Trapping Zero Read online

  T R A P P I N G Z E R O

  (AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER—BOOK 4)

  J A C K M A R S

  Jack Mars

  Jack Mars is the USA Today bestselling author of the LUKE STONE thriller series, which includes seven books. He is also the author of the new FORGING OF LUKE STONE prequel series, comprising three books (and counting); and of the AGENT ZERO spy thriller series, comprising six books (and counting).

  ANY MEANS NECESSARY (book #1), which has over 800 five star reviews, is available as a free download on Kobo!

  Jack loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.Jackmarsauthor.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!

  Copyright © 2019 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS BY JACK MARS

  LUKE STONE THRILLER SERIES

  ANY MEANS NECESSARY (Book #1)

  OATH OF OFFICE (Book #2)

  SITUATION ROOM (Book #3)

  OPPOSE ANY FOE (Book #4)

  PRESIDENT ELECT (Book #5)

  OUR SACRED HONOR (Book #6)

  HOUSE DIVIDED (Book #7)

  FORGING OF LUKE STONE PREQUEL SERIES

  PRIMARY TARGET (Book #1)

  PRIMARY COMMAND (Book #2)

  PRIMARY THREAT (Book #3)

  AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER SERIES

  AGENT ZERO (Book #1)

  TARGET ZERO (Book #2)

  HUNTING ZERO (Book #3)

  TRAPPING ZERO (Book #4)

  FILE ZERO (Book #5)

  RECALL ZERO (Book #6)

  Agent Zero - Book 3 Summary (recap)

  When his daughters are kidnapped by a shadow from his past, Agent Zero must do anything and everything to get them back—even if it means defying direct orders from the CIA and being disavowed by his own government.

  Agent Zero: Though he successfully killed the assassin Rais and rescued his daughters from the hands of human traffickers, he has been disavowed by the CIA and was last seen being escorted by three agents to an unknown fate.

  Maya and Sara Lawson: After their harrowing ordeal in Eastern Europe and the ensuing rescue by their father, Agent Zero’s teenage daughters are physically and mentally traumatized. Though they are awestruck at his determination to find them, they now realize that he is something more than what he claims to be.

  Kate Lawson: During his final fight with Rais, Agent Zero recalled a memory that his wife did not die of natural causes, but was murdered by a deadly poison. Rais’ last words alleged that her killer was CIA.

  Agent Alan Reidigger: In a letter he wrote to Zero before his death, Reidigger divulged the name of the Swiss neurologist who installed the memory suppressor in Zero’s head—who is also his best possibility of ever restoring his full memory.

  Agent Maria Johansson: Maria revealed that she is working two sides—not only the CIA but also the Ukrainian FIS, though she claims to be manipulating both in the hopes of uncovering a conspiracy about an alleged soon-to-be war.

  Agent John Watson: After being discovered for helping Agent Zero recover his daughters, Watson has been detained by the CIA—along with Maria Johansson.

  Agent Todd Strickland: A young CIA agent and former Army Ranger, Strickland was initially sent after Agent Zero but instead ended up helping him and his daughters, forging a strange friendship in the wake of their incident.

  Deputy Director Shawn Cartwright: It is still unclear whose side he is on, if he has a side. Cartwright helped Zero indirectly, but also disavowed him while on the rampage in Eastern Europe. Zero believes he is simply a diplomat, playing along with whatever side will benefit him.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELEVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  PROLOGUE

  Reid Lawson was exhausted, aching, and anxious.

  But above all else, he was confused.

  Less than twenty-four hours prior, he had succeeded in rescuing his two teenage daughters from the hands of Slovakian traffickers. In the process he had stopped two freight trains, inadvertently destroyed a very expensive prototype helicopter, killed eighteen men and severely injured more than a dozen others.

  Was it eighteen? He had lost count.

  Now he found himself handcuffed to a steel table in a small, windowless detention room, awaiting the news of what his fate would be.

  The CIA had warned him. The deputy directors told him what would happen if he defied their orders and struck out on his own. They were desperate to avoid another rampage like the one that had happened two years earlier. That’s what they called it—a “rampage.” A violent, bloody tear across Europe and the Middle East. This time it had been Eastern Europe, across Croatia and Slovakia and Poland.

  They had warned him, threatened him with what would happen. But Reid saw no other recourse. They were his daughters, his little girls. Now they were safe, and Reid had resigned himself to accept whatever end might be in store for him.

