Code Zero Read online

  The Twin Towers had fallen according to their plan. As did the London Hospital. The Seven Kings used bribery, manipulation, and other means to inspire various fundamentalist groups to commit acts of terrorism. The Kings, knowing that such atrocities always impacted the stock market, made hundreds of billions of dollars. Most of that money would never and could never be recovered.

  And Hugo Vox was at the heart of the whole thing.

  A man trusted by everyone in the U.S. government, from Mr. Church to the president. A man who had access everywhere. A man who was tasked with developing the most elite counterterrorism and antiterrorism training programs.

  Bliss stood in Vox’s office at Terror Town, the training facility in Washington State where America trained its agents, and where teams from the nation’s allies came to learn the best ways to combat terror.

  The irony seemed to scream at her from every molecule of air in the place.

  Vox was a bad guy.

  The news seemed to hit Bliss very hard but from several different angles. On one hand, as a DMS team member, the betrayal was huge. It rocked the foundations of the whole organization and damaged the previously iron-hard credibility of Mr. Church. There were some angry murmurs in congress that Church already had too much freedom of action, and that his judgment no longer warranted that level of trust or authority. Bliss thought this was a little unfair. She had no love for Church or that harpy, Aunt Sallie, but Vox was a master manipulator. Maybe the smartest and most subtle of his kind that ever lived. He hadn’t just fooled Church, Vox fooled everyone. Including the president and every member of Congress, including the grumblers. They’d all been cheerleaders for Vox for years. Church was merely a handy target. That rankled Bliss.

  On a more personal level, she was hurt. She liked Vox and had worked closely with him and his protégée, Dr. Circe O’Tree, on dozens of cases. She’d gone to him to vet nearly every employee she hired for her division and every contractor she used when designing security systems for top-secret facilities like the Locker. Many of those people had been personally vetted by Vox.

  Just as she had been.

  Until two weeks ago, “vetted by Vox” was the highest stamp of approval you could get. It was a badge of honor. Grace Courtland had been vetted by Vox. So had Top Sims, Captain Ledger’s right-hand man. And dozens of others in the DMS, and hundreds within government service.

  Clearly not all of them could be villains. But how to tell which ones were Vox’s creatures?

  But the news hit Bliss in another way.

  She found that she admired Vox even more for all of this.

  Admired him a lot.

  Thinking about it sent a thrill through her veins. This was real power. Bigger power than anything she’d ever glimpsed. Eclipsing Church by miles, in her estimation. Power that changed the entire world. 9/11 was a point around which the future history of everyone on earth turned, and Vox had done that.

  Vox.

  She sat at his desk and looked at the computer he’d left behind. Vox had somehow constructed some technology that could fool MindReader. He had untraceable cell phones. His plotting was accomplished through some means MindReader could neither detect nor control.

  Power.

  So much power.

  Bliss booted up the computer and, when it was ready, removed two devices from her bag. One was a micro MindReader substation. The other was something neither Aunt Sallie nor Bug nor Mr. Church knew she had. A device Bliss had painstakingly constructed from the schematics she’d found in Paris Jakoby’s computer.

  He’d called it Pangaea, and from his records it was clear that the system was not only designed and built by a now-dead Italian computer pioneer, but it was without doubt the forerunner of MindReader. There were far too many similarities for it to be coincidence. Bliss did a little digging, and from bits and pieces of information gleaned from Bug, Captain Ledger, and Dr. Hu, it seemed that in his pre-DMS days, Church had run with an international team of shooters. They’d torn down a group called the Cabal, which in turn had been built on the philosophical and scientific bones of the Third Reich. Pangaea had been allowed the Cabal—and later the Jakobys—to steal information from hundreds of other research programs around the world. Steal it without leaving evidence of the theft. By combining research from so many sources, the Jakobys were able to make what appeared to be freakish intuitive leaps in various fields related to genetics.

  Captain Ledger and Grace Courtland had torn their empire apart, killing Paris and his sister, Hecate, in the process. That Grace Courtland had also died was something Bliss thought she’d feel bad about, but found that she did not.

