Six Seconds

by Rick Mofina

  The account’s completion bar showed the e-mail going through, until it reached ninety-nine percent, then the machine suddenly shut down.

  Some kind of glitch?

  Jake considered what he might do, when the machine restarted itself. A symphony of bleating and whirring as images blurred by.

  What the heck? What kind of computer was this? It was unlike anything he’d seen. A lot of Arabic, then something just plain weird.

  A video popped up, accompanied by a series of timers, some Arabic writing next to it. Then a series of pop-ups, ongoing chat in Arabic. The computer was doing strange things.

  A video started.

  Jake froze.

  Samara was in it.

  “What the hell?”

  She was wearing a white hijab, sitting with clasped hands before her on a plain wooden table. A framed photograph of her son and husband came into view.

  “I am Samara. I am not a jihadist.”

  Jake’s jaw dropped. Ice shot up his spine. His gut convulsed with the collision of disbelief and knowing.

  As the video played, the pieces locked together.

  Jake knew.

  Iraq.

  The papal visit.

  All her time on this computer, her long-distance calls and private conversations.

  “And it is for these crimes that I deliver my widowmother’s wrath. For these crimes you will taste death in your country…”

  This was Samara’s suicide video.

  She was security cleared as medical staff for the visit. She would get close to the pope.

  God, what have I done! I’ve got to get Logan out of here! Call the FBI! We have to stop-

  A flash, movement of light; a shadow blurred on the screen and Jake felt a soft punch to his throat.

  What?

  It hurt.

  He couldn’t swallow.

  He pressed his hands to his throat and something warm and wet cascaded through his fingers. The computer and the room began to spin. Jake’s hands were coated with blood. He turned, fell to the floor.

  He saw Samara standing over him.

  She held a large serrated knife and watched in silence as Jake’s life slipped away.

  Calmly she slid her arms under his, locked them in front and dragged him into their bedroom. Straining, she lifted his corpse onto his side of their bed and covered him with sheets.

  Taking pains not to wake Logan, she got cold water, dish soap, a plastic pail and washed away the blood.

  She glanced at the faces of Muhammad and Ahmed on her computer before shutting it off.

  Nothing would stop her from keeping her vow.

  It was down to hours now.

  64

  Faust’s Fork. Near Banff, Alberta, Canada

  Campsite #131.

  The Tarver family site.

  Still cordoned by yellow tape.

  Stepping from his truck to stretch, Royal Canadian

  Mounted Police Corporal Arnie Danton took in the scent of pine forests, the view of the majestic Nine Bear Range and the rushing Faust River before he began his preparations.

  He used the remaining daylight to set up, going to the back of his truck, pulling out his lamps, his cover alls, his gloves, and arranging his solutions, his cameras.

  Then he sat on the tailgate and ate his dinner, a sub sandwich, potato chips with a bottle of water and a peanut butter cookie, chewing contentedly as he waited for night.

  He needed the darkness.

  Sitting alone with the rush of the river for company, he thought of Graham. He felt sorry for the guy and for what had happened to his wife. That’s why Danton was here on his own time doing him a favor. A lot of guys had been doing Graham favors lately.

  Night came quickly in the mountains.

  Danton crumpled his food wrappings, placed them neatly in his recycle bag, then set out to determine if blood was spilled anywhere in or around the Tarvers’ campsite by applying luminol.

  A fifteen-year veteran who’d trained at the RCMP Academy, several universities, and crime labs in Ger many, Sweden, Japan and the U.S., Danton was rec ognized by courts in Canada and the U.S. as an expert in analyzing bloodstain patterns at crime scenes. He had a keen interest in the process of chemical lumines cence.

  The process detected the presence of blood that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye by applying a solution of water, sodium perborate, sodium carbonate and luminol to a given area. Once the solution contacts blood, even minute traces, it reacts by turning bright blue under ultraviolet light.

