Split Second (29 page)

48

Brian Hamilton hated Cheyenne
Mountain. Sure, it was one of the most interesting places in the world to
visit, but
living
there only worked
if you were a bat. The Palomar facility had also been underground, but nothing
like this. It had a much larger security perimeter, so trips to the surface
were easier to make happen.

Not that it really mattered.
Soon enough he would be traveling on another assignment anyway, living in a
hotel room somewhere. But what he really wanted was to work side by side with
Edgar Knight, toward their common goal. He was tired of being Knight’s
designated spy, having to watch Lee Cargill squander Q5’s vast resources and
capabilities. Watching him crawl like a wounded baby when he could be soaring.

Cargill was an idiot.

He could transform the world,
but he was too weak to do it. He could wipe out the asshole terrorists who
wanted nothing more than to butcher the helpless. If you have the ultimate cure
for cancer, you use it to wipe out the disease once and for all. You don’t
wield your cure only as a last resort, when the cancer has all but choked the
life out of you.

Edgar Knight, on the other hand,
was a man with
vision
. He was able to
make the tough decisions. If you were captain of a life raft with a maximum
capacity of ten people, choosing to take five passengers of a sinking ship on board
was an easy decision, not a heroic one. But what about when there were fifty
passengers? Was it heroic to take them all, dooming
everyone
to death? Or was the heroic move using force, if
necessary, to limit this number, to ensure some would survive?

Sure, from the outside this
looked coldhearted, while the converse seemed compassionate. But watching the
world circle the drain because you were too much of a pussy to make the hard
decisions was the real crime.

Survival of the fittest was
harsh reality. In the animal kingdom it was eat or be eaten. If you saw a group
of fuck-nuts just itching to nuke the world back into the Dark Ages—who believed
the Messiah equivalent, the twelfth Imam, would only come out to play when
Israel was destroyed, and worldwide Armageddon unleashed—you
wiped them out
. To a man.

Or else they’d do the same to
you.

It had been three days since
Cargill had reported that he was on the verge of acquiring Jenna Morrison and Aaron
Blake. Since then, Hamilton had heard almost nothing from the man. He assumed Cargill
had been successful, since all attempts by Knight to locate Blake and Morrison had
failed. If they were on the run, they would have at least made one mistake by
now, no matter how good they were.

Hamilton and his comrades on Q5’s
Inner Circle had been assigned quarters within Cheyenne, in the south quadrant,
but they were restricted to this quadrant alone. Bad enough having to be
trapped in a claustrophobic base. Worse still when you were restricted to just
a fraction of it.

Edgar Knight had made it clear
that Hamilton’s number one, and
only
,
priority was to get a copy of Nathan Wexler’s work, and Knight was willing to unleash
unlimited manpower to do it.

If only they had this
information already they wouldn’t have to dick around. They could beam a team
inside the fucking mountain and take down the entire Cheyenne facility if need
be. But to do that now, they’d have to get their eighteen-wheelers within
fifty-eight feet, not just of the mountain, but of their destination inside. Since
Cargill ringed every base with sensors that would alarm if they detected the
unique energy signatures of the devices, they couldn’t get nearly this close.

Hamilton was reflecting on this
while he lifted weights in a small gym on site, and attempting to strategize as
to how he could carry out the mission that Knight had assigned to him. The file
was better protected than the gold in Fort Knox. The physicists Cargill had assigned
to digest its contents had been moved to an undisclosed off-site location, and
were no doubt heavily guarded and as tightly sequestered as a hung jury.

Without interaction with
Cargill, Hamilton had little hope of learning anything. And the fact that Cargill
seemed certain there was another mole on the inside, and wasn’t in the mood to
confide in anyone, made his job all the more difficult.

So Hamilton was basically in a
holding pattern. Waiting for something to happen. Anything. It was as if
Cargill had vanished. Hamilton would sell his soul to the devil to hear from
this pussy again.

Right on cue, his cell phone
buzzed, indicating an incoming message from Cargill.

Ask and you shall receive
, he thought happily.

