China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

‘‘You better synchronize. By my clock it’s one twenty-two p.m. You got twenty-four hours to get what you promised.’’

  Brian’s face was gun-barrel rigid. His line of sight focused beyond the walls.

  ‘‘Did you hear me, Delaney?’’

  ‘‘Loud and clear.’’

  ‘‘We’ll call back and tell you where to make the delivery.’’

  ‘‘No. I’ll tell you.’’

  ‘‘You don’t got no say in this.’’

  ‘‘I’m not dropping off cash, you jackass—it’s a BW warhead, extremely volatile. I can’t just toss it in a Dumpster behind Wal-Mart. I’ll tell you when I have a safe location secured.’’

  ‘‘Don’t mess with us.’’

  ‘‘You bring Luke and Tabitha. Otherwise I abort.’’

  Paxton hawked. ‘‘Officers. All of you the same— think you run the world. Twenty-four hours, clock’s ticking.’’

  Brian dropped the phone back in its cradle. He leaned against the counter. Veins stood out on his arms.

  I said, ‘‘Are you going to call the police?’’

  ‘‘No.’’ He turned to me. ‘‘There’s only one person I trust with Luke’s life, and that’s you. So get yourself in gear.’’

  I felt the boosters kicking in. I knew what he was offering me. Brian renounced the possibility of God, saw a barbarous and insensate universe, but by trusting Luke’s life to me he was giving me a chance for redemption.

  I said, ‘‘Now what?’’

  ‘‘Now we get ourselves a warhead.’’

  I said, ‘‘Leave that to me.’’

  When I pulled into her driveway Abbie Hankins had just walked her kids home from school. The front door was open, backpacks and small shoes and bunched socks clogging the entryway, air-conditioning rolling outside into the angled afternoon sun. I had three Happy Meals, a quart of Pralines ’n’ Cream, and a six-pack of Coors, Abbie’s beer. I knocked.

  Abbie stuck her head into the hallway from the back of the house. ‘‘Here for the Weight Watchers meeting, are we?’’

  ‘‘I thought the kids could eat while we talk.’’

  While the kids tore into the food, Abbie poured two glasses of iced tea, handed me one, and said, ‘‘Let’s sit out on the patio.’’ We settled onto rickety metal deck chairs and she said, ‘‘Okay. Shoot.’’

  ‘‘I need a favor. A huge one that could get you in trouble.’’

  ‘‘Something illegal?’’

  ‘‘Unquestionably. But it could save Luke’s life.’’

  In the sunlight her hair shone Valkyrie blond. She said, ‘‘I got you in big trouble once with something illegal. And you got me out of big trouble recently. I’m doing the arithmetic, and you’re coming out on the ‘greater-than’ side of this equation.’’

  ‘‘Want me to tell you?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Help me steal the Sidewinder missile from the China Lake Museum.’’

  Back at the house, Brian met me at the door. ‘‘Results?’’

  ‘‘Tonight at eleven. Abbie will meet me at the museum with the key.’’

  He clasped my shoulder. He looked, I thought, surprised. ‘‘Good girl.’’

  ‘‘But once I get it you have to be ready to roll. I’m not parking my Explorer on the driveway with a big-ass rocket sticking out the back.’’

  ‘‘We’ll drive it out to the meeting site while it’s still dark.’’

  ‘‘All right.’’ We headed into the kitchen. ‘‘And for your information, you get three chances to call me ‘good girl,’ and I mean in your lifetime.’’

  Standing at the kitchen table was Marcus Dupree. ‘‘Better learn, man. You don’t say ‘good girl’ unless the woman in question wears diapers, or she’s a golden retriever. Good afternoon, Evan.’’

  ‘‘Marc.’’

  He was making amends, I thought. I hadn’t seen him since the day I’d told him off, charged him with being no friend to Brian. He was in civvies, jeans and a Naval Academy T-shirt, but still looked martial.

  ‘‘You’ve been shopping,’’ I said.

  On the table lay two slim fire extinguishers, several small aerosol canisters, and an assortment of bits and gadgets from Radio Shack—sensors, LEDs, and two electronic thermometers.

  I said, ‘‘What’s for lunch?’’

  ‘‘Anthrax,’’ Brian said.

  ‘‘Holy Christ.’’

  ‘‘Or sarin gas. I haven’t decided.’’

  Marc said, ‘‘Maybe it’s plutonium particulates. They’ll mess their shorts; I guarantee it. You can’t go wrong with radioactivity.’’

