Jeff Abbott - Collision

“Hello, Khaled.”

I say nothing.

“I know who killed your brothers and their friends,” he says.

I look back down at my financial analysis textbook. The charts and tables swim before my eyes.

“Don’t you wish to know?” he says after my silence becomes uncomfortable.

“Yes,” I say.

Then he surprises me. “Why do you wish to know?”

“Because I want to fight back against whoever killed them. I want them dead. I want them suffering.”

Now it was his turn to be silent.

“You seem a stuffy sort and you are thin. I’m not sure you will be useful.” J puts his hands flat on the table.

I let all the strength gather in my body. “I’d like to be useful.”

“Come with me,” he says.

I do. Over the next day he shows me the proof-financial trails, photos, a picture of the Khaled boy with the deformed lip, now lying on a morgue slab.

“I killed him,” J says. “He cried before I shot him. I didn’t much like him. He wouldn’t betray his friends, he wouldn’t work with us.”

I don’t take any relief in seeing the dead man, even though he planted the bomb. He is just a cog; I want to break the machine. “You could give all this evidence to the police.”

“They would do nothing,” J says. “You could do something.”

“What?”

J leans back in his chair, lit his cigarette. “Join us.”

“No.”

He offers the cigarettes to me and I shake my head. “I expected you to say yes.”

“I’m not a fool.”

“No, you’re not, Khaled. That’s why I’m issuing the offer to you. You are ideal. You’re young, smart, and motivated.”

“I’m just one man.”

“We have several young men lined up for this sort of dangerous work.”

“Where would I go?”

“America.” J almost says it with a growl.

I hesitate on how to answer. I want to strike back at the murderers. I want to make something happen so another family does not go through this horror. I put my face in my hands. If Papa hadn’t died

… maybe I could say no to J. But my brothers’ deaths have shown me the ripple effect. My brothers’ murders killed more than themselves. Blood of Fire’s enemies remain unpunished. And if I decline J’s offer

… am I suddenly, well, dangerous, to J and his people? I know about them. The thought chills.

It is the single biggest moment of my life. Decide whether to avenge my family or whether to walk away and be safe. But there is no safety in this world.

“What do I have to do?” I ask.

“First? You have to sneak into America, Khaled,” J says.

“Will I have help?”

“Yes. But if you’re caught, we do nothing for you. You never heard of us. You speak of us and I don’t think American prison will go very well for you.”

I swallow. The decision makes itself. I nod. “When do I leave?”

Ben saw two men-hard-faced, pale, wearing jeans and dark T-shirts. One sported wraparound sunglasses, the other a punkish thatch of black-and-white hair. He didn’t see the guns until the one in sunglasses raised a pistol and the other gunman hoisted a rifle.

“Run,” Pilgrim said, putting himself between Ben and the gunmen, firing at them as he ran. Ben turned and sprinted down the hallway. In the narrow corridor the sudden blasts of two shots boomed like thunder yanked close to earth.

Ben headed for a stairwell at the end of the hallway. An exit sign hung above the door, and as he bolted toward it the sign shattered, a stray bullet slamming through the X.

As he reached for the door, heat hissed past his ear. He tried the door. Locked. Then Pilgrim jerked Ben back from the door, fired a bullet into the lock, a punch of fire and metal. Pilgrim kicked the door open and shoved Ben into the stairway. A faint, dying-bulb glow lit the stairs.

“Stop,” Pilgrim said. “There could be more downstairs. I’m sure there are at least three of them. I’ll kill these two here.”

Okay, fine then, you’ll kill them here. Ben couldn’t believe Pilgrim’s calm. Ben took a step backward onto the stairs. “They’ll shoot us…”

“We need to get to the ground level.”

They heard a man down the hallway, pleading “No,” then the bang of a shot.

Kidwell, Ben thought. Where was Vochek? The two guards? He wasn’t going to stand here and get shot. The solution was distance between him and the guys with guns. Including this one.

He doesn’t want to give away his position-he won’t shoot you. Logic was a beauty.

Ben turned and ran for the rooftop door.

“No,” Pilgrim hissed. “Goddamn it, get back here”-but Ben hit the door to the roof and it opened.

He ran out onto the roof’s concrete expanse. The day was dying, the sun halfway through its low slide into the hills. He saw another roof entrance on the opposite side, with a jumble of industrial AC units and ventilation equipment in between. And he ran straight for the door, an escape hatch, a way out of this nightmare.

The door opened.

Pilgrim couldn’t protect the idiot if said idiot wouldn’t listen to orders. He hated extraction jobs and hadn’t done one in over ten years; it was a bother to worry about keeping a frantic civilian alive in the heat of dirty work. But he had to keep Ben Forsberg alive. Because Ben Forsberg was clearly the key to understanding what the hell was going on, with Teach, with the Cellar, with this attack.

First things first. The two gunmen in the hallway. Keep one alive to talk, to tell him where they’d taken Teach.

He considered. The staircase was concrete, with metal railings. He peered down into the gloom. The pit of the stairwell dropped down six stories and offered no nooks or crannies in which to hide. No cover.

But there was the bend of the stairs. Where the stairs forked at the landing, the plain metal railing met the dusty concrete. The railing’s post stood close to the gap in the stairs.

He could hide in the gap, just below the landing.

Pilgrim eased himself over the railing, tested to see if his feet would reach to the railing below. No. If he braced himself in the gap, his head and shoulders would show, and they’d blow his brains out in the first few seconds. But if he held onto to the railing one-handed..

He tested the idea. Only his fingers, wrapped around the metal of the railing post, were exposed. He held the Glock in his right hand; he couldn’t see the landing, but the gunmen, if they came through, would be standing just so-he pictured the positions in his mind-and he screamed, in hysterically tinged Arabic, “I give up, I surrender, truce, let’s talk.”

They would know he was on the landing, and they’d fire suppressing rounds to clear him off the landing before they set a foot inside.

He heard the broken door kicked open, a spray of bullets hitting the steps where a man would stand. If they saw his fingers gripping the bottom inches of the post they would simply blast the bones of his fingers away and he’d fall. The stairwell went dark, the lights blown out.

The shooting stopped.

Pilgrim raised the gun above the lip of the landing, emptied the clip at an angle he hoped would catch the knees. Bullets pocked against skin and bone, and screams echoed against the concrete. He released his hold as a bullet smashed against the post he’d been gripping, the screams fading, and he landed, feet hitting the railing below, bouncing from the rail to land like an awkward cat on the steps.

Pilgrim scrambled to his feet, drew the gun he’d taken from Kidwell, and ran to the landing. The punk-blond gunman lay dead, guts ripped, heart hollowed. The one in the cheap wraparounds had caught shots in the chest and the groin. He cupped one hand around the blood welling from his jeans while reaching toward the blond’s gun.