Authors: Patrick Lee
They were midway across the woods now, crossing the swell of the hill, far south of the highest point in the middle of the forest.
“I bet you weren’t lying when you said you’d always wanted to be president,” Dryden said. “I bet the part about Fenway wasn’t even bullshit. And when you and your people got the system up and running, and you could read headlines from the future, I bet I know the first damn thing you searched for. Your name in 2024, to see if you were going to win the election. But you weren’t going to win. You were going to get shot to death, because someone in intel figured out what you really were.”
They crossed another mudslick. Far ahead, to the east, Dryden could make out a hint of light through the trees. The opposite side of the forest.
“When you saw those headlines,” Dryden said, “you knew what to do about it. You scoured the future to find out exactly which intel people were going to figure you out. Maybe some article from far, far ahead in time, twenty years from now, when the names had been declassified and the stories told. You found out who was going to bust you … and you had them killed—right here in the present. Some of them were probably still college kids, weren’t they?”
Eversman didn’t reply.
“Then you checked the 2024 headlines again,” Dryden said. “See if you survived this time around. But you didn’t—because in that altered future, there would just be
other
intel people filling those job positions. People just as capable of nailing you. So you killed them too, and checked the headlines again, rinse and repeat the whole goddamned thing until you got the future you wanted. Right?”
No response.
“Marnie and I had it backwards from the start,” Dryden said. “We thought the original future was the one where you were elected president. We thought the Group changed that future six different times, killing you in six different ways. But the Group wasn’t killing you. They were saving you. Shuffling the deck by eliminating the people who would find out the truth about you. And finally it worked. Finally there was a future in which you lived all the way to Election Day.”
Eversman looked up into the treetops, as if pretending to be interested in something there. He said, “You sound like you know everything. Why even ask me about it?”
“Because there’s more I need to know, and you’re going to tell me.”
“Why would I say anything to help you?”
“I’ll just go ahead and ask anyway,” Dryden said. “We’ll see how you respond.”
Eversman only shook his head. He glanced upward again, just briefly.
“Some parts are obvious,” Dryden said. “When Marnie and I showed up at your place in Carmel yesterday, you must have thought you won the lotto. The Group was turning over heaven and earth to find us, and we rolled right up to your gate and pushed the buzzer. When we finished telling you our story, one of the first things you did was ask us who else we’d talked to. I should have picked up on that, but I didn’t. I imagine, in that moment, you thought all the loose ends were tied off. Marnie and I probably would have been dead inside the next five minutes, but then you got a phone call. Something so urgent you had to take it. Let me guess: That was the news that Claire had gotten away. Just like that, you still had a loose end out there. But you also had a sure way to get her back. You had me. The one person Claire would try to contact and meet up with.”
Ahead in the direction they were walking, the light through the trees was brighter. They were maybe two hundred yards from the east edge of the woods and the SUV parked there.
“So everything after that was bullshit,” Dryden said. “The meeting in the desert had already been planned, so that still had to take place, but since it was your own people I was meeting out there, you could easily arrange for me to survive it. The fact that Claire sent me that text message offered a perfect reason, but you would have come up with something. I wonder: Were you the guy on the phone, during that meeting? Were you the scrambled voice with the accent?”
Eversman didn’t answer.
“I wondered last night why the chopper attack in the desert worked,” Dryden said. “Why the Group didn’t know about it in advance and prepare for it. Now I understand. The whole damn thing was staged anyway. Sure, the six guys of yours that you killed in the Mojave weren’t in on it, but I don’t imagine you care about them.”
“What exactly do you still need to know, then?” Eversman asked.
“Two things,” Dryden said. “First, the system. The buried unit. It’s at your estate, isn’t it.”
Eversman’s reaction was complex, a sequence of different emotions in the space of a second. Surprise, annoyance, then an attempt to maintain composure and hide both of those responses. Too late.
“You’re never getting near it,” Eversman said. “So why do you care?”
