when it came to the activities of their most important operational unit.
Maya and Trent met Todd Strickland in the Situation Room. The fact that he wanted to meet them here in the heart of the EOT’s intelligence apparatus and not in his office told Maya that whatever was happening was serious. Well, more serious than usual.
The Situation Room contained a large number of monitors connected directly to a server stack with more processing power than any computer except for a few at DARPA, one at NATO headquarters, and another at NORAD headquarters. Ordinarily, an endless stream of data would flow across those monitors, and a team of analysts would determine what, if any, of the flow of data constitute a problem large enough for the EOT to get involved.
Today, there were no analysts, and the monitors projected a single discrete set of data dominated by a blueprint that occupied the center six monitors. Todd Strickland was joined only by Penelope León, his wife and the EOT’s resident tech wizard.
Both of them looked terrified. Todd's light blue eyes stared like a man in shock, and his reddish brown hair was messy and damp with sweat. Penelope looked a little more poised, but the whites of her eyes had expanded, contrasting sharply with her dark skin and even darker pupils. More white showed at her knuckles as she gripped the edges of her armrests. Her hourglass figure, perfectly brushed hair, and flawlessly tailored white blouse and pantsuit prevented her from looking quite as desperate as Todd in his rumpled outfit, but her fear was no less evident.
The last time Maya had seen them like this was when they scrambled to save the world from a daisy chain of Tsar Bombs. Whatever was going on now, it was probably just as serious.
“Is that a satellite?” Trent asked.
Without turning to him, Todd replied, “Yes, Captain Obvious, that is a satellite.”
“Not just a satellite,” Penny added. “It’s a DEDALUS. DEDALUS 2, specifically.”
“And that is?” Maya asked.
“A Defense Data Localized Unit of Storage.” Maya raised an eyebrow, and Penny returned a grim smile. “DoD likes its acronyms.”
“I guess so,” Maya said. She directed her attention to Todd. “So let me guess: someone accessed this satellite, and now we have to retrieve a bunch of sensitive information before they use it to destroy the world?”
Todd looked her squarely in the eye. His movie-star face showed no sign of humor. “I sincerely hope not, Agent.”
Maya shared a brief look with Trent before turning back to Todd. “Okay. What’s going on?”
Todd tapped a button, and the images on the monitors were replaced with a brief video. The video showed a rainforest rushing up to meet them before there was a flash of yellow-white light and the feed cut to black.
“I assume that was the last few seconds of DEDALUS 2’s life?” Trent asked.
His voice had lost all of its joviality too. The loss of a military data satellite was serious business, especially because unless Maya was greatly mistaken, that loss hadn’t occurred over Allied territory.
She wasn’t mistaken.
“Yes,” Penny replied in response to Trent’s question.
She turned back toward her keyboard and tapped a few keys. Maya allowed herself a moment of envy. Even when she was just turning around, Penny managed to make it look beautiful, like a Caribbean princess.
The screen changed once again to show a map of the southern half of Africa.
“The satellite went down in the East African rainforest,” Penny explained. “Its GPS receiver wasn’t working properly near the end of its life, so we were only able to get a rough location, but we believe it went down near the northern border of Tanzania in the vicinity of Mount Kilimanjaro.”
A red circle encompassing about thirty square miles of land appeared on the eastern portion of the map. Maya mentally catalogued the location, then asked, “Anything in the news?”
“So far no, thankfully,” Todd replied. “The crash was reported as a meteor strike, and thankfully people seem to be buying that. Tanzania hasn’t bothered to send anyone to investigate since it’s a solid fifty miles from anything remotely resembling civilization. Fingers crossed, you two can get in, grab the data core, and get out without any trouble.”
