Dead Man's Switch (21 page)

“Think I'm stupid?” It was the orderly's voice.

King opened his eyes, and the brightness hurt. Beyond the orderly's shoulders, he caught a glimpse of snowy mountain peaks. They'd moved a long way from Tacoma.

The large man rolled King over. “Don't kick, okay? I'll just have to hurt you.”

King kicked anyway. He wasn't going to be a passive victim, and everything about the situation told him he was going to get hurt one way or another.

Something thumped his head. A fist. Jerome's fist.

“Enough,” Jerome said.

“Why are you doing this?” King asked.

“Don't know,” Jerome said. “Don't care. I just listen to a voice on the other end of the phone.”

“Where are we going?”

“Don't ask. You really don't want to know, okay?”

“Not okay,” King said.

“Whatever.” The orderly began to drag King out of the van. King thumped around, trying to make it difficult for the orderly.

Another thump on the head made King see spots.

“You can walk,” Jerome said, “or I can give you another needle.”

“Of what?” King wanted the orderly to talk. About anything.

“Of whatever. It works, that's all you need to know.”

The utter lack of care in the orderly's voice frightened King. This process of taking another human in a cargo van, as if the human were cargo, was obviously just a job to the orderly.

“Tell me one thing,” King said, “and I promise I won't struggle. Who sent you?”

The orderly succeeded in yanking King out of the van. King landed on his feet. With the tape securing his legs together so tightly that his ankles touched, he could barely keep his balance.

The orderly spun King away from the van and stepped behind him. It gave King a clear view of where they were. In a parking lot at the base of a hiking trail. Not good. Definitely not good.

“Don't know who pays the bills,” Jerome said. “That's a truthful answer. So you owe me to deliver on your promise. I really don't want to carry you.”

“Where?” King asked.

Something dropped over his neck from behind. It felt cold. Seconds later, there was a jolt of tightness that seemed to fracture his Adam's apple.

“In case you can't figure it out,” the orderly said, “that's a choke chain. Works on dogs. It'll work on you.”

There was a slight ripping sound at his ankles. Behind him, the orderly must have squatted and cut the tape loose, because King could move his legs. He staggered slightly, keeping his balance as he spread his legs.

“Now we walk,” Jerome said.

King felt a jab in his back.

“Yep,” Jerome said. “A knife. Don't be stupid, okay? I've got a short grip on this choke chain and a tight grip on my knife. The only place you're going is where I want you to go.”

That's when a cell phone rang.

CHAPTER 45

“Yeah,” Jerome said into the phone.

A pause.

“Yeah,” Jerome said again. “We're here.”

Another pause.

Then Jerome said to King, “It's for you.”

King was hoping Jerome would cut the tape on King's wrists so King could hold the phone.

Nope.

“I've got Blake's computer.” A robotic voice reached King from the back of his skull. He realized that Jerome had put the cell on speaker mode and was holding it right behind King at head level. The robotic voice was some kind of computer-simulation that made it impossible to recognize. “Had it at dawn long before you called from the hospital. All it took was bloodhounds and a metal detector. Just wanted you to know that your bluff didn't work. You have nothing. Understand? Nothing. That's why you're headed into the mountains. Everyone knows you wanted off the island. When you don't come back, you'll be a runaway who just disappeared. Like tens of thousands of others every year.”

“Hey,” Jerome said to the cell-phone voice. “Thanks. You know how hard it's going to be to move him now that he knows?”

“He was smart enough to know it all along,” the computer voice said in garbled tones. “That's why he handcuffed himself to a bed. Now get it done. Even if you have to drag him to the edge of the cliff. Then go back to the hospital.”

Click. The call ended.

Jerome sighed. “Guess it's time for a needle. Probably for the best. You won't know what hit you.”

“And neither will you,” King said.

Jerome jerked on the choke chain. “Give it up. Don't bother.”

“Armageddon,” King said.

“Huh?”

“Armageddon. It's a code word.”

“It's a stupid code word. Doesn't mean a thing to me.”

“Not yet,” King said.

King waited. When nothing happened, he felt a sick clunking in his stomach. He'd put too much faith in the promises that had been made to him a few hours earlier in an office in downtown Seattle.

“Armageddon,” King repeated.

The promises. From a man in a navy blue suit with cropped hair and a face that showed no expression and who had nearly black eyes darker than the skin of the man's face, eyes that had focused on King with an intensity that was more fascinating than frightening.

“Yes, you're going to be like a goat tethered to a stake to bring in the tiger. But the tiger won't make it to the goat. Because we'll be there. If you're in a tight situation, talk long enough for us to get a sense of what is happening and get our men into position. No matter where you are, we'll be there. We've got choppers. We've got a small army. We're the best, the elite. We know how to hunt men.”

But what if the transmitter sewn into his jacket had failed? What if somehow choppers had lost the van? What if the best of the best CIA agents weren't good enough?

“Armageddon,” King tried again.

“Don't get on my nerves,” Jerome said. “Wait. Too late. You already are. Maybe I won't give you a needle. The choke chain will do it.”

As if to prove it, Jerome gave another yank, and King staggered.

King said it again, as calmly as he could, given the massive amount of adrenalin that was beginning to surge through his body.

Where were the best of the best? The man hunters?

King hadn't known what to expect when it arrived. Only that he'd been promised, no matter what, that it would arrive.

And finally it did.

Thfft. Thfft.

The sound didn't mean anything to King at first. But it must have meant something to Jerome because King heard the big man grunt.