  In addition to the activity of the past several days and a severe lack of sleep, he’d been given painkillers after having his injuries treated. He had sustained a shallow stab wound in his abdomen from his fight with Rais, as well as thorough bruising, some superficial cuts and scrapes, a gash across one bicep where a bullet grazed him, and a mild concussion. Nothing serious enough to keep him from being detained.

  He wasn’t told his destination. He wasn’t told anything at all as three CIA agents, none of which he recognized, silently escorted him from t
he hospital in Poland to an airfield and onto a plane. He was, however, somewhat astonished when he arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia instead of the CIA black site Hell-Six in Morocco.

  A police cruiser had carried him from the airport to agency headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in the unincorporated community of Langley, Virginia. From there he was ushered into the steel-walled detention room on a lower level and handcuffed to a table that was bolted to the floor—all without any explanation whatsoever from anyone.

  Reid didn’t like the way the painkillers made him feel; his mind wasn’t fully alert. But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. Especially not in the uncomfortable position at the steel table, the handcuff chain threaded through a metal loop and tight around both his wrists.

  He’d been sitting in the room for forty-five minutes, wondering just what the hell was going on and why he hadn’t yet been tossed into a hole in the ground, when the door finally swung open.

  Reid stood immediately, or as much as he could while being handcuffed to the table. “How are my girls?” he asked quickly.

  “They’re fine,” said Deputy Director Shawn Cartwright. “Sit.” Cartwright was Reid’s boss—or rather, he had been Agent Zero’s boss, right up until Reid was disavowed for striking out to find his girls. In his mid-forties, Cartwright was relatively young to be a CIA director, though his thick, dark hair had begun to gray slightly. It was surely coincidence that it started right around the same time that Kent Steele had returned from the dead.

  Reid slowly lowered himself back into the seat as Cartwright took the chair across from him and cleared his throat. “Agent Strickland stayed with your daughters until Sara was discharged from the hospital,” the director explained. “They’re on a plane, the three of them, on their way home as we speak.”

  Reid breathed a short-lived sigh of relief—very short-lived, since he knew the proverbial hammer was about to fall.

  The door opened again, and anger spontaneously swelled in Reid’s chest as Deputy Director Ashleigh Riker entered the small room, wearing a gray pencil skirt and matching blazer. Riker was head of Special Operations Group, a faction of Cartwright’s Special Activities Division that handled covert international operations.

  “What’s she doing here?” Reid asked pointedly. His tone was not friendly. Riker, in his book, was not to be trusted.

  She took a seat beside Cartwright and smiled warmly. “I, Mr. Steele, have the distinct pleasure of telling you where you’ll be going now.”

  A knot of dread formed in his stomach. Of course Riker would take pleasure in doling his punishment; her disdain for Agent Zero and his tactics was hardly masked. Reid reminded himself that he had gotten his girls to safety, and he knew this was coming.

  It still didn’t make it any easier. “Okay,” he said calmly. “Then tell me. Where will I be going?”

  “Home,” Riker said simply.

  Reid’s gaze flitted from Riker to Cartwright and back again, unsure he had heard her correctly. “I’m sorry?”

  “Home. You’re going home, Kent.” She pushed something across the table. A small silver key slid over the polished surface to just within his grasp.

  It was a handcuff key. But he didn’t take it. “Why?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say,” Riker shrugged. “The decision came from above our pay grade.”

  Reid scoffed. He was relieved, to say the least, to hear that he wouldn’t be thrown into a miserable pit like H-6, but this didn’t feel right to him. They had threatened him, disavowed him, and even sent two other field agents after him… only to set him loose again? Why?

  The painkillers he’d been given were numbing his thought process; his brain was unable to work out the kinks in what they were telling him. “I don’t understand…”

  “You’ve been away for the last five days,” Cartwright interrupted. “Conducting interviews, researching a history textbook you’re editing. We have names and contact information for several people that can corroborate the story.”

  “The man that committed the atrocities in Eastern Europe was confronted by Agent Strickland in Grodkow,” said Riker. “He was discovered to be a Russian expatriate masquerading as an American in an attempt to cause international strife between us and the Eastern Bloc nations. He drew on a CIA agent and was shot dead.”

  Reid blinked at the flood of false information. He knew what this was; they were giving him a cover story, the same one that would be issued to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world.

  But it couldn’t be that easy. Something was certainly amiss—starting with Riker’s bizarre smile. “I was disavowed,” he said. “I was threatened. I was ignored. I think I’m owed a little bit of an explanation here.”

