the Second Horseman (2006)

by Kyle Mills

  "Shut it," Brandon said, adjusting himself into a more comfortable position and trying to get the blood flowing into his shackled hands. The soldier aimed his rifle, and Brandon gave him a bored frown. He'd never expected to survive their border crossing. Or his prison escape. Or the Ukrainians. Hell if he was going to be intimidated by a high school kid with a bad afro.

  He let his head loll to the left and looked at the similarly restrained Catherine. "So how are we doing?"

  "Maybe not quite as well as I'd hoped. I figured the Jordanian guards wouldn't speak any English, but for some reason it never occurred to me that none of the Jewish soldiers would, either."

  The Israelis were understandably upset that someone had just tried to crash through their barricades with a nuclear weapon in the back of their truck. There had been a lot of shouting, sign language, and brandishing of weapons, but it quickly became clear that this was a situation that demanded a bit more nuanced communication.

  "Can't plan for everything," Brandon said.

  "Go ahead and say it. You would have." She forced a hopeful expression that was barely visible through the dried blood on her face. "But, hey, we're not dead."

  In truth, he'd been fishing for a little reassurance, but it looked like "we're not dead" was the best she was going to do.

  "So, what now?" he said, not sure he really wanted to know.

  "When we get where we're going, they'll separate us. Interrogate us."

  "Great." He leaned his head back against the canvas behind him. "That's just great."

  "I told you not to come. I told you --"

  "It's not your fault," he said, turning toward her and trying unsuccessfully to get her to look at him.

  "Just tell the truth. Okay, Brandon? Tell them everything they want to know."

  "Everything?"

  She nodded, still not meeting his eye. "Don't try to be clever. I know you're good at it, but these people . . . They'll see through it."

  The implication was clear. Tell the truth and maybe they won't turn the electrodes taped to his balls up to eleven. Why were they trying to save the world again?

  "Are you looking for something?"

  Brandon ducked out from under the table and sat upright in his chair. "The electrodes."

  "Electrodes?" A broad smile spread across the man's face -- an open, easy, friendly smile. A smile that said he'd just returned from coaching the local Little League team and was about to start his volunteer shift at the old folk's home. It wasn't real, of course.

  but as a professional, Brandon could appreciate the effort that must have gone into developing it. The truth, just visible behind it, was that this guy was about an inch from pulling out a knife and starting in on Brandon's fingers.

  Beyond that subtle vibe, though, everything was quite pleasant. They were sitting in something that felt more like a conference room than an interrogation room and Brandon had a cup of really good coffee steaming away in front of him.

  "I think you've been watching too many movies," the man said in slightly accented English, squinting at the screen of his laptop. Finally, he pushed the computer aside and raised his reading glasses to the top of his head. "That's quite a story, Brandon."

  "Yeah. I guess it is."

  It had all happened exactly like Catherine said. They'd been separated the moment they arrived in this empty, spooky, little town, and an hour later the man sitting in front of him had arrived to politely listen to Brandon's stream-of-consciousness recounting of his past few weeks.

  "Where's Catherine? Is she okay?"

  The man nodded, but seemed preoccupied with the difficult task of finding holes in Brandon's story. He'd been on the Internet through the entire interrogation, verifying what he was being told. The bottom line was that there just weren't many paths that could take Brandon from an American jail cell to delivering a nuke across the Israeli border.

  "So they're still liking me for the Fed heist, huh?" Brandon said, trying to break the silence before it broke him.

  The man ignored the question. "You still want to stand by your statement that you've never met Edwin Hamdi?"

  "Like I said, I think I did -- when he had me pulled out of the condo --"

  "It seems a bit incredible that he would involve you to this level with no prior issues."

  "Issues? What do you mean, issues?"

  "For instance, maybe you don't like Jews? Or perhaps you are a supporter of the Palestinians?"

  Brandon took a slow sip of his coffee, being careful not to burn his mouth. "I want to be completely clear on this: If you put a gun to my head -- and I'm not suggesting you should -- I couldn't find Israel on a map."

  "Brandon!" Catherine threw her arms around his neck as the door was bolted behind him. "Are you okay? I thought I was never going to see you again!"

  "Wasn't so bad," he said, losing himself in her warmth for a few seconds before pulling back to look at her face. It was clean and he could see black stitches peeking out from the edge of a bandage on her forehead. "How was yours?"

  "Okay, I guess," she said, taking him by the hand and pulling him over to a sofa pushed up against the wall. Once again, the room wasn't what he'd been expecting. More college apartment than gulag.

  "They'll be cross-referencing our stories now, trying to figure out if we're lying. But I think they believed me. What about you?"

  He shrugged, still looking around nervously. "They didn't want to believe me, but why would I lie? Their whole country's going to be gone in three weeks."

  She agreed. "It's a little late for tricks."

  "Okay. So they'll think about it for a couple hours and figure out we're telling them the truth. What then?"

  "They'll try to find --"

  "I mean what about us?"

  "Oh."

  He waited, but she remained silent.

  "That's it? Oh?"

  "How would I know? I don't --"

  "Yes, you do."

