The Drifter (26 page)

Dinah buried her face in Miles’s neck.

Boomer took another folding chair and sat at the table across from Peter, a cruel smile playing across his ruined face. “I’m looking forward to watching you turn into pink mist.”

Peter smiled pleasantly. “That’s funny. I’m looking forward to tearing off your head and using your neck for a latrine. I think it’ll improve your looks.”

Boomer stood up again, reached under his coat, and brought out a gigantic revolver. “I think I’ll just shoot you now, fuckface.”

“Boomer.” Lipsky’s voice cracked like a whip. “We keep him alive for now, remember?”

“What is the plan, anyway?” asked Peter. “Sure seems like you’re making this up as you go along.”

Lipsky looked at Peter. “I take it back, Boomer. Go ahead and hit him. But with your hand, and not in the face.”

Boomer came around the table and drove his fist into Peter’s stomach.

“Ooogh.” Peter doubled forward as much as the plastic handcuffs would let him, and tried to sound as if all the air had gone out of him. He’d hardened his gut muscles when he’d known where the punch would hit, and it wasn’t that bad. He’d had worse during sparring.

Boomer puffed up in triumph. “Now who’s the asshole?”

Lipsky put a hand on Boomer’s shoulder, pulling him away. “Now finish the goddamned detonator.”

“All right, all right.” Boomer emptied the plastic bin onto the table and raked through the bomb parts. A twelve-volt battery. A
gray plastic junction box. A cell phone. And a neatly coiled group of wires connected by a plastic wiring harness. To Peter, he said, “You ever get blown up, asshole? They say suicide bombers don’t feel a thing, but how would they know? I’m pretty sure it’s gonna hurt like hell.”

The wiring harness looked like something you’d find under the hood of a car. There were ten short wire pigtails made up of two color-coded wires, blue and white. One end of each pigtail came together in the long, narrow harness. The free ends each ended in a quick connector.

Ten pigtails, Peter thought, for ten sets of conduit. For ten plastic oil drums.

On the far end of the wiring harness, a single pair of wires came out, again blue and white, again with quick connectors. Humming happily, Boomer plugged the single blue wire to one of two blue wires soldered into the open back of the cell phone, then plugged the second blue wire from the phone to a third blue wire soldered to one terminal of the twelve-volt battery.

The cell phone would be the trigger. A remote switch that worked by connecting the phone’s vibrator to a set of wires. When the vibrator was set off with a call or text, the circuit would close and the battery would send power to the detonator.

“Was this how you got blown up, making bombs?” said Peter. “Nasty scars. Lost part of an ear. And you were ugly to begin with. Must be hard to get a date with a face like that.”

Boomer smiled at the wires, his hands busy with his work. “You kidding? I’m a war hero, motherfucker. I get
all
the pussy.”

“But they feel sorry for you,” said Peter. “That’s a pity fuck. That’s a hand job from your sister.” Peter didn’t know what he had to gain by provoking the man, but he was tied to a chair and hating it. And he wasn’t built to wait.

He saw the muscles work in Boomer’s jaw for a moment, but he still didn’t lift his eyes from his work. “Boy, it don’t matter what you say anymore.” Boomer reached for the free white wire, and plugged its quick connect to a second white wire soldered to the battery’s second terminal. “Because in less than an hour, I’m gonna make a phone call. This here switch gonna close, and ten blasting caps gonna pop, setting off ten beautiful chunks of plastic. The plastic will light up the fuel oil. The oil will light up the fertilizer. All in about half a second. And there will be one big-ass explosion. Take down a tall building.”

He looked up at Peter, his ruined face shining with the thought of it. Seduced by the fire blossoms of Iraq.

And all the while, his busy hands were arranging the assembled device neatly in the gray plastic junction box.

—

Peter’s shirt was wet with sweat in the cold room. His whole body was trembling, maybe with the cold. He hoped it was with the cold.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Felix came in with the hand truck for another load of fertilizer.

Come on, Lewis. Anytime now.

Midden

I
n the back of the truck, Midden slit open another fertilizer bag from the shrinking stack and dumped it into the last white plastic drum. The pellets slid beneath the dark surface of the fuel oil, raising its level slightly.

The smell was dense and cloying. It reminded him of the long fight through the Iraqi oil fields, always with the stink of the ruptured pipeline and the ferocious heat of the burning wells.

Stay focused, he thought. Although loading the drums required nothing of him other than the strength of his back and the blade of his knife. It was surreal, like before any operation. He had a pre-mission ritual in the bad old days, a system of checking his equipment that distracted him from the fact that they were about to step outside the boundaries of civilization and go kill people.

