Shadow zero, p.8
SHADOW ZERO, page 8
But no, she would have at least left him a note or something to let him know she was doing that.
So she was either dead or captured. He hated thinking about it, but he needed to accept it. The risks they took as EOT agents meant it was at least possible that one or both of them would die one day in the line of duty. He hoped desperately that this wasn’t Maya’s day to die, but he couldn’t wring his hands and wait for some fairy godmother to appear and give him the answer.
He needed to move. If the enemy had taken Maya, he could track them and find her.
He gathered his pack and his rifle and started up the side of the crater. His head ached slightly, but not enough to debilitate him anymore. It was slow going climbing the powdery ash surface of the crater, but he managed to reach the top without sliding or falling down.
At the top, one thing became clear. Maya had fought. Several bodies lay on the ground, and none of them were Maya.
Trent examined one of the bodies but found nothing that identified who they were working for. The bodies were all African, but Trent couldn’t immediately tell if they were soldiers, poachers, or rebels of some sort. Their weapons were in good condition but far from cutting edge, and most of them looked to be in average shape. That really didn’t confirm much—after all, Alan Reidigger flirted with fat for most of his career, and he was a certified badass—but it suggested to Trent that they were dealing with an amateur outfit.
A big damned outfit, though. They clearly hadn’t been a match for Maya one on one, but their sheer numbers had been enough to overcome her.
He found a set of footprints smaller than the others. When he shone his flashlight over the prints, he recognized the tread as belonging to a pair of standard-issue Navy combat boots, the type Maya wore.
He followed her tracks into the forest. In several places, the tracks were broken or muddled where Maya had stopped or taken cover before moving on.
The tracks continued for a quarter mile or so into the forest. More bodies were sprinkled along the route where Maya had encountered more of the… the… He was just going to call them terrorists for now.
He reached a small clearing in the forest. Maya’s footprints shifted, and a few other sets muddied them up. He saw no bodies here and no blood either. What he did see was a set of three pairs of footprints walking abreast at the opposite end of the clearing.
Maya’s footprints were in the middle.
So this was where Maya lost. There was a brief skirmish, but then she had been taken and led away, probably bound. Besides her footprints and those of her guards, there were many more. In fact, after a few yards, it was impossible to discern between one set of footprints and another.
The footprints were moving southwest. Trent saw no blood along the route, so he was confident that Maya was still alive.
That encouraged him but terrified him at the same time. None of the plans they could have for her were good.
Guilt filled him for the first time. He sighed and cursed himself inwardly.
You idiot, Trent. Letting some bastard get the drop on you and take you out of the fight before it even began. Yeah, real cool. Look at the badass CIA agent. Gets conked in the head and takes a nap while his partner fights singlehandedly to keep him alive.
His guilt deepened when he thought about what Maya’s father would say if he were here to see it.
Agent Zero was Trent’s hero. He was to Trent what Lebron James was to every little kid who wanted to be a basketball player, what Lionel Messi was to every aspiring soccer star. He was the greatest field agent of all time, a legend more than a man, a warrior whose very name cast terror into the evil hearts of the world.
And he didn’t like Trent. Trent could tell that right away when the two of them met. He had come face to face with the man he wanted to be like more than anything, and that man had looked at him with annoyance, disdain, and distrust.
And he was right to feel that way. Trent had just proven that Agent Zero’s instincts about him were accurate. No way Zero would have been caught snoozing like Trent was. No way he would be sleeping while his partner was struggling for her life. If Zero was here now and knew that Trent had let his daughter be kidnapped because he was smacked in the head once, he would look at Trent and say, “I knew you were worthless.”
No, he wouldn’t say it. He wouldn’t have to. His eyes would communicate it.
Maya’s voice cut through his pity party. You can feel sorry for yourself, or you can stop moaning and do something about it.
He smiled slightly. She had said words to that effect several times when the two of them—and later, with the addition of Maya's younger sister, Sara, the three of them—had been hiding out from a CIA bounty on their heads. Life sucks sometimes, but bitching about it wouldn't change anything.
This sucked. Trent was bitching about it. That wouldn’t change anything.
So, he shouldered his pack and continued to move through the jungle, following Maya’s trail. After a mile or so, he came to a slope that dropped sharply downward. It didn’t seem likely to him that the terrorists had gone straight down the slope. They must have a path somewhere nearby that allowed them to descend with less risk.
He swept his flashlight beam slowly over the ground in front of him, keeping the beam pointed low. He didn’t know how close he was to the terrorists’ compound, but he couldn’t be that far. Even if he was wrong about that, there was always the possibility of patrols in the jungle who could see his light and prepare another ambush.
His first couple of sweeps didn’t reveal anything, but when he pushed a clump of bristle grass aside, he saw a boot print pressed firmly into the mud beyond. He followed that print and soon found…
Nothing. Not a damned thing. No more boot prints. No sign of Maya or any other terrorists. No trampled vegetation or scuff marks on trees that could have indicated where the group had gone. There wasn’t even a clear path.
