Split Second (33 page)

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.

“Thanks,” said Wexler from
inside the chamber. “I’ll never forget this.”

Blake nodded, almost
imperceptibly.

The door to the room burst open and
scores of men shot through. Dozens of bullets drilled into Blake’s body.

But as he was falling to his
death, in a last monumental effort of will, he kept his hand on the door handle,
turning it the last rotation needed to seal the chamber.