Cold Barrel Zero (8 page)

“You were at the massacre,” I said to her, and I turned to him. “Hayes did this?”

Riggs nodded. “We survived.”

“What happened?”

Through the windows, I could make out guards on the widow's walks and upper-floor arcades looking down at us.

“I'm afraid I can't say where exactly we were fighting. It's a borderland. A bad neighborhood, geopolitically. Hayes's team was preparing the battlefield.”

I'd heard that phrase—
preparing the battlefield
—before. It's a bit of Pentagon jargon. The Department of Defense uses it to broaden its activities around the world. As long as it claims it is preparing the battlefield, the DOD can conduct clandestine operations. The CIA functions under a different set of laws, rules that govern covert actions. The terms may sound similar, but there is a world of difference between them.

The Pentagon, unlike the CIA, can conduct clandestine missions without presidential authorization and without telling Congress, operating with zero civilian oversight. That's why more and more intelligence work has been pouring into the military side.

“Two years ago, the men and women under Hayes's command conducted a low-visibility clandestine operation,” Riggs said. “It was dangerous and complex. A long incursion into enemy territory that was crucial to U.S. national security.”

“Men and women?”

“There's an all-female division in the Intelligence Support Activity and other women in the special mission units. We borrowed the tactic from the Mossad. Sending eight jacked young men into a hostile area raises suspicion. Couples have far less trouble. If the enemy thinks we have no women operators, we damn well better have some.

“Hayes was given an exceptional amount of autonomy for a captain, though he was no ordinary captain. Several members of his team were killed on the mission. Perhaps we had them working for too long out in Indian Country, under too ambiguous a moral compass. But they came back to the safe house, the forward base they had been operating out of, and…”

He trailed off. He still had the photo from the massacre in his hand, but he brought it down beside his leg. I could see he felt embarrassed, as if it were indecent to let Nazar see it.

“It's fine,” she said, and she stepped toward Riggs. She laid a hand on his arm to reassure him, took the photo, and held it in the light. “I can't go for more than a few minutes without seeing it up here, anyway.” She gestured to her temple, then looked at the faces of the dead.

“My niece and nephew, here. And this is my sister.” Her finger moved across the glossy surface of the eight-by-ten. “She was always the pretty one. We used to tease her.”

She smiled, then shut her eyes hard, waited for the emotion to subside. She cleared her throat.

“Yes, well,” she started, in control again. “Captain Hayes came back to the base and began to gather the interpreters. We were all essentially refugees,” she said, and she glanced down at the book she had been translating. “From…”

She looked at Riggs.

“No details, please,” he said.

“From a country hostile to the United States. We had been persecuted, some of us killed, for what we believed and what we looked like. The colonel gave us shelter, protection. He was good to us. And Hayes, he was good to us too. We all loved him.”

She pressed her lips together and shut her eyes again, let the anger flow through her. “He had a way of making people love him, making them trust him. That is why we followed him on the day of the massacre.”

“You have to understand,” Riggs said. “Hayes was much more than a door kicker. He trained with the CIA at Camp Peary and Harvey Point. He was born to be a spy, spent his whole life blending in, winning confidences, making everyone his accomplice. That's why he was so lethal. You have to be careful with him, Byrne. He could turn you without your even knowing it. He draws people in, uses them as tools to kill others, then discards them. And we've never seen anyone better.”

“He played on our hopes,” Nazar said. “All we wanted was a home, a safe place for our families. Hayes told us we had been granted asylum in the U.S. and Europe. We gathered our relatives, what possessions we could carry—none of us really had much more than that anyway—and went to meet him. I've never seen such joy among my people. For generations we had wandered, lost and hunted, and soon it would be over.

“Hayes and his team gathered us in the village square. My sister was crying, she was so happy. They lined us up in front of a mud wall and told us a helicopter was coming.”

She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and kept on, calm. “Then Hayes shouldered his rifle, and they began to fire.”

She looked at the photo, examined the bodies.

“Hayes executed them,” Riggs said. “Everyone who had interpreted for Hayes, their families, and all who witnessed his crimes on that day. He killed them all.”

