Split Second (2 page)

Dan Walsh was a physicist at nearby
UCLA and had been a close friend of Nathan Wexler for years.

“Okay,” said Jenna. “This is
very cute and all, Nathan. I like how you’re trying to build the suspense. But
enough already. I’m at the edge of my seat. Really.”

She set the goblet of wine down
on a nearby end table. “So out with it. Spill. I’m not going to drink to a
breakthrough discovery until I at least know the gist of what it is.”

Wexler tapped the screen of his
cell phone and a drum roll issued from the speaker.

“Really?” said Jenna, laughing. Apparently,
the wine wasn’t the only thing he had prepared for this moment. “I had no idea
you were this theatrical.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know
about me,” he replied with a broad smile as the drum roll continued to loop in
a repeating pattern.

The front door shot open and
three men burst through the threshold and into their small home, as though cued
by the drum roll.

For just a moment Jenna thought
they might be part of the show, but something about their look, their
seriousness, squelched this notion, and gave her an unmistakable sense that
these men were highly dangerous. And Nathan’s reaction—his mouth dropping open
and his eyes almost exploding from their sockets—made their uninvited status a
certainty.

She didn’t know who these men
were, or why they had stormed into their home, but one thing was certain—they
were highly skilled. Not only had they managed to unlock the door without a
sound, but had somehow deactivated the alarm that Nathan had set as well.

What in the hell was going on?

The men stood their ground,
silently, waiting for the two scientists to digest their presence.

“Who are you?” whispered Nathan
Wexler in alarm to the trio of intruders. “And what are you doing here?”

2

Jenna knew immediately the men
were not there to rob them. A team this good would have set their sights on a
far more valuable prize. A mansion or an art museum. But certainly not the
small house they were renting.

 
“Dr. Wexler,” said the tallest of the three,
nodding at Nathan. “Miss Morrison. Sorry about the intrusion. But I’m afraid
you need to come with us. If you cooperate,” he continued, “I can promise that you
won’t be harmed.”

The man’s two companions, a short,
stocky black man, and a pale blond who looked to be of German ancestry, remained
silent and alert.

“Who are you?” repeated Wexler.
“And what is this about?”

“This is about the discovery you
just made. I need to bring you to someone who wants to discuss it with you.”

“How do you have any idea of
what discoveries I might have just made?”

“Look, my mission parameters are
very tight. I’ve already disclosed more than I should have. My job is to bring
you in, gently, but ask you to put off all questions until you meet with my
boss. Apparently, any discussion I might have with you is above my pay grade.”

“And if we refuse?” said Jenna.

The man shook his head while his
two colleagues maintained a calm but hardened look. “I’m afraid I can’t take no
for an answer.”

Jenna’s mind raced. The man
hadn’t made an explicit threat, nor had he drawn a gun. But then again, he
didn’t have to. She had no doubt that just one of these men, unarmed, could
probably best her and Nathan if they both had machine guns in their hands.

What had Nathan discovered? How
did they know about it so quickly? And Nathan had said his discovery was
largely theoretical, with unclear real-world applications, so why the intense interest?

“We’ll be leaving in a moment,”
said the gang’s spokesman. “Apologies again, but we first need to take care of
a few things.”

He nodded toward his two
companions who began to carry out what were obviously pre-planned tasks. The
blond made his way to Wexler’s desktop computer and produced a small
screwdriver, expertly dismantling the computer and removing the hard drive in
less than a minute.

His colleague searched the house
for several minutes and returned holding Wexler’s laptop. “I’ve confirmed that
he only has the one desktop and one laptop, as per our intel,” he reported. “I’ve
also removed all of our bugs.”

The tall man nodded while
Jenna’s heart leaped to her throat. They had been bugged? For how long? And
why?

But if this was about Nathan’s
recent discovery, she reasoned, he had only spoken of it out loud minutes
earlier. They couldn’t possibly have carried out an operation with this little
notice. The conclusion was inescapable. Along with the bugs, they must have
been monitoring Nathan’s phone and computers as well. Nathan had told her that
he had sent an e-mail about his discovery to Dan Walsh recently. This must have
set the wheels of this raid on their home in motion.

The tall man lifted a phone to
his face. No 3D image hovered in the space before him, which meant he had
purposely kept the call audio-only. “I trust you’ve copied everything in
Wexler’s cloud storage account, correct?” he said into the phone.

He listened to the response,
which must have been an affirmative. “Great. Go ahead and wipe the account,
then,” he ordered, and then ended the call.

He turned to the two scientists.
“I’m afraid I need you to give me your phones,” he said, holding out his hand.

Jenna glanced at Nathan. He blew
out a long breath and nodded, handing the tall spokesman his phone, and Jenna
followed suit. Once this was done, the man gestured toward the front door,
ignoring Jenna’s laptop that was still packed in her carry-on luggage. She was
somehow certain that these men knew her laptop was there, but had no interest
in any of her work.

