Split second, p.5
Split Second, page 5
And while he hated killing, hunting for a man, battling a man, matching wits and skills with another man when their lives were both on the line, provided the ultimate competition. And thus the ultimate rush.
Every contest was sudden death, requiring superhuman focus and superhuman effort. It was reminiscent of the Old West, where no gunslinger could ever be taken lightly, regardless of appearance, since every gunslinger still alive had never once been bested, by definition.
Ernest Hemingway had said, “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”
Blake realized he was beginning to live this famous quote and took it as a personal warning. He began to fear the rush was growing too great, becoming too addictive. He feared he was approaching the point of no return. That he would never be able to lead a normal life, and that he would take on more and more risk to get his fix, inevitably resulting in an early death.
But while the fear of spinning out of control was one catalyst in his decision to leave the military, frustration at politicians, and the lack of understanding demonstrated by many in the West, was the final straw. At least indirectly.
The direct cause of his decision had been the deaths of his two closest friends. Deaths he had witnessed. Deaths that had been totally unnecessary.
His team had been ordered on a raid by the powers that be in Washington DC, one that had been absolutely pointless, and they had been shackled with rules of engagement so crippling that failure and loss of life were all but assured. The friends he had lost were his brothers-in-arms. He was willing to die for them, and they for him. They had been as close to him as only those who had bonded in war could possibly be.
It wasn’t just their loss, which had been crushing, that had finally driven him over the edge.
It was the futility of it all.
How many thousands of men had America lost fighting the advance of barbaric hordes of Islamic extremists, only to have politicians who had no understanding of the military and little of world politics give back all gains? How many times had politicians, elected solely on charisma and domestic policy expertise, made tragic blunders, totally avoidable tragic blunders, leaving the soldiers in the field to twist in the winds of political expediency?
Spilling blood to protect the homeland was one thing. But spilling blood, only to then vacate hard-won gains on a whim and leave a vacuum that ended up making the problem far worse, was another.
It made Blake physically ill.
Hiding one’s head in the sand and ignoring reality wasn’t going to make the problem go away. And it was maddening how often the civilized world allowed itself to be duped by barbarians with no ethics or morals. By savages who would do anything for their cause. Literally, anything. They placed no value on human life, and no act, no matter how savage or despicable, was off limits, including genocide.
Many in the West, compassionate but misguided, were determined to bend over backwards to understand the extremists, to empathize with them.
But there was no understanding an ideology this rabid, this diseased. Who could understand a woman who would strap a bomb on a child and send him or her into a crowded square?
These extremists had been brainwashed by a sick, close-minded, hateful ideology. Some in the West believed that poverty was responsible, that America was somehow at fault for hoarding so much of the world’s resources. But many of the extremists were well-off, as Bin Laden had been. And hundreds of millions of people around the world lived in squalor, but had never resorted to sawing off heads and burning men alive.
But while the West often failed to understand the motivations of these extremists, the extremists understood the motivations of the West only too well. They found the West soft. Gullible. Stupid. Its media easily manipulated.
So their snipers would hide behind women and children, using them as human shields, picking off soldiers. And this wasn’t a one-off phenomenon, but a deliberate strategy. Richard Kemp, commander of British forces in Afghanistan, had written in a formal report that, “The Taliban’s use of women to shield gunmen as they engage NATO forces is now so normal it is deemed barely worthy of comment.”
If an American soldier was too decent to shoot through these helpless human shields he would die. If he did defend himself and a civilian was killed, this would appear on news programs around the world as yet another example of the cruelty and overzealous nature of the American military, of the barbarity of the American soldier, emphasizing the plight of the poor freedom fighters whose countries they were invading.
This wasn’t to say that some American soldiers weren’t sadists. Some were. it was inevitable. And this wasn’t to say that mistakes were never made, that atrocities never occurred, coming from the American side. Innocent civilians were killed, each and every occurrence a horror.
But to suggest this was systemic, to suggest the Western forces were no better, and possibly worse, than the ruthless extremists, or that the West had brought this on themselves, made Blake’s blood boil. The Americans often went to great lengths, and even risked their own lives, to limit civilian casualties. While the very mission of the extremists was to wipe out as many Western women and children as possible, billions if they could.
Still, there were those who continued to believe that one man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom fighter, even with respect to groups as despicable as the Taliban. The same Taliban who willfully destroyed sixth-century statues of Buddha carved into the side of a cliff. The same Taliban the United Nations reported routinely committed systematic massacres against civilians.
And those who fought with every ounce of strength for women’s rights in America would somehow overlook the atrocities the Taliban committed against their own women. Treating them as possessions, prohibiting them from showing their faces, from walking in public without a male relative to escort them. And executing female children for the unforgivable crime of attending school.
Yes, nothing was totally black-and-white. Yes, there were good and bad actors in every large group of people. But those who suggested an equivalency between the actions of the West and the extremists made Blake so furious he couldn’t see straight.
