by George Noory
The killer also had a knife. Greg thought the man had put away the knife but didn’t see where.
“No, I can’t find any computer thing,” Leon said. “If I can’t find it, he doesn’t have it on him, that’s what I was told. So to the next step.”
Greg heard his name called and he turned to the sound, his eyes half open. As he came around he saw the dazzler in the man’s hand and he shut his eyes, blocking some of the force of the laser but still getting enough of a dose to increase his blindness. He cried out and covered his face with his hands, staying on his knees as he rubbed his eyes.
Leon holstered the weapon. He raised Greg’s right arm with one hand and reached under Greg’s shoulder with the other, pulling Greg to his feet. “Let’s go, dude, there’s one more thing you have to do so you can close your eyes for good.” He laughed at his own humor.
Greg was wobbly; his knees started to fold and the killer jerked him upright and supported him as they moved toward the door.
“Good thing about this light gizmo,” Leon said, talking to himself, “it makes them real submissive but doesn’t leave any marks. ’Course, they get banged up all to hell anyway.”
Greg was oriented enough to see that they were heading for the door. Beyond the door was the exterior corridor. Over the railing headfirst was a long enough drop to splatter his brains on the concrete below.
Leon leaned him against the wall by the door and held him steady with one hand and used the other hand to open the door.
Greg felt the weapon on the man’s hip brush against him again. How had the man triggered the blast? He didn’t think the weapon was fired like a pistol because he didn’t see a trigger. The killer had held the weapon with his whole hand wrapped around it, more like holding a flashlight than a gun. There was probably a button that he had pressed but Greg didn’t know if it was activated by squeezing the cylinder or pressed with thumb or finger.
Greg knew the man wasn’t opening the door to take him down to the van. The killer staged suicides. The man would push him over the railing headfirst. He wasn’t going without a fight. The bastard had attacked his eyes and he went for the killer’s eyes, blindly clawing at the man’s face.
Leon knocked the hands away from his face and punched him. Greg banged his forehead into the killer’s face. He missed the man’s nose but Greg lurched forward, hitting him with his shoulder with all the strength his anger-driven adrenaline could muster.
The killer stumbled backward and Greg went off balance and staggered, slamming into the desk and falling to the floor. As he hit the floor on his back he felt something underneath him, a round cylinder. Ali’s wasp spray.
Greg twisted onto his stomach and reached out, groping blindly for the canister. He felt it against the tips of his fingers but didn’t have a grip on it as the killer bent down and jerked Greg’s head back by his hair, then got an arm around his neck in a chokehold.
As Greg pulled at the arm to keep it from choking the life out of him he felt something else that had been knocked off the desk—the hotel pen he had used to write the fake information on the pizza menu he gave Ali. He got a grip on it and stabbed the killer’s arm around his neck. He kept stabbing until the man released his grip and began to wildly punch at Greg in a rage.
Greg dropped forward onto his stomach and reached out, getting a handhold on the wasp spray. As Greg twisted around, Leon turned his head and held up his arm to block the spray.
Some of the mist got to Leon because he let out a shriek of pain and rage. Greg fired the spray again but Leon went under the spray, knocking into Greg and driving him back. The killer struck Greg’s wrist, sending the canister flying.
Leon punched him on the head and face. “You son of a bitch, you’re dead—dead! I’ll rip out your heart and eat it.”
He got Greg to his feet and used both hands to get a firm grip to propel Greg out the door. Greg knew he was finished if he got close enough to the railing to be pushed over. He clutched at the door frame, trying to hold himself back, and the man broke the hold by hitting his arms.
Leon pushed him and Greg let his knees fold, dropping down to the floor. No longer able to push Greg, Leon moved around him, cursing as he did so, and bent down to use both hands to pull Greg up.
Greg went along, half rising, as Leon pulled him until the killer had his own back to the rail.
Greg dropped lower again, his face almost touching the laser weapon, but his vision wasn’t good enough to make out any detail except the fact that it had a tubular shape.
Cursing him, Leon bent down and grabbed him by the collar with both hands to pull him up. As the killer pulled, Greg’s right arm went behind the killer’s knees. Greg reared up, lifting the man off his feet and pushing him back against the rail.
Leon hit the railing with his butt. He let go of Greg’s collar with one hand to grab for his weapon. The move created a sudden release of the tension holding Greg back. Greg gave him a shove with his shoulder and grabbed onto the rail as the man slipped backward.
The killer shouted and clutched desperately at Greg as he went over, falling backward, wildly flailing his arms and legs as he dropped headfirst to the concrete below.
Greg leaned over the rail and stared down, out of breath and with too much adrenaline to feel all the pain he would soon be feeling from the beating he had taken. With blurred vision he saw a body on the concrete. Lying still.
Greg staggered back inside, not bothering to close the door behind him.