The message ordered all eight
remaining members of the Inner Circle to meet in an hour inside one of the
largest meeting rooms on the Cheyenne campus, which was about the size of a school
gymnasium. It didn’t say why, or anything else for that matter.

Very interesting.

Upon entering the room, Hamilton
was frisked and relieved of all weapons. He was alarmed by this request,
thinking he had been discovered, but was told that everyone was getting the
same treatment, at Cargill’s orders.

Once all eight remaining members
of the Inner Circle were inside, Lee Cargill and Joe Allen entered the room,
shutting the door behind them.

Hamilton watched Cargill closely,
wondering what game he was playing.

The room was stark and
utilitarian, with a shiny concrete floor that a finished garage might have, and
some wooden chairs spread here and there throughout. At one end was what looked
like a steel voting booth, or a portable closet.

Hamilton and his seven comrades
were bunched loosely together in the middle of the room, and as Cargill and
Allen walked through this group and to the other side, all eight turned to face
them.

“I hope everyone is enjoying
their new quarters,” began Cargill, “and getting a feel for this facility. I’m
sure you’ve been a little bored, and wondering why you haven’t heard from me.”

His audience looked on with
great interest.

“As you know from the last
message I sent, three days ago, I have reason to believe Edgar Knight has a man
who is loyal to him within Q5. I’m not sure the mole is within the Inner Circle,
but until I can be sure, our entire program is paralyzed.

“But have no fear,” continued
Cargill. “Good fortune has shined upon us. We’re all familiar with the classic
polygraph test, and we all know that any of us worth his salt can beat it. But
one of our sister Black Ops science groups has had a team working on dramatic
improvements to the test, working toward perfecting a foolproof system. So I
checked with them.” He shot the group a broad smile. “You guessed it. It turns
out they’ve recently made a breakthrough. Not as impressive as being able to
send matter forty-five millionths of a second back in time, of course,” he
added, “but not bad.”

Cargill paused, and the room was
now perfectly quiet.

“They weren’t keen on letting
one of only two available prototypes out of their sight,” he explained. “But I
made it clear this was an emergency. And President Janney made sure this was a
request they couldn’t refuse. So lucky us. We now have a polygraph system that
is unbeatable. Today we get to find out, once and for all, who is ready to stab
us in the back. Who is ready to drink the Kool-Aid that Edgar Knight is
serving. Who wants to sabotage us and help this madman build a global
government and take the helm.”

“Assuming the mole is in our
Inner Circle, of course,” added Joe Allen from beside him.

“Right,” said Cargill. “Which I
hope like hell isn’t the case. But either way, we’ll finally be confident we
can trust each other, and we can move forward on that basis.”

Cargill’s face hardened. “So
none of you are leaving this room until all of you are tested. You should be
honored to know that this will be the first use of the new test under field
conditions. So when I call your name, come with me into our little chamber, and
let’s make history.”

49

Brian Hamilton’s heart pounded
away inside his chest, but he was happy to note that outwardly he appeared no
different than any of his comrades, who all showed signs of stress at Cargill’s
announcement. And
they
were all
innocent.

One of their group, Chris
Entwistle, appeared particularly nervous, and Hamilton wondered what sordid
secrets he was hiding, not that he had anything to worry about, since Cargill’s
questioning would be focused on one transgression only.

Hamilton knew he was out of options.
They were locked in the room and the door was certainly being guarded. Only
Cargill and Allen were armed. Besides, the fucking Incredible Hulk would have
trouble escaping from this mountain once an alarm had sounded.

He had no other choice but to
take the test. The question was, was everything Cargill just said bullshit? The
more Hamilton thought about this, the more convinced he became that it was.

The timing was a little too
convenient. A sister group just happening to develop an unbeatable polygraph just
when Cargill needed it most. Doubtful.

Cargill was clever, with a reputation
for guile. Surely this was yet another example.

Contrary to popular perception, polygraph
tests were notoriously inaccurate, and if one knew what one was doing, easy to
beat. Those administering tests were skilled in the art of deception, which ensnared
many perps that the test would not have.