So he had left it all behind. For his sanity. For his life. To come down off his adrenaline addiction. To find a way to feel alive without need of life-and-death stakes. To never again have to suffer the death of brothers.
And not to have to take orders from politicians who couldn’t see Islamic extremism for the despicable ideology it was, an ideology immune to reason, its adherents showing a level of barbarity and intolerance incomprehensible in the West.
So Blake had decided it was time for a course correction. And even though spying on unfaithful spouses wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, it was probably good for him, just as cold turkey, painful though it was, was necessary for a junkie to cleanse his system.
Aaron Blake breathed a deep sigh and brushed these thoughts to the side, returning to the task of learning how to run a business. But just as he did so, Myla, his personal digital assistant, alerted him in a pleasant, feminine voice that a woman was approaching his door.
He checked the time. It was a little before eight in the morning.
Interesting.
As he watched the woman approach on his monitor he realized this wouldn’t be just another cheating spouse assignment. More like a beating spouse assignment. Judging from this young woman’s appearance, her husband had done quite a number on her.
Sad, and tragic, but he suspected there was little he could do in such a situation. This was a case probably best left to cops, although he cautioned himself from jumping to conclusions.
Perhaps there was more to this than met the eye.
He watched as the woman on the monitor took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell.
9
“Thank God you’re here,” said the visitor when Blake answered the door. “I’m sorry to bother you before regular hours.”
“Don’t be,” he replied with a warm smile as he gestured her inside. “I’m an early riser. And in this line of work regular hours don’t exist. Besides,” he said, making a show of looking her up and down, “you don’t look to be in any condition to be patient.”
He motioned her to take a chair before his all-glass desk, chosen because glass tended to make the room look bigger, which he sorely needed. He had done everything possible to make his living room office-like, rather than apartment-like, and there were no couches or other furniture, and no television. The main room led to a kitchen and bedroom, and this was the extent of it.
“I’m Jenna,” said the woman, extending her hand. “Jenna Morrison.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. “Aaron Blake.”
She had short brown hair and matching eyes, and while she was more plain than pretty, she was fit and had a perfect complexion. He judged her to be in her twenties, and despite wearing jeans and a T-shirt and looking far worse for wear, there was something attractive about her. He judged her to be about five foot five, only two inches shorter than his own underwhelming height.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Morrison?” he asked.
“Jenna.”
“Jenna,” he amended.
She took a deep breath, and he could tell she was searching for a place to begin. “I’m in a hurry, but it’s critical that you believe me and don’t think I’m crazy. So I’m going to take this one step at a time.”
He nodded. “Go right ahead.”
“I am engaged to, and living with, one of the most brilliant minds of our time. A physicist at UCSD named Nathan Wexler, who has already contributed some major work to the field.”
She paused. “Before I go on any further, I want you to verify what I’ve just said. Look up Nathan. Go on the UCSD website. Go on his Facebook page, where you can see us together, see that we’re engaged and living together.”
Blake smiled warmly. “No need. I’m prepared to take your word for it.”
She shook her head. “No. I need you to do this. My story is going to sound crazy, and I want to establish my credentials, so to speak, before I go any further.”
Blake stared into her eyes, intrigued.
She waited in silence as he surfed the Web and confirmed her information.
“Okay,” he said after several minutes had passed. “I accept that you’re Jenna Morrison and the truth of your relationship with Nathan Wexler. Also, it’s clear that Dr. Wexler is quite the genius. So why don’t you tell me what this is all about.”
His visitor began, explaining she had been in Chicago for a week with her sister, during which time her fiancé had made a major breakthrough, the nature of which she had yet to learn. And then she proceeded to tell her tale, which he interrupted for questions or clarifications, but infrequently.
Blake decided Jenna Morrison had been correct: her tale did sound ridiculous. And yet she spoke with detail and assurance. And her intelligence and reasoning power were impossible to miss.
But criminal psychopaths could be brilliant and utterly convincing. Could weave rich tapestries of lies.
On the other hand, this girl’s story was too rich of a tapestry. If she had murdered Nathan Wexler, why complicate things so much, make up wrinkles that were so simple to disprove?
“When you first began,” said Blake when she had finished, “you told me you are living with Nathan Wexler. Present tense. If he’s dead, as you say, why weren’t you using past tense?”
“I didn’t want you to have any preconceptions. If you knew he was dead from the start, you’d absorb what I told you in a different light. I didn’t want that.”
Blake nodded. Very shrewd of her. “And you don’t even have a guess as to what he might have discovered?”
“No. But as I said, there is one man who knows, at least the gist.”
“Dr. Dan Walsh at UCLA?”
“Correct. And we need to find a way to warn him he’s in danger. If he’s even still alive.”
Blake studied her face carefully.
“Look,” she said, impatience showing for the first time. “Do you believe me? Will you help me?”
His every instinct told him this Jenna Morrison was something special. Some people melted under pressure and some reacted to its squeeze by turning into diamond, becoming battle hardened. He was all but certain this girl fell into the latter camp.