74
He stumbled into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. Water wouldn’t wash away the effect of the dazzler but the cool wetness made him feel better and his eyes cleared enough so he could see his blurred reflection in the mirror. His eyes were still watering. He didn’t get much of the wasp spray in his eyes but could taste it in his throat.
In the bedroom he grabbed the flier and shoved it into his coat pocket. He started to leave without his wallet and looked around until he spotted it on the floor. He bent down and picked the wallet up and pocketed it.
He left the room, stepping out into the exterior corridor. He heard voices from below and didn’t bother focusing enough to understand what was being said, though he caught the drift that someone thought the man on the ground had been a drunk who fell off the railing.
He went to the end of the corridor farthest from where the killer had gone off. It was too dark and his eyes too blurred for him to see the steps and he stumbled on them, shuffling down the stairs and using the handrail for support. When he reached the bottom, he moved off in the opposite direction from where the people had gathered around the body.
Greg got to a wide boulevard, eight or ten lanes with traffic flowing in both directions. It was a major artery out into the San Fernando Valley from the hills that Ventura Boulevard shouldered.
He was in a hurry but couldn’t move fast. His head hurt, his face was raw and bruised, he had weak knees and blurred vision and he was on foot in a city that sprawled for miles in every direction, one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly cities in the world. Taxis had to be called, not waved down on the street. A few subways existed somewhere in the city but at the moment he had no idea where they were located and had no money for the fare. He couldn’t even get on a bus. Where would he go even if he could beg money and find public transportation?
He needed to hole up somewhere so he could think. If Ali hadn’t taken the damn car keys he could have parked somewhere and rested until his eyes and mind were working right again.
He kept walking, on the sidewalk, away from the motel. Where he was going, he didn’t know, or how to get anywhere farther than his feet could carry him, but he knew he had to get out of the area because it would soon be swarming with police.
Keep moving keep moving keep moving, he told his feet.
He heard sirens and they sounded like the same ones he had heard when he walked away from Rohan’s apartment after looking down and seeing a body sprawled on the street.
Gre
g hadn’t gone more than a block when he saw a white van parked along the curb.
He stumbled as his feet lost coordination because his mind took up all his energy. It couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to be the same van. He should have gone down to where the killer was lying and rifled through the man’s pockets to find the van keys.
He stopped beside the van and peered through the closed passenger-side window. It was dark and his sight was still too blurred to see the interior except to notice there was no one in the van.
He tried the passenger door and it opened. He leaned in and there it was—a key in the ignition. That was all, just a plain key, not even with a ring or a remote door opener. But it was the most beautiful key he had ever seen.
He slipped onto the passenger seat and shut the door behind him. It would have been easier to have walked around to the other side of the car and gotten onto the driver’s seat the usual way, but he was driven almost by paranoia that if he didn’t climb in and take possession he would lose the van.
His ribs screamed in pain as he worked his way laboriously over the seat and got settled on the driver’s side, now more exhausted than ever. He tried the key and the engine started and he muttered a little thanks.
He pulled away from the curb. With his watery eyes it looked like Christmas as he slowly headed down the boulevard, the white, red, yellow and green lights glowing like bright bulbs.
He still didn’t know where he was going. He just drove straight. After he’d driven a few minutes he pulled over in a business section, a light industrial area filled with small shops and warehouses that were closed for the night, and parked the van.
A red glow to the rear reminded him to take his foot off the brake.
He scooted lower in the seat and closed his eyes. Images of a body free-falling and spinning like a top popped into his head.
75
For the moment he was safe. But surviving the killer hadn’t increased his life expectancy by much. He wondered if the van was rigged with a tracking device so whoever sent the killer would know his location. He didn’t see anything obvious but it was dark in the van and a tracking device could be anywhere, even underneath or in the engine compartment. A camera the size of a pinhead could be recording him. But what were the chances there was another killer waiting to go into action?
Fumbling around the interior, he found a bottle of water and poured it on his face and onto his eyes. Wedged in between the center divider and the passenger seat was a slender computer tablet. He weighed it in his hands for a moment, wondering if he dared use it to access Ethan’s hidden file. No, that would be stupid not only because it would make it easier to track him, but it would also let them know where the file was so it could be destroyed.
He rolled down the passenger window and threw the tablet out. As far as he was concerned, anything electronic could be used to track him.
In the center divider he found eleven twenties—$220. Not much but enough for an untraceable stay in another cheap motel, although that trick wouldn’t fool anyone. It hadn’t even worked the first time.
Finding the money made him feel better. Having no money or plastic in a big city felt like being lost in a forest without food or shelter.
He shut his eyes again, leaned back and concentrated. What’s the plan, man? Get on the freeway and drive as far as $220’s worth of gas would take him? Then what? Broke and stranded, lie down on the freeway and become roadkill? Go downtown and camp on the door of a newspaper or TV station in the hopes of running into someone who could help?
