Bone Music

by Christopher Rice

  He’s a giant of a man, a former deputy chief for the LAPD who headed up their counterterrorism and special operations bureaus before entering the far more lucrative world of private security. His shiny bald dome reflects the morning sunlight streaming through the panoramic windows with such intensity Cole’s afraid to remove his sunglasses. Because the man’s mouth rarely changes from a thin, determined line, Cole’s left with no choice but to view the slight grimace Ed’s worn since they took off as a sign the man’s truly afraid of what Dylan might be capable of.

  “Are they in place?” Cole asks.

  “We’ll have snipers north and south.”

  “Not east and west?”

  “West of the site’s mostly flat wash with a slight downhill grade until you get to the freeway. Nearest mountains are way too far from the site to have any good perches. Same situation to the east. Also, never a good idea to have snipers staring right into the sun. And given that it’s Arizona, the nearest tree is probably in Flagstaff.”

  “Or Sedona. Strike team?”

  “Fifteen minutes out. Best we could do given the absence of cover. Which I imagine might be why he picked the place. He’s got a Special Forces background aside from being a mad genius, right? Might explain some of what’s in here.”

  He pulls a stack of pages from his canvas briefcase. It’s held together with a giant paper clip, which tells Cole it was printed out just before they took off from downtown San Diego. Whatever’s in it, his security director didn’t want to share it over e-mail.

  Good call, he thinks as soon as he starts reading.

  It’s confidential information about the biker massacre in the middle of the Arizona desert. There are some initial police reports from the first investigators to arrive on scene; reports pulled off law enforcement servers the public would like to think are a lot more secure than they actually are. They’re followed by a transcript made up of a series of fragmented conversations. The name of the person speaking is provided wherever possible, but in most cases, the hackers made educated guesses, such as Officer 1, Possible ATF Agent, as they dipped in and out of the mobile devices being carried by the investigators on scene, eavesdropping for as long as they could before the cyberdefenses of whatever telecommunications company they’d penetrated got wise to their presence.

  This is one of only a few instances in which Cole’s ordered the off-the-books digital services team of their private security contractor to hack into the mobile phones of strangers. He doesn’t even know the company’s name, and Ed insists they keep it that way. Plausible deniability and all that. But in those other instances, he’d been out to disprove rumors that former employees had stolen proprietary science. And he had, sparing the targets a great deal of trouble and jail time and God knows what other ruin the board would have elected to unleash on them. In other words, he’d used evil for good. Now he’s using it because lives have been lost.

  Ed’s highlighted chunks of the transcript in green.

  Cole holds up a page marked by four different highlights so Ed can see it. “What’s the theme?”

  “Officers and agents on scene speculating bikers couldn’t have pulled it off. They used words like mercenary, Special Forces. Special ops. Trained killer. All words that could be associated with Dylan Cody’s background. The explosion knocked most of the guys flat, broke some bones on the others, but only killed a few of them. The rest of the work was close-range gunshots.”

  “But there’s no mention of Dylan.”

  “Unless you consider rapid-fire, close-range gunshots delivered minutes after a C-4 explosion to be part of his skill set.”

  “It is. Any ID on the bikers in the video he sent?”

  “One of ’em. The one who got a shotgun blast through his middle did fifteen years for aggravated rape. He has a long-standing relationship to the crystal meth community in the American Southwest.”

  “Huge surprise. And the girl?”

  “We think it’s an alias.”

  “An alias?”

  “We matched her image to an Arizona driver’s license photo for a woman named Charlotte Rowe, but Charlotte Rowe only popped into existence about a year ago. I want them to keep looking before I show you anything.”

  “I could still use a preliminary report.”

  “They do better work when they think you’re waiting. And losing patience.”

  “All right, I trust you.”

  Ed nods. It’s the closest they’ll ever have to a tender moment.

  “I want the strike team rolling in when we land.”

  “Cole—”

  “I don’t want them to strike, Ed. I just want a show of force.”

  “You want them rolling in right as we set down next to the building he’s sheltering in? That could be chaos, Cole.”

  “Pageantry, Ed. The word is pageantry.”

  “Fine. You’re the one who knows what this guy’s capable of.”

  Ed’s baiting him.

  He doesn’t bite.

  Ed begins tapping instructions into his mobile phone.

  “So wherever this place is,” Cole asks, “it’s not exactly the middle of nowhere?”

  “It’s close,” Ed answers. “Just a little ways north of Tucson.”

  “I imagine Tucson would object to being depicted as the middle of nowhere.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got an aunt there, and she says that’s exactly the appeal. Any idea why he picked this place?”

  “Quick escape from this mess he caused with the bikers.”

  “Seems like he’d want to get farther away. He’s certainly had enough time. What do you think?”

  “About what?” Cole asks.

  “I’m just saying, you know him a lot better than I do. What’s your guess?”

  More bait. Again he doesn’t bite.

  He needs Ed. Badly. And if Ed wants to take this moment to express some disapproval of the tortured path Cole and Dylan have walked together, the man’s allowed. There are only a few of Graydon’s dark secrets Ed doesn’t know, and the ones he doesn’t, Dylan knows all too well. Cole can’t afford to make an enemy out of Ed or anyone else. Not now, not today.

