Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

Maggie was not prepared for what she saw next. She actually took a step back to fetch the nurse be lieving that Fatima had vanished as evidenced by the empty crumpled sheets of her hospital bed. It took a second to register that Fatima was there- under the sheets-her body so ravaged as to be nothing more than a living skeleton.

An oxygen tube ran under her nose. An IV dripped morphine. She was unconscious.

Death’s work was nearly complete.

Maggie sat in the cushioned chair next to her bed.

Fatima turned her bare head to Maggie and opened her eyes to acknowledge her presence.

“I’ve come as you have requested.”

Fatima blinked then resubmerged into unconscious ness.

Maggie sat with her for an hour. She stood to leave the room for a short break and almost screamed.

Fatima’s ice-cold fingers had seized Maggie’s wrist.

Maggie didn’t move.

Fatima’s grip was strong. Her eyes opened but re vealed only white orbs. She moaned and her skeletal jaw began to work.

“I lied to you, Maggie. I did see something.”

The pressure of Fatima’s grip increased.

“Do you wish to know?”

“Yes.”

“It is not good. Do you wish to know?”

Maggie’s chin crumpled and she fought to push the word out of her mouth.

“Yes.”

“I am seeing it now. Your son is alive.”

“Where is he?”

“But he is in danger.”

Fatima’s grip was hurting Maggie. She fell to her knees at the side of the bed.

“Where is he?”

“He does not know he is in danger.”

“Please, I’m begging you, where is he?”

“There is a woman. I see a woman. There is fire, ex plosions, destruction. She is carrying something.”

“Who is the woman?”

“The woman is carrying a child.”

“Is it Logan?”

“The child is dead.”

“No! Nooo!”

Fatima released her grip.

Her body convulsed. Her jaw locked open and she was still. The monitor began ponging with alarm.

“Help!” Maggie called. “Somebody!”

A nurse hurried into the room, uncollared her stethoscope. Listened, then pressed a button on the intercom system above the bed. “We’ve got an expired DNR in 921.”

Maggie covered her face with her hands, stepped back into a far corner out of the way. What followed unfolded in snatches.

Helga entered and sobbed.

The nurses consoled her, Maggie consoled her, for how long, she couldn’t be certain. Maggie was not sure how long she stayed with Helga, or how she made it back to reception to retrieve her license. She remem bered it was raining.

She remembered thunder, lightning, her skin prick ling the entire time she walked to her car. She remem bered the words of a dying psychic warning her that Logan was in danger.

“The woman is carrying a child.”

Washington, D.C.

The plot to kill the pope played out in grainy photos on the computer monitor of Special Agent Blake Walker of the U.S. Secret Service.

The gun rose from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. A Browning 9-mm semiautomatic pistol.

In the right hand of Mehmet Ali Agca who fired five shots at Pope John Paul II.

The first round penetrated the pope’s stomach, the second hit his hand, the third his arm. The fourth and fifth shots wounded spectators.

The Holy Father fell back into the arms of his secre tary.

May 13, 1981.

A day most of the world would not forget, Walker thought. He was lead advance agent with security for the pope’s upcoming U.S. visit. For Walker, a stickler for research, this was the umpteenth time he’d studied papal assassination attempts.

Next.

The Philippines. 1995.

During a papal visit, firefighters in Manila were called to an apartment fire near the Embassy for the Holy See, where the pope was to sleep. Among the ruins they discovered: bomb-making material, the route of the papal tour marked on maps and two sets of priests’ cassocks.

Suspects were tied to the first attack on the World Trade Center.

That one was chilling; so was the next.

During the pope’s recent visit to South America, a violent group of Marxist extremists cut power to the airport as the pope’s plane was making a night landing. Every single light went black on the ground. The pilots couldn’t see. At the last moment they aborted the landing and flew to another site. Later, airport police rushed to investigate an abandoned truck in a forest road near a runway. Inside they found a shoulderlaunched surface-to-air missile that had malfunctioned.

Walker studied the database index.

So many confirmed attempts. Now, as time ticked down on the pope’s U.S. visit, intelligence agencies were picking up more chatter and more threads of new potential threats every day. As Walker loosened his tie, there was a knock on his door and his assistant ap peared.

“Fran’s calling again.”

His face tensed at his ex-wife’s name but he stayed focused on his work.

“I can’t take it. Tell her I’ve got back-to-back meet ings.”

“She demanded I tell you that it’s about support.”

“Annette, I can’t talk to her now.”

Six Seconds 201

“Sure thing, boss.”

The door closed and Walker exhaled. He’d never wanted the divorce.

For a shining moment he remembered sweeter times as a rookie with the NYPD. On the beat and at night school at John Jay. Then the move to D.C. to join the FBI where he met Fran, a paralegal. Then came the births of their daughters, his commendations, second ments to counterterrorism at the CIA, then the Secret Service, Presidential Protective Division, then Intelli gence.

Always on call. Always on the road. Always on edge.

Then Fran started accusing him of loving his job more than her and the girls. Then she’d found a new boyfriend at their church: Miller Higby, a nine-to-five accountant to help her nag for support payments, which Walker had never missed.

Never.

That would be an error.

Walker couldn’t afford errors. Not in his line of work. He’d come close to a career-killer once.

Thanks to an asshole reporter named Ray Tarver.

Walker had met him briefly at an event. Shot the breeze, traded cards. Months later Tarver called cold saying he was going to run a story alleging Russian mobsters had compromised members of the White House security detail. The story was that the mobsters had blackmailed agents over gambling debts. Tarver claimed he had it documented on a classified CIA report; Blake Walker was one of the extorted agents.

Walker nearly lost his mind.

The story could not be true.

But instead of informing his superiors, Walker ac tually started suspecting agents who might have been behind the damning story. It drove him crazy. He started his own secret investigation of his colleagues. At the same time, after days of intense work, Walker persuaded Tarver to share the document, which was key to his story.

Walker had the document analyzed. The experts questioned its authenticity.

Just like the entire story.

Tarver refused to tell Walker how he got his docu ment. Walker couldn’t rule out that maybe Tarver was set up. Or had fabricated it. Tarver killed his story. Walker killed his investigation.

Tarver did have sources everywhere. But they played him. Walker figured him for a flake, so infatuated with conspiracies that he couldn’t distinguish between fact and fantasy. Someone would feed him a line and off he’d go. When Walker thought of the harm the case could have inflicted on the detail, his blood bubbled.

But it didn’t stop Tarver.

Tipped to other conspiracies, the guy kept popping up. Exaggerating a grain of truth or trying to parlay rumor or innuendo into fact. Walker kicked himself for his knee-jerk reaction to Tarver’s first story. Kicked himself for ever suspecting his colleagues. It taught him to be very suspect of reporters like Ray Tarver.