Signal: A Sam Dryden Novel (Sam Dryden series Book 2)

by Patrick Lee

  There was no sign of Whitcomb, or anyone else—until they came to the lot’s southeast corner.

  Dryden stopped. He was looking to his left, out the driver’s-side window. He heard Marnie lean forward to look past him. He buzzed the window down and stared.

  Twenty feet in past the mouth of an open lane was a makeshift fire pit: an old steel tractor rim that had been rolled into the middle of the channel and laid flat.

  Thin tendrils of smoke snaked up from inside it.

  “Let’s take a look,” Dryden said.

  He killed the engine and got out, taking one of the Berettas in one hand and the plastic hardcase in the other. Leaving the machine unguarded for even a minute felt like a very bad idea.

  He shut the driver’s door behind him as Marnie came around the hood. She had her Glock held ready.

  There was no sign of anybody near the fire pit. Beyond it, the open lane between the stacks of scrap metal stretched away for nearly a hundred feet, to where it bent ninety degrees to the right, out of view. Between the fire pit and the distant corner, there were no openings leading away on either side.

  Dryden crossed to the tire rim and crouched next to it. There was a bed of mostly cooled embers at the bottom, the carbonized remnants of what might have been plywood scraps—whatever firewood had been available amid the heaps of junk in this place.

  There was an improvised grill suspended across the rim, some kind of grate that might have covered an air return duct in a building, years or decades ago. On the stony ground beside the rim, two metal cans stood open and empty. Their labels were gone, either torn off or burned off. It was clear the cans themselves had been used as makeshift pans to cook whatever had been inside them.

  “Looks like he spent some time here,” Dryden said.

  “We don’t know this was Whitcomb. Maybe high school kids come out here to party. Seems like the kind of place for that.”

  “I don’t see any beer cans or cigarette butts,” Dryden said.

  Marnie shrugged. “Litter-conscious high school kids.”

  “Funny.”

  Dryden turned in a slow circle, studying the rows of scrap metal on both sides. They seemed to form unbroken walls running from one end of the lane to the other. Except—

  “Look at this,” Dryden said.

  He went to the north-side wall, twenty feet farther in from the fire pit. There was a sheet of corrugated metal, the kind people used for pole barn roofs, leaning against the wall of scrap. The sheet stood upright, easily four feet by eight. Dryden took hold of one edge and pulled it sideways.

  Behind it was a framed doorway leading into the scrap pile itself.

  “What the hell?” Marnie said.

  She came up beside Dryden. They stood and stared.

  It was clear within seconds what they were seeing. Embedded in the base of the huge scrap pile was a standard-sized shipping container—the kind of modular unit that could serve as a train car, a semitrailer, or a massive cargo crate aboard a ship.

  This one had been set down at a rough angle at the bottom of the stack of wreckage, and then mostly covered by it over time; only one corner of the container was visible, exposed like a portion of a fossil jutting from a shale outcropping.

  The framed metal doorway was wide open; its door appeared to have been torched off and discarded ages ago. Where the hinges had been cut through, the exposed metal was long since rusted and pitted.

  The space beyond the threshold loomed black like the depth of a cave. Dryden could smell the air inside—lots of smells, and none of them good.

  “Got a flashlight?” he asked.

  He glanced at Marnie and saw that she was already holding a pocket Maglite. She clicked it on and aimed its beam into the darkness. Dryden ducked and stepped through the opening, and Marnie followed.

  The inside of the container was more claustrophobia-inducing than Dryden had guessed. In a normal one of these units, an adult could stand upright with headroom to spare. Not this one. It had been compressed by the tons of weight piled atop it. The metal roof sagged in bulges, reducing the ceiling height to maybe five feet. The walls bowed outward to compensate. Here and there, where the sides met the top, the welded seams had torn like foil under the stress; scrap metal crowded inward through the ripped openings.

  The floor of the unit was pooled with rainwater in places, all of it rusty brown. Half submerged in the farthest of these, just visible in the light beam, lay the remains of some animal, probably a raccoon. Dryden could see a rib cage and a few tufts of fur.

