Active Shooter Page 9

  “Who were those guys?” she asked.

  “Cross-strappers,” I said. “I remember a clever reporter knowing all about them.”

  A replay of her telling me about them in a New York City restaurant ran through my mind, as I figured it did through hers.

  “How did they know I was meeting my source?” she asked.

  “Inter-agency cooperation and cross-jurisdictional empowerment, of course. You know all about that, too, remember? Whatever information and surveillance my handlers have access to, the cross-strappers can tap into as well.”

  She shook her head.

  “And here's the shocker,” I added. “I have a feeling there was no meet at all. Maybe not even a source. Maybe they've been playing you all along.”

  “That doesn't make any sense. She's given me real stuff.”

  I fought the urge to snicker at her naivete. “Maybe. But they sure played us now, didn't they? Maybe they figured out how she was communicating with you, and they spoofed her. Maybe she helped them do it.” I paused to let her absorb this for a moment. “As part of a cooperation deal. Or, maybe there's no she and there never has been.”

  “No, that's not it. They wanted me to contact her. That's what they were forcing me to do.”

  “Or they wanted you to corroborate your guilt.”

  “I'm not going to argue with you. But that's stupid.”

  Now I shrugged. I knew it was stupid, especially since Bridget did have that fancy scanner. “Whatever. It's irrelevant, anyway. We're screwed at least three ways, so we best focus on unraveling this mess.”

  “And we're doing that by going camping.”

  “Nah. The camping part is to make sure we don't end up dead.”

  “Splendid.”

  “I think so.”

  I finished packing the car. We drove away, and stayed on streets all the way to La Habra. There, at the local Costco, I used the first of my one hundred dollar bills to purchase some supplies.

  From there we drove through the local mountains until we connected with Interstate-10. I aimed east, toward San Bernardino and beyond. At the 15 freeway we veered north, and stopped at the Bass outdoor store where we spent a few more of the hundred dollar bills to outfit ourselves with thick canvas cargo pants, shirts and fleece lined jackets, along with whatever hiking gear I could think of.

  A few minutes later, heading north on the 15 freeway, as we passed Hesperia, I used the fully charged burner phone to dial Walter.

  “What happened to the secured cell?” he asked.

  “Technical difficulties. Speaking of which, you got a cross-strapper problem. They're spoofing and bird-dogging your Op.”

  “What?”

  “What I said. Clean it up. Text me on this number when you can guarantee they're off my trail.”

  I hung up. I turned off the phone, handed it to Bridget and asked her to take off the battery and plug in the other burner to recharge.

  She did as instructed and asked, “Won’t they know where we are now?”

  I gave her a sideways glance as I pulled off at the last exit into Hesperia. I made a left turn and took the onramp to head south. A few minutes later we rejoined I-10 to resume our eastbound trek.

  My watch read a few minutes past three o’clock when we sped past Palm Springs. Still wearing our disguises, we drove another twenty minutes and turned off to enter Joshua Tree National Park.

  At the visitor center, I requested a one week pass, but not before I confessed we’d been in the park for one day. I admitted we’d camped the night before. I was confused about where and how to get a pass, you see. The ranger gave me a suspicious look, or maybe one of annoyance because of the extra work he’d have to do. In her computer, she typed a little bit more than usual so that the resulting pass she handed me would have the post-dated park access period.

  “Clever,” Bridget said on the way out. “Clever you are, my handsome shooter.”

  “The alibi isn’t for us,” I replied. “It’s easy enough to undo. But if the powers that be deign us worthy, they can use it to justify their mercy.”

  As we climbed back in the car, I promised Bridget we'd get up the following morning to see Joshua trees back-lit by the sunrise.

  “That sounds lovely,” she said with a soft smile.

  I drove us to my favorite camping site and set up camp.

  Chapter 13

  My aching back woke me up first. I shifted my weight in a vain attempt to find a more comfortable position, and Bridget stirred. Inside the joint sleeping bags we'd zipped together to share warmth during the cold desert night, she clung to me. I no longer felt entangled. If anything, I found comfort in her wanting to remain closer. The horror of a killer dispatching two men with cold precision that spilled their blood onto her had not turned her off her after all.

  “I am sorry,” she whispered to me.

  I felt her breath against my neck. I saw it rise in a plume toward the tent's ceiling.

  “Good morning,” I replied.

  “I didn't know.”

  No, she didn't. No matter how much I'd warned her or how threatening a picture I could have painted for her, some things you have to experience to believe.

  “I'm still pretty sure it was her. They may have tapped in and tried to intercept our meet, but it was her.”

  In days gone by my problem-solving mind would have pulled the thread on that, sought to consider the possibilities and probabilities to arrive at the most likely, optimum solution to the riddle. But I didn't care now. I didn't deem it worth the effort. I saw it as irrelevant. Such is the case when in the midst of the battle all clever complications boil down to the need to survive. Or more to the point, when your sanity won't survive unless you change the subject.

  “We should probably get going,” I said. “We don't want to miss our sunrise.”

  She got up first, and I watched her put on her cargo pants and fleece jacket. I got up and did likewise.

  From my hiking pack, I extracted a couple of granola bars. I handed her one of them.

