Zero Day Read online

  Soon. Soon enough she would be ready to emerge. She could feel the tight shell beginning to crack. It wouldn’t be long before she would slide out of that shell and take her final form.

  Operation SAFEGUARD, Undisclosed Location, Top Secret

  Lieutenant Colonel Lou Jenks checked his watch. He’d always wanted to do something where he got to synchronize watches, but it seemed significantly less exciting now that he was actually doing it. The truth was that he felt conflicted.

  About whose side he was on, there was no question. He’d done everything that the United States Air Force had asked of him. He’d gone from being a somewhat tubby towheaded teenager to a chiseled man who could give and follow orders. Even though he’d never seen actual combat, before his posting to the bunker, he had actually done the job that was his cover story: providing maintenance to aircraft used during SpecOps activities in hot zones, and he’d been close enough to action that he’d been able to hear it. When he’d been ordered to Operation SAFEGUARD, he obliged without a single complaint, even though it meant being sealed up underground six weeks out of every eight, bored out of his skull. And when the president ordered the use of nuclear weapons, he did what he’d been trained to do, running through his checklists, entering the codes Hubbard read to him.

  His whole life he’d wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to be a badass, flying a fighter jet and taking down the bad guys in cinematographic dogfights. By the time he was ten, however, he needed glasses, so he settled on the next best thing: join the air force and work on those fighter jets. His dad wanted him to go into the army, like he had, but his pops never made it sound all that glamorous. Lou wasn’t particularly interested in crawling through mud and taking long marches with heavy packs on his back. Sure, there’d been some of that early on, but mostly it had worked out. Better than worked out, because once he was in, he realized that all he wanted to do was stay in the air force. He was a lifer through and through, and he studied and jumped through all the hoops to make officer. And from there it was a hop, skip, and a bunch more hoop jumps until Operation SAFEGUARD greased the skids for a few more promotions. His whole life was air force, air force, air force. He gave them everything, and in return they’d given everything back.

  That’s why it hurt so much when the president betrayed him.

  He knew it wasn’t personal, that Stephanie Pilgrim wasn’t sitting in the White House scheming about how to stab Lou in the back, but it felt that way. Denver was gone. His parents were gone. His friends, his girlfriend. The city of his birth was a dead zone. And all because he’d done his job the way he’d been trained, because he’d followed orders and allowed the president to use nuclear weapons on domestic soil.

  He kept telling himself that if it meant they’d won, if it meant the end of those spiders, then, yes, he would have done it again. He would have sacrificed his own life. But they hadn’t won. The spiders were still out there, and the entire coup had been over that basic fact: the president had started a job but wouldn’t finish it. She’d sacrificed Denver for no reason.

  A few of the other operators had tried arguing with Yoats, but the brigadier general wasn’t having any of it. He’d given his orders. They were under the command of President Pilgrim. It didn’t matter to Yoats that at this point most of the armed forces had swung around to Lou’s way of thinking. One of the operators, Gomez, couldn’t let it go, and Yoats had ordered him confined to the brig, which, since they didn’t have a brig, was actually a storage room with a lock.

  Still, Lou was conflicted, because even though he knew which side he was on, Yoats wasn’t the only person who was dead set against Broussard’s coup. Hubbard, who had been on the desk with Lou when the strike orders came in, was also adamantly pro-president. They were friends, of a sort, and Hubbard had confided that he was worried.

  “Look man, we both know that Yoats is right about sticking by the president,” Hubbard said, and Lou worked very hard to make sure he didn’t give anything away. They were in the back corner of the dining hall, lingering over the remains of their breakfast. Hubbard was a tea drinker, but Lou had made himself a soy latte in the fancy machine by the beverage station.

  “You join up, the first thing you do is swear an oath,” Hubbard continued. “We take our orders from our commanding officers, they take their orders from theirs, and it goes all the way up. I know that not everybody loves having a chick as the commander in chief, but she’s got the job. Chain of command, you know? You’ve got to respect that or what do you have?” Hubbard snagged the last nub of the powdered donut on his plate and threw it in his mouth. He chewed aggressively, swallowed, and then leaned toward Lou, clearly worried about being overheard even though there was nobody else left in the dining hall.

