Assassin Zero

Jonathan Rutledge did not want to get out of bed.

It was, to be fair, a terrific bed. Fit for a king, as well as king-sized—although, he mused to himself in those early morning hours, perhaps it would be more fitting to call it president-sized.

He groaned as he rolled over and instinctively reached for the empty spot beside him. Strange, he thought, how he still stuck to his side of the bed even when Deidre was out of town. He was astounded by how quickly she had taken to her new position; currently she was on a circuit through the Midwest, lobbying for funding of art and music programs in public schools, while he pushed his face further into a down pillow as if it might drown out the sound that he knew was coming any moment.

And with that, the phone at his bedside rang again.

“No,” he told it. It was Thanksgiving Day. The only things on his schedule were to pardon a turkey, pose for some photos with his daughters, and then enjoy a nice, private meal with them. Why were they bothering him at the crack of dawn on a holiday?

A sharp knock at the door startled him. Rutledge sat up, rubbed his eyes, and asked loudly, “Yes?”

“Mr. President.” A female voice floated to him through the thick door of the White House master suite. “It’s Tabby. May I come in?”

Tabitha Halpern, his Chief of Staff. She couldn’t be bringing good news this early, and definitely not coffee.

“If you have to,” he muttered.

“Sir?” She hadn’t heard him.

“Come in, Tabby.”

The door swung open and Halpern entered, dressed smartly in a navy blue pantsuit with a crisp white blouse. She took two brisk steps inside and then paused just as suddenly, casting her gaze at the carpet, seemingly uncomfortable standing over the president while he was still lying in bed in silk pajamas.

“Sir,” she told him, “there’s been an… incident. Your presence is required in the Situation Room.”

Rutledge frowned. “What sort of incident?”

She seemed hesitant to say. “A suspected terror attack in Havana.”

“On Thanksgiving?”

“It occurred late last night, but… technically yes, sir.”

Rutledge shook his head. What sort of deviants planned an attack on a holiday? Unless… “Tabby, does Cuba celebrate Thanksgiving?”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. Is there time for coffee?”

She nodded. “I’ll have some brought up immediately.”

“Great. Tell them I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Tabby turned on a heel and marched out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her and leaving Rutledge grumbling under his breath about the injustice of it all. At long last he swung his bare feet out of the bed and stood, stretching and groaning again and wondering, for what must have been the ten thousandth time, how he had ended up living in the White House.

The technical answer was a simple one. Five weeks earlier Rutledge had been the Speaker of the House—and a damned good one at that, if he could say so himself. He had gained a reputation over his political career as a man who could not be bought, who stuck to his moral code and did not sway from his beliefs.

But then came the news of former President Harris’s involvement with the Russians and their plan to annex Ukraine. With the incontrovertible evidence of an interpreter’s recording, impeachment proceedings went dizzyingly fast. Then, with minutes to midnight before Harris’s definitive ousting, the president threw a hopeful Hail Mary for a reduced sentence by implicating his own VP. Vice President Brown folded like a lawn chair, pleading no contest to having knowledge of Harris’s involvement with Kozlovsky and the Russians.

It happened in the span of a single day. Before Rutledge had even finished reading the transcript of Brown’s testimony, Harris’s impeachment was approved by the Senate, and the VP resigned with a trial pending. For the first time in US history, the third man in line, the Speaker of the House, would take the seat in the Oval Office—Democrat Jonathan Rutledge.

He didn’t want it. He had assumed that leading the House of Representatives would be the pinnacle of his career; he’d held no aspirations to go any higher than that. And he could have stated those four little words that would have made all the difference—“I decline to serve”—but in doing so he would have been letting down his entire party. The President Pro Tempore of the Senate was a Republican from Texas, about as far right on the political spectrum as one could go in the democratic system.

And so Speaker Rutledge became President Rutledge. His next step would have been to nominate a vice president and have Congress vote them in, but it had been four weeks since his inauguration and he hadn’t done so yet, despite mounting pressure and criticism. It was a very careful deliberation to make—and after what the last two administrations had done, there weren’t exactly people lining up around the block for the job. He had someone in mind, the sharp California senator Joanna Barkley, but his time in office thus far had been so tumultuous that it seemed controversy and scrutiny awaited him around every corner.

On any given day, it was enough to want to give up. And he was keenly aware that he could; Rutledge could nominate Barkley as his VP, get the vote of approval from Congress, and then resign, making Barkley the first female president of the United States. He could justify it by the whirlwind of events surrounding his rise to the office. He would be lauded, at least he imagined, for putting a woman in the White House.