The test administrator might
tell a subject to wash his hands thoroughly with soap, to avoid false
perspiration readings, and then monitor a hidden camera in the bathroom to see
if the suspect washed or not. If he didn’t wash, this would speak volumes,
since an innocent man would wash his hands raw, wanting to avoid an inaccurate
reading at all costs.

The polygraph test had great
utility as a psychological ruse that could be used to extract confessions. And
the best way to provoke a confession, or a mistake, was to convince subjects
that the test was all but infallible. Those who truly believed they were about
to be discovered tended to react in very impulsive, and very stupid, ways,
which is what the testers were counting on.

This is why the current
situation was likely a ruse. This fantasy story of a foolproof test was
designed to intimidate Hamilton into making a mistake. Cargill was hoping to flush
him out without need of asking a single question.

Well, Hamilton wasn’t falling
for it. He would take it as if it were a standard polygraph, and use techniques
he had been trained on to beat it. If Cargill wasn’t bluffing after all, then
he was fucked. But he was betting he’d slide right through the trap.

Two long hours passed as three other
members of the Inner Circle went before him. And then Lee Cargill exited the steel
booth and called out the name Brian Hamilton.

The moment of truth had arrived.

Cargill led Hamilton back inside
the makeshift testing room, foolishly turning his back on him and letting him
get very close. If only they weren’t deep within a fortress, Hamilton could
have snatched Cargill’s gun and escaped without working up much of a sweat. For
a clever man, Cargill was exceedingly stupid at the same time.

He entered the booth, bigger
than it looked from the outside, and took a seat before a glass table. Cargill
and Allen both took their places behind the table, facing him. Allen carefully hooked
him up to the device, attaching leads to his fingers, forehead, and chest,
while Cargill studied a large monitor, nodding periodically.

And then the testing began. Allen
had a script in his hand and saw little need to diverge from it. Which was
perfect, Hamilton realized. After all, he knew exactly what they were after, making
the test even easier to beat, because it was obvious which questions were the
controls—being used to establish baseline breathing, pulse, blood pressure, and
perspiration readings—and which questions were the real deal.

The trick was to keep answers
short. And when being asked control questions, to delay taking breaths, taxing
your system, and to imagine yourself in highly stressful situations, being
burned alive or smothered by fire ants. If you could stress yourself out while answering
control questions, the minor stress reactions to lying wouldn’t differ from the
“normal” state. There were also tricks to convince yourself you were telling
the truth, even when you weren’t.

Allen walked him through thirty
minutes of questions while Cargill studied the monitor, not showing any
reaction. The longer the test wore on, the more confident Hamilton became. If
the test was as good as Cargill had said, he would have been discovered by now.

Finally, it was over, and Cargill
instructed him to join the others until all were through being tested. A few of
his comrades were engaged in idle conversation to pass the time, but Hamilton
didn’t join in.

Next up was a man named Joe
O’Bannon. After him there were only two more. The mood in the room had improved
considerably as the majority had now passed the test, although Chris Entwistle,
who had appeared to Hamilton’s practiced eye to be anxious, now seemed even
worse, as though he might vomit at any moment. Perhaps he had food poisoning. Hamilton
wondered how a stomach flu would affect the results.

Once O’Bannon was done,
Entwistle’s name was finally called. Cargill came out of the booth and led him
back in, as he had with all the rest.

They were ten feet from the steel
room when Entwistle moved—with a purpose.

The man became a blur of motion,
tearing Cargill’s gun from its holster and backing away, pointing the weapon at
Cargill’s chest before anyone in the room could even begin to react.

An instant later the others all reflexively
reached for their own weapons, reacting with instincts that had been honed over
many years, only to remember that they were no longer armed.

But Entwistle now was.

Several in the Inner Circle
began moving toward him, silently and with deadly intensity, but Cargill
quickly waved them off.

Only a few seconds had passed
since Entwistle had made his move.

“Fuck you, Lee Cargill!” the
gunman hissed. “So I sympathize with Edgar Knight,” he said. “So the fuck what?
Any sane man would. That doesn’t mean I haven’t served you faithfully.”

“Put the gun down,” said Cargill,
struggling to remain calm.

