Threat Zero Read online

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  For Laura and Snowy, my two best muses

  —A. J. Tata

  For Kayden Irving

  —Nicholas Irving

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my tremendous writing partner, Nick Irving, the character upon which Vick Harwood is “loosely” based. Nick’s creativity is inspiring and his positive vibes and focus are refreshing. I look forward to continuing this journey with Nick.

  Scott Miller and the team at Trident Media Group are the best in the business, and I’m thankful that Scott thought of teaming Nick and me together for the Reaper fiction series.

  Thank you to our editor, Marc Resnick, and assistant editor, Hannah O’Grady, and the entire St. Martin’s/Macmillan team for their professionalism and support in making Threat Zero the best story it can be.

  And most important, thank you to our readers, who make all of this possible.

  —A. J. Tata

  This work would have not been possible without the team support of the St. Martin’s Press and Trident group family. I am greatly indebted to General A. J. Tata, Marc Resnick, and the editors who have been supportive throughout the work of this series.

  I am forever grateful to the readers and listeners of the Reaper series, for without you, none of this would be possible. And to my family and military brothers and sisters in arms, I thank you eternally.

  —Nicholas Irving

  CHAPTER 1

  As it turned sharply uphill toward Camp David, the convoy of black Suburban sport utility vehicles filled with family members of President Bob Smart’s cabinet snaked through the shooter’s scope.

  A single black Dodge Charger led four hulking black armored vehicles ferrying excited men, women, and children to the well-known presidential retreat in western Maryland on a warm May morning. Windows were rolled down. Children’s arms hung outside catching the wind and sun. Parents smiled in anticipation of the fun weekend.

  As the automobiles made the U-turn, shiny metallic paint winked through the misty air as the sun burned away the dew. The convoy turned off the main road into the Catoctin Mountain Park, leaving behind the grassy fields before ascending into the thick forests. Little publicized, but accessible to the leader of the deadly Threat Zero Team, as the ambush squad called themselves, the itinerary for the annual family day was right on schedule.

  As the first vehicle slowed at the hairpin turn, Zero One—the leader—pressed a garage door opener sending unit, which transmitted a signal to a receiving unit antenna sticking up from a faux curbstone. The blown Styrofoam curbstone contained twelve improvised explosive devices called explosively formed penetrators, or six-inch copper plates, that became molten fists when fired from the PVC pipes.

  The EFPs fired in a flurry of black smoke and flame. The black rectangular hood of the first Suburban popped off, flew into the air, and bounced off its own windshield. The precisely placed EFPs punched through each of the armored SUVs like rocks through a flimsy porch screen. All four SUVs were hit, two were on fire. Doors opened. Women and children stumbled out. Then two men rolled out of the fourth vehicle, both on fire.

  Zero One leveled his scope on the first of the two men, fired. Switched to the second man, fired. Saw the woman in her jeans and five-hundred-dollar shirt, shot her through the head. Two children on the ground, injured. He took them, as well. The other members of his team fired on their targets. Each was assigned a vehicle to avoid squirters that might escape. Zero One eyed the trail vehicle, which he had assigned himself. The fire burned rapidly, flames licking the sky. Anyone inside was incinerated by now.

  He moved his scope to monitor vehicle three, which he had assigned to the newest member of the team. Two women were lying on the ground, blood seeping from their heads. Good shots. While that Suburban was not burning, smoke was boiling under the hood. Someone stumbled from the vehicle, gasping. Zero Three nailed the adolescent through the head, spinning the child around. He fell into the open door and slid down, arms and legs splayed open, as if he were making snow angels.

  After no further activity on vehicle three, Zero One scanned up to the lead vehicles. Two men from the lead chase car were aiming rifles, scanning for the threat, for them. Zero One fired once, killing the man who was using the open Dodge Charger door as cover. Another team member killed the other man, eliminating the threat. Police sirens screamed in the distance. Time to pack up and move.

  “Rally,” he said into his microphone. The team executed their well-rehearsed clean-and-collect plan. They then collapsed to an apartment where they had one final task before they would escape and evade in much the same manner that they had entered the ambush location.

  The entire attack had taken three minutes.

  CHAPTER 2

  The charcoal barrel of an SR-25 sniper rifle pressed into the flesh beneath Sammie Samuelson’s chin, aiming upward into his skull.

  Vick Harwood had been watching one of the cable news shows on his smartphone—some former senator from Virginia named Sloane Brookes was discussing her presidential aspirations—when he got the Facebook Live notice. Brookes had been commenting on the president’s latest tweet that referred to her as “Slippery Sloane” and alleged she was conducting shadow diplomacy with Iran in the wake of the cancellation of the nuclear deal. Brookes had quickly pivoted away and reminded the host of her support for free tuition for all college students, paid for by trimming the defense budget.

