Split second, p.32
Split Second, page 32
He shoved it into Rohrer’s computer and accessed the Internet.
“Knight wasn’t lying,” whispered Wexler. “You can type inside a Google search bar, and download files, but can’t send anything else through cyberspace, including passwords.”
“Won’t need to,” whispered Blake. “Two doors down is the office of a Dr. Susan Schlesinger. I heard her in there with some guy doing a check-up. Sounded like it was almost done. While I’m finding and downloading what I need, open the door a crack and watch for him to leave.”
Wexler nodded and did as he was asked. Only two minutes later he reported that the patient had left and the doctor had returned to her office. Blake hurriedly finished up, shoved the flash drive into his pocket, and exited, with Wexler in tow.
He moved quickly to Dr. Schlesinger’s door and rapped twice. The woman opened the door halfway and looked troubled when she didn’t recognize either of her unexpected visitors. “Can I help you?” she said.
“Sorry to bother you, Dr. Schlesinger,” said Blake pleasantly, “but we’re with security here. We have reason to believe someone was searching through your office earlier today. Can we come in and take a look?”
She opened the door wider, an anxious look on her face. “Why would someone do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Blake, entering the room.
Once inside his friendly demeanor turned distinctly menacing. “I need you to stay very quiet,” he said, lifting his right arm from behind his back to reveal the scalpel he was holding. “If you scream or make any loud noise, I’ll kill you where you stand.”
“What’s this all about?” she whispered, barely managing to croak out the words.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Blake. “But I need you to do something for me.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“Call security,” he said. “Tell them you saw two men who looked suspicious near your office five minutes ago. Give them our descriptions. Tell them they both exited to the stairs, but you think they were using your computer.”
“And you won’t hurt me?” whispered Schlesinger, trying not to panic.
“I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to hurt you,” said Blake earnestly. “So just pull yourself together, do this, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
She lifted her phone while Blake repeated what she needed to say.
“Deep breaths,” said Blake, trying to calm her down.
The doctor took a few deep breaths, as instructed, and then dialed zero, asking for security. Her voice was shaky, but she was calling to report possible intruders so it wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to be a little rattled.
When the call had been transferred to security she gave her report as instructed, listened for several seconds, thanked the man at the other end, and hung up.
“What was his reaction?” said Blake. “Did he sound excited or bored?”
“Excited,” said Susan Schlesinger. “He promised to find the men I reported.”
“That’s all?” said Blake.
She nodded.
“You sure he didn’t also say he would send someone to check on your computer?” asked Blake. “After all, you did report we used it.”
“Positive,” she whispered.
Blake sighed. “Look, who could blame you for withholding something like this? I’ve given you reason to be afraid for your life. I get that. But I still promise I won’t hurt you if you cooperate. So I’ll ask one last time, are they sending a man here now?”
“Yes,” she said, fighting back tears. “Yes, you’re right.”
“Thank you,” said Blake, sounding almost relieved.
Wexler continued to marvel at his companion’s skills. Blake had spread the building’s security forces thin checking every nook and cranny for them on a number of blind floors, and after the doctor’s report they would be scrambling to check the floors above and below the nineteenth.
But Wexler realized Blake had wanted security to send a man to Schlesinger’s office. This is what he had been after all along. Wexler decided that if the stakes weren’t what they were, this Aaron Blake would have been fun to watch operate.
“When the man knocks,” Blake said to the doctor, “don’t make a sound. You’re almost at the finish line,” he added, “so hang in there.”
Blake opened the door a few inches and stood ready near the entrance. He handed the scalpel to Wexler. “Stay back with the doctor,” he said. “Out of sight of the door. If she makes a sound, kill her.”
Wexler had to remind himself this was all an act, but it was a role that could not have been more out of his comfort zone. He strained to come up with a response that was in character. “Roger that,” he said, wondering if people said this in real life or just in the movies.
Less than a minute later a member of security arrived and grabbed the handle to the door, still slightly ajar. “Dr. Schlesinger?” he called out.
Getting no response, he opened the door wider and entered, an extended gun leading the way, even though he had been told Blake and Wexler were long gone.
Aaron Blake moved with astonishing speed and dexterity, using the man’s slight momentum to pull him farther into the office with one hand while chopping at his Adam’s apple with the other. Not waiting to be sure the man had blacked out, Blake grabbed his head and ran him a few yards to the doctor’s desk, slamming his head down hard on the unforgiving surface.
The man dropped like a lead weight.
Blake didn’t waste a moment. He relieved the guard of a semi-automatic pistol, combat knife, and cell phone.
He rose from the floor and used the combat knife to sever the cord of Schlesinger’s landline. Since her cell phone was useless here, she would be unable to call security a second time.
“Thanks for your help,” he said.