  Much closer, only a few feet from the doorway, someone had made a crude bed out of a bench seat from a pickup truck. There were ratty old movers’ blankets hanging off one end, as if kicked there after a night’s sleep.

  Dryden put a hand on Marnie’s arm and guided the light to a point beside the bed.

  Where the floor was spotted with blood.

  “Shit,” Marnie whispered.

  “Hand me the light.”

  Marnie pressed it into Dryden’s hand; he crossed to the bench seat and knelt beside it. The blood was mostly dried on the metal floor, in little dime-sized spatters. But a small amount had filled an indentation in the surface, some kind of stamped rivet hole about as deep as a tablespoon. The blood that filled it wasn’t exactly liquid, but it wasn’t dry either. In the harsh glare of the Maglite beam, it looked tacky.

  Marnie crouched next to him, her eyes fixed on the same indentation.

  “I’ve seen plenty of blood,” Dryden said, “but I never had to guess how long it’d been there. This is more like your line of work.”

  Marnie leaned closer, narrowing her eyes. “Maybe twelve hours. Maybe longer.” She pointed to the sides of the indentation, discolored by a kind of high-water mark of dried blood. The tacky portion was lower down in the dimple. “It’s had time to settle. Time for some of the water content to evaporate off. I never know for sure until I hear from forensics, but after a while you get pretty good at guessing what they’re going to say.”

  At the edge of the light beam, beneath the makeshift bed, something caught Dryden’s eye. He reached under and drew the object out into the light: a leather wallet. He flipped it open.

  Most of its contents appeared to have been taken. There were only empty slots where credit cards would have been. Only a bare plastic sleeve in place of a driver’s license. No cash, of course.

  All that remained was a ticket stub from a movie theater: AMC CUPERTINO SQUARE 16.

  “Cupertino is a few miles from San Jose,” Marnie said.

  Dryden nodded. “Where Dale Whitcomb lived. Where he worked, anyway.”

  He stared at the stub, then at the dried and congealing blood.

  “If the Group figured out that Whitcomb was coming here,” Marnie said, “then they could have known about the meeting, too. Including the time it was supposed to take place. They could be hidden somewhere outside right now.”

  “If it’s the Group that got him. If it wasn’t just some transient that lived in this container, and attacked him out in the scrapyard and dragged him back here. Granted, that doesn’t sound all that damned plausible, when you look at the odds. I mean, if someone killed him, I guess the smart money should be on the people hell-bent on killing him. Except…”

  He trailed off, his attention suddenly fixing on the wallet. The empty sleeve where the driver’s license would have been. And the ticket stub.

  “Interesting,” Dryden said.

  “What is?”

  Before Dryden could answer, the space around them darkened. On impulse, they both looked at the flashlight, but its beam still shone as bright as before.

  Then, from behind them, came a man’s voice. “Weapons down. Slowly.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dryden felt his hand tense around the Beretta. Felt Marnie’s entire body go rigid beside him, the sensation transmitting through the point of contact between their shoulders.

  “Do it,” the man in the doorway said.
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br />   Marnie turned her head halfway toward Dryden, her breath coming in fast, shallow bursts.

  Dryden pictured the sequence of moves it would take to open fire on the newcomer. Four things to do: spin in place from his kneeling position, raise the Beretta, center it on the target, pull the trigger.

  The man in the doorway only had to do one thing—assuming he had his weapon leveled already. Or two things. Two shots in rapid succession. Dryden and Marnie, right there in the guy’s field of fire, at can’t-miss distance. Damn near punching distance.

  No contest.

  “We’re putting them down,” Dryden said. “Stay calm.”

  Marnie’s head turned the rest of the way, her eyes locking onto his. Are you sure?

  “It’s okay,” Dryden said. He lowered his shoulder and eased the Beretta onto the metal floor, and let it go. Marnie hesitated, her breathing still fast, then did the same.

  “Stand up and turn toward me,” the newcomer said.