While she occasionally allowed the severe emotional pain she was feeling to show in her eyes, she didn’t have the bearing of a beaten wife. She had a fire about her. An easy intelligence. A self-confidence and competence. For someone who had been through hell, this was quite impressive.
“Your story is definitely out there,” he said. “But you already knew that. And you haven’t given me any reason to doubt its veracity.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “You said you confiscated the cell phones of two men. Can I see them?”
Jenna shook her head. “No. I tossed them in San Diego. I realized as I began the drive here that they could be used to track me. I promised the poor guy I stranded on Palomar that I would call one of his friends and tell them where to find his car, but I decided I couldn’t. At least not yet.”
“A wise decision,” said Blake in genuine admiration. Her reasoning from start to finish had been impeccable. Each individual move she had made, by itself, was unremarkable, even obvious in hindsight, but it was his experience that very few civilians, when thrust into a nightmare the way she had been, would have had the presence of mind to unerringly navigate the precisely correct path.
“What about the weapons you say you, ah . . . acquired?” he asked. If she had gotten rid of these, also, this would cast considerable doubt as to the truth of her story. “Can I see them?”
“Absolutely,” she replied immediately. “They’re in the trunk of my car. Well, you know, the car I drove here.”
“You really know how to use a trunk,” said Blake wryly. “Most women just use them to carry groceries or luggage. It’s the rare women who understands their utility for storing weapons and trapping dangerous intruders.”
Jenna smiled, the first time since Nathan’s death, and led Blake to her car, parked in a visitor’s spot near his apartment. She popped open the trunk.
Blake recognized the SMG inside immediately—an MP5, favored by US Special Forces. Interesting. Not the sort of weapon a Jenna Morrison could get her hands on. It would be easier for her to murder Nathan Wexler than to acquire one of these. The automatic pistol was also one used by the US military.
He shut the trunk.
“Check the license plate,” she said. “You can confirm it’s not registered to Jenna Morrison or Nathan Wexler. And it’s a plate that will definitely be reported stolen before too long.”
Blake nodded. He had planned to do just that. He took a photo of the plate with his phone and led her back inside.
“As I said,” he began when they resumed their positions, one in front and one behind his desk, “you’ve given me no reason to doubt you. And based on the weapons you showed me, every reason to believe you. Which means Dr. Walsh may be in trouble, as you’ve said.”
He rubbed his chin once again for several long seconds. “Myla,” he said finally to his personal digital assistant, “what are the formal hours of the UCLA physics department today?”
“Eight thirty to five,” responded the feminine computer voice.
Blake glanced at his watch. It was eight forty. He turned to Jenna. “I’m going to call him. Make sure he’s . . . well, that he’s alive.”
“Don’t you have to assume he and his phone are bugged?” said Jenna.
“Yes. But don’t worry, I won’t give anything away. I’m going to put this on speaker, but don’t say anything. If anyone is tapping in, I don’t want them to recognize your voice.”
He had Myla place the call, which was answered on the second ring. “Physics department,” said a cheerful female voice.
“Dan Walsh please.”
“Whom may I say is calling?”
“Tell him Randi Schatz. And that it’s extremely important.”
After less than a minute delay the line was picked up. “Dan Walsh,” said a male voice.
Is that him? mouthed Blake.
Jenna nodded.
“Hi, Dr. Walsh. My name is Randi Schatz. I’m an inventor, and I’ve come up with some software that can simplify the analysis of advanced mathematics. I’d love to schedule an appointment and demonstrate it for you.”
“Thanks, but I’m not interested,” said Walsh abruptly, hanging up on him.
Blake couldn’t blame him. No one appreciated being bothered by a solicitor who got him to the phone under false pretenses, especially this early in the morning. But Blake had no choice. If the call was being bugged, he needed it to appear as legitimate as possible. Had he hung up after verifying Walsh was alive and at work, this would have raised the eyebrows of anyone listening.
“Nicely done,” said Jenna. “You’re hired,” she added, not that this had ever been in question, but it was her way of saying she was beginning to appreciate his skills. “It’s a relief to know Dan is alive. But we have to warn him to make sure he stays that way.”
“I agree. But I don’t think he’s in much danger at the moment. We’ve been assuming they know Nathan sent an e-mail to Walsh with a summary of what he’d discovered. But if this were enough to trigger the kind of all-out response against Walsh that was triggered against Nathan, it would have happened by now. The groups you described don’t play around. Which isn’t to say they aren’t monitoring him. But we should have time.”
“Okay,” said Jenna. “I guess that makes sense.”
She paused for a moment and then sighed. “I should tell you that I can’t pay you much upfront. Five hundred is all I have on me. But I have more than enough in savings. And Nathan had a million dollar life insurance policy,” she added, her eyes becoming moist again from this reminder of how he had been snuffed out in his prime, in a single, unthinkable instant. “His parents told him it was a good idea,” she explained, her voice barely above a whisper. “At his age and health, it only cost him twenty-two bucks a month.”