  Danton pulled on hooded coveralls, a face mask, latex gloves. On his head, he then slipped on an expen sive lightweight surgeon’s headlight offering LED illu mination and magnification. He prepared a large batch of the solution, then poured it into a cylinder resembling a diver’s air tank. He connected it to a hose and sprayer applicator, then slipped the tank on his back.

  In the black, moonless night, Danton began working on the scene.

  Section by section.

  Spraying then scoping with the ultraviolet lamp.

  Spraying. Scoping.

  He’d devoured every study on outdoor application of luminol.

  The Russian, Swedish and Icelandic studies showed that months, even years of rain and snow, did not entirely eliminate the presence of human blood. Of par ticular interest was the study that indicated human blood was present on a centuries-old stone the Vikings had used for ritual ceremonies.

  Anyone coming upon Danton would have witnessed a surreal ballet as he worked the scene like an artist.

  First, the immediate campsite. Then the ground, the picnic table, the trees.

  All remained as dark as the sky.

  All negative.

  Danton followed the short path to the riverbank and worked his way back slowly.

  Spraying. Scoping.

  A couple of paces from the water he froze.

  Two small circles glowed blue.

  “And thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”

  Danton, like most blood-pattern experts, knew the passage from Genesis.

  He continued, moving forward from the riverbank toward the campsite.

  Spraying. Scoping.

  More blue droplets glowed until they formed a virtual Milky Way of blood.

  For the next half hour, Danton painstakingly worked in a pattern that radiated from the site.

  Spraying. Scoping.

  He was running low on solution and about to pack it in when something in the bush glowed.

  Like a distant star.

  A grapefruit-size rock with bluish smears. Danton examined it.

  Now, this would be your murder weapon.

  65

  Great Falls, Montana

  That night, beyond the pool, across the motel’s mani cured courtyard, the crack splitting the drawn curtains of the silent room moved ever so slightly.

  Binoculars were trained on the units used by Graham and Maggie. The tranquility was deceptive. The watcher’s breathing had quickened.

  Stay calm, Sid told himself.

  Crickets chirped as he rolled the focus wheel. Sid and Faker had taken shifts in their intense sur veillance, for they’d reached a critical point in the operation; one underscored by the headlines of the newspapers neatly arrayed on the desk.

  The pope would arrive in Montana in the morning. The network’s operation was advanced and proceeding. However, since Graham, the Alberta RCMP officer, had emerged in the U.S., Sid and Faker had been urging ter mination action. They knew there had been operational activity in Canada.

  They could not permit anything to put the greater mission at risk.

  A few days ago, after Sid and Faker had urged ter mination, they were ordered not to take any action, other than to observe and report.

  But now, the stakes were higher. The threat was closer and gaining. They were running out of time and continued to press for termination action.

  Faker was talking softly on the satellite phone. His voice w
as so low, Sid had to struggle to hear. At times, Faker would pull the phone away to whisper updates.

  “Some of them are getting nervous,” he told Sid, “because the threat is getting close to the messenger.”

  Of course, Sid nodded, the risk of the mission being shut down was huge.

  “Some want us to remove the threat now. Others say it would jeopardize the operation, draw attention and lead to a cancellation, or more tougher security, or possible exposure of the network.”

  Sid couldn’t bear the debate.

  All of his life, from the day his teenaged mother had abandoned him in the pew of a Brooklyn church, he’d yearned to be part of something greater than himself. Ached to make his mark in history.

  As Faker returned to the phone, Sid’s thoughts rolled back to all the work that had gone into this operation. Risks had been eliminated to get them to this stage. The termination operations in Virginia and Canada proved that threats to its success could be eliminated with efficiency.

  “That’s it.” Faker finished the call. “Our orders are to take no action. We are to observe and report.”

  Sid shook his head.

  “Don’t they realize how close the Canadian cop is,” he said. “They are making a grave error.”

  “I agree.” Faker joined Sid at the window with his own binoculars. “I’ve told the clerk at the desk that we’re investigating an infidelity case. I’ve bribed him to alert us to any movement.”

