Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Nate turned back to his daughter. “Just need to handle some business with the people who are after us.”

“Like when you got all mad at those guys at the bank?”

“Oh, honey,” he said, “I haven’t gotten mad yet.”

Her extraordinary brown eyes, set off by those long lashes, took his measure. “Is it gonna be okay?”

He remembered a trip they’d taken when she was four, their airplane shuddering over the Rockies. He’d been convinced they were going to drop out of the sky, but he’d told her it was all fine, that’s just how airplanes flew sometimes, and she’d gone contentedly back to her coloring book while he and Janie had white-knuckled their armrests and braced for a plummet.

“Yeah.” He smiled down at her. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Satisfied, she returned to her book.

Her take-it-for-granted faith in him was the most precious gift she could have given him.

He stepped from the porch into the mud, and his father came up off his lean on the Jeep. They regarded each other, his father’s face shifting as he grappled whatever he was feeling back under control.

Nate said, “Dad, I want to tell you how much-”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” He squeezed Nate’s shoulder once, gently, then lowered his head mournfully and moved inside, the screen door banging after him.

Janie stood in the mud with Nate, before the Jeep. The mist had given over to a faint rain, her blond wisps turning dark at the points. Focusing to make sure his hand listened to what he was telling it, Nate put the key in the door.

“Bye, Dad!” Cielle called out from the porch swing. She waved, flashed a big smile, then went back to her book.

“I’m gonna tell her to come over,” Janie said. “You should get to hug her at least-”

“No,” he said. “This is perfect.”

A few guitar chords vibrated the air around them, Jason working out the progressions of “Blackbird” on the porch behind them. Janie pressed her fist to her mouth, and her shoulders rose, but she was fighting everything down, not wanting Cielle to see. Nate lowered his hand to her as if asking her to dance.

She took it, her flesh cold and wet in the rain.

Water ran down her face, mixing with tears. The delicate lines of her collarbone, visible beneath her soaked T-shirt, rose and fell with her quick breaths. A smile tugged at her mouth but didn’t quite take. “See ya around, Husband.”

“Catch you on the other side, Wife.”

She stepped into his kiss, and he gripped her narrow shoulders, raised and trembling against the cold. He savored the feel of her full lips and then pulled away, and they touched foreheads, the rain making them blink. Those translucent blue eyes. Her wide, lovely mouth. The sporadic band of freckles against her milk-white skin.

“I was drowning,” he said, “and you saved me.”

He tore himself away, climbed into the Jeep, and drove off, wiping at the wetness of his face. He didn’t look back, because his self-control would not withstand another glimpse of her.

Around the bend he became aware of Casper galloping beside the Jeep, still favoring one front paw, and he skidded over in the slush and climbed out. He walked back, and they confronted each other in the road.

“Sit,” he said, and the dog obeyed.

Nate put down his hand. “Shake.”

Casper offered up a muddy paw.

Nate said, “Stay.”

Casper’s square head pulled back regally on his muscular neck. The yellow of his eyes shone through the brown, intelligent wrinkles furrowing his forehead, and it seemed in the way it has seemed for centuries between men and dogs that he understood precisely what was being said and what was not.

Casper withdrew his paw, let it drop to the wet earth.

Nate straightened up. “Good boy.”

He kept the muddy smudge on his palm, not wanting to wipe it off. In the rearview he could still see Casper there, sitting in the down-slanting rain, watching him drive away.

The grille of the Jeep pointed up the paved walk at Pavlo Shevchenko’s front doors. A stretch of twenty or so feet, two drops of three concrete steps each, then the house itself, nestled into the hillside.

The engine ran, though Nate was not behind the wheel or even inside the vehicle. With an AR-15 assault rifle slung over his shoulder, a Glock 19 shoved into the band of his jeans, and a frag grenade wedged in his front pocket, he stood behind the open driver’s door, holding in his hands a football-size hunk of fine-grained granite he’d pulled from Pavlo’s own front yard.

Around the corner, parked under the protective cover of a neighbor’s drooping sycamore, he had prepped everything. Danny Urban, with his militia-like sensibilities, had made Nate’s job easier by acquiring gear familiar to an army grunt. Nate had wrapped two blocks of C4 with tape, adhered them above the gas tank, and sunk a military-issue M6 electric blasting cap into the white putty. Then it came down to junior-high physics, creating a simple circuit.

There was no leg wire in the duffel bag, an omission owed to Nate’s haste in raiding the evidence locker. After pondering the dilemma, he’d removed one of the Jeep’s rear speakers and stripped out several lengths of radio wire, which he’d connected to the blasting cap and the car battery before laying the two ends well apart on the ground before the front bumper. From his pocket he’d removed the two soup-can tops and taped one lead to each. When the jagged metal circles touched, they would complete the circuit and the Wrangler would go apocalyptic.

Now he needed a piece of paper to buffer the soup-can tops until contact. He searched the Jeep, finding nothing. No flyers, no CD jewel case from which to pull a cover. The service manual was long gone, his registration tattered and thin, and the proof-of-insurance slip too small to risk. How was it possible that there wasn’t a single piece of sufficient paper in the vehicle? His concern mounted, edging on panic. He couldn’t imagine coming all this way and having to deconstruct the bomb, drive down the hill, and go paper shopping.

A young father approached with his daughter, laughing and splashing through puddles in their rain boots. As they passed, the man stared at Nate curiously. The wires, C4, and duffel were not adequately indistinct even in the darkness. Nate forced a smile and said, “Engine trouble,” and the pair hurried along.

Watching them leave, hand in hand, Nate felt a solution take shape. He reached for his back pocket, removing the two photographs. Cielle crouching beside her soccer ball, her grin punctuated by gaps. Janie laughing with him at their wedding. Closing his eyes, he kissed them each. Very carefully, he taped the soup-can tops around the pictures, sandwiching them, and adhered the makeshift pressure plate to the Jeep’s grille. A collision of any force would tear the photographs and push the metal circles into contact.

He’d seen this make of car bomb a half dozen times at checkpoints in the Sandbox, and he knew what the aftermath looked like. Two point five pounds of explosives supersized by a half tank of gasoline should be enough to open Pavlo’s front door.

Standing now at the end of the walk, his weakened arms straining under the weight of the granite, Nate said a silent prayer to Lady Luck and dropped the stone onto the gas pedal. The engine roared. Reaching across, he cranked on the radio, and Shithead Jason’s AC/DC disc spun to life, Brian Johnson wailing from the remaining car speakers: “-won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives-”

Below, the front door cracked open, Valerik poking his head out, the stub of his sleek ponytail wagging into view. The heel of his hand rode the stock of an AK-47. They were ready and waiting.