“Kiss my ass!” roared Entwistle.
“I don’t take orders from you anymore. Edgar Knight came up with technology
that could stop bloodshed around the world. Could save the lives of thousands
of our brothers who are fighting barbarians. Could spare the lives of
heroes
. And all you do is shiver in the
dark and squander the gift Knight gave us. You’re a
disgrace!
”

“Look, Chris, let’s talk about
this. You know you can’t escape.”

“We’ll see about that,” said
Entwistle defiantly. “Joe Allen!” he shouted, turning toward the makeshift
steel room they had been about to enter. “If that door opens as much as a
millimeter, Cargill is
dead
. If
anyone in this room even
thinks
about
making a move, the same goes.”

“I’ve heard enough,” said
Cargill, his voice suddenly taking on a command tone once again. “Thanks for
playing, ‘flush out the traitorous cockroach.’ It’s a little game I invented.
See, Chris, this polygraph is standard issue, dressed up a little for show. I
was just hoping to stress you into making a mistake.”

Entwistle stared at him in
disbelief, but only for a moment. “Congratulations,
asshole
,” he said. “But now I’m going to use you as a shield to get
out of here. Not too smart now, huh genius?”

Cargill slowly began crouching
down. “You don’t really think I’d let you steal a loaded gun, do you? It has
blanks for weighting, but it was bait. And you took it.”

At that moment, several things
happened all at once, at a speed that would have been impossible for most men
to follow with the naked eye, although Hamilton was not most men.

The door into the booth began to
open at the same time that Cargill lunged for a gun in an ankle holster, and
Entwistle fired three times at Cargill’s head. The blanks exploded with the
sound and fury of real ammunition, but Cargill had not been bluffing when he
said the gun wasn’t live.

Entwistle’s recognition of the
situation was immediate and decisive. He rushed Cargill as he was lifting his
gun from the ankle holster and in one fluid move used an advanced martial arts
technique to twist Cargill’s arm in such a way that he had to release the gun
into Entwistle’s hand or have his elbow destroyed.

As Entwistle was replacing his decoy
gun with a live one, he spun Cargill around so the leader of Q5 was between
himself and the door, turning his ex-boss into a human shield as Allen emerged
from the polygraph room with his gun drawn.

“Drop it or he dies!” screamed Entwistle,
freezing Allen in mid-motion.

Before Allen could comply,
Cargill dropped to the ground, exposing the man behind him, and betting his
life his second-in-command would react before Entwistle did.

It was very close, but Allen
reacted first, pumping three bullets into Entwistle, two in the chest and the
last in the head. Entwistle got off one shot after he was hit, but it missed
Allen by several inches.

The moment Entwistle hit the
ground, his face now hamburger, four guards burst through the door, automatic
pistols drawn.

“Stand down!” Cargill shouted at
the four newcomers.

The four men took in the scene
and then lowered their weapons as ordered.

“Thanks for your quick action,”
said Cargill, “but we have the situation under control.”

As the guards exited the room,
Hamilton noticed the horrified expressions around the room. He planted the same
expression on his own face, but he desperately wanted to grin, or maybe even
dance a jig.

The loss of a man who shared his
disdain for Lee Cargill was unfortunate, but Entwistle’s grisly death was
nothing he hadn’t seen before.

Hamilton had been hoping simply
to avoid being snared in Cargill’s trap, but something even better had happened.
Entwistle, a talented soldier, had been sympathizing with Knight, had probably
been thinking of ways to reach out to him and offer his services. But he had
stupidly let Cargill panic him into making the most idiotic of blunders.

Cargill’s ploy had not been an
exercise in futility, as Hamilton had expected. Quite the contrary, the man had
trapped his one and only mole, after all.

Hamilton had thought Cargill was
an idiot for letting the men get so close to his gun as he led them to take the
test. But he had been too hasty. Cargill had done this on purpose.

He had been more clever than
Hamilton had given him credit for.

As it turned out,
too
clever.

Because he had flushed out the
wrong man. And now he would return to his old, trusting self, confiding in his
Inner Circle once again. So now the real fun could begin.