The Voting Machine

The Precipice

Behind the boulder at the crest, I found a narrow foot trail. It ran beneath the perimeter of the bluff like a rain gutter under the edge of a roof. I stepped carefully down the path, crouching with both hands out to maintain my balance. One slip would send me tumbling off the trail into a steep vertical drop, at least sixty feet, before smashing against the rocky shoreline below.

Under the last rays of the setting sun, the sea waves were lapping at the stones below. Seagulls danced in the wet sand where the tide had receded. Fifty yards ahead of me a long, jagged precipice protruded from the cliff like a giant diving board. This formed a natural barrier between Chet's estate and the neighboring properties. The trail seemed to end in dense layers of hedges and chaparral at the far end of the diving rock.

I heard Brenda's bird humming overhead but she was invisible in the night sky. Her white, smooth surface seemed to reflect the rapidly changing colors of the sunset, creating a sort of camouflage. Behind me, the view of the compound was bright with the flash of sirens and crime scene investigation cameras. Overhead a fighter jet had raced up from Camp Pendleton in the south. Brenda's bird had kept the police helicopters at bay, they weren't yet equipped to handle an armed drone. But the military had finally been summoned to send in superior firepower and it wouldn't be long before her drone was detected and blown to smithereens.

I pictured Brenda working quietly in her corner of the basement of the Chinese Consulate General, clutching the joystick of her console, executing a final round of maneuvers before extermination. I wondered whether Chet and Theresa had become aware of our little plan. I suspected she told them nothing. By now everyone would've heard the news reports. Chen's hackers may have put two and two together and figured out the source of the drone's pilot commands.

Brenda had kept the bird a secret when she decided to drive out of her hiding spot to join Teresa and Chen in LA. She had taken me up on my offer to contact Teresa, using the email account I provided to make contact. Then she told me that she stashed the bird in the trunk of her car as she made the trek along the 60 Freeway, hiding her contraption in a rhododendron bush at the edge of Chen's Windsor Park property once she finally arrived in the city. She had impressed Chen and Teresa with her knowledge of Project Siren, which could be instrumental in Chen's quest to track down Shiro's blue bird. But she never bothered to reveal that she had built her own device based on the training she'd received with Shiro's soldiers in Iraq. Perhaps she was keeping it in hiding as a backup plan in case they turned on her.

After Quentin led me to my rendezvous with Chet under the Acropolis in the Second World, I told Brenda that I had secured a meeting with Shiro face-to-face right here in the city. I asked her to have the bird trail me from above, following as quickly and quietly as it could flap its wings undetected in the great city. Then I'd give the signal through the GPS once I had unmasked the enemy in case I needed her to come to my defense.

I lumbered up the trail, approaching the diving rock. The path sank into a recess covered in dense thorny branches. At the bottom of the trail, a small mouth of rock opened into the side of the hill. I knew the Laguna coast had a series of caves where hippies and surfers would crash to share a bowl during the low tide. I stood at the top of the trial and stared into the mouth. It was pitch black inside, impossible to enter without surrendering to whatever risks hid within the shadows.

I realized for the first time that I'd missed the chance to grab a weapon before making my way down the trail. I could've searched Dean's body in the guest house for a gun or even grabbed one of the steak knives like my wife had done. I was completely empty-handed now so I knelt down, reaching deep into the thorny bushes and grabbed the sharpest rock I could find, still staring directly into the mouth of shadows.

Then suddenly the mechanical buzz vibrated in my ear and the white bird floated over the diving rock like a second moon crashing down from the sky. The blast shook the roof of the cave and Chet scurried out of the shadows like a frightened animal. The fighter jet swooped down with an ear-splitting roar and I jumped down on Chet as the drone shattered overhead. There was a blinding flash of light from the explosion and we wrestled in the thorns as the debris showered down on us. 

His Sig Sauer fell away, sliding down the hill into the sea below. I smashed the rock against his temple until he curled into a ball and kicked my chest with both legs, knocking me backwards into the thorns. The fighter jet soared high into the night, oblivious to our struggle. Chet rose upright on two wobbly knees and staggered out onto the diving rock. I raced after and clipped him in the legs. We both fell off the edge of the rock, my body landing on top of his with a bone-crunching thud. I wrapped my fingers around his throat.

"Where is my daughter?" I screamed.

"I told you I don't have her," he gasped, his eyes bulging.

"Liar!" I shouted.

"It's the truth," he said.

I jammed my thumbs harder into his windpipe.

"Kill me and your life is finished," he warned.

"It's been finished."

My grip tightened until he finally stopped trembling. Then his body was soft and heavy, as lifeless as a bag of sand. The man who made my life a living hell was now gone. The only thing left was the hell he created. In the distance, two agents with flashlights were treading carefully along the foot trail, advancing at a slow but steady pace that ensure they would reach the diving rock in a few minutes.

I pushed Chet's body over the side of the cliff, waiting until it splashed into the tide far below, watching the water ripple as he sank under the surface. Then I crawled to the very tip of the diving rock, above the deepest, darkest waters of Monarch Bay, where the sea foam reflected the glimmering moonlight. I remembered my visit to the beach on the night that Gina died, how I imagined her body and all the other lost souls floating across the ocean, crossing time and space to greet one another in a watery underworld where the spirits of the past returned to life.

Then I took a deep breath and jumped.