Any Minute Now (21 page)

“You've been given the all clear, Lucy,” he said as they paused to gaze at the swaying tops of the trees. “You can leave whenever you want.”

“Hella good. I don't want to wait till my uncle gets back.” Lucy took a step closer to him.

St. Vincent was suddenly lost in contemplation of the past. He was recalling a time when he had stood next to his mother. She had just come off Christ's stage, as she called the platform from which she addressed her congregants and took their money. Her arms and neck glistened with sweat, and she gave off a smell like a mare in heat that caused Luther's nostrils to flare wide. She was a charismatic woman, but this hardly said anything about her, since all successful preachers were, by definition, charismatic. Her charisma was bound up in her sexuality, which emanated from her in waves so heady it could take your breath away. For the first time, Luther understood how utterly she drew the inner circle to her, engendering absolute loyalty in them. She put her arm around him, enveloping him in her scent, the side of one thrusting breast against his shoulder, and Luther grew so hard his phallus ached.

“You don't worry about your uncle?” St. Vincent said, pulling himself back into the present.

She turned her face up to him. “Why should I? I don't give a fuck whether he lives or dies.” This was all part of her plan to make him feel that she had only him, Luther, to rely on.

“Then I may have something for you.” She was standing so close to him their arms brushed. Tendrils of her hair, tossed by the breeze, caressed his cheek. “Would you want to work for me?”

“Fuck, yeah!”

His nostrils flared as he took in her scent.

*   *   *

The first explosions turned night to a comic-book day and took out the gates. Charlie was reminded of
A Clockwork Orange.
A bit of the old ultra-violence that kicked the living shit out of the occupants of the house called, appropriately enough, HOME.

Then, scuttling forward, she fired the grenade. It destroyed the entire generator complex and from white, black returned, deeper than ever. Someone brushed past her. She thought it was Whit, but it was, in fact, Flix who, having disrupted all communication within the compound, leapt over the ruined gate, his AR-15 firing.

Charlie raced after him, Whit at her side. “What the hell?!” she shouted.

Rather than spraying the compound with fire, Flix was targeting enemy combatants with frightening speed and accuracy. Three were already down by the time she and Whitman began targeting their own enemies. But Flix was already ahead of them. Three more went down under his withering bursts. His advance was so on the money, he was killing them even before they had a chance to fire back. There seemed to be little for her and Whit to do but to head for the villa's front door.

As Flix dealt with the compound guards, Charlie applied the working end of her F2000 to the door, which burst apart in flaming shards. Shouldering past her, Whit was the first to enter. The interior was completely dark; no one had had the time to light even a single candle. His goggles guided him from room to room.

“Seiran,” he whispered as he progressed. “Seiran, death has found you, my friend.”

To Charlie, now right beside him, he said, “These villas are all the same. The target's always in the central living area, the most heavily protected place against drone attacks in the compound.”

Through the kitchen, which was a bit of a mess, through two small bedrooms, each with rumpled sheets, past two modern baths, down another corridor, then into the central room, larger than all the others put together. Charlie lunged, caught a girl, cowering in a corner, by the biceps, and pulled her to her bare feet. She was Asian and could not be more than fifteen.

“What is this, Whit, white slave trade?”

“Later,” Whitman said. “Talk to her.”

“Seiran el-Habib,” she shoveled into the shivering girl's ear, “where is he?”

The girl opened her mouth, but a brief chattering of automatic gunfire from behind them caused her to jump, her lips clamped shut. Whit turned, weapon at the ready, but it was only Flix.

“One more down,” he said. “That's the end of the guards, so far as I can tell.”

Even through her goggles, Charlie noticed a weird light in his eyes, as if he was not quite there, as if his body had been possessed by something else, something of which she had no knowledge. Suppressing a shiver, she turned back to the teen and repeated her question.

The girl looked at her, said, “I'm not paid enough for this shit.” She pointed to a closet on the other side of the room.

Flix went for the door, but Whitman stopped him with a hand across his chest. “You've got our backs,
compadre
.”

