The Drifter (28 page)

Peter

T
he white sparks rose up in him like something alive. Peter focused instead on the pain of the plastic handcuffs biting into his wrists as the truck lurched around the corner, picking up speed. Whoever was driving wasn’t fucking around.

Something was very wrong. When the big diesel started up, he expected the next sound to be the hard crack of the charge detonating on the engine block. Instead the truck rolled out and he heard the pop pop pop of pistol fire.

He had to assume Lewis was dead. He was on his own.

The white sparks grew until he thought the top of his head would come off. His lungs were barely functional, sweat running down his face. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Midden stood on the other side of the cargo box, one hand looped easily through a cargo strap, blank as an unchiseled tombstone. Was there something in there?

“You think you’re going to walk away from this?” Peter’s voice sounded strangled in his throat. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Midden didn’t react in any way. As if Peter was already a ghost.

“They’re going to kill everyone else, you know. Felix. Me. Dinah and Miles. Boomer. And you. It’s going to be Lipsky and Skinner. They need someone to blame, and you’re on the list.”

The truck slowed slightly, then turned again. Peter swung at the end of his handcuff tether, his muscles clamping tight as the white static filled him. Where were they going? How long did he have? The truck gathered speed again, the tires thumping on the potholes. Midden stood like his feet were bolted to the floor.

Peter said, “You think you’re ever going to get out of this truck? Boomer has the detonator, and it’s armed. Have you even checked to see if that roll-up is unlocked?”

Midden just stared at him, his face a barren field. The soil so toxic that nothing could grow for millennia. But there was something going on inside that implacable mechanism. Peter knew there was. He just had to get access to it.

The white static roared in him, louder, higher. Wait, friend, please wait. The bands around his chest tighter and tighter. It was all he could do to speak.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’ve done in your life. But nothing could be worse than what is about to happen. And it doesn’t have to happen.”

Midden just closed his eyes, as if profoundly tired. As if to pray. Or to weep.

Charlie

H
e held on with both hands as the SUV flew around the corners. Mingus crouched between the seats, digging in with his toenails, tongue flapping.

“Do you see it?” said the driver, Lieutenant Ash’s friend. He drove like he was playing a video game, but this was not a game. “Do you see the truck? With your mom and your brother.”

Charlie twisted in his seat, looking all around them. “I don’t see it, I don’t see it.” Horns blared as they slid between the cars, cutting across lanes. His mom would kill him if she saw him like this. His feet on the seat, safety belt barely on. But he had to find her first. Once he got her free she could kill him all she wanted.

After zooming backward away from the guy shooting at them, they’d circled around to catch the big truck his mom was driving, but it had somehow gone a different way. And no matter where they went now, Charlie still didn’t see it.

“Keep looking,” said Lieutenant Ash’s friend. “Guess I head for the freeway.” He roared around a Volkswagen and took a right on
Locust, then slowed past the district police station. “You know where they’re going?”

“No,” Charlie said, shaking his head. Did the guy think he wouldn’t have mentioned it? But he kept looking. “Tell me who you are again?”

“Name’s Lewis. Friend of your mom and dad, from a long time ago.” He looked sideways at Charlie for a moment, his face gone funny. “You look like him, you know. Like your dad.” He turned back to the road. “Sorry about him dying.”

It was a weird thing to say, but people had said a lot of weird things since his dad had died. But Charlie was curious about something. “So, um. Why haven’t I met you before?”

“We were friends in school. We all got mad and had a big fight. It was a long time ago. You want to talk about it later, that’s fine with me, but maybe right now we find that truck, all right?”

With the police station behind them, they sped up again, weaving through traffic like they were standing still.

“Charlie,” said Lewis. “I need your help. So I got to tell you something hard. You ready?” He looked sideways at Charlie again. “That truck got a bomb in it.”

Charlie closed his eyes. Damn. His mom. His little brother. His damn mom! “What are they going to do with it?”

“That’s what I want to know,” said Lewis. “What’s the target? Shit, what if it’s in downtown Chicago?”

Charlie thought that seemed like a long way to go with a bomb in your truck. It was like the challenge problems in math class, trying to find the right path though a complicated equation. Then he saw the path.

He said, “What’s the tallest building in Milwaukee?”

Lewis

L
ewis blinked.

It was the U.S. Bank building.

He could see it in his head, a forty-two-story tower with white geometric bars, the bank logo right at the top. It even looked a little like the World Trade Center.

He looked at Charlie. “You got it. That’s the one.”

Thinking now that he really knew how they were going to make money. Skinner would have shorted bank stocks in general for several months in advance, as well as the market as a whole. He could have done that for nearly nothing, with a colossal upside if he could collapse the market, even for a day.

It was a good plan. Wasn’t illegal to bet against the banks.

He pulled the Yukon to the side of the road. “Okay, kid. Time for you to get out.”