It was tempting. Especially when waking to news of terror attacks on Thanksgiving Day.

Rutledge buttoned up a shirt and knotted a blue tie, but decided to forgo a jacket and instead rolled up his sleeves. An aide wheeled in a cart with coffee, sugar, milk, and assorted pastries, but he simply poured himself a mug, black, and carried it with him as two stoic Secret Service agents silently fell in step beside him as he strode toward the Situation Room.

That was just one more thing he had to get used to, the constant accompaniment. Always being watched. Never truly being alone.

The two dark-suited agents followed him down a flight of stairs and along a hall where three more Secret Service agents were posted, each nodding in turn and acknowledging him with a murmur of “Mr. President.” They paused outside a pair of oak double doors, one of the agents taking a post with his hands clasped in front of him while the other opened the door for Rutledge, granting him access into the John F. Kennedy Conference Room, a five-thousand-square-foot center of command and intelligence in the basement of the White House’s West Wing, known more commonly as the Situation Room.

The four people already present stood as he rounded the table to take a seat at its head. To his left was Tabby Halpern, and beside her, Secretary of Defense Colin Kressley. The Secretary of State and Director of National Intelligence were notably absent, having been sent to Geneva to speak to the UN about the ongoing trade war with China and how it might impact European imports. In their stead was CIA Director Edward Shaw, a severe-looking man whom Rutledge had never actually seen smile. And beside him was a blonde woman in her late thirties, professional but admittedly stunning. A glance at her slate-gray eyes lit a glimmer of recognition; Rutledge had met her before, at his inauguration perhaps, but he couldn’t recall her name.

How they all had assembled so quickly, dressed impeccably and so seemingly alert, was beyond him. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as his mother used to say. Rutledge suddenly felt downright slovenly in his rolled shirtsleeves and loosely knotted tie.

“Please, have a seat,” Rutledge said as he lowered himself into a black leather chair. “We want to give this matter the attention it deserves, but there are places we’d all rather be today. Let’s get right into it.”

Tabby nodded to Shaw, who folded his hands atop the table. “Mr. President,” the CIA director began, “at 0100 hours last night, an incident occurred in Havana, Cuba, specifically near the northern harbor shore in an area called the Malecón, a popular tourist spot. In a span of approximately three minutes, more than one hundred people experienced an array of symptoms, ranging from dizziness and nausea to permanent hearing loss, vision loss, and, in one unfortunate case, death.”

Rutledge stared blankly. When Tabby had said a suspected terror attack, he’d assumed a bomb had gone off or someone had opened fire in a public place. What was all this about symptoms and hearing loss? “I’m sorry, Director, I’m not sure I follow.”

“Sir,” said the blonde woman beside him. “Deputy Director Maria Johansson, CIA, Special Operations Group.”

Johansson, right. Rutledge suddenly recalled meeting her, as he had thought, the day of his inauguration.

“What Director Shaw is describing,” she continued, “is indicative of an ultrasonic weapon. This sort of concentration on a limited area in such a finite period of time creates parameters narrow enough for us to assume this was a targeted attack.”

That did little to explain anything to Rutledge. “I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling like the dunce of the room. “Did you say ultrasonic weapon?”

Johansson nodded. “Yes, sir. Ultrasonic weapons are typically used as nonlethal deterrents; most of our Navy’s ships are outfitted with them. Cruise ships use them as defense against pirates. But based on what we know happened in Cuba, what we’re seeing is much larger in scale and more potent than what our military employs.”

Tabby cleared her throat. “The police in Havana collected reports from at least three eyewitnesses who claim to have seen a group of masked men loading a ‘strange object’ onto a boat in the aftermath of the attack.”

Rutledge rubbed his temples. An ultrasonic weapon? It sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. It never ceased to amaze and confound him the creative ways humans dreamed up to hurt and kill each other.

“I assume you don’t believe this is an isolated incident,” Rutledge said.

“We would love to assume so, sir,” said Shaw. “But we simply can’t. That weapon and the people behind it are out there somewhere.”

“And the nature of this attack,” Johansson picked up, “appears random. We can’t discern a motive to target Havana or a tourist destination other than ease of access and escape, which in a case like this generally indicates a testing ground.”

“A testing ground,” Rutledge repeated. He had never served in the military, nor had he ever been employed in intelligence or covert operations, but he was fully aware what the deputy director was suggesting: this was the first attack, and there would be others. “And I suppose I should also assume that some of the victims were American.”

Tabby nodded. “That’s correct, sir. Two suffered permanent blindness. And the lone casualty was a young American woman…” She consulted her notes. “Named Megan Taylor. From Massachusetts.”