  Several Pangaea workstations had been bagged and tagged by the DMS forensics team, but the schematics in Paris Jakoby’s desk were known only to Bliss. She’d copied them and then deleted them. Then she spent months handcrafting a new system that including many of her own upgrades. Although she had great respect for the man who designed Pangaea, she knew that she was smarter. Her knowledge base, in terms of programming, hacking, and cyberwarfare, was decades fresher. That meant that the computer she built was as unlike MindReader as it was similar. A cousin rather than a twin.

  It was no longer Pangaea, and it was definitely not MindReader.

  She gave it a new name.

  Haruspex.

  That was far more suitable, considering how she’d built it. A haruspex, in terms of ancient Etruscan and Roman culture, was a person who could divine the future and unlock the mysteries of the fates by reading the entrails of sacrificed sheep.

  Very appropriate. She’d read her own future in the entrails of Pangaea. Haruspex had been born in the blood of devastation left behind by the slaughter at the Dragon Factory and the fall of the Jakoby empire of twisted science.

  Now she had a computer that was nearly as powerful as MindReader, and more important, one that was invisible to Church’s system.

  Invisibility was a kind of power.

  She smiled at the thought. It was like a superpower. Bliss had enough geek genes to actively wish that she could be a superhero.

  Or even a supervillain.

  But this was the real world.

  She sighed and began her assault on Hugo Vox’s computers using MindReader and Haruspex.

  Firewalls and anti-intrusion programs rose up to challenge her, but with the deftness of a pagan priest of the religion of cyberscience, she eviscerated them and thereby divined their secrets.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Euclid Avenue Station

  Euclid and Pitkin Avenues

  Brooklyn, New York

  Sunday, August 31, 1:52 p.m.

  I leaned my head and shoulders out of the open bay door. The area was cleared of everything except official vehicles, and per instructions the actual intersection was cleared. Police were erecting barricades and working crowd control. A half dozen news vans were already there, their satellite towers rising like metal trees above the crowds. News choppers were in the air, but police birds were establishing a no-fly zone for anyone but cops, Homeland, and us.

  I tapped my earbud.

  “Cowboy to Warbride.”

  “Go for Warbride,” said Lydia.

  “What’s your twenty?”

  “Right below you, boss. In the lee of the SWAT van. There’s not enough room for the helo to land. We had to rappel in. You will, too.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Cowboy—we are Echo plus three. Deacon made the call, but they’re locked and loaded.”

  “The three we talked about?”

  “Affirmative,” she said. “See you on the ground.”

  Top and Bunny had listened in and were already setting up the fast-ropes for our drop to the street. I explained the situation to the pilot and then rejoined my guys.

  “Duncan, Noah, and Montana?” asked Bunny.

  “Yup.”

  Of all the candidates we’d tested, three were solid standouts. A SEAL, a Boston brawler turned ATF agent, and an FBI agent
who looked like a country cowgirl but who was one of the most vicious unarmed combat fighters I’ve ever met. I had good feelings about them, both in combat ability and in the likelihood they would fit into Echo Team. It remained to be seen if it was their bad luck they joined the DMS today, or my good luck that they were adding useful skills to my team.

  I spotted Lydia standing with the rest of Echo Team. They were between two white-and-blue NYPD SWAT trucks parked crookedly by the subway entrance. A dozen men and women in body armor and helmets stood looking up at us. Even from that distance I could feel their anger and tension. Their friends and colleagues were down in the tunnel and they felt it was up to them to go charging to the rescue.

  Bunny was next to me and must have been reading my thoughts. “We going to have trouble keeping them off the dance floor, Boss?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  We dropped fast-ropes toward the street, clipped on, and flung ourselves into the air. Normally any kind of jump scares the shit out of me. I am not a heights person. Today I had other things to be afraid of. I plunged toward the ground, one gloved hand on the rope, the other behind my back to work the brake. We touched down one, two, three, unclipped, and saw the ropes rise like magic snakes as the Black Hawk climbed away, dragging its wind and noise with it. We hurried over to meet Lydia and the team. Sam nodded to us. The newbies did, too, but they were far more wary. Ivan wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Hellboy?” I asked.

