The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  Lewis briefly wished he could get online and make a few trades.

  Instead he waited.

  And counted.

  He was about ready to send the kid to the Boys and Girls Club and kick in that warehouse door when Skinner showed up.

  Not in the busted-up Bentley, Lewis noted. But in a very nice Audi SUV, which he parked beside the box truck like he owned the place. He walked around to the back of the truck and climbed up the loading dock and inside.

  So Peter was right about the hedge-fund asshole, which meant Lewis was right about the financial part.

  —

  After a minute or two, Skinner sauntered out to his car and drove away.

  Lewis had the little Radio Shack transmitter in his hand, ready to blow the charge on the truck’s engine block. The 10-gauge was muzzle-down in the footwell, ready to put some holes through the driver of the truck. Then the radiator, then the tires. Better to blow it up here in a neighborhood of single-family houses, where evacuation would be relatively simple and fast, than a more dense target area. Like downtown Chicago. It was only ninety miles away.

  “Okay, kid. Time for you to get out of the truck, take that dog, and get as far away from here as you can. Someplace safe.”

  “Sir, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Kid had that same stubborn look as Jimmy, too. “Listen,” said Lewis. “I ain’t askin’, I’m tellin’. The shit is about to hit and you gotta be somewhere else. There gonna be bullets flying and God knows what. And your mom would skin me alive if something happened to you. So get out the truck and walk away from that warehouse. I want you at least two blocks away.”

  “Mister, that’s my mom, and my little brother.” The kid’s mouth was set. “I’ll duck down low. Nobody will see me. But I’m not leaving.”

  Lewis was starting to think that he wouldn’t win this one. The engine would shield the kid some. It wasn’t the worst idea, except for the bomb. But if the bomb went off, wouldn’t none of them be left in one piece. The cold autumn wind blew through the open windows. The dog panted in his ear. He opened his mouth to reply when a skinny shave-headed guy in a Marine’s dress uniform came out and climbed up into the driver’s seat of the big box truck. That would be Jimmy’s missing Marine, Felix.

  “Get down. Now,” said Lewis. He opened the door and stepped out of the Yukon. He laid the 10-gauge across the hood and flipped the power switch on the transmitter, arming the radio. He put his thumb on the little red button.

  Then the guy with the scars came out holding the smaller boy by the arm, not gently.

  “Shit,” said Lewis, and took his thumb off the little red button. He watched as the guy with the scars pushed the kid up into the cab of the truck on the driver’s side, and the missing Marine scooted over to the passenger seat to make room. Then a tall, rangy white guy with a nice coat and a cop haircut—had to be the cop Lipsky—came out with his hand hard on Dinah’s arm. Lewis was stunned by the sight of her, even half a block away. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to see her without that tightness in his stomach. He didn’t think he wanted to.

  Had she been wearing handcuffs before? She wasn’t now. Lipsky hustled her up into the driver’s seat, and Lewis knew he’d lost his chance to blow the engine block. It would kill Dinah, and the boy, too.

  Lewis only had the 10-gauge. At that distance, he might well kill everyone in the cab of that truck with a single pull of the trigger. And he wasn’t going to do that. It paralyzed him, just the sight of her. So there he stood, one foot on the ground, one foot still in the Yukon, unable to decide. Kill Dinah and her boy, or let the truck go. Let them all go.

  Then the damn dog started barking, loud enough to be heard in Chicago. Lewis saw Dinah turn her head and look right at him, eyes wide. The cop shouted to the Marine and stepped up to the running board. He reached in through the open window and started the truck with a diesel rattle. Then he spotted Lewis with his cop eyes and pulled out his pistol.

  Dinah ground the truck into gear without taking her eyes off Lewis.

  And Lewis still couldn’t do a thing.

  The cop shouted again and Dinah gunned the engine and pulled the Mitsubishi out of the loading dock and onto the street like she’d been driving a truck all her life.

  She turned right, up the street and away from Lewis, and the cop Lipsky stepped off the running board, walking toward Lewis with his pistol held down at his side like Wyatt fucking Earp.

  The truck was at the end of the block now and turning behind the bulk of the warehouse. Lewis reached for the 10-gauge and Lipsky raised his gun and started firing steadily.

  Lewis stood behind his door, which gave him some protection, but it didn’t feel like it when the slugs started punching into the Yukon, spiderwebbing the glass. The guy wasn’t just emptying his clip, he was aiming. For fifty yards away and walking, the guy was accurate as hell.

  Lewis wanted to step out with the 10-gauge and put some holes in the man. It’s what he should have done. Put the man down. But the boy was right beside him, Dinah’s boy. And the boy didn’t ask for this. The boy didn’t have a choice.

  So he ducked into the driver’s seat, threw the Yukon in reverse, and roared backward up the street, steering with his mirrors and hoping like hell he wouldn’t hit anything.

  Maybe everyone else would die when that bomb went off, but not this boy. Not the son of Jimmy and Dinah, the woman they had both loved.

  46

  Peter

  The white sparks rose up in him like something alive. Peter focused instead on the pain of the plastic handcuffs biting into his wrists as the truck lurched around the corner, picking up speed. Whoever was driving wasn’t fucking around.

