by Sussman, Ben
As he looked, he batted away the other major worry that was nagging at his brain.
If we find him, then what? Matt was no closer to obtaining the antidote from John than he had been at the beginning of this nightmare. If anything, he had actually managed to make his situation worse. John would not stand for him straying off the tight leash he had kept him on for the past hours. If Matt had learned anything about the cold-blooded murderer, it was that John’s mission was all that mattered to him.
No time to dwell on that now. His first objective was to find his son. Once he did, everything else would have to fall into place.
He glanced eastward down the stretch of the boulevard. As Larsen had said, it headed deeper into the heart of Los Angeles. Matt was still convinced that Luke would not have headed in that direction, seeing the street lined with squat darkened buildings. He spun and looked down the busy westward stretch of Sunset instead.
Think like Luke, he told himself.
He stepped forward slowly, his mind echoing with the imagined voice of his son. “I’m eight years old,” it began. “I don’t know where the hell I am. I feel like crap. I’m scared out of my mind. But I’m also brave. I want to protect my dad. I told Larsen that I was leaving because I didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.”
Matt stopped, causing Larsen and Ashley to bump into him. He had not realized that they were following him closely.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he repeated, aloud this time.
The answer suddenly flashed in his head. He whirled to face the direction they had just come from. Seconds later, his feet were carrying him down the sidewalk in a sprint. A confused Ashley and Larsen struggled to keep up with his speed.
“Matt!” Ashley shouted. “Where are you going?”
There was no time to stop. Matt simply yelled over his shoulder.
“Back to the car! I know where Luke is!”
Thirty-Six
Jason placed his gun back in its holster, leaving the top unsnapped as a precaution. He tried standing up but fell back against the desk as a hot arc of pain shot through his leg.
“How is it?” Emma asked him.
“It’s fine,” he lied.
“I’m sorry,” she told him again. “Instinct kicked in. I automatically went for your most vulnerable area.”
Worth got himself back to an upright position, rubbing his thigh but feeling the searing discomfort slowly ebbing away. “Let’s face it, Emma. You kicked my ass.” They shared a small smile. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“After Stanford, Mike said I still needed official agent training. I excelled at hand-to-hand combat class.”
“Clearly,” Jason agreed. “So, you’re not the mole.”
“No.”
“But you agree that there is one.”
“Absolutely. It’s the only thing that makes sense. You’re correct about that.”
“Who do you think it is?”
Emma opened her mouth to speak but the words were lost. The shrill blare of a klaxon cut the air. A voice quickly followed over the office intercom system. “Emma Hosobuchi, report to Situation Room A immediately.”
She locked eyes with Jason. “Do you trust me?” she asked.
“What do you-”
She held out her hand for him to take.
“Do you trust me?” she insisted.
Jason hesitated for only a second before grasping her hand. “Yes.”
Eighty feet away, General Griggs was leaning over a hi-resolution monitor embedded in the conference table of Situation Room A. Text scrolled across it in quick bursts. He tried catching all of the information that was ticking past but doing so only succeeded in making him dizzy. At last, he pushed away from the table. He turned to Feltz, who was hovering at his side.
“You’re sure about this?” Griggs asked him.
“Absolutely, sir. We now have confirmation that FALCON operations one through five have been disabled.
“Incredible,” Griggs muttered. He ran a hand over his face. This was even worse than he had imagined.
“Are you alright, sir?” Feltz asked.
“Considering our supposedly impenetrable defense systems are nearly down, putting the lives of millions of innocents Americans at stake, I would say I am not fine at all, son. In fact, I would call that a rather stupid question.”
“Of course, sir,” the soldier backpedaled.
“Where the hell is Emma Hosobuchi?” barked Griggs, cutting off any further questioning.
“She’s been ordered to this room ASAP, sir. Should be here any second.”
