by P A Duncan
“Come on, I’ll give you a ride home,” he said.
“No. Sore knees are penance for seeing you against Alexei’s wishes.”
“Damn, I was so hoping you’d divorce him.”
He meant it as a joke, but her smile was rueful. “I seriously considered it,” she said.
“Does he know that?”
“No, and if he finds out, I’ll know you told him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“In some ways, I’d like to know that more than where Jay is going to plant his bomb.”
With spring a few days away, Alexei Bukharin wanted the boat he’d neglected last year to be ready. He’d installed a fresh battery and tuned the motor, his escape from a cold, hard reality. On a nearby workbench, his mobile phone began to ring. He almost let it go to voice mail, but it could be Natalia’s school. He climbed down from the boat and grabbed it.
“Bukharin,” he answered.
“Hey, old man, how’re they hanging?”
Edwin Terrell.
“How did you get this number?”
“A few CIA analysts will do anything for a little of my time.”
“Mai’s gone for a run.”
“Given the distance to your house, I’d say you’ll see her running up the driveway in about an hour. She and I had an interesting conversation, one I’d like to share.”
“I’m not interested in what you and she discuss.”
“This is important, Alexei.”
Alexei’s neck prickled at the serious tone. “Go ahead.”
“She’s second-guessing herself.”
The professional in him said to listen to what the man had to say. The husband in him wanted no part of it. “Mai is fine,” Alexei said. “Is that all?”
“Your wife said, this whole Alexei thing put me off my game.”
“It’s none of your business. Don’t call again.”
Alexei hung up, turned off the phone, and went back to the house. Lubova’s car was gone from the garage. Good. No witnesses. Not that he’d do anything he had to hide. He wanted to have a frank discussion with his wife with no constraints.
After a shower and a change of clothes, he was making their lunch and saw Mai on the security monitor as she jogged to the house from the gate. He left the pot to simmer and waited for her entrance.
“That smells wonderful,” she said.
“Corn chowder.”
“Do I have time to shower?”
“Yes. You also have time to talk. About you, me, Snake, and how we fit together in your life. Don’t tell me you didn’t see him. He called me.” Her annoyance gave him some satisfaction. Terrell would get a piece of her mind the next time.
“All we did was talk,” she said. “That’s all we ever do.”
“I’ve prepared a delicious lunch. You and I can do the same.”
“You don’t want to start that conversation, the jealousy is a tad hypocritical, and I don’t want the drama. I want a nice, quiet lunch where we talk about anything other than our work or my friends. After that, for the next month, I’m locking myself in the office to go over every scrap of information again to see if I can pull that missing piece from my arse. I’d like your unconditional support. If I get it, I swear on our dead children, once this is over, we’ll close it out and never speak of it again.”
Alexei wondered if she knew she’d fallen into Siobhan Dochartaigh’s Belfast brogue; he’d had to concentrate to understand her.
“No one wants peace in this house more than I do. If I have to castrate myself figuratively to get it, fine.”
“I’m glad it’s figurative. Once this mission is over, I’ll want to use that physical attribute on a regular basis again.”
“Lunch in twenty minutes.”
Her smile never made it to her eyes. She jogged up the stairs, and he wondered if he’d not sold his soul but hers.
II
Terror in the Heartland
30
Cruel to be Kind
Somewhere
April 16, 1995
Dawn bled through the threadbare curtains into the latest in the line of shabby motel rooms. John Carroll peered at the ceiling, as he had all night. The dark hid the cracks, water stains, dead bugs, and other things he didn’t want to recognize. Daylight made them depressingly obvious. As a diversion, he experimented with how long he could keep his eyes open without blinking. Even in his solitude, with his father far away, he wouldn’t let the game go long enough for tears.
He’d stayed so still, he could ease from the bed, pull up the covers, fluff the pillow, and no one would know he’d slept there.
If I die, he thought, how long before my dad would worry?
Weeks. Maybe months. If he had to pull the trigger on this big gun, nothing would remain. His DNA would be vaporized, and his father wouldn’t connect him to the major news story. That his dad might search for him for the rest of his life made Carroll uneasy. His father didn’t deserve that, but maybe it’d be better he didn’t know. His dad could float down that river, denial, and take comfort from it.
Carroll was glad his grandfather would never know.
He shivered with the epiphany: His grandfather’s death had freed him. Carroll loved his father, and his father loved him. However, his father’s disappointment had been constant; his grandfather’s love always unconditional. No one in his life mattered enough to hold him back. And that moved him another step closer to fulfilling his mission.
One person mattered.
A hint of regret showed in the tears at the corners of his blue eyes. His meth-agitated brain regretted little. Not the fact his father wouldn’t know to grieve. Not the fact he’d be killing far more people than he had in Iraq. Not the fact he’d abandoned every human being who’d meant something to him. Even her. If he died, he’d regret never seeing her again, never knowing if she was safe. That almost undid him. No, she knew how to take care of herself. A survivor, he thought, and if I survive, too, we’ll be together.