  “Good, then contrary to orders, we’ll take action.”

  “We will do whatever it takes to ensure success, my brother.”

  Sid did not pull his eyes from his binoculars.

  66

  Great Falls, Montana

  Nearly two hours before dawn, the motel phone next to Graham’s bed rang.

  Half awake, he grabbed it on the first ring.

  “Corporal Graham, it’s Teale in FIS. I’ve just e-mailed your photos to you.”

  “Okay, hang on.” Graham got on to his computer, went into his e-mail, found the attachment and opened it. Jake Conlin stared back at him, bald, with a Vandyke beard, along with photos showing his left and right profiles. “Got it. Great. Thanks, Simon. Gotta go.”

  Graham called Maggie’s room.

  Some forty minutes later, they were back at the Sky Road Truck Mall.

  Graham printed off copies of the photos in the twenty four-hour business office. They started in the big restau rant. The strains of country music, the smells of strong coffee, frying bacon and the clink of cutlery filled the air as they showed people Jake’s updated mug shot and asked for their help.

  They approached bleary-eyed drivers coming off all night runs and early risers fixing to hit the road. They went from table to table, receiving head shakes, shrugs, a “looks familiar,” a “maybe, I don’t remember,” an “I’m not sure,” a “naw,” a “good luck” and “I’ll say a prayer for you.”

  Maggie was growing anxious as they left the restau rant for the store.

  At the checkout, the first person they went to was a tall man in a battered cowboy hat paying for toothpaste and shampoo. Maggie asked for his help.

  “Sure, darlin’.” His smile faded as he realized Graham was with her. “Just got in from Denver, I’m beat, but go ahead, show me your pictures.”

  The cowboy looked at the updated photos and scratched his whiskers.

  “Now, tell me again. Who’s asking and what’s this about?”

  “I’m his wife and he’s with our son. I need to talk to him.”

  “Whoa. I don’t want to get involved in no family spat, you understand.”

  “Sir,” Graham said, “no one’s asking for that. Please, have you seen him?”

  “And you would be?”

  Graham told him.

  “Police?” The man handed the picture back. “I’m not so sure.”

  “Sir, this lady’s just trying to find her little boy.”

  “I’ve seen that man in your picture,” another voice said.

  Maggie, Graham and the cowboy turned to the clerk,

  386 Rick Mofina a girl in her twenties with a small diamond stud in her pierced right nostril.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I overheard you and peeked.”

  “You saw Jake Conlin?” Maggie was hopeful.

  “His name’s not Jake. It’s Burt Russell.”

  “How do you know that?” Graham wrote it down.

  “That’s him in your picture. I held truck magazines for him a couple of times. He said his name was Burt Russell. He comes in every couple of weeks.”

  “You have anything with his name on it, a credit-card receipt, check, an order, anything with proper spelling or an address?”

  “No, he’s a cash customer.”

  “Any idea where he lives?”

  The girl shook her head.

  Encouraged by the lead, Graham used a public landline phone to call Reg Novak, his friend in D.C., to query Montana Highway Patrol and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.

  “Can you run the name Burt Russell, and variations on the spelling, through state motor vehicle records. He might be the RO of a large truck.”

  “Give me some time to make a request,” Novak said. “You’re running up a big tab with me. Going to cost you Flames tickets if I ever get out your way.”

  “You’ve got a deal, Reg.”

  Graham and Maggie found a booth in the restaurant.

  After they ordered breakfast, Maggie went to the restroom. Waiting alone, Graham glimpsed morning headlines about that day’s papal visit to Montana.

  As the sun rose, a new concern dawned on him.

  What if Ray Tarver’s conspiracy story was re motely valid?

  What if Jake Conlin and the pope’s visit to Montana were linked?

