Code Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel Read online

  “What games?”

  “Theft of science. Two weeks ago an Arklight team hit a lab in Warsaw sponsored by the Red Knights. It was a group of scientists working on computer viruses. There was some Iranian money involved, but their principal clients were the Upierczy. They have been trying to obtain as much information as possible about gene therapy and transgenics. They want to force their own evolution. They want to become indestructible, invincible. They want to be like the vampires of movies and books and they’re convinced genetics will accomplish this.”

  “It might,” I said sourly.

  She nodded. “Yes, and if it happens we’ll lose the fight against them. But my point was that when we hit their lab it was already in turmoil. Someone had hacked into their systems and stolen everything. Research, testing data, backup files, the works. We used Oracle to hack their system but we couldn’t find anything, not even a hint as to who’d stolen the data. It was so clean and thorough a job that we thought it was the Deacon using MindReader, but he said that it wasn’t the DMS.”

  I said nothing. Church had mentioned something about the Red Knights’ computers being hacked, but it was a comment in passing. And I’d assumed it was Arklight using Oracle. Assumptions, assumptions.

  “How’s any of that connect with Mother Night?”

  “Ah,” she said, smiling faintly. “One of the technicians at the lab said that it was Mother Night. It was all he said, though. Just that.”

  “You couldn’t get any more out of him?”

  Her smile never flickered. “Alas, he was unable to say more. However, a few days later we hit a second site in Vilnius. A testing facility for genetic enhancement. When we broke in, though, everyone was already dead. Four Red Knights and sixteen technical staff. All dead.”

  “How? It would have taken a hefty strike team to—”

  “No,” she said. “They had not been shot. Someone had released a toxin into the system. Specifically, a radically weaponized strain of enterohemorrhagic E. coli. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Our scientists tell us that it triggered a quick-onset form of hemorrhagic colitis. The victims bled out through their rectums.”

  “Christ, that’s disgusting.”

  Violin’s eyes were ice cold. “They were Red Knights and their servants.”

  I said nothing to that. The women of Arklight had suffered indescribable indignities, torture, rape, and worse at the hands of the Knights, and this went back centuries. Whatever mercy they might have had for their former oppressors was long since beaten out of them. They were now the most vicious and efficient kill team anywhere in the world. Second to none, and I do not exaggerate. I was very, very glad they were on our side.

  She said, “All of the computers had been stripped of their data and there were no viable materials left. It was all gone, except for empty cabinets, ransacked computers, and the bodies of the dead. Those, by the way, had been piled up and set on fire. There was a message painted with blood on the wall that read: Mother Night Says that you have to Burn to Shine.”

  “Oh, man…” I shook my head. “But even so, how does that connect Mother Night to me and the DMS?”

  “Since we found that site, Arklight has been asking around. We’ve managed to conduct a few interrogations of Knights we captured, and with people connected to them. No one knows much, but several of them told a story about a senior scientist for the Knights who’d been found at the point of death. He’d been severely tortured and left for dead.”

  “Tortured by whom?”

  “By a woman who called herself Mother Night,” said Violin. “She asked him a lot of questions and most of it was about the Knights, their former connection with the Red Order, their more recent connections with the surviving members of the Seven Kings, and a mutual enemy of all of then—the DMS. Your name came up in the interrogation. The scientist said that he was aware of you, and of your role in killing Grigor, king of the Red Knights. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the questioning. The scientist died shortly after that. So … all we have is a small, fragile connection between you and someone who has been doing significant harm in order to steal computer files and research. A group who has either developed an E. coli–based bioweapon or who has stolen it for use.”

  “I’ll have to share this with Church, and he’ll probably want to talk to you or to your mother.”

  Lilith, Violin’s mother, was the leader of Arklight. I have never met a more formidable woman. She and Church had some history, but I didn’t know what it was or how deep it went.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Violin stood up. When I began to rise too, she touched my shoulder to keep me seated.

  “If I hear anything else I’ll let you know,” she said. “Goodbye, Joseph.”

  “Goodbye, Violin,” I said.

  She began to move away, but she stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. “Joseph…?”

  “Yes?”

  “This woman … Junie Flynn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be good to her.”

  There was so much meaning in what she said, so many layers to it that I could not respond. It felt like there was a lump in my throat the size of a fist. However, Violin nodded to herself as if I had replied.

  As she walked away I felt a weird ache inside. Almost a premonition, like maybe I’d never see her again. But that was stupid.

  I sat there and took over the job of petting Ghost, who stared at Violin’s retreating back. “Mother Night,” I said aloud.

  Ghost whined softly.

  Chapter Seven

  The Warehouse

  DMS Field Office

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Friday, May 20, 7:55 p.m.

  Mother Night surfaced again later that month.

  It went like this.

  The interrogation team finished with Reggie. They’d squeezed him like a Florida orange, and when they were sure he had no juice left, they gave him back to me to transport him to the witness protection program. Or, rather, our version of it. The one run by the U.S. Marshals is good, but in an age where computer hacking has become the most feared WMD, the protected witnesses aren’t all that secure. The Marshal Service is a government agency, which means it needs to keep records, transfer information, and receive reports from the field. All of that goes through computers. Last year, nine protected witnesses who were set to testify against a coalition of Mexican cartels were targeted and killed. Five of them had families, and each witness had on-site marshals as watchdogs. There were no survivors. Forensic computer analysis proved that the system had been hacked.