“I was hit twice,” Nazar continued. “But I was fortunate. I lay among the bodies, beside my niece and sister, as still as I could manage while the bullets cracked. And Hayes—I couldn't believe it was the same man I had worked with. It was like a devil took him.”

She looked my way, and I could see she was still trying to make sense of it. I knew Hayes as a good man, but I had seen him in battle, seen him kill face-to-face with a cold efficiency. It was as if, when we flicked our weapons' safeties to fire, something switched inside him too.

“I'm sorry,” I told her. The words sounded weak and uncaring, almost cruel. We stood in silence. Nazar commanded the center of the room. I wanted to avoid her gaze, the simple moral insistence that burned in her, but I didn't look away.

Riggs cast his eyes to the ground. “I failed to protect them.”

“He did everything he could,” Nazar said. “He came and tried to stop Hayes. They shot him in the chest, and he still fought.”

“It wasn't enough. Only Nazar survived, lying among the dead. To this day, her work, reading and writing, pains her.” I had seen how Nazar bent close to the page, almost touching it.

“I was an air force colonel,” Riggs said. “I came up as a fighter pilot. And now I'm useless for anything but holding down a chair.”

“What were they hiding?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“They targeted their interpreters. Were they covering their tracks?”

“I can't talk about that. One of the team members was raised in the U.S. but has family connections in Turkey, an area known as a transshipment point for the al-Nusra Front. It's a very worrisome scenario.”

“What was in that truck?”

Riggs nodded. “These are the right questions, Tom, but I can't discuss the answers. After the massacre, Hayes and his team took arms and equipment that would allow them to work independently of the command. Based on their movements and the impunity with which they have been operating inside the United States, we believe that they are at full strength at the squad level, possibly higher.

“I killed one of them on the day of the massacre, and Nazar and I are the chief witnesses in proceedings against them. Our safety is the least of our concerns. These soldiers have gone over. Hayes is not the man you knew. He has done things from which there is no redemption. We sent them into the dark, and the dark came back with them. They are in this country. And last night they stole something very dangerous to all of us.

“The United States spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars training them for exactly this: to enter a nation and destroy it through violence from the inside. The problem is that their target is now the United States. And after last night, they have the means. So, Tom Byrne, how about a little help, if that won't inconvenience you too much?”

I didn't answer. I didn't care what happened to me, but Kelly was still out there, alone.

Hall looked at me with disdain. “You were on a good track. Fleet Marine Force. Accepted into Special Amphibious Recon. Why didn't you go on with Marine Special Operations?”

“I wanted to be a doctor.”

“But you and your guys got shot up pretty bad at K Thirty-Eight?”

“Yes.”

“And
then
you started working on getting your commission. Got your bachelor's during active duty, applied to the USUHS.” That's the military's medical school.

“Correct.”

“Intern. General Medical Obligation. Resident. Fellow.” He read down the sheet, ticking off the steps. “That's a lot of time hiding out in libraries and hospitals. And then you were at Camp Dagger?”

“On the forward surgical team.”

Hall put the papers down. “This tells me a story, Tom. You were on track to be a good soldier. Then K Thirty-Eight happened. You saw some real bloodshed and you quit, ran away, tried to find someplace safe. But even as a doctor, you couldn't escape it. After the Dagger attack, you left the navy the first chance you got. Milked us for everything, then bailed.”

He stood over me like a prosecutor wrapping up a closing statement.

“You nailed it,” I said.

Riggs leafed through the papers. “I don't think so. You're hiding something. You volunteered for a frontline trauma spot. Commendation with valor for K Thirty-Eight. And you earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal at Dagger. They don't give those out to just anyone.”

“After they mop up the blood, they go looking for heroes. Sometimes they just need a chest to pin a medal on.”

Riggs frowned.

“You can do some good here.” He lifted the folder. “Make things right. Save lives.”

I remembered that day at Camp Dagger, remembered a woman, young and strong and beautiful, remembered how peaceful her face looked. The shadows. I couldn't live with any more of them.

“Dr. Byrne,” Nazar said. “Will you help us?”

I thought back to the chief of surgery at the last hospital. Even one death was too many.
You can't save them all,
he had said. But I had a feeling the patients on my table wouldn't mind if I tried.

“All right,” I said. “What can I do?”