  “Breakfast,” she said.

  “Just enough to power the short walk to our photo spot. I’ll do better by you when we get back.”

  She shot me a skeptical look. She’d seen the sort of food stuffs I’d bought the day before, and she didn’t seem impressed then either.

  I handed her a head lamp. She waited for me to put mine on, then followed suit, imitating how I'd strapped it on. A minute later, with granola bars in my pocket, a camera bag strapped to my back, and a tripod in my hand, we started off down trail. Beams of light swept this way and that as our heads swayed with each step.

  I led the way, modeling for her where to step, and providing some tour guide trivia along the way. As I’d guessed, Bridget wasn’t much of a camper or hiker, but her thin and fit physical shape allowed her to meet the minor challenges of trekking in the dark. Though tempted to slow down the pace for her sake, I soon saw I wouldn't need to.

  Light began to sift in dark blue hues from the east, and we made it to a grove of Joshua trees a few minutes before the disk of the sun broke through the horizon. Their illumination no longer necessary, we shut off our headlamps.

  “Ah look at that,” I said as I started setting up my tripod in front of an isolated Joshua. “It’s going to be a good one.”

  “Oh yeah?” Bridget dropped into a crouch, arms tightly wrapped around her knees. She'd also pulled the hood of her jacket over her head.

  “Sure,” I replied. “You can come out here ten weeks in a row and not get a sky like that.” I waved at the horizon where clouds broke the usual blank, pattern-less Southern California sky, coloring it with dark swaths of orange, red and yellow against deep blue hues.

  “When do you know it's time to take the photo?”

  “You just know.”

  “The light?”

  “The moment,” I said. “That slice of time, that half second when it feels right.”

  I finished setting up and metered the shot.
It wasn’t time yet and it woudn't be at least for a few minutes. I stood up and went over to her and crouched next to her.

  “You OK?” I asked her.

  “It’s cold.”

  “It builds character. It makes for the best shots, too. I’ve never taken an outdoor shot that counted for something that didn’t hurt at least a little.”

  I stayed with her until the first of the sun's rays poked through the horizon and intensified the shades of yellow, orange and red. A sense of urgency came over me, not the sort that concerns or scares you, but the pressing flow that rushes over rocks and steep drops on the way to something good.

  I went over to the camera and clicked one shot, knowing it would render the Joshua tree in silhouette. Then I waited.

  I heard Bridget come over. She knelt beside me, and we waited together.

  “There,” I said after a couple of minutes. “See how the needles light up?”

  “Wow,” she said.

  I took the shot, reviewed the LCD screen, adjusted the exposure, and bracketed off three more shots at third of a stop intervals. Then I grabbed the camera and tripod and ran to my left. Bridget followed me, with less urgency, but with a good measure of her curiosity.

  I set up a wide angle shot to capture the grove, took one shot, zoomed to recompose, and took another shot. I stood up to see the brightening sunlight.

  “Is that it?” Bridget asked.

  “That was it. Just like that, the moment came and went.”

  “Let me see,” she said.

  I unclipped the camera from the tripop mount and handed it to her. Without my prompting or help, she pressed the review button and used the back button to review each shot. For a few moments I fought back the urge to ask her how she'd learned to handle a camera like that. I'd rather watch her reaction to each shot, I decided.

  “Nice,” she said. “I like what the light does to the needles.”

  “Your eye goes right to them, doesn’t it? Drawn by light.”

  She nodded, then as she handed the camera back said, “Will you do any touch up on these?”

  “Yeah. I always post-process my shots. These need at least a little bit of color and white balance adjustment.”

  I took the camera from her and walked around the grove grabbing a few more shots, this time with the light to my side. These were the sort of shots that might feel like pointless throwaways, but from which I might turn up one or two keepers. I tried close-ups and off-kilter angles to achieve what I hoped would come across as unusual, somewhat abstract treatment of oft photographed-to-death subject matter.

  When I came back to her, Bridget was smiling. “I thought the moment was gone.”

  I pointed the camera at her. She laughed, and I grabbed a few shots, mostly headshots using quirky, impromptu viewpoints I used when I didn't think much of and about the shot I was taking. I kept shooting as she grew more serious, and I stopped when she waved for me to stop.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Creating a moment. Sometimes we can do that.”

  I waited for her to respond. She didn’t say anything, so I grabbed the tripod and made back toward our campsite for, as I told her, a more proper breakfast.

  Thirty minutes later Bridget was making a face as she sipped from her cup of instant coffee, liking little about it except that it warmed her up. For that reason alone, she kept drinking it until it grew cold enough that the drink’s benefit no longer exceeded her distaste had for it. She found the instant oatmeal I cooked a little more to her liking, rushing to consume her bowl in its entirety before it too lost its warmth.

  As I was finishing mine, she asked, “This is good for you, isn’t it?”

  “I am hoping it is for you, too.”

  “It’s a nice diversion, but I don’t see how it helps us.”

  “Doesn’t it?” I asked, giving her another chance to consider her assessment.

