Internal Threat (26 page)

Another bolt of pain shot down John’s neck where Matt had struck him. He steered the motorcycle to the side of the road, placing a shaky foot down as it idled. Using his fingers, he searched for the wound and found it easily at the base of his skull. He could feel the broken skin, massed tissue and slickness of blood. Assessing the severity, he decided that he needed to attend to it now. If he did not, it would jeopardize the entire mission.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and opened the web browser. Quickly finding what he was looking for, he pocketed the phone and kicked off from the curb. John angled the motorcycle down a side street until he came out on to a wide boulevard. The street lay cloaked in darkness except where the cold blue glow of a street lamp pierced it. About half way down the street, he saw his destination. He turned down a nearby alley and coasted along its length until he arrived at the rear door of the store.

Placing the kickstand down, he climbed off the Hayabusa and stepped to the thin wooden door. His feet buckled beneath him briefly as another wave of pain seized the back of his head. One gunshot to the door’s lock and a shove with his shoulder brought him inside quickly. He thumbed on a light to reveal a cramped storeroom filled with shelves. Brown plastic bottles surrounded him.

“A well-stocked pharmacy for this part of town,” John mused as he scanned through the bottles. He located a pack of bandages and ripped them open. Nearby was a roll of surgical tape which allowed him to slow the blood flowing from his head wound. Satisfied at the feel of it, he turned again to the shelves.

“Put your hands in the air and turn around,” a voice said gruffly behind him.

John hesitated.

“Do it!” the voice shouted.

John obeyed this time, slowly raising his hands and turning around. A man in his sixties was facing him, separated by the length of his double-barreled shotgun. Reading glasses hung from the neck of his rumpled UCLA sweatshirt.

“I am sick of you druggies coming in here and stealing my stuff!” the man roared. John simply remained silent, assessing his options. “Thirty years I’ve been here and you freaks think I’m easy pickings. Well,” he motioned with the shotgun as he stalked closer, “think again. Now you go back and tell your meth friends-”

John rotated to the left while snapping his hands out. He snatched the gun from the man’s grip, causing him to leap back in surprise. An ear-splitting boom filled the storeroom as buckshot scattered bottles on the shelf. John flipped the gun so he was cradling it in his hands. He swept his leg beneath the other man’s feet, causing him to topple to the floor. John stood over him with the still-smoking barrels aimed at the man’s neck.

The world swam for a second before John shook it away. The altercation had taken more out of him than he expected. “Your pain medications. Where are they?” he calmly asked.

“Go to hell!” the man shouted.

John cocked the gun and placed it in the store owner’s face, causing the man’s eyes to go wide. John pulled the trigger, shifting his aim a second before he fired. The shot exploded near the man’s left ear, causing him to howl in pain. John leaned down to speak loudly into the owner’s right ear.

“You are most likely now deaf in your other ear. I am sure you would not want the same thing for this one, would you?” he asked, waving the gun next to it.

The man shook his head violently from side to side, then held out a shaking finger to the far corner of the room. John followed it to see a metal locker resting upon one of the shelves. He crossed to it and was happy to find it unlocked. Inside were neatly organized bottles of vicodin, codeine, morphine and oxycodone. Familiar with its work, John grabbed the bottle of oxycodone and unscrewed the top. He dry swallowed two of the white pills and stepped back to the man who had rolled on to his stomach. Blood trickled from the ear that he clutched.

John stood over him, considering. He scanned the room for any sign of a video monitoring system and found none. He doubted that the man cared who was stealing from his store, instead just wanting it to stop. Glancing down again, he saw that the man had reached the bottom of the stairs that he must have come down. A trembling hand reached upwards for the railing bolted to the wall. John placed the heel of his shoe on the man’s back to stop him.

“I am actually doing you a favor,” John said. “In a few hours’ time, this entire coast will be nothing but ash.” He stepped back to avoid the mess and the man suddenly rolled over to face him.

“Please,” the store owner begged. “You can just go. I won’t say anything.”

“As I said, it will not matter soon enough. I cannot take any chances, though.” He raised the gun until its aim was level with the man’s head. “This is not your fault,” John offered. “It is Matt Weatherly’s.”