  Graham paged through his notes from his interview in Washington with Tarver’s reporter friend, Kate Morrow. Before he died, Tarver’s ex-CIA source had told him about intelligence out of Africa on plans for a “large-scale attack being planned for a major target.”

  But the information was vague, like countless other threats.

  Walker, the Secret Service agent protecting the pope, knew all about Tarver’s theories. Graham kept turning pages. Walker said Tarver “lived in a fantasy world with other conspiracy nuts.” Walker had chased Tarver’s leads, which in the end, “turned out to be jackass theories.”

  Yes, but given today’s events, shouldn’t he pass his info to Walker? Walker’s card was in Graham’s note book. He tapped it, wondering if Arnie Danton had applied luminol to Tarver’s campsite yet. Graham needed to know the result.

  If the Tarver deaths were truly an accident, then his boss, Stotter, was right.

  He’d been traveling the U.S. on a wild-goose chase.

  Graham ran his hand over his face, then called Walker’s cell phone.

  He got his voice mail and left a message.

  Leaving the restroom, Maggie was stopped by some thing she hadn’t noticed before. Outside Barney’s, the second restaurant, the painter’s drop sheet that had covered the entrance wall yesterday was gone, reveal ing a gallery of people.

  Photographs of men, women and children were tacked to a corkboard headed, Birthday Blasts At Barney’s. Maggie was drawn to scores of glowing faces and searched them until she came to a pair of eyes that pierced her.

  Logan.

  She gasped and touched his face.

  He was smiling, but something was not right. In the same picture, she saw Jake. So different. Bald head. Goatee. A half smile. On the table before them, a cake with the words, Happy Birthday, Samara. Who was that?

  A woman was also in the picture, seated with Jake and Logan. Midthirties, dark hair, beautiful. Maggie caught her breath.

  The other woman.

  Maggie studied her, looked hard into her eyes. They were deep, intelligent, giving off a fierce light of defiance.

  Maggie leaned closer, almost squaring off with her.

  67

  Grea
t Falls, Montana

  Graham was concerned when Maggie returned to their booth.

  “You look pale,” he said. “What is it?”

  “We’re so close.”

  Maggie handed him the birthday snapshot. He studied it just as the waitress brought their food. They had nearly finished eating when Graham’s cell phone rang.

  “It’s Novak with your info. You got my hockey tickets?”

  “Man. I owe you.”

  Montana’s DMV records showed Burt Russell’s resi dence as 1023 °Crystal Creek Road, Cold Butte, Montana. Graham unfolded his state map, and drew an X on the spot east of Great Falls, between Petroleum and Garfield counties.

  “A two-and-a-half-hour drive, give or take. Let’s check out of the motel and get moving.”

  In the parking lot, a stranger was ducking down between their rental and another car, a white sedan. It looked like the man had been tinkering with Graham’s car.

  “Excuse me. Can I help you?” Graham squinted in the morning sun.

  The man stood. His attention bounced from Graham to Maggie and back. He gripped a steel tire iron in his right hand, rotated it slowly. He was Graham’s height, but thinner. Clean-shaven with short dark hair, dark eyes and an angular face that bordered on menacing, until he smiled.

  “No. Thank you. I’m almost finished. Flat tire.” His accent suggested he was British, or European. As Maggie and Graham got in, Graham noticed the man’s open trunk had four plastic fuel cans. Odd, he thought.

  As they pulled away, Graham turned to Maggie.

  “Write this down.” He recited the stranger’s Montana plate, make, color of his car and a description of the man, time and location.

  “Why?”

  “A cop habit.”

  “Good thing. I think I saw that guy on our plane. Small world, huh?”

  Graham saw her nervous smile but did not return it.

  “Too small, maybe.”

  There were no messages at the motel, which puzzled Graham. Nothing from Arnie, or Stotter even. Before leaving, Graham went online and extended his wireless access service for his laptop. Maggie used the motel computer to print off all she could on Cold Butte in Lone Tree County. After paying for their rooms, they asked the manager for directions out of Great Falls.