The Search

by Alex Howell

She wasn’t kidding about using the state of the art encryption. Huh. Guess we really are dealing with the big bucks here. It’s—

  And then the file finished, and what Mason saw confirmed his worst suspicions, his most paranoid fears about where this was all leading to.

  The phone call had originated from within the White House.

  Clara was almost certainly underneath the most secure building in the entire United States.

  23

  Aww, hell.

  Of all the places Clara could be, the White House was about the worst place. Not only was it heavily secured, but no one who ever would have ventured in there on a rescue mission would ever look like a hero. Even if Mason could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a member of the cabinet or a Secret Service agent had double-crossed America, there was no way that storming the White House would make him look like a patriot.

  They would cast him as the madman who put the executive branch at risk. Even if “they” kept it under wraps, he wasn’t going to get inside and get his daughter out without drawing eyes. Someone would kill her.

  He could not physically remove her. He’d have to negotiate or work with either the enemy or someone very close to the enemy.

  But there just weren’t a lot of options for that working out. Once he had fulfilled the enemy’s main request—highly likely at this point, since Mason was now reduced to grabbing breakfast for some terrorists in New York City—he didn’t see how they’d ever work with him. He didn’t see how he could convince someone in the White House of a spy or enemy mastermind in there—and, even if he did, how was that trusted adviser ever going to figure out who the rat was?

  It was a bad problem that had just been made worse. For once, Mason suddenly wished he didn’t know this information, or at least had delayed it until the moment at which he’d act upon it. Now, he’d have to have it in his head until he finally took action.

  Tessa got back into the car less than a few seconds later. Mason had not bothered to hide that he had gone through her bag in search of the tablet. In fact, the thing was still sitting on his lap.

  “What in the hell are you…”

  Her voice trailed off as she saw what Mason saw—that the source of the phone call had come from the highest level of government. Mason tilted his head, as if to say “see what I’m dealing with?”

  “My God,” she said. “Who in the—”

  “I don’t know and I doubt this system does either,” Mason said. “And right now, we have to play this close to the vest. We need to keep doing what we’re doing right now. We’re already an hour outside New York City. But this does tell us where Clara is being held. It’s going to suck, but… guess we’re going to pay the administration a visit after we’re done.”

  “Does it, though? Does it show they have her here?”

  Mason grimaced, knowing full well the potential that where she was being held was different from where the call could have originated from.

  “How certain are you that the location of that call would be accurate from this app?”

  “One hundred percent,” she said. “The technology used in this is far ahead of anything. It’ll track burner phones, flip phones, smartphones, phones underwater, phones in an airplane, anything. I would trust this device more than I’d trust you.”

  “Say no more,” Mason said. “Then why do you doubt—”

  “Because there’s just too much that doesn’t make sense,” Tessa said. “Someone from the White House wants you—not someone in the NSA or CIA—but you to seemingly come out of retirement to rescue some Arabian guy from customs, and then wants you to get his stuff. Is it… is it a political move? Do we have any friends from the SEALs that were real political?”

  “None that I can think of,” Mason said with a snort. “Best I can tell, someone maybe is just power hungry.”

  “We should find out who all is—”

  “Just because it came from the White House doesn’t mean it’s someone in the White House staff, you know?” Mason said. “And besides, for all of this, you make a good point. Maybe the head honcho is calling from the White House, but they have Clara in some underground cell or something, far away from the White House. I doubt the previous presidencies ever kept hostages underneath the Oval Office.”

  Tessa sighed, which Mason matched. Talk about feeling defeated. Talk about feeling lost.

  “Now I’m just even more confused.”

  Mason, with wide eyes, had to nod his head slowly and add a “yep, yep.” Nothing much about this made sense.

  “Do you want to split up?”

  “What do you mean?” Mason said. Had she picked up that he wanted to leave her behind?

  “You can stay in D.C., I can go to New York, or we could do the reverse, or—”

  Mason ended that train of thought with a firm shake of his head and a hand on Tessa’s arm. Of all of the outcomes he could envision, most of the bad ones came because of a tactical error like splitting apart too early. He had to show up in New York to continue his service to the mission, and he had to be the one to rescue Clara. Letting Tessa handle that responsibility seemed like a really good way to put her in harm’s way.

  “We’ll do this together,” Mason said. “You lie in the shadows. As far as I’m aware, you’re just a lover of mine. Let’s keep it that way. You can help better when you’re hiding than when you’re out for all the cameras to see.”

  To his surprise, Tessa burst out laughing at that, even as she started the car and headed back in the direction of Manhattan. In fact, she was laughing so hard she started coughing because she was having trouble breathing.

  “The hell?”

  “You might be the first man to ever say ‘you’re just a lover of mine. Let’s keep it that way.’ Most would think that being a lover of theirs would be the end goal, not a starting point.”

  “Yeah, well, things have a way of getting confusing on a mission like this.”

  Tessa kept laughing, but it slowly died down as the darkness of the night created a peaceful stillness.

  “Are you good to drive to New York?”