  All that melted away, though, as he stared at his smartphone, watching the Facebook Live feed from Samuelson’s Facebook account. He recognized Samuelson’s slightly deformed skull. The unmistakable scar from a mortar attack was a bright red four-inch hash mark just below a tuft of hair not much larger than a Mohawk. Samuelson’s face was pocked with wounds from rock and shrapnel sustained during the attack in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His eyes were in their signature half-lidded stare, nearly catatonic. Eyebrows pinched together, making his normal unibrow look even more authentic. This was a pose that Samuelson could conjure whether he was joking or dead serious.

  Harwood hoped this was some kind of sick joke.

  Thumbs-up, crying face, open-mouthed shock, angry face, and heart emoticons floated across the screen in a steady stream.

  “Don’t do it, man,” Harwood muttered. He quickly fired up his MacBook, clicked onto Samuelson’s page, and enlarged the feed to full screen. He pressed off the feed on his smartphone and dialed Samuelson’s number.

  A few seconds later a phone began playing George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” a specialized ring tone that Samuelson had marked just for the Reaper’s phone calls. There was no doubt this was Samuelson with the barrel under his chin. His eyes narrowed slightly at the sound of the phone, but he didn’t move. His pupils unflinchingly stared into the Facebook Live feed, presumably done so from a smartphone.

  “Pick up, Sammie. Been through too much, man,” Harwood mutte
red. The phone clicked through to voice mail with Samuelson’s deep voice saying, “Send it,” in true spotter parlance.

  “Sammie, come on, man, talk to me,” Harwood said. The voice mail did not play through Samuelson’s smartphone speakers. The computer screen showed Samuelson’s apartment in the background. It was an untidy studio overlooking a windswept valley of green grass and rising, forested hills. A breeze carried debris and traces of smoke. Over Samuelson’s right shoulder was a desk with an assortment of newspapers, magazines, and loose-leaf papers. Beneath them there appeared to be a MacBook of some variety, a silver monochrome edge peeking out from beneath the mess.

  “I’m sorry, Vick,” Samuelson said.

  “What are you sorry about?”

  Harwood practically shouted at the computer screen. He studied Samuelson’s face. The lips moving in slow motion. The high-definition display on the monitor highlighted every scar, every imperfect line, a cut on the lip, the bristles from missing last week’s Ranger haircut.

  “It’s all right in front of you,” Samuelson said. Samuelson’s chin pressed deeper into the muzzle of the weapon.

  “Whatcha watching,” Monisha said, opening the door to Harwood’s spare bedroom turned makeshift office.

  “Get out, now, Monisha!”

  Harwood turned his head. Saw the young teenager he had adopted. His promise to her was to mentor her into college and medical school. She was basically a fourteen-year-old orphan when he had saved her from two men who had connected with her on a prostitution web page.

  “Don’t yell at me, Reaper. I ain’t done nothing wrong,” Monisha shot back.

  Harwood looked at Monisha, her honey-brown skin covered by a gray army running shirt and blue jeans. She wore black canvas PRO-Keds that were fashionably unlaced. Her eyes grew wide as she gazed over his shoulder at the monitor. Brow furrowed, teeth clenched, Monisha shouted, “No!”

  She knew Samuelson as well as anyone in her life. He and Harwood were her role models. Big brothers. All she had.

  Standing to block her view, he turned to look at the screen.

  The shot rang loud in the small bedroom, echoing from the MacBook speakers. Harwood was caught in between Monisha’s horrified stare and the explosion of blood spraying onto Samuelson’s screen.

  Through the pink haze of the Facebook Live feed, Samuelson’s head—what was left of it—hung loosely to the side, blood draining over the ragged edges of his destroyed skull like red wine over a jagged goblet.

  As soon as he could refocus, Harwood heard a noise at the back door. It was the slightest tick of a lockpick set. He removed his Beretta pistol from its holster—he always kept the handgun within five feet of him—and whispered to Monisha, “Get in the closet, now. You know where to go.”

  “I heard it, too,” Monisha said. She had excellent instincts and had proven to be an able assistant and spotter on the range. He had taken Monisha to shoot pistols and rifles so that she would be comfortable with his lifestyle as an expert sniper. Still on active duty, Harwood was required to have a “Family Care Plan” for Monisha in the event he was deployed. He had chosen the parents of Command Sergeant Major Murdoch to care for her, and they had gladly accepted the duty, doting on Monisha from the outset.

  Glass shattered in the hallway as Harwood locked the closet door behind Monisha. She would take the hidden stairway into the basement as they had rehearsed.

  Harwood moved toward the noise, leading with his Beretta. A shadow crossed the floor to his front. Pushing his back against the wall, he heard the intruder snap off two shots. If Harwood had not insulated the house with sheets of metal between the wooden studs and plasterboard, he would be dead or seriously wounded right now. But he had designed their home in Columbus, Georgia, primarily to protect Monisha against the hazards of his life as a renowned army sniper with many enemies.

  Swiping his thumb up on his smartphone, he pressed the Kitchen button on his security system. The camera showed a compact man looking directly at the fiber optic camera. Two more shots and the picture went blank on Harwood’s phone. He was dealing with a professional marksman if not assassin. Harwood’s specialty was as a sniper, earning him the nickname Reaper, for his thirty-three kills in ninety days. A record for the U.S. Army Rangers.