Although it was different in the war. In those days, they were fighting the enemy. People who were doing their best to kill Midden and his friends.

This was not like those days.

This was killing for money.

But it was what he had agreed to do.

No matter how he felt about it.

Stay focused.

He slit the last bag and poured it into the last drum. It disappeared below the surface of the black ooze without a trace. The drum lid with its junction box and flexible conduit screwed down snug with a slithering sound.

He left Cas to tie down the load and walked back to tell Lipsky.

One last time.

Peter

L
ipsky took a gun out of his coat pocket and pointed it at Miles.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he told Peter. “Midden is going to cut the cuffs off the arms of the chair, then cuff your hands to each other. If you sneeze, if you so much as fucking blink, I’m going to shoot the kid. Do you understand me?”

Peter nodded.

“Then he’ll cut the leg cuffs and stand you up.”

Peter knew that Lipsky planned to kill them all, anyway. Himself, Dinah, and little Miles, too. But he was no longer willing to allow it to start early. He was counting on Lewis. So he nodded.

It happened just like Lipsky wanted. Midden had a wicked folding knife with a serrated blade that cut through the yellow plastic cuffs like they weren’t even there. Peter held out his hands to be cuffed like a good prisoner. Once the new cuffs were tight on his wrists, Midden cut the leg cuffs from behind the chair, so Peter couldn’t get him with his feet. Then he backed away while Peter stood, leaving no opportunity for a quick strike.

“Take him to the truck,” said Lipsky. “Cuff him to a cargo ring.”

Peter walked through the warehouse door, Midden two careful steps behind him. The loading dock door was rolled up, and the translucent roof panel gave him enough light to see the white plastic oil drums arranged in the Mitsubishi’s cargo box.

They were cinched together with webbing, which was strapped to the cargo rings on the sides of the truck, so the load wouldn’t shift during travel. Each drum now had a small plastic junction box stuck to its lid, with the flexible electrical conduit leading to a central point like a spider’s web in the making. From the end of each piece of conduit came those blue and white wires, with a quick connector on each end.

He stepped into the back of the truck and the smell of fuel oil hit him like a wall. The space was much smaller than the warehouse room, and mostly full of bomb. The white static was tired of waiting. Peter kept breathing, in and out. But it was harder and harder, and his chest felt tighter and tighter. The static began to spark up, heating his brain. Breathe in, breathe out. He could still look through the loading dock door, though, and into the open warehouse. When that truck door rolled down, things would get very bad.

Come on, Lewis. Do it.

“Take this,” said Midden, looking at him with a mild curiosity. He held out another plastic handcuff.

Breathe in, breathe out. “You’re really doing this,” Peter said, turning to face him. Midden backed automatically, the coiled mechanism inside him keeping Peter at an optimal distance. “A truck bomb. Hundreds of people.”

“Put one end of the cuff on you,” said Midden. “Run the other end through the top cargo ring, so your hands are over your head.”

Peter looked the man in the eye, but it was like staring down the barrel of a sniper rifle. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you involved with these jokers? Why are you doing this?”

“Take the cuffs,” said Midden. But maybe there was something else in his eyes.

“Or else you’re just riding the fastest road to hell,” said Peter, and took the cuffs. He wrapped one strap around the midpoint of the cuffs already on him and tightened it with his teeth. “Trying to find something, finally, that you can’t live with. Is that it?”

“Shut the fuck up,” said Boomer, pushing past Midden with his detonator box. “He’s gettin’ paid. We’re all gettin’ paid. Then we’ll live like kings. Like captains of fuckin’ industry.”

“Sure,” said Peter. “And you only had to murder a few hundred people to do it. Or maybe it will be a few thousand.”

That same look flashed across Midden’s face, clearer now. As if something hiding beneath the mechanism was peering out, just for a moment. But he just pointed at the side of the truck. “Now the cargo ring,” he said.

So Peter slipped the loop through the metal ring at head level and cuffed himself to the truck. Hoping like hell that Lewis was out there somewhere and paying attention.

Boomer took ten golf-ball-sized lumps of plastic explosive and stuck one into the bottom of each junction box epoxied to the lid of each drum. Then he jammed an electric blasting cap, a silver tube like half a shiny pencil, into each lump of C-4. Out of the end of each blasting cap came two wires, one blue and one white, with quick connectors on their ends. Boomer connected the blasting cap wires to the conduit wires inside each junction box, then screwed on the box covers, his face rapt.