The general’s eyes were drawn to movement outside the window of the conference room. Without his glasses, it was difficult to discern but it appeared that two figures were furtively making their way towards the rear stairwell that lay across the length of the office floor. One of those figures looked disturbingly familiar. He shot out of his chair.
“Isn’t that her?” he shouted at his underling, squinting to get a better look.
Feltz instantly joined Griggs at the window. The door to the stairs was shutting just as it came into his sightline. “I can’t be sure, sir. I didn’t really see.”
“Get the goddamned MP’s!” roared Griggs.
“MP’s?”
“Did I stutter? Was that order somehow unclear to you?”
“No, sir,” stammered Feltz. He snatched up the handset of a nearby conference room phone and punched a series of numbers. “We have a Code Yellow situation. MP’s needed on the lower level.” He listened for a few seconds, then cupped his hand over the phone to whisper to Griggs. “Sir, they want to know what they’re supposed to do when they get here?”
Griggs seethed in silence. Must he always be surrounded by people so dense? He glared back at Feltz, saying through gritted teeth. “Tell them to follow Emma Hosobuchi, exercise extreme caution and authorize the use of lethal force.” His eyes turned back to the stairwell door, uninterested in the shocked reaction registering on Feltz’s face. “We have a traitor that needs to be dealt with.”
Emma was taking the stairs two at a time. Her mind was clicking at rapid-fire speed, permutations and scenarios flashing and then disappearing as they were instantly dismissed. The door to her destination lay just above the next staircase. As she was about to take the last few steps, she noticed that she was alone.
“Jason?” she called out.
“Down here,” came the answer. Emma bounded back down the stairs she had just climbed to find Worth leaning against a metal handrail. She noticed his right knee slightly bent to the side. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “I can’t keep up with my leg.”
Without a word, Emma stepped down to him and placed her diminutive frame underneath his right shoulder. “Put your weight on me.”
“Ms. Hosobuchi, I-”
“It wasn’t a question, Specialist Worth. It was an order.” She heard Jason sigh in frustration, then felt him maneuver so she was bearing the brunt of his right side’s heft. Together, they made their way up the stairway.
“Technically, I don’t have to follow your orders, you know,” Worth said.
“Yes, well, you never were very good at obeying the rules.”
Jason gave a thin smile. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“The third floor. We need to find Cameron Allen.”
“The IT guy? What’s he going to do for us?”
Emma remained silent as they hit the door to the third level. She yanked it open and waved Jason through. He stepped as quickly as he could and had just crossed the threshold into a carpeted hallway when there was a metallic bang from below. He whirled but only saw Emma hurriedly shutting the door behind her. “What was that?” Worth asked.
“Most likely, it was the MP’s that Griggs has ordered to find me,” Emma said off-handedly, scanning the nearby wall. “Ah, here we go.” She pressed a small panel set into the wall and it swiveled open on hidden hinges. Inside, a keypad rested beneath a steadily glowing green light. Emma r
apidly punched a series of numbers and then cocked her ear to listen.
Ker-thunk.
She nodded, satisfied. Grabbed Jason’s hand to lead him down the hallway. He opened his mouth for another question but she interrupted him before he had a chance. “It’s a lockdown program I created for internal threats. It locks all stairways and freezes the elevators.” Suddenly, there was pounding at the stairway door that they had exited through. Muffled shouts from beyond confirmed what Emma had just told Jason.
Emma paused and turned to Worth. “This is your chance to leave me. It’s still possible for you to say I coerced you into coming this far. But if you go ahead with me, then you’re as much a danger to Griggs as I am.” She jerked her neck towards a high corner of the hall. “There is a high probability that the camera over there has a feed going directly to Griggs. An even higher probability is that we will not leave this building alive tonight. I’ll understand if you want to stay here.”
Without a beat of hesitation, Worth met Emma’s eyes and gave his answer. “Ma’am, you picked the wrong soldier to leave you behind.” He straightened. “I can walk on my own now. Lead the way.”
