Split Second (10 page)

“Then why did you murder Nathan
Wexler in cold blood?” demanded Blake.

Argent looked genuinely
confused. “Is that what she said happened?”

“Are you saying it didn’t?” said
Blake.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. No
one on the exfil team survived. So I don’t know what went down. But the orders
were to bring them in with zero damage. Nathan Wexler was hugely important.” He
paused. “But it was all a horrible misunderstanding. We weren’t expecting an
attack. If you take me to Jenna Morrison, I can explain everything. I’m not
your enemy,” he said evenly.

Blake considered. Every word
Argent had just said could be a lie. Or it could all be true. Or anything in
between. After all, in the same situation, he had not hesitated to lie as convincingly
as he could. So was this a ruse? To buy time until he could turn the tables?

So what now? Argent knew his real
name. He could leave the man in the woods, unconscious. But given the capabilities
of this group, leaving someone alive who knew his name was the equivalent of
suicide. So was it a choice between homicide and suicide?

Blake shook his head. It didn’t
matter. He wasn’t about to kill Argent in cold blood, even if this was the
smartest play. He would have to take him prisoner. Assume the man was telling
the truth and let him explain things to Jenna. The risks of this strategy were
high, since trying to control a man as highly trained as Argent was asking for
trouble, but he had no other choice.

 
“Drop it!” screamed a voice ten feet behind
him. “Now!”

Shit!
thought Blake. Was there anyone who wasn’t able to glide
through the woods without making a sound?

He let the Sig Sauer fall from
his hands and to the ground for a
second
time and turned to face this new threat. As expected, the newcomer had a gun
pointed at his chest, this one fitted with a sleek silencer.

“Rourk,” said Argent, his voice
reflecting relief. “I expected you sooner. But better late than never.”

“Sorry,” said the man named
Rourk. “You were already at gunpoint when I arrived. But when I heard you
mention Jenna Morrison, I thought I’d wait a few more seconds to see if your
friend here would say anything interesting.”

Then, without another word, Rourk
calmly pulled the trigger of his gun twice in rapid succession.

Blake stumbled forward, his head
reeling, not able to believe that after all he had survived overseas, his death
would occur on a beautiful mountain in California.

15

Blake clutched at his chest as
two separate realizations penetrated his skull: his hands remained dry and were
not turning blood-red in color. And Mark Argent had collapsed to the ground behind
him.

Blake wheeled around as blood
poured from two holes in
Argent’s
chest and the man’s eyes fluttered closed for the last time. Blake was
unscathed. Rourk had shifted the gun a few degrees just before he fired and had
hit Argent instead.

Blake turned back to Rourk,
obviously not quite the comrade Argent had been hoping for.

“So I missed the first part of
your conversation with Argent,” said the killer calmly. “Who are you, and how
do you know Jenna Morrison?”

At this point, Blake saw no
reason to lie. So he told him that he was a PI representing her, and Rourk
didn’t bother demanding to see Blake’s wallet as Argent had done.

Rourk punched a number into his
cell phone, by hand, which was almost unheard of, and waited for an answer.

“Rourk here,” he began when
someone came on the line. “I’m still on Palomar Mountain. But Jenna Morrison
hired a PI and he was snooping around out here. I have him, but I was forced to
kill Mark Argent.”

Rourk listened to a brief
response from whomever he had called and then continued. “I’m alone with the PI.
For now. But the rest of the team will be checking up on us in no time. I doubt
my cover will hold for long under the circumstances. I recommend leaving the
area and using my captive to get to the girl. And we’ll still have one of our
men on the inside, in case we need him.”

There was a pause of several
seconds as Rourk listened intently. “Roger that,” he said finally, ending the
connection.

He nodded to Blake, still
holding the phone in his left hand while his gun hand remained extended. “Let’s
go. Take me to Jenna Morrison right now.”

Blake had no idea who this man
was or what was going on. He had seen that not even the key players
themselves
knew what team anyone was
really on, not without a scorecard. So if Rourk threatened to kill him, this
could well be a bluff. By the same token, if Rourk pretended to be his best
friend, this could be a ruse as well.

There was no way to know.

What he did know was that Rourk was
willing to kill in ice-cold blood, as he had demonstrated minutes earlier. So
while Blake had been prepared to play it out a bit further with Argent, whose
blood was now nourishing the trees, he needed to make a move on Rourk, no
matter how risky. And the sooner he did so, the more likely he could catch him
off guard.

Blake took a deep mental breath.
“I can take you to Jenna. But I’m betting you don’t really need her.”

“Yeah? And what do you think I
need?”

“It’s better if I
show
you.”

“Show me what?”

“I’m going to reach into my
pocket. Very slowly. I’ll bring it out with two fingers. Just don’t shoot me.”

Not waiting for permission, Blake
reached into his front pocket with great care and removed his decoy flash
drive, watching Rourk’s body language as he did so. The man’s reaction wasn’t
subtle. If he had been a dog, there would be a puddle of drool beneath him.