Dryden ignored the comment. “I want to know how it works. The system itself is buried in the ground, but there have to be keyboards and monitors somewhere. There have to be people sitting at them, running the searches and looking at the results. But you know what I think? I think there are as few of those people as you can possibly make do with. Because those people are liabilities. Any one of them could start getting ideas of their own, with that kind of power at their disposal. If I were you, I’d have a skeleton crew at those keyboards, and I’d keep them all in one place where I could watch them like a hawk. I’d make them live there. I’d probably keep them right in that guesthouse on the estate.”
Another little spike of surprise and annoyance. Another score.
“Nobody else knows a damn thing about it,” Dryden said. “Do they. Not your superiors in the Group, wherever they are. Not the guys who just tried to kill me in these woods. Not the people you send out to commit murder. They know the bare minimum they need to. Why would you tell them anything more? I bet your wife doesn’t even know about the system.”
Eversman rolled his neck as if to work out a kink, but the movement looked fake—like his real purpose was to take another good look at the sky through the trees. Dryden looked, too. Nothing there.
“So how many in the skeleton crew?” Dryden asked. “Five? More than that? Is it—”
“Three people. Plus me.” Eversman’s tone was calm. Even proud. “Yes, they live in the guesthouse. Yes, I keep an eye on them. Yes, they’re the only ones in the world, besides me, who know anything about the system. Do you know why I’m not afraid to tell you this?”
Dryden waited, still pushing Eversman forward through the trees.
“Because you and Marnie were exactly right,” Eversman said. “Any plan that could destroy the system would also tip it off. And it hasn’t been tipped off. So none of this is worrying me.”
They were a hundred yards from the east edge of the forest now.
“What’s the second thing you want to know?” Eversman asked.
Dryden said, “Why am I pointing a gun at you? Why do I have your hands bound?”
“You’re asking
me
?”
“What I mean is, how did I outplay you here? You and your people could have used the system to see how this would turn out. And you must have.”
Eversman nodded. “We must have.”
“So why did I win?”
Eversman laughed; he seemed to catch himself off guard by doing so, as if he found something about the moment genuinely funny.
Then he planted a foot, bringing himself and Dryden to a hard stop, and turned in place so that the two of them were suddenly eye to eye.
Eversman’s wrists were still tied behind him. Dryden was still holding the Beretta. There was nothing Eversman could do to change the dynamic.
Yet the guy’s expression was all confidence.
“Who says you won?” Eversman asked.
Before Dryden could reply, Eversman cocked his head, listening for something.
Five seconds later Dryden heard it.
The rattle of a helicopter coming in.
It was somewhere to the north, beyond the wooded hilltop, the terrain and the trees masking its sound. It was already very close—thirty or forty seconds away at most.
Eversman smiled. “I told you last night, I keep one stationed in San Jose. I called for it to lift off as soon as Collins and I entered the woods.”
Dryden looked around, painfully aware of how little cover the forest would offer against an airborne attack. Someone looking straight down from a hundred feet up would see through any of the ground cover, and even through most of the tree boughs.
“I bet you instructed Marnie and Claire to stay away from here,” Eversman said. “Didn’t you. I also bet they’re going to ignore that. In fact, I know it.”
Dryden looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“My people and I did use the system to see how this would turn out. We checked this morning. You know what we found? Headlines about you and Marnie Calvert disappearing. You were last seen alive in Los Angeles two days ago. She was last seen Saturday morning in Santa Monica. The two of you end up linked forever, because apparently she was tailing you at the time you both vanished. We found true-crime write-ups about you two, published as much as five years from now. You’re one of those oddball little stories that sticks in the public consciousness. Claire Dunham ends up missing, too—no one connects her disappearance to yours, but either way, she vanishes. So there you go. If no one ever sees you three again, what else could it mean? We’re going to bury you. All of you.”
The clatter of the rotors was much closer now, just over the summit of the tree-covered hill.
Dryden stopped looking around and leveled his gaze on Eversman.
