Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  He paused.

  “Think back to Hoover. Imagine what would have happened had Helen sent the files to Russia. That’s pretty much the equivalent of the damage done by the OPM and social-media hacks. But forget Russia. Russia is insignificant. The information will be out there for whoever wants it. What’s good for the goose . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself. The last hack exposed the ‘adjudication information’ from security-clearance investigations—the raw, embarrassing intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers, including details of federal workers’ sexual partners, their drug and alcohol abuse, their debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, criminal activity . . .”

  Jasper dropped the newspaper to the floor. “So, I ask you, the American people, to make more noise. Stop this, before it gets worse. And it will get worse. You have six hours.”

  36

  “What now?” Monica asked.

  “You said there were guys in the military who have reason to harm Jasper.”

  “Sure. But wouldn’t the FBI already be onto that?”

  “I’d like to think so. But we’ll make sure it’s flagged. I’ve got a colleague who works for them, on secondment to the UN. She’ll find out.”

  “Right. And what—we wait here in this crappy motel?” She waved her hand around the room. Walker felt she was being unfair. Sure, it wasn’t a five-star resort, but it was clean and tidy and warm. Far better than the majority of places he’d spent outside base in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  “We go to breakfast and you tell me everything about your brother that you can think of, starting with the old friend of his that you mentioned,” Walker said, opening the door and slipping on his jacket against the morning chill. The sky had that dirty silver hue of an overcast LA sunrise in March. Monica slipped past him.

  He cranked the car door open and slid into the seat. As he fired it up, eight cylinders of American pride thrummed to life with a distinctive whump-whump-whump. It was an inherently unstable design, the typical crossplane V8, requiring all kinds of crankshaft stabilizers to keep things in harmony—but nothing beat the sound of these crossplane V8 engines with the unevenly spaced firing patterns within each cylinder bank, producing a distinctive burble in the exhaust note.

  He drove them two miles north of the motel, taking it slowly, waiting until the oil and coolant warmed through. The big fat tires banged on broken blacktop and thumped into potholes, but they were high profile and the suspension was soft and he felt like he could have done the drive at four times the speed and it would feel the same. The course he took had a couple of left and right turns, an ambling route, the kind used by people who were lost or those checking to make sure they didn’t have a tail. He found a diner near the interstate on ramp, and he pulled in hard, flicking the Cuda’s steering wheel and the handbrake to slide into a parking spot.

  Walker checked his rearview mirror, and then his side window and then the windscreen. He watched an old Crown Vic buzz by. It had been behind them the whole time, a few hundred yards back on the journey from the motel to here. The driver was a male in his fifties. He kept his eyes straight ahead, went through the next intersection, kept driving.

  “What?” Monica said.

  “Not sure. Maybe nothing.”

  “We’re eating here?” Monica said.

  “We’ll talk. I’ll eat. You do what you like.”

  Walker killed the engine, got out with the keys in his hand and waited at the diner’s entrance, holding the door open for her. As Monica breezed by he watched her motions as she looked around at the early-morning clientele. Truckers and delivery men and people on the road, consuming fried food and drinking bottomless cups of drip coffee. There was a television above the counter, playing ESPN.

  Walker sat in a booth and a waitress delivered menus and coffee. Monica sat opposite. She looked out the window, to the east.

  “This will make you feel like you’re back in your neighborhood—they have a gluten-free option,” Walker said, looking over the menu. He looked up and Monica had cracked a small smile despite herself.

  “I just can’t see how I can help Jasper like this.”

  “I don’t know either,” Walker said. “But you can help him, I believe that. We just need to know where to start.”

  “The proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “Let’s start again,” Walker said. “At the beginning. Who would have any reason to abduct and use Jasper’s expertise like this?”

  She sighed, but played along. “Any number of terrorists, foreign or domestic.”

  “Sure. But what about what you know.”

  “Personally?”

  “Yes.”

  Monica looked out the window, tension straightening her posture. Walker knew that thinking back about Jasper’s past meant reliving her own memories. But it was necessary, it was the only way.

  “Jasper had a friend, then the guy’s family moved away.”

  “Military?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Just saying. They move around a lot.”

  “Right. So, they connected again in college. Got really close, dormed together, did systems engineering at SOCAL in San Fran. Then they went their separate ways. Jasper never spoke about him. A year later, out of college, Jasper joined the Army, but not using his IT skills at all. It was weird.”

  “And you think this friend might have a reason to hurt Jasper?”

  “Reason, maybe, but he wouldn’t. Paul wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Monica nodded. “I saw an email from him, on Jasper’s tablet, last Christmas. It was open, on the bench, and it was just a ‘Hey, what’s up?’ kind of thing. So, they stayed in contact.”

  Walker drank his coffee and allowed Monica time to tell the story.

  “I Googled him. I wanted to know what had become of him—he’d been a constant around our house, years earlier. Then he disappeared completely. I wanted to know what he was doing, where he ended up. A curiosity.”

