The Detachment (34 page)

Treven shook his head in disgust. “You are the most self-serving, lying hypocrite I’ve ever known.”

“I’m aware my request that you let me live long enough to set things right is self-serving. I can only say that if you prefer, you’re welcome to shoot me here instead. Either way, please, Ben. I’m asking you. Let my girl go. She didn’t do anything to you, or to anybody. You don’t even know her. Please. Just let her go.”

His voice broke and he stopped. He cleared his throat, blew out a long breath, and wiped the back of his hand savagely across his cheeks, one way, then the other.

For a while, they sat silently, Hort’s cigar slowly dying in the darkness.

“The others,” Treven said, aware he was conceding something and that Hort would recognize as much. “They don’t want just the diamonds. They want you to clear us. Get us off whatever hit lists you’ve put us on.”

“I’m a civilian now, Ben. I can’t do anything anymore. I could though, as the head of the commission I mentioned.”

Treven stared at him. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I thought you might find it to be another disgracefully self-serving statement,” Hort said. “But it is a fact.”

Treven didn’t respond. Once again, it was what he expected from Hort. But that didn’t necessarily make it a lie, either.

“Look at it this way,” Hort said. “You have the diamonds. And I’m a civilian now, you can get to me anytime. Let me finish what I have begun. Help me stop the school attack. And let Mimi go. What’s the downside to you? Just let her go.”

Treven watched him. He’d never seen Hort look so diminished. He wasn’t sure if it was some objective thing that had happened to the man, or if it was the new light in which he was seeing him.

“Why’d you try to take us out at the Capital Hilton?” he said, after a moment.

“I didn’t try to have you taken out. I told you, I was after the others.”

“I’m not buying it. You would have told me.”

“How? You had no cell phone, at least not one you were ever using. And you didn’t check in with me.”

It might have been true. Impossible to know for sure. But he hated that he wanted to believe it.

“Whatever. Why’d you try to have the others taken out, then?”

“You know why. They know too much. About my involvement. About everything.”

“So do I.”

“I told you, you’re the only one I trust.”

“Even if I believed you, and I don’t, the others? As far as they’re concerned, you’re as motivated to kill them now as you were before. Maybe more so.”

“It may be that I still have the motivation. But I no longer have the means. You have to get it through your head, I’m just a civilian now. You have the diamonds, you can go anywhere you want. And as I said, you can always come after me later. You could even come after my daughter if I do anything to cross you. I don’t see what I could reasonably do to stop you.”

Treven thought. They’d all agreed that if he had the opportunity as expected, he should kill Hort. Maybe they’d discover afterward that the “diamonds” he’d given them were fake, like the ones he’d given to Larison. Maybe they’d still be hunted by a national security state on steroids. But if having his own daughter in jeopardy wasn’t enough to get Hort to play ball this time, the working assumption was that nothing ever would. This way, they’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing he’d died before they did.

The problem was, a lot of what Hort had told him made sense, if sense was the right word for it. The situation wasn’t what they’d been assuming it to be. Hort alive might be more useful to them than he would be dead. He might be able to stop the coup and set things right, as he’d put it. Without him, this fucking thing he’d set in motion would probably take on an unstoppable life of its own, if it hadn’t already.

And there was that school to think about. How was he going to feel, if he knew about something like that and let it happen anyway? He’d done a lot of dark things in the course of his job, he knew, a lot of ambiguous things. Some of them kept him awake at night. Some made him wonder about punishment and reckonings and even hell. But he could honestly say everything he’d ever done was intended to keep Americans safe. Sometimes he felt like that knowledge was all that kept him sane in the face of what the task sometimes required. So what was he supposed to do now? How would he live with himself if some people blew up a school—a school, for Christ’s sake—and he could have stopped it, but didn’t? Compared to that, the possibility of someone blackmailing him with some bullshit video suddenly seemed unimportant.

He wasn’t sure. He didn’t trust his own motivations much more than he trusted Hort’s. And he didn’t know what the others were going to say. They’d made an agreement, and these weren’t the kind of people who took you to court for a breach of contract.

“Shall I finish this cigar?” Hort said. “Is it my last?”

Treven hoped he wasn’t being played. If he was, he supposed he was a three-time loser. He would deserve whatever he got.

“Just tell me about the goddamn school,” he said.

W
aiting for Treven made for a stressful night. Dox brought in pizza; we ate; and then, to pass the time, we watched the news, which was nothing but breathless so-called “terrorism experts” fantasizing about the latest existential threat and how it could best be combated, along with blow-dried talking heads obsessing over the semiotics of Horton’s stunning departure from the Rose Garden earlier that day.

As the evening went on, Larison had gotten paranoid, becoming convinced that Hort had brought a team that had snatched Treven and tortured our location out of him. He’d pointed his Glock at Kei and had sworn if anyone breached the door, she was going to be the first to die. To which Dox had said, with uncharacteristic menace, “Put your gun away. You’re scaring her.”

“She should be scared,” Larison had answered.

“Well, congratulations then, because she is. Now, like I said, put your gun away and stop talking like that. There’s no need for it.”

Larison looked at him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Dox pulled his Wilson Combat. “Son, this time I’m not doing Cleavon Little for you. You get in a mess with me, you’re going to have to find your own way out.”

“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” I said, deliberately playing the alpha. If it worked, and they accepted my dominant position, it would give them a reason to listen and a means of saving face. If they didn’t accept my position, things were about to get a whole lot worse.

There was a long and tense silence. Then, reluctantly, Larison slid his Glock back in his waistband. Dox, watching Larison unblinkingly, slowly did the same.

