Runner (Sam Dryden Novel) Page 15

  Something in the memory room was breaking through. Something important to her, its edges sharp and white hot, cutting through the membrane.

  She saw a picture in her mind. A woman stooping to smile at her. She had kind brown eyes. She was beautiful.

  Hello, Rachel. How are you feeling today?

  What was her name? That’s what was trying to cut through the barrier. The woman’s name. She was sure of it.

  Sam was talking louder now. Fear in his voice. Telling her to let go.

  The membrane was stretched to the breaking point, the burning edge of the name almost through—

  Holly. Her name is Holly.

  Holly what?

  The mental picture was still there. Holly’s eyes, so pretty when she smiled—

  What was the rest of her name?

  Hadn’t she heard that name somewhere else? Hadn’t someone had it in their thoughts? Not so long ago?

  Holly. Holly, Holly, Holly—

  Sam’s hands took hold of her fingertips and pulled them free of the metal. The terrible vibration cut out as if an OFF button had been pressed. She reeled backward and lost her balance, but by then his arms were around her. He was holding her and speaking softly.

  “Are you alright? Rachel.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Holly Ferrel,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  For a long moment she couldn’t reply. She was sorting it all out in her mind. Lining the ideas up, like toy cars on a track. Because she knew where she’d come across that name recently—and it was the worst place of all to hear it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Leland Hager had been in a good mood until thirty seconds before. He had been standing in his office, at the inward-facing window, looking down over the work floor. A few years earlier, when this compound was still being carved out of the wilderness, engineers had used this building as a garage for earthmovers. Now the earth movers were long gone, and the vast floor space was full of glass-walled rooms, twelve in all. From this window, Hager could look down on all of them in a single glance.

  The rooms were arranged in three clusters of four. The three clusters corresponded to the three test sites in the continental United States.

  Red City, Wyoming. Cold Spring, Utah. Cook Valley, North Dakota.

  The three antennas.

  In the eighteen months he’d been in charge of the compound, Hager had found he was at his happiest when he was standing there looking over the glass rooms—the stations, as everyone called them. In each occupied station lay a controller, flat on his back, electrodes stuck to his forehead with conductive gel. The stations were lit with dim red light, like darkrooms—like wombs, Hager sometimes thought.

  It was quite the feeling, staring at all that through his own reflection in the office window—the reflection of a paunchy little bald man who’d come out of Dartmouth three decades earlier with a degree in finance. A hedge-maze of rational career choices later, here he was, like Oppenheimer out in the desert at Alamogordo with his tinted goggles on. Maybe his own name would end up in metaphors, decades down the road.

  The work Western Dynamics was doing, at this place and others just like it, was exciting to the point of being scary. There were the antennas, and the controllers, and then there was the other thing—the thing that unnerved everyone who heard about it. Hager had to admit, at least to himself, that the other thing even unnerved him, a little. When it was finally rolled out and put to use—which could be any time now—there would be no putting the genie back in the bottle. Yeah, no question about it, it was scary as hell. All big things were scary, though. If you let that kind of fear get in your way, what would you ever amount to?

  Hager had been in the middle of that thought when the commotion started, down in Cluster Two. The only controller on duty in that section, Seth Cobb, had suddenly sat upright as if someone had jolted him, and started yelling about something wrong at the antenna site.

  Now, thirty seconds later, Hager was standing in Cobb’s station, trying to calm him. The kid had pulled the paddles off his forehead; one of them had smeared gel into his eyebrow.

  “What happened?” Hager asked.

  “I don’t know. It just felt like … somebody was reaching for me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Like there was somebody on the other end of the line—at Cold Spring. Like they were … coming right through the connection toward me.”

  That didn’t make any sense, a fact Cobb seemed well aware of. The guy could only shrug, though, looking rattled. Whatever had happened, he wasn’t making it up.

  Hager was about to speak when he stopped himself.

  For a couple of months now, there’d been word coming down from those above him, in Washington and elsewhere, about a potential threat to the project. These conversations had been vague, in ways Hager had gotten used to during his time with Western Dynamics. The whole shady arrangement—two rival companies working with the government, each with its own friends in high places—had been a mess from the beginning. Some of those high-up friends had connections to one another that complicated the game. There were loyalties and there was bad blood, there were favors and paybacks owed, and most of those connections lay hidden in the murk. SHB, Hager called it. Standard human bullshit. He’d run into it his whole career, in one form or another. It didn’t matter how lofty your goals, how precise your planning or your actions. Every organization in the world was infested with the mildew of standard human bullshit. At times, the whole deal—the two companies and Washington—felt like a warped love triangle, operating by the rules of a damned Victorian courtship. Certain things were implied but never outright said. The risk of offending the wrong person was always there, hovering over everything. These warnings in the past two months were a prime example. As far as Hager could understand it, the danger was this: Somewhere out there, there was a loose end from the original research at Detrick, years back. A living subject who’d gotten away—a young girl, if the rumors were right. The girl may or may not have ended up in the custody of Martin Gaul’s people at Belding-Milner, down in California, but regardless, she posed a potential hazard to the testing going on at the three antenna sites. There was a risk of interference. That was as far from vague as the warnings had gotten.