  Something was very wrong. When the big diesel started up, he expected the next sound to be the hard crack of the charge detonating on the engine block. Instead the truck rolled out and he heard the pop pop pop of pistol fire.

  He had to assume Lewis was dead. He was on his own.

  The white sparks grew until he thought the top of his head would come off. His lungs were barely functional, sweat running down his face. Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Midden stood on the other side of the cargo box, one hand looped easily through a cargo strap, blank as an unchiseled tombstone. Was there something in there?

  “You think you’re going to walk away from this?” Peter’s voice sounded strangled in his throat. Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Midden didn’t react in any way. As if Peter was already a ghost.

  “They’re going to kill everyone else, you know. Felix. Me. Dinah and Miles. Boomer. And you. It’s going to be Lipsky and Skinner. They need someone to blame, and you’re on the list.”

  The truck slowed slightly, then turned again. Peter swung at the end of his handcuff tether, his muscles clamping tight as the white static filled him. Where were they going? How long did he have? The truck gathered speed again, the tires thumping on the potholes. Midden stood like his feet were bolted to the floor.

  Peter said, “You think you’re ever going to get out of this truck? Boomer has the detonator, and it’s armed. Have you even checked to see if that roll-up is unlocked?”

  Midden just stared at him, his face a barren field. The soil so toxic that nothing could grow for millennia. But there was something going on inside that implacable mechanism. Peter knew there was. He just had to get access to it.

  The white static roared in him, louder, higher. Wait, friend, please wait. The bands around his chest tighter and tighter. It was all he could do to speak.

  “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve done in your life. But nothing could be worse than what is about to happen. And it doesn’t have to happen.”

  Midden just closed his eyes, as if profoundly tired. As if to pray. Or to weep.

  47

  Charlie

  He held on with both hands as the SUV flew aro
und the corners. Mingus crouched between the seats, digging in with his toenails, tongue flapping.

  “Do you see it?” said the driver, Lieutenant Ash’s friend. He drove like he was playing a video game, but this was not a game. “Do you see the truck? With your mom and your brother.”

  Charlie twisted in his seat, looking all around them. “I don’t see it, I don’t see it.” Horns blared as they slid between the cars, cutting across lanes. His mom would kill him if she saw him like this. His feet on the seat, safety belt barely on. But he had to find her first. Once he got her free she could kill him all she wanted.

  After zooming backward away from the guy shooting at them, they’d circled around to catch the big truck his mom was driving, but it had somehow gone a different way. And no matter where they went now, Charlie still didn’t see it.

  “Keep looking,” said Lieutenant Ash’s friend. “Guess I head for the freeway.” He roared around a Volkswagen and took a right on Locust, then slowed past the district police station. “You know where they’re going?”

  “No,” Charlie said, shaking his head. Did the guy think he wouldn’t have mentioned it? But he kept looking. “Tell me who you are again?”

  “Name’s Lewis. Friend of your mom and dad, from a long time ago.” He looked sideways at Charlie for a moment, his face gone funny. “You look like him, you know. Like your dad.” He turned back to the road. “Sorry about him dying.”

  It was a weird thing to say, but people had said a lot of weird things since his dad had died. But Charlie was curious about something. “So, um. Why haven’t I met you before?”

  “We were friends in school. We all got mad and had a big fight. It was a long time ago. You want to talk about it later, that’s fine with me, but maybe right now we find that truck, all right?”

  With the police station behind them, they sped up again, weaving through traffic like they were standing still.

  “Charlie,” said Lewis. “I need your help. So I got to tell you something hard. You ready?” He looked sideways at Charlie again. “That truck got a bomb in it.”

  Charlie closed his eyes. Damn. His mom. His little brother. His damn mom! “What are they going to do with it?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” said Lewis. “What’s the target? Shit, what if it’s in downtown Chicago?”

  Charlie thought that seemed like a long way to go with a bomb in your truck. It was like the challenge problems in math class, trying to find the right path though a complicated equation. Then he saw the path.

  He said, “What’s the tallest building in Milwaukee?”

  48

  Lewis

  Lewis blinked.

  It was the U.S. Bank building.

  He could see it in his head, a forty-two-story tower with white geometric bars, the bank logo right at the top. It even looked a little like the World Trade Center.

  He looked at Charlie. “You got it. That’s the one.”

  Thinking now that he really knew how they were going to make money. Skinner would have shorted bank stocks in general for several months in advance, as well as the market as a whole. He could have done that for nearly nothing, with a colossal upside if he could collapse the market, even for a day.

  It was a good plan. Wasn’t illegal to bet against the banks.

  He pulled the Yukon to the side of the road. “Okay, kid. Time for you to get out.”

  The kid shook his head. Looked straight out the windshield. “No, sir,” he said. The dog growled.

  “No?” Lewis gave him his best dead-eyed glare. “Boy, you do not want to go where I’m going. This shit is gonna get real ugly. So get the hell outta my ride and take that damn dog, too.”

  “Nope.” The kid set his mouth, stuck his chin out, and shook his head again. He looked so much like Jimmy right then. That same fucking stubbornness.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, boy. Get out of the truck.”

