Threat Zero Read online

  One of the young Hispanic men held a cell phone to his ear as Ravenswood walked down the street. He felt the eyes peering at him from behind the shuttered blinds. He’d been here before, a few times, only when he needed something unsavory done.

  The porch light on the next house flickered twice. That was the signal to walk two houses beyond and hook into a small gravel alley behind the second house. There was a detached brick garage that had a recently whitewashed one-car garage door. On the side of the structure was a white door that was cracked partially open.

  Ravenswood approached, feeling the two men close in behind him, ninjas quietly following. He rapped lightly on the door and someone pulled it open. The two men behind him closed quickly. He stepped inside and was staring at five hardened MS-13 gang members, tattoos crawling all over their faces, necks, arms, and chests. A couple bared evil grins, while two men in the back stood stone-faced with their arms crossed. One was seated and sucking on a giant bong.

  Exactly what he needed: to be in a room full of stoned stone-cold killers from one of MS-13’s most hardened clicas.

  “Dinero,” said the man with the giant MS-13 stamped on his forehead. He was taller than the others and seemed to be the alpha among alphas.

  Ravenswood retrieved ten thousand dollars, knowing this was only the opening bid.

  He felt the air moving behind him when an arm circled his neck and placed him in a vise-grip choke hold. The move was not unexpected, so he remained loose. He had intentionally brought an older burned military Beretta pistol, knowing it would be taken in the entry. There was no avoiding the meet. MS-13 wanted their money delivered in person. There was a reasonable probability you wouldn’t walk out alive if you didn’t bring enough cash. Ravenswood knew the game was typically about three pat downs. He had forty thousand dollars total dispersed amongst his two pants pockets, his two inner coat pockets, and his hand.

  Two men approached, one smiling and showing that his lips and inner gums had been tattooed. He was missing a few teeth and had gold caps on his incisors.

  He took the money and laughed.

  “Diez mil? Brodda’, wat you tinking? Las’ jobe was treinta mil.”

  “Sí,” Ravenswood said. “This is an easier job.”

  They expected some type of negotiation, so he gave it to them. It was all part of the process. A pair of hands from behind wrenched the pistol from his hip holster and held it to his head. The man whispered, “Muthafuka” in his ear. They were swarming him like maggots, hands and stale, nasty breath pouring over him. Spanish and broken English words tumbled over one another into a low crowd noise. Soon, they had all fifty thousand dollars and his pistol. He had left his wallet at home and taped his Metro card on the inside of his sport coat.

  “Muy bien,” the tall man said. “Come.”

  He walked past the man sitting on the natty sofa and still hitting the bong. The tall man walked him from the living room into one of the bedrooms that had been converted to an office. A large, shirtless man with ripped muscles sat with his arms folded in front of a gray metal desk with a shiny new MacBook. The man had full tat sleeves, but his chest was tattoo-free save two hearts with arrows on each pectoral, one that read PADRE and the other MADRE. In the corner of the room were three AR-15s and two M4s with silencers, all most likely stolen military equipment.

  “Hector makes the call,” the tall man said in decent English.

  “Forty thousand?” Hector said, arms crossed, muscles pushing on muscles.

  “Simple job,” Ravenswood said.

  “No such thing,” Hector countered. “For thirty we took care of the IT guy. I watch the news. Follow certain … clients … on Twitter. Your girl is in trouble.”

  The last thing Ravenswood expected was that Hector was a social media expert, but he didn’t know why he suspected he wasn’t. Everyone’s information was so public today it only made sense for a team of professional assassins to monitor all of the outlets, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

  “No trouble,” Ravenswood said.

  Hector smiled. “Then why are you here, my friend? For the second time in less than two weeks.”

  He paused, could feel himself start to sweat a bit, which was not a good thing to do in front of these ruthless killers.

  “Another business transaction,” Ravenswood said.

  “Tell me.”

  Ravenswood laid out the target and what he wanted done to the man.