  We didn’t want to turn Reggie Boyd over to the marshals. We trusted the agents but not their computers. The world of law enforcement is changing. A couple of keystrokes are more powerful than a bullet.

  The DMS has gone old-school with its version of witness protection. Nothing goes onto any computer except MindReader. Even then, information is protected by 28-bit encryption and self-erase counterintrusion programs. There are missile codes with less security.

  So, Reggie had been a guest at the new Warehouse, the DMS field office in Baltimore. My office.

  Everyone I worked with still called it “new” even though we’d been in residence here for months. However, whenever someone spoke of the Warehouse, without the “new” prefix, everyone knew they weren’t talking about here. Once upon a time we’d been in a different building four blocks away. That building was now a hole in the world and everything that had been in it had been vaporized by a terrorist bomb. A hundred and sixty-nine people had gone up with it. Friends, colleagues, brothers-in-arms. Gone. On some level those of us who’d escaped that catastrophe felt it was disrespectful to simply call this the Warehouse.

  The new building was bigger and it was crammed with every kind of interior and exterior surveillance and detection equipment. A sparrow couldn’t take a crap on a rain gutter without an alarm ringing somewhere. Paranoid? Sure, but as the saying goes, sometimes they really are out
to get you.

  Ghost and I came to get Reggie a few minutes before eight on a rainy Friday. Reggie’s “cell” was actually an office that had been converted into an apartment about as big as a good-sized dorm room. He had a flat-screen TV, cable with lots of premium channels, a Netflix account, and a tall stack of Blu-Ray DVDs. When I came in, he was in sweats and sneakers, and was sprawled on his couch watching an old episode of Game of Thrones.

  “It’s almost over,” he said. “Can you give me a sec?”

  “Sure.”

  I perched on the end of the couch for a few minutes, watching it with him. It was from the second season, the siege of Kings Landing. Good stuff.

  Ghost climbed up between us, and while the armies clashed on the screen, Reggie stroked Ghost’s fur. Their relationship had changed a bit. Not that Ghost wouldn’t kill him if I ordered it, but over the last month we’d all developed an odd fondness for Reggie. He was a traitor and a jackass, but Reggie didn’t seem evil. Not even a little bit. More like a cousin who can’t keep out of trouble but who’s fun at parties.

  And, let’s face it, no one in the history of international espionage had ever been more cooperative. He could wear out a crack team of CIA interrogators in nothing flat. They dreaded interviewing him because he not only gave useful information; he was the kind of guy who had to tell you every single blessed detail of every single blessed moment of every single blessed day. Once, when a weary interrogator asked him to summarize some of the less important things—like Reggie’s account of driving to work or going to the gym—Reggie shook his head and said that he was afraid of missing something.

  He didn’t miss a thing. Not one single, mind-crushing moment of his life. I was tempted to bribe him into shutting up and never speaking again.

  When the episode ended, he turned off the TV and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. “Any chance you’re going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Come on, Reg, you know better.”

  We got up. His suitcase had been packed by my people, but I allowed Reggie a few seconds to stuff some of his favorite DVDs into a bag. He looked around and sighed again.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just that I think I’m going to miss this place.”

  “Oh, come on…”

  “See, what did I say?”

  “I’m not laughing,” I said, hiding a smile. “But why on earth would you miss this place?”

  Another shrug. “I like it here. The food’s good. Nobody cheats at cards and you let me keep what I win. I seem to be getting somewhere with Rudy.”

  Rudy Sanchez was the DMS house shrink as well as my best friend. He’d spent a lot of time with Reggie, not as part of the interrogation team, but trying to map the route from law-abiding citizen to criminal and back again. He planned to publish his findings in one of those incomprehensible psychiatric trade journals that I don’t think anyone really reads.

  And, apart from that, Rudy was the kind of therapist who could help you find a way to like yourself again. He did that for me, and I was a real mess.

  Reggie bent and scratched Ghost between the ears. “I’m going to miss the fur monster here.”

  Ghost nudged his hand with a wet nose.

  “Despite the fact that he bit you?” I asked.

  Reggie straightened and gave me a philosophic shake of his head. “Puppy-boy there was doing his job. I can’t fault him for that.”

  Puppy-boy liked being talked about and he thumped his tail.

  Dog’s very strange. He won’t let my brother, Sean, pet him, but he goes all goofy around a bonehead enemy of the state like Reggie. Go figure. Maybe Ghost needs to log some couch time with Rudy.

  “I’ll make sure the fur monster sends you Christmas cards,” I told Reggie. “Let’s go.”

  I checked us through security and we walked together out to my Ford Explorer. When Reggie saw it he whistled.

  “You got the new one? Niiiiice,” he said, stringing it out. “What did you get on the trade-in?”

  “Less than I’d hoped,” I said. What I didn’t tell him was that my last Explorer had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The one before that had been parked at the old Warehouse and was destroyed when that blew. This new Explorer was my fifth in four years. My insurance company freaking hates me.