Sunlight lasered through the thin spots in the curtains, making him squint. He sat up and eased his feet to the floor. The carpet was threadbare in places and far from clean, but the meth made sure cleanliness no longer mattered to him. He dry-washed his face and shook the sleep-deprivation away. Where am I, he wondered. He opened the drawer in the bed table and looked at the phone book beside the Gideon Bible.
“Oh, yeah,” he murmured. “Right where it’s going down.”
“So, lad, you’re going to do this?”
Her voice was so clear in his head, he almost expected to find her standing in front of him. No such luck.
All the thinking about her had made him hard. He’d take care of that in the shower. From his duffel, he took a clean set of underwear and went to the cramped bathroom.
He emerged clean, shaved, and sated. His hand rested on the room phone. No, too early to call, and he was starving. Carroll finished dressing, pocketed his wallet and room key, and walked down the street to a McDonalds.
Meth sapped his sleep and sometimes his appetite, but he fueled himself with two Egg McMuffins and an order of pancakes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. A while, obviously. On the return to his room, a second coffee and a cherry pie in hand, he cut behind the restaurant and fished a cardboard box from the dumpster.
Back in his room, he left the television off. The usual Sunday morning fare—hypocritical preachers and infomercials—didn’t appeal to him.
He sipped coffee and nibbled his pie as he cut the box into several squares, big enough he could write what he needed, small enough to fit on the car’s dashboard. Among his writing supplies, he found a black Magic Marker and used some of his writing paper to practice. After a few attempts to disguise his handwriting, he saw the futility. Who’d recognize it anyway? No one around here, but the Army had plenty of samples of his script. He’d take the chance the feds couldn’t track him from a hand-lettered sign.
A pleasant fantasy intervened. The feds pull
ing the rented truck over and telling him to come out, hands raised. He’d light the fuse instead, and bang! He laughed and spared some time to sketch the scene: the exploding truck with “BOOM!” in big letters above it. Arms, legs, and heads lying about in pools of blood. A caped superhero flew away.
“Take that you fascist bastards!” the hero said.
He worked on the sign, using his non-dominant hand. It was legible and different from his usual handwriting, like something you’d scrawl in a hurry: “Please don’t tow. Needs a jump start. Will move by April 19.” He underlined “will move” twice. Good. That looked like someone desperate not to have his car towed.
“What if it’s towed, lad?” came her voice again. “What is it you’ll be doing then?”
“I’ll walk away,” he said. “No one will notice me.”
“Oh, aye, unless you’re blown to smithereens.”
“Yeah, but I’ll take that fucking rotten building and its fucking rotten Nazis with me.” He looked around the room again to confirm he was alone.
Good. Everything was in place. Things were going smoothly.
He packed his duffel with his usual care, making sure the dirty laundry was in a plastic bag. The notepaper with his practice writing and the cartoon he burned in the metal trash can. He let the ashes cool, flushed them, and washed the can. The cardboard sign went into the duffel.
In the bathroom’s cracked mirror, he checked his appearance.
Nothing suspicious. An average guy in clean jeans with no rips or tears. Shirt tucked in. Belt in place. His oversized windbreaker hid his shoulder holster. His haircut was fresh, and he was clean-shaven. He’d be his polite self, appearing harmless and trustworthy.
He’d always been trustworthy. That wasn’t about to change.
A nearby church used the community center lot for overflow parking. His ancient car fit in with the others. He pulled into a spot as far from his objective as possible. The car was in nobody’s way, but he’d have to hustle to get to it.
Not the time to think about that.
He put the sign in place, got out, locked the doors, and shouldered his duffel. At a pay phone, he did his best not to look at the building, thinking of it only as a target. He could imagine how the media would report it: “A gaping hole in the skyline where once stood a symbol of government abuse.”
Yeah, sounded good.
A young couple with two little girls in frilly, pink dresses saw his smile and wished him good morning. He returned the greeting and winked at the little girls, who giggled as they passed.
More luck. The pay phone worked. After punching in his calling card number, he listened to it ring.
And ring.
And ring.
“Fuck,” he muttered, loss of control tugging at him. Relax, he told himself. Assess and find an alternative.
A church bell chimed, and he checked his watch. Ten o’clock. He’d give it an hour and try again. He bought a paper from a vending machine, got more coffee, and found a bench at a bus stop.
When he tried the call again, an answer came on the second ring.
“Where the fuck were you?” he demanded of Gerald Parker.
“It’s Easter. Corazon and I took the kids to church.”
“You know this is the weekend, right?”
“It’s Easter. I promised Corazon we’d do more family things, and I—”
“Listen, Jerry, we’ve got more important things to think about.”
Jerry said nothing.
All Carroll could hear was his own rapid breathing. “Jerry, don’t you fucking hang up on me.”
“Jay, I’m trying to keep my family together.”
The phrase “desperate times call for desperate measures” came into his head. Had he read that somewhere, or had Prophet said it?
When the words emerged from his mouth, he couldn’t believe he’d said them.
“Jerry, you remember what Prophet told you would happen if you don’t help me.”
A sharp intake of breath. Parker said, “Oh, Christ, don’t say that.”
“If you don’t get your ass here, I’ll do the deed for Prophet.”