  “Describe what you felt,” Hager said. “As clearly as you can.”

  “There was someone there,” Cobb said. “Right at the antenna.”

  “It’s not the first time that’s happened,” Hager said. A handful of times, high school kids had shown up at each of the towers and tried to climb them, usually late on Friday or Saturday nights.

  “This was different,” Cobb said. “I don’t know how, it just was. There was somebody there. Who shouldn’t have been there.”

  Hager thought about it.

  Risk of interference.

  There were no security cameras at the antenna. No immediate way of seeing what was going on there in the desert. Hager had a friend in D.C. who could probably get access to satellite data, but it would take time; an hour, maybe. Now that he thought about it, he recalled that Gaul had especially close ties with that whole community, the kind of intel people who had spy sats at their fingertips—but he’d be damned if he’d involve Gaul or anyone else from Belding-Milner in this thing.

  What to do, then?

  He looked past Cobb to the reclined workstation chair behind him. The two gel-covered electrodes were lying across it where they’d fallen. Hager nodded to them.

  “Put those back on.”

  * * *

  Dryden and Rachel were back in the car, heading north, within a minute of her letting go of the tower. The farther they got from it, the better Rachel appeared to feel. For an awful second or two, Dryden had believed the thing was electrocuting her.

  She’d described in detail what she’d experienced. A sensation that she was hearing the thoughts of people up in Cold Spring, six or more miles from where the tower stood. Then
the feeling of racing through a tunnel, of encountering somebody at the other end. Last, the visual sense of her own trapped memories trying to get free.

  “It felt like the memory about Holly Ferrel was the most important,” Rachel said. “Like I was desperate to get it back. And then when I did, I recognized it. I’d heard it someplace.”

  “Where?” Dryden said.

  “El Sedero. The building with the blond man and the soldiers. A handful of times, I heard the name Holly Ferrel, or sometimes Dr. Ferrel, in their heads. Dr. Ferrel … in Amarillo, Texas. I remember one of them thinking he might have to go visit her, sooner or later. At the time I barely thought about it—someone going to visit a doctor, that just sounds like a medical problem. But looking back at it now…”

  She trailed off, but Dryden saw what she meant. If people working for Gaul had been contemplating paying Holly Ferrel a visit, it could mean something very bad for her.

  “You don’t remember anything else about her?” Dryden asked. “What kind of doctor she was? Was she a researcher who … worked on you?”

  “I don’t know. There was nothing like that in the memory. Just the fact that she was nice. That she cared about me. A person can’t fake something like that. Not with me, anyway.”

  Dryden took her point.

  “I don’t know what her connection to Gaul is,” Rachel said, “but she knows me. She might know everything we’re trying to figure out. And if she’s in danger, we need to get to her—” She cut herself off. “Can we just call her? Look her up online in a library and—”

  Dryden was already shaking his head. “If she’s really at risk from Gaul and his people, her phone’s already compromised.”

  If she’s even still alive.

  The thought was out before he could stop it. In his peripheral vision, he saw Rachel shudder.

  “Sorry,” Dryden said.

  “It’s okay. I’m thinking it, too.”

  “We can still look her up on a library computer, but we’d have to contact her in person, one way or another. There are ways to do that without exposing ourselves to much risk, even if she’s being watched.” He considered the geography. Did the math in his head. “Amarillo’s probably ten or twelve hours from here.”

  Rachel nodded. Her hands were fidgeting in her lap. Nervous energy.

  For the next few minutes, neither of them spoke. At last the southern outskirts of Cold Spring emerged out of the heat shimmer. Dryden reached behind him and took the Oakleys and baseball cap from the backseat. He was just putting them on when Rachel screamed.

  The pickup came out of nowhere, thirty feet ahead of the Honda. The road had been empty a second earlier, and suddenly the truck was there, lunging in from the side, from behind a shallow rise that had hidden its approach. Some local idiot out two-tracking in the desert—that was the impression Dryden’s mind instantly formed, based on the truck and the guy at the wheel. He got a tenth-of-a-second glimpse of overalls on top of a stained shirt, and a stubble-covered face the word yokel might’ve been coined especially for.

  Dryden locked up the Honda’s brakes, and for an absurd second the truck actually veered toward the car instead of away, as if the driver in his panic had made exactly the wrong move. By then, though, the truck’s momentum had carried it right across the road, missing the Honda by a foot or two, spinning out sideways on the hardscrabble beyond.

  On flat ground the truck probably would’ve just skidded to a stop, but the desert surface at that spot was sloped down at 10 degrees or more. The vehicle slid sideways another sixty or seventy feet, and then its wheels caught a rut and flipped it through a neat half-roll. The pickup came down on its roof, the cab pancaking almost flat with the hood and the truck bed.

  Dryden brought the Honda to a stop and put it in park. He and Rachel stared at the crippled truck, a hundred feet away, its rear wheels still spinning under power. The door visible on this side—the passenger door—had been blown open by the crash, but against the desert glare Dryden could see only darkness in the crushed compartment beyond.