Riggs turned to Hall. “Bring me everything you have,” he said. Hall left. Nazar, Riggs, and I remained in the sunroom.

Hall returned with a file and offered it to me. “To start, we want you to look at some photos. Tell me if you recognize the men who followed you today.”

I reached for the folder. As my fingers closed around it, the lights went out.

“DID YOU HEAR
something?” Hall asked.

“Will someone check the goddamn fuse box” came Riggs's voice. “This place is ancient. Don't worry. We have a backup—”

A muffled crack cut him off. It sounded like lightning behind the fog.

“Who has a radio?” Riggs asked. There was movement in the dark, then a crash from inside the house.

I heard the crack and static of an open radio channel: “We lost power. You see anything out there?” Riggs asked.

“Nothing,” a guard replied.

“Keep your eyes open.”

My vision slowly adjusted to the dark, but I could still barely make out the contours of the figures standing three feet away, like shadows in the fog.

A man lifted a radio beside me. “We're on the porch. Get down here with some lights.” It was Riggs.

“Rog. We'll—” The guard's voice cut off, and then three cracks boomed from the radio speaker.

“Say again. Say again,” Riggs ordered. But there was only silence from the other end. I could feel my heart pumping in my chest. “Say again,” Riggs demanded.

Finally, a new voice broke in on the radio.

“Someone's inside.”

“Where?” Riggs asked.

A moment passed. No one answered.

“Get to the courtyard,” a guard said. The words came over the radio between fast breathing, like a man running, and squelches of static. “Lock yourself in.”

I followed the voices. We stepped through a door onto weathered tiles.

“Byrne, you here?”

“Yes.”

“Hall?”

“Yes.”

“Nazar.”

“Yes.”

I moved closer until I could see the others.

“Good. We'll be safe here,” Riggs said. “There are sentries above us. Everything's locked. The only easy way in is through that door.”

He pulled out his sidearm, thumbed down the safety, and stared at the door that led back into the house. We formed a loose circle, fanned out with our backs to a stucco wall.

“We're in the courtyard,” Riggs said into the radio.

“We haven't found anyone. They blew the generator. Sit tight.”

My vision narrowed. Every sound seemed to grow louder. Time slowed. I moved on autopilot. There was fear and a flood of adrenaline. I felt strong and wanted the fight.
Come on. Come for me.
Jesus, how I had missed this rush.

“I need a weapon,” I said.

“None to spare.”

His mistake. We waited. The other men were nearly hyperventilating. I felt like they were right beside me. The fog muffled the sounds, warped the sense of distance.

This was bad. We shouldn't be bunched up together. It was a basic rule when expecting contact. I took a few steps to the side.

“Don't move,” Riggs said.

Far up, to my right, I saw blue flashes, and then I heard a
rat-tat-tat.
It seemed too quiet for a gun.

“Are those shots?” I asked. “Suppressed?”

“No,” Riggs said. He lifted the radio. “This is Riggs. Come back. Come back.”

There was nothing.

“Come back.”

I heard a cry and a thump from inside, straight ahead of us. The colonel raised the pistol and aimed it at the door. A moment passed with no noise, no movement, just our breath in the fog.

“Come on, assholes,” I heard Riggs whisper.

“Let's get out of here.”

“No. They want us to panic.”

We waited. Time stretched my nerves to the breaking point. I turned toward the colonel and saw a shadow moving silently down the wall from the second story: a man, slipping in like a wraith.

“Riggs, behind you!”

The figure let go of the rope and dropped to the floor. I lunged toward him. Metal clinked against brick. White light blanked out the world. The explosion hit me like a crashing wave, thumping my chest and deafening me. I fell back. My head hit the ground.

I staggered up on my hands and knees. I could hear only a high-pitched whine in my ears, some aftereffect of the blast, could see only blue, like I'd stared into the flash of a camera. I took one step and fell forward, caught a wall with my hand, steadied myself as my eyes adjusted. The blue softened to red, and finally the black murk took over again.

“Byrne.” I felt a gloved hand on my shoulder. “This way. We'll get you out.”

I followed, arm extended, touching the guard's back as we moved through the house. I don't know how he managed to navigate. There was no light. The reek of explosives bit at the back of my throat, sent me into a fit of coughing. We crossed the foyer and made it outside. I could feel the damp as we started moving down the hill, toward the sound of crashing surf.