  Charlie looked at Lewis then, looked him right in the eye. “No, sir,” he said. Very crisp and clear. “That’s my mom and my little brother in that truck. So I’m going. Sir.”

  Lewis looked at the boy. Could see the man he might become. Lewis thought he’d like to know him. Not that Dinah would allow it. Even if they both managed to live through the next twenty minutes.

  “Okay.” Lewis nodded. “Okay.” Then he put the pedal down and peeled out into traffic. “But here’s the deal. You pay close attention, you do what I say, the first time I say it. No bullshit, no back talk, you hear me? I’m trying to keep you alive. If you die and your mother lives, she’s gonna consider that failure, and so would I. That’s not the trade she would make, you hear me? So keep your damn fool head down. And I’m not givin’ you a firearm, so don’t ask. Now I got something stupid planned, so get in the backseat. Right behind me, hear? And put on your seat belt nice and tight.”

  “What about Mingus?”

  Lewis shook his head. All this shit and the kid was still thinking about the damn dog.

  “Get him in your lap if you can, and hold on tight. You don’t want him on the passenger side.”

  49

  Dinah

  Dinah wrestled the Mitsubishi down Humboldt. The huge pit in her stomach had nothing to do with driving the truck. It was big and clumsy, but if she didn’t have to make too many turns, it wasn’t difficult. She looked sideways at Felix in his uniform with his spooky eyes. He had his arm around her boy’s shoulder, the muzzle of the gun pressed into his side.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  He didn’t answer her. He stared straight ahead, lips moving but no sound coming out. Like he was praying.

  The road was terrible, and the Mitsubishi’s suspension was not designed for comfort. She felt every crack and pothole with a jolt up her spine.

  “Talk to me, please, talk to me,” she said. “Tell me why my son has to die.”

  “Just drive,” said the man. His voice was thin, but his grip on her son was still strong. “It’ll be over soon.”

  She wanted the courage to just wreck the truck, drive it off a bridge. The river was coming up. That would be the best thing for it, to drop the bomb in the river. But she wasn’t sure she could.

  50

  Peter

  The plastic handcuffs bit into the skin of Peter’s wrists with each lurch and shudder of the truck. He trembled with the effort of holding in the static.

  The cargo box was closed in around him, his heart thumping in his chest, his breath trapped in his lungs. He was burning up in his sweat-soaked T-shirt even though it was cold enough to see his breath.

  The dark chemical stink of fuel oil filled the truck. His muscles were tight as clamps.

  Static was like a flashing thundercloud in his head, wrapped tight around his brainstem. His skull throbbed, about to explode.

  Midden stood by the cargo door with his eyes closed, still holding the tie strap. The man was as lethally capable as any man Peter had ever met. Peter saw how he’d hauled Zolot in. He’d broken both of the burly policeman’s arms without any apparent effort. He could surely stop Peter from doing anything, handcuffed to the wall as he was. Plus he had a wicked-looking folding knife clipped into his front pants pocket.

  But Peter saw something in him. A flash of morality at Lipsky’s willingness to kill Dinah and Miles. He seemed to be thinking. And he seemed to be listening.

  Meanwhile, the truck kept rolling closer to its terminal destination, and Peter was sure he’d heard Dinah and Miles in the cab.

  He didn’t have long.

  He couldn’t hold back the white static forever.

  He said, “I’m guessing you were overseas, like me.” Midden didn’t open his eyes or show in any other way that he’d heard. Peter said, “Maybe that gives us something in common, maybe not. I don’t know your part in this, and I don’t care. I just need to stop it.”

  51 />
  Midden

  Midden listened while the Marine talked. Eyes still closed.

  That alone was an admission of guilt, a willingness to die, given that he was well within the reach of the Marine’s feet. But the Marine made no move, not yet.

  Holding on to the strap, truck bucking unpredictably under his feet, Midden thought about everything he’d done to this point in his life.

  The years and lives wasted in Iraq for a bankrupt cause.

  The leaders he once trusted proving themselves unworthy of his trust, unworthy of the sacrifices of his fellow soldiers.

  Proving it over and over again.

  He had thought by working with Lipsky and Boomer that he would serve himself for once. Be done with causes and get paid. Retire someplace quiet with his nightmares and his memories, and see how long he could keep from eating his gun. Not long, he suspected. Not long at all.

  Only to discover that this Marine, who had likely had the same experiences as Midden, the same friends killed for the same wrong reasons, the same utter loss of all faith in man and God, was still fighting for a cause.

  Still willing to sacrifice his own life for others.

  The Marine kept talking. “You can do the right thing right now. Do nothing. And I’ll forget we ever met. You just walk away. You have my word.”

  “No,” said Midden. Eyes still closed.

  There it was again, that word come unbidden.

  Midden had spent the last years trying to pretend the war hadn’t happened, the war and everything he’d done fighting it. But now he found that he didn’t want to hide from what he’d done, in the war or in this dirty little scheme.

  Like the others, he, too, had wanted to get rich. And now he would share their guilt. There was blood on his hands. He had to be accountable for this. For everything.