  “The thing is, even if you and I know what’s what, I don’t think everybody sees it the way Yoats does. I mean, obviously Gomez, but he’s got an excuse.”

  Lou took a sip of his latte, thinking of poor Gomez. He was the youngest operator and originally from Los Angeles. He had it worse than anybody. First spiders and then nukes. Crap.

  “It’s not just him, though. There are the guys who are obvious about disagreeing. Chappie and McNair are walking around like dogs looking for a fight. But that’s not who I’m worried about. I think something’s going on, Lou. You would have asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have said never in a million years would any of the men in the bunker disobey a direct order from Yoats; but if you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago, I also would have said that never in a million years would there be a coup in the United States.”

  “What are you saying?” Lou was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.

  “I’m just saying keep your eyes and ears open. Okay? And stick with me. If things go to hell,” Hubbard said, not able to stop himself from smiling, “you’ve got a black belt at your service.”

  It left Lou feeling crappy. He didn’t care about Yoats. The guy had been a good commander, but it was the cost of doing business. Hubbard, though . . .

  He looked at his watch again.

  It was time.

  He knocked on Hubbard’s door.

  “Sec!”

  After more like thirty seconds, Hubbard opened up. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Just got out of the shower.”

  “Oh, ah, yeah. Bad timing, I guess. I was going to ask if you’d maybe come to the gym with me. I was thinking about what you said earlier.” Lou lowered his voice. “You know, about maybe some guys thinking about something, and I thought you could maybe show me a few moves, just in case. Work up a little of that jujitsu.”

  It was like waving bacon in front of a dog. Lou had barely finished speaking before Hubbard was bouncing down the hallway toward the gym.

  The walk took maybe forty seconds, and the whole time Lou was looking at his watch. He’d been afraid that he was going to be too late getting Hubbard in the gym, but the guy was so eager to help that they were thirty seconds early.

  Hubbard entered the close-quarters-combat room ahead of him.

  The room was maybe twenty by twenty and covered in wrestling mats. It had the odd, funky sweat-sock odor that came from men trying to pulverize other men, and suddenly Lou had a visceral remembrance of the way Hubbard had embarrassed him the one time they’d sparred. It made what came next a little easier. He glanced one more time at his watch. Ten seconds.

  “Hey, Richard?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s this scar from?” He pointed toward Hubbard’s head with his left hand while reaching behind his back and under his shirt with his right.

  “What scar?”

  “This one,” he said. He whipped the pistol up, planning to put one right in Hubbard’s eye. He didn’t know whether he’d tried to be too cute or he was a second later than his brothers-in-arms and Hubbard heard a gun going off somewhere else in the bunker, but Hubbard skipped backward.

  The bastard was fast. Lou had to give him that. But he wasn’t faster than a bullet. It was enough to
mess up his aim, though, and the shot tore through Hubbard’s throat, right next to his Adam’s apple. Crazily, Hubbard stayed on his feet. He was gushing blood even as he had a hand clamped over the wound, but he looked for all the world like he was—

  Crap!

  Suddenly, Lou was on the ground, Hubbard on top of him, spitting blood and just whaling on him with one hand and pinning down the wrist holding the gun with the other. And then, even as the blood came running out of Hubbard’s throat like a fountain, Hubbard forced Lou’s hand around so the gun was pointing at Lou’s face, wrapped his fingers around Lou’s fingers, and pulled the—

  White House Manhattan, New York, New York

  Manny kept looking at the dog. Why on earth was there a dog in here? And who were the woman and the man who came with the dog? They weren’t scientists, but they seemed to be affiliated with Melanie and her small group of men and women who were scientists. Whatever, he thought. Not really where his focus should be, particularly when Melanie was promising a “game changer.”

  They were in the room they were calling the Oval Office despite being neither oval nor in the White House. Everybody was doing their best to inject some sense of normalcy into a situation that was nothing short of surreal. When everything was turned upside down, you had to look somewhere to keep your balance.