Emma allowed herself a thin smile before telling him, “Let’s go find Cameron Allen. Then we’ll know if we’re going to survive the night.”
Thirty-Seven
Matt was pressing so hard on the Porsche’s accelerator that his foot was throbbing. Spotting an upcoming corner, he downshifted and crossed one hand over the steering wheel to pull it. Tires shrieking in protest, the car skidded in a perfect arc to make the turn.
“Jesus!” Ashley shouted from the passenger seat. Larsen slid the length of the back seat and banged into the passenger door.
“I’m not slowing down,” Matt grumbled.
“Luke needs us alive,” she reminded him.
Matt ignored her, keeping his focus on the road ahead. Street names flashed past in rapid succession. His knowledge of this residential area of Beverly Hills was spotty at best since he never had listings in the area. However, he prided himself on knowing the way around every busy route in Los Angeles. Sunset Boulevard was one of those; heavy with traffic at any time of day or night. The path that he was on now ran in a circuitous parallel to the Boulevard. If he was correct, they would arrive just in time to –
Blue and red lights flashed in the rearview mirror.
“Weatherly, we have a problem,” Larsen said from the back seat.
“I can lose them,” Matt answered, pushing his foot down to the carpeted floor.
“Then you’ll have a bigger problem.”
“I don’t care.”
“Stop the car,” Larsen told him. Behind them, the whine of the police car’s siren was rising.
“No way.”
“Weatherly, stop the car!”
“I’m not stopping this car!”
“Stop the damn car before that cop calls for backup or your son is going to die!” screamed Larsen.
Matt’s face flushed red as he turned to glare at the detective. Silently, he slammed on the brakes, pitching both Ashley and Larsen forward. The police car screeched to a halt at their bumper, the door flying open and a uniformed silhouette appearing next to it. The officer stayed in the shadows cast by the far-away streetlamps.
“Let me do the talking,” Larsen ordered. He spotted his badge on the back floor and placed it into his hand. Making Ashley lean forward, he opened the passenger door and climbed out.
The voice of the policeman immediately hit Larsen’s ears. “Hands in the air! Now!”
Larsen complied, putting his arms out at his side and clutching his badge in his hand. “Everything’s fine,” he said. He squinted to get a better look at the policeman but the gloom only provided the hint of the officer’s outline next to the open car door.
“Keep your hands up!” the officer shouted.
“I’m Detective David Larsen of the LAPD. Homicide.”
There was a beat of silence before the policeman spoke again. “Show me your badge.”
Larsen flipped open his wallet to expose the shield.
“Toss it to me,” the policeman said.
There was something in the man’s voice that gave Larsen pause. He could not put his finger on what was bothering him and yet the gnawing feeling was there.
“I said, toss it to me,” the order came again.
Larsen did as instructed, lobbing his wallet to the man’s feet. He waited for the policeman to kneel down to pick it up, which would undoubtedly put the man’s face in the direct path of a streetlight’s glare. Yet, the officer did not move. He only kept his gun trained at the detective.
“Now your gun,” the policeman commanded.
“I don’t have it on me,” Larsen parried. It was a lie but one that the detective felt was necessary. Something in the other officer’s tone – or rather the complete lack of anything in the man’s voice – was thoroughly unnerving him.
“Is Weatherly still in the car?” the officer asked.
The ropes of worry in Larsen’s stomach tied themselves into a knot. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I said, is Weatherly still in the car?”
Larsen fit the pieces of suspicion together in his brain. If this guy was a cop on patrol, he would not have had time to radio in the plates on the car. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. His words hung in the air, the silence giving Larsen all the warning he needed.
Everything that followed happened within the span of seconds.
The gun in the officer’s hand popped, the muzzle flash illuminating a stoic young face with short-cropped blonde hair.
Larsen dove to the left, his body skidding along the chipped black asphalt. Simultaneously, he screamed out, “Matt, get out of here!” The Porsche’s tires roared, churning up bits of the ground and pluming exhaust that burned Larsen’s lungs.