Whitman waited for Flix to nod and return to the entrance to the room, to stand vigil. Then he approached the door.

Wait
, Charlie signed to him.
I have a better idea.
They had learned to sign together, thinking it would be a fun way to have sexual adventures in public without anyone being the wiser.

Okay. Let's have it
, Whit signed.

Charlie pointed to the girl, and after a brief hesitation, he nodded and stood back.

“Go,” Charlie whispered to the girl. “Announce yourself. Open the door, then get the fuck out of the way. Understand?”

The girl nodded, and Charlie let her go. She picked her way to the closet door, knocked on it. “It's Beth,” she said, her lips close to the door. “I'm coming in.”

Her hand went to the knob, turned it, and she slowly opened the door. Before she had a chance to dance away, two shots blew her off her feet.

“Shit!” Charlie said as she and Whit turned on their portable spotlights, effectively blinding whoever was in there. She held her position while Whit dragged out two figures: another girl, also Asian, this one surely not more than eleven or twelve, and a male, aged around thirty-five. He had dark skin, a full beard, and was wearing what appeared to be a caftan. He was also wearing a pair of Tod's loafers.

Whitman grabbed the gun from him—a vintage Walther PPK, as if this guy had been reading too many James Bond novels. It could kill someone just as easily as a modern-day handgun, witness Beth, who lay in a pool of blood with two holes in her chest—one through a lung, the other through her heart, judging by their placement. Whitman frisked him carefully, but he was clean. Charlie had hold of the preteen, peering at her in the beam of her light.

Now that he was disarmed, Seiran el-Habib himself was offering no resistance whatsoever.

“There's been a terrible mistake,” he said over and over.

“You don't know how lucky you are, shitbird,” Whitman said. “I've got some surprises for you back home in America.”

They were about to move out when Charlie said, “Whit, there's something wrong here.”

“You bet there's something wrong,” Seiran el-Habib said.

Ignoring him, Whitman dragged him closer to where Charlie stood. “What is it?”

She was shaking her head back and forth. “This girl … Whit, this girl's American.”

“What?”

“It's what I've been trying to tell you,” Seiran el-Habib said. “Beth was American, too.”

Flix, abandoning his post by the door, rushed at el-Habib. Only Whitman's intervention stopped him from running full-tilt into the Saudi.

“Why the hell should we trust him?” Flix said from around Whitman's shoulder. “All these motherfuckers know how to do is lie—lie and kill.”

Charlie pushed her goggles up on her forehead. “Whit.”

Whitman could see the terrified look in her eyes. He couldn't blame her.

“Take them,” he said, consigning Seiran el-Habib and the girl to Flix. Not the smartest move, he suspected, but right this moment he had no choice. Then they all retreated from the room, moved through the maze of rooms and corridors until they reached the first of the interior guards Flix had shot to death.

Aiming his light onto the subject, Whit knelt down beside the corpse. He was dressed as an Arab, but there was something wrong, though he couldn't immediately put his finger on it.

“Whit,” Charlie said, “check out his boots.”

Whit bent closer, changing his angle so he could see the boots beneath the robe. They were U.S. Army issue.

“Christ,” he whispered.

“It could mean nothing,” Flix said, suddenly as nervous as a ceiling-fan storeowner with a comb-over.

“Idiot,” Seiran el-Habib said, “it means everything.”

Flix slammed the butt of his rifle into el-Habib's side. “Nobody asked you, motherfucker.”

With added urgency, Whitman searched beneath the guard's robe. Fishing around, his fingers felt something hard sewn into the lining. He ripped the cloth down the seam, and a dog tag fell into his hands.

“Jesus,” he breathed. “Jesus Christ Almighty.” All the air seemed to go out of him.

“Whit, what is it?” Charlie asked.

The tone of her voice told him precisely what she was thinking.

“Flix, you just killed Marine sergeant Alexander Stephen Moran.”

“All the others,” el-Habib said, “the same.”