  Monica looked out the window again. She was silent for a full minute, then said, “It was his name, that drove me. The name in the email. The photo was him but it was the name that made me do the double-take and read it.”

  She looked Walker in the eyes.

  “He’d changed his name.”

  37

  “His name was Leroy Craven,” Monica said. “That’s what we’d known him as. Then years later he reappears and has a different name.”

  “People change their name,” Walker said. “Maybe he didn’t like Leroy?”

  “People change their name when they get a new identity because they’ve gone to prison,” Monica said flatly.

  Walker leaned back as the waitress refilled his coffee, and he ordered scrambled eggs and bacon, and Monica ordered porridge.

  “He did five-and-a-half years at Lompoc. That’s a federal prison, minimum security. I searched news files and found nothing. Nothing was reported of him attending court or being sentenced. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Yes,” Walker said, interested. “Federal crime, could be cyber related. Hacking?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did you get a release date?”

  “No,” Monica said. “I know—I thought the same thing you are right now—was it something he and Jasper did at college? Hacking something and getting caught?”

  “Did Jasper do that sort of thing?”

  “I’ve no idea. But they were tight. He was always away at college. Then the Army. Then the obsession, when it came—but he was working for the NSA by then.”

  “You didn’t try using your security clearance to access Craven’s prison records?”

  Monica added milk to her coffee, stirred it with a plastic stick and sipped it, then shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “The days you could do that kind of thing are well and truly behind us, especially since 9/11 and with all the streamlining of databases that Homeland Security has implemented. My access would be recorded, along with every file in th
e system that I touched, every email and phone call that I’d make around it . . .”

  “You’d lose your clearance,” Walker said.

  “Yep,” she said. “And as much as I want to know, it’s not worth losing my job and reputation over.”

  “Maybe now it is?” Walker said.

  Monica sipped her coffee and smiled. Their food arrived. She added sugar to the porridge and stirred it.

  “No,” she said. “We don’t need to do that. We can visit him. Craven. Or, should I say, Paul Conway, as he’s now known.”

  “You know where he is?”

  Monica nodded. “It’s easy to find someone’s address nowadays. Find out where they’re registered to vote, what car and house they have in their possession, basic credit check, all kinds of info.”

  “Is it far from here?” Walker said, eating a loaded fork full of eggs.

  “Not far, though it may take a while, the way you drive that car,” Monica said, smiling.

  Walker could see that the idea of potentially getting somewhere in the search to help her brother had brightened her mood. Progress.

  “By the way,” she said, eating, “I’m not some gluten-free-organic-flavored-air-eating hipster.”

  “Never for a second crossed my mind,” Walker said. “You don’t have the post-ironic beard to pull it off.”

  •

  General Christie opened the file on Josiah Walker.

  Graduate of the Air Force Academy. Like all candidates he obtained a Bachelor of Science. Sub-majored in politics and history. Academically brilliant. His father had attended too. At the time of his enrollment he was nineteen, six-two and 200 pounds. On graduation he was six-three and 245 pounds. Played quarterback for the Falcons, which wasn’t that much below a starting position in a low-ranked NFL team. He could have had a career in the pro league, was approached by scouts after the finals, but instead he went into the 24th Tactical and deployed to Afghanistan, the first of three tours, along with two in Iraq. If he’d stuck around, Walker could have been closing in on the rank of Brigadier General; he had the pedigree and aptitude to end up with a long and easy career, but instead he chose the most dangerous job in the Air Force, then bugged out when he was promoted to desk staff. Then he joined the CIA.

  PT results were outstanding. Middle-distance awards, but not much of a fast runner. Strong swimmer. Mesomorphic body type that responded quickly to stimulants, hence the bulk gained and prowess on the football field.

  Walker was proficient with all small arms, expert on the pistol. Lethal in hand-to-hand combat.

  The 24th Tactical. An Air Commando, and then some. Walker trained with SEALs and Delta. He had worked with them and the CIA, and everyone else.

  Postings in Germany, Japan, Korea. Wounded three times, with three Purple Hearts. Silver Star. Air Force Cross.

  Retired a Lieutenant Colonel when he was being sent away from front-line duties and into training.

  At least, that’s what it looked like, on the surface.

  But then Christie read the Agency’s human resources file of Walker’s acceptance. He had undertaken similar aptitude tests to those from the AFA, plus a raft of others, Agency specific.

  The psychologist had made copious notes. Walker passed and was accepted, obviously, but there were notes, detailed ones, seven pages worth. War had changed Walker, was the summary. It was usual for a person’s responses to change over ten years—maturity, life lived. But this was beyond that.

  Walker had become obsessive, a trait he hadn’t shown before.

  Obsessed with justice, with seeing a task done right, with getting the job done no matter what the personal cost. Most people want to think that they can fix wrongs. Walker knew that he could.

  Hence, the final recommendation was that Walker be considered as an officer in the Agent Provocateur area. An AP.

  A rare—exceedingly rare—position in the modern CIA. Not just a case officer recruiting agents and running a network. His role was to seek out the nation’s opponents and then destabilize, degrade and destroy.