  “Symbolism,” he answers.

  “Symbolism?”

  “The location’s going to have some kind of symbolism. That’s all I can figure.”

  “Symbolism related to what?” Ed asks.

  “His beliefs.”

  “Beliefs? The guy’s a scientist and a soldier, not a preacher.”

  “Actually he manages to combine the worst of all three,” he says.

  “I see,” Ed says. “Well, you’d know.”

  “Ed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know?”

  “Fine. Is there some kind of involvement between you two that might be clouding your judgment here? If that video’s real, a meeting like this . . . We’re talking a week of prep, negotiations. At least. This could be an ambush, Cole, and we’re flying right into it.”

  “My involvement with Dylan’s work is exactly why I’m obligated to take this meeting.”

  “You know what I’m asking.”

  “You want to know if he took me out to the Hotel del Coronado and did things to me that made me forget my own name? Is that it?”

  Ed just stares at him. The man’s no homophobe. His reticence probably has more to do with an aversion to discussing his employer’s personal life. If Cole’s mother were in this seat, Ed would be just as demure on the topic. But can Ed hear what he’s really asking? If Cole’s judgment around Dylan is warped by libido now, that means it was warped by libido two years ago. And two years ago, he did a lot worse than rush into an ill-advised, last-minute meeting in the middle of Arizona with a man who might be capable of bending steel with his bare hands.

  Ed seems to realize this. He slouches back and turns his attention to the view.

  The Airbus H155 is supposed to be one of the quietest helicopters millions can b
uy, but Cole can feel every thump of its rotary blades in his bones. From this altitude the desert looks like a vast sea whose sandy bottom has been churned up by a global apocalypse. A place without borders or habitation, even though they crossed the California state line only minutes ago. It’s not hard to imagine Dylan living out here like some hermit.

  Correction. It’s easy to imagine Dylan living out here like some hermit.

  Easier than accepting Cole should have been keeping better tabs on the guy. And that he didn’t because the mere thought of Dylan hurt him in ways that suggest Ed Baker’s right; his judgment when it comes to Dylan has been clouded.

  It wasn’t the Hotel del Coronado.

  It was the Montage in Laguna. Not as historic, but just as luxurious.

  And, yes, on more than one occasion during their visits there, Dylan did make him forget his own name. But Cole had been foolish enough to think theirs was a passion bred by the secrecy of what they’d embarked on together, a fleeting, if white-hot, intimacy their special project had produced in them both. If it had occurred to him that Dylan was, quite literally, playing him like an instrument, such thoughts took a back seat to the shared intensity of their ambitions. Or that’s where he tried to shove them so he could justify letting Dylan shatter him in the bedroom.

  And the great, miserable irony is that Cole’s never been one for relationships.

  He still balks at his mother’s insistence that he find some handsome young banker or lawyer to marry. When he was in college, before gay marriage became the law of the land, he’d delighted in his freedom from the conventions and rituals that seemed poised to doom the ambitions of his fellow Stanford overachievers; his freedom from the reality of some wife’s biological clock or her bewildering emotional needs weighing down his potential life’s work. Back then the road ahead had seemed clear of obstructions, an endless stream of professional accomplishment and occasional release at the hands of gorgeous, skilled professionals who made regular appearances on his favorite porn websites.

  But now he’s thinking of that journal his father left for him, the one that mentioned Dylan.

  To hear his mother tell it, stories of departing presidents leaving behind private letters in the Oval Office for their successors had inspired Cole’s father to leave him a series of journals that were essentially long letters addressed to him, solely about the running of his company. Today they fill several thick, leather-bound books Cole keeps in a locked cabinet in his home office. It was in those journals, just days after Dylan’s disappearance, that he found a description of Dylan Cody that couldn’t have been more accurate.

  He is as well versed in the chemical reactions that govern the mind as he is in how the mind can be shaped and manipulated by external factors. He sees the brain not as a flawed, damage-prone instrument, meant to be healed, but as something to be maximized, the first phase of a computer application desperately in need of overdue updates.

  After he finished reading those words, Cole blamed exhaustion and Project Bluebird’s humiliating end for the tears he’d shed.

  Now he’s not so sure.

  19

  His face pressed to the cabin’s window, Cole watches the abandoned restaurant grow in size as they come in for a landing. Thanks to the Internet, Cole knows that the rest stop formerly known as Jackie’s is popular now with outdoor explorers, the kind of people who love to take GoPro videos inside empty missile silos flooded with rainwater and post them to YouTube.

  The old sign must be fifty feet tall. It rises out of the sand like a monolith, as if it’s still desperately trying to grab the attention of motorists on a freeway that ended up moving miles to the east, too far away to supply the place with enough customers to survive. A few of the old neon letters are visible—J A C—but most of the sign’s been gnawed away by the unobstructed winds.

  The chopper’s runners extend from either side of the fuselage with a slight whine. Meanwhile, the strike team pulls into place; four shiny black SUVs moving Secret Service–like over the expanse of brown. They kick up rooster tails of dust before fanning out on either side of the restaurant. Three in front, one in back. Although given the place’s state of disrepair, the terms front and back seem relative. Only one SUV parked behind the place. That tells Cole the back wall’s still largely intact, offering limited means of escape.