  “Suicide is not our thing. We are more … brutal,” Hector said.

  “We need suicide,” Ravenswood said, as if ordering from a menu.

  “Then this forty thousand is a down payment and we get another forty when we do the job.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ravenswood said.

  “What is ridiculous is that you think you can dump your dirty laundry here with us, have us do a flawless job, and you never follow up with a bonus or tip. So, we will do your job and then you will, within twenty-four hours, bring another forty thousand to this exact location. Or we can take you to the other room.”

  One of the MS-13 teams had shown him “the other room” when he was there two weeks ago. Nooses hung from a steel pipe. Black bloodstains inked the floor and walls. It was a torture and murder room, no question.

  “I think that’s fair,” Ravenswood said.

  “We will take care of this guy,” Hector said. “And then you will pay us the other half. If not?” He shrugged and looked through the open door at the closed door across the hallway. “We can’t promise a quick death, but we can promise death eventually.”

  Ravenswood felt a tingle crawl up his spine, like a spider.

  “Deal,” he said. “Twenty-four hours.”

  Hector nodded.

  “We never discussed a rush job. So, it will be an even one hundred thousand.”

  Ravenswood nodded. He knew he wasn’t getting out of there alive if he argued. That was the risk in doing business with MS-13. They were brutal, which was also the reward.

  “Of course. And there may be another opportunity soon.”

  Hector smiled as the tall man escorted him out.

  As he stepped onto the gravel alley, one of the gangbangers tossed his pistol. It landed with a scraping noise.

  “Piece of shit,” he said.

  Ravenswood picked up his pistol and retraced his steps to the Metro. His burner phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a text from the MS-13 house.

  This guy next?

  It was a picture of Vick Harwood, the Reaper. How did they know? More than a simple gang, less than the mafia, MS-13 had evidently learned the value of mining intelligence. It was more than a simple question. The text was a statement. We are inside your head. We know what you are thinking. You have every reason to fear us. We can find you.

  He stared at Harwood’s face and texted in return, Yes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Harwood awoke when the plane landed at Dulles International Airport, thirty miles west of Washington, D.C., in the Virginia countryside near midnight of the same day they had taken off from Baku.

  Hinojosa was awake, holding her smartphone, which was buzzing and chiming.

  “Holy shit,” she said.

  He rubbed his eyes. “What?”

  “This Twitter guy has posted this entire theory about what happened at Camp David and it’s so real.”

  “You’re on Twitter?”

  “I mean, everybody has to be nowadays. It’s how Smart communicates. Pole-vaults over all the media and just puts it out there.”

  “Makes sense. So, what’s this dude’s theory?”

  “Basically, that former Senator Brookes from Virginia is behind it. That she needed Carly killed because she found out something about her. He mentions a missing laptop and connects it to an IT guy who was killed.”

  Harwood thought about the MacBook. He had not mentioned that to anyone other than Bronson and Hinojosa, both with the FBI.

  “Killing someone is no simple thing,” Harwood said.

&n
bsp; “Unless you have someone else do it for you,” Hinojosa countered.

  “I get that, but still. Twelve family members and another ten Secret Service agents killed in that ambush. That’s a terrorist attack, not a hit. And the lack of morals that would come with that. Who would kill that many people just to protect themselves?”

  Hinojosa looked at him. The plane stopped outside the Arco hangar.

  “You’re cute, Vick. I like your innocence. You’re a killing machine, but you kill in the name of righteousness. You’ve operated at the soldier level. I’ve operated at the political level. Two different animals. These people will do anything to save themselves and preserve their power. It’s a drug. And they kill for it.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Harwood felt a rush, as if the escape from Iran and Baku were back on. Perhaps it was? He didn’t know what to expect now that they were on U.S. soil. A U.S. government–sanctioned team of assassins was trying to kill him and Hinojosa. They wanted him dead because he knew too much about the operations in Crimea and Iran, he presumed. And they wanted Hinojosa dead because she was Samuelson’s sister. He hadn’t actually seen any proof that she was related to Samuelson, but he had taken her at face value given the intensity of everything else that had taken place. They had been chased hard by Stone and Weathers. As he had slept and drifted in and out of dreams, he found himself thinking about Samuelson and why he might have been framed. If what Hinojosa said was true, that Sammie and Carly were an item, then it was possible she had told him her secrets, possibly even invited him to the outing at Camp David that day. Harwood remembered that Samuelson had been excited during their last few phone calls, as if life was finally looking up for him.