  “Down on the platform with the first responders, a pair of transit cops, Faustino and Dawes,” said Lydia. “The station’s been cleared. We have National Guard units on their way, ETA eleven minutes. SWAT is positioned at the stations down the line, but they’ve been told to stay at street level. Deacon ordered that no one goes down there but us.”

  We were all dressed in Saratoga Hammer suits and helmets, and under the August heat it was boiling hot. I caught a brief exchange of micronods between Bunny and Lydia. It was an open secret that they were a couple, but they were professional enough to keep it to themselves. They didn’t let it spill over into the job.

  “What do we know about the SWAT team that went in?” Bunny asked.

  Lydia shook her head. “No contact with them. Faustino said she heard gunfire. Mira, jefe,” she added, “the transit cops said that their radios didn’t work in the tunnel. From what she described, it sounds like a jammer. Said there were cameras down there, too, mounted on some of the pillars.”

  “Ain’t that interesting as shit,” mused Top.

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “we’ll figure it out on the fly.”

  Without another word we then ran down the stairs into the subway.

  Down into hell.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Fulton Street Line

  Near Euclid Avenue Station

  Brooklyn, New York

  Sunday, August 31, 1:56 p.m.

  Officer Faustino stared at us with big eyes in a white face. She held her Glock in one hand, the barrel pointed to the ground. Her partner, Dawes, stood nearby, looking equally scared and confused.

  “Officers,” I said, pulling down the lower half of my balaclava as I stepped onto the platform. Sweat ran down my face. “I’m Captain Ledger, Homeland Security.”

  A lie, but a useful one.

  Beyond the cops I saw Ivan squatting on the edge of the platform, pointing a combat shotgun into shadows. The rest of Echo swarmed past me, moving quickly to double-check that the station was secure.

  “C-Captain,” said Faustino, tripping over it a bit. “What’s happening?”

  Instead of answering, I said, “Holster your weapons, officers. Do it now, please.”

  They did so, but reluctantly. The two cops looked to be about one short step away from losing their shit. The male cop maybe more so. I could sympathize. Control is not a constant or a given, even if you have a badge pinned to your chest.

  However, Faustino forced herself to straighten and chased the tremolo out of her voice as she asked, “How can we help?”

  A good cop. I gave her a smile.

  “We can’t let anyone down those stairs,” I said, “and we sure as hell can’t let anyone go up. Not unless you get an all-clear directly from me or my superiors. Can I trust you and your partner to hold this line?”

  She forced herself to straighten. “Yes, sir. We got it.”

  I kept eye contact for a few seconds longer, then spun away to join my team. This was a “life sucks” moment for everyone. I dearly hoped this would be the worst moment of all of our days.

  At the edge of the tracks I hunkered down next to Ivan, who was studying the tunnel through a night-vision scope.

  “What are you seeing?”

  “Seeing nothing, boss,” he said, quietly, not looking at me. “Hearing some weird shit, though, and its making my balls want to shrivel up and hide.”

  I held my hand up for silence and bent my ear toward the tunnel entrance. I didn’t hear anything. Until I did. It was soft, distant, like a breeze blowing through a cracked window on a stormy night.

  “Those are human voices,” said Sam quietly. Lydia and the others clustered around us and they listened, too. They all heard it. Some sooner, others after a few seconds, but they all heard it.

  The moans. Plaintive and hungry.

  “Fuck me,” whispered Bunny.

  “Okay,” I said as I went over the edge and down onto the tracks, “form on me.” We moved quickly and quietly into the tunnel, but a hundred feet in I stopped and turned to the others. “Listen up,” I said, facing the newbies, “there wasn’t time before and I didn’t want to say this in front of those cops, but here’s the deal. This is the point where I’m supposed to make a speech to the new recruits. But I don’t like speeches and we don’t have time, so this will be short and sweet. You three are jumping in ankle-deep shit. You’re doing that without being properly briefed or trained. All of that sucks, but there it is.”