  Dryden got his feet beneath him and stood. He turned and saw a man maybe sixty years old, dark hair going gray, hard features, sharp eyes. The guy was just outside the doorframe, lit by the indirect sunlight in the channel between the scrap piles.

  A second man stood behind the first, ten years younger, blond hair going thin on top.

  Both men held pistols. The man in the doorway had his leveled on Dryden, but the guy’s gaze was pointed elsewhere. It was focused on the plastic case Dryden still held in his other hand.

  “You know what this is, don’t you,” Dryden said.

  The man nodded just visibly. “Open it.”

  Dryden unlatched the case. He eased the lid open with his free hand, so neither the machine nor the tablet computer would come loose.

  The man stared into the red glow shining through the machine’s slats. For a moment he seemed almost entranced by it. Then he raised his eyes and looked back and forth between Dryden and Marnie. “Who are you people?”

  Dryden said, “We’re on your side—Dale. But you’re a smart guy, right? So you must already know that.”

  The man seemed to consider these words, holding Dryden’s gaze. Then he exhaled softly and nodded, and lowered his gun.

  “Where are Curtis and Claire?” Dale Whitcomb asked.

  “Curtis is dead,” Dryden said. He watched the news hit Whitcomb like an elbow to the chest. Watched him brace for whatever was next.

  “Claire’s been abducted,” Dryden said. “I believe she’s alive. I believe we can get her back.”

  Whitcomb stood there in the metal doorway, trying to process it all. At last he stepped back to let the two of them exit.

  “Let’s talk,” Whitcomb said.

  * * *

  The four of them sat on the hard ground around the improvised fire pit. The wind coming down out of the mountains was chilly, coursing through the shadowy channels of the scrapyard. Dryden found a few short lengths of two-by-four lumber in the back of the Explorer, and set them on the bed of embers. Within a minute they began to blaze.

  He also brought the bag with Curtis’s binders in it.

  Whitcomb addressed Dryden and Marnie. “You know my name. I’d like to know yours—and how you’ve ended up here.”

  Dryden took stock of the man. Dale Whitcomb looked exhausted, though not the same way Claire had. Whitcomb was stressed, not tired. Instead of sleep, he needed half an hour with a punching bag, pounding it until his knuckles were cracked and bleeding. Beyond the frayed nerves, he looked like a decent enough guy. Claire had trusted him; that counted for a lot.

  “Fair enough,” Dryden said.

  He introduced himself and Marnie, then spoke for ten minutes, covering the basics of what had happened since midnight. Claire’s phone call, the race to the trailer in the Mojave, Claire’s abduction, Curtis’s death. Then Santa Maria, the tower, Marnie.

  When Dryden finished, Whitcomb introduced the blond man. His name was Cal Brennan, and he and Whitcomb had known each other for more than thirty years.

  “We served together, way back,” Whitcomb said. “Our careers took different paths, but we kept in touch. Brennan’s here because I trust him, and because he can put together the kinds of resources we need, to go after the people we’re up against. I’ve brought him up to speed on everything I know. He hasn’t seen one of these machines in action yet, but … he’s aware of the kind of work I do. We’ll turn this one on and demonstrate it, as soon as we’re done talking.”

  Brennan’s gaze kept going to the plastic case that held the machine. It was sitting on the ground between Dryden and Marnie, along with the bag full of binders.

  Brennan, fifty years old, give or take, looked like a guy who rarely smiled. There were no laugh lines around his eyes. He looked like a hardass. He was also tanned in a way that suggested he had recently come from someplace even sunnier than California. He had a pair of Oakleys hanging from his shirt collar, their plastic bands scratched to hell as if someone had taken steel wool to them. Dryden had seen that effect before, in places where windblown sand was a constant feature of life. He would have put serious money on Cal Brennan having some connection to the world of private security contractors. He had the look.

  Whitcomb turned to Dryden and Marnie. He seemed about to speak but then stopped himself, struck by something. He glanced at the nearby shipping container, its empty doorframe still exposed, and then looked back at Dryden.

