He asks, “Are you okay?”
I only nod. The gun in my hands now feels like it weighs a hundred pounds.
My father reaches out, gently takes the gun from me. I’m happy to give it up. He looks down at Veronika again, studying her as if for the first time.
“You’re the one I talked to.”
He doesn’t bother making it a question.
Veronika’s no longer crying out in pain. She glares up at my father.
“My employer—”
“I know who your employer is. I know what he wants. He’s not getting it.”
Veronika laughs. It’s a strange sound coming from her ruined face. Blood drips down her chin, dotting the already unstained portions of her T-shirt crimson.
“He tried to make this easy,” she says. “He told us not to hurt your daughter. Not unless we had no other choice.”
“I appreciate that,” my father says. “Doesn’t change the fact you’re never going to see the light of day again.”
Veronika’s bloody grin becomes a sneer. “Neither will you.”
She holds up her hand, the one she’s been holding at her side. In the craziness of the past few minutes, I completely forgot she had been reaching for her pocket before I shot her. The only thing I’ve been focusing on is that I actually shot her.
Veronika grips a small black device. It’s the size of a car fob. Maybe it is a car fob for all I know.
“Boom,” Veronika says, and squeezes the device.
And like that, the ship trembles. It’s as if there’s just been an earthquake. First one tremor, then a second tremor, then a third, all in quick succession.
Veronika laughs again. “We placed charges all over the ship. You will not escape.”
On the fourth tremor, I hear the explosion. It sounds like it’s coming from a nearby room. Maybe one of the engine rooms.
The ship starts to tilt.
My father grabs my arm, pulls me up the corridor.
“Run,” he says. Then, as another charge detonates, this one even closer, he shouts, “Run!”
I run. The ship continues to tilt, making it so that I’m running up an incline toward the door, and I don’t have much traction with my bare feet, but I run as fast as I can.
My father’s directly behind me, his boots smacking the floor, another charge detonating somewhere behind us, this one sounding much too close, and suddenly I realize that this is how I’m going to die, on a container ship, either by being blown up or by drowning.
Seconds later we’re at the door. The ship’s tilting even more now, and it’s difficult for me to push the door open. My father steps past me, shoves as hard as he can, manages to hold the door open long enough for me to slip through.
“Starboard side,” my father shouts, and at first I’m not sure who he’s talking to—is he shouting at me?—but then I realize he’s yelling into his transmitter, that right now one of the helicopters is above us, its rotor blades chopping the air as the ship keeps tilting and the loose shipping containers start sliding across the deck.
My father grabs my arm, pulling me toward the side of the ship. We’re fighting up the incline that’s becoming steeper with every second, and somewhere above us is the helicopter—I can hear it but can’t see it—and my father shouts, “Hurry!” and we keep running and the thudding becomes even louder as one of the helicopters banks toward us and my father shouts at me, “Hold on tight,” and before I know it he grabs me around the waist and I throw myself into him, wrapping my arms around him, as one of those ropes comes down and he grabs it just as one final charge detonates, this one just inside the door we’ve escaped, and the whole world seems to explode as my feet leave the deck.
I look over my father’s shoulder as the helicopter lifts us away.
Half of the shipping containers on the deck are gone, now floating in the bay. The front half of the ship is already mostly under water. The top of the ship is roiling in a ball of flames.
“You’re okay,” my father says to me, and somehow, despite the fact he’s holding a rope attached to a helicopter while his daughter hangs off him, he sounds too calm and collected, like this is something he does all the time. “You’re okay.”
Twenty-One
It’s late morning by the time we arrive back to the condo. We’re in a military car, a sedan, something my father drove off the base. We headed down the highway, my father driving, me in the passenger seat, neither one of us speaking.
We haven’t talked much in the past couple hours.
An Army nurse patched me up—checked me over for cuts and scraps and the whole deal—and then I was debriefed. At least, that’s what somebody called it—debriefing—where I told what had happened a couple times and then looked at some pictures and confirmed Veronika and Grigory from those pictures. Then finally my dad said it was time to go and so we left.
Parking in one of the empty spots in front of the condo, my father shuts off the car and then just sits there.
I sit there, too.
The engine ticks.
Finally my father says, “So. We’re not going to tell your mother about what happened, are we?”
I take it as a question, but maybe it’s not. Maybe my father is telling me that we’re not going to tell my mother about what happened. Which, frankly, is fine with me. The less I have to relive the past twelve hours, the better.
When I don’t answer, my father says, “Holly?”
I blink. Look at him. He’s my father but somehow he’s not. He’s like a familiar stranger whose name I remember but that’s it.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you. I”—he pauses, takes a breath—“I never wanted you or your sister to ever become collateral damage in my work.”
“Your work,” I murmur. Then, louder: “Your work. Just what the hell do you do?”
My father doesn’t