  “Yeah,” Tessa said. “I’ll stop so we can get some sleep in New Jersey. We can finish the last hour at six.”

  “Deal. And then, Tessa?”

  She looked at him with a hopeful smile—an expression that he needed, even if he hadn’t known it before seeing that smile.

  “Once we finish in New York and get back to D.C., you can go. I’ll go and find Clara myself.”

  “Sure?”

  “You’ve already put yourself in the line of serious danger by being here. I don’t think I need to explain why. You stay here with me and you’ll get hurt. You can communicate from afar, but you shouldn’t be near me. Got it?”

  Tessa nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  Mason, however, struggled to stay awake for the rest of the ride and soon succumbed to fatigue, passing out in the passenger’s seat as he hoped that Clara’s rest would somehow be peaceful.

  24

  Date: May 13th, 2028

  Time: 6:10 a.m.

  Location: Near Trenton, NJ

  * * *

  Mason woke with a jolt at sunrise.

  The good news was that this meant he had not woken up that much past six. That much was confirmed when he looked at his watch and saw it was only ten past the hour. He still had time to get to Mr. Abdi and even grab him a fresh breakfast, as ridiculous a request as this whole thing had become.

  He was, however, slightly confused by how Tessa was resting on him, as if trying to cuddle with him in the night. Why would she…

  He knew why.

  This girl, he thought.

  But he didn’t let the thoughts go any further as the urgency of the situation at hand came rushing back, reminding him that he had his daughter to take care of, and that it would only happen that way somehow by getting breakfast over to some Saudi Arabian men in a city that was far away, too far away, from his kidnapped only child.
>
  Just before he was set to wake Tessa up, though, his phone vibrated in his pocket. His mind clouded by the fatigue of sleep, Mason at first did not realize who was calling, looking at the name, seeing “Rock,” and wondering who he had in his phone that was named “Rock.” Was that an old code name that he had never bothered to delete? Might it have been someone in the government reaching out?

  Then he took a closer look and realized it said “Blocked,” not “Rock.” I’m an idiot sometimes. He mentally tried to awaken himself, suddenly felt as if he’d been awake and sharp from five drinks of coffee, and tilted to the right to let Tessa keep sleeping.

  “Awful early for you to be calling,” he said as he got out of the car, shutting the door behind him. “I’m still on schedule to be getting your men their complete breakfast.”

  “How’s your girlfriend?”

  Oh crap.

  Mason thought of playing dumb, but they already saw Tessa as his romantic fling. He had to play along, at least to the extent that she was a part of his life.

  “I’m sure that she’s asleep right now somewhere. That seems awfully personal a question.”

  “Is that so?” the voice said, laughing. “And would that be because she’s in bed in her apartment… or because she’s on your lap at a gas station?”

  Oh crap!

  There was definitely no getting around the point now. Mostly for worse, Mason could not play games anymore. And he knew what the voice had warned him of before.

  “What’s your point?” Mason said.

  “Simple, really,” the voice said. “We told you not to get anyone else involved. Did we not?”

  “She’s not involved,” Mason said, but he knew he was grasping at straws of definitions. “She drove me. If you think—”

  “You know, Mason, the worst thing that you can do in this spot is lie to us,” the voice growled, snapping and losing control for the first time. “I don’t know what skills they taught you in the SEALs, but to lie to someone who has control over the life of your daughter is not one of them. So you need to answer this right now. Did we. Not. Tell you. Not to get anyone else involved?”

  The thing Mason feared most was exactly what the voice had mentioned—them doing something to his daughter. He would lie through his teeth for many things, but the idea of something happening to Clara… it was too much. It couldn’t happen.

  Mason was beginning to regret ever helping in the first place. He should have at least called their bluff early, perhaps to set the stage early that Mason would not be so easily tugged along. But it was too late for that. It was too late for a lot of things.

  Hopefully, after this call, it wouldn’t be too late for Clara as well.

  “You did,” Mason admitted.

  “And what have you done now, Mason Walker?”

  Mason bit his lip. To lie further, to deflect the question, to have played dumb would only get the trigger pulled on his daughter that much quicker. Only honesty could keep her alive.

  “I got help.”

  “Ahh, finally, you admitted the truth,” the voice said, almost sounding relieved. “It’s a good thing you did so, too, because let me tell you what we know. We know that Tessa was with you in the Navy SEALs. We know that she became a world expert on hacking and cybersecurity. We know that she was the one who got you into the CIA. We know that she was the one you called ‘Hawkeye.’”

  They know everything. They have everything between us of relevance. It’s like everything we did was out in the open, as plain as a painting in bright red letters for the world to see.

  Jesus…

  They’re going to kill Clara for this.

  “So with all of this in mind, tell us, Mason, why would you ever seek help?”

  Mason bit his lip. If he didn’t say anything, he couldn’t lie. That may have been a giant loophole he was trying to keep open, but it was one that he fully believed in at that moment—mostly out of sheer necessity. Anything else would not work.

