Signal (7 page)

Claire cursed under her breath, pushing the Land Rover to 50. Without the patrol car’s headlights, the desert surface was nearly pitch black. The only visible detail was the road, a faint asphalt ribbon reflecting the predawn sky. Claire veered toward it across the hardpan but had gone only a few hundred feet when another bullet hit the Land Rover, punching through metal somewhere toward the back. A second later the concentrated fire from all the shooters began to rain against the vehicle, blowing out the rear windows, punching through the panels of the body. Clearly the shooters had night-vision scopes of one kind or another.

A tire blew; the vehicle slewed violently to the left before Claire got it back under control. The road was close now, fifty feet away as she angled toward it.

Then the driver’s-side window shattered, and Claire gasped, losing hold of the wheel. The Land Rover pulled hard left again, much too sharply for this speed. Dryden reached for the steering wheel, got his hands on it in the darkness—

Too late. The world heaved sickeningly beneath him as the big vehicle pitched onto its side and then its roof, tumbling hard enough that he had to hang on to keep from being thrown clear. He felt the strange machine in its plastic case, his own body pinning it to the console as he leaned across and clung to the steering wheel. Then the rolling vehicle came down on its roof for a second time, and Dryden’s head smacked against something, and all sensation switched off.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“She’s breathing. I think she’s good.”

A man’s voice, somewhere in the dark and the choking dust. No concern in his tone. Just flat assessment.

Dryden cracked his eyes. He was lying in the half-crushed cab of the Land Rover, which lay on its roof. Claire’s midsection was beside him; someone had dragged her halfway out of the wreck. Flashlight beams cut through the dust—a talclike powder in the air, probably from the air bags. Ragged scraps of plastic hung from the blown-open steering wheel and the passenger-side dashboard.

The hard plastic case with the strange machine inside it lay next to him. Through the closed lid he could faintly hear it still working, the static hissing out through the seam.

“Wake up,” the man outside said.

A slapping sound followed, a hand to a face, over and over. A different man laughed, high and jittery.

Claire murmured in response to the slapping. She took a sharp breath. The laughter continued another few seconds.

Dryden’s head cleared the rest of the way.

The Berettas. Where were they? Claire had stowed them behind the seat after they left the trailer, but now—

The answer came by way of a metallic clatter, someone fishing something out of the crushed vehicle, just behind Dryden.

“That’s two weapons,” a man said. “I don’t see anything else.”

“He awake in there?”

“He’s coming around.”

“Who the hell is he?”

“Get him out of there, let’s see.”

Four different voices—two on each side of the vehicle.

A second later, hands gripped Dryden’s ankles and pulled. He slid out into the clear air and the darkness, the flashlight beams blinding him. Through their glare he saw a rifle aimed down on him, far enough out of reach that he could make no move against it. Smart men. Well-trained men, anyway.

Someone rolled him over and patted his pockets. Found his wallet and then his keys, and took both. One of the light beams swung away as the man flipped open the wallet and studied his ID.

Dryden turned and stared through the blown-out window frames of the flipped SUV. The dust inside had mostly cleared. He could see all the way through and out the far side, where Claire was now fully conscious. It looked like she had a bullet graze across the back of one hand—the one she’d had on the steering wheel—but no other visible injury.

“I got his name,” the man above Dryden said. “Want me to call it in?”

“Not out here.” This voice belonged to the first man who’d spoken, standing over Claire on the other side of the Land Rover. He seemed to be in charge. “Throwaway phones or not, they don’t want the cops tracking anything at this site. Keep them switched off until you’re on a freeway.”

“What do we do with him?” the man with Dryden’s wallet asked.

The leader was silent for a few seconds, thinking. Then: “They want the girl taken to the interrogation site, but they want the thing in the hardcase brought directly to them. So we’ll take the girl, and you take the case. Take the man with you; they can decide what to do with him. Use his vehicle, it’s not damaged.”

A third man spoke up. “We need to go. Dispatch keeps trying to raise that cop. Every minute we spend out here—”

“We’re set,” the leader said. “Move.”