“I’d love to be civilized,” said
the tall intruder, clearly the group’s leader and spokesman. “So can I count on
the two of you not to scream or attract attention? These actions won’t change a
thing, and I’m sure you’d prefer not to be gagged. We’ll be gone before anyone
can intervene or call the cops.” He shrugged. “And to be honest, even if they
do, it won’t matter.”

He said it with such a total air
of certainty that it was impossible for Jenna not to believe him.

3

The La Jolla night sky was
cloudless, as usual, and the display of stars would have been awe-inspiring
under normal circumstances. As it was, Jenna fought to calm herself and become
a dispassionate and clinical observer and thinker.

The physical and mental
exhaustion she had been feeling had been obliterated by repeated surges of
adrenaline and she was hyper-alert as the group of five rounded the block,
stopping before a semi. The truck was small for an eighteen-wheeler, but it was
still an
eighteen-wheeler
, a fish out
of water in a residential neighborhood. It dominated the street like the rare
moving vans that would visit the neighborhood every few years.

As if the night hadn’t been
surreal enough, the truck had the words
Hostess
Cakes
emblazoned in blue on both sides. Several red hearts were arrayed
around this logo, and large images of cupcakes, Ho
Hos
,
and Twinkies adorned the outside of the vehicle. While the sky was moonless,
the star field was just bright enough for her to make out these decorations, as
well as the truck’s license plate, which she memorized.

Another man was already seated
in the driver’s seat of the cab, apparently waiting for his three colleagues to
return. The back of the truck was open and dimly illuminated, and they were led
up a ramp and inside.

Three more men were waiting
there, sitting against one wall, and nods were exchanged as their two colleagues
came into view in the back of the truck.

Wexler turned to the short,
stocky man beside him and arched one eyebrow. “Sure you brought enough men?” he
said sarcastically.

“Yeah, this is total overkill,” admitted
the man with a shrug. “I’ll give you that. But take this as a compliment, Dr.
Wexler. It’s a measure of your importance.”

The shorter man, clearly the team’s
second-in-command, motioned for them to take a seat on the wall opposite his
three associates, and they complied. He parked Wexler’s hard drive and laptop
beside him, and he and his blond partner sat next to their colleagues on the wall
opposite the two prisoners as well. Seconds later the truck’s engine roared to
life and the large vehicle pulled away from the curb, beginning its mysterious
journey.

Heavy equipment of unknown type
was stacked against the back wall of the windowless trailer and strapped tight,
and each of their captors had large nylon duffel bags resting beside them.
Jenna had no idea what was inside these bags, but it wasn’t a shipment of
Twinkies or Ho
Hos
, of that she was certain. She
guessed weaponry of some kind, although their captors had yet to point a gun in
their direction and continued to try to maintain the illusion that their cooperation
was voluntary.

Jenna stared at the stocky man
and forced a smile. “Surely you can tell us
something
,”
she said. “I get that your boss wants to control the discussion with Dr. Wexler.
But what’s the harm in telling us where we’re going? I mean, we
are
American citizens, after all, and
you’re military, right?”

The man smiled and shook his
head. “Nice try. You can assume anything you’d like. But I still can’t tell you
anything more. But rest easy. You won’t be harmed, and answers are only a few
hours away.”

Jenna frowned at this response,
but also realized her attempt had not been entirely futile. At least they had a
sense that their journey in the back of a semi would be a relatively short one.

The truck made a number of turns
as it worked its way out of residential areas. Within ten minutes they
accelerated up what must have surely been a freeway onramp, and less than an
hour later they began climbing steadily. While there were a number of mountains
and mountain ranges near San Diego, after twenty minutes of steadily increasing
elevation their current location was clear. Only one mountain was this tall and
this close: Palomar.

Palomar Mountain State Park was
only about sixty miles northeast of San Diego, although winding one’s way up a
mountain with an elevation of over six thousand feet was slow going, so the
trip could take as long as ninety minutes to two hours. The park was densely
wooded with oak trees and any number of conifers, including pine, cedar, and
fir, as well as large numbers of ferns.

The mountain’s chief claim to fame,
stationed near its top, was the Palomar Observatory, home to the Hale
Telescope, for many decades considered the most important telescope in the
world.

After five additional minutes of
slowly winding up the corkscrew road, the driver slammed on the brakes, and the
inhabitants of the trailer were all jerked several feet toward the cab,
fighting to regain their balance and find a handhold on one of the straps
hanging down from the walls.

“Change of plans,” said a disembodied
male voice, one that was tense and agitated, no doubt the driver communicating
via some kind of speaker system. “Our forward car spotted an assault team a
mile ahead. They’ll try to hold them off while we backtrack down the mountain. We
can’t rule out that we’ll run into a flanking team behind us, so prepare for
imminent action. We’re calling in reinforcements.”