Getting the media involved seemed to be the only way to survive the morass that was swallowing him. He wouldn’t have had a killer after him if Ethan hadn’t penetrated something super-big, evidence that would expose a conspiracy he and so many others felt was strangling government of and for the people. From what Ethan had told others, that had to be what the God Project entailed. Getting the evidence publicized would make the secret forces back off, even if it was written off by the authorities as a hoax.
But he didn’t give himself a respectable chance of surviving alone until morning—not camped where he was or downtown. Not much chance of hiding out in the van without being discovered in short order, period. He had to get out of the van. Going to a motel would only delay the inevitable—the door would come crashing in sometime in the night and he would be finished.
“Finished.” The word stuck with him. Ethan had started something big. He’d broken into a secret government program and discovered something that launched a black operation to find and destroy the evidence and kill anyone who knew about it.
Ethan had started it and passed it on to him to finish.
Greg shook his head to clear his thoughts. Ethan hadn’t passed the file to him to find someone else to expose the truth—he sent it to him because he was a media personality known to millions.
He didn’t need to camp downtown and beg someone to listen before he was dragged out of the van and murdered during the night. He’d publicize the dirty secrets himself. What he needed was a way to access the file and then broadcast the information to the world.
That boiled down to getting on the Internet to get to the file and find a way to spread the information out to the world once he had it. Dropping in at his broadcasting studio and going on the air nationally wasn’t in the cards. Besides never getting past the front door at the studio, he was certain he would be cut off even if he managed to get on the air.
He thought about how clever Ethan had been to fool everyone by getting the information to him in a way no one would have suspected. Every aspect of his own life must be under a microscope—phones, Internet, e-mails, tweets, texting, blogs, Facebook and every other social media and electronic communication. And there was no way for him to send out a message to thousands by snail mail.
They had him electronically hog-tied, but what if he worked through someone else?
If he got on another person’s computer, he could get on the Internet and access the file. He’d only be able to send it out to whatever social networking was on that computer because anything with greater access, like his radio program’s database of his fans, would be intercepted. He might end up being able to access only a couple dozen people. And he wasn’t about to endanger family or friends by using their computers even if Mond didn’t have them blocked.
Even more on point, when they had put him under the microscope he was certain they would’ve included everyone in his personal circle of friends and family because they would be the ones whom he was most likely to contact.
While shielding himself and anyone he contacted, he still needed to get the information out to tens of thousands, millions of people, if possible, and the only database available to him with that kind of access was the one his radio show maintained.
A door suddenly opened in his mind and he realized how he could pull it off. It was an audacious path that he hoped, like Ethan’s snail mail, the authorities or black ops would never have thought of and intercept.
Once he got on the Internet, he knew how to get the information out to the world.
76
Using a stranger’s computer seemed like a reasonable plan. Whoever was trying to keep the information secret couldn’t be tracking every computer in the world, and where Ethan hid the file didn’t sound like a location that the NRO would be monitoring. It also wouldn’t put a stranger in danger because there would be no connection to Greg, other than his briefly borrowing the computer.
The most likely place to find a computer was at a coffeehouse, coffee bar or whatever the “in” name was now for places where people sat around and drank lattes while they played with their phones and computers.
He drove back toward the hills, to Ventura Boulevard, to a coffeehouse he had been to before. The place was half a block off the boulevard, down an alley too narrow for a vehicle.
He thought about parking the van a couple of blocks away but decided that if they were tracking the van, by now they would know where
it was. He had to get in and get the job done before he got dragged out of the coffeehouse or ended up getting killed “resisting arrest.”
He left the van half a block from the alley, at the first available space he saw, and headed for the coffeehouse.
Greg took a look at himself in the reflection of a store window before he reached the alley. His eyes had been stung and he’d been kicked and beaten up and fought a killer to the death. He appeared to have lost the fight and some of life’s other battles along the way.
There was a streetlight at the corner where the alley and boulevard met, but none down the alley itself to the coffee place. It felt good on his eyes to walk in the darkness.
Before stepping into the coffee bar he straightened his clothes and blinked his eyes several times, wiping tears away.
He paused just inside and got some stares he ignored. He needed a computer with a webcam and went for the first person he saw who had one. He took the eleven twenties out of his pocket and stuffed one back in so he had money for a cup of coffee.
The guy with the computer webcam looked up as Greg approached. Slender, in his late twenties, with glasses and a goatee, he had IT written all over him. Just the kind of guy who would be comfortable accessing data. But he didn’t look receptive to being interrupted. His body language said he was a person who was only barely comfortable being alone and yet couldn’t handle anyone intruding on his space. The kind of guy no one would like at the office but who was efficient, knew it and let everyone else know it. A twerp.
Greg stopped in front of him, feeling a little breathless. “Hi, this is crazy, but I need to make a quick webcast. I’ll give you two hundred dollars if I can use your—”