Collision (3 page)

This is a test.

Fine. I wish to fail the test. I smoke my last cigarette, sip at tea, and tell Samir that I’m walking down to the corner store to get some more cigarettes.

“I have cigarettes,” he says, fumbling at his pocket.

“Not the kind I like.” Whatever brand he offers, I will instantly hate.

“Poor students shouldn’t be picky,” Husayn says. Next to him, the boy with the scarred mouth nods, gives me a nervous smile, and offers to walk with me.

“No, I’ll just be a moment,” I say. I give a false-note awkward laugh. I want out of the room. Maybe I’ll take a bus home and tell Mama and Papa that their two oldest sons have lost their minds. I excuse myself and walk into the rain.

The store sits on the corner. I buy the cigarettes and I stand under a store awning, the warm honey of smoke calming me, in no hurry to return, watching the pedestrians a block away on fashionable Rue Hamra. My brothers. Getting involved with a wannabe terrorist-slash-bookworm who lives in an expensive apartment. Madness. I start to build the arguments in my mind, the words I will use to tell them they’re making a mistake. Blood of Fire, what a name. I imagine the drive home as my brothers will try to convince me that they’re serving justice. Perhaps they are. Yes, I understand their frustrations with the political system, with the West, with the rest of the Arab world, and . . .

The blast sounds more like a truck coughing up a ton of grit, more a rumble of machinery than death. I have heard explosions before. This one’s boom grabs my bones. I freeze and then horror fills my skin. I am running down the street, the cigarette crushed between my fingers and I don’t feel the cinder scorch my hand.

The boy with the scarred mouth, the other Khaled, smacks into me, knocks me down, slams a foot into my chest as he keeps running. I get up and run toward the apartment building.

Smoke from Husayn’s building roils into the rain. The third floor, where Husayn’s apartment is. Was.

A body, burning, crumples from the window. Falls, arms cartwheeling, smashes into the rubble-filled sidewalk as I run toward it.

Gebran. I start to scream. His arms that carried me burning, his fingers that strummed Bach and folk songs burning, his dark curly hair burning. He lands in front of me, ten feet away. I land on top of him to smother the flames. I don’t feel his flames, I don’t feel pain, I feel his death pass through me.

Hands grip me and pull me up from Gebran. A mask of surprise covers his dead face. Smoke wafts from his shoulders, his hair. Sirens wail. I bolt up the stairs, fighting against a surging tide of panicked tenants fleeing the building.

The floor is a ruin. Husayn’s apartment and the one next to it are destroyed. The fire rages in the two apartments, but from the stairwell I see fragments of the dead: The remains of an arm smeared along the floor. A head and the shoulders of one of Husayn’s friends, burnt and torn. A fetal-shaped crisp that was once a person.

And Samir. The edge of the blast caught him; perhaps he was coming out of the apartment to fetch me on my cigarette errand, to lecture me on my rudeness for leaving and not hurrying back. He is crumpled against a far, unsteady wall, legs bent like wind-churned twigs, his face pale, gore seeping out of him as though he is melting, his whole body turning to blood.

I kneel by him, try to pick him up, and he starts to come apart. He is beyond broken.

“Kill . . . kill them . . .” His lips manage to shape the words and he looks at me as though he doesn’t know me and he dies.

The ceiling begins to collapse and I run down the stairs. Out into the streets, past the sirens and the fire engines, smeared with my brothers’ blood, I run home.

Mama and Papa are standing at the doorway, watching me stagger toward them. The television is full of the bombing. I have to find the words to tell them Samir and Gebran are dead. I don’t even remember what I say. Probably, “Samir and Gebran are dead.”

Papa shakes his head, keeps shaking his head. Mama screams. They are lost in their grief and shock; they clutch at me, suddenly their only child.

When they can speak—when I can speak—they ask questions. No, I do not know why the apartment was bombed. No, Husayn, I had never met him before, he was my brothers’ friend. No, I only went to get cigarettes, I was only gone a few minutes. Papa starts to wheeze in shock.

“Who did this?” I ask, kneeling before the television to watch the news footage. “Who has claimed responsibility?” Because whatever division of the police or counterterrorism group has killed Blood of Fire will surely be trumpeting their victory.

Through his tears, Papa shakes his head. No one has claimed it yet.

Then that means the Israelis, the CIA, perhaps a rival cell. I think of how Hamas and Fatah, in the Palestinian camps, happily murder each other.

“Who is this terrible friend, this Husayn?” Mama demands. Then she is screaming a new trill of grief, because Papa’s hand closes over his shirt, disappointment in his eyes but also a surprising relief. He slumps into his chair.

