Runner (Sam Dryden Novel) Page 6

  “Christ.”

  “I told him I knew what it was. He got flustered, but he didn’t stop what he was doing. So then I told him something else. Something I’d heard in the soldiers’ thoughts when they strapped me down for the night. The fact that it was true must’ve helped me sound convincing.” She was quiet a beat. “They had orders to restrain him and put him in a van with my body, and drive us both to a gravel pit thirty miles north of El Sedero. Along the way they were going to wrap his head in cling wrap to suffocate him, and then bury him right on top of me.”

  Dryden imagined it. The guy standing there, hearing that, knowing it was true. Knowing the kind of man he worked for.

  “What happened then?” he asked.

  “I asked if he knew how the building’s security system worked. He said he didn’t. I told him I knew as much as the soldiers knew about it—which was everything. I said I’d help him escape if he’d let me go, once we were out. He agreed. He even meant it; I guess he knew he couldn’t lie to me. So we went. We got as far as the building’s back door. I gave him the code to disarm the door alarm. I didn’t tell him there were motion detectors behind the building, and that there was no way to shut them off.”

  Dryden thought he knew what was coming. If she really didn’t feel good about it, he was prepared to feel good about it on her behalf.

  “I told him we had to run,” she said. “We opened the door and counted to three, and then he went. He got about twenty feet before the lights came on and everything started blaring—around the time he realized I hadn’t followed him. He turned around and saw me still standing in the doorway, and he understood. But by then there was nothing he could do about it. He had no choice but to keep running. I stepped out and hid in a shrub beside the wall, and right after that the soldiers came out and went after him. I waited until they were out of sight before I made my own run, in the other direction, and I heard the gunshots about ten seconds later. I don’t know how much of a lead I got by doing all that. A minute, maybe. I saw their flashlights behind me pretty soon after the shots.”

  Her voice had dropped to nearly a breath by the time she finished.

  “I know he deserved it,” she said. “I just don’t like telling myself people deserve it.”

  * * *

  They got back on the road. They came to Highway 58 and took it west toward the San Gabriels. Toward Bakersfield. Climbing into the foothills, Dryden glanced in the rearview mirror. The outlying sprawl of the Mojave glittered in the sun like a spill of broken glass. Like the shattered ruin of a city.

  Whatever the information is that’s in my head, those people are terrified of it. They’re scared the way people get when it comes to really big things. Like diseases. Like wars. It’s like there’s … something coming.

  In the passenger seat, Rachel shivered. She glanced at Dryden.

  “It’s scary waiting a week to find out what I know,” she said. “Whatever it is, maybe I could warn people about it, if I could remember.”

  Dryden thought of the drug they’d given her. Thought of the places he’d seen it used—little cinder-block rooms in Cairo and Tikrit, the holds of ships anchored at Diego Garcia. For a few seconds his background seemed almost to be another passenger in the Jeep, leaning forward into the space between himself and Rachel. He ignored the feeling and focused on the drug again. Focused on the specifics he knew about it.

  “There might be a faster way to get to your memories,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bloom where you’re planted.

  The saying had become a kind of mantra for Gaul, over the years. The moral equivalent of a shoehorn, he supposed, though he preferred not to think of it that way. It was an assessment of reality, that was all. An organizing principle.