Before his victim could ask who that was, John fired.

E
mma moved rapidly down the hallway, klaxons still blaring in her ears. Her mind, usually the calm and ordered home of thoughts, was now a jumbled mess. She was struggling with what she had seen on Cameron Allen’s computer. The signature. It couldn’t be.

And yet she knew there was no other answer.

It was the only person who made sense. The only one who would have unfettered access to the server locations. The only person who-

“Emma,” Jason’s voice brought her back to reality.

“Yes?” she replied.

“What now?” he demanded.

In response, she brought her gun up and aimed it behind his shoulder. She fired, earning a confused flinch from Jason. Sparks erupted from the high corner of the hall as the blackened lens of a video camera crashed to the floor.

“Maybe if you could kind of clue me in before you do something like that next time?” Jason said, shaking his head. Emma lowered the gun, chewing her lip in thought. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“You’re staying here,” she answered. She stepped around a nearby corner where the metal doors of an elevator waited. She depressed the button to call it.

“Like hell I am.”

There was a soft ding as the elevator arrived. Emma immediately stepped inside and opened the tiny service door beneath the floor buttons. Reaching in, she withdrew three wires pinched between her forefinger and thumb. She yanked them out, causing a quiet electric sizzle and pop. Nodding in satisfaction, she turned back to Jason who was stepping in behind her.

“Stay here,” she ordered, holding up a hand to stop him.

“Emma-”

“I have to do this myself. Do you understand?” Jason moved his foot forward and found his chest butting up against the barrel of her gun. “I’ll do it, Jason,” she threatened.

“No, you won’t,” he said, gently pushing the gun down. “But I get it. Go.”

Emma nodded her gratitude and stabbed a button on the panel. As the doors slowly slid shut, Jason held her eyes and mouthed, “Be careful.”

The doors sealed shut and Emma was by herself. She popped the magazine out of her gun. A cluster of four bullets gleamed. She rammed them back into place as the elevator ascended.

Enough to get the job done, she thought.

The service garage lay on the far side of the NIA headquarters. Originally, it had been built as a massive storage unit to hold the reams of paperwork that the office generated. Because of the sensitive nature of the documents, it was once under heavy guard and surveillance. Over the past five years, however, the NIA office had gone green like much of the rest of the world. Employees were encouraged to print less and store their data on backup drives. After a purge of the top-secret boxes, the shelves remained dusty and bare for a year.

Someone eventually had the forethought to put the large room to use. They pointed out that the large freight elevator that ran up to the surface could also bring down any vehicles that needed repairing. It was deemed a good idea, since there were several official cars and Humvees that could use fixing without prying eyes, such as those with unexplained bullet holes or questionable blood stains.

Emma herself had only been to the garage once to drop something off, when the person accompanying her had filled her in on its history. They had also jokingly noted it was a perfect escape route out of the NIA since nobody ever monitored the freight elevator to the surface.

As her own elevator deposited Emma on the garage level, she noted that there had been no change to the area; that included the small keypad resting beside the entrance door, a small red light glowing steadily at its top. There was little time to spare, with Griggs’ lackeys hunting her down. No doubt they had reached Jason by now, who she knew would defend her vigorously but surrender himself without further incident. As she reached the door, she exhaled a sigh of relief that the code had not been changed. She rapidly punched the buttons and watched the red light. For one breathless beat, it remained stubbornly crimson. Just as Emma’s hopes were fading, it suddenly snapped to green. She pushed open the door.

The first bullet struck Emma’s left forearm.

Out of her peripheral vision, she saw the muzzle flash from across the room which allowed her the split-second she needed to try to get out of its path. She was not quick enough, though, and the shot broke the skin and brought blood. It also caused the gun to fall from her hand, hitting the floor and sliding beneath the chassis of a car several feet away. Emma dove to the ground nearby, taking cover behind the hulk of an armored Humvee.

“You’re just going to kill me then?” she called out to her attacker.

“It’s your own fault,” he replied.

