Authors: Sigmund Brouwer
Dead Man's Switch (22 page)
“Some people might call that monstrous,” King said.
“Yes,” Evans said calmly. “And then again, many others of us have 9/11 seared in our memories and are determined not to allow it to happen again. I suggest you remember your earlier statement that now is not the time or place to debate it. You will have decisions to make shortly, and I want you to have as much knowledge as possible as I answer your question as to whether the US government is willing to kill its own citizens if necessary to protect this secret.”
“Everything so far indicates that what you brought me earlier is accurate, and that video you shot of the prisoner with the Spiderman face is the last bit of proof I needed,” Evans said to King. “And we owe you a debt for that. We were unaware that Murdoch had gone renegade on us and was taking advantage of this situation to bring in private trophy hunters who paid huge bounties to hunt the most dangerous predator in the world.”
Evans leaned back in his pilot's chair and looked ahead through the bubble of the chopper window. “In retrospect, it's something that could be too tempting for the wrong person. Internet forums make it easy to stay anonymous as you look for wealthy clients. And you easily could keep the location of the island secret too. Say the client is from Texas. You'd just need to make sure he doesn't have any GPS technology, put him on an airplane at night, land at a private airport somewhere on the mainland, and keep him blindfolded during the final chopper flight to the island.
King couldn't help but think about the money hidden in Mack's bank account. He'd been afraid to ask Mack about it the night of the escape. And King sure wasn't going to bring it up now in front of the CIA.
“We had a deal,” Evans said, shifting the conversation abruptly, “I've delivered on everything you wanted, so now I want my payment. Answers. How did you find out about Murdoch?”
“Dead Man's Switch,” King said.
Evans raised an eyebrow as a question mark.
“It's a website. You set up a bunch of emails to go out if you don't put in a password every day. That's how I got the first email from Blake Watt. Blake's funeral was a few weeks ago. Blake's the one who found out. Blake's emails started coming out and led me along little by little. The final proof is all on the Macbook Air that Murdoch has.”
“A website that sends out info?” Evans glared at King. “You told me you could keep this secret. So now some website is out there holding all this information that could explode on the world at any time?”
“I didn't lie,” King said. “We can keep it secret.”
King glanced at his watch. He'd already plugged in the password for the day and had bought another 24 hours, but Evans wouldn't know this. Best thing to do here would be to squeeze Evans with time pressure the way that Blake had squeezed King.
“We have about four hours to stop the release of the info,” King said. “But not until you come up with some guarantee that nothing will happen to me or my dad or my friend MJ. You know, that part about whether we believe the CIA would kill American citizens to keep a secret.”
Evans nodded, but none of the sudden anger left his face. “Releasing that information would be something we'd hate to see. We want the lowest profile possible, which is why I'd much rather work with you to keep it secret than work against you if you went to the press. But if you did go to the newspapers right now with your story, the CIA would find a way to deny any plausibility. It's the Internet age. People make wild claims all the time.”
Evans snorted. “If you took this public, we could arrest you and charge you with one thing or another under the Homeland Security Act. But we wouldn't, because if we did, that would be an indication that there was truth behind the accusations. No, we'd just let the rumors continue and start our own whisper campaign against the accusers. Stories about your backgrounds would be leaked to the press, and those stories would be outrageously false but put you in a bad light.”
Evans smiled grimly. “Your mother, for example, would be exposed for her time with bikers as she sold meth and marijuana to underage kids in bars.”
King began to arch his back in indignation. “She did not.”
“Of course not,” Evans said. “But we'd find ways to get into courthouse computers and make it look as if she had a jail record. I promise you right now, if you went public with this, it would be far worse for each of your parents' reputations than for the reputation of the CIA. Their credit scores would be destroyed; they'd be out of work. And all that you would have inflicted on us is yet another conspiracy theory.”
“That's what I needed to hear,” King said. “Now I know I can trust you.”
“What, bringing an elite force of special operatives to rescue you wasn't enough?”
“No,” King said. “You didn't do that for me. You did it because of Murdoch. He was playing you like a fool and making millions because of it. You didn't do me a favor. I did you one by bringing this to you.”
Evans grunted but didn't agree or disagree.
King tossed his iPhone to Evans, who caught it with a fluid athletic movement.
“Dead Man's Switch,” King said. “It's not only a website. It's also a game app.”
Evans hit the home button and glanced down. “Password?”
“Two eight five five.”
Evans unlocked the phone.
“Look through it,” King told Evans. “Check out the apps.”
After about 30 seconds, Evans said, “Hundreds.”
“Actually, 3520, if you want to be exact,” King said. “It's Blake Watt's phone. All those games and apps made no sense. Then I thought about how easy it would be to hide an app in there. So I did a search. Try it. You know how to go to the search screen? Go toâ”
“You kids think you're the only ones who understand technology.”
“You there?”
“Give me a second,” Evans said.
“Justâ”
King stopped when Evans shot him a cold glare. Then King grinned, letting Evans know King was messing with him.
“Do a search for Dead Man's Switch,” King said.
Evans worked his thumb on the screen. Then lowered his eyebrows as the result came up. “Game app. And don't tell me. Tap it and it will open.”
King waited. He was silent as he watched Evans, whose eyes widened moments later.
“It's on an island. CIA operatives. Each given different weapons. Hunting. This isâ¦this is⦔
Evans was speechless.
