Then he saw the guy. He was crouched behind another vehicle, and from the way he stretched, Jonathan figured that his leg had cramped up on him.
Having left his ruck back with Boxers and Tristan, it was easy for Jonathan to lie on the ground next to the truck and prepare his charges. He’d stuffed his pockets with six GPCs-general purpose charges-which were wads of C-4 explosives with tails of detonating cord. Each packed a hell of a wallop, and in all the years he’d been using them, he’d never once experienced a failure. He pulled two from the thigh pocket of his trousers and pressed them into the wheel well of the pickup. He’d previously attached the electronic detonator and set the timer for seven minutes, a random number that he thought was sure to give him enough time to get back to the others before the show started.
He gave the explosives a light tug to make sure that they would hold, and pressed the button to start the countdown.
It wasn’t until he started to rise that he heard the footsteps approaching.
“Hey, you!” someone called in Spanish. Jonathan knew without looking that it had to be the soldier. “What are you doing?”
Jonathan didn’t move. On the ground, on his side, his back facing the approaching soldier, Jonathan was a scary curiosity-maybe an enemy, maybe a passed-out drunk. The soldier wouldn’t shoot until he was sure one way or the other. That bought time. Now Jonathan had to figure out what to do with it.
Still on his side, he unclipped his rifle from its sling so that he’d have more mobility when he stood, and then he reached across with his right hand, unsnapped the strap that secured his KA-BAR knife to the scabbard on his left shoulder, and drew it. Gunshots at this moment would ruin everything.
“You there,” the soldier said. “Stand up.”
Jonathan didn’t move. The voice still sounded too far away. Much closer, though, and Jonathan’s clothing would give him away. Footsteps approached. Then they scraped to a halt and Jonathan heard the clatter of the guy’s weapon as he shouldered it.
It was time.
Jonathan spun from his side to his back, and as he did, he slashed the gleaming edge of his knife across the tendons behind the soldier’s knee. He dropped before his mind could register the pain, and as he fell, Jonathan sat up, pushed the soldier’s rifle to the side and slashed the knife across his wrist, severing the tendons that controlled his fingers. Without fingers, you can’t pull a trigger.
Jonathan’s final slash opened a gaping smile in the soldier’s throat. Amid a fountain of blood, the soldier toppled to his side, dead.
“Sorry, kid,” Jonathan said softly. Like soldiers everywhere, the youngest always died first. Inexperience bred hesitation-the deadliest of all weaknesses on a battlefield. In close-quarters battle, victory was won in the blink of time when questions formed in the other guy’s mind. In a fight with Jonathan, the odds were never evenly stacked. Even after so many years, though, he never got used to the killing.
To become inured to that kind of violence would be to surrender your humanity.
The clock ticked. In six and a half minutes there was going to be a crater where he was standing, and between now and then he had two more bombs to set.
Big Guy was a scary, scary man. He reminded Tristan of one of the predatory animals you see on cable television. As Tristan sat on the ground, his knees up and his back against the house where Scorpion had checked his email, he could see the intensity of the Big Guy’s glare even in the dark. He seemed perfectly at rest balanced on one knee. His rifle wasn’t at his shoulder, but it might as well have been. He held it as if it weighed nothing, his hands loose on the grip and the barrel.
There was a stillness about the Big Guy that seemed unnatural, or maybe supernatural. Only his head and eyes moved, and they moved constantly. Every time Tristan stirred, those eyes darted to him, and his spine melted. The man oozed lethality the way others oozed sweat on a hot day.
If Tristan understood the plan he’d overheard, Scorpion was planting bombs around the neighborhood to distract the people who were trying to kill them. There’d be a total of three explosions, each of them drawing the bad guys-that’s what Scorpion actually called them, bad guys-in different and wrong directions.
In the confusion, they would steal one of those army trucks-a Sandcat-to pick up somebody named Maria, and then yada, yada, yada, they’d be back safe in the United States.
Less clear to him was that middle part, the yada, yada, yada. They must have worked that part out when he wasn’t listening. It had something to do with tunnels. Tristan didn’t know how to break it to them, but he had a real problem with claustrophobia. He didn’t do tight places at all. It’d been all he could do to keep from going bat-shit crazy when he was shackled to Allison in the bus.
Jesus, how long ago was that? Was it only yesterday? Was that even possible?
And how long had it been since he’d slept? Not the occasional dozing he’d been able to pull off at various times, but
Just thinking about sleep made his eyelids heavy. He felt exhausted at a level that he’d never experienced. It was as if energy were held into your body by a spigot, and someone had twisted his all the way open. So tired that it hurt. As he closed his eyes, he wondered if he’d get in trouble for falling asleep at his post.
As he listened to the sounds of the night and the rhythm of his own breathing, Tristan’s mind took him back home. He saw Mom praying in the dark and Ziggy trying his best just to be noticed. He wondered what she’d said when they told her he’d been kidnapped. When you already prayed ten hours a day, was it possible to find room for more?
After they’d grown so far apart, would this nightmare bring them closer together? Even a little bit?
Even as the question formed in his mind, he knew that the answer would be no. Like everything else, this would be written off as God’s will, another check mark on His shit list that included Dad’s cancer and Tristan’s problems in physics class. If you pray hard enough, you never have to confront anything difficult. You never worry about living or dying, winning or losing. All you have to do is pray for strength.
A knot formed in his stomach as he imagined his homecoming. He’d have to explain to everyone how he’d lived while the others all died. Amid all those parents mourning the loss of their children, there would be no room for him to celebrate the fact that he’d survived. Everything he’d experienced these past twenty-four hours, from the shoot- outs to the plane crash to whatever lay ahead, would have to go unspoken. No one would ever be able to understand the intensity of the life that he’d lived since Scorpion and the Big Guy had pulled him from the bus.
He’d never be able to confess that in the midst of all the terror and the bloodshed, there was real
Too busy killing.
When this chapter in his life closed, what could possibly replace it? Surely there had to be something.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t in Scottsdale, and it for sure wasn’t in his house. If what Scorpion suspected proved to be correct, the Crystal Palace would collapse, and as it did, it would take Mom with it. That place was her life. Without it, Tristan didn’t think she’d have anywhere else to turn.
And when she turned to him, he wouldn’t be there. He refused to walk that route. She was his past; something else entirely was his future. He didn’t know yet what that was-how can anyone know the future?-but he knew it wasn’t listening to a bitter old woman complain about the grave-like existence she’d carved for herself.
When she turned to Ziggy, though, Tristan would try to help. Again, he didn’t know how, but the kid deserved better than that, even if he didn’t know it.
A cold sense of hopelessness washed over Tristan as he thought these things, and he snapped his eyes open to return to the fears of the present. Those were the important ones to face, anyway.
And if they screwed things up, the future wouldn’t matter, would it?