  Not surprisingly, since it was the president’s office, even if hopefully a temporary one, it was the largest office in the building. The desk was an ancient rosewood beast that would have worked as a banquet table in a pinch, and there was a sitting area with two heavy blue chesterfields plus a settee and a pair of chairs upholstered in a floral fabric that Manny thought was absurdly ugly, particularly given how tastefully the rest of the office had been decorated. While it wasn’t the real Oval Office, it had the same sort of feel. Regal, serious, and authoritative, yet still a place where business could be done. Though right now it was crowded. The room was big enough that it could comfortably fit perhaps fifteen people, but they had at least double that number in the room.

  Aside from Melanie and the other scientists and the mysterious woman and man with the dog, Billy Cannon was there with several other uniforms, plus a mix of aides, high-level members of the government, including the director of the National Cyber Security Division, the unfortunately named Bertha Biggins, and the president’s science advisor, Dr. Hickson Churley, who was, in Manny’s opinion, a buffoon. As he looked around the room, he was stabbed with a sudden sense of sadness as he realized who was missing: Alexandra Harris. He’d grown to appreciate Alex’s presence. As his father would have put it, Alex could be a crusty old broad at times, but she was at the top of her game, and he often thought that she’d been born a generation too soon to be truly appreciated. Goddamned Ben Broussard. When all of this was over . . .

  Manny was sitting next to Steph on one of the chesterfields, and he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I still think you should go ahead and give the order. Activate the Matthew 5:45 protocol now. We’ve got a ticking clock here with Broussard, and—”

  “Dammit, Manny,” she hissed. “I know. And you know that once I go down that road there’s no going back. Our nuclear weapons won’t be of any more use to us than a bag full of rocks. I want to reserve the right to change my mind and use them for as long as possible. That’s my decision, Manny.”

  Melanie came to stand in front of the room, the desk behind her, waiting to catch Steph’s eye. Manny gave her a quick shake of his head and held up a finger to indicate he needed a second. “If you wait too long, it won’t be your decision. It will be Broussard’s.”

  Steph glared at him in anger. It was nothing he hadn’t faced before. He didn’t like it, but he knew that one of the things she most valued in him when it came to politics was that he had never been a yes-man. She let out a loud huff, then pursed her lips. “Fine. Let’s listen to what Melanie has to say, and after we’re done, we can revisit this. We’ll take stock of where we are on Broussard’s progress breaking down the firewalls.”

  Manny figured that was as good as he was going to get, so he signaled to Melanie that she could start. The room stilled as she began to speak.

  “You should all have access to the slide deck on your tablets. Please go to slide one. You’ll see a picture of a first-wave Hell Spider next to one of the second-wave Hell Spiders. First wave is all black, while the second wave has red stripes.”

  They both had tablets, but Steph shifted on the chesterfield, leaned over, and whispered “Hell Spiders?” out of the corner of her mouth. It was quiet, but Melanie heard.

  “Sorry. Yeah, we’re calling them Hell Spiders.” Manny saw Melanie glance over at Julie and then back to the president. “Seemed like a fitting name, and we needed to call them something.” She continued: “If you swipe to slide two, you’ll see those two spiders as well as the third kind, which we are calling queens. So you’ve got first-wave, second-wave, and queen Hell Spiders. Please note that slide two is to scale.”

  Manny heard several people gasping. He’d seen the pictures already and was still wildly unsettled, so he knew how startling it was to see how big the queens were for the first time.

  “Obviously, yes, this is way outside the sphere of what we are used to. The largest known spider before these events is about the size of a dinner plate. That’s going by the legs, not the tagmata, which is— Sorry. I’ll try not to slip into scientist-speak. The body is smaller—say, the size of, uh, a pear or something. When we look at the first-wave and second-wave Hell Spiders, they’re quite large, but nothing that is beyond the scope of what we would expect in the natural world. The queens, however, are a different matter.”

