The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  34

  Peter left Lewis to keep an eye on the warehouse, with a pocketful of shotgun shells and the Glock in his belt.

  Peter had rung the doorbell only once, but Mingus’s barking would wake the dead. Dinah wore thick flannel pajama bottoms and a UWM sweatshirt. Not what Peter had imagined when he pictured her sleeping.

  Dinah glared at him with those glacier-blue eyes. “Peter, do you have any idea what time it is?”

  Mingus poked his nose past her hip, tail wagging happily. Dinah shoved the dog back with her foot. Peter was glad to see the chrome .32 in her hand. She looked more comfortable with the weapon than he expected.

  “I know it’s late, and I’m sorry,” said Peter. “Get your boys out of bed and pack a bag. One night, maybe two. Bring that gun. Five minutes. You’re getting out of this house.”

  “I will not,” she said. With that regal bearing, her spine straight as an iron rod. “I have a double shift tomorrow. It’s a school night. Charlie has a math test.”

  Of course Dinah would require an explanation.

  Peter figured Mingus had woken the boys. He lowered his voice so they wouldn’t hear. “You remember that suitcase I found under your porch?”

  Dinah nodded.

  “Well, there was more in that bag than money. There was also a decent amount of explosives.” Her eyebrows shot up. “And Lewis and I just found a stash of bomb-making supplies. Enough to make a very big boom.”

  “You and Lewis?” She looked confused.

  “He’s helping me. Dinah. Something ugly is going to happen soon and I need to get you and the boys out of here now.”

  That finally got her attention. But she still didn’t want to believe him. “Why on earth would they come here?”

  Peter didn’t want to tell her, but he saw no other way to get her moving in a hurry. So he said it.

  “Someone threatened me. And mentioned you and the boys specifically. He was pretty convincing.”

  Dinah closed her eyes. He saw her bend then, just for a moment. She looked smaller, softer. Her voice was quieter, too. “The man with the scars?”

  Peter nodded. “He’s one of them. It’s their money, and their explosives. They were watching the house, they know where it is. They might be out there right now.”

  She opened her eyes and forced her spine straight, the iron rod in place again. He knew she was strong. He saw then that her perfect posture was part of her strength, the armor she wore to survive the challenges of her life. Though that was nothing compared to what they faced now.

  She stepped back to let him inside. Mingus wagged his tail so hard it gave him a whole-body wiggle as Peter closed and locked the new door he’d installed just the other day. He was glad he’d bought the reinforced steel.

  She asked, “Was James involved in this?”

  Peter let Mingus jump up on him, then rubbed behind his ears. The dog still smelled like strawberries.

  “I think Jimmy took it from them,” said Peter. “He must have figured out what they were planning. They still need those explosives. They’re pretty sure either you or I still have them. I imagine they’d like their money back, too. So they have more than one reason to come here.”

  “They can have the money. I don’t care about that.”

  “Where did you put it?”

  “It’s in the attic. Over behind the boxes, still in that paper bag.”

  He figured it was as good a place as any. He didn’t have any better ideas. There wasn’t room for it in the hidden stash spot under his truck.

  Dinah didn’t waste any more time. She walked to the bedrooms and got the boys up and moving with a few whispered words. Then shoved clothes and toiletries into a bag. Peter walked from window to window, looking out at the night. Just because he hadn’t seen anyone didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  Charlie came out and filled a backpack with a half-gallon of milk, a box of cereal, and a few plastic containers of what Peter assumed were leftovers. Threw in a few granola bars and paper cups and some silverware. Smart kid. The Army traveling on its stomach.

  Peter didn’t think they would need much food. He had a feeling things were going to happen pretty fast after this.

  He stood at the open door, scanning the street, when Dinah came out with a duffel slung over her shoulder, holding a sleepy-eyed Miles by the hand. Her face was set. Charlie shrugged into the backpack with the food and picked up his baseball bat.

  “Leave that behind,” said Dinah.

  “I’m the man of the house,” said Charlie. “I’m taking the bat.”

  Dinah opened her mouth to respond, but Peter said, “Charlie’s right. Bring the bat.” He already had the Sig Sauer in his hand.

  They went down the walk to Peter’s truck. He said, “Charlie, we don’t have much room in the front. I need you to get in the back with Mingus, just for a few minutes. It’s going to be pretty dark. You okay with that?”

  Charlie paused for only a moment. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Mingus won’t be so scared with me there.”

  Twelve years old. Jesus Christ.

  Peter saw Dinah wipe her eyes as she climbed into the passenger seat after little Miles.

  This whole thing was fucked.

  —

  The first minutes, they drove in silence. But when Dinah realized where they were going, she said, “No.”

  Peter said, “It’s not my first choice, either. But where else do you suggest? Your grandmother’s house?”

  She let her breath out in a thin, bitter stream.

  “Dinah,” he said. “I need to tell you something. The Marine Corps home-repair program. It’s not real. I made it up.”

  She looked at him. “I know,” she said. “I called the VA yesterday. We’ll have a conversation about it. But not right now.” She pointed her chin at Miles, half asleep on the seat between them.

