Phantom zero, p.1
Phantom Zero, page 1
P H A N T O M Z E R O
(AN AGENT ZERO SPY THRILLER—BOOK 19)
J A C K M A R S
Jack Mars
USA Today and #1 bestselling author Jack Mars is the author of numerous thriller series, including Luke Stone, Troy Stark, Spy Game, and Jake Mercer series. Jack’s latest releases are the Lara King, Grant Valor, Axel Strike, and Cole Hunter series.
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Copyright © 2026 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.
Jacket image Copyright Freezeman Studio, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
SERIES BY JACK MARS
COLE HUNTER
AXEL STRIKE
GRANT VALOR
LARA KING
TYLER WOLF
JAKE MERCER
THE SPY GAME
TROY STARK
LUKE STONE
THE FORGING OF LUKE STONE
AGENT ZERO
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 TWELVE
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
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
David Martinez paused with his coffee cup halfway to his lips. “What the hell?”
He set the coffee cup down and picked up the microphone. “United 443, climb to FL 20 and wait for clearance. American 3499, you’re third behind the Qantas heavy. Qantas, you’re… Delta 881, climb now!”
Around him, his fellow air traffic controllers on duty at Los Angeles International Airport cried out with similar urgency. David looked at his radar in disbelief. Thirty seconds ago, all of these flights had been behaving. They were managing a busy day of flight operations at the busiest airport on the West Coast, and everything was going smoothly. Now it was like some kid had scrambled everyone’s flight paths and put them all on a collision course.
Literally, he was looking at five separate imminent collisions.
“United 443, climb to flight level twenty! American 3499, go around. I don’t know what’s going on but… Jesus!”
On his radar, Qantas 114—a fully loaded A380 double-decker jumbo jet—had just come within a hundred feet of colliding with Delta 881, a Boeing 767 that apparently thought climb now meant descend toward the runway. Not even the right runway. Oh God, not even a runway.
“Delta 881, that is a taxiway! Repeat, that is a taxiway. It’s not even a goddamned runway.”
“No one’s answering,” Asha said in the seat next to him. “I don’t think they can hear us.”
A cold pit formed in David’s stomach. “All pilots, please respond now. The airspace has descended into chaos, and you all need to listen to us so we can get you out of—”
“Madre de Dios!” Bartolo shouted. “Southwest 669, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Hey!” David called. “Everyone keep it together! We can get this under control!”
“Yeah?” Bartolo snapped. “How?”
The door opened, and Gabriela stormed toward David’s desk. His boss’s brows were pinched together in anger, but her face was white with terror, just like his. “David. What the hell is going on?”
“No one’s answering,” David said. “I don’t think they can hear us.”
He swallowed. His hands shook badly enough that he had to squeeze them into fists to keep his fingers from drumming on his desk. “I really don’t know what happened, ma’am.”
Gabby nodded, but she wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. She was looking at the big radar screen at the front of the room, trying to make sense of the corkscrews, spirals and random scribbles that now depicted the flight paths of seventeen different flights that two minutes ago were following actual landing patterns.
A loud, crackling noise over the room’s speakers caused everyone to flinch, and a few of them to scream. Then a voice—thin, hollow, but somehow weighty—spoke. “Today begins humanity’s first lesson. Your secrets are not safe. Reveal them or suffer the fate of all liars and secretkeepers.”
The transmission ended. Silence hung over the room.
What the hell was that? Who the hell was that?
David tried to ask those questions out loud, but his tongue was stuck firmly to the roof of his mouth, and his lips wouldn’t open. Besides, if he asked those questions aloud, he might learn the answers, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“Oh God!” another ATC called, snapping the group out of their silence.
Gabby cursed and snatched David’s microphone. “Qantas 114, abort! Abort! Goddamn it, pull up you fucking idiot!”
Qantas 114 didn't pull up. Neither did American 3499. The A380 collided head-on with the Embraer E175. The big Airbus obliterated the much smaller regional jet. The Embraer's fuel ignited, vaporizing the Airbus's cockpit. The superjumbo tilted downward, heading straight for their tower.
It’s a dream, David told himself. It’s all a dream. I’m about to wake up. It’s going to be okay.
He knew in the back of his head it wasn’t true, but it felt better to believe that instead of panicking and running the way his coworkers were. He watched the flaming remains of the jetliner approach and reached for his coffee cup, hoping to enjoy one more sip before the end.
He didn’t get his wish. As soon as his hand closed around the cup, the jetliner collided with the tower.
