Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  New soldiers begin their Combatives training on day three of Initial Military Training at Fort Benning, at the same time they are first issued their rifle. That training begins with learning to maintain control of your weapon in a fight. Keep your weapon, you have a much better chance of survival.

  The three basic options taught for encountering a resistant opponent are to disengage to regain projectile weapon range, or gain a controlling position and utilize a secondary weapon, or, as a third option, close the distance and gain control to finish the fight.

  This guy had just voluntarily given up his firearm, figuring he had the bulk to do the job, probably assuming his colleague would take action should the unexpected transpire.

  That was his mistake.

  It was the colleague in the car that Walker was concerned about, not the slab of beef in front of him. In Walker’s experience, it wasn’t so much the bigger they are the harder they fall, but the bigger they are the harder the blows on impact. Smaller guys were faster, they could get in close and dart out again, slip out of mounts and grapples and chokes. Bigger guys had longer reach, and in this case a lot more mass and strength, but this meant a bigger target and surface area for Walker to play with. But the guy behind, at the wheel of the Suburban—he was the trouble. He had firearms and a vehicle at his disposal.

  Walker glanced back over his shoulder. Monica was moving about in the car, slowly remembering who and where she was. Over the giant’s shoulder, the figure in the car was watching passively, his hands still on the steering wheel of the Suburban, as though he were ready to drive onto the bridge and roll over them at any given moment. If that were the case, good for Walker—it was easier to dodge a car than a bullet.

  So, back to the task at hand.

  The giant was a pace away and he shaped up to fight.

  Walker recognized the stance and motions and knew that he was a similar vintage to Walker’s service, for surely things had changed in the past ten years that he had been out of the DoD. As the years and decades passed, more and varied martial arts had been added. Joint locks and choke holds became more technical, more useful, more efficient.

  Entirely serviceable. Walker had learned them too, the abbreviated Air Force version, then he’d learned further techniques when training with the 24th Tactical. Then he went to the CIA, to the Point, which is where he learned all kinds of improvised weaponry outside of what the DoD taught. Useful, that level of knowledge.

  The initial techniques are simply a learning metaphor useful for teaching more important concepts, such as dominating an opponent with superior body position during ground grappling or how to control someone during clinch fighting. They are taught as small, easily repeatable drills, until they master techniques of escaping blows, maintaining the mount, escaping the mount, maintaining the guard, passing the guard, assuming side control, maintaining side control, preventing and assuming the mount. The drill can be completed in less than a minute and can be done repeatedly with varying levels of resistance to maximize training benefits.

  “Okay, whirlwind, or do you need me to buy you a drink first?” Walker said. He gave this guy a minute, tops.

  The giant attacked hard and fast.

  Soldiers are then taught how to gain control of a potential enemy at the farthest possible range in order to maintain their tactical flexibility, then assess the tactical options and how to implement them.

  Walker let the blow glance by, spinning around him, so that he could see Monica over the guy’s shoulders. She’d steadied now. She was watching dead ahead, at the scene in front of her, as though seeing the world for the first time and comprehension still a long way off.

  The giant stepped in and threw his right arm around Walker’s neck, while Walker braced against the guy’s chest with one arm and grabbed his wrist with his other hand, while the giant pulled Walker in for a head-butt.

  Walker didn’t resist. But what he did do was let go of the guy’s wrist and raise his elbow. The crack on impact of elbow and head was spectacular, the guy hit between the eyes with his own vicious pulling motion being a harder blow than Walker could hope to land on his own inertia.

  The giant stumbled a step backward.

  Monica was sitting upright in the seat. Walker saw her glance down in front of her to where the Colt lay, and then back up to the window, and down again, as if she was thinking but her brain was still a while away from drawing concrete conclusions.

  A trickle of blood ran down whirlwind’s nose from where he’d been split open on his Neanderthal-like brow ridge, the crimson running into his mouth where he smiled with now bloodied teeth.

  “Ha!” he said. “Good . . . good. Now I’m angry. Puny Air Force man.”

  “Yeah. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You’re as useful in a fight as a fart in a whirlwind.”

  The smile dropped from the giant’s mouth.

  Walker figured this guy hadn’t been in a real fight since he was about fifteen, when, pre-steroids, he would have already been about six-three and a couple of hundred pounds. The other kids on the high-school football teams would have been smart enough to give him a wide berth.

  This was fine by Walker. He enjoyed training people, had always enjoyed it. And if this guy survived the fall, then he too would learn a valuable lesson. Even if he didn’t survive, the last moments of falling through the air would be his schooling in physics and a reflection on all that he’d done to get to that point of inevitability.

  Walker rushed him.

  The two men grappled, arms locked, each trying to make the other turn and drop and submit into a mounted choke hold.

  Pound for pound, Walker was stronger.

  But the giant had too many pounds on Walker.