  “I let Jimmy down. I should have visited. I was trying to help.”

  Dinah nodded. “You did help,” she said. “It’s not your fault that it’s come to this. So thank you.”

  He pulled the truck up in front of Lewis’s building and got out. Nino and Ray were waiting outside, standing like sentinels in the cold.

  Dinah closed her eyes again at the sight of them, just for a moment. Then opened her eyes, popped the latch on her door, and got out. Peter knew she didn’t want to be there, but she had no choice and she knew it. So she kept going.

  Peter nodded at Nino and Ray. They nodded back. He didn’t know what arrangement Lewis had made with them, and he didn’t care. Lewis said they’d stick and that was good enough. Dinah scooped Miles up onto her hip, where he put his arms around her neck and his face into her shoulder. He must have weighed eighty pounds, like a sack of ready-mix concrete. She carried him like he weighed nothing at all.

  She looked right at Peter, her blue eyes shining clear in the dim glow of the streetlight. “We’ll talk when it’s over,” she said. Then walked toward the building without a backward glance. Peter went to let out Charlie and the dog.

  As he was locking up again, his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket. It was the number he’d last seen in spidery handwriting on three business cards. He pushed the button. “Hello.”

  “Peter, sorry to call so late.” Lipsky’s voice was so clear he might have been standing right there, talking quietly into Peter’s ear. “But I figured you’d still be up. I wanted to tell you that replacement glass for your truck window came in today. Are we still meeting at the Riverside Veterans’ Center in the morning?”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” said Peter.

  “Me, too,” said Lipsky. “See you about eleven. I’ll buy lunch.”

  “Hey, thanks for this,” said Peter. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Just an old soldier, trying to help,” said Lipsky. “See you tomorrow.”

>   The phone dead in his hand, Peter turned to Lewis’s building. But everyone had already gone inside.

  He didn’t figure Dinah needed any help managing Nino and Ray.

  So he put the truck in gear. Picked up his phone again and punched in Detective Zolot’s number.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  The man even woke up angry.

  “You said you wanted in,” said Peter. “I’m getting close. And there’s a new wrinkle.”

  The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat

  From the dark interior of a rusting brown Mazda, Midden set the night-vision gear on the passenger seat and watched the old green Chevy pickup rumble away. It had been a simple thing to follow the Marine from the woman’s house.

  He could see why the Marine was causing so much trouble. It was a risk, what they had planned. Even from a distance, he could tell the man was the real thing.

  The others were asking a lot. Involving the woman and the kids. This wasn’t what Midden had signed up for.

  He told himself that he was committed. He was reliable.

  One last time.

  Then out of it for good.

  He reached into the footwell and took hold of the M4 assault rifle. Laid a chamois cloth in his lap and began to field-strip the weapon in the dark as he had done so many times before.

  The series of familiar movements was like an old friend in a world where he had none.

  All his other friends were dead.

  VETERANS DAY

  35

  Peter

  Peter woke early on full alert.

  His truck was on a dead-end street on the south side of town, tucked in with other parked cars. Hard to find by accident.

  It was still dark, his breath steaming in the cold air coming through the missing window of his truck. He stretched his ears out for whatever had gotten his sleeping mind’s attention. The hush of a passing car on the next block. The faint clatter of the last leaves falling to the pavement. But nothing else, no warning sound. So he lay in his bag and thought about what he had to do that day.

  “Stay right there. Don’t move a muscle.” The voice was calm and quiet, and coming through the missing window, right above Peter’s head.

  Peter’s whole body tensed, but the sleeping bag was zipped up to his chin. He’d spent an hour doubling back, checking his tail to make sure he had a safe place to sleep. He’d even looked for a GPS tracker like the one Lewis had put on the black Ford, and had found nothing.

  He should have kept Mingus with him. Mingus would have warned him.

  “Put your hands out.” Peter knew the voice. “Slowly. Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “How did you find me?”

  A snort of derision. “I could follow this truck with my eyes closed. That cargo box is like a radar beacon. Now show me your hands. Slowly. And don’t even think about the gun on the floor.”

  “Okay,” said Peter, working his hands free of the bag and raising them past his head, resting them on the sill of the window. He should have slept in his boots. He should have slept away from the truck. He should have done a lot of things. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”

  The latch clicked as the door opened at his head. “Slide yourself out of the sleeping bag and onto the ground. Hands stay out and away.”

  The man wasn’t going to be provoked. He was too cool, too experienced. So Peter did as he was told, scootching awkwardly out in his T-shirt and jeans to stand barefoot on the cold cracked asphalt amid skittering leaves. Peter could feel the man behind him, angling just out of reach.

  A second man stood in front of him, a thoughtful five steps away, holding a gun, which took away any significant options an unarmed and barefoot man might have. Peter had never seen him before. He wore a black canvas barn coat that made him fade into the darkness of the early morning. The only parts of him that were truly visible were his face, weatherworn and empty as a crater, and a pale hand holding a long-barreled target pistol like it was machined for the task.

  “Now what?” asked Peter.