The kid shook his head. Looked straight out the windshield. “No, sir,” he said. The dog growled.

“No?” Lewis gave him his best dead-eyed glare. “Boy, you do
not want to go where I’m going. This shit is gonna get real ugly. So get the hell outta my ride and take that damn dog, too.”

“Nope.” The kid set his mouth, stuck his chin out, and shook his head again. He looked so much like Jimmy right then. That same fucking stubbornness.

“Don’t make me hurt you, boy. Get out of the truck.”

Charlie looked at Lewis then, looked him right in the eye. “No, sir,” he said. Very crisp and clear. “That’s my mom and my little brother in that truck. So I’m going. Sir.”

Lewis looked at the boy. Could see the man he might become. Lewis thought he’d like to know him. Not that Dinah would allow it. Even if they both managed to live through the next twenty minutes.

“Okay.” Lewis nodded. “Okay.” Then he put the pedal down and peeled out into traffic. “But here’s the deal. You pay close attention, you do what I say, the first time I say it. No bullshit, no back talk, you hear me? I’m trying to keep you alive. If you die and your mother lives, she’s gonna consider that failure, and so would I. That’s not the trade she would make, you hear me? So keep your damn fool head down. And I’m not givin’ you a firearm, so don’t ask. Now I got something stupid planned, so get in the backseat. Right behind me, hear? And put on your seat belt nice and tight.”

“What about Mingus?”

Lewis shook his head. All this shit and the kid was still thinking about the damn dog.

“Get him in your lap if you can, and hold on tight. You don’t want him on the passenger side.”

Dinah

D
inah wrestled the Mitsubishi down Humboldt. The huge pit in her stomach had nothing to do with driving the truck. It was big and clumsy, but if she didn’t have to make too many turns, it wasn’t difficult. She looked sideways at Felix in his uniform with his spooky eyes. He had his arm around her boy’s shoulder, the muzzle of the gun pressed into his side.

“Why are you doing this?”

He didn’t answer her. He stared straight ahead, lips moving but no sound coming out. Like he was praying.

The road was terrible, and the Mitsubishi’s suspension was not designed for comfort. She felt every crack and pothole with a jolt up her spine.

“Talk to me, please, talk to me,” she said. “Tell me why my son has to die.”

“Just drive,” said the man. His voice was thin, but his grip on her son was still strong. “It’ll be over soon.”

She wanted the courage to just wreck the truck, drive it off a bridge. The river was coming up. That would be the best thing for it, to drop the bomb in the river. But she wasn’t sure she could.

Peter

T
he plastic handcuffs bit into the skin of Peter’s wrists with each lurch and shudder of the truck. He trembled with the effort of holding in the static.

The cargo box was closed in around him, his heart thumping in his chest, his breath trapped in his lungs. He was burning up in his sweat-soaked T-shirt even though it was cold enough to see his breath.

The dark chemical stink of fuel oil filled the truck. His muscles were tight as clamps.

Static was like a flashing thundercloud in his head, wrapped tight around his brainstem. His skull throbbed, about to explode.

Midden stood by the cargo door with his eyes closed, still holding the tie strap. The man was as lethally capable as any man Peter had ever met. Peter saw how he’d hauled Zolot in. He’d broken both of the burly policeman’s arms without any apparent effort. He could surely stop Peter from doing anything, handcuffed to the wall as he was. Plus he had a wicked-looking folding knife clipped into his front pants pocket.

But Peter saw something in him. A flash of morality at Lipsky’s willingness to kill Dinah and Miles. He seemed to be thinking. And he seemed to be listening.

Meanwhile, the truck kept rolling closer to its terminal destination, and Peter was sure he’d heard Dinah and Miles in the cab.

He didn’t have long.

He couldn’t hold back the white static forever.

He said, “I’m guessing you were overseas, like me.” Midden didn’t open his eyes or show in any other way that he’d heard. Peter said, “Maybe that gives us something in common, maybe not. I don’t know your part in this, and I don’t care. I just need to stop it.”

Midden

M
idden listened while the Marine talked. Eyes still closed.

That alone was an admission of guilt, a willingness to die, given that he was well within the reach of the Marine’s feet. But the Marine made no move, not yet.

Holding on to the strap, truck bucking unpredictably under his feet, Midden thought about everything he’d done to this point in his life.

The years and lives wasted in Iraq for a bankrupt cause.

The leaders he once trusted proving themselves unworthy of his trust, unworthy of the sacrifices of his fellow soldiers.

Proving it over and over again.

He had thought by working with Lipsky and Boomer that he would serve himself for once. Be done with causes and get paid. Retire someplace quiet with his nightmares and his memories, and see how long he could keep from eating his gun. Not long, he suspected. Not long at all.

Only to discover that this Marine, who had likely had the same experiences as Midden, the same friends killed for the same wrong
reasons, the same utter loss of all faith in man and God, was still fighting for a cause.