  But why make him the shooter? It made no sense. ISIS was proud to take credit for their terrorist attacks and they had yet to do so regarding the Camp David Ambush. He remembered the number of people who genuinely hated the current president and those who also truly admired the man. What percentage of those who hated him would actually slaughter family members of the President’s cabinet? It was the work of a terrorist, for sure, but foreign or domestic?

  The names that had been given to them produced no further leads. Was the intelligence community following up and fleshing out the details? He’d been on assignment practically since the beginning and without an opportunity to analyze anything about the original attack that put everything in motion.

  The facts as he knew them were that Stone and Weathers dumped him in Iran, presumably leaving him behind to die and as evidence of American involvement. Their pursuit confirmed that he wasn’t supposed to make it back alive to the United States. A second bothersome fact was the additional person at the Perza compound in Iran, a man who looked exactly like Basier Perza, Laleh’s twin, and the Iranian terrorist that the FBI claimed was involved in the Camp David Ambush. There was very little chance he had conducted the raid at Camp David and then returned that rapidly to his family compound. What did that say about the accuracy of the reports on the shooters? Or their mission, for that matter? Lastly, he knew for certain that Samuelson had a MacBook in the Facebook Live suicide and that MacBook was missing when he arrived on the scene.

  What did all of this mean? He wasn’t sure but knew that he needed answers. His life was in jeopardy, and by extension, he guessed, so was Monisha’s. If these people were willing to randomly kill family members at Camp David, they would come back to his home in Columbus, Georgia. While Command Sergeant Major Murdoch and his family were tough, they couldn’t be on guard twenty-four hours a day. He would call Monisha and Murdoch in the morning.

  He knew that clearing Samuelson was the only path to the truth, which would, as the saying went, potentially set him free. Rarely one to think about politics, Harwood considered the ramifications of the political conflict raging in the country today. Polar extremes in a struggle for the ideological identity of the nation. As a black man he had his own struggles and views but kept them mostly to himself. It was his vote and nobody’s business who he supported. Everything being so public today, there was an expectation that you brand yourself as either left or right. Liberal or conservative. As a soldier, he again had his own perspective on American foreign policy. He didn’t like it when a commander in chief announced timelines and troop deployments. He believed President Smart was wise not to disclose numbers of deploying troops and where they were going to fight.

  All of that said, he was a patriot. He loved the United States and all that it stood for. He knew that some had globalist agendas, which meant erasing the boundaries and watering down the liberties that every serviceman and -woman fought hard for. Still, he didn’t believe that framing Samuelson had anything to do with politics, per se. Samuelson had information and someone determined he needed to die. That someone could either outright kill Samuelson or get creative and use him for a purpose beyond just eliminating a threat.

  Who would want that done and why?

  That was his starting point.

  Turning to Hinojosa, he said, “Find an address on this Twitter guy and let’s head there first.”

  “Already got it. He lives in southeast D.C. near the baseball stadium. Registered to Maximus Anon, LLC,” she said. “The trick is going to be getting out of here.”

  “A company?” Harwood asked.

  “We will find out.”

  Blue lights were flashing in the distance, racing their way. The ramp opened and Harwood slung his rucksack over his shoulder. The Arco pilots and steward seemed oblivious to their status or predicament, which was fine with Harwood.

  He raced down the steps and saw the Signature Terminal, knowing it was the private jet facility he’d landed at just a few days ago.