  He’d gotten the phrase from a college buddy who’d gone on to be a successful defense attorney. This old buddy had once cross-examined a fifteen-year-old girl who’d been raped at a fraternity party. The girl was poor southern white trash, and the defendants were Tulane students from wealthy families—one had a federal judge for an aunt. Gaul’s buddy had explained to him over drinks, years after the fact, the mindset it took to put a teenaged girl on the stand and rip her to pieces in front of her family. There was a meticulous strategy to it. There was no question she’d end up crying in front of the jury, but that was okay, as long as you made her look like a liar before that happened. Yes, the jury was going to feel protective of her, and yes, those feelings would kick into higher gear when the tears came, but as long as you tripped her with her own story first, as long as you did it just right, then it wouldn’t look like you’d bullied the poor little thing. If you played it perfectly, put a little English on it, as they say, then the crying would actually work against her. It would lend weakness to her testimony. There was all that to consider, while in the back of your head, humming like an old fridge, was the knowledge that your clients had actually done it. Had held her down in a hallway off the frat house’s kitchen, the music so loud she could feel the bass in her shoulders and hips where they were pressed to the floor, so loud that people in the next room couldn’t hear her screaming when all three of the defendants fucked her. It wasn’t your job to wonder why they’d done it. Heat of the moment, too much alcohol, alphas being alphas and all that. Neither was it your job to find it fake as all hell when they looked contrite in your office a week later, their eyes full of nothing but fear for their own futures. No, your job was to help them salvage those futures. And if that meant shredding a little girl on the witness stand—violating her again, your conscience would say if you let it—well, what of it? You had to do your job. You had to bloom where you were planted.

  Gaul had found the notion as useful as a machete in jungle foliage whenever life had put him somewhere tricky. In career terms, there were all kinds of problems you could hack your way out of—and opportunities you could hack your way toward—if you had that idea in your grip. It even helped him bury old guilts, like that ugly splash in the water under Harvard Bridge, which sometimes came to him in the darkness before sleep.

  Gaul had the saying in his head now, as he stood under the palms near the overlook, three hundred feet above Topanga Beach. The Pacific Coast Highway curved past, far below. Beyond, the ocean lay soft blue in the late morning haze. Gaul watched a black SUV swing off the highway onto the canyon road. It made its way up through the switchbacks and took the turn onto Overlook Drive, and came to a stop next to Gaul’s BMW. There were no other vehicles or people around.

  The SUV’s back door opened, and a man named Dennis Marsh stepped out. He was fifty, trim, his hair just going thin. The wind coming off the ocean set his tie and the legs of his dress pants flapping. Marsh crossed to where Gaul stood, put his palms to the wooden top of the railing, and stared at the sea. No handshake.

  Gaul didn’t ask how his flight from D.C. had been. Marsh had gotten here in the backseat of an F-16 trainer, the needle pegged at Mach 2, in order to have this conversation in person. There were things you shouldn’t talk about even on secure phone lines.

  Gaul studied the man’s face. He’d known Dennis Marsh for more than twenty years. The guy was a realist when he had to be—he wouldn’t have become the secretary of Homeland Security otherwise—but he was very far from being a subscriber to the bloom where you’re planted philosophy. A fact that made Gaul just a little nervous, given the man’s stature.

  If small people created problems, they could be dealt with easily enough. Like the idiot doctor who’d been overseeing Rachel in El Sedero. The man had taken a lunch meeting with a guy from the L.A. Times a week ago. Audio recordings of the conversation had picked up nothing damning, and it had turned out the reporter was the doctor’s cousin, but all the same, Gaul had opted to play it safe. Why leave a troubling door open even a crack? But such easy solutions weren’t on the table when you were dealing with someone at Marsh’s level.

  “I heard from our friend,” Marsh said. His gaze stayed fixed on the ocean. “He e
xplained what you want me to do.”

  Gaul said nothing.

  “There’s not a chance I’m doing this blind,” Marsh said. “You know that. You need to tell me what I’m dealing with here. I want to know everything.”

  “I can’t tell you everything. I don’t know everything myself.”

  “If I do what you’re asking, I’m risking a lot more than prison,” Marsh said. “I’m risking household-name status as a bad guy. Tell me.”

  Gaul wanted to tell him to relax. Wanted to remind him that there were very large political boulders rolling and grinding around over this thing, and that among the men who wanted to see it resolved was Marsh’s boss, the one with the rose garden outside his house. Wanted to tell him, in short, that his cooperation was in no sense a fucking favor he could call in later on. Instead Gaul kept his voice respectful and said, “I appreciate the position I’m putting you in, Dennis. I’ll owe you for this.”