I motioned Larison over to the bathroom. “Give us a minute,” I said to Dox.

We went inside and I closed the door behind us. “Look,” I said quietly. “He’s got a soft spot for girls, and when you scare her like that, it presses his buttons.”

“That’s his problem.”

“All right. But you’re a professional. What’s the upside for you? What are you getting out of it?”

He didn’t answer.

“My point is, it’s not like you. We’ve spent a decent amount of time together at this point—two hits, a cross-country drive, a snatch—and you’re always in control. What’s got you running so hot now?”

He looked away. “I don’t know.”

“You want to talk?”

He laughed. “You trying to be my shrink?”

“I’m trying to be your friend.”

“Well, don’t.”

I looked at him. “How many people do you know who would understand the shit you’ve done? And how it weighs on you?”

Again, he didn’t answer.

“Look,” I said, “do what you want. But you have to stop running so hot. It’s making Dox jumpy, and it’s starting to make me jumpy. If I can help, let me help, but either way, we all need you cool. I need you cool. Like you usually are. Okay?”

After a long moment, he nodded. “Okay.”

We went out and returned to waiting. No one waved any more guns. I was going to have to do something about Larison, and I didn’t know what. Shake him? Shoot him? How could I get through to him? I thought,
if I ever work with a team again, just kill me,
and then had to stifle a crazy laugh because, with this team, that was exactly the problem.

At nearly one in the morning, there was a soft knock at the door. All of us stood, save Kei, who still had one wrist flex-tied to a bedpost. All the guns came out again. Larison was looking at Kei; Dox was looking at Larison. I checked the peephole. It was Treven.

“Easy,” I said to Larison and Dox. “It’s him.”

I opened the door and Treven came in. He was holding a gym bag. That was encouraging. I locked the door behind him.

“You get the diamonds?” Larison said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Don’t brief us yet.” I gestured to Kei. “Dox, could you put the headphones on her?”

We’d picked up a pair of over-the-ear headphones and a radio so we could talk in her presence without being overheard. Dox put the headphones on himself, adjusted the radio volume to his satisfaction, and then slipped the headphones onto Kei’s head and over her ears. She bore it well, her expression neutral but not blank; her posture, resigned but not beaten.

“Right here,” Treven said, holding up the bag.

Larison nodded. I didn’t like how eager he looked. “Did you do him?” he said.

There was a pause. Treven said, “No.”

Larison’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Treven said. “I could have. But based on what he told me, I think it would have been a mistake to do it right now.”

“Goddamn it,” Larison said, “Hort always has a line of shit. Always. When the hell are you going to figure that out?”

Treven looked at him. “You know,” he said, “I’m getting a little tired of you.”

I thought,
Christ, here we go again.

“Listen,” I said, in my best command voice. “We’re all a little strung out. You’re professionals, you know the signs and you know the causes. We’ve been going balls-out for a week now, Las Vegas to Vienna, back to the East Coast, gun fights, three days non-stop driving in a portable sauna all the way to California, worrying about satellites and drones and however the hell Horton tracked us in D.C….no privacy, no breaks, and barely any sleep. It’s amazing we haven’t killed each other yet. But let’s not kill each other now, okay? We need to dial it down. Or we’re all going to die.”

No one spoke. Either the moment had passed, or Dox was going to have to do another movie impression. Or we were all going to shoot each other. One of the three, anyway.

Finally, Larison said, “What did he say?”

Treven looked at me and said, “You were right about the schools.”

We all listened quietly while he briefed us. When he was done, Larison said, “You can’t really believe him. Don’t you see what he’s doing?”

I looked at Treven. “He told you where and when the school attack is supposed to go down?”

Treven nodded. “Lincoln, Nebraska. Smack in the middle of the country. Three days from now, on the first day back from summer vacation. Some kind of back-to-school assembly that morning in the auditorium, apparently. This guy Gillmor is running a team of four guys. Hort says they’re going to show up with machine pistols and just hose the room down. Nothing fancy, not a lot of logistics, just pure horror and destruction tailor-made for cable news.”

“Exactly,” Larison said. “It’s another setup. We’re supposed to show up with our hair on fire exactly when and where Hort tells us to. This time, he’ll have snipers positioned in vehicles all around the school. He fixes us, finishes us, goes home and has a beer.”

“There’s one more thing,” Treven said. “They’re going to hit the building with drone-fired Hellfire missiles while the shooters are inside.”

“What’s the point?” Dox said. “Kill the shooters?”

“Yes,” Treven said. “Just like Hort was trying to kill us after we did Shorrock and Finch. And also increase the destruction. But don’t you see? If we try to stop this, we won’t all be fixable in the same place at the same time. Some of us would have to take out the shooters. Someone else would have to take out the drone, or find the ground team operating it.”

“So Hort fixes us in two places instead of one,” Larison said. “It’s the same bullshit, and you’re falling for it. Again.”

“What if you’re wrong?” Dox said to Larison. “What if Horton’s telling the truth? A bunch of children are going to be slaughtered, and we’ll be part of it.”

Larison looked incredulous. “Part of it how?”

“We took out Shorrock and Finch,” Dox said. “We helped set this in motion.”

“Not our fault,” Larison said. “We thought we were stopping it, remember?”

“You didn’t care if we stopped it, started it, or fucked it in the ass,” Dox said. “You just wanted your damn diamonds.”

For just an instant, Larison’s expression twisted. I read it as,
What did you mean by that?
I sensed him fight to not glance at Treven, who shook his head the tiniest fraction, as if to say,
I didn’t tell them.

Hort’s words flashed in my mind:

He’s a man who has too much to keep hidden. A man in turmoil.