The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  It was also about breaking something fragile.

  And burning down the world just to warm his cold, hungry hands.

  —

  Lipsky rose and clapped Felix on the back. When the younger man stood, he seemed taller than Peter remembered. Maybe it was just how very thin he was. He strode without a glance past Peter to the white bags of fertilizer on their pallets, and bent to stack the fifty-pound sacks on the hand truck. He lifted one in each hand as if they weighed nothing, and worked with a focused, manic energy. Peter knew that if he tried to talk to Felix now, the younger man wouldn’t even hear him.

  Lipsky watched with an odd smile on his face as Felix moved his heavy load out of the room.

  “What kind of meds are you giving him?” asked Peter. “Something to really fuck him up, right?”

  Lipsky’s smile widened, and Peter knew he’d guessed it. Lipsky had pushed the young Marine over the brink. But Lipsky would never admit it. “Hey, the man’s a patriot,” said Lipsky. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “No, he’s zonked out of his gourd,” said Peter. “Delusional and damaged. So what’s your excuse?”

  “You really should read your own manifesto,” said Lipsky. “Modern banks have wrecked the economy. They’ve grown so large they can gamble everything on a roll of the dice, and the government has no choice but to bail them out. They’re sucking money out of the middle class. They’re set up now just to profit themselves, rather than facilitate production and innovation, which is the role they’re designed to perform. Something has to change.”

  “And you’re actually into this?” asked Peter. “Lipsky the revolutionary?”

  Felix came in and stacked eight bags of fertilizer on the hand truck while Lipsky watched silently. After Felix walked back out, Lipsky turned to Peter.

  “What I believe,” said Lipsky, “is that the social contract is broken. Government has proven itself incompetent, and our elected leaders are driven only by greed for wealth and power. Corporations are no longer loyal to their employees or their customers, just their stock price. Executives no longer do what’s best for their companies, just themselves. Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Countrywide, JPMorgan. The list goes on.” He shrugged. “The only response for a rational person is to act in his own best interest. To take what you can get.”

  “Oh,” said Peter. “I see. You’re a thief. That’s why you’re working with Skinner. A prince among thieves.”

  The veterans’ center door banged open and Midden came through, towing a stumbling bear of a man by one unnaturally angled arm. “I got sidetracked by this guy. He must have been watching the truck.”

  Detective Frank Zolot moved in an agonized hunch, his face a furious clench of pain. His other arm hung free like a pendulum, some essential connection no longer functional. His cheap suit was rumpled and torn.

  Peter thought about Lewis, parked by the loading dock, not by the veterans’ center.

  Midden wasn’t even sweating and there wasn’t a mark on him. Although from the black specks on his face and the grime on his fingers, Peter knew he’d been under the truck. But Peter couldn’t imagine how Midden had broken both of the big detective’s enormous arms without any visible effort. Midden was clearly the most dangerous man in the room.

  Lipsky walked over. “What the fuck? Where’d this guy come from?”

  Zolot’s lip lifted in a silent snarl. Midden handed Lipsky a black automatic pistol. It looked like a Glock. “He had this. He said he was a cop.”

  Lipsky took the gun. “Where’s the plastic? Did you find it?”

  “I think so,” said Midden. “Give me a couple more minutes.” He dropped Zolot’s arm and the pain on the man’s face eased. Midden fixed Lipsky with a pointed stare. “Don’t kill anyone until I get back.”

  Midden held the stare until Lipsky nodded. Then Midden walked out.

  Lipsky turned to Zolot. “Hello, Frank.”

  “Fuck you.” Zolot’s injuries had not improved the detective’s mood. Although his broken arms rendered him essentially harmless, the heat of his rage still radiated like a glowing forge.

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “There’s a SWAT team gearing up in a parking lot three blocks from here. They have orders to shoot you on sight.”

  Lipsky grabbed Zolot’s wrist and twisted. Zolot gasped in pain.

  “Who else knows, Frank?”

  The big detective opened his mouth. Nothing came out but an agonized yelp.

  Peter sighed. He’d wondered if Zolot could deliver the cops. If his reputation was too damaged. Now he knew. Zolot was just another man caught in Lipsky’s web.

  Lipsky shook his head and released the other man’s wrist. “Nobody believes you, Frank. They never did. Shit, just look at you. You’re in a bad way, partner.”

  “You’re not my partner. You were never my partner. You were only out for yourself. How much did that asshole Skinner pay you to look away? What’s the going rate to duck a murder?”

  Four hundred grand, thought Peter, understanding now. In neatly banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

  “Frank, we had no proof,” said Lipsky. “The DA made the call, not me. Look in the record. We didn’t have enough to indict, let alone convict.”

  “He paid the DA, too, in campaign contributions. But he killed her. You know it, I know it. We could have sweated that fucker. But we didn’t. He got away with murder. And now? Now you’re going to blow something up. What’s the rate for that, you cocksucker?”