  A long arm flashed fast as a whip around his neck from behind and clamped tight over his windpipe. The static flared.

  “Just relax, Peter. This won’t take long.”

  Lipsky’s voice was warm in his ear as the tall detective pulled Peter close, the fist of the choking arm locked tight inside the crook of the opposing elbow. The old illegal police choke hold blocked the blood flow to the brain and would knock you out in as little as ten seconds. Two or three minutes and it could kill you.

  Peter fought back, the white sparks arcing high. He stomped Lipsky’s foot hard, then thrashed to the side to get the other man off-balance. He twisted and kicked and bucked, but Lipsky was fit and well trained and stronger than he looked. The former Ranger had the hold locked in place.

  Peter fought, but his time was running out. He fought until the white sparks rose up to fill him completely.

  He fought until the world turned to black.

  36

  Peter

  He woke sitting in a chair. He kept his eyes closed, trying to learn whatever else he could.

  His wrists were bound tight to the chair’s arms, his ankles tied to the chair’s legs. His bare feet were cold on a hard, dusty floor. He had a headache and a nasty taste in his mouth, his neck and throat were sore as hell, and he was absurdly glad to be alive.

  He smelled the deep chemical funk of the fuel oil and knew he was in the warehouse. He had to believe that Lewis was still out there, watching. The plan wouldn’t change for Lewis. The fail-safe would still be in place. That made it slightly easier to be tied to a chair.

  He heard a man talking to himself in a singsong voice. “On behalf of the American people. We the people. We shall rise.” The voice was familiar.

  Then the same voice, softer, tinny, and distant, maybe coming from a small speaker. “We the people are making a statement with our actions today. A statement that the American people are still the rulers of our own nation. Not the elites who would pervert our laws for their own ends.” He knew that voice.

  Then a different voice. “I know you’re awake, Peter.” Lipsky.

  Peter opened his eyes.

  He was in the big warehouse room with the swept floors behind the locked security door. The big iron door to the veterans’ center was closed. Peter was relieved to see the bags of fertilizer still stacked on their pallets.

  His chair sat behind the long folding banquet table. The table held a plastic bin with a jumble of electrical parts and long coils of flexible plastic electrical conduit joined to plastic electrical boxes, with pairs of wires showing at each end. Peter didn’t need to count them. He knew there were ten, one for each white plastic drum of oil. Lipsky stood on the far side of the table.

  Beside Lipsky was a small portable video camera on a tripod staring at him with its dark unblinking lens.

  The white static rose up abruptly then, his chest tight, all those brick walls closing in, wrists and ankles tied with yellow plastic cuffs that kept him trapped here, inside. Peter closed his eyes again and shoved down the static. He pulled in one shallow, ragged breath, let it out. Then another, and another, breathe in, breathe out, trying to keep his heart from climbing into his throat, the white static from rising up until his mind held only the frantic need to run, to escape, to stand free under the open sky.

  “I thought you were tougher than this, Peter.” Lipsky’s voice was calm. “It was just a choke hold. And a little something from the police evidence locker to keep you out for a few hours.”

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Push it down. Think about that Navy shrink who saw the automatic panic, who walked him out to that park bench. Who told him to develop a relationship with the static. This was his life. It was up to him how he would live it.

  Make friends with the static. Breathe in, breathe out.
/>   Hello, old friend. Hello. Now fuck off, would you? I have work to do.

  Lipsky’s calm, kind voice, coming closer. “Maybe it’s the confined space? I could see it when you sat in the back of that police car, the day we met. Must be pretty rough.”

  Breathe in, breathe out. Peter opened his eyes to see Lipsky standing beside him now. He thought again of Lewis, somewhere outside. Waiting.

  “Does this mean I’m not getting the new glass for my truck?”

  An explosion of pain to the ribs, Lipsky hitting him hard.

  “Ow, shit,” said Peter, coughing.

  “Where’s my C-4?” Lipsky’s voice still calm and kind.

  Peter heard the singsong voice again. “We the people. The American people.”

  He opened his eyes. A skinny young man in a Marine’s dress blues sat on a folding chair in the far corner, tapping at the keys of an old laptop. The soft, tinny voice came next, from the laptop’s speakers.

  “Some within law enforcement may consider our actions to be criminal. But we are not criminals. We are veterans of the United States Armed Forces. We have fought for this great country in the past. And we fight again now to wrest power from the financial giants that have taken control of this nation that we love. We have struck once and we will strike again.”

  Jimmy had found him, and Peter had, too. Cas had shaved his beard and was easier to recognize. Now Peter knew why he’d taken his dress uniform from his closet.

  “Hey, Felix,” said Peter. “Your nana sent me to find you. She misses you and wants you to come home.”

  Felix Castellano flicked his eyes toward Peter for a moment, then away.

  Lipsky hit Peter again, in the same spot.

  “Ow, hey, what the fuck?” The pain helped to distract him from the static. “Is that how you treat a fellow veteran?”

  Lipsky’s voice was patient. “Where’s my C-4?”

  “It’s gone, okay? I threw it in the lake.”