  Marsh finally turned to face him. Zero tolerance for friendly bullshit in his expression. “Tell me.”

  Gaul rested his elbows on the rail and looked down at the highway. How much to really give him? Where to start?

  “I know parts of it already,” Marsh said. “I know it’s not really Sam Dryden you’re after. I know there’s a girl, and I know you had her in your custody for two months, and I know this is tied to research at Fort Detrick, more than a decade ago.” Marsh’s voice went quieter, as if the specks of people on the beach below might hear him. “I came out of military intel, Martin. All kinds of interesting watercooler talk in that field. I know about the animal testing at Detrick, way back. The gibbons. I’m aware there were human trials later, trying to get the same effect, and I’ve heard from more than one good source that it worked. Have I got all of it right so far?”

  Gaul nodded without looking at him. He heard a little hiss of breath from the man in response.

  “Christ,” Marsh whispered. Then: “Is she one of them? Is she a mind reader?”

  Gaul kept his reaction hidden. Kept his jaw set and his eyes on the sweep of the ocean.

  If you think all she can do is read minds, then your sources aren’t half as good as you imagine. Hearing thoughts is the least damn thing Rachel can do, when she gets in your head.

  “Yes,” Gaul said. “She can hear thoughts.”

  In its own temporary way, he supposed, that was the whole truth. Until her memory came back, Rachel would be limited to mind reading. That was a passive ability, like hearing, or feeling pain. The rest of her capabilities were active, focus-intensive skills. With her memory blocked, she didn’t even know she had them.

  “So lay it out for me,” Marsh said. “What exactly is happening? What are you asking me to step into?”

  For a moment Gaul didn’t respond. A bright yellow open-top Humvee went by, down on the highway. As it passed below the overlook, the three girls inside screamed laughter, the sound of it immediately washed away in the same wind that blew their long hair around. Gaul watched the vehicle slip away down the coast toward Santa Monica. What would it feel like to be that carefree? To not know how much the world was about to change.

  “Martin?”

  Gaul blinked. He turned back to Marsh and stood up from the rail.

  “I won’t go into the details of what happened at Detrick,” Gaul said. “Except to say the research there ended five years ago, and the work was taken up by private interests instead. Defense contractors.”

  “Plural?”

  Gaul nodded. “Two of us. My company, Belding-Milner, along with Western Dynamics.”

  Something flickered through Marsh’s expression at that. He looked like a chess player assessing some new arrangement of pieces on the board. Easy enough to guess what had struck him: Belding-Milner and Western Dynamics had been rivals forever. Bitter ones. Everybody knew that. Marsh’s eyes narrowed for a tenth of a second as he filed the news away.

  “You both took over the research,” he said.

  “We each took it over,” Gaul said. He watched Marsh pick up the subtle point of the wording.

  “Each company working independent of the other, you mean. No sharing.”

  “No sharing,” Gaul said. “I’m sure the government was happy enough to run it that way. In spite of what you hear, they’re okay with a little competition now and then.”

  “So who won?”

  Gaul looked down. He felt his jaw tighten. Bullshit for the sake of saving face had never much appealed to him. “The other guys. In five years our research has yielded almost nothing. Western Dynamics had success right from the start.”

  Marsh waited for him to go on.

  “As of now, they’re beyond just doing research. They’ve got a finished product in final trials.”

  “What kind of product?” Marsh asked.

  “People. I don’t mean test subjects—actual operatives. Loyal personnel.”

  “And these operatives are … also mind readers.”

  Gaul nodded.

  Mind readers, among other things.

  The operatives at Western Dynamics could technically do all the same things as Rachel, though that was like comparing junior high chess club kids to Gary Kasparov. Rachel was almost a god next to them.

  “So where do you come into this?” Marsh asked.