  She stood and walked across the room, getting as far away from him as she could before turning and pressing her back against the wall. "I told you not to come with me, Brandon. I told you to run."

  "I think we've established that."

  She stared at the blank wall above his head. "If they can't find the bombs with the information we've given them, then they'll probably just leave us here to die in the blast."

  "And if they do find them?"

  "Then . . . Then they'll probably just kill us to keep the whole thing quiet. I imagine they'll let the U. S. government know what happened and hold it over their heads. The Israelis have never been very happy with the Morris administration's conciliatory stance toward the Arabs."

  Brandon nodded slowly, feeling a wave of sadness that actually obscured the fear of the past few hours. He'd almost gotten to the point that he could imagine a real life for himself. A life where he came up with a way to get his rush from something more productive than stealing. A life that maybe included Catherine. Of course, he'd always known it was nothing but a dream, but at least it had been a vivid one. Almost vivid enough to think about it becoming real one day.

  Chapter FIFTY

  Edwin Hamdi sat quietly in the backseat of his car, staring past his two bodyguards into the darkness beyond the windshield. It was after ten P. M. and the traffic was almost nonexistent as they pulled off the exit leading to the quiet neighborhood he'd lived in since his move to Washington.

  He turned in his seat and watched the trees lining the road as they were briefly lit and then swallowed up again. There was a certain serenity to be derived from the familiarity and stillness, though he knew it was nothing more than an illusion. The chaos he'd created was out there -- building and destroying, killing and saving. Reshaping the world.

  The evacuation of Israel was going as well as could be expected. After endless promises and reassurances -- as well as a number of outright bribes -- the Jews were finally crossing into Jordan and Egypt. Combined with the massive airlift effort as well as the involvement of th
ousands of ships from all over the world, it appeared that the Jews would once again be saved. Deserving or not.

  Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Palestinians were not faring as well. While they were on track to achieve a more or less full evacuation, the question of what would happen afterward was still unanswered. In many ways, they were a people unwanted by the world. The West wasn't anxious to absorb an uneducated mass that it considered largely radical and violent, and the Arabs weren't particularly interested, either. While the Jews were moving toward new and eventually permanent homes, the Palestinians were flooding haphazard refugee camps.

  Of course, there were also those who refused to leave. Some estimates put the number at a quarter of a million -- primarily fanatical Jews who would not let the land they thought they so richly deserved be pried from their fingers.

  The sound of crunching glass and subsequent deceleration interrupted Hamdi's train of thought and he put a hand out to brace himself. "Did we hit som--"

  He fell silent when he saw two small holes in the windshield, one in front of each of his men. A moment later, a dark figure with a rifle appeared in the street, running hard toward the car.

  "Drive!" Hamdi shouted throwing himself forward and wedging himself between the front seats. The man on the passenger side was completely still, his head resting against the side window, while the driver was slumped forward against the steering wheel.

  "Drive!" he yelled again, though he knew both men were dead.

  The car drifted to a stop and Hamdi jammed a hand against the driver's knee, trying to get his foot to depress the accelerator. Instead, the lifeless body just tipped to the right.

  The sound of crunching glass was louder this time, and came from behind.

  Hamdi jammed himself beneath the steering wheel and reached the gas pedal just as a powerful hand closed around his ankle. The car leaped forward and he was jerked violently back, slamming his head against the edge of the wheel.

  "Help!" he shouted weakly. "I'm Edwin Ha--"

  The pressure around his ankle disappeared and was immediately replaced by an arm around his neck. He reached behind him and tried to claw the eyes of the man who was holding him. At the same time, he heard the driver's side door open and his bodyguard's body being dragged from the car.

  The blind rage that suddenly boiled up inside him provided enough strength to twist around and partially face his attacker, who was still hanging partway out the broken back window. He swung a fist at the man's head and bit down on his forearm, filling his mouth with the metallic taste of blood.

  Instead of releasing him, though, the man just increased the pressure on his neck. After a few moments, Hamdi's strength abandoned him and he was shoved to the floorboard as the car began a smooth U-turn. The arm around his neck disappeared and he gasped for breath, too consumed with getting air into his lungs to notice the handcuffs closing around his wrists.

  As his mind cleared, panic began to take hold. He pulled painfully against his shackles and tried to rise to his knees but was held in place by a knee in his back. It was becoming hard to breath again, but this time it was his own fear robbing him of oxygen. He forced himself to stop struggling and to concentrate only on his breathing. He had to regain control. To stay calm.

  "Where are you taking me?" he finally managed to get out.

  "Somewhere we can talk."

  Hamdi had always prided himself on being a strong-willed man, someone able to do what was necessary when others wouldn't. In truth, though, that conceit had never really been tested. It would be now.

  "Do you know who we are?" the man said.

  Hamdi didn't answer immediately, instead letting the warmth and vibration of the floorboard seep into him. "The Jews."

  Chapter FIFTY-ONE

  The gaps between the boards that made up the door were almost a half-inch wide but there was nothing but darkness beyond. Brandon's hand hovered over the ancient knob for a moment before he tried to twist it. Locked. Or more likely just stuck.

  "I can't get it open, Colonel."