“It's ninety-nine cents, is what is,” King said. “Available on iTunes.”
“We'll get it pulled,” Evans said.
“Come on,” King said. “Who would believe something that crazy?”
“Ha, ha,” Evans said. Short pause. “What's your point here?”
“Blake Watt was a computer wizard. He's the one who created it. I know that because I looked up the game app developer. He calls it DMS Apps. It's proof Blake also knew about the CIA hunting games on the island.”
“And?”
“Everything he pointed us to was meant to expose Murdoch. Yet if Blake also knew about the CIA, that means I wondered if maybe the CIA knew about Blake too. If his drowning wasn't an accident. That led me to the big question. Who got rid of Blake? Murdoch? Or you guys?”
Evans folded his arms. “Do I really have to answer? We rescued you.”
“Maybe some kind of reverse thing. Making it look like you're against Murdoch to get me to tell you what I know. After all, you admitted Murdoch is CIA as well.”
“
Was
CIA. In about an hour, his career is finished. It's a short hop to the island from here.”
“I didn't know who to trust until now. The CIA doesn't need to get rid of people to keep it secret. You can use other methods.”
“I still don't understand your point.”
“It's this,” King said. “You didn't need to kidnap Blake. You would have threatened him and his parents just like you threatened me. That means you didn't kidnap Blake, it meant Murdoch did.”
“Kidnap? He's the kid who drowned.”
“Unless Murdoch took him and Blake was smart enough to threaten
Murdoch with exposure with the dead man's switch so that Murdoch couldn't just kill him,” King said. “And if Murdoch kidnapped Blake, I'll bet he's still on the island. Alive and waiting for us to do something about it.”
King glanced at his watch. “We've got under four hours to find him before the next emails go out to the entire media.”
“Now?” Evans exploded. “Now you tell me this? Not this morning when you first came to my office. But now?”
King shrugged. “Had to be sure about you.”
“Four hours. You wait to tell me we've got an entire island to search for the kid, and you wait until there's four hours left to announce this? Let me tell you, if this hits the Internet, all of you are going to be miserable for the rest of your lives. His family. Your family. The other kid's family. What's his name. M something.
“MJ.”
“Four hours until the dead man's switch is triggered. You have no idea how angry I am, and no idea how bad that is for you.”
“We don't need four hours,” King said. “Can you think of a better place to keep a kid imprisoned than in an actual prison?”
“Hop aboard,” Evans said to Warden Murdoch. Evans was standing alone on the helicopter deck, door open and looking down at the warden. “We need to talk.”
“Aboard” meant the platform of the UH-1 gunship. Evans had called it a Huey. It was big enough to conceal the entire commando unit. Five minutes before, it had thumped down from the sky, landing on the island's helipad. King had seen none of the view of Puget Sound on the ten-minute flight from Fort Lewis. He was tucked in the back, feeling tiny among a dozen SOG men inside the chopper in their full combat gear, including helmets. The Huey's bladesâlong scythes that cut the air with frightening efficiencyâhad been slowing since landing and had made a final rotation when Murdoch had appeared, driving up in his shiny black Jeep TJ. King recognized it by the sound of the engine. From inside the chopper, King had also recognized the warden's voice when he'd greeted Evans a few seconds earlier.
“Come on down,” Murdoch said. “I've got the Jeep. I'm surprised to see you here, but whatever you want to talk about, we might as well do it in the comfort of my office. I'll order some food from the cafeteria. They do okay with it when they know it's for me.”
“I'll stay here,” Evans said. “Not interested in a hostage situation.”
“What are you talking about?” Murdoch said.
“Ten or 20 guards under your employ and a private game you've been playing with government assets. You've got a small army at your disposal, and I'm not interested in war. So get on the helicopter. I'm here to arrest you.”
Evans motioned for King, who moved forward to the helicopter bay and stood beside Evans and looked down on Murdoch.
Murdoch flinched, but other than that, he did a good job of hiding surprise.
“King,” Murdoch said. “Crazy seeing you here. I think you owe me and your dad a good explanation of why you went off the island.”
“Because I had to escape last night,” King said. Enjoying this. “You know. After I pepper sprayed you and hit you with an EID and duct taped around the puke on your clothes. Let me tell you, it felt good. But not as good as this.”
The Jeep was 50 yards behind Murdoch. Gleaming in the sunshine.
Evans said, “Murdoch, I'm not happy. We wired the kid for sound at the hospital. Ten minutes after he calls you, he gets taken. Then there's the conversation you had with him later about the Macbook Air. I recorded that too. Nobody else but you ordered that hit. Nobody else but you had someone in place at the hospital.”
“Frankly,” Murdoch said. “I have no idea what you're talking about. And if I did, I doubt any of it would stand up in court.”
“You won't be seeing court. You won't get a lawyer. I've got the full weight of Homeland Security behind me. We're not talking felony here. You've essentially committed domestic terrorism. That means you're going to disappear into one of our camps.”
“Because of a kid with crazy stories?”
“Because of your not-so-secret-anymore bank account. Once we began looking, it didn't take long to find. You're going to have a tough time explaining the $4 million in there unless you want to get on the chopper now and get it over with.”
“You want all this public? How the CIA set up games on the island?”
“You think that's going to be your protection? Think again. And listen to what I just said. Nothing's going public. We're taking you to Guantanamo. Or somewhere else. And you're going to be lost among a lot of terroists who were caught trying to blow up the United States.”