  “You eat what you kill, Frank,” said Lipsky. “You never did see it. Where the power is. Where the money is. Nobody’s going to make your fortune but you. If you want to inch along on your tiny little salary for the rest of your life, you go for it. You could have taken a risk. You could have forged ahead. But you stuck to your narrow little view. And look where it’s gotten you.”

  Zolot looked at Lipsky as if he were a different species. “It’s called an oath, Sam. We swore an oath. Do you remember? To serve and protect. All the people, not just the people with money.”

  “You’re a fucking dinosaur, Frank. Nobody cares about the people. Even the people don’t care about the people, they only care about themselves.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know why I bother. You didn’t get it then, you don’t get it now. And I’m tired of listening to your sermons. Good-bye, Frank.”

  Lipsky raised the pistol and shot Zolot in the head.

  The noise rang off the brick walls. Zolot crumpled to the dry and dusty floor, which soaked up the blood like bread under gravy. The smell of it was alive in the room.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Peter.

  “What?” said Lipsky, taking out a handkerchief and wiping down the weapon. His face was indifferent. “You thought I was going to let him live?”

  “No,” said Peter. “But he used to be your partner.”

  Lipsky looked at him, those X-ray eyes boring through him. “Partners are overrated.”

  Felix returned with the hand truck to take another load of fertilizer. The stacks of bags were shrinking fast. “Hey, Cas.” Lipsky held out the pistol with his pinkie through the trigger guard. “This is for you. It’s loaded and live.”

  Felix stood up the hand truck, then took the weapon, his face alive with interest. He dropped the magazine, checked the load, racked the slide to eject the live round, pushed the round into the magazine, and popped the magazine into place, all in under a count of five. Then tucked the gun into his belt at the small of his back and bent to reload the hand truck.

  Whatever was wrong with the guy, thought Peter, some parts of him were clearly still highly functional. The wrong parts.

  Midden walked through the door with a black-plastic-wrapped rectangle in his hand. When he saw Zolot dead on the floor, he stopped. “I told you not to kill anyone.”

  Lipsky took the package
from his hand. “You don’t make those decisions, Sergeant. I do.”

  Something flickered across Midden’s face and was gone just as quickly. But Peter saw it.

  Lipsky must have, too. “Look, I’m sorry. The man was in pain,” he said. “And he’d seen all of us, Midden. You killed him when you brought him in here. You know that. Hell, he killed himself when he braced you outside. I put him out of his misery, and ours, too. All right?”

  He didn’t wait for a response. He carried the package to the table and tore open the plastic, exposing two beige rectangles. “Only two,” he said. He turned to Midden. “This is it?”

  Midden shook his head. “That’s all I found.” He glanced at Peter. “Good hiding place, too.”

  “Not good enough,” said Peter.

  “That’s only half,” said Lipsky. “Where’s the rest?”

  “I got rid of it. And that’s the truth.”

  Lipsky looked at Peter with his X-ray eyes and seemed to accept it.

  “It’s enough, anyway,” he said. “Midden, thank you.” Lipsky took his phone from his pocket and hit a button. “We’ve got it. Bring them in. You need to finish the detonator.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Peter. Although this was what he had known would happen. “You said they hadn’t seen any faces. You said you wouldn’t touch them if you got the C-4.”

  “I said I wouldn’t if you provided the plastic. And you didn’t. Midden had to find it. And we’re missing half our goods.”

  Peter was watching Midden with one eye and saw it again. That flicker across his face, a look of disgust that came and went so quickly Peter almost missed it. Then the empty coiled stillness was back. But there was something beneath it, Peter now knew. Something submerged.

  Boomer, his face a mass of bruises, came through the door, towing Dinah by an elbow. Still handcuffed, Dinah had put the circle of her arms around Miles. They still wore their ragged blindfolds.

  Boomer steered them into a corner. “Sit yourselves down right there,” he said. “Don’t move, don’t talk.” Then he went to the table and peeled the plastic facing off the rectangles of C-4.

  Peter said, “I’m sorry, Dinah. It’s my fault you’re here.”

  “Peter?” She turned her face, trying to find the direction of his voice. She’d pulled Miles into her lap. “Peter, where are you?”

  “No talking,” called Lipsky. He was on the phone again.

  “I’m cuffed to a chair,” said Peter. “Keep your blindfold on. It’s going to be okay.”

  “I said don’t talk.” Boomer came over and backhanded Peter across the face. “You gotta learn to do what you’re told.”

  Peter tasted blood. “Fuck you,” he said. “Cut these cuffs off and hit me again. I’ll have you pissing blood for a week.”

  “Please, Peter,” said Dinah, arms wrapped tight around Miles, her face shrouded by the blindfold. “Do whatever they say. They told me they’ll let us go when they have what they need. I just told them where the money is.”

  Lipsky turned to the scarred man. “Boomer, get that detonator finished. Midden, go keep an eye on Cas. Help him get the bags dumped into the drums.” Midden nodded and walked out to the warehouse.

  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.

  42

  Midden

  In 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 sli
ghtly.

  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.

  43

  Peter

  Lipsky 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.