With the junction boxes secured, Boomer gathered the free
ends of the conduit and began to attach their threaded ends to the central detonator box with plastic nuts, methodically snapping the quick connectors together, like any electrician getting the job done. The ordinariness of it made Peter’s skin crawl and the harsh white sparks sizzle in his skull.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Then Boomer picked up the cover to the detonator box and screwed that on, too. He took a double syringe from his pocket and snapped off the twin tips. On the box lid he squeezed out double pools of gel, then used the syringe noses to mix the two gels together.

“There was one guy in Sadr City liked to do this,” said Boomer, and waved the double syringe. “Five-minute epoxy.” He dipped the noses in the mixture and dabbed it over the screw heads on the central detonator box. “Makes this shit really hard to take apart.” He reached over the spiderweb of conduit to the smaller junction boxes and dabbed more epoxy on their cover screws, too. “I always figured he wanted more time. If someone found his IED and called us to defuse, he had a few more minutes to get there. I figured he liked to watch.”

“And you like to watch,” said Peter.

“Oh, yeah,” said Boomer, eyes gleaming. “The best is when you’re close enough for the pressure wave to just about knock you on your ass.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “That’s where your brain damage came from.”

“That’s enough.” Lipsky stood in the loading dock door. “Midden, you’re riding in the back until we get to the site.” He jerked his head at Peter. “I want to make sure this guy stays put.”

“What about Dinah and the boy?” said Peter, the clamps on his chest getting tighter and tighter.

“Don’t worry about them,” said Lipsky. “Don’t worry about anything. In less than an hour you’ll be dead.” He nodded at Midden. “Unless you mess with this guy, in which case you’ll die whenever he wants you to.”

Peter heard the rumble of an expensive engine, the crunch of tires on the driveway, and the slam of a car door right beside the truck. Lipsky had his pistol out so quickly that Peter didn’t even see it happen.

“Is the party still happening?” Skinner’s pale, aristocratic face peered through the gap between the truck and the warehouse, his white-blond hair stylishly unkempt. “I wanted to see the device before it was too late.” He put a foot on the bumper, climbed up onto the loading dock’s bumper pad, and peered into the truck, his eyes wide. “Wow! That is really something, gentlemen.”

His face was flushed. He wore an off-white summer-weight suit, a money-green tie, and a feverish grin. The finger that Lewis had broken when he tore the gun from Skinner’s hand was set in a cheap drugstore splint. Peter hoped it hurt like hell.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” said Lipsky, truly angry for the first time that Peter had seen. “You’re supposed to be on a plane.”

Skinner waved him off. “Private charter, direct to the Caymans,” he said. “They’re on my clock.” He dipped his hand in his pocket and came out with a little knife that he opened with his thumb. “But I have something to settle with this guy first.” He started toward Peter.

Peter held hard to the cargo ring with both hands and prepared to kill Skinner with his feet, but Midden took a step to intercept.

“Ow! Hey,” said Skinner, holding his wrist. “Give me that!”

“Jon, control yourself,” said Lipsky.

“He wrecked my Bentley! That was a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car!”

Lipsky put a hand on his arm. “I’ll buy you another one. Okay? Whatever color you want. But you need to be on that plane. Now, don’t touch anything else, get in your car, and go directly to the airport. When you get to the hotel, destroy your suit and shoes and replace them from the hotel shop. Do you hear me?”

“Come on, he’s going to die anyway. Why can’t I kill him?” Skinner sounded like a child. Something was definitely not right in there.

Peter said, “You know he’s slipped his leash, right?”

“Shut your mouth, or I’ll give him his knife back.”

“Look at his eyes, Detective. What if he decides to stab a stewardess? Then you’re really screwed.”

Lipsky pivoted and swung his pistol into the side of Peter’s head, which flared in a bright burst of pain. He closed his eyes against it and kept breathing, in and out. Kept the static from rising up completely.

Lipsky’s voice was a little farther away now. “Keep an eye on him, Sergeant. I’ll come for you when it’s time. We’re almost there.”

“Can I hit him?” Skinner’s voice was eager.

“No,” said Lipsky, calm again. “You’re leaving.”

“What about the nigger? The one who was with him when he wrecked my Bentley?”

“Wait,” said Lipsky. “There’s someone else?”

Felix walked past to slip out the loading dock door. Boomer followed with Dinah and Miles.

Lipsky rolled down the truck door with a clatter. Then the clank of the latch. Peter was trapped in the back with Midden and the bomb.

Waiting for Lewis.

He heard Boomer talking faintly through the aluminum skin of the truck. Then Lipsky, and maybe Dinah.

Breathe in, breathe out. The white static rose.

Then he heard the bark of a dog.