  I said, ‘‘I love it when guys cook.’’

  Brian said, ‘‘I promised these assholes a BW warhead, so that’s what we’re going to give them. We’re kludging together ‘detectors’ to prove that we’re delivering the goods.’’

  Marc pointed at the Radio Shack gadgets, said in his jazz-deejay voice, ‘‘We could rig them to act like Geiger counters, add a clicking sound.’’

  I picked up one of the little aerosol canisters. ‘‘What’s this?’’

  ‘‘CS gas,’’ Brian said.

  ‘‘Pepper spray?’’

  ‘‘Just in case.’’

  ‘‘In case what?’’

  ‘‘In case the Sidewinder doesn’t sufficiently impress them. If things get squirrelly, I want to disable and confuse them quickly. The CS gas can do that.’’

  ‘‘And the fire extinguishers?’’

  ‘‘I’m putting one in the ’winder. Know how fast people run when they see smoke shooting out the end of a missile?’’

  He saw my thoughtful look.

  ‘‘I’m not taking firearms into the exchange. Luke’s going to be there,’’ he said. ‘‘The Remnant’s a bunch of amateurs. I don’t trust them to hold their fire in a tense situation, and my carrying a weapon would simply make them more trigger-happy. I’m not going to take that risk. Marc will be outside, so he’ll be armed. But I have to do it another way.’’

  I gazed over the items on the table.

  ‘‘If things turn sour,’’ I said, ‘‘you want to do more than disable the Remnant. That will be difficult anyway, considering that they’ll probably outnumber us.’’

  ‘‘You’re not coming.’’

  ‘‘Bro. Don’t be asinine. My point is, you’re creating the illusion that you’ve got a biological warhead, so why not extend the illusion to scare the Remnant, and control them if things go bad.’’

  He crossed his arms. ‘‘Go on.’’

  I pointed at the electronic gadgets. ‘‘You’re engineering detectors to convince them that the warhead is lethal. Take it a step further. Engineer the warhead to release the biological warfare agent if Paxton doesn’t behave.’’

  ‘‘Doesn’t behave. Doesn’t set Luke free, you mean.’’

  ‘‘Yes. You should be ready to force his hand.’’ I was also thinking that we could force Paxton to tell us what had happened to Jesse. I picked up a spray canister. ‘‘If he double-crosses you, gas him.’’

  He rubbed a hand across his chin and started pacing. ‘‘Wouldn’t that mean exposing myself to the BW agent as well?’’

  ‘‘You’ve been vaccinated against anthrax. Paxton hasn’t.’’ I turned to Marc. ‘‘This nixes the plutonium idea. Brian couldn’t claim to be vaccinated against radioactivity. But if he makes them think he’s exposed them to germs—’’

  ‘‘You could offer them an antidote.’’

  ‘‘Exactly.’’

  They looked at each other. A scimitar smile transformed Brian’s face. ‘‘I like it.’’

  Marc said, ‘‘This crowd knows about anthrax vaccinations for the military. They’ll know you haven’t been immunized, Evan.’’

  ‘‘Then I’ll have to take the antidote. It can be part of the act.’’

  He thought. ‘‘They may also know that antibiotics can cure anthrax.’’

  ‘‘Not secret, bioengineered military anthr
ax they can’t.’’

  He nodded. ‘‘I can provide syringes. Sheree’s diabetic. ’’ He explained, ‘‘My wife.’’

  Brian said, ‘‘Getting sprayed with anthrax would be painless, though. Pepper spray leaves you screaming and coughing on the ground, half-blind for an hour.’’

  ‘‘So dilute it, give them a tiny dose, something. You guys know how to handle fifty million dollars’ worth of fighter jet; you can surely manage to fiddle with a spray can.’’

  Brian was nodding, thinking. ‘‘It won’t fool them for long, but maybe long enough.’’ He glanced at me edgewise. ‘‘You certainly have a dishonest imagination. ’’

  ‘‘The venom of asps is under my lips. Let’s get to work.’’

  Abbie was waiting when I backed the Explorer up to the rear door of the China Lake Museum. The night sky unrolled above us, moonless, punched with stars. The wind keened like the dead. The Explorer’s tailgate sat half-open, and protruding from it were lengths of PVC pipe. I planned to place the Sidewinder underneath them, slide a short pipe over its nose, stuff a towel in the end, and hang a flag off the back. That way, when I cruised down China Lake Boulevard it would appear that I was doing some midnight plumbing, not packing a heat seeker, maybe looking to dogfight Range Rovers.