Wexler was still holding the scalpel, wondering if he looked like as much of an imposter as he felt. Blake gestured to him. “My colleague will wait outside your door for five minutes to make sure you don’t exit, to give me time to do what I need to do. After five minutes, you can leave unmolested. When you do, feel free to tell security what happened. But since you’ve already put them on our tail, I wouldn’t waste time on this. I’m urging you to leave this island as quickly as possible. Trust me, you do not want to be in this building right now.”
She nodded meekly but didn’t reply.
Blake motioned for Wexler to exit the office and then closed the door behind them.
“Go to the elevators,” he whispered to the physicist. “I’ll wait thirty seconds and join you there.”
“Didn’t you want me to guard the door?”
Blake grinned. “Really?” he whispered. “You thought I meant that? Trust me, she won’t peek her head out of that office for the next five minutes no matter what.”
Blake waved his hand toward the corridor. “Go,” he said impatiently. “And don’t look up at any cameras.”
56
Edgar Knight paused just before opening the file now on his computer. If it really was the file, this would be one of the most monumental moments of his life. He knew once he began digging in he would be unable to focus on anything else.
So before he opened it, he needed to check on things. He put in a call to the man leading the search for Blake and Wexler, David Robinson. Unlike the rank and file, members of security had cell phones that had been programmed to act as walkie-talkies on the island.
“What’s the status on our two bogies?” he asked.
There was a brief hesitation at the other end. “We still haven’t found them,” reported Robinson, his voice strained. “We’ve now searched every square inch of every floor that Blake blinded, but nothing. We had a report that they were spotted on the nineteenth floor and exited into the stairwell. They may have used one of the computers in a doctor’s office. We’ve sent someone to check on this office, and others to search the stairwells and nearby floors.”
“Any chance they left the building?” asked Knight.
“Hard to imagine,” said Robinson. “The outside cameras are still operating, and we haven’t seen anything. But it’s also hard to imagine they’re still at large, so anything is possible. I’ll make sure we’re paying attention outside as well.”
Knight frowned. Blake was giving his security team a workout, just as Jenna had promised, but it was only a matter of time. And Knight was now only seconds away from getting information that would ensure his success, that would change the world forever.
“Okay, don’t contact me unless you have good reason to believe I’m in personal danger. No matter what.” Knight smiled with great satisfaction. “I’m going to be very busy.”
* * *
Blake and Wexler traveled to the fifth floor, one of those that was no longer subject to video coverage.
The doors opened and a member of security appeared two feet away, facing them as though he had been waiting for the elevator. Blake and the man raised their guns at the exact same time and stopped, both with their weapons now trained point-blank at the other’s head.
Neither took their eyes off the other, or even blinked, and both ignored Nathan Wexler completely.
“Looks like we have a standoff,” said the man, still staring at Blake with the intensity of a predatory cat.
Blake pulled the trigger and the man’s head almost exploded from his shoulders. His body fell to the ground along with his gun.
Idiot, thought Blake as he exited the elevator.
Standoffs were for the movies. Even if a gunman was a hair away from exerting enough trigger pressure to fire, human reflexes weren’t nearly fast enough to react if another gunman decided to go first. It was like spreading your thumb and forefinger an inch apart and having a friend hold a pencil in between, choosing when to drop it. If you waited until you detected it being dropped, you would never be quick enough to catch it.
The same was true in a supposed standoff. Whoever fired first would win, unscathed.
Blake retrieved the man’s gun and cell phone, giving him two of each. He pushed the last button on the phone and someone answered.
Blake focused on mimicking the voice of the man he had just killed. “I’ve been shot,” he said, deepening his voice and rasping out these words, knowing that pretending to be near death would help pave over any differences in vocal tone. “Overheard them,” he croaked, as though seconds away from bleeding out. “They plan to kill Knight. Nothing else matters to them. They’re taking elev . . . ”
Blake allowed his voice to trail off and he dropped the phone. He then entered the elevator on which they had arrived and pressed the button for the twenty-second floor, stepping back off before the doors closed.
“Come on,” he said to Wexler. “We’ll take the stairs to the first floor. Hopefully most of the men stationed there will be flocking to protect their boss.”
* * *
Edgar Knight studied the contents of the file in silence. This was it! Part of him had almost believed it was all a dream, that something would always stop him from putting his eyes on this holy grail, but here it was.
He only had to read the introduction to know it was Wexler’s work. He had familiarized himself with his previous work, and he had read physics and analysis done by other Nathan Wexlers as they attempted to replicate the first one’s breakthrough.
The equations were elegant and the thinking profound. Wexler’s insight was to look at the ways a fifth dimension could be forced to interact with the other four in an entirely novel way. Knight knew it would take years for him to fully understand all the mathematics, if ever, but already the logic of it was making sense.
He was euphoric.
And unlike Nathan Wexler, he knew much about how time travel worked in practice. So while Wexler wasn’t entirely certain he could extend this effect from forty-five microseconds to almost half a second, Knight now was. It might be as simple as initiating certain patterns of vibrations in the field when it was activated.
Knight read on in fascination as the wheels in his head continued to turn.