He cursed and ran his hands through his hair. He had been taught tracking skills, but he'd never had a need to use them in the real world. Of course, they would be necessary now when his inexperience could lead to the death of the woman he loved and the loss of nuclear launch codes.
His eyes hardened. No. He wouldn’t fail. It didn’t matter that the task was impossible. This was the work he’d signed up to do. If Zero was standing in Trent’s position, he wouldn’t focus on how difficult the circumstances were. He’d find a way through.
And that’s what Trent would do.
He shouldered the pack, checked the load on his rifle, and started downward. His fear and guilt faded, replaced by steely resolve. He would rescue Maya. He would prove his worth to himself and to the memory of his father.
Most of all, he would prove his worth to the woman with whom he’d decided to spend the rest of his life.
I’m coming for you, Maya. Just hold on.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Warmth caressed Maya’s cheek. For a fleeting instant, she thought she was back at home, and the East Coast sunrise was filtering through her window and bringing her gently to wakefulness.
Then she remembered the night before. With a groan, she sat up, pressing against the concrete walls of her cell and pulling herself up by the shackles that chained her wrists above her head. Her shoulders ached, likely due to the hours she’d spent hanging from those shackles while she slept. Her wrists were wet and slick, but when she opened her eyes and looked, she was relieved to see that it wasn’t blood that made them that way. Not that the grime that coated the shackles and just about everything else in the cell was particularly wonderful.
Look at that. Your first imprisonment as a CIA agent. Congratulations.
Her first imprisonment as an agent, yes, but far from her first imprisonment, and despite the desperation of her situation, for from the worst, at least so far. She looked around and took stock of her surroundings.
Her cell was a six- by seven-foot concrete block with rusty steel bars forming one wall. A gate was set in the steel bars. From the back, she could only see a plate of steel, but she guessed that plate hid a simple tumbler lock. That didn’t mean it wasn’t robust, but the rust on the bars looked thick.
She looked back at her shackles. Those were more green than red. Rough green scaling coated the surfaces, some sort of limescale. The concrete walls of the cell were covered with more of that green scaling along with a liberal amount of black mold. More mold colonized the concrete floor, and a pungent odor wafted from a mat of fuzzy gray that grew nearly to overflowing out of a pan on one end of the room that had probably served to collect the waste of the previous prisoner. None of this was great to breathe, but she had more pressing things to worry about than a mold infection at the moment.
She looked back through the bars. The cell was located in a corridor that was open on both ends. On either side, she could see terrorists in groups of three to five moving around the compound. From her limited perspective, it was difficult to tell just how big this compound was, but assuming a square shape, it was probably one hundred feet by one hundred feet. Not especially big, especially not for all the men she’d seen the night before. So say longer than it was wide, maybe two or three hundred feet. That would be large enough for a well-equipped compound supporting a group of this size.
She felt a pang as she thought about Trent. He would surely have woken by now, and what would he have done then? What would she have done in his position?
Well, that was easy. She would have tried to find him. She would have looked for his trail and followed it.
The problem was that she didn’t know how far she’d come. She had spent the first couple of hours of their journey conscious, but when her guards tripped and she tried to take advantage of their mistake to escape, the giant man—clearly their leader—had picked her up and slammed her into the ground hard enough to make her nose bleed.
She had passed in and out of consciousness after that. She didn’t know how far they had walked, only that the sun was starting to rise when she was finally dumped into the cell and shackled to the wall.
They couldn't have moved that fast through the jungle. She guessed they had made it maybe ten miles at the most. Trent should be able to cover that distance in five hours, depending on how clear her trail was. More if the trail was obscured or otherwise difficult to follow.
And then what? Say he arrived here. What would he do? He was a damned good fighter, but these odds were beyond him. She’d learned that the hard way last night. Both of them together might have a shot at holding their own, but one of them at a time, and they would simply be overwhelmed.
She feared that wouldn’t stop him. If she was on the outside, and Trent was in here, and she didn’t know what was happening to him, she could see herself coming in guns blazing and risking it all out of fear. Hopefully, he would be smarter than that and take the time to think about a workable plan instead of letting his worry for her cloud his judgment.
Actually, it was a little surprising to her that she was still alive. She had killed close to twenty of the terrorists by her count. If she were a terrorist leader and had finally disarmed and captured someone that dangerous, she would want that person killed immediately.
Of course, she wasn’t a terrorist leader, so she couldn’t expect herself to think like them. Besides, as far as they were concerned, they had her dead to rights. At the moment, she couldn’t disagree.
So perhaps they intended to sell her. Human trafficking was, unfortunately, profitable throughout most of the world, and she wasn’t being arrogant by assuming she would fetch a good price. She had inherited her mother’s natural beauty, and her chosen career had kept her in incredible shape. She had already experienced how desirable some men found her.
Or perhaps they intended to ransom her. That would never work. The CIA would deny any knowledge of her existence, but maybe the terrorists wouldn’t know that.