  Still, he was more than competent with the basic handgun of the U.S. Army, the Beretta nine-millimeter pistol. He needed to move though, because he could sense the intruder coming toward him.

  Harwood did a running baseball slide across the kitchen doorway, firing upward from his back as he slid across the opening. The attacker had closed the distance so that they were less than ten feet apart. Using the kitchen island as cover, the man ducked as Harwood laid down suppressive fire. His intent was to give Monisha time to evacuate and draw the attacker away from her.

  Ultimately, he intended to kill the son of a bitch, which would buy them both all the time in the world. Easy fix. No time for that, though. He pushed the images of Samuelson to a compartment in his mind where he stored all the painful memories of his young life. In full combat action mode, Harwood pushed up to one knee, raced through the dining room, dodged the dinner table, and raced headlong into the kitchen.

  The attacker’s back was facing Harwood. He waited until the man heard him, looked in his direction.

  Then the Reaper snapped off three rounds in the center mass of the man’s face. Checking to make sure he was accurate, Harwood’s concern shifted to the potential for backup intruders and ultimately the mess he was going to have to clean up from this guy’s exploded head. He inspected the body for forms of identification or any intelligence. Black pants, black shirt, and black outer tactical vest were all devoid of any helpful information save a small radio connected to a fiber optic earbud stuck in the man’s left ear canal.

  Harwood removed the earbud, wiped off the blood and wax, and stuck it in his ear, listening. For a few seconds static carried through the small device.

  Then: “Zero Five, confirm kill.”

  Zero Five? The term meant nothing to Harwood. He was an active duty Army Ranger sniper. Call signs and nicknames were a staple of his regimen, but he’d only heard “05” as a suffix to a call sign previously—such as “Eagle 05,” which usually indicated the second-in-command. “06” was typically the commander. He removed the small radio from the outer tactical vest and stuffed it into his pocket, immediately focusing outward, away from the growing pool of blood on the kitchen floor.

  “Need code word for cleaners,” the voice said into his ear.

  Deep baritone. Command voice. Like a drill sergeant or captain, someone who was used to barking out orders, making stuff happen. Inflected with the slightest hint of impatience.

  Harwood’s mind raced with options. None awesome. His favorite thought was to somehow lure the cleaners into the house and kill them. Monisha had enough time to get into the safe room, lock the door, and survive. It was like a nuclear bomb shelter in the backyard. There was no way in or out other than a combination lock and heavy gauge metal blast-proof door. Harwood knew that he had enemies, both foreign and domestic, and as Monisha’s surrogate big brother, he had taken the greatest precaution possible. Perhaps extreme, but Harwood had two speeds: on and off. And “on” was 100 mph, always considering the worst thing that could happen.

  Harwood moved to the rear door that had been breached. He had triple locks and had been careless this morning when he had looked outside in the backyard. He should have locked all three when he had returned from his security checks before prepping to take Monisha to school. Scanning the backyard, Harwood saw no visible threats. The yard was a well-manicured one-hundred-foot-by-one-hundred-foot square of St. Augustine grass, thick blades providing a level and smooth carpet all the way to the eight-foot-high fence.

  Perfect fields of fire for him. The only imperfection in the backyard was the imperceptible three-foot-by-three-foot square of sheet metal that led into the safe room. It was covered with the same grass and only Harwood could discer
n it, primarily because he knew it was there. Detecting no threats in the backyard, he moved to the living room, kept low, and took position between the front door and the bay window.

  The street featured the usual traffic of parents driving to work or carpooling to school. A yellow school bus stopped at an intersection a half a block away. Monisha’s bus. The driver looked over his shoulder at Harwood’s house, waited a beat, perhaps expecting Monisha to come sprinting from the door as she had done so many times. After about fifteen seconds, he gave up, and pulled away with one less student than the normal pickup of five.

  As the bus pulled away, Harwood saw a gray sedan, maybe a Ford Taurus, parked on the street. Two men sat in the front seat. The car was aimed away from Harwood’s modest brick rambler built in the Georgia countryside outside of Columbus and Fort Benning.

  Harwood low crawled to the sofa, pulled his SR-25 from beneath the davenport, slid back to the bay window, and used a hand to slowly push open the windowpane, tilting it ninety degrees. He eased the muzzle of the weapon out of the window and lined up behind the scope. Boxwood shrubs were just beneath the window and the barrel of the weapon, masking Harwood’s movement. He flicked on the digital recording device in his scope and laid a steady aim on the two men. They were white, broad-shouldered men, not unlike his dead assailant in the kitchen. Likely accomplices. He had never seen this car or these people on his street.

  “Send it,” Harwood said, pressing the push-to-talk button on the radio.

  From the front seat of the car, two heads turned toward the house. That was enough confirmation for Harwood.

  His best shot was on the passenger. The driver’s head was mostly blocked by the divider between the front and back doors. He leveled the crosshairs. Exhaled slowly. Pulled the trigger.

  The man’s head erupted, kicked backward. As Harwood was moving the rifle to attempt a shot on the driver, the car sped away.