  What strikes Cole the most as they land is the absence of any other vehicle. Which means Dylan got here on foot. Which is a reminder of all the things Dylan’s been trained to do. Imagining those skills married to Dylan’s wonder drug makes Cole’s stomach lurch.

  Yeah, now that you’re not sleeping with him anymore, it doesn’t seem like such a great idea, does it?

  Once they’ve touched down, Ed slides the passenger compartment door open and goes to step out first. Cole stops him with one hand.

  When his feet hit the concrete of the old parking lot, he counts the black-clad members of his security team who’ve drawn their weapons and aimed them across the hoods of the SUVs. Six in all, each brandishing a fully loaded Glock. It’s the show of force he asked for.

  Now he plans to offset it a little.

  Gripping his phone in one hand, he walks in front of them toward the shattered windows and crumbling facade. If the team takes a shot, they’ll probably end up hitting Cole first.

  Dylan emerges from the whale’s mouth that used to be the restaurant’s front door. He’s assembled some ordinary civilian clothes into an effective if more monochromatic version of desert camouflage. His shirt and pants are sand lashed, but he’s wiped down his face and hair.

  Technically they’re out of the security team’s earshot, but the recording device under Cole’s shirt is also transmitting to a tiny earpiece in Ed’s left ear.

  Cole braces himself.

  Dylan sinks to his knees and laces his fingers behind his head, as if preparing to be arrested. Cole’s fine with the pose. For now.

  “Where is she?” Cole asks.

  “Not here.”

  “Who is she?”

  “You don’t already know?”

  “I know everything about her seems like an alias. What’s her background? Is she one of your old Special Forces friends?”

  “There’re no women SEALs. Yet.” The implication is clear: his drug could change all that; Project Bluebird could have changed all that, if Cole hadn’t pulled the plug.

  “Who is she, Dylan?”

  “Keep digging. You’ll get to it. It’s more obvious than you think.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Out in the world. Making the most of my gift. Just as I’d hoped.”

  “Your gift? Are you serious? Your gift is proprietary science that doesn’t belong to you.”

  Dylan’s gentle laughter is as condescending as a pat on the head. “What are you going to do? Turn me in? Give the Justice Department a tour of your little island lab? Open up your books so everyone can see who was funding us? Did Project Bluebird even have books? Honestly! Let’s not waste our time on this petty nonsense. We have far more important things to discuss.”

  Cole surprises himself with the speed of what he does next. He hurls his phone in Dylan’s direction. Dylan lashes out with one arm and catches it just in time. The phone doesn’t come apart in his hands. No burst of superhuman strength. When Dylan realizes the goal of this gesture, he smiles.

  “Clever,” Dylan says, “but I haven’t made that much progress. You want your phone back?”

  “I have other phones.”

  Dylan hurls it at him anyway.

  Cole catches it but with both hands.

  When he looks over one shoulder, he sees even Ed has his gun drawn now. The rest of the security team are standing with Glocks aimed at Dylan, rather than braced across the hoods of their vehicles. Cole gestures for them to stand down. They all comply. Except for Ed. He doesn’t move an inch.

  “Why here?” Cole asks.

  “Think.”

  There’s no hint of malice in Dylan
’s expression. Not even a hint of challenge. But there never is. He’s smart enough to make someone believe personal destruction is in their best interests.

  “I’m not an Arizona historian, Dylan.”

  “But you know history is the reason we’re here. Which means you know me. So think. Why would I pick this place?”

  Think back on our relationship, is what he’s saying. Think back on all the conversations we had, all the private movements we shared together, moments I was willing to throw away completely as soon as you cut off my funding so more volunteers wouldn’t die.

  Luckily Cole doesn’t have to. He knew the answer after a brief web search. He knew the answer when Ed asked him the question on the flight, but to say so would have meant admitting to a level of intimacy he wasn’t ready to reveal to Ed just yet.

  Still, he scans their surroundings to see if there’s some clue that might suggest his first guess is wrong.

  Just behind Dylan great shafts of dusty sunlight stream through the restaurant’s ruined ceiling, falling across the scattered rows of booths inside. Stacked against the hole-filled walls are piles of rotting chairs and sun-bleached cushions pulled from the booths. The booths were red leather once, Cole assumes; now most of them are bone white. The preservative effects of the dry desert air have done a steady battle with the wind and whatever other forces have passed through this place, taking bites along the way.

  To the east is the slight downhill grade Ed mentioned. The freeway is so far away it’s almost impossible to see the sunlight winking off the roofs of passing cars. But if the map he studied before he left is to be believed, somewhere down there is Aravaipa Creek.

  “Grant’s massacre,” Cole says.

  Dylan smiles. He gets to his feet slowly, brushing the sand from his knees. “One hundred forty Apache women murdered and scalped by a coalition of Natives, Anglos, and Mexicans. Mutilated. Another testament to mankind’s bewildering appetite for inflicting suffering.”