LITMIR.BIZ

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I always been this paranoid?

      “Hey.” Maria grabbed him by the shoulder and he spun to face her. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

      Zero stared into her gray eyes, noted the way her blonde hair fell around her shoulders in waves, and the memory of them together whirled through his head again. The feel of her skin. The shape of her hips. The taste of her mouth on his.

      But there was something else there too. He recognized it as a stabbing pang of guilt. Kate hadn’t been killed yet. Did we… did I…?

      He shook the thought from his head. “Like I said. It’s the meds. They’re just really messing with my head. I can’t think straight.”

      “Let me drive you home,” Strickland offered. Agent Todd Strickland was only twenty-seven, but had an impeccable track record as an Army Ranger and had quickly made the transition to the CIA. He still wore a military-style fade cut over a stocky neck and muscled torso, though he was simultaneously gentle and approachable when the situation called for it. Most importantly, he had been a friend in more than one time of need.

      And while Zero recognized that, at the moment he needed to be alone. It felt impossible to think straight with anyone talking to him. “No. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

      He tried to turn again, but Maria reached for his shoulder once more. “Kent—”

      “I said I’m fine!” he snapped.

      Maria did not recoil at his outburst, but narrowed her eyes slightly as her gaze bored into his, searching for some understanding.

      The memory of their tryst came again, involuntarily, and he felt heat rise in his face. We were on an op. Holed up in some Greek hotel. Waiting for instructions. She seduced me. I was weak. Kate was still alive. She never knew…

      “I have to go.” He took a few steps backward to make sure that neither of his fellow agents would attempt to pursue him again. “Don’t follow me.” Then he turned and strode away, leaving them standing there on the White House lawn.

      He had very nearly reached the gates before he felt the presence behind him, heard the shifting of footsteps. He spun quickly. “I told you not to—”

      A short woman with shoulder-length brunette hair stopped in her tracks. She wore a navy blue blazer and matching slacks with heels, and she raised an eyebrow as she regarded Zero curiously. “Agent Zero? My name is Emilia Sanders,” she told him. “Aide to President Pierson.” She held out a white business card with her name and number on it. “He wants to know if you’ve reconsidered his offer.”

      Zero hesitated. Pierson had previously offered him a spot on the National Security Council, which had made him suspicious of the president’s involvement, but it seemed as if the offer was genuine.

      Not that he wanted it. But still he took her card.

      “If you find you need anything at all, Agent Zero, please don’t hesitate to give a call,” Sanders told him. “I’m quite resourceful.”

      “I could use a ride home,” he admitted.

      “Certainly. I’ll get someone for you immediately.” She pulled out a cell phone and made a call while Zero stuffed the business card in his pocket. Pierson’s offer was the furthest thing from his mind. He had no idea how much time, if any, he had in which to act.

      What do I do? He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, as if trying to dislodge an answer.

      726. The number spun quickly through his mind. It was a safe deposit box at a bank in downtown Arlington where he had been keeping records of his investigations—photos, documents, and transcriptions of phone calls from those leading this secret cabal. He had paid for five years upfront on the deposit box so that it wouldn’t go dormant.

      “Right this way, Agent.” The presidential aide, Emilia Sanders, gestured for him to follow as she led him briskly toward a garage and a waiting car. As they walked, Zero thought again of the suspicious looks from General Rigby, from Director Mullen. It was paranoia, nothing more—at least he tried to tell himself that. But if there was even a chance that they knew he was on to them, they would come after him with everything they had. And not just him.

      Zero made himself a mental checklist:

      Get girls safe.

      Retrieve contents of safe deposit box.

      Stop war before it starts.

      All Zero had to do was figure out how to stop a group of the most powerful men in the world, with some of the deepest pockets, who had been planning this event for more than two years, had the backing of almost every government agency the United States had to offer, and had everything to lose.

      Just another day in the life of Agent Zero, he thought sourly.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Aboard the USS Constitution, Persian Gulf

      April 16, 1830 hours

      The furthest thing from Lieutenant Thomas Cohen’s mind was war.

      As he sat at a radar array aboard the USS Constitution, watching the small blips as they meandered lazily across the screen, he was thinking about Melanie, his girlfriend back home in Pensacola. It was just under three weeks to go before he would rotate home. He already had the ring; he’d purchased it a week earlier on a day pass to Qatar. Thomas doubted there was anyone on the ship he hadn’t proudly shown it to yet.

      The sky over the Persian Gulf was clear and sunny, not a single cloud, but Thomas wouldn’t get to enjoy it, tucked away in a corner of the bridge as he was, the thick armored port windows obscured by the radar console. He couldn’t help but feel mildly jealous of the ensign out on the deck that he communicated with by radio, the younger man holding a line-of-sight visual on the ships that, to Thomas, were just blips on the screen.

      Sixty billion dollars, he thought with grim amusement. That’s how much the United States spent annually to keep a presence in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Oman. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet called Bahrain its headquarters, and was comprised of several task forces with specific patrol routes along the coasts of North Africa and the Middle East. The Constitution, a destroyer-class ship, was part of Combined Task Force 152, which patrolled the Persian Gulf from the northern end all the way to the Strait of Hormuz, between Oman and Iran.

      Thomas’s friends back home thought it was so cool that he worked on a US Navy destroyer. He let them believe that. But the reality was simply a strange, if not somewhat boring and repetitive, existence. He sat upon a modern marvel of engineering, outfitted with the highest of tech and armed with enough weaponry to devastate half a city, yet their entire purpose basically boiled down to what Thomas was doing at the very moment—watching blips on a radar screen. All that firepower and money and men amounted to a glorified what-if situation.

      That wasn’t to say there was never any excitement. Thomas and the other guys who had been around for a year or longer got their kicks from watching how nervous the FNGs would get, the newcomers, the first time they heard that the Iranians were going to fire on them. It didn’t happen every day, but it was frequent enough. Iran and Iraq were dangerous territories, and they had to at least keep up appearances, Thomas supposed. Every now and then the Constitution would get a threat from the Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s maritime force in the Persian Gulf. The ships would sail a little close for comfort, and sometimes—on the particularly exciting days—they’d fire off a few rockets. Usually they fired in the complete opposite direction of any US ships. Posturing, Thomas thought. But the FNGs would just about piss themselves over it, and they’d be the butt of the joke for a few weeks after.

      The trio of blips on the screen moved ever closer to their location, approaching from the northeast. “Gilbert,” said Thomas into the radio, “how are we looking up there?”

      “Oh, it’s a beautiful afternoon. About seventy-four and sunny,” Ensign Gilbert said through the radio, doing his

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