  The new car was next year’s model. Black, with smoked windows and a bunch of extras, including bullet-resistant glass and extra suspension to compensate for the body armor. No ejector seats, though. I keep requesting them but they won’t give me one. I think they’re afraid I’ll use it for fun. They’re not entirely wrong.

  “Buckle up for safety,” I said as Reggie climbed in.

  Ghost went into the backseat, flopped down, and began enthusiastically licking his balls. Everyone needs a hobby.

  I got in, started the engine, locked the doors, and drove past the security guards, both of whom waved to Reggie.

  Reggie Boyd, the cybercriminal who’s everybody’s pal.

  Even with heavy rain, the ride should have taken only two hours, and this was something I could have turned over to any of my staff. There are more than two hundred people working for me at the new Warehouse, including four teams of top-of-the-line shooters. I should have sent some of them, but I wanted to do this myself. It was low-risk, and besides, despite everything, I kind of liked Reggie, too.

  Reggie turned on the Sirius, found the Raw Dog Comedy station, and we were laughing our asses off when the team of killers came out of the rain and rammed their Humvee into the side of my Explorer.

  Chapter Eight

  East McComas Street

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Friday, May 20, 8:41 p.m.

  I never saw it coming.

  We’d veered off Cromwell heading to McComas, which ran parallel to I-95, when a dark green Hummer slammed us on the driver’s side. The impact tilted the Explorer onto the two passenger-side wheels and drove it sideways toward a row of cement cattle guards that had been placed to guide traffic. It felt like being punched by a giant. The front and side air bags blew, hitting us hard in the face and the side of the head, slamming us back against our seats. The rain-slick streets offered no resistance as the bigger vehicle smashed us into the cattle guards with bone-jarring force. Reggie screamed. Ghost began yelping in fear and pain. I had a mouthful of air bag and couldn’t breathe; my side of the car was canted inward toward me. Cracks appeared in the reinforced glass. If it hadn’t been for the body armor, the car would have collapsed like a beer can.

  “Joe!” howled Reggie in a high and terror-filled voice. “God, Joe!”

  With one hand I fought to release the seat belt while my other hand clawed at the handle of my rapid-release folding knife, which was clipped inside my front trouser pocket. The air bags were designed to deflate almost immediately after deployment, with nitrogen leaking out of small vents; but we were so crammed in that the vents were blocked. There was almost no room to move.

  Ghost’s whines changed to barks and I craned my head to see the Humvee’s headlights receding. I wasn’t fool enough to think they were going away. They were backing up to hit us again.

  I stamped blindly on the gas and the Explorer lurched forward as the Hummer roared and slammed forward again. My car was too badly damaged to drive away—even if I could see to steer, which I couldn’t—but it jerked forward a few feet. Enough so the Humvee crunched into the side of the rear bay with a huge whump. Metal screeched and I heard one of the tires explode. The car settled awkwardly into a cleft formed by the Humvee and the cattle guards. There was no damn where to go.

  Then the knife was in my hand. I flicked it open and jabbed the airbag. White powder filled the cabin, and I spat and sputtered as I twisted to cut the seat-belt straps with the knife. Ghost kept barking but I could hear other sounds. Reggie’s groans of fear and pain. Car doors opening. Feet crunching on broken glass. Shouts.r />
  Reggie was bleeding and dazed, but alive. Ghost was going nuts in the backseat and I silenced him with a stern command. Through the cracked glass I could see several figures. All wearing black hoodies and black jeans.

  They all had guns.

  Jesus Christ.

  Panic flashed through me. The driver’s door was crushed in. Reggie’s door was locked and the glass was reinforced, but five armed people could definitely break in. The impact with the Hummer had twisted the Explorer’s frame and the steering wheel sat askew, blocking me from climbing backward over the seat.

  Shit.

  I saw gun metal glimmer in the downspill of streetlights.

  Then a barrage of thunder as they opened up on the car with automatic weapons. I could hear the bullets punch into the side of the car, tearing through the metal skin, flattening themselves on the steel lining. A couple of rounds ricocheted away and I heard a sudden scream of pain and surprise as one of the figures staggered and fell.

  Dumb ass, I thought. The fuck do you expect when you fire at an armored vehicle?

  They closed on the car and began trying to kick the windows in.

  That, unfortunately, they might accomplish. The impact of the two heavy vehicles had damaged the glass and it was bound to give.

  I clawed the torn fabric of the air bags away from me, tore open the flaps of my Hawaiian shirt, and grabbed for my gun just as the bad guys tried to open the door.

  The doors were locked.

  One of them must have gone back to their Hummer because suddenly they began swinging a tire iron at the glass. Little chunks of glass popped out from pressure cracks and pinged off the dashboard, the rearview mirror, and my head.

  I slashed at Reggie’s seat belt and shoved him roughly into the foot well.

  “Stay down!”

  The window glass abruptly turned to white as a solid blow send a thousand microcracks all through it.

  Then I jammed my back against the door, banged the door lock control with my elbow, took my Beretta in both hands, and fired at the glass, blowing it outward.