The officer, who Larsen now realized was the mysterious John that had set the entire night’s events into motion, immediately climbed back into the police car. The engine roared to life. Larsen saw the grill set on a collision course with his skull. He rolled to the side, the wheels catching the cuff of his pant leg and shredding it. The detective pulled his gun from beneath his jacket, unloading a barrage of bullets at the swerving backside of the police car. One of them found its mark, bringing a pop and hiss as it struck a rear tire. The car fishtailed, then straightened, its passenger door flinging open from force. A bulky object tumbled on to the ground about twenty feet from Larsen. As he gained his senses, the detective realized that it was a body, arms jerked into an unnatural position by the fall. The neat hole of a gunshot rested just below a receding hairline. The man was stripped down to his police-issued undershirt.
Larsen squeezed his eyes shut. Another dead body, a cop this time. He mumbled the Lord’s Prayer, crossing himself. As he touched his left shoulder, his hand came back sticky. He glanced at it and winced. Blood covered his fingertips. Suddenly, the pain that had been held back by a wall of adrenaline flooded his body.
“Damn it,” he grumbled through gritted teeth. He had only been shot in the line of duty one other time and it had been the fault of a coked up Hollywood producer who thought the detective was there to steal his stash. That wild bullet had only grazed him. This wound was more serious. Larsen found the entry point beneath his left bicep. It was a small hole and he was thankful that the bullet appeared to have passed through cleanly. He quickly ripped off a shred of long fabric from his pants and tied a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood. The pain became a dull throb that Larsen could deal with. He stood up on wobbly legs.
Allowing himself a minute to catch his breath, Larsen did the only thing he could think of. Started running in the same direction he had been heading with Matt and Ashley.
Thirty-Eight
Cameron Allen was hungry. It was a feeling he was all too familiar with. In fact, in the rare moments when he was honest with himself, it was a sensation that had haunted him for his entire life. As his bulky f
rame lumbered out of his vinyl chair, he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective glass of a flat-screen monitor and grunted. He had imagined that the slightly lower intake of calories he had ingested this week would cause a noticeable difference. It had not. All two hundred and eighty-three pounds stared back at him.
“Screw it,” he thought. His intended destination had been the secure printer across the hall but he changed direction towards the vending machine at the opposite end of the hallway. Depositing his three quarters, he waited for the King Size Snickers to drop out of its coils. He was so intent on the candy’s descent that he failed to notice the intermittently flashing lights in the top corner of the passageway. When he did, he shrugged. “Not my problem,” he mumbled aloud.
Back at his chair, he cracked his knuckles and hovered his hands above the keyboard for the briefest of seconds before plunging them down in rapid-fire typing. Cameron was a code monkey. That meant he spent most of his life writing computer code. The majority of it was done in the service of the United States government. Some of it, however, was done in his spare time at his apartment in Colorado Springs.
The private coding had begun purely for his own enjoyment. Without much of a social life, he needed something to amuse himself in the evenings. Cameron enjoyed creating worms and viruses and then dumping them on unsuspecting users. One of his favorite creations automatically subscribed the visitors to a certain church’s website to a paid membership in a hardcore pornography site. He chuckled imagining the awkward conversations it must have created in hundreds of homes. As time wore on, though, he became bored by his usual hacking. He craved more of a challenge.
That’s where his job came in.
The government job he had obtained straight out of college was a daily grind that eventually became intolerable. Frustrated at his lack of promotions and increasing workload, Cameron saw the opportunity for surreptitious revenge. Through various chatboards, he spread the word that he was available for the right price. The offers trickled in. Most involved obtaining low-level items like email addresses and personal cell phone numbers. He was never stupid enough to go after top secret information, knowing how heavily firewalled and monitored such things were. Cameron was easily able to satisfy the orders, building a tidy savings account in the process. He was rather pleased with the whole setup.