That could buy her some time. Whether they intended to ransom her or sell her, she had at least a few days to figure a way out of this mess. She could possibly even learn where the data core was and make a plan to retrieve it when she escaped.
As for Trent… She’d just have to hope he didn’t do anything foolish while she found a way out of here. Once she was gone, she could contact him, and…
And God damn it, she had no radio. No earpiece. No enhanced vision glasses. No equipment or weapons of any kind.
She sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. Heat climbed her cheeks, partly from frustration and partly from embarrassment. She had been on assignments before, but she realized now that they had all been softballs, minor jobs meant to give her experience but lacking the kinds of challenges that came with serious intelligence work.
She was very well-trained. Now, for the first time since joining the EOT, she had to look past her training and figure things out on her own.
A few terrorists walked down the hallway toward her, talking amongst themselves. Maya closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. It was a shot in the dark that she would hear anything worth knowing from a few foot soldiers just passing through, but any shot was worth taking.
Fortunately, the men spoke English rather than Kiswahili. While Kiswahili was rapidly supplanting English as the primary working language of Tanzania, the majority of its inhabitants still spoke English as their first or second language. These men appeared to be complaining about their superior.
“Haki doesn’t give a shit anymore,” one man said. “He’s a Corporal now. He thinks his shit smells like roses.” He followed this up by spitting on the ground.
A second man said, “You don’t think the stories are true, though, do you? About djinni?”
“Do you think the stories are true about your sister?” a third asked. “If so, could you give me her address? It’s been a while since I’ve felt a woman.”
A thump followed this, then laughter. The second man said, “Shut the fuck up, Azaan.”
“Yeah,” the first man agreed. “What do you want a pig like Jabari’s sister for anyway? You have a real woman right there, all tied up and waiting for you.”
I wish you’d try it, Maya thought darkly. I’ll rip that part of you off and shove it down your friend’s throat.
Fortunately for her—or maybe unfortunately—Azaan didn’t seem eager to try it. “No thanks. I actually like my penis. I prefer it attached to my body.”
“Hey!” a fourth voice shouted. “What the hell are you three doing? This isn’t social hour!”
There was some scuffling. Maya kept her eyes closed but guessed that the three men were snapping to attention. “Yes, Haki,” Jabari said, a slight sneer in his voice. “We’re so sorry to offend, sir.”
“Get back to work!” the infamous Haki commanded.
The men shuffled away, muttering to themselves. A few seconds later, a fifth voice spoke. This one was familiar, a deep sonorous basso. “Well done, Haki. You have surprised me. You have the makings of a great leader.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
Maya resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the fawning tone Haki adopted. Of course, the asshole supervisor was a complete sycophant to the boss.
“Follow them. Make sure their work is to my expectations.”
“Of course, Commander. It will be done. I will ensure it.”
Haki stalked off. Maya kept her eyes closed, but she could just imagine his lifted chin and puffed out chest. Like a child trying to impress his father.
Of course, that was how many dictators portrayed themselves. Like a benevolent father who rewarded his children if they made him proud and punished them severely if they disappointed him.
The gate to her cell slid open. She stirred softly, acting as though she’d just woken. She opened her eyes and met the smiling face of the commander.
She returned his smile. “Hello, Commander. It’s so nice to meet you. I gotta say, though, this isn’t the most comfortable guest room. Bit drafty.”
The commander chuckled. “I apologize for that. Perhaps I can find you a room underground where no outside air can reach you.”
Me and my big mouth. “I have a better idea. How about you let me go, give me what you took from the satellite, and I’ll call off the massive military response that is eager to turn your little villa into ash?” Guess I’m still gonna talk big.
The commander knelt in front of her. “The data core, agent. How do we access its information?”
He was fishing, and Maya didn’t intend to give him anything easily. But she could fish too. “Why do you need it?”
He chuckled. “Guess.”
Maya thought about playing stupid, but she got the sense that he wanted to boast. Maybe she could lean into that and get information from him. “You’re a group of freedom fighters hiding in the jungle. This compound is impressive, but I’m guessing you don’t have much in the way of heavy weaponry, nothing that can help you overcome the leaders you’re trying to overthrow. You need money. People would pay a lot of money for the information on that core.”
“Would they? What information is that?”
Instead of answering him, she said, “I imagine you’re on a bit of a timetable too. Now that the word is out, you can’t wait for the U.S. to show up and obliterate you. Which will happen soon.”
“It will have to happen very soon. Our buyers will arrive here in five days. By that time, you will have told me everything you know because you will either have grown smart enough to release that information without pain, or you will have suffered so much that you will do anything to end that suffering.”
Maya hid her excitement. Five days. Now she knew how much time she had. Maybe she could figure out who he was selling to. “Five days? They must be coming from overseas.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Tell me how to access the data.”
“No.”
He reached forward with a massive hand and caressed her cheek. She flinched away, and his smile widened. He reached closer, cupped her chin, and yanked her head back to face him.