“You didn’t check for headlines about anything strange happening in Monterey today,” Dryden said. “Did you?”
“Why would I? You three weren’t going to disappear from Monterey. There wasn’t going to be any record you’d been here at all. What headlines around here would I have looked for?”
“That’s why you didn’t know I was going to kill your guys,” Dryden said. “Because you never checked. You saw the stories about us missing, and you figured that told you everything.”
“It told me we’ll accomplish the part that matters. It told me enough.”
“What else didn’t you check for?” Dryden said. “Did you search for headlines about your own death?”
Eversman’s confidence remained intact. He held Dryden’s stare.
“You three disappear because we kill you,” Eversman said. “I take that to mean I win. That I live.”
On the last word, the sound of the incoming helicopter suddenly intensified. Dryden looked up and saw it through the pines, just passing over the hilltop, flying no more than twenty feet above the trees. It wasn’t the same chopper that had broken up the meeting last night in the Mojave, but it was similar enough. The setup was the same. Open bay door in back. A gunner strapped in place and leaning out with a big rifle. Probably another .50 caliber.
In the half second Dryden was distracted by the aircraft, Eversman moved—far more quickly than Dryden would have guessed. The guy lunged forward, bending at the waist for a headbutt. Dryden dodged it by spare inches, throwing his own head sideways and taking the impact as a graze against his cheekbone. He pivoted and shoved Eversman hard, meaning to send him sprawling, but the guy caught his balance and came on again, all adrenaline and desperation.
Dryden swung the Beretta toward him and fired. Three shots, a tight group centered in Eversman’s chest. Three little rips in his shirt fabric, instantly soaked with blood.
Eversman stopped as if he’d hit an unseen wall. For another second he stayed on his feet, his eyes wide and staring at Dryden. His mouth worked soundlessly; he looked like he was trying to say
How?
Then he fell where he stood, probably dead before he hit, and Dryden forgot all about him. He spun toward the oncoming chopper—it was making straight for him, though he couldn’t possibly have been visible to the pilot yet. Dryden looked down at Eversman’s body and understood: The guy’s phone must have been relaying its GPS coordinates to the chopper, calling it in like a beacon. It would have been the easiest way for Eversman to guide it here from San Jose in the first place. Dryden turned east, toward the nearest edge of the forest, and ran.
He knew already that escaping in the other Suburban wasn’t an option. Even if he could reach it unseen, it would be suicide to get into it and try driving away.
He ran toward it anyway, east through the forest, simply to move away from both Eversman’s body and the chopper itself. He tried to stick to the densest clusters of trees, the best visual screens available.
Fifty yards from where Eversman had fallen, Dryden stopped. He turned and crouched as low as he could in the brush. He watched the chopper slow and take up a hover directly above the corpse.
The gunner in the bay door leaned farther out and looked straight down. Dryden could see some kind of bulky headgear on him. A helmet with a scope built right into the front of it. Probably a FLIR camera. Thermal vision. Even in daylight, it would make child’s play of searching for a human target in a forest like this. The shaded ground could be no more than sixty degrees. Dryden was thirty-eight point six degrees warmer than that. Not even the sunlit canopy of pine boughs overhead would be that hot. Not on a brisk day like this. Not even close.
The chopper stayed in its hover, the gunman staring down and taking in Eversman’s corpse. The FLIR scope would make it obvious the man was dead. There would be body-temperature blood seeping out in a big puddle, contrasting starkly with the cool dirt.
If the pilot took the chopper a little way to the west, the gunner would see the bodies of the first four men Dryden had taken down. There would be more puddled blood there, and the bodies themselves might have already cooled noticeably. The same would go for the other five out at the southwest edge of the woods, on the gravel road that bordered the wheat field.
The chopper didn’t do any of that, though.
Instead the gunner looked up from Eversman’s corpse and swept his viewpoint over the surrounding woods in a quick, efficient arc.
He saw Dryden almost immediately.