  He joined the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. That file was a separate one, and Christie would read it next. She went through the last notes, the citations for the awards. The citations for the Air Force Cross were redacted, which meant it involved secrets. Probably working with the Agency . . .

  Christie crosschecked that file, which included the times during Walker’s ten-year Air Force career that he had worked alongside CIA officers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Jed Walker. Ten years in the Air Force, eight in the CIA and a brief twelve-month stint in the State Department before going off the grid until the New York Stock Exchange incident. The Vice President was a close ally and friend.

  So, what’s he doing with Monica Brokaw?

  General Christie picked up the phone and called Langley. Maybe the CIA still had a leash on this guy . . .

  38

  Harrington had managed a total of two hours’ shut-eye. Would he call it sleep? No. He liked his sleep. He did that when he wasn’t on the job. His whole crew had napped, at some point, in shifts, a half-hour here, an hour there. Now the sun was up and they were all awake and caffeinated and edgy.

  Twice they’d responded to sightings. Twice it was a partial match that hadn’t paid out.

  He and his crew were at two locations, thirty miles apart, north and south Los Angeles.

  “Change of plans,” he said to Kent. “Head back to the airfield. We’ll take to the helo. The others can keep looping around the south in their car.”

  The driver nodded, pulled a U-turn across four lanes and planted his foot, happy to have somewhere definitive to go rather than driving around in huge circles.

  “We haven’t had a decent hit,” the guy in the back said. “How is that even possible, in a city like LA, with cameras on people’s dashboards and on security feeds at every gas station and bar, every hotel foyer—every person and their smartphone clicking away and posting shit online.”

  “They slept somewhere,” Harrington said. “Maybe even in their car. But they’ll be moving, if not now then soon. They’ll turn up.”

  •

  Jasper’s old friend Paul Conway lived in Palm Springs, and they were headed there because they were already east of the city and it was closer to them than Jasper’s apartment, which wasn’t going anywhere. The day was turning out to be windy and bright. Walker unwound the Cuda’s engine on the freeway. It felt good, and it sounded good. On the highway ramp his foot pressed the accelerator hard to the floor, all that power through the back tires, threatening to fishtail on the way down. The force of the big engine pressed them back hard into the vinyl seats like they were leaving LA on board a fighter plane. Walker loved it.

  On the flat open road he eased into a cruise, sitting on eighty-five. Again going fast enough to get booked, but not arrested. He checked the gauges and dials: all normal. He cleaned the windscreen with the washers. Shifted in his seat. Adjusted his sunglasses against the sunlight dead ahead.

  He kept the Cuda nudging three figures all the way east. Monica was enjoying the ride.

  The landscape became that of America from so many westerns he’d seen as a kid, the ones that didn’t have the budget to go farther east than LA. The sound was nostalgic too. The soundtrack of America: the engine and rubber on the highway, slinging them cross-country. A blonde in the passenger seat. Someone to save, and people hunting them. The Colt .45 in the door pocket. A modern American take on the western, and little had changed. Death and adventure and the unknown swirling around them.

  An hour into daylight and the day was turning out to be a bright one, the sun blazing in the east. The clouds had dispersed into long wisps that looked like the ripples of sand under waves on a beach. Nacreous cloud formations, Walker recalled from his Air Force days. He’d called in Close Air Support in clear skies and black skies. The weather didn’t much bother the US Air Force. In fact, inclement weather was a friend of Special Forces units: there was not
hing like a black night of sleet in which to hunt, bringing all their training and skills and specialized optical kit to bear upon an enemy. He’d seen A10s light up the mountains with depleted uranium rounds. He’d directed a Lockheed AC-130 Spooky to level a ridge-line humming with Taliban activity, the Gatling gun spewing out 3600 rounds per minute of 25-millimeter shells, doing in a couple of minutes what his squad of sharpshooters on the ground had not achieved all day. He’d felt a MOAB, the Mother Of All Bombs, from twenty miles away, detonating in the mountains to collapse cave systems. Any closer and he would have lost his hearing, closer still and limbs would drop off from the shockwave.

  Glory days.

  “What are you thinking about?” Monica asked.

  Walker looked across at her. She’d been watching him reminisce.

  “You were far off, had the beginnings of a smile,” she said. “You should smile more.”

  “I’ll smile when we’re the other side of this deadline with your brother in safety and the Internet still on.”

  “Avoiding my question and comment much?”

  “Okay. I was thinking of Afghanistan.”

  “Okay, sure, that makes sense, seems a cheerful place,” Monica said.

  “There’s good memories among the bad,” he said.

  Monica said something under her breath, then, louder: “You’re typical of an operator who’s done what you’ve done. Guys like you, those not burned out. To be doing what you’re doing, out of choice. Addicted to it.”

  Walker was silent.

  “Then again, maybe it’s not a choice,” Monica said. “Those like you, plenty of them, can’t let go.”

  “You sound like my ex-wife,” Walker said.

  “Smart lady, by the sounds of things.”