  “I’ve got an Uber coming in three minutes,” Hinojosa said.

  “Uber? You’re broadcasting where we are. Your credit card is lighting up. The FBI GPS trackers are pinging. And they’re alerting the cops that we are here by using some bullshit narrative.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that. You slept, I couldn’t.”

  They were walking toward the Signature VIP door when a black sedan pulled up in the parking lot on the opposite side of the gate. A G550 Gulfstream was taxiing up to the left of the Airbus A300. The police lights were still a few minutes away, the sirens wailing. He had no idea if the police were coming for them or if it was some random act. Harwood led Hinojosa into the private jet terminal and quickly escorted her out the front into the parking lot.

  “Follow me,” he said. They approached the Town Car from the rear. He heard a snick as the driver unlocked the doors and stepped outside. He was an older black gentleman wearing a black suit and white shirt. He noticed Harwood and Hinojosa and squinted.

  “Who’s your principal?” Harwood asked, stepping up to the man quickly.

  “Right this way, sir.”

  “What?” Hinojosa asked.

  “You’re not the only one with connections,” Harwood said. “Murdoch did this. Our driver is actually an infantryman from the Old Guard at Fort Myer near the Pentagon.”

  They were in the Town Car and sliding through the gate, hooking a series of lefts and rights that put them on the Dulles Toll Road toward Washington, D.C. The police lights passed them coming into the airport traffic network as they were leaving it. The car seats were black leather. A smoky divider separating them from the driver lowered.

  “I’m Jonesy,” the driver said. “Murdoch calls, Jonesy delivers. No questions. I imagine you’re somebody to him, which makes you somebody to me. Where we going?”

  “Thanks, Jonesy,” Harwood said. “Nationals baseball stadium will be just fine.”

  The driver’s face crinkled with a smile.

  “Roger that.”

  The sliding glass window rose and gave Harwood and Hinojosa some privacy to talk and plan.

  “Tell me about this Twitter guy,” Harwood said.

  “Not much to know. Twitter allows you to have fake accounts, fake names, whatever. He goes b
y Maximus Anon. Some people get doxed—outed—but the good ones are able to stay one step ahead of the pursuers trying to embarrass people, silence them, etc.”

  “Doxed?”

  “Internet slang for someone uncovering an alias and exposing them. Usually relates to government bureaucrats just being vocal on Twitter or maybe some other forum when some asshole comes along and uncovers their identity and informs the boss or supervisor. People have been fired, especially if you vocally support the current president.”

  “That’s messed up. What happened to the First Amendment?”

  Hinojosa chuckled. “Yeah, well, its application seems episodic.”

  “Is this guy friend or foe?” Harwood was trying to steer the conversation toward something he could more readily understand. He wasn’t on social media other than to post the occasional Instagram photo of him and Monisha, mainly because she wanted it out there that she was related to “the Reaper.”

  “We don’t know, but it’s more likely that he’s neutral. A lot of these guys are trying to protect the Constitution. There has been considerable erosion of privacy rights, as Operation Crossfire Hurricane showed us. So there’s this loose-knit cabal of researchers with hidden identities. Some parody an elected official. Some are more serious or ominous. Some, like Maximus Anon, are brazen.”

  “So more than likely, he’ll be neutral,” Harwood said.

  “More than likely, but he may be pissed that we’ve found his house. If he doesn’t want his true identity uncovered, then we can imagine how he’ll feel about us showing up on his doorstep.”

  “If it’s his doorstep.”

  “There’s that,” Hinojosa agreed.

  Forty-five minutes later it was nearly 2 A.M. and the streets of Southeast, Washington, D.C., were quiet, but not empty. The shaded separator came down and Jonesy said, “Be safe.”

  “Roger that. You, too.”

  Jonesy nodded and his right hand flicked out with a card.

  “Ever need a favor in this area, give me a call. I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing, but Murdoch saved my life in Iraq so I’ll be there when he or anyone he supports needs me.”