Emma squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. Until now, there was at least a shred of her that still refused to believe the truth. After hearing the voice, however, there was no mistaking it. It was the voice she had heard on the Stanford quad all those years ago, the one that told her what great potential she had, the one that offered its support against General Griggs’ attacks time and time again. It was the voice of her friend. And also the traitor.

“Why Mike?” she asked, raising herself to catch a glimpse of him through the Humvee’s windows. Her voice echoed out across the cavernous space. Mike lay across the room, his gun aimed steadily in her direction. Her vantage point allowed her to go unseen for the moment.

“I really don’t have time to explain, Emma. I’ve got a schedule to keep.” He stalked forward, eyes darting side to side, gun swinging with them in sync. Emma realized that although Mike knew the general area where she was hiding, he did not yet realize her exact location. It was her only chance of survival.

“If you were going set me up, label me as a traitor and now you’re going to kill me, you at least owe me an explanation,” Emma called out. Her voice rebounded off of the walls, reverberating in a tinny echo. Mike turned, following its direction.

“Money,” he said. “That’s always the simplest explanation, isn’t it?” He stalked forward, gun nosing ahead of him.

Emma crawled to the opposite side of the Humvee, resting behind the black stretch of its rear tire. She saw Mike’s legs twenty feet away, slowly and methodically pacing down the aisle created between the stretch of two black town cars. “It’s not about money,” Emma countered. “Don’t lie to me now.”

Mike chuckled mirthlessly. “You always were the best at figuring things out, Emma. No, it’s not about the money itself. It’s about what it can buy. In this case, that would be my wife’s life.” His footsteps stopped. Emma knew he must be waiting for her to speak again to zero in on her spot.

“Your wife?” Emma asked. She listened as his footsteps began again, clicking across the polished cement floor, getting closer.

“Have you ever seen Multiple Sclerosis first hand, Emma? It’s a mean, cruel disease. It doesn’t care who it latches on to – a child, a priest, a woman who is so selfless she did nothing but spend her life caring for others. And it destroys them from inside out. Makes them feel every day of it. It takes a person who laughs and loves and turns them into a hollowed out shell. A mummy with a heartbeat.”

“I’m sorry, Mike,” Emma said softly before realizing the words were out of her mouth. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t know!” Mike roared, pausing for a moment in his pursuit. “Just like I didn’t know our insurance stops at a certain point. Did you know that? It’s called a lifetime cap. And my wife blew through it in the first two years. She needs round-the-clock care at a special facility. Back in the good old days, you could just take out a home equity loan but not now. I maxed out our credit cards, sold one of our cars. Then one day there was nothing left to borrow against, nothing left to sell. That’s when I heard about an experimental treatment they were trying out in Europe. But how could somebody like me, a humble government employee, get access to that?”

The footsteps began again, making their way towards Emma’s Humvee. As they crept closer, Mike’s voice grew louder. “Turns out, I did have something left to sell. Something quite valuable actually. The highest bidder promised me twenty million dollars. That’s when I realized that I don’t owe anything to this government or this country. I have a chance to save the only person I’ve ever truly loved and that’s the only thing worth fighting for.” Mike had reached the grill of the Humvee now. “This is nothing personal, Emma. I always liked you. But surely, you can see now that you were the easiest person to hang all of this on. That’s why, when they find your dead body, nobody will ask too many questions.”

Mike leapt around the hood of the vehicle, gun blazing. His bullets pinged off the empty cement floor. His brow furrowed in confusion as he stepped back in front of the Humvee, intending to check the other side.

Suddenly, the engine roared to life. Mike tried to get out of its path but the Humvee burst forward. Inside, Emma pressed her foot down on the accelerator. The chrome grill rammed into Mike’s chest, pushing him up against the crumpled passenger door of a nearby car. He screamed in pain, the gun tumbling from his hands. Emma wrenched the gearshift into reverse, then quickly slammed it back into drive. Mike saw his opportunity and jumped to the right as the Humvee came screaming in his direction again. The metal hulk of the SUV slammed into the car, lodging its bumper in the bashed door. The wheels spun uselessly.