The reaction inside the trailer was
immediate and frenzied. The men removed compact submachine guns and numerous clips
the size of cigarette cartons from their nylon duffels and readied themselves
for a possible assault. Several of them voiced variations of the phrase, “what
the fuck?” with great agitation, as the truck reversed course, hurtling dangerously
back along the narrow road that corkscrewed down the mountain. The residents of
the back of the truck all clutched straps and hung on for dear life, but were still
thrown this way and that with considerable force.

“What is going on?” demanded
Jenna, unable to control her frayed nerves any longer, her words screeched out more
than spoken.

“Don’t know,” said the man in
charge as he continued to prepare for whatever might be coming. “We know
there’s a rival group out there. But there is no way they could know about this
op. No way,” he repeated in dismay. “This was supposed to be routine. A milk
run. Our large force of men and spotter car were just standard precautions. We
weren’t expecting any trouble.”

“That’s very comforting,”
grunted Wexler, clutching at a strap he shared with Jenna as the truck continued
careening down the mountain.

Then, from out of nowhere, their
small stretch of Palomar Mountain State Park became a
war zone
.

The driver slammed on the brakes
once again, almost yanking Jenna’s arm from its socket as she fought to retain
her grip on the handhold, as horrifying sounds of explosions and heavy gunfire
filled the trailer. The forces on the braking Hostess delivery truck became too
great for it to hold its line, and it fishtailed. The trailer slammed over onto
its side and left the road, shearing away from the cab and sliding down a steep
slope.

Inside the trailer, bodies flew
in every direction, and the machinery at the back of the trailer tore loose
from its bonds and collided randomly with the inhabitants. After ten or fifteen
seconds of this, the sliding trailer slammed into a line of evenly spaced tree
trunks and came to a rest against them, on its side and at a thirty-five-degree
angle.

The trailer’s light had been extinguished
immediately during the slide, and they had been tumbled in absolute darkness, as
though stuffed inside a massive clothes dryer filled with heavy objects.

As gunfire continued to rain
around them, one of their captors managed to produce a glow stick and crack it
open, and two others soon followed suit, providing enough illumination for
Jenna to take stock. She had several minor cuts and abrasions but was largely
unscathed. Two of their five captors were unconscious, and from the blood
leaking from their heads, were most likely dead.

And both of Nathan’s legs had been
broken!

He was alive, but something
heavy had crashed into his lower body with incredible force. He was groaning in
agony, his legs splayed in awkward positions. A bone poked through his lower right
leg, which was bleeding profusely.

She slid over and put her hands
under his head, lifting it slightly, as tears rolled down her face. The sound
of machine gun fire continued to echo through the trailer.

“How bad is it?” asked Nathan,
his voice thin and reedy.

Jenna was glad Nathan had known
enough not to look at his legs himself, which might have sent him reeling into
shock. “Not so bad,” she lied through her tears. “Nothing a few good doctors
can’t patch up good as new,” she added, forcing a smile.

She had to keep him as relaxed
as possible. Keep his mindset positive.

While she spoke, their three
remaining captors, all of them more or less healthy, had affixed sophisticated night
vision goggles to their faces, pulled, no doubt, from their mysterious bags.
“McFadden, you’re with me,” said one of the men, who immediately slid toward
the trailer door, with someone who must have been McFadden following.

The door had been designed to
slide up and down, but now had to be forced from left to right in the capsized trailer.
“Simkin,” barked the man now in charge, as both he and McFadden pulled the door
open enough for them to leave, “you stay here and watch our guests. And don’t
forget the stakes we’re playing for,” he added grimly.

Just as the two men exited the
trailer there was another burst of gunfire, at point-blank range, and Jenna had
no doubt they had been ambushed as they tried to leave.

Seconds later a voice called
into the truck. “Simkin,” it said. “I only want to relieve you of Dr. Wexler. There
is no need for you to die. Lay down your arms and I’ll leave you in peace.”

Simkin didn’t reply, but his
eyes frantically surveyed the tumbled contents of the trailer. In seconds he
found what he was looking for, Wexler’s hard drive and laptop, and put several
bursts of automatic fire into each of them, ensuring that not even the best
forensic computer specialist on Earth could get anything useful from them.

Upon hearing these shots, the
men outside moved in and began firing at him.

But instead of returning fire,
Simkin did the unexpected.
The
unthinkable
.

As bullets tore into his body,
he reached out and yanked at Jenna, sending her sliding away from the man she
loved, and in the same motion, with his other hand, he pointed his weapon at Wexler’s
head.

Then, as his last act before
finally succumbing to death, the man named Simkin sent a burst of rounds into
the magnificent brain of Dr. Nathan Wexler, instantly and totally obliterating
one of the greatest minds in history.