The man crouched down over Claire, wrenched her arms behind her back, and zip-tied her wrists. Then he and the other man on that side of the Land Rover hoisted her up by her arms and dragged her away toward a vehicle Dryden could just make out: an open-top Jeep Wrangler.

The man standing over Dryden pocketed his wallet, then squatted down and grabbed his forearms; he shoved them together behind Dryden’s back. Five feet away, the man with the rifle repositioned, keeping his friend out of the line of fire and the barrel squarely on Dryden’s center of mass. Dryden felt a zip-tie encircle his wrists and pull tight enough to dig into the skin. Finally the second man lowered the gun. He crouched at the Land Rover’s passenger window and pulled the hard plastic case out into the light.

*   *   *

They marched him back toward his Explorer at nearly a jog, keeping one of the Berettas tight against his rib cage. The Jeep Wrangler started up before they’d gone even ten paces; Dryden craned his neck and watched it go. It pulled around in a tight arc and raced away southbound on 395.

The pistol barrel dug into him like a spur. “Move, goddammit.”

He picked up his speed. He had his own reasons to go as fast as possible, but it was just fine to let them think he was compliant.

As they neared the Explorer, his eyes picked out the police cruiser. It sat dark and steaming a hundred yards farther back, its windows shattered and its radio squawking. A woman’s voice, clear and urgent. The word
respond
kept coming through the hiss.

They covered the last stretch at a run. The man with the Beretta gripped Dryden’s arm tighter; the second opened the Explorer’s back door on the passenger side. Together they shoved him through, headfirst, onto the floor behind the front seats. For maybe two seconds, one of them stood staring down on him, studying the vehicle’s interior in the dome-light glow. There were scraps of construction materials everywhere in back: lengths of two-by-four lumber, spools of sheathed electrical cable, PVC piping.

“Who is this guy?”

“Who gives a shit? Come on.”

They slammed the door and climbed into the front seats. In the seconds it took them to do that, Dryden positioned himself so that his hands, bound behind him, were pointed back into the space beneath the middle bench seat. He could feel the bottom of the seat’s cushion pressing against his side, the whole length of his torso. Which meant his hands would be blocked from the passenger’s view—and free to grope for anything he might reach beneath the seat.

A second later the vehicle roared to life. Dryden expected it to veer only slightly as it made for the road; it had been parked already facing south.

Instead it took a hard turn, a hundred eighty degrees, the movement sliding his body roughly on the matted carpet. Then the vehicle straightened out and accelerated.

They were going north on 395, not south.

Opposite the direction of the men who’d taken Claire.

CHAPTER NINE

“You see flashers ahead, get off the road,” the man in the passenger seat said. “Kill the lights and get out into the scrub—slow, no dust trail.”

“I know.”

Tension in their voices. From his viewpoint down behind the driver’s seat, Dryden could see the passenger looking forward and backward every few seconds, watching for distant police units, but also watching Dryden, his eyes dropping to take stock of him on every pass from front to back.

Dryden still had his bound wrists under the bench seat behind him. He kept his shoulders dead still, except for the rhythmic movement of his breathing, which he exaggerated. The best things to project now were fear and defeat. He let his head sag to the carpet and clenched his teeth. He blinked rapidly. He made his breath hiss in and out, just perceptibly shuddering.
I’m cowed. I’m not going to be any trouble. Go ahead and relax.

Some of this stuff was pretty basic—psy-ops 101. The man in the passenger seat seemed to eat it up. The evidence was subtle, but it was there. Longer glances out the front and back windows, shorter glances down at Dryden. On some passes he didn’t look down at all. The guy was relaxing.

Maybe thirty seconds had gone by since they’d left the scene—maybe ninety since the Jeep with Claire in it had departed. Two vehicles doing 60 or 70 in opposite directions. The math got uglier by the second.

Dryden kept his shoulders moving steadily with his breathing. Kept his head sagging. And moved his wrists.