  Walker gave up fifty percent, just for a half-second, letting the whirlwind get in close, fast. Then Walker switched positions and pulled his arms out of the hold, twisted his body and used all of his weight to turn the guy around. The brute pulled a knife from his boot and as he came up Walker pulled the screwdriver out and put it into the guy’s neck, right into the half-inch-thick pulsating carotid artery, and kicked him off the bridge. As he fell his hand went to his neck and he dropped the knife and he stared up at Walker, wide-eyed. Lesson learned.

  Suddenly Walker’s attention was drawn away by a roar to his left.

  The Suburban, racing toward him, both the driver’s hands at the wheel, the vehicle so wide that the edges were almost hanging over the bridge. Walker had nowhere to go but over the edge and to hold onto the steel structure underneath or to try to jump onto the Suburban’s hood—

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Walker ducked for cover and looked behind him.

  Monica was standing next to the truck, her father’s Colt .45 in her hands, holding it double-handed in a steady A-frame braced position.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Walker looked left and dropped down lower in case of a round going astray.

  BANG! BANG! POP!

  The Suburban’s windscreen was shattered by the heavy .45 rounds, the ninth bullet had gone close enough to the driver to penetrate and explode on impact with the laminated glass. The driver’s face erupted in blood and he put his hands to it, the Suburban careening to the right, hard and fast. It flew off the bridge and dropped like a stone, hitting the side of the canyon with a crunch and falling, tail first, down the tight ravine, smashing onto the body of whirlwind.

  Walker, still standing, saw the driver’s face, scratched up more than anything serious, lock in a look of surprise as the car’s gas tank caught alight on the rocks and a plume of fire engulfed the car. Black smoke ballooned up past the bridge and into the sky.

  62

  Walker guided the Colt from Monica’s hands and led her to the truck. She settled on the front bench seat and he climbed in behind the wheel and took off. He drove across the bridge, through the billowing black smoke, navigating by instinct, and then he was through the smoke and across the bridge a
nd he sped down the mountain trail.

  “I just—”

  “No,” Walker said to her, checking his rearview mirror before taking a turn down the track, not seeing any men or vehicles in pursuit. “You shot at him. You hurt him, sure. But he killed himself.”

  “You think?”

  “I know. And you saved me—and yourself. You did the right thing.”

  Monica was silent.

  Walker downshifted and took another tight turn down the steep track, then glanced to Monica holding on to the dash and said, “You okay?”

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You tripped out.”

  “How? Did I fall?” She put a hand to her head but felt nothing. No bump, no graze, nothing that could account for the blackout and woozy feeling. Then she looked down and saw the syringe on the floor of the truck. “Did I . . .”

  “That? No. That was me.”

  Monica looked to him. “You?”

  “You had an e-cigarette, and it wasn’t loaded with tobacco. Or weed, or any other kind of soft recreational drug.”

  “I—I don’t remember. I remember seeing it, on the floor back there.” Monica looked into the footwell at the back seat and saw only trash. “What was in it?”

  “Some kind of hallucinogen. You’d have to ask Paul to be sure.”

  “Paul—where’s Paul?”

  Walker sped up as the track started a long sweeping decline along the side of the mountain.

  “He’s out there somewhere.”

  •

  Harrington looked down at the burning wreckage of the Suburban. He could see a charred corpse in the driver’s seat. But not his other guy. He sent Kent down to take a look. He waited.

  Kent saw something down there that confirmed both team members were dead and he looked up and shook his head.

  The soldier next to him said, “What now?”

  “Get the helo to pick us up,” Harrington said.

  “It’s tracking the contact on the motorbike.”

  “Our mission is Monica. Re-task the helo.”

  “Copy that.”

  63

  Walker drove east on the interstate, and eventually they would head north, to Palo Alto. It had been twenty minutes since they’d left the fire track. Twenty minutes of Monica’s silence.

  “We need to change cars,” Walker said.

  Monica said nothing, merely stared out her window.

  “We’ll take Granger’s Crown Vic. Actually, we’ll get him to drive us. They’re looking for me and you. Not him. Not three people.”

  Monica remained silent.

  “We’ll get to your brother’s apartment and see what—”

  “What’s the point?” Monica didn’t look at him as she spoke. Her voice was flat, tired, losing hope. “Paul was our lead. What can we do?”

  “I got some intel from Paul. A code. We’ll find your brother.”

  “Really?” Now Monica was looking at him. “What kind of code?”

  “Numbers.”

  Monica was quiet long enough for Walker to look across at her.

  “What kind of numbers?” she said finally.

  “In series of three. Single and double and triple digits, then singles and doubles, singles and doubles.”

  “Do you have them written down?”

  “Yeah,” Walker said. He fished into his jeans pocket as he entered the outskirts of Beaumont. He handed over the folded piece of paper.

  Monica held it, and her hands began to shake, but not from the drugs or the adrenaline.

  “What is it?” Walker said. “Are you okay?”

  “Did Paul see this?”

  “Yeah. Of course. He found it. He thought it was trash code at the end of the first couple of attacks. But I transcribed it. I think it’s something. There’s a pattern in there, somewhere.”