  “When you first saw me from inside there,” Whitcomb said, “you knew who I was. Had you seen a picture of me somewhere?”

  Dryden shook his head.

  “Then how did you know?” Whitcomb said.

  “Because of the wallet,” Dryden said. “It was missing everything that could identify you in any official way, but it had a movie ticket stub from Cupertino in it. That was strategic, on your part. You knew the Group might get to Curtis, and learn about this meeting. And if they showed up here, you wanted them to find something that made it look like you were dead. Something they’d have to wonder about, at least. Blood on the ground, a wallet with a ticket stub from where you live—the Group would have picked up on that. They know where you live. But if the Group didn’t find this place … if some random person came along instead, and saw the blood and the wallet, and called the cops … you’d never want them to tie your name to this location, on some official record. That really would bring the Group straight here. They might have shown up at this place days ago, if the cops found your wallet here today. Right? So that’s why there was a ticket stub and nothing else. Something the Group would associate with you … but the police wouldn’t. Best of both worlds.”

  Whitcomb nodded, studying Dryden.

  “You’re already looking at this game the way I do,” Whitcomb said. “Chess in four dimensions.”

  Something in the way the man said it chilled Dryden, though he tried not to show it. He only nodded, and waited for him to start talking.

  * * *

  “The way Claire understood it,” Whitcomb said, “and the way she explained it to you, this technology was discovered by a fluke. Bayliss Labs stumbled onto it without any idea what they were looking for. Right?”

  Dryden nodded.

  Whitcomb leaned over the improvised fire pit, holding his hands out to the heat. “It wasn’t a fluke,” he said. “It wasn’t just a fluke. My people at Bayliss may have stumbled onto the design, but they were being pushed toward it. They were looking for it without knowing it.”

  Dryden traded a glance with Marnie, then looked at Whitcomb again and waited for him to go on.

  “I need to start a little further back,” the man said. “Actually a lot further back, but it won’t take long. Please bear with me.”

  Far away to the west, in the wooded foothills rising above the scrapyard, a crow screamed and took to the air. Dryden turned and saw it, a tiny speck of black against the early afternoon sky.

  “My father served in World War II,” Whitcomb said, “in North Africa and Europe. He landed in Morocco under Patt
on, November 1942. My dad was infantry, but a few weeks into the invasion he was transferred to a group under the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, which was military intelligence. He had a background they liked: radio engineering, pretty advanced work at Stanford before the war. OSS had a job for him right away. Scout planes had seen something out in the desert in northern Algeria, some small German installation, all by itself in the middle of nowhere. Someone up the chain wanted to know what the hell it was, so my dad and his guys went in with a commando unit. The Germans defending that site must have thought it was pretty important, because they fought to the last man. When my father and his team finally got in to look at the place, they found most of it demolished. But not all of it. From what they could see, it had been some type of research station. There was one machine in particular that seemed to be the main event. A great big thing, the size of a pool table, with cables running out to speakers beside it. A radio of some kind, they thought. Its power supply had been cut, and someone had put a few bullets through its casing, but nothing vital had been hit. They got it powered up and switched it on, but at first all they heard was static. Then, every so often, they’d hear radio traffic coming through. Mostly it was music, sung in local languages, like what they’d heard on the streets in Moroccan towns. It was strange as hell to hear that stuff being broadcast on the radio, though, in German-occupied North Africa.”

  A knot in one of the two-by-fours popped in the firepit, sending an ember arcing out onto the dirt beside Whitcomb. He hardly seemed to notice.

  “My father and his people only had control of that site for a day before word came that heavier German forces were en route. Other teams from OSS had arrived by then. They boxed up all the paperwork they could salvage and carted it off, but the equipment itself was too heavy to move on short notice. The commando unit rigged everything with high explosives, including the big machine with the speakers. They blew it all to scraps, and then everyone got out of there. In those hours that my father had been able to listen to the machine, and the static, he only heard one thing he could actually make sense of. One thing in English: the chorus of a song apparently titled ‘She Loves You.’ He heard those three words and then the word yeah repeating a few times before he lost the signal.”