We call an ambulance. I am calm on the phone. Me bloodied and singed and battered, Papa dead in his chair, Mama clutching my arm. We stand, looking at Papa in his recliner, my hair smelling of burnt blood, Mama sobbing.

Our world is gone. Gone, in an hour. I want to kill someone for the first time in my life, and I don’t know how to, who to hunt for, who to hate.

The police talk to me in the days and the weeks that follow. I am questioned for hours. I can give them nothing. I never say the words
Blood of Fire
aloud. The papers argue that the murdered men were a peace-committed organization, cut down by the Mossad or the CIA. No arrests are made.

No one knows who the boy with the scarred mouth is. Rumors fly: The boy was an American agent, an Israeli-bribed traitor who planted the bomb and made his escape, nothing proven. But now I know the truth.

Mama sits at her window and moans and cries and the sound of it will drive me slowly insane. The sound of her grief cuts me slow and deep, like a sword drawn over my back again and again, laying all my pain and hate and anger bare.

That night, I make a simple vow. Those who destroyed my family will pay, with blood spilled a thousand times more. My promise sounds ancient. It feels modern. Timeless. Hatred doesn’t seem to expire.

It is why I am coming to America, and am eager to do my duty.

4

Teach put a motherly hand on the big man’s shoulder, ran her other one across his burr of hair. “You literally dodged a bullet.” The relief in her face was vivid. “Pilgrim.” Teach leaned close to him. It wasn’t his real name but it was the name she had used for the long, dark ten years of working together, so it was as real as anything else in his jigsaw life.

Pilgrim nodded. “I must have moved just enough as he fired and it saved me. I felt the shot pass by my head. I hit the floor and the sniper thought he’d taken me.” Pilgrim stepped past Teach into the den in the rental house, which stood on a quiet bend of Lake Travis, near Austin. Teach and her assistant Barker had already started tearing down the scant equipment in the safe house: erasing the laptop’s drive, looping cables. They always packed lightly so they could vanish quickly. She told Barker to finish loading up the cars.

Pilgrim sat at the table, rubbed the back of his head as though the bullet had left a trail in his hair. “I should have just kidnapped Adam, forced him to tell us how he found us, who he worked for.” He shook his head. “I don’t like losing, Teach.”

“We couldn’t tip our hand early that we were watching him. You made the only approach possible.”

“Whoever he works for didn’t want him talking.”

“You should have brought him back here.” This from Barker, stepping back inside the house to pick up a box containing eavesdropping equipment. Pilgrim wondered if the kid had wiped the milk off his lip. He couldn’t be more than twenty-three or so, bespectacled and thin. He had more opinions than experience.

Pilgrim ignored him. “Adam thought I was a terrorist. God only knows what he told Homeland.”

“I’ll derail that with a few phone calls.” Teach’s face was normally florid, a little plump, but now her skin was pale and her mouth a thin slash of worry. She was in her fifties, slightly built, bookish, with a polished Southern accent. “This sniper—”

Pilgrim said, “I recognized his face. Nicky Lynch. Rumor was he killed two CIA officers three years ago in Istanbul.”

“I remember,” Teach said. She stood next to him, inspected his head as a mother might a scrape. He shrugged her off. “Hon, give me info on his car.”

Pilgrim described the car, gave her the license number. “I’m sure it was a rental, paid for under a false name. Or stolen for the job.”

“Barker, track the plate when we get out of here.” She nodded at Barker, still standing in the corner. “Let’s get the bags in the car, hon. We’re heading back to New York.”

Barker nodded. He paused at the door. “I’m glad you’re okay, Pilgrim.”

“Thanks.”

Teach waited for Barker to step outside and closed the door behind him. “You nearly get shot and you don’t call me immediately?”

“I’m having a really unpleasant idea. Only you and me and Barker knew about the operation. And foreign gunmen don’t just show up in a place like Austin. Someone had advance word of our operation.”

“Barker’s clean.” Teach went to the window as if to regard Barker afresh as he loaded the car. “Did Reynolds give you any information before he died as to how he found us?”

“No.” He went into the bedroom he’d used, started packing a few essentials into his bag.

Teach rubbed her temples. “Whoever Adam Reynolds was working for has obliterated his tracks. Barker’s found nothing unusual in Reynolds’s life: no unexplained money, no accounts, no suspicious e-mails or phone calls, nothing. Which scares me. We’re talking very smart, very dangerous people.”

“Clearly. They killed their own boy genius for talking to me.”

“It narrows the suspects.” She shrugged. “Terrorist organizations. Organized crime. Drug cartels. Foreign intelligence services.” She offered a wan smile. “No shortage of people who hate us, hon.”