  “He said it was trash code?”

  “That’s what he said. But there’s a pattern in there, I’m sure of it.”

  “It’s not a pattern,” Monica said. “It’s a book cipher. The numbers refer to pages and lines and words in a book.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which book?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “But you’re sure it’s a book code?”

  Monica looked out the window, the paper loose in her hands. “Yes.”

  “Maybe Jasper left the book at his apartment?”

  “Maybe.” Monica looked ahead.

  “There were hundreds of books in his apartment.”

  “Yep.”

  “But he’d probably need to have a copy on him, of this particular book.”

  “No. He’d have memorized it.”

  “Memorized the location of every word in each line on each page of a book? That’s impossible.”

  “Not for Jasper. Not if he knew the placement of the letters, memorized them. He deals in numbers all the time—he’s a freak with them.”

  Walker found the second motel on the highway, where the decade-old silver Crown Vic was parked. Granger had followed his instructions.

  “You look worried,” Monica said.

  Walker glanced at her as he slowed the truck but continued past the entrance.

  “What you said about Jasper,” he said. “If he knew the letters and memorized them . . .”

  “What about it? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Well, I am sure.” Monica nodded. “He used to do book ciphers as a kid. Obsessive. My father taught him. So, he has a favorite book, or two, or ten, and he’s memorized letter positions in them. Simple as that.”

  “You use that word a lot with your brother—obsessive.”

  Monica didn’t answer.

  “So, he used a book cipher to get a message out. To whom? How could he be so sure someone—Paul—would look into the hacks? Would he have, if we hadn’t got to him?” Walker pulled the truck to a stop a block from the motel and parked around the corner. When he killed the engine, Monica was still silent, so he said, “Our next step is to find the book he used to crack it. The exact edition, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have no idea what book he’d use.”

  “No. He never did book ciphers with me.”

  “Just with your father?”

  “No. Not since . . . not for a long time.”

  “Then who?”

  “Paul. He used to do them with Paul.”

  64

  Harrington and his now four-man team were picked up by the hovering helo from the roof of the container. The rectangular steel structure was the closest area the helicopter could come in close to, given that the bridge was swamped with the acrid black smoke of burning vehicle and fuel and bodies. They had evacuated the site as magazines from their fallen team members’ weapons started to cook off and high-velocity rounds pinged against the steel bridge structure and surrounding rocks.

  “Back to base,” Harrington said over their tactical radios. His crew, as hardened as they were, fell silent and somber at the loss of two comrades. “We regroup, get better intel, find out exactly who the third person was. He was a tech head of some sort. I want to know what they were looking at. What servers, what databases, what files they touched. Make sure I have that intel by the time we’re on the ground.”

  Kent said, “What are we doing about finding them?”

  “They’ll show up soon,” Harrington said. “Aside from Trapwire running their facial rec against every picture and video in the country, I’m declaring a state-wide man-hunt for the three of them. Who was that guy on the bike?”

  Kent flashed Harrington a picture on a tablet. Harrington took the device and showed their sniper, who had scoped the scene as they’d parachuted in.

  “That’s him,” the sniper said. “Hundred percent.”

  “Good.” Harrington scrolled down. “Paul Conway. Works in IT security in Palm Springs.” He passed the tablet back. “We need to know everythi
ng there is to know about him. In the meantime, I want roadblocks on every interstate. Start them a hundred miles out of here. Have county deputies cruise every B-road. We’ll get them. They’ll get theirs.”

  •

  The private detective drove the Crown Vic near the speed limit, which was annoying because Walker wanted to get to Jasper’s apartment as quickly as possible, but it did give him time to think and decompress.

  Walker and Monica sat in the back; the rear seat was as comfortable as a plush sofa. Walker had his window cracked, and the radio was turned to the news, and they listened as they drove northeast on the Interstate 5. They were thirty minutes beyond Beaumont.

  Walker couldn’t figure out why Paul had not said anything about the book cipher, but he did know where Paul would now be headed: Jasper’s apartment. He would need the book that matched the cipher, and even if he had the exact copy and edition back at his own house in Palm Springs, he knew well enough that it would now be crawling with cops and Feds. They just needed to get there before Paul, or while Paul was still there.

  “Maybe just a little faster?” Walker said.

  The PI picked up the speed by five miles per hour and seemed reluctant to go much beyond that.

  Walker imagined the trip taking five hours, best case. If they hit any traffic in or around LA, people headed back into town after a weekend away, or headed into San Fran for the same reason . . .

  The passenger headrest was all the way down and Walker could see clear over the top of it. The road ahead was a ribbon of blacktop largely devoid of cars on this Sunday lunchtime. The back of the PI’s head was bulbous and there were scars in the bald patches that signified he’d had a tough time of it at some point, either in a fight or maybe even a car wreck.

  Granger had been genuinely happy to see them. Walker assured him that there was no heat coming down on him from any kind of federal authorities, though Walker was happy to maintain this illusion as a possibility to keep the guy in check.