“I see you recognize this,” said
Blake. “It has the only copy of Nathan Wexler’s work in existence. Jenna gave
it to me. She also told me the password. Interested?”

“And if I am?” said Rourk
evenly.

“I just want your word you’ll
leave the girl in peace. We both know you don’t really want her. Just this thumb
drive. So let’s go to a computer. I’ll tell you the password. You verify that
it works and then let me go.” Blake paused. “Deal?”

Blake waved the memory stick
back and forth as he spoke and noted with great interest that Rourk never once
took his eyes from it. If it were a stopwatch the man would have been
hypnotized by now.

“Deal,” said Rourk. He motioned
up the mountain. “Lead on.”

“As a show of good faith, I’ll
even let you hold on to the drive.”

Without waiting for an answer, Blake
flung the memory stick in Rourk’s direction as hard as he could, so forcefully
it landed a full ten yards behind its presumed target. Rourk couldn’t help but
turn and follow its path, focusing on where it would land so he wouldn’t risk
losing it in the dense undergrowth.

The instant he turned to follow
the drive, Blake rolled to the ground, pulled his backup gun from his ankle
holster for the second time in minutes, and came up firing, hitting Rourk in the
left forearm just moments after the flash drive had landed behind him. Rourk’s
phone went flying and he dived behind a wide trunk for cover.

“God-
dammit
!”
he thundered as he hit the ground, further aggravating his wounded arm.

Blake could have shot his
adversary in the head, but refused to kill him, even though it was arguably
justified, until he knew all of the players and their motivations. The man had
killed Argent, but Argent could have been the devil in disguise for all Blake knew,
and Rourk’s action could well have saved his life.

But now he had forced Rourk to
make a choice, as he had intended. The man could retrieve his prized flash
drive lower down the slope. Or leave it and go after Blake, who was armed and clearly
lethal.

It was as easy a choice as he
had expected. Rourk still had his gun, but had little chance of hitting Blake,
who was now planted behind a nearby tree trunk. Instead, Rourk picked his way toward
where the flash drive had landed, taking a pinball path between trees to shield
him from further fire as he worked his way toward his goal.

As soon as Blake was sure of Rourk’s
intent, he retrieved the man’s fallen phone and beat a hasty retreat up the
slope, putting distance and as many trees as he could between himself and his
prior captor.

16

Aaron Blake was in excellent shape
but was still out of breath by the time he reached the car, having sprinted
uphill for eight minutes over uneven terrain.

“Duck down,” he instructed Jenna
as he entered and took the wheel.

“What happened?”

Blake told her as he began
driving down the mountain, clinging to a speed just a few miles over the limit,
fighting back his adrenaline-fueled need to break the sound barrier. The fight-or-flight
instinct perfected by evolution demanded that flight take place at the fastest
possible speed, not at a veritable crawl. But the people after him didn’t know
what car he drove, and screaming down the mountain like he was on fire would give
them a giant hint.

Jenna shook her head in dismay
after he had finished recounting what had happened. “Why am I having a déjà vu experience?”
she said miserably. How many times was she going to be racing down Palomar
Mountain, fearing for her life?

“So what are the chances we get
off this mountain alive?” she asked.

“Excellent,” said Blake, his
breath and heart rate rapidly returning to normal.

“How do you figure?”

“The parties after us are in
conflict with each other. And I’ve seen that their loyalties are questionable.
It’s a messy situation, which is good for us. We’re up against a boat filled
with quality oarsmen, but they’re not all rowing in the same direction. I don’t
think—”

Blake stopped abruptly as they
shot around a turn and approached the stretch of road at which the men with Forest
Service patches and hard hats were lurking. He took in the scene in a few
practiced glances. Two of the men remained where they had been, but four others
were now on the other side of the road, climbing up the slope and fanning out.

“Duck down lower,” he instructed,
not wanting to risk that one of the four might happen to glance down at the
road and into their car. He then relaxed his own features, turning himself into
the picture of calm contentment for anyone observing.

“Okay, we’re clear,” he said
less than a minute later, signaling Jenna that she no longer needed to fold her
head into her lap. “I think we’re out of the woods now.”

Jenna thought about pointing out
that this idiom probably wasn’t ideal when one was actually very much
in
the woods, but decided not to.

“As I was saying,” continued Blake,
glancing at his rearview mirror every few seconds, “I like our chances of
getting off this mountain alive, and even slipping away without incident. These
guys will find their fallen comrade soon, but only Rourk knows we were here. And
when it comes to the murder of Mark Argent,
Rourk
is in
possession of a smoking gun, almost literally, so he has to get the hell out of
here and avoid his former comrades. Since he also thinks he has the real thumb
drive, there’s no way he’ll try to come after us right now. He’ll be racing to
bring the memory stick back to his boss.”