CHAPTER ONE
Mischa Lawson spun in the air, firing twice as she came down. Both shots hit their target, and when she landed, she fired again. That shot also found its mark.
She ducked under a swinging blow and slid below the sights of another weapon. When she came up, she fired twice more, striking her last two targets.
She got to her feet, holstered her weapon, and bounced lightly. Her knee felt good. Barely a wisp of soreness lingered from her fight with assassins six weeks ago.
She returned her weapon to its alcove in the wall. A green light switched to a blinking red one to indicate the gun was charging.
A whirring noise echoed through the room as the target dummies returned to their starting positions. Mischa grabbed a towel from the rack and started patting her face. She headed for the locker room and started to lift her shirt off when the door behind her opened.
She pulled it down quickly and turned toward the door, frowning. When she saw who it was, she rolled her eyes. “Do you not believe in knocking?”
The intruder, Mischa’s older sister, Maya, covered her eyes and gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I was just bringing this downstairs.”
“This” was a set of neoprene coated plastic sticks used to train in sword fighting. Mischa didn’t see the utility of training sword fighting as opposed to knife fighting, but Maya insisted that the exercise applied to truncheons, clubs, and found weapons like tire irons and broomsticks.
“You should still knock,” Mischa protested. “Or at least check the pad outside to see if anyone’s here.”
The Lawson family was in Alan’s cabin in Lovettsville, Virginia. Mischa was training in the underground complex beneath that cabin. Complex was generous. It consisted of this small training room, the locker room with a single shower, an electrical room, and Alan’s office. The cabin above was equally cramped, designed for a single confirmed bachelor, not a family of six.
But here they would stay until they brought the Meridian group to justice, thus ending the threat to their family and to thousands of innocent women trafficked into sexual slavery every year. Now that Meridian knew where they lived and was actively trying to eliminate Mischa, their home wasn’t safe.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Maya said, hanging the sticks on a rack on the wall. “I’m sorry.”
Mischa’s anger faded. “It’s nothing.” She smirked. “I just didn ’t want to make you jealous of my athletic body.”
Maya gave her a pointed look. “You’re way too young to make that joke.”
“I am sixteen, Maya. I’m not a child. And what does that have to do with athleticism?”
Maya hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, you’re way too my sister to make that joke too.”
Mischa still didn’t know what her age had to do with anything either, but she didn’t ask again. “Very well. My apologies.”
“Relax!” Maya said, “I’m not mad at you.”
You should be, Mischa thought.
Her lips thinned, but she pushed the expression away. “Well, if you don’t mind, I must shower. I will assist you with your unpacking when I’m finished, if you like.”
“No, that’s fine. It was just that. I’m finished with the rest.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around. “This is a nice place. I should get some rounds in here instead of driving all the way to Langley every morning to work out.”
Maya was a member of the CIA’s Executive Operations Team, the most elite unit in the Agency. She, her fiancé Trent, and hers and Mischa’s father, Reid—who went by his callsign, Zero—were the most skilled agents in the CIA’s history, at least until Mischa turned eighteen and passed the entry requirements. Alan Reidigger, the man who’s home they were sharing for the foreseeable future, was a former agent, current consultant, and Zero’s best friend.
Former best friend. That was also Mischa’s fault.
“You should do what makes you happy,” Mischa told Maya.
Maya looked at Mischa, and her smile faded. “Are you okay, Mischa?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Try as she might, Mischa was unable to hide the sarcasm from her response. Maya detected it and gave her a kind smile that grated far more than a hateful leer would have.
“It’s not your fault,” Maya began.
“I’m going to shower,” Mischa said. “If you don’t want to see me naked, you should leave.”
“Hey, just talk—God!”
Mischa tossed her shirt into the hamper and reached back to unclip her bra. Behind her, Maya said, “Fine,” and stalked out of the training room. She tried to slam the door behind her, but the dampers caught it, closing it with a soft click.
Mischa stepped into the shower and leaned against the wall. Her throat tightened, and her lower lip trembled, but she wouldn’t cry. She would not cry. Weaklings cried. Babies cried. Mischa Lawson, the Sparrow, the nightmare of slavers, didn’t cry.
Only thanks to Mischa, her family was unsafe in their own homes. Sara suffered from serious emotional trauma. Her father’s relationship with his best friend was destroyed. Her loved ones were frightened and fighting amongst themselves, and it was all because of her arrogance. She thought she could handle Meridian, and she had dragged the others into this mess. Now they all suffered.