* * *
“Through these doors,” whispered Nathan Wexler, “and then left.”
Blake nodded, hoping like hell his diversion had at least reduced the number of men guarding the room they needed to enter. They had made it to the first floor and to within twenty yards or so of their destination without running into any resistance, which meant that the men who had remained on this level were concentrated ahead of them.
Blake motioned his physicist companion to wait several feet behind him around a bend in the corridor. He threw open one of the double doors and dived through into a roll, anticipating that hostiles were lying in wait on the other side.
The barrage of gunfire that greeted his ears indicated he had surmised correctly, although the shots were all chest high, just missing his body as it knifed lower. He came out of his roll firing, shooting bursts into all three men who were facing the newly opened door, killing them instantly.
Blake retreated a few steps and signaled for Wexler to join him, but as the physicist neared the double doors another gunman turned into the corridor behind them. Blake yanked Wexler down, taking two rounds meant for the physicist, one in his left shoulder, which shattered, and another in his left leg.
Blood coursed down this entire side of Blake’s body as he sent a burst of gunfire at the newcomer, but since the man was diving back around a bend in the corridor, he remained alive. Still, he had been severely wounded, and Blake had no choice but to assume he would be unable to give chase.
“Let’s go,” said Blake. He used the physicist as a crutch and proceeded back through the double doors. The two men went left for eight yards, and then right, following Wexler’s instructions.
The pain in Blake’s shoulder was so excruciating that the hole in his leg barely registered. He continued to leak blood like a sieve, leaving a trail behind him as if he were a snail.
Wexler half-carried, half-dragged him the remaining ten yards to the door that had been their goal from the very beginning. The door wouldn’t open, but Blake removed his right arm from around Wexler’s shoulders and sent a burst through the lock to remedy this situation, steadying himself against the wall.
A dozen men were typically stationed around this room to be sure no one who wasn’t authorized entered—so the lock was just a formality. Especially since it didn’t matter if anyone entered, anyway. The room could only be useful to one man: Edgar Knight.
They entered the room that housed Knight’s stationary time travel chamber. To Blake’s eyes, the device was identical to the one inside Cheyenne Mountain. As Cargill had predicted, Knight had seen no need to change a good design.
Wexler managed to get them both to the sending station and Blake slumped into a chair in front of the computer that controlled the device. Blake handed the physicist one of the cell phones he had taken, which would work just fine anywhere but on the island.
“I’ve programmed Cargill’s number,” whispered Blake, his voice strained. “Call him . . . instant you arrive.”
Wexler nodded. “Got it.”
Blake tinkered with his belt buckle and removed an electronic device, about the size of a thick quarter, which began to glow from an inner light. “Put this . . . in pocket,” he rasped.
“What is it?”
“When you . . . arrive,” replied Blake, continuous speech becoming more and more of a challenge as he continued to weaken. “It signals. Aborts device. So you’re only . . . sent . . . once.”
“Right,” said Wexler, as though this should have been obvious.
Blake was losing blood so rapidly he knew he had only minutes to live. He handed Wexler the flash drive he had taken from Dr. Rohrer’s abandoned office, knowing he no longer had the motor skills to insert it into the computer. The physicist found the proper port and shoved it in.
When the file Blake had downloaded appeared on the monitor, Wexler opened it, and it immediately began carrying out automated instructions that required no additional human input.
“Get inside . . . chamber,” whispered Blake, his voice weak almost beyond recognition.
As he had already explained to Wexler, Cargill’s group had studied the breakthrough the other Nathan Wexler had made, and after only four days had been able to modulate the field, causing it to vibrate in a precise pattern that allowed for an extended range, in time and thus space. And the only change necessary to achieve this result was in the software.
Q5 had hastily conducted experiment after experiment, rapidly climbing the learning curve and perfecting the technique.
The software Q5 scientists had designed was even now working its magic. It would use Cargill’s backdoor to take over the computer, and would trigger the device as soon as it detected that someone was in the chamber and the door was sealed. The device would be programmed to send Wexler far enough back in time for him to end up sixty-two miles away, a somewhat arbitrary distance.
Since they didn’t know where Knight was headquartered, if sixty-two miles away in a certain direction happened to be inside a mountain, preventing time travel from occurring, the programming would alternate polarity, and thus direction, every second, and try again, until success was achieved.
Wexler spun the crank on the chamber door to open it and lifted Blake from the chair, propping him against the device.
The moment Wexler was safely inside, Blake marshaled his massive will, and the last of his remaining strength, to spin the crank back the other way. The device would fire the moment the door was sealed once more.
Blake wondered what it would be like to have every cell in his body vaporized in an instant. While he hadn’t felt the need to tell Nathan Wexler about this, the transmitter in his pocket would serve two functions the moment it detected unfamiliar GPS coordinates.
In addition to aborting the device, it would activate the tiny grain of octa-nitro-cubane explosive attached to a detonator inside his belt. Enough to turn two rooms this size into a fireball.
