Spectre Black Read Free Page A

Just the dark that was darker than the night, and in the center of it a faint infrared glow.
    Then the lights came on and the car arrowed down the highway, the taillights eventually swallowed by the dark.

Chapter 2
    San Clemente, California
    “Tennis balls.”
    “Cool, huh?”
    Cyril Landry held the lime-green tennis ball, aware that he was not hefting it with confidence.
    Which was unlike him.
    “Don’t worry,” the cricket-like man in the gaudy Hawaiian shirt said. “It won’t go off on its own. Has to be activated by the racket.”
    “Not any kind of racket,” Landry said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
    The man in the Hawaiian shirt nodded and his gray ponytail nodded right along with him. “That’s correct. You’re right as rain. Otherwise . . .”
    He left it open to conjecture.
    Landry had gone out for a day of paddleboarding, but as the sun dropped low over the water, he’d stowed the board and paddle into his Subaru and wandered into downtown San Clemente for a bite to eat.
    Even at this early hour the restaurants were crowded, so Landry ducked into this cubbyhole of an antique shop, with an eye on the Beachcomber Bar and Grille across the street, hoping a table would open up.
    A friend had told him about the old hippie. Landry wasn’t in the market for anything right now, but curiosity had finally gotten the better of him. His friend had said, “You won’t believe this guy. He was in Nam. Some elite squad, what I heard. He sells knickknacks and the occasional Hellfire missile.”
    His friend had been joking about the Hellfire missile. At least Landry thought he was.
    But once Cricket Man, aka Terrence Lark, knew he was for real, he’d shown him some nice stuff.
    Amazing stuff.
    “If you’re interested, let me know,” Lark said, before tucking the tennis ball reverently back into the box with its mates.

    After his solo dinner, Landry walked by the shops and restaurants down by the water. The whitewashed stucco buildings dated from the 1920s. Almost all of them had red tile roofs. The Spanish colonial-style look had been a requirement when the resort town was built and incorporated in 1928. At the time the town was called “San Clemente by the Sea.”
    San Clemente appealed to Landry. He liked that it felt like a small town tucked inside a large sprawling chain of cities and freeways—quickly accessible to airports and ways in and out of LA.
    He always looked up the celebrities and famous people in the towns he decided to live in, and San Clemente was no different. San Clemente didn’t have a lot of notable natives. Richard Nixon’s Western White House was here. But otherwise, the pickings were scarce: Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney, Jr., Cara Fawn—a porn star—and Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl’s Jr. Such a beautiful place—idyllic. You’d think San Clemente could have done better than that.
    On Friday night, the street was a hive of locals and tourists. Every shop was open at night. Throngs of people bubbled along the sidewalks like packing peanuts on a conveyer belt, only these packing peanuts were dressed in T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, and swim trunks. There were surfers, baby boomers, beach bums, working stiffs, Maserati owners, chefs, charter boat captains, and the younger families who came from the bland neighborhoods across the San Diego Freeway where houses were measured more in square feet than originality. Landry did not like the fact that there were more of these houses every day, perched on the buff and gray hills like Monopoly hotels. But who was he to judge? The millennials made good money. Landry saw them coming into town for dinner and shopping with their spacious SUVs and collapsible strollers and very cute offspring.
    Landry blended in, just another beach bum/surfer type. Every picture tells a story and he made his own. His longish brown hair had gold streaks in it, which he had applied himself. A goatee concealed the lower half of his face. Even the car he