  Across the room from Manny, Dr. Churley was shaking his head in obvious dissent. Before the man had even spoken, Manny found himself annoyed. The president’s science advisor was new to the post. He’d come on board only the week before the spiders had emerged, a replacement for Dr. Pihu Agnihotri, who had resigned after she’d been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. Dr. Agnihotri had been a slam-dunk pick. She was brilliant and personable, plus she was a huge political win on both sides of the aisle. Manny could think of maybe only four or five times in his entire career when a decision had made everybody happy in the way that appointing Dr. Agnihotri had. Unfortunately, Dr. Churley was a win only in the politics department. He had a CV that looked impressive but was one of those compromise picks that Manny was willing to allow because it gave him and the president leverage on another front. It had been such a recent appointment that his interactions with Churley had been limited, but from the little he’d seen of the man so far, Manny would have been happy to watch the smug doctor get dropped out of a helicopter from a great height. Frankly, that was one of the reasons Churley hadn’t been called on to consult since this began. Manny didn’t actually know how the doctor had even gotten himself into this room.

  “Are you really sure you’ve got the scale correct on this?” Churley said. “It’s inconceivable that a spider of this size—”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  Although Manny wanted Melanie to just cut to the chase, there was a part of him that thrilled at watching her cut Churley off instead.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Churley continued, as if he somehow had inside information. “There’s simply a physical limit to how big spiders can get. Proportionally, they just keep adding weight, so at some point they’d be immobile. It’s really inconceivable that—”

  “Churley!”

  Manny actually jumped. He hadn’t expected the president to shout at the man, and—given the proximity of Steph’s mouth to his ear—it startled him.

  “I’m just saying that, with all due respect to Dr. Guyer, it’s inconceivable that a spider of that size could—”

  The president cut him off again. “Stop talking. I would like to hear what Melanie has to say.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up.” She said it firmly and coldly, and Churley’s mouth snapped shut. She turned to Mel
anie expectantly.

  Melanie considered for a second. “There are a lot of things we just don’t know or understand, but we’ve got good data here.”

  Churley couldn’t help himself. “It’s just inconceivable—”

  “Enough!”

  This time Manny was ready for Steph’s outburst, but he was still surprised that she leapt to her feet and pointed at the man. “You. Get the hell out of this room. In fact, get the hell out of my life. If I see you again, I’ll have you shot.”

  Churley stood frozen for a second, then carefully smoothed down the front of his shirt and his tie, turned on his heel, and walked out of the room. The door shut with a heavy click, and the room was dead quiet for a second.

  Melanie’s eyes were so wide that she looked to Manny like a deer caught in the headlights. She cleared her throat but didn’t say anything. Steph sat back down on the couch next to Manny, and he shifted and said sotto voce, “You aren’t really going to have him shot, are you?”

  That was enough to get a polite snicker from Steph and break the tension in the room. Melanie continued speaking.

  “Okay, so we’re on slide two still. And I was saying, this is to scale. Apropos of . . . Honestly, I have no idea who that guy was, but apropos of Captain Inconceivable, we have never seen spiders the size of the Hell Spider queens, but it’s not without precedent. At different times in the earth’s history, there have been outsized creatures. There are the obvious examples like during the Cretaceous period, when we had T. rexes and the Saltasaurus and other jumbo dinosaurs. And at the end of the last ice age there were animals all over the world that were huge. There’s a book called The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, and she called it the ‘too big to quail’ strategy. There was supposedly a beaver in North America that was the size of a grizzly bear. And then, about thirteen thousand years ago, they all seemed to die out.”

  Steph leaned forward. “The spiders?”

  Melanie wobbled the hand that wasn’t holding the tablet. “Don’t know. I don’t think so. Most scientists seem to think the megafauna extinction was caused by the spread of humans. But the point is, we think the Hell Spiders are on some sort of extreme cycle of hatching and hibernation. I was fortunate enough to be able to examine an egg sac immediately prior to the emergence of the first wave. It was dug up during archaeological work on the Nazca Lines in Peru, and it was buried with items that were dated to about ten thousand years ago. So right now our best guess is that the cycle for hatching is spread out in the same way that certain kinds of cicadas go underground for thirteen or seventeen years. It makes sense. It explains why there’s no written record of the Hell Spiders, why the hatching came as a complete surprise.”