  “I come into it a few months ago, with a phone call from a good friend at Detrick. Head of a small working group following up on the old research there. He had information about a test subject from back then—a girl. The events that ended the research at Detrick were … traumatic. But this girl had not only survived them, she’d escaped. She’d been free all this time since then, five years, but there was a chance to … reacquire her. My friend wondered if Belding-Milner wanted to head up that effort.”

  “And gain something you could use against your competition.”

  “All’s fair.”

  “She’s a kid, Martin. What were your people going to do with her?”

  Bloom where we were planted.

  “Nothing harsher than necessary. Most of the tests we had in mind could be done with a few drops of her blood, or functional MRI scans. But our first move was to set up narcotic interrogations. Her knowledge alone had to be worth looking into.”

  “And?”

  Gaul sighed. “She knew something, alright.”

  “What did she know?”

  Gaul was quiet a long time. Far to the southeast, a big yacht slid out of Marina del Rey, turning away into the haze.

  “What did the girl know?” Marsh repeated.

  Gaul told him. By the time he’d finished, three minutes later, Marsh’s face had paled a shade or two. A sheen of sweat sharpened the lines on his forehead.

  “This is real?” Marsh asked. “This isn’t just some tech proposal someone worked up—”

  “I’m told it’s standing by to go active anytime. Do you understand, then, why the girl can’t be left alive? Under the wrong circumstances, she could interfere with it. There would be serious problems. This is bigger than a pissing match between defense contractors, Dennis. My orders to kill her came down from on high. I have to follow them.”

  Marsh nodded weakly. His mouth worked, his tongue trying to wet his lips.

  “Are you on board with this?” Gaul asked. “Are you going to help me?”

  Another nod, just perceptible. Marsh was staring past Gaul, his gaze taking in the spread of Los Angeles. Maybe he was seeing it in the light of what was coming.

  “Then we’re done here,” Gaul said. “You know what to do.”

  He didn’t wait for Marsh to nod again. He turned and crossed to his BMW, got in, and started it. He backed around in a semicircle, pointing the car’s nose downhill, then craned his head to look at Marsh again. The man was still standing there at the rail, lost in what he’d just learned. For a moment Gaul felt the same tinge of nervousness he’d had when Marsh first got out of the SUV. Just how much of a realist was the guy? How willing to play along? Then Marsh turned, his expressi
on set with acceptance, and strode back to his vehicle.

  That’ll have to do, Gaul thought. He took his foot off the brake and coasted down toward the canyon road.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The man behind the counter in the sporting goods store was looking at a magazine with naked women in it. Rachel couldn’t actually see the magazine—the man had it down behind the countertop, out of view—but she could more or less see the pictures in his head. There were lots of tattoos in the images. There were metal rings and spikes stuck through skin. Now and again the man would turn his attention on a woman in the store. Rachel could feel his eyes tracking over the the smooth lines of girls’ legs, following them up to the hems of their shorts. Over these mental pictures came his thoughts, crude and simple. They seemed almost like animal noises. Nice nice nice, fuck yeah …

  Rachel tried to keep herself out of his sight as best she could. She stuck close to Sam as he pushed the shopping cart around. The sporting goods store was in Bakersfield. It was just past ten in the morning, and through the big glass wall up front, Rachel could see the parking lot and the city beyond, everything blazing in the sunlight.

  Right there, parked at the near edge of the lot, was the used car they’d bought down the street. A Toyota something, a RAV4, she thought Sam had called it. It was old, but he was satisfied with how it ran. They’d left the stolen Jeep in a long-term parking lot at the airport and walked to the dealership from there—after first hitting a Payless to get Rachel a pair of sneakers. But before they’d done any of that, before they’d even reached Bakersfield, they’d driven up a dirt road in the mountains southeast of town. At the base of a pine tree in the middle of the woods, Sam had dug up a plastic box with three things inside it. First was an envelope containing ten thousand dollars in fifties and twenties. Next was a handgun and a box of bullets. Last was a cardboard sleeve with three sets of fake identities inside it. All of these had Sam’s picture but different names.

  It helps to have friends in dark places, he had said.