King turned slightly. Saw surprise on Jerome's face and two darts sticking out of the side of Jerome's neck.

As Jerome sagged to his knees in blank incomprehension, from 30 feet away, two men in camo stepped out of the bushes.

A lot of things to say ran through King's mind.
Took you long enough. Good to see you. Nice shooting.

Instead, he moved out of the way so that Jerome hit the ground instead of King.

King knew it was going to feel good to get that choke chain off his neck.

CHAPTER 46

Inside a commuter helicopter, King waited for the blades to slow to a stop shortly after it had settled on a helipad.

“We're in Fort Lewis,” King said to the pilot, a man in a navy blue suit with cropped hair and a face that showed no expression and who had near black eyes darker than the skin of the man's face. His name was Evans. No first name. Just Evans. “A military base.”

“To be accurate,” Evans answered, “it's Joint Base Lewis-McChord.”

Back at the parking lot near the old van where King had been held prisoner, two choppers had landed shortly after the two-person team had taken Jerome down with darts. One of the choppers had been large enough for six men and a couple of women to step down and begin processing the scene. The second chopper, much smaller, was lightweight and looked like a traffic chopper that television stations in Seattle used. This was the one that Evans piloted, and after King had boarded, Evans had taken them west to the urban sprawl of Seattle and Tacoma.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord had been an easy guess for King. On the approach, King had been able to see McNeil Island across Puget Sound. And things were starting to make more sense. If Evans was based out of Fort Lewis, that explained how he'd arrived so quickly at the FBI office in Seattle earlier that morning. And if the special units that Evans commanded were based out of Fort Lewis, it also explained how he'd been able to pull the operation together so quickly.

“Here's my question,” King said to Evans. “Is the US government willing to kill its own citizens to protect this secret?”

The chopper was completely silent, and no military personnel had approached it. Obviously, it had been cleared to land, and Evans was expected.

“Before I answer that,” Evans said, “I will tell you what's been happening on the island. As you know, I'm CIA, and we have been running secret night games on the island to train our special ops group. It's no coincidence that I'm based out of JBLM. This is also the home base for the 201st Battlefield Surveillance Brigade. The island provides training for some of their soldiers too. McNeil Island is the perfect location for all of our needs.”

“Training,” King repeated.

“We started this about a year ago. Murdoch is CIA, and he's in control of the prison and the situation on the island. In these games, unlike training games the military runs elsewhere, our operatives had to pit themselves against dangerous felons in situations where if they lost, they faced real risks. For further clarity, in case you were unaware of what
is
public knowledge, Special Operations Group agents—SOG's—are drawn from the elite of the elite. The army, for example, has the Delta Force. The navy has something called DEVGRU, but you probably know it as SEAL Team Six. The air force equivalent is the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. We take only the top 5 percent from each of those special forces for our own. The task is simple. Go places where we need them and do things no other soldiers could accomplish.”

He paused. “And sometimes they need to hunt other men.”

He waited to see if there would be a protest. “Bin Laden, for example. Other terrorists. Some known to the world. Some not. You can debate the morality of this, but the fact is that without it, America would be less safe. SOG tactics and operations are highly secret, but as an arm of the CIA, the mission of the SOG is a matter of public record.”

“I'm not here to debate,” King said. “I want to understand what's been happening.”

“We've learned that regardless of how well we train our operatives,” Evans answered, “90 percent of failures or casualties occur within the first three missions. Once an operative makes it past that threshold, he's likely to succeed and return alive. What we needed—and found here
on the island—was a real-life situation that dropped the failure rate during the first three missions significantly. Forcing them to hunt and be hunted by dangerous humans in training sessions on McNeil Island is an extremely practical way to prepare for other missions.”

Evans looked past King with a thousand-yard stare, as if recalling a dangerous mission. Then he focused his laser eyes back on King. “As a secondary benefit, we've used this as a way to test a new drug that erases short-term memory and helps prevent posttraumatic stress disorders all across the military. It's a variation of something called metyrapone.”

“Is that what Jerome used on me?”

Evans shook his head negative. “Our drug is injected after the hunt, not before or during. What he used on you was something to make you compliant. My best guess is flunitrazepam. It's easy to obtain at a hospital. It's a hypnotic sedative and skeletal muscle relaxant.” Evans smiled grimly. “And yes, we've used it too on occasion. For the same purpose he did.”

“On the phone, my dad couldn't remember anything from last night,” King said. Every word had been recorded because the CIA had been in on this from the moment in the Seattle office when King had used cell phone video to convince Evans that King knew about the night hunts on McNeil Island. Mack had sent King straight to the FBI office. And about 20 minutes after King arrived there, Evans had walked in, and the CIA had taken over the operation.

“Easy conclusion,” Evans said. “Murdoch has full knowledge of metyrapone. Your father might remember a few fragments but only if you tell him what happened.”

The answer lifted a burden from King. It didn't explain the quarter million dollars in the bank account, but it meant Mack had not been acting during the FaceTime call. Mack hadn't been working with Murdoch.

Evans said, “Our variation of metyrapone has the potential to help a lot of soldiers. If they are injected right after a traumatic battle, it saves them a tremendous amount of stress and could ease their transition back to civilian life. So the island provided us a situation where the most ruthless criminals in America were locked away forever. We could
put them in real-life hunting situations and then test the effectiveness of the drug following each hunt. Few remember that they've hunted our men. Or that they've been hunted and shot with darts.”