  “Agent Zero…” Riker began. Then she chuckled slightly. “Sorry, old habit. You’re not an agent; not anymore. Kent, this wasn’t our decision to make. As I said, this comes from higher up. But the truth of the matter is, if we look at the sum and not the parts, that you eliminated an international human trafficking ring that has plagued the CIA and Interpol for six years now.”

  “You took out Rais and, presumably, the last of Amun with him,” Cartwright added.

  “Yes, you killed people,” Riker said. “But every one of them has been confirmed to have been a criminal—some of the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles. As much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree with the decision that you did more good than harm.”

  Reid nodded slowly—not because he agreed with the logic, but because he realized his best course of action at the moment was to stop arguing, accept the pardon, and figure it out later.

  But he still had questions. “What do you mean I’m not an agent anymore?”

  Riker and Cartwright exchanged a glance. “You’re being transferred,” Cartwright told him. “That is, if you accept the job.”

  “The National Resources Division,” Riker chimed in, “is the CIA’s domestic wing. It’s still within the agency, but doesn’t require any field work. You’ll never have to leave the country, or your girls. You’ll recruit assets. Handle debriefs. Meet with diplomats.”

  “Why?” Reid asked.

  “Simply put—we don’t want to lose you,” Cartwright told him. “We’d rather have you onboard in another function than not with us at all.”

  “What about Agent Watson?” Reid asked. Watson had helped him find his girls; he had gathered equipment for him and gotten Reid out of the country when he needed to. As a result, Watson had been caught and detained for it.

  “Watson is on an eight-week medical leave for his shoulder,” Riker said. “I imagine he’ll be back as soon as he’s adequately healed up.”

  Reid raised an eyebrow. “And Maria?” She had helped him as well—even when her orders from the CIA were to apprehend Agent Zero.

  “Johansson is stateside,” said Cartwright. “She’s taking a few days’ respite before reassignment. But she’ll be heading back into the field.”

  Reid had to keep himself from visibly shaking his head. Something was definitely wrong with this—it wasn’t just him being pardoned. It was everyone associated with his latest rampage. But he also had the instinct that told him it wasn’t the time or place to argue about going home.

  There would be time for that later, when his brain wasn’t bogged down with sleep deprivation and painkillers.

  “So… that’s it then?” he asked. “I’m free to go?”

  “Free to go.” Riker smiled again. He didn’t at all like the look of it on her face.

  Cartwright looked at his watch. “Your daughters should be arriving at Dulles in about… two hours or so. There’s a car waiting for you if you want it. You can get yourself cleaned up, changed, and be there to greet them.”

  The two deputy directors rose from their seats and headed for the door.

  “Good to have you back, Zero.” Cartwright winked at him before he left.

  Alone in the room, Reid looked down at the s
ilver handcuff key before him. He glanced up at the cameras mounted in the corners of the room.

  He was going home—but something was very, very wrong about that.

  *

  Reid hurried towards the parking garage at Langley, free of the cuffs and detention room—free of being a field agent. Free of fear of repercussion against those he loved. Free of a dirt hole in the ground at H-6.

  A startling notion struck him as he navigated through the gates and out onto the street. They could have simply thrown him in Hell-Six. They could have at least threatened him with it, held that black cloud of never seeing his family again over his head. But they didn’t.

  Because if they did, I would have every reason to talk, Reid reasoned. There’d be nothing to keep me from spilling everything if I thought I’d be spending the rest of my life in a hole.

  Though it felt like weeks ago, it had only been four days prior that a fragmented memory had returned to him; before the memory suppressor, Kent Steele had gathered intel about a pre-planned war that the US government was designing. He hadn’t told anyone about it, though he did disclose to Maria that he had remembered something that could spell a lot of trouble for a lot of people.

  Her advice had been simple and straightforward: You can’t trust anyone but yourself.

  He didn’t see it earlier, in the detention room with his fate in question and the painkillers addling his brain. But he saw it now. The agency knew that he knew something, but they didn’t know how much he knew—or how much he might remember. He wasn’t even sure how much he truly knew.

  He shook the thought from his head. Now that the questionable outcome of his future had been resolved, all of the tension drained from his shoulders and he found himself fatigued and aching, beneath which brewed a bubbling excitement at the thought of seeing his girls again.

  He had two hours before the girls’ plane landed. Two hours was more than enough time to go home, shower, get changed, and meet them. But he decided to forego all that and went straight to the airport instead.