Once again, Jenna was impressed
with the speed and quality of his analysis, especially given the pressure they
were under.

“How long until they break the
password and realize the flash drive is a decoy?” asked Jenna.

“First he has to get it back to
his boss, which could take a while. The password isn’t all that solid but will
still take
some
time to break. I’m
guessing we’ll have several hours, at minimum, before he cares about us again.”

Jenna nodded.

Blake removed a phone from his
pocket and handed it to her. “This is Rourk’s phone. Copy all the names and
numbers you can from it, and then throw it into the woods so we can’t be
tracked.”

Jenna examined the phone for
several minutes. “I’ve never seen a model like this. Must be disposable,
because there is no data of any kind here. It’s not that his contact list is encrypted,
it’s that I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even exist.”

Blake frowned. “Before Greg
Soyer set up my phone to be untraceable, I used these burner phones myself. But
I’ve never seen this exact breed before. Probably custom. I’m not entirely
surprised, since Rourk entered the number he called by hand, which he wouldn’t
need to do with even the most basic conventional phone.” He paused. “But if
it’s like most burners, it will at least automatically save the last number
dialed. See if you can find it.”

Jenna bent to this task
immediately. “Got it!” she said less than a minute later.

“Outstanding,” said Blake. He
handed her his own phone. “Enter the number in here for me.”

She worked his phone for a brief
period and then announced that she was finished, handing it back to him. She
then lowered the window and sent Rourk’s phone flying into the trees.

Blake checked the time on the
car’s dash. “We don’t have as much cushion as we did, but we still should be
able to make it to UCLA in time to get Dan Walsh.”

Jenna sighed. “True. Unless missiles
start to, you know, rain down from the sky toward your car. Or there’s a
division of tanks waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain.”

“Right,” said Blake with a tight
smile. “If either of those things happen, it might make us a minute or two
late.”

He turned toward Jenna and
caught her eye. “One purpose in coming up here was to verify your story. Well, I
can now say, without a doubt, that this has been accomplished. So I believe
every word you’ve told me. You are not crazy, Jenna Morrison. This entire
situation is absolutely
batshit
crazy,
but you’re not.”

Even though these words had been
a show of support, they served to bring back feelings of depression and loss. “Yeah.
I only wish I
were
crazy. I wish I
could wake up from a temporary insanity to find that the past twenty-four hours
never really happened.”

Jenna looked away for several
seconds and gathered herself. “I’d love to know if Greg has managed to bypass
Nathan’s password yet,” she said.

“Yeah, me too. I wish there was
a way to find out short of visiting him again, which we really don’t have time
for now.”

Jenna nodded. It was impossible
not to take instant communications for granted, but this was a relatively new development
in human history. With Blake refusing to call or text Soyer, she was being given
a taste of what the Dark Ages must have been like. If you wanted to learn the
status of a friend who lived a hundred miles away, the only way to do it was to
walk, run, or hope you had a horse.

Blake checked the time once
again. “We’ll need to stop at my apartment. I’ll have just enough time to
shower and gather a few things I’ll need before we’ll have to leave again to
get Dr. Walsh.”

“Are you sure we should go
forward with this? Why contaminate anyone else?”

“He’s already a part of this.”

“Yes. But you said yourself that
if they wanted to kill him or take him they would have already done it. And I’m
like Typhoid Mary. The kiss of death. If he ends up dead because of me, I’ll
never be able to forgive myself.”

Blake sighed. “It’s possible
you’re right. It’s possible contacting him will change his status, will
suddenly make him a target. But if we ignore him, don’t warn him, he’s at their
mercy. He won’t even know they’re out there. And what if he takes what’s in
Nathan’s e-mail and works on it himself? He is a top physicist, right? So they
could decide at any moment to take him out. At least if we bring him into the
fray, he’ll have a chance.”

Jenna’s eyes narrowed in thought,
but she didn’t respond.

“Also,” continued Blake, “we’re
going to need someone to explain Nathan’s work to us once Greg Soyer uncovers
it. And probably its significance. When Einstein came out with general relativity,
I heard that even a lot of the world’s top physicists didn’t understand the
math, or the full implications. But you know more about this than I do. Do you
think you’ll be able to grasp what’s on that drive? Because I know I won’t have
a clue.”

Jenna frowned. “No. You’re
right. I’ve seen some of the papers Nathan wrote, and I’d understand them
better if they were in Sanskrit.”

“So we’ll ultimately have to
bring somebody in. Endanger
someone
.
If we don’t, we’ll never truly understand what this is all about. And how do we
know failing to get to the bottom of this won’t jeopardize thousands of other
lives? Since Dr. Walsh is already endangered, it makes sense to go to him.”

“You’re right,” she said
begrudgingly. “I don’t like it, but you’re absolutely right.” She blew out a
long breath. “Let’s go pay a visit to UCLA.”