  Colonel Iyov Silva, the man who had so pleasantly interrogated him weeks before, strode across the living room they had just torn apart, accelerating to almost a run before slamming a foot into the door. The crunch of splintering wood filled the tiny house, but it held. Silva lined up again and delivered another kick, this time pulling part of the jamb away from the wall and sending the door cartwheeling down a flight of stairs.

  "Colonel," Brandon started, "it's over. There's no more time."

  The man ignored him, stepping cautiously onto the stairs and feeling along the wall for a switch. When lights came on, he let out a long breath.

  "Catherine! Another dirt floor!"

  The clanging of metal sounded somewhere in the house and Silva descended into the cellar to start the now familiar process of digging through old furniture and dusty boxes.

  "Did you find something?" Catherine said as she ran into the living room holding three long metal spikes.

  Brandon didn't answer, instead concentrating on the glassy sheen of her eyes. As near as he could tell, she'd completely lost it. Completely.

  They'd spent the last three weeks crawling through the abandoned buildings of this cluttered Israeli city, futilely searching every closet, basement, and attic. His hands were cracked and bleeding from manhandling furniture and jimmying doors and his back was killing him from the wooden floor he'd been using as a bed. Not that he'd really slept since they'd arrived -- instead, he just lay there, waiting for someone to decide that they'd outlived their usefulness and kill them both.

  He grabbed Catherine's arm as she tried to get by and held her there for a moment. "Cath. Jesus. It's today. Do you understand me? I've been keeping track of time. The bombs go off today."

  When she looked up at him, all that was visible was the blank desperation that had replaced hope in her. He let go and she ran down the stairs after Silva, asking the same doomed question she had a thousand times before: "Did you find something?"

  In her mind, she was solely responsible for all of it -- the destruction of Israel, the deaths of countless people, the greatest ecological disaster in history. The superlatives just went on and on.

  Maybe he should be thankful. They hadn't been tortured or summarily executed like he'd expected. Instead, they'd ended up here, working on one of the countless task forces charged with finding the warheads before they detonated.

  "Shit!" he yelled, slamming a hand against the wall and dislodging some of the hundred-year-old paint. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

  He wanted to take the steps three at a time, but the dim light and rotted wood demanded a less dramatic entrance. When he finally hit the dirt floor, his eyes hadn't completely adjusted, but he could still make out Catherine using her spike to penetrate the earth in a careful grid pattern designed to uncover something the shape of a warhead. Silva was doing the same, though more slowly. Every time he was forced to move one of the old pieces of junk that littered the basement, he stared at it like it was a family heirloom.

  "What the hell's going on, Colonel?"

  Silva looked up from an old photo album resting on an ironing board. "What?"

  Brandon held up his left hand, displaying an empty wrist. "You took my watch, but I'm not stupid. I can count. Today's the day they said the warheads would detonate. It's too late. We're not going to find them."

  "There's still time," Silva responded. "Still a chance."

  "How much time?"

  He didn't answer.

  "When are they going to go off, Colonel?"

  "How would I know that?"

  "Because you've found some of them. Not this one, but you've found some of them."

  "I don't know what --"

  "You've found some?" Catherine said. She stopped what she was doing and looked at Silva with an expression so pleading that Brandon found it hard not to turn away.

  "Come on, Colonel. Tell her."

  Silva seemed to soften for the first time in the weeks
they'd been together. He glanced at his own watch and then nodded slowly.

  "Yes, Catherine. We've found others. In fact, we've found all of them -- except this one."

  Her face animated slightly and she sagged against the spike in her hand. Brandon walked over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She was completely exhausted. Honestly, he had no idea what was keeping her going, but whatever it was, some of it seemed to have just drained from her.

  "The bombs were all set to detonate at the same time, right? When?"

  "Soon."

  "Then get us the hell out of here. We're not going to find it."

  "How can you be so certain?" Silva said. "If you have any information you neglected to provide me, now is the time."

  "Jesus Christ," Brandon said angrily. "Have I ever done anything that would lead you to believe I'd give my life to blow up a bunch of dirt I'd never set foot on until a few weeks ago? And what the f--"

  Silva held up a hand and Brandon fell silent. "You're a very exhausting man, Brandon. Has anyone ever told you that?"

  "You don't believe we know anything, do you?"

  He shook his head.

  "Then let's get the fuck out of here! We've done what we can. Colonel. You've evacuated, you've searched, and you've found all the bombs but one. You've saved your country . . ."

  Silva pulled a single cigarette from his pocket and lit it. "We captured Edwin Hamdi shortly after you told us about him. Our best interrogators were sent -- men I've worked with for years. It didn't take long for information on the location of the warheads to begin to flow. At first it was worthless, but as the questioning went on, it improved."

  He took a long drag on the cigarette and then looked at it in a way that worried Brandon.

  "Given time, anyone can be broken down," he continued. "Even the strongest and most clever of men. But we didn't have time. We had no choice but to begin the questioning . . . forcefully. The drawback to that approach, of course, is the toll it takes on the subject. By now he is exhausted, confused. Even if he wanted to tell us where the remaining warhead is, it's possible he would no longer be able to."