  Abbie unlocked the door. ‘‘What a way to spend Saturday night.’’

  ‘‘It beats the Lobo.’’

  We hauled a section of pipe from my car and carried it inside. Abbie closed the door and flipped on a light. The stuffed animals in the display cases jumped into eerie relief, synthetic eyes glaring blindly.

  Abbie said, ‘‘You’re going to bring the missile back, right?’’

  ‘‘On my honor.’’

  She set the pipe down. ‘‘By Monday. Then, just maybe, I won’t get fired.’’

  ‘‘This should all be over by tomorrow afternoon.’’

  ‘‘Cool.’’ She pulled out a large screwdriver and started unscrewing the Sidewinder from its display mount.

  I reacquainted myself with the missile: a ten-foot needle, six inches in diameter, with guidance fins near the nose and on the tail. Those tail fins, too big to fit inside a PVC pipe, would have to ride next to me, resting between the front seats of my car. I looked at the rest of the exhibit, Technicolor photos of fireballs and shrapnel.

  Abbie spun the screwdriver. ‘‘Relax, it’s unarmed, no warhead or propellant. I’m almost positive.’’

  ‘‘Ha-ha. Remember that air show, where the navy let kids sit in a fighter cockpit but forgot to disconnect the ejection seat? Some little seven-year-old—’’

  ‘‘Stop.’’ She held up a hand, looking stricken. ‘‘Don’t talk about kids getting hurt. I can’t stand it.’’

  And that, I knew, was why she had agreed to help me—not to repay a debt to me, or because she had a residual wild streak, or even because the Remnant had set loose the coydog that attacked her. She couldn’t stand by while these people threatened a child’s life.

  ‘‘You’re aces, Abbie.’’

  She tapped the missile. "Put your shoulder under here."

  I braced myself under the missile. With a final twist of the screwdriver the Sidewinder came free. Its weight bore down, heavier than I’d expected.

  ‘‘See?’’ she said. ‘‘It’s fine. Good enough for government work. Now let’s get this pig into your car, so you can put our tax dollars to work.’’

  26

  The barn sat on a rise overlooking the bowl of valley to the east. Decrepit and grayed, long abandoned, it rested among hunched boulders and Ponderosa pines. Behind it the Sierras rose like a granite blade, ten thousand feet up into the empty sky. Inside it, the wind whistled and banged against the slats, a one-man band, blowing hot. It was Sunday, October thirtieth. It was showtime.

  We’d been there since four a.m., Brian, Marc Dupree, and I. We were ready by ten thirty. We had our Radio Shack anthrax detectors. We had syringes preloaded with saline solution, which cures Radio Shack-variety anthrax. And we had the Sidewinder resting on two sawhorses in the center of the barn, covered with a canvas tarp. The only thing missing was the Remnant.

  I paced, catching glimpses of the desert panorama through the slats of the barn. Around me, blowing sand tingled in shafts of sunlight. Brian stretched out on the ground and laid his head on his backpack.

  ‘‘Ev, sit down and rest. We have three hours.’’

  ‘‘Right.’’ But I couldn’t settle down. Though I hadn’t slept all night, I was wired, nerves popping.

  ‘‘There’s no point in running down your reserves. I’ll call Paxton at noon.’’

  Marc was squatting against the wall of the barn. ‘‘Listen to your brother. Conserve yourself.’’

  Brian closed his eyes and clasped his hands on his chest, as though he were a suburban husband napping in a hammock on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It astonished me. Beyond that, it comforted and frightened me: the warrior’s tranquillity.

  The wind gusted through the slats. Despite the heat, I shivered.

  And I did sleep. At noon Brian’s voice drew me back through the wool into wakefulness. He was on my cell phone, talking to Paxton.

  ‘‘. . . off Highway three ninety-five, westward, uphill about five miles,’’ he said. ‘‘No, before the turnoff to Whitney Portal.’’

  Sounding relaxed. He listened a moment.

  ‘‘You don’t have to remind me. I’m keeping my end of the bargain; you keep yours. Now let me speak to Luke.’’

  Listening some more, he gave me a sharp look and waved me near. I put my ear to the phone.

  I heard Paxton say, ‘‘Hold on,’’ and my heart jumped. But then came a click, static, and the voice on the line was not Luke, but a tape recording.