His hands could feel plenty of things beneath the bench seat. A slip of paper that was probably a Home Depot receipt. One end of a short length of two-by-four lying sideways under the seat. A six-inch scrap of wire sheathing he’d stripped from a cable, last week when he rewired the cottage.

And the trailing edge of a plastic bag. Again, from Home Depot.

Not an empty bag. What was in it? He thought he could remember stowing it here, a few weeks back, before the wiring and before the plumbing, too. Back when he’d still been doing framing work, putting in the new closet in the master bedroom.

He got his fingertips around the plastic and pulled it closer, the crinkling sound lost under the roar of the engine and the drone of the tires.

Something heavy in the bag. He knew what it was—a tight stack of one particular item he’d bought in bulk: framing brackets. Little L-shaped pieces of galvanized steel, stamped out and press-bent and sold with the factory grease and metal shavings still clinging to them. They were practical and unfancy and cheap. And sharp, at least to a degree. Dryden could think of a dozen things that would have been better to find under the seat—a drywall knife would have been nice. But the brackets might do.

He worked the stack out of the bag. Contorted his wrists, gripping the stack, feeling for how best to position the thing to slide it against the zip-tie.

There was no good angle. No way to work the stack against the plastic band without also cutting the hell out of his skin.

So be it.

*   *   *

“I think this thing’s on,” the passenger said.

Two minutes now, since they’d left the scene. Three since Claire had been taken south.

Dryden could feel blood slicking his wrists. He thought he could feel the zip-tie beginning to give, too. He hoped.

“Don’t open it,” the driver said.

The passenger was no longer sparing any attention for Dryden. The guy was glancing up occasionally through the windshield, but mostly his focus was on something down near his own feet.

“It’s on,” the passenger said. “I can hear something. Static, I think.”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t open it.”

The zip-tie broke with a
snick
—louder than Dryden had wanted. He tensed and watched the passenger for a reaction.

Nothing.

He separated his hands. Groped in the dark again, beneath the seat, and got hold of the two-by-four. It was at least two feet long; he could feel the far end of it resting against the back of his knee.

He glanced up at the passenger. The man was only staring forward now, chewing on his lower lip. Maybe he was stewing about being shut down by the driver. Maybe there was an ongoing dynamic between them, alpha and beta, aggressive and passive-aggressive. No doubt it was fascinating.

Dryden pulled the two-by-four tight against himself, then raised his hip upward just an inch or two, his body forming a long, shallow arch with his feet at one end and his shoulder at the other. He eased the two-by-four through the gap until it lay in front of him, then brought his hands around to his front side.

His head was still resting on the floor. He directed his gaze forward, at the space beneath the driver’s seat. The Explorer was fairly new, just two years old, but it was the base model for the most part. No special electronics under the seat cushions. No motorized adjustments, no warming coils. Nothing but steel supports set in glide tracks, and a release bar to let the driver scoot the seat forward or back.

And empty space. Four vertical inches of it. Enough to admit the two-by-four, along with his forearm. Dryden could see all the way through to the footwell in front of the driver. Could see the man’s foot on the gas, and the brake pedal beside it.

*   *   *

The man at the wheel was named Richard Conklin, at least as far as his current employer was concerned. It was not his real name, but he’d used it often enough that he sometimes slipped into thinking of it as a kind of alter ego. Under his real identity, he was twice divorced and paying out a great deal of money in child support for kids who hated him, and toward whom the feeling was very nearly mutual.

Richard Conklin, though. Richard Conklin was a killer.

He was a killer when the job called for it, anyway.

Other times, the job might be to break into a house and steal something—some piece of paperwork, say—or simply drive a vehicle from one location to another and not look in the trunk. Above all, Richard Conklin did precisely what he was paid to do, and never asked why. He never even knew who he was actually working for. There were always go-betweens. Double-blind connections. One-time-use phones and carefully couched language for instructions. Paranoia was everybody’s friend. That was how Richard Conklin had always done business.

Until last month. Until the meeting up in Silicon Valley, with the people he was working for now. The people who wanted what they called a
rapid response team,
a term that sounded like
private army
to Richard Conklin’s ears.