  “Pleading the fifth, are we?” the voice said with a sarcastic laugh.”You, of all people, should know how such silly things as laws and amendments don’t apply to two places—in the badlands of the outlaws, and in war. Make no mistake about it, Mason. This is a war. You may not see it yet, but it is something that will come.”

  That will come…

  So this is building toward a war? Does he mean between us?

  Or does he mean between the USA and Saudi Arabia… or maybe even more participants?

  As if catching itself, the voice paused for a few seconds, breathing heavily, giving Mason space to speak. But now that the voice had revealed something seemingly critical to the future, Mason wasn’t about to utter a peep now. He didn’t see how the information was valuable now, but perhaps in an hour or so it would prove of use with a new development.

  “Very well, Mason,” the voice said. “If you choose to punish us by breaking the rules, then we will have to break part of our original promise.”

  “I swear, if you kill her—”

  “Not killing, Mr. Walker,” the voice said. “Check your text messages. We are sending you something you will want to see.”

  The line went dead. Mason, with trepidation, opened his text messages to see that someone had sent him a live video link. Mason opened it, waited for it to load, and nearly chucked his phone when he saw what was happening.

  Two men, dressed in all black, had his daughter by the arms. Her hands were tied behind her back, but at least she had her feet free. Her mouth was covered by duct tape. She moved freely, but did not struggle back. It was as if she knew the struggle was futile, and it was better to save her strength. Or she hasn’t had food and water in several hours and is weak because of it.

  The camera then panned to a new room with a giant hole in it. Mason saw his daughter come into view.

  And then the men tossed her into the hole. The line cuts back on.

  “No!” he roared. “I swear I will kill all of you no matter what… what… damnit!”

  Mason had to stop himself when he saw the hole wasn’t nearly as deep as the first camera had suggested. Clara had undoubtedly suffered some bruises, but the fall couldn’t have been more than five or six feet deep at the most.

  Even so, this was a new degree of fighting dirty. This was going a step into the direction of actually killing Clara—even if Mason completed the mission.

  And it only got worse the more that the voice spoke.

  “Your daughter will remain in that hole for the duration of your mission, Mason,” it said. “The longer you spend with your friend, the more that hole will fill. She is not going to be able to get out of that hole without some major help, Mason, and if you do not recognize the gravity of our threats… your daughter will be up to her neck in dirt.”

  “You son of a—”

  “You can threaten me all you want, Mason, but that doesn’t change the threats.”

  Mason all but panted as he grew hyperactive. He wanted to reach through the phone, pull out the coward warping his—or maybe even her—voice and break their scrawny little neck. He wanted to show them that for all of their bluster, only one man had the courage to actually get on the ground and fight.

  But technology wasn’t there yet. Which meant Mason would remain where he was.

  “You know your next task. I expect you to leave your friend. Find your own way into the city and meet Abdi and his colleagues by 8 a.m. with the requested breakfast. Do not disappoint me, Mason.”

  The line went dead. Mason held his phone down in disbelief.

  He knew what the threat was, and he knew that the terrorists had not been playing around. It shouldn’t have surprised him to see what it did. While surprise was not necessarily what he felt, it was fair to say that he was in something of a state of shock.

  And he knew now that he had to do that which he had most feared would happen between him and Tessa.

  He’d have to send her away.

  He knocked on the door, jolting Tessa
from her sleep. She looked as if moving to get a gun, but then quickly relaxed when she was it was Mason—she, like many of Mason’s former military friends, had gotten all too used to the environment of having to defend oneself in an instant.

  “You OK?” she said, waking up much faster than Mason ever had.

  She already knew the answer, though, from how he looked.

  “I need you to go to Manhattan on your own,” Mason said. “They got Clara in a pit now. If they see me cooperating with you—which they already have—they will kill her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s why I was outside. They just called me. They know everything about us.”

  “Jesus, damn,” Tessa said. “You sure they’d kill her though? They have to know that if they kill her, you stop cooperating.”

  While that was true and may have made sense to Mason in any other circumstance, this was his only child that they were talking about. The very thought of Clara going without food and water, of tasting dirt, of having bruises from being so savagely thrown into the hole was enough to make his blood boil at an earlier temperature than normal.

  It may have made sense, but it didn’t have to make sense with family. It had to make too much sense when it came to family.

  “Not gonna risk that, Tessa,” Mason said, patting the hood of the car. “You get to New York and get yourself away. I’ll figure it out on my own.”

  Tessa looked at him, let out a long sigh, and then nodded.

  “I bet you will,” she said. “Good luck, Mason. Please… if you can find a way to contact me and you have to…”

  “Don’t you worry,” Mason said.

  I’m not going to ever see her again.

  They’ll probably kill her too for what happened. But if it’s not Clara, then…

  With that, Tessa slowly drove off, suddenly no longer in a rush to go the speed limit. Mason sighed, waiting until she’d disappeared from view, and hailed an automatic ride. There wasn’t much point in trying to be covert when it was obvious that his every waking move was being tracked by his daughter’s captors.