She breathed deeply until her tears were under control, then showered efficiently. She toweled off and dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt depicting a cartoon squirrel in a spacesuit who lived underwater. The odd design was meant to be ironic and funny. Mischa supposed it was. She just liked the big eyes and the bright smile. It was innocent. Mischa had never been innocent.
She headed upstairs, joining the family in the cabin. They were spread out across the living room, kitchen, and dining area. Trent and Maya were sitting on the couch, close enough that she might as well just sit on his lap. They were watching a sitcom whose humor appeared to derive from the idiocy of the main characters. Alan wasn’t here. He was outside installing and testing new security and defense equipment to protect the safehouse in case of Meridian attack.
Zero was in the kitchen making breakfast. Pleasing smells wafted from the three pans he was manipulating. One contained bacon, one contained sausage, and another contained scrambled eggs. Mischa’s stomach growled.
Sara sat at the table, her face buried in her cell phone. Mischa’s stomach twisted, and she wasn’t hungry anymore.
Sara Lawson was Mischa’s middle sister, the younger of Zero’s biological daughters and the one taking their imprisonment the hardest. No, not their imprisonment. Their inaction. That was what really bothered Sara. They had agreed to cede control of their operation to Zero and wouldn’t engage Meridian unless expressly ordered to do so.
Sara was angry about that. She was angry at Zero for usurping command of their crusade. She was angry at Maya for treating her like a child. She was angry at Alan for telling Zero and Maya what she, Mischa, and Alan were up to.
Mostly she was angry at Mischa for not fighting back. In her view, Mischa had betrayed her. She had brought Sara into her crusade, and then she had stepped away and, through her submission to Zero, had forced Sara to step away.
The feeling of betrayal that radiated from Sara was, more than anything else, the cause of Mischa’s guilt.
She sat across from Sara and smiled. “Good morning, Sara.”
“Morning,” Sara replied, not looking up from her cell phone.
From the kitchen, Zero called, “That shirt looks nice on her, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does,” Maya said. “When do we get to meet this young man, Mischa?”
Mischa rolled her eyes. The squirrel shirt was given to her by a boy in her class. The poor boy was smitten with her. He was attractive enough, but Mischa wasn’t interested in romance, especially not at this age. She couldn’t relate at all to her classmates and the thought of being involved with one of them was repulsive.
He would move on. She couldn’t return to school, probably not for months, so he would have time to find another object for his affections.
Sara rolled her eyes. Without looking up from her phone, she said, “Mischa doesn’t like him. She took the shirt because you guys all oohed and ahhed over it. She’s not into boys.”
“Is she into girls?” Trent asked with his usual complete lack of social awareness.
“She’s into not being forced to be normal,” Sara said. “Come on, what’s she supposed to see in a bunch of pimple-faced teenage boys?”
Gabe’s skin was shockingly free of blemishes, but Mischa didn’t want to point that out and give her family the wrong idea, so she only said, “The shirt fits well regardless. Gabe said I could keep it even if I wasn’t interested in him.”
Zero frowned. Mischa was looking at Sara, so she couldn’t see it, but she could hear it in his voice. “Did you say that to him?”
“Of course. It would be wrong to let him believe I shared his feelings.”
“Ah.” Zero paused, then asked, “So you’re really not into boys, huh?”
“Dad, eww,” Sara said.
“What? I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean… Well, she’s getting older.”
“Yeah, stop there, Dad,” Maya interjected. “A for effort. It’s okay.”
“I wasn’t trying to say anything,” Zero said defensively. “I was just trying to show interest in her life.”
Mischa sighed. In the field combatting terorrists, Zero was a demigod. He was confident, capable, and deadly in situations that would leave others utterly overmatched.
At home, Zero was as clumsy, dorky, and nonplussed as any average father. Mischa usually found his ineptitude adorable, but she did wish that he would stop obsessing over her living a “normal” life.
“I am uninterested in sex at the moment,” she replied. “However, when I desire a relationship, I will desire one with a man. I simply have no interest in the boys in my age group.”
The others stared blankly at her for a long moment. Eventually, Zero broke the silence. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Sara chuckled softly. Hope coursed through Mischa’s veins, so powerful it was almost frightening. She looked at Sara and smiled.
Sara glanced up and saw Mischa’s smile. Her own vanished immediately, and she looked back at her phone.
Mischa’s stomach twisted again. She got to her feet and headed to the kitchen. Zero was staring moodily at the food, coping with his faux pas. He looked so much like Maya that it would have made Mischa laugh if she wasn’t enduring the pain of Sara’s anger.
“Is the food ready?” she asked. “I am starving.”