“Jay, please—”
“Quit begging me like a fucking woman, Jerry. I can do this alone, but your wife and kids will pay the price.” He heard his friend’s shuddering breaths and fought remorse down.
“Jay, what’ll I tell Corazon? She’s fixing Easter dinner.”
“I don’t care, Jerry. Come get me like you’re supposed to. If you’re not here in three hours, my next call will be to Prophet to tell him you copped out.”
Parker’s sigh shattered Carroll’s soul. “I’m coming.” He hung up.
Carroll replaced the receiver, pushing aside the guilt from treating his best friend so shitty.
“We’re at war,” he murmured. “You do what you need to do.”
He looked at the building, squinting as the morning sun reflected off its windows. His eyes watered. The glare, nothing more. He was a soldier in his killing zone.
Not even Siobhan could touch him.
John Carroll doubted he’d have any friends left after this. On the drive to Jerry’s house east of Wichita, Jerry had said little and wouldn’t look at Carroll.
The tension here was as bad as in Enid, worse after Prophet arrived. That meant an extra meal, and Corazon didn’t hide her hostility. When the three men left to go to the truck rental place, Carroll was glad to be out of the house.
At the rental office, Prophet sent Jerry to the storage unit and came inside with Carroll, but he stayed off to one side, watching, his ball cap pulled down low over his eyes. Sweat pooled at the small of Carroll’s back.
No turning away now.
He used the Robert Worf driver’s license and cash to rent the truck. No problems. Prophet rode shotgun when Carroll met Jerry at the first storage unit. Prophet watched as the two men loaded the blue, plastic barrels into the rental. At the next storage unit, Prophet stayed inside the truck with the air conditioner going. Carroll and Jerry moved nearly three tons of fertilizer in bags into the truck. The final stop was the storage place where he’d put the new supply of det and dynamite, acetylene tanks, and gas cans for the fuel oil.
By the time they drove to several different places to buy all the fuel they needed, it was dark. At Jerry’s house, Prophet got out of the truck, climbed into a sedan, and drove away.
“It’s okay now,” Carroll said. “He’s seen you helped. Corazon and the kids are safe, and you know I’d never hurt them.”
Without a word, Jerry went inside his house. Carroll drove to the last motel on Prophet’s itinerary. He parked the truck in a far corner beneath a light and asked the clerk for a room where he’d spend a sleepless night watching it.
One good thing, he thought, in two days I’ll never have to deal with Prophet again.
31
Thus Bad Begins
Mount Vernon, Virginia
April 16, 1995
She hadn’t had the dream where she watched the man she’d loved die in a long time. This one was different. In this one, they stood, hand in hand, gazing at each other. Heat, fire, and light enveloped them.
Mai woke with a ragged cry, trembling from the afterimages playing in her head. She fought down panic. She was in her house, and she was alive.
She rose, head pounding, the room spinning. Her first hangover in a while, bad enough she wished she’d been abstemious. And the dream replayed in her mind like some George Romero horror fest.
That bomb seemed like a lifetime ago; in truth, it was less than a decade. The man in her dream had morphed into John Carroll.
Though she knew it would aggravate her headache, she shook her head to clear that image. Her stomach rumbled with hunger.
Hadn’t Alexei brought in a tray last night? There, on the desk. She hadn’t touched it.
Jesus Wept. A fifth of Jameson on an empty stomach.
“No wonder you feel like shite,” she muttered.
Afte
r she used the toilet in the attached bathroom, she splashed cold water on her face. That did nothing for the headache, but the dream faded.
A stranger with blood-shot eyes ringed with dark circles looked back at her from the mirror. And she stank. The same clothes she’d worn for how long? Who knew? Her unwashed hair straggled from a days-old braid. No wonder Alexei hadn’t tried to touch her in the past couple of weeks.
She undressed and tossed the dirty clothes aside. She set the shower as hot as she could stand it, lathering her hair and body. Some humanity returned. What day was it anyway? She had to give that some thought. Sunday, she decided. Easter Sunday, wasn’t it? Yes.
Her thoughts strayed to Irish history. Not yet eighty years since the Easter Uprising. An attempted revolution that had failed, much like the one John Carroll envisioned would fail. The Easter Uprising had left behind martyrs for which masses were still said and songs were still sung. All for a cause that lived in some to this day.
Was that what John Carroll wanted? To become a martyr for his misguided cause?
Well, then, she’d better stop him before he went down in history as merely another right-wing nut job, like a hapless Fenian.
For days now, she’d sat at her computer, sipping whiskey and re-reading every scrap of information she’d collected about John Thomas Carroll and his motley band of brothers. She’d replayed each of his messages while she lurked in news groups and chat rooms until it all merged into a twisted mess.
Stop pushing, she told herself, and it’ll come. She had no patience for that. The copious amounts of whiskey she’d consumed in the past month hadn’t hindered her progress. Of course not.
Clean, dry, and re-dressed in yoga pants and another tee-shirt, she went back into the office and removed the evidence of her debauchery. Alexei would count the empties when he collected the trash for tomorrow’s garbage pickup. He wouldn’t say a word, but she’d get that smug look of disappointment.