  Three sets of eyes studied me. Everyone pulled down the lower shrouds of their balaclavas. Easier to have a conversation that way. Ivan stood apart and kept his shotgun pointed down the tunnel.

  “We’re heading into a situation that is probably going to be worse than anything you’ve dealt with,” I continued. “Get used to that because this is what we do. The DMS usually doesn’t put boots on the ground unless the shit is already hitting the fan. Sucks but there it is.” I cut a look at Lydia. “You tell them what’s down here?”

  She nodded. “As much as I could. Wasn’t a lot of time.”

  To the newbies I said, “So you know. This is the real face of terror, kids. Not guys in turbans and not homegrown assholes with fertilizer bombs. As far as the DMS goes, it’s mad science and monsters. You three good to go or do I send you back to babysit the cops? The appropriate response is ‘hooah.’”

  “Hooah,” they said. If there wasn’t overwhelming enthusiasm, who could blame them?

  “Good. Combat call signs from here out.”

  “Sir,” said the bullet-headed ATF shooter from Boston, Duncan MacDougall, “we don’t have call signs. At least I don’t.”

  The FBI woman, Montana Parker, shook her head. “Me neither.”

  “I do,” said the Navy SEAL, a tall, ascetic man with a poet’s face. “Been called Gandalf since OCS.”

  “Gandalf,” I said, nailing it in place.

  MacDougall, I remembered from the training sessions, had a tattoo of a snarling wolf on his left forearm. I pointed to him. “You’re Bad Wolf.”

  He grinned.

  “What about you?” I asked the FBI woman.

  “Most of the guys I’ve ever worked with have called me ‘that bitch,’ but I don’t think that’s going to play.”

  Despite everything, I laughed.

  Ivan shifted to stand next to her. He was six four and she came to well below his shoulder. Five three, tops. “How about Stretch?”

  She gave him a smile that was softer and brighter than I would have expected. She hadn’
t smiled once during the training sessions, and I had the feeling that no one had ever accused her of having an overly sunny disposition. I’d been leaning toward a call sign of Genghis or Harpy, but I was glad I hadn’t said anything.

  “Welcome to the DMS, Stretch. I’m Cowboy.” I pointed to Top and Bunny. “Sergeant Rock and Green Giant.”

  They’d already learned the call signs of the others. Lydia was Warbride, Ivan was Hellboy, and Sam was Ronin. And for a weird little moment I thought I heard other call signs whisper through the shadows. Names of comrades and friends long gone, and others who’d taken injuries that had pushed them off the firing line.

  Dancing Duck.

  Chatterbox.

  Trickster.

  Scream Queen.

  So many others.

  Too many others.

  “Now pay close attention, and that goes for everyone,” I said. “We’re stepping into a world of wrong here, and if we come to a worst-case scenario then we are going to have to make hard choices without hesitation. The first two DMS teams who faced people infected with the seif-al-din were overwhelmed and destroyed because they hesitated. They let ordinary human feelings get them killed. We can’t repeat that. The reason you three made the cut is because you never hesitated, not in any of the drills. Well, this isn’t a drill. This is as real as it is ever going to get. We are going to face walkers. You understand what that means?”

  MacDougall—Bad Wolf—said, “What Warbride told us seems unreal. This is World War Z stuff. I mean … are we really talking zombies here? It’s hard to believe.”

  “Tell you what, son,” said Top in a slow drawl, “how about you cover yourself with steak sauce and walk point for us. Let’s see if it feels like hazing when those fuckers tear a flank steak off your ass.”

  The other members of Echo laughed. Not nice laughs.

  Bad Wolf stiffened. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just…”

  Top laid a hand on his shoulder. “Son, you’re fishing for a context that just ain’t there. We’ve all been through it. You’ll get through it, too.”

  “It’s what we do,” murmured Lydia.