Pilgrim went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face. A ghostly heat tingled in his hair, left over from the bullet, as though its close path had singed his scalp. Just imagination, he told himself, and he stuck his fingers under the cool jet of water. He didn’t want Teach to see his hands shake. It was strange to think how close he had come to his brains painting the walls and the desk and the surprised face of Adam Reynolds. The poor dumb brainiac.

Pilgrim dried his face. “Reynolds. All he wanted to do was good.”

“Exposing us is not in the national interest,” she said. “It’s necessary for our work that we remain unknown.”

Pilgrim shook his head. “I’m tired of what’s necessary. Necessary sucks. I want to do what’s decent.”

She put her hands on his shoulders. “Pilgrim, you do. Every day. You’re tired and rattled. You’ll feel better when we’re back home. We’ll regroup, plan our next move.”

“Screw the next move. Suppose there’s evidence in his office about the Cellar. Something I didn’t find. What do we do? Hide? Take up new names and new lives, again?”

“You knew what our work was when you signed up. You knew it entailed sacrifice . . .”

“Don’t lecture me about sacrifice. Sacrifice implies a choice.”

“You had a choice today.” Teach crossed her arms. “You should have let Nicky Lynch believe he succeeded. Track him and see who the hell hired him. Instead you pull brainless macho crap. You probably liked him realizing he’d missed.”

“Yes. I’ll long treasure the surprise on his face before I blew him away.”

“Lose the sarcasm. You didn’t analyze the situation and I want to know why.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t think because—I don’t want to do this work anymore.” The realization was clear in his head, unexpected but sharp.

She came to him and touched his arm, and it made Pilgrim remember the old days, when she first found him, offered him a choice better than a lifetime in a dank hellhole of a prison that smelled of ancient stone, tears, and blood. “You’re just shaken—”

Pilgrim shrugged off her hand. “I’m done. Adam Reynolds found me, when no one else ever has. He knew the aliases I used on the jobs in India and Canada and Syria. He could have plastered the news channels about us. We can’t hide anymore.”

“Wrong. We simply find out how he found us.”

“I don’t want to work for the Cellar anymore. I want a normal life.”

Her frown deepened. “Stop this nonsense. You’re not resigning, Pilgrim.” Teach was like a mother who didn’t hear what she didn’t want to hear, he thought. “We’re dead if our aliases can be exposed. I know you well enough that you won’t walk away from us while we’re under attack.” She picked up her phone, started punching in a number.

He heard his own words again:
I want a normal life.
He touched his pocket; the notebook was there, where he always kept it. He wanted to go to the lake’s shore, sharpen a pencil, draw the face as he remembered it, as he dreamed about it. But not now.

Pilgrim clicked on the television, surfed to a news channel. CNN showed an aerial shot of a downtown Austin building, police securing the scene. The reporter said one man was confirmed dead in a sniper shooting and another death in a nearby parking garage might be related. No mention yet that the dead guy in the garage was a known assassin. No release of Reynolds’s name yet, it was too early. The talking heads droned on, the reporter on the scene parceling atoms of worthless data and trying to make her words meaty and relevant.

Teach got off the phone. “We’ve got seats on the evening flight to LaGuardia.”

Pilgrim made a walking-away gesture with his fingers. “Have a good trip.”

“You can’t resign . . .”

Barker stepped into the bedroom doorway. He straightened his glasses. “Good Lord. Are you quitting?”

“False alarm. It’s the shock of nearly getting shot,” Teach said.

“Your timing sucks.” A strange smile touched Barker’s face.

“That’s what I said, he can’t leave us now . . .” Teach started. She turned to Barker and she stopped. Her body blocked Pilgrim’s view of the young man and he stood.

Barker held a Glock 9-millimeter. Aimed at them.

Pilgrim felt disjointed, still blinking from the surprise of surviving a sniping, and the slight, bespectacled Barker reminded him of poor, foolish Adam Reynolds and he thought:
nerds with guns.
Then his survival instinct kicked in, an engine in his chest, and he calculated—eight feet to reach Barker, with Teach between them. He couldn’t get to Barker before Barker shot Teach.

“This is disappointing,” Teach said.

“I apologize,” Barker said. “Nothing personal.”

Pilgrim was silent. Barker was stupid, tipping his hand early. Therefore he would do something else stupid. Pilgrim put the worn, tired look back on his face, one that would make Barker smug.

Teach kept her voice calm, but Pilgrim, behind her, could see a shift in her stance, a balancing to shift her weight forward.

Pilgrim said, “You work for the same boss as Adam Reynolds.”

“Wow. Give me a moment to deal with the staggering awe I feel at your mental prowess.” The gun gave Barker a sense of power, shining in his cocky smile. “Retirement is definitely in your future.” Barker kept the gun locked on Pilgrim.

“Put the gun down. I’ll pay you better than whoever you’re working for,” Teach said.