  “It’s beautiful here, Andre. Your pictures are beautiful. The air is pure and crisp, perhaps a bit too crisp at the moment. And I suppose it’s good to have some distance between us and the mess we left behind. But eventually we’ll have to deal with it.”

  “Will we?”

  “I suppose there’s some charm, maybe even comfort in being disconnected, unplugged, off the grid,” she said.

  I waved at our surroundings, rocky cliffs to our right, flat desert floor to our left, and the grove we’d photographed earlier rising up against snowcapped mountains in the distance.

  “Maybe we are more plugged in out here,” I said.

  She considered this for a moment and smiled. “You love this. You’d much rather be doing this than all that techno-crap.”

  “Can you blame me?” I asked.

  “Only if you’re not escaping to avoid facing reality.”

  “What reality? The one where I get to kill people to save the world, or the damsel in distress, as the case may be?”

  “The one where people are doing nasty things behind our backs. The one where people and organizations are robbing us of our freedoms.”

  “I’m almost inspired to action.”

  “You seemed to have no problem springing into action back there.”

  “Not because I signed up for the cause. Not more so than when I jumped into the fray in a crowded airline terminal.”

  “Doesn’t any of it bother you, even just a little?” she asked. “Don’t you feel the slightest bit of responsibility?”

  She stopped there, though I sensed she wanted to say more, like, for instance how this technology others were allegedly misusing came thanks to my wicked innovation. Or maybe she didn’t want to say that at all, but I did, or at least I wanted someone else to say it to me.

  "You do realize it's not all evil," I said. "In this age of ours, fraught with dangers from all quarters, some can make compelling arguments about the need for this techno-gadgetry you want to expose. It's not a settled, black and white matter."

  "Next thing I'll know, you'll be arguing that exposing this stuff will cause loss of life. I've heard it all, Andre. It doesn't track."

  “What is it that you're going to accomplish with ground-breaking reporting on this stuff?” I asked her. “Think about it. Really think about it. What evil are you really going to expose, and when you do, what difference is it going to make? What wrong are you going to right, and even if you manage to win the day, how will things really change?”

  “So just ignore it all? Bury your head in the sand?”

  “No. Do something beautiful instead.”

  “How can you do beautiful work with so much ugliness around you?”

  “I can do it exactly because there’s so much ugliness around me. I rather do it than keep adding to the ugliness. I rather not dwell on the ugliness because in the end it’s all founded on lies. I rather stop and notice the world as it really is.” I waved at our surroundings again. “Like it is here. Like it is in most of the world we haven’t uglified with all our cleverness.”

  “So just keep doing your photography,” she said, her voice sounding almost resigned to my rant.

  “I’ve seen and done some ugly stuff, Bridget. It made me very dark inside. It broke me in the end. Maybe your source told you about that.”

  Bridget looked away. I didn’t know whether to take her gesture as confirmation that she did know about my psyche’s collapse, or whether she felt any measure of guilt for pulling me into the darkness of my past deeds.

  “Photography opened a door to get away from all that. It didn't restore me, but it did give me one way to look for light,” I said. “In fact, it literally forces you to seek it, and not just light. It has to be good light. Light that contrasts against darkness and shadow, and I guess in that sense you’re not ignoring darkness altogether, are you?”

  “I guess not,” she put in, still looking into the distance.

  I looked in that direction, too, and found that grove of Joshuas standing there, framed against the San Jacinto mountains beyond the d
esert valley.

  “I like photography because it makes me stop and notice the things that really matter. It forces me to avoid ignoring beauty, so that I don't bury my head in the sand and fail to see all that's good and lovely.”

  Bridget didn’t answer and kept her eyes focused far away.

  “You know why I agreed to do your interview?” I asked.

  She turned to face me and only now did I notice the glint of tear-filled eyes.

  I said, “Because you're beautiful, and I thought that the possibility of taking your portrait, even if you probably need nothing of the sort, maybe that would help me uncover more beauty, more of what's lovely in life.”

  “Well, that almost worked,” she said.

  “For a few fateful hours it did.”

  “Come on, Andre. We can solve this, you and I,” she pleaded, but I heard neither resolve nor conviction in her voice.

  “Some things have no solution, none that we'd like to accept,” I replied. “I do know I want you to stay alive.” I leaned in until my lips were no more than two inches from her ear. She tensed up but did not withdraw. “Stay alive and free. Please, Bridget. Alive and beautiful. You have so much going for you, and there's so much you can do instead of this. All of it better, all of it brighter. Find it, Bridget. Find it and bask in it.”

  “Does that mean I walk away from you too?” she whispered.

  I weighed my answer and could not tell her anything but, “Run, don’t walk.”

  “What happens now?” she asked, moving away from me.

  I gave her the space she needed and said, “Last contact they have on us, we were headed north on the 15. They’re probably looking for us in Vegas.”

  “And that helps us how?”

  “We have a few days to stay lost. To be on our own, lost but finding beauty. Just you and I. Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”

  “Sure. I’ll have to find a way to let my network honchos know I’m not missing, kidnapped by some nut.”

  “I might have to do something like it on my end, to avoid panic.”

  “What will you tell them?” she asked. “That you have me well under control, that there has been no spill, and that there won’t be any? All is contained. I am contained?”