Whitman looked from Orteño to Charlie, then he rose to face the Saudi.

Seiran el-Habib's upper lip curled with disdain. “That's right, you fools,” he said, “I was being guarded by the American military.”

 

19

“I have a routine,” Paulus Lindstrom said. “At eight o'clock I play baseball with my lab assistants for precisely one hour. By nine-oh-five, I've entered the lab. Ten minutes for a bowel movement, then wash up, change clothes. I'm working by nine-twenty-five. Forty minutes for lunch.” He looked around nervously at Valerie's living room. “I leave work at six precisely. Not twelve-thirty. Here's an entire afternoon drifting in front of my eyes.”

“Aimlessness doesn't suit you. I understand perfectly,” Valerie said. “But unusual times sometimes call for a break in routine.” She did not want to alarm him any more than he already was. An agitated Lindstrom was not a pretty sight. She was still waiting for Preach's further instructions.

His hands were working themselves into knots. “But I have my subjects to…”

“What subjects?”

Lindstrom turned away.

“Paulus?”

He went into the kitchen. Valerie followed him, arms crossed over her breasts, watching as he drew water for himself from the sink. His Adam's apple bobbed wildly; he drank like a man who had been out in the desert for days.

“Paulus,” she said softly, but she knew better than to approach him in his distraught state. “Paulus, please talk to me.” And then, because she knew what he needed at this moment, “I'm worried about you.” A pang of remorse flew through her like an errant arrow. In one way or another, she had been manipulating people all her life, but Paulus was different. He was as vulnerable as a newborn once you got to know him. She did not love him, but she liked him, whereas most people pitied him. Their mistake.

He stood facing the sink, his back to her. His pale, long-fingered hands gripped the edge of the sink as if for dear life. He stared out the window at the garden she had created out of the postage-stamp-sized patch of ground.

“Do you grow vegetables as well as flowers?” he asked.

“Tomatoes and cukes,” she said.

“Did you ever try beans?”

“No.”

“You need poles for beans. They grow vertically, so you don't need much room. You should try growing beans.”

“Okay. Would you help me?”

He turned suddenly, his face pale and stricken. “I'm the one who needs help.”

“Then let me help you.”

He blinked, as if slowly and carefully digesting her words. “I want to stay here.”

She smiled, nodding. “All right.” Sounding too eager would be a mistake. She sensed they were on a knife-edge. He could come toward her or bolt like a rabbit for his metaphorical warren, and then she would lose him. Trust was the only thing that mattered to a man whose life revolved around routine.

“You won't mind?”

She ventured a smile. “I haven't so far.”

That made him laugh, and she knew they had stepped off the knife-edge onto what he felt to be solid ground. He let go of the sink at last, crossed back into the living room, and sat on the sofa that was also his bed. She could see how much comfort it gave him. He always sat in the same spot—the corner where he could rest his left arm along the sofa's arm.

She sat on a chair facing him, not wanting to insert herself into what she knew was his private space. “Paulus, I think it might be time to tell me what's troubling you.” She paused for a moment. She was running purely on instinct. “Is it your subjects? Are you worried about them?”

“I am.”

His voice was so soft she had to lean forward to hear him. “Are they in danger?” She matched the volume and tone of his voice.

He stared down at his hands, which hung between his knees, the fingers twining and untwining as they had in the kitchen. “I don't know.” Twining and untwining. “I'm terribly afraid he might be.”

A bolt of electricity shot through Valerie. Words could sometimes do that to her; they could have a visceral effect on her being. “Paulus,” she said softly, gently, “you said ‘he,' not ‘they.'”

“Did I?”

There was no point in answering, she suspected. He knew very well what he'd said. This was a man who used language as carefully and precisely as he moved through life itself.

“There's a particular subject you're worried about.” She was making a statement, not asking a question.

He nodded. Then he raised his head. His eyes were enlarged, liquid with unshed tears. “I was forced to take a step that was…”

“Was what, Paulus?”

“Unscientific. Unsound.”