  ‘‘Daddy . . . ?’’ Hesitation, a tiny voice. ‘‘Here’s what’s in the paper today. USC twenty-eight, Cal seventeen. UCLA thirty-four, Wash thirty-one.’’

  ‘‘Son of a bitch,’’ Brian said.

  ‘‘Or . . . Ore-gon fourteen . . .’’ Luke continued struggling to read out the football scores, but Brian wasn’t listening anymore.

  ‘‘Let me speak to my son.’’

  Paxton came back on. ‘‘The boy’s fine. But we ain’t about to put him on the phone so the navy can triangulate our location and track him down. They trace this call and attack us, they won’t find him. Not now, not ever.’’

  Brian’s breathing accelerated. Explaining the facts or the technology to Paxton was pointless. ‘‘Have Luke and Tabitha here. In one hour.’’

  Before Paxton could respond, Brian shut off the phone. ‘‘They’re coming. Saddle up.’’

  We heard the engines from half a mile away. Marc peered between the slats of the barn and said, ‘‘Two trucks and two motorcycles.’’

  Brian walked toward him. ‘‘Can you see Luke or Tabitha?’’

  Marc shook his head.

  We all looked through the slats, down the tawny slope to the dust plumes rooster-tailing behind the Remnant’s vehicles. The big green Dodge was in the lead, sunlight flashing off its windshield as it ate up the ground.

  Marc said, ‘‘I’m going.’’

  He planned to take a position in the scrub pine and boulders uphill behind the barn. He opened the backpack and took out two small walkie-talkies. He tossed one to me. They were the same make—cheap, bright blue and orange—Paxton had carried the night they kidnapped Luke. If they used them again, we wanted to monitor transmissions. Marc then took a pistol from the pack. He tucked it in the waistband of his jeans, in the small of his back. Giving Brian a nod, he shoved aside a loose plank and slipped out the back of the barn.

  The trucks and cycles bucked along the road, louder. Brian touched my shoulder.

  He said, ‘‘Now we bring him home.’’

  ‘‘All the way.’’

  He pushed open the barn door. The dry world poured out beyond him—rocky slope, corn-bread desert, distant mountains the color of blood, bruise, gunpowder, bone. Brian stood silhou
etted in the entrance, a singularity, a hole in the light. I waited behind him, about to cross the event horizon.

  The walkie-talkie spouted static, two clicks, Marc’s signal that he was in position. I pressed the transmit button once in reply and slipped the walkie-talkie into the pocket of my shorts.

  The Remnant’s vehicles rolled up and stopped. For a moment they sat guttering. Then the men on the bikes crept forward. They were young, with clipped hair, grim eyes, muscled arms. They drove slowly around the barn, reconnoitering. Brian stood in the doorway. The trucks growled, heat shimmering off them, smoked windows blazing with sunlight. We couldn’t see past the glare.

  The bikes swung back around the barn and signaled thumbs-up. In tandem, the trucks shut off their engines. Doors opened. Isaiah Paxton stepped into the sun, cowboy hat shading his spare face, tanned arms loose at his sides, worn-down boots noiseless as he crossed the ground toward the barn. From the second truck came Curt Smollek. He had a gauze bandage on the end of his nose, and a shaved patch on his scalp, where iodine covered a cluster of scratches.

  Paxton stopped outside the barn door. Behind him Smollek chafed and jammed his thumbs under his belt. He looked in the barn and his eyes narrowed. There I was, the woman who had bested him with a ferret. He fondled the bandage on his nose.

  He said, ‘‘What’s Miss Doggy-style doing here?’’

  Paxton didn’t bother looking at me. ‘‘Delaney? Just supposed to be you.’’

  Brian scoffed. ‘‘You can’t transport an air-to-air missile singlehandedly, unless it’s hanging under the wing of an F/A-eighteen. I needed Evan’s help.’’

  Smollek hitched up his jeans and hawked a spit wad onto the dirt.

  Paxton said, ‘‘She wipe your nose when it runs? No wonder the beast had a cakewalk infiltrating the military. Pilots got to have little sis help ’em tote ordnance. ’’ He took a step. ‘‘Show it to me.’’

  Brian nodded toward the green truck. ‘‘Let me see Luke and Tabitha.’’

  ‘‘The way it works, you do what we say; then you get what we arranged.’’

  Brian kept looking at the truck, trying to peer past the smoked glass and the glare. ‘‘Fine. But let me see them.’’

  Paxton shifted his stance. ‘‘No. Time you learned you ain’t running this show.’’