The fog eased as we moved lower. I picked my way down the eroded hillside, the tufts of scrub and washed-out gullies above the cliffs. I heard the churn of an engine coming from the water below. Floodlights glared down at us from the house, filtered through the brush. The man I was with wore canvas utility pants and a gray long-sleeved shirt. He had no insignia. He blended into the shadows with black streaks of face paint.

I stopped. Gunshots cracked behind us. I saw red flash through the fog to our left, coming from the house.

The man with me wasn't one of the colonel's guards. It was one of the fugitive soldiers Riggs had described. He knew my name. I tried to think.

“Thank you,” I said. He stood downhill from me. I moved closer to him. The waves boomed below us.

“Don't mention it. We've got to move. There's a boat waiting.”

“Is that it?” I pointed. He looked. I planted my foot on his shoulder, shoved him to the ground, and started toward the house, using my hands and feet in the crumbling dirt on the steepest part of the hill.

I could hear rifle rounds tearing past us, coming close. “Don't shoot!” I shouted. “It's Byrne! Friendly!”

He came from my left side, hit me hard, tackled me. A puff of dust exploded, and a sandstone bank let go where I had been crawling. The bullet would have torn through me. We tumbled down the hill, and suddenly, my stomach went light. We dropped in a free fall.

The cold seized my body like an electric shock. I gasped as my head went under the blackness. I came up and cleared the salt water from my mouth and nose. The waves slammed into the rock face, threw spray twenty feet in the air. The water surged again. A swell carried me up, ready to throw me against a stone wall half covered in jagged shells.

I felt the water suck me back, try to hurl me with the lip of the wave. I dived, expecting the blow any second. It pulled me down, but I made it out the back of the wave. I swam through the white water. I was in the middle of a set. I dived down again and came up to see another wall of black water feathering and crashing toward my head. I went under once more, no time for a breath. A third wave, a fourth, a fifth. I had no air left, could barely see them coming as I pulled myself down into the freezing water and fought the foam. I tried to breathe, sucked in air and frothing water.

I heard an engine cut close. A black object materialized out of the fog. A rigid inflatable boat maneuvered twelve feet away, the pilot pivoting the engine perfectly to keep it steady as it slammed over the surf. My legs cramped from the cold and effort. I started to sink. With the last of my strength, I sidestroked through the lip of a wave and hauled myself to the gunwale. I grabbed the rope and pulled my body up, coughed out water against the rubber. I waited like that for a moment, breathing slowly, fighting the urge to hyperventilate. I wrapped my hand around a thwart and pulled myself up. A man stood over me. He reached down, grabbed the seat of my pants, and heaved me up and onto the floor as the engines revved. There were three men aboard.

The boat took off planing, launching off the back of the swells, dropping six feet to flat water. I slammed against the deck with each crash. The others took them like it was nothing, some standing, not holding on to anything for support, absorbing all the momentum with their knees.

The cliffs whipped by. I grabbed the column of the pilothouse as we picked up speed, accelerating to thirty-five, maybe forty knots. After each jump, we bottomed out; it felt like a car crash.

Black waves flew past. The wind was up. The swells capped. We were maybe a mile out. I couldn't see land or horizon, only fog. I knew I probably wouldn't survive if I dived off.

“What do you want with me?” My teeth clattered around the words.

A man stepped over. I asked it again, as loud as I could over the roar of the twin diesels. It was the guy I had tangled with on the hill.

“Relax, Junebug,” he said, and reached into a lockbox. He pulled out a damp wool blanket and handed it to me.

I hadn't heard that in years. My sergeant had given me the nickname at Field Medical Training Battalion, where they put the corpsmen through infantry training so we could hack it with the Marines. We had been drilling on the yard, and as I ran with my class, I inhaled a bug. I doubled over and caused a three-corpsman pileup in front of the command master chief. I'd never lived it down.

The man who'd given me the blanket brought his face in front of mine and ran his hand through his wet hair.

“Hayes?” I said.

“Good to see you, Byrne.” He pounded me on the back. “I'll bring you up to speed in a minute. For now, just hang on.”