  They had no cell phone in the car. They could tell someone in town to call an ambulance, if need be, but they themselves would have to be long gone before the authorities arrived.

  Either way, they couldn’t leave here without checking on the guy. He could be choking on blood in there.

  “Stay here,” Dryden said. “I’m coming right back.”

  He opened the door and got out, then stooped and reached under the driver’s seat for the SIG. It was that last-minute swerve the truck had made toward the car—probably just a mistake, but damned strange all the same—that made him take the gun. He stuffed it into his rear waistband and stepped off the pavement into the desert.

  * * *

  Kill them, Owen. Crawl the fuck out of there and kill them. Right now.

  Owen was hurting. Holy God, was he hurting. The pain was almost enough to distract him from the Gravel Man’s voice in his head. Almost.

  You’re losing the advantage. What are you waiting for?

  Owen twisted himself around; something in his shoulder popped, and it was all he could do not to scream.

  At least that was his left arm. He used his right for the MP-5. He turned his head and saw it lying in a stir of dust, two feet away from his hand.

  Outside, some distance off, a man called to him, “Are you hurt?”

  Lucky you. He’s making it easy for you. Get the weapon and take care of him.

  Owen reached for the gun with his right hand, but even that movement contorted the sore shoulder; he coughed at the pain and went still again.

  You want me to hurt you? I thought we were past all that, Owen.

  Then, muted almost to nothing, as if he were speaking to someone else, the Gravel Man said, He’s goddamn useless. Who else has a live asset near Site Two? Better get them in here.

  Owen could make no sense of that. Then again, this whole thing had baffled him, starting a few minutes ago when the Gravel Man had spoken up out of the blue. Owen had been helping his grandfather swap out a radiator when it happened. It was the first time, in all these awful months, that the Gravel Man had troubled him while Grandpa was around. Owen had come to trust that it would never happen, that he would never be made to do anything crazy in front of his grandfather.

  Owen, this is important, the Gravel Man had said. There was something in his voice Owen hadn’t heard there before. A kind of urgency. Maybe even fear. What did that mean? Get the machine gun from under your mattress, the voice said. Then get in the pickup and go to the old Lake Road south of town. Right now.

  Grandpa had been staring at him by then, his head cocked. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Owen could only shake his head. He’d never even considered what he would say if a moment like this came along.

  Owen, you motherfucker, go! GO!

  “Gotta use the bathroom,” Owen muttered, and ran from the pole barn. He was in the truck half a minute later, with the gun beside him, rolling fast out of the dooryard. By then the Gravel Man was talking to him again.

  Get on the Lake Road near the bottom end of town and head south on it. You’re going to find someone down at the radio tower, or maybe they’ll be coming north away from there. Whoever it is, stop them and kill them.

  As it’d happened, he’d damn near done that in the moment he reached the road. He’d even swerved a bit there, thinking to hit the car once he saw it—a shitload of good that’d done him.

  He looked at the MP-5 again. Right there within his reach. He got a fold of his shirt between his teeth, bit down hard against the pain, and made another move for the gun.

  * * *

  Dryden was thirty feet from the truck, about to call out again, when he saw movement in the dim interior. A second later a man’s foot eased out, followed by the other. The man was up on all fours and crawling out backward.

  “You alright?” Dryden asked.

  No answer.

  “Can you hear me?”

 
When it happened, it happened fast—faster than he would have guessed it could. He supposed it was the strangeness of the situation that caught him off guard. The man eased fully out of the truck, his face still pointed inward at the crushed cab. His left collarbone looked broken, and he seemed to be cradling that arm in front of him with his right. All at once he heaved himself upward into a raised kneeling position, cried out in pain, and collapsed, spinning his body. And just like that he was sitting slumped with his back against the truck bed’s wall, with an MP-5 submachine gun pointed up at Dryden.

  Dryden heard a gasp, far behind him. He turned to look—Rachel was standing at the open passenger door of the Honda.

  “Rachel, stay there!” he shouted. “Get behind the car. Right now.”

  For a moment she remained frozen, eyes huge and scared.

  “Go!” he yelled.

  She nodded and slipped around behind the trunk to the far side.

  Dryden turned his attention back on the gunman. The weapon was shaking in his hand, but not enough that it would miss if the guy pulled the trigger.

  Judging by the way his fingertip was flattened against it, the trigger was already under a few ounces of pressure.

  There was simply no chance of drawing the SIG without the man opening fire.

  “Who are you?” Dryden asked him.

  The man said nothing. His eyes kept going back and forth from Dryden to the Honda. The guy was injured, but not so badly that he couldn’t get on his feet. If he killed Dryden, it would be a simple matter for him to get up and go after Rachel. She might be faster, but he had the gun, and there was nothing around but a mile of empty land.

  “Take it easy,” Dryden said.

  The guy’s expression hardened. His finger flattened a little more on the trigger.

  * * *

  Do it. Owen, do it!

  Owen watched the man who was standing nearby, but he found his eyes kept wanting to go back to the car on the road. He had crawled out of the wreck all set to do his job, to quiet the Gravel Man for better or worse, but then—

  The little girl. Lord in heaven, what could she be, ten or twelve?