“Shut your mouth,” he said with an eye roll.

Pilgrim said, “Why are you waiting?” because there was no good reason for the kid not to shoot them both. He risked a step to the left. Teach stayed still. “I’m unarmed and I still make you nervous.”

“Consider it your last compliment,” Barker said.

Footsteps approached, boots crunching into pebbles. Teach had chosen a rental house with a gravel driveway—the stones announced feet or tires with a growl.

“They want Teach alive,” Barker said. “So cooperate and she doesn’t get hurt.”

Too much information, Pilgrim thought. “What about me?” he asked.

“You’re dead,” Barker said and Teach rushed him, drawing the gun’s aim. Barker hesitated for a fraction of a second, not wanting to shoot her, obeying his orders. Teach rammed into Barker, catching him in the door frame. Pilgrim seized the gun from Barker’s hand in a swift downward wrench that broke Barker’s wrist with a sickening crack.

Barker screamed and dropped to his knees.

Teach took the gun from Pilgrim and moved into the den. Their guns were gone, hidden by Barker. She locked the back door. “Three more guns, upstairs closet,” Teach said.

Pilgrim ran up the stairs. In a closet, he found two semiautomatic pistols and a rifle. A crash boomed downstairs, glass breaking, a door being knocked loose from its frame. He grabbed the rifle and barreled a third of the way down the stairs. He saw chaos.

Barker still lay splayed on the floor, face contorted in pain.

Teach squeezed off a shot at the first man through the door but missed by a fraction of an inch. Before she could fire again, a dark-haired bruiser of a thug struck her in the arm with the butt of his rifle. She lost the gun and he grabbed Teach as she staggered backward, then shoved her out the door, following her.

Two other men covered the room with semis. Pilgrim raised the rifle, tried to angle the awkward shot past the railing.

Barker screamed, “On the stairs!”

The men spun the guns toward him and opened fire.

The railing splintered around Pilgrim as he retreated upstairs. Blood wet his temple, cut by the flying debris. He reached the second floor, covered the stairs with the rifle, and backed up next to the window. He peered through the glass.

As he dragged her across the yard, Teach struggled against her captor, hitting a well-placed blow to his throat. But he had a hundred pounds and twenty fewer years on her, and with a jackhammer backhand he knocked her into the scrub. She fell like a stringless puppet to the rain-wet lawn.

Silence below. Not a cry from Barker, no feet slamming on the stairs. The men in the house were waiting him out.

Pilgrim watched the bruiser throw an unconscious Teach over his shoulder and start a hard run toward the oak thickets behind the house.

Pilgrim shattered the window with the rifle butt, took careful aim, and fired. The bruiser jerked and fell, he and Teach crashing to the grass. Pilgrim knew he should turn his eyes back to the staircase, to the immediate threat in the house, but he kept his gaze locked on Teach.

He heard an angry bellow from downstairs.

Get up. Run,
he willed her.

She didn’t move. Jesus, maybe he’d hit her. The idea iced his heart. He didn’t see blood on her, but the way she lay slumped, blocked by the bruiser, he couldn’t see her clearly.

He heard a barked, angry half curse, half command. “You can hold a gun in one hand, can’t you, idiot?”—in rapid, heavily accented English, the leader must be talking to Barker—then “Position yourselves, wait for the dog to panic.” Spoken in Arabic. First an ex-IRA sniper and now these assholes. It was an international gathering to kill him. He swallowed past the thick dryness in his mouth and a peculiar serenity filled him and he thought:
You guys made a really long trip to die.

He glanced around the room. The only furnishings were a table and an office chair, not much for cover.

He calculated how long it would take him to get down the stairs if both men turned away from the stairwell, toward the window. Not long enough, not running. He moved to the lip of the floor, checked the stairs. Empty. That meant Barker and the two gunmen were taking cover, waiting for him to expose himself on the trapped boundary of the stairs, where his options were limited. They, on the other hand, had an entire room in which to move and catch him in their cross fire.

He returned to the window and saw Teach’s chest rise in a hitch of breathing. She was okay, just out. But two men emerged from the dense grove of oaks and ran toward her. If he fired at them, the three men waiting below would know he was aiming out the window, busy with multiple targets, not at the stairs. In moments the trio would rush upstairs and obliterate him with the semis.

Stalemate.

One of the men, with hair dyed blond and waxed into spikes, threw Teach, still unconscious, over his shoulder. He raised high a pistol, nestled the barrel against her head, where twigs tangled in her graying hair. Pilgrim understood.
Fire at us, she dies.
The man turned and ran awkwardly, Teach bouncing on his shoulder. The second man, wearing gaudy wraparound sunglasses, covered their retreat into the woods. They left the dead bruiser in the grass.