Still willing to sacrifice his own life for others.

The Marine kept talking. “You can do the right thing right now. Do nothing. And I’ll forget we ever met. You just walk away. You have my word.”

“No,” said Midden. Eyes still closed.

There it was again, that word come unbidden.

Midden had spent the last years trying to pretend the war hadn’t happened, the war and everything he’d done fighting it. But now he found that he didn’t want to hide from what he’d done, in the war or in this dirty little scheme.

Like the others, he, too, had wanted to get rich. And now he would share their guilt. There was blood on his hands. He had to be accountable for this. For everything.

The Marine was silent. There was just the roar of the engine, carrying them forward.

Then it occurred to Midden that maybe the Marine didn’t know what he meant.

“Yes,” said Midden. “Go. Do it.”

When he opened his eyes, he saw the Marine’s jaw clenched, the tendons popped on his neck, every muscle standing out clearly on his arms.

Peter

N
ow, Peter told himself.

And let go.

The static rose up in him, through him, without pause or hesitation. Like a beast straining against a leash, suddenly released.

He bit down hard to keep himself from roaring aloud.

What he wasn’t prepared for was how
good
it felt.

The power. The release.

The white static moved his arms. The black plastic center block that locked the handcuffs gave way and the yellow cuff flew free from his strong left hand. The white static grinned through his mouth as it whipped the end free of the cuff locked to the truck.

The man in the black canvas chore coat stared at him, eyes wide, holding on to his cargo strap like a lifeline.

Peter ignored him and let the white static focus on the bomb.

The scarred man’s design was good. The layers of protection were solid. The junction-box lids were epoxied shut, so he couldn’t get to the C-4 directly. The weakest point was the heavy conduit
conveying the wires from the central control box. If he could break the threaded connectors, he could pull the wires and free the blasting cap from the C-4 inside.

He took hold of the closest length of armored conduit and gave a hard jerk. No quick snap of the connectors, nothing gave way. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. He braced his knees on the drums, set himself, and let the white static pull until his shoulders ached. But after a moment it was clear that the connectors and conduit were too strong to break that way.

He could crack them all eventually by stressing the joints, repeatedly bending the conduit back and forth. But it would take minutes for each drum, and he’d never get them all, not in time. Not before they arrived at wherever Lipsky had chosen for his ground zero.

His mind worked hard, riding the static like some animal tamer. Running through possibilities, searching for an answer, while also trying furiously to keep himself intact inside the rush of blinding white electricity. The hardest part was the pure joy of the static, the pleasure in destruction. He hadn’t remembered how good it was, how alive he felt. Part of him, a disturbingly large part, wanted to leave the bomb in place just to watch it explode. To watch the world come down.

But he ignored that urge and channeled it. He leaped up onto the plastic drums for better leverage, and crept across the ordered conduit like a fly testing a spiderweb for weaknesses, and all the while the heaving truck tried to throw him to the floor. He had to get to Boomer’s ignition system, the big central control box. If he could get only one box open, it had to be that one, where the cell-phone igniter connected the twelve-volt battery to the wires for the blasting caps. That way he could essentially pull all the wires at once.

The control box was at the center of the bomb. This plastic lid
also was epoxied in place, but there was a little overhang, a thin lip where Peter might get a grip. Peter caught one edge of the loosened handcuff strap under the lip, and again set himself. Using his back and legs for leverage, he put the white static to work, roaring aloud as he pulled until his muscles screamed. Then he pulled harder. But the epoxy was stronger than the handcuffs had been. Stronger than Peter.

He kicked at the plastic box with his bare foot, hoping the box would crack and he could gain purchase there, but Boomer had used exterior-rated boxes, with thicker walls and stronger corners. Peter’s foot did nothing.

He looked down from his perch on the drums at Midden, who still hung on to the cargo strap while the truck leaped and lurched under his feet. Peter saw the steel clip at his front pants pocket.

“Your knife,” said Peter, barely recognizing his own voice. “Give me your knife.”

The man seemed lost in his head, banished to whatever purgatory or hell he was making for himself there. He didn’t seem to notice that Peter had spoken.

“Hey,” said Peter, the white static roaring fully through him now. “HEY! Make yourself useful. Give me your knife.”

The man didn’t respond for a long moment.

The chemical fumes of the fuel oil mixed with the thumping of the truck over the potholes to give everything a terrible urgency. Every moment of travel that much closer to the time when the world would turn to fire.

Then the man’s dark, dead eyes rose to meet Peter’s while his right hand went to his pocket and took out the knife.

He opened it with his thumb, revealing the wide, wicked blade. The serrations designed for nothing other than opening up the flesh of a man.

He looked at Peter for a long moment.

Then swung his arm and lofted the knife underhand in a gentle pitch devoid of spin, one workman tossing a tool to another.

Peter smiled as it came, plucked it easily from the air, and in the next movement plunged the knife into the lid of the central control box.