Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

All of this took maybe five seconds, and Jory stood watching in shock before he organized his legs to head for the door. Ed lunged and grabbed him by the back of the belt, heaved backward, and threw him over the top of his shoulder. The boy landed hard on the floor, his head snapping back and smacking on the concrete. He was out.

Ed quickly untied Graham and cradled him in his arms.

“You’ve been working out,” Graham murmured to Ed.

Ed gently set Graham down. Then he took off his big coat and laid it out on the floor. A Velcro strap under the left arm held a large automatic pistol. Another strap fastened what looked like a small, flat black box. Ed set these things down, then wrapped Graham up in the coat. He looked at Graham’s swollen eyes, which were now more like slits. “Who did this to you?”

Graham pointed his chin at Randy. “He’s one of them, but I think you already broke every bone in his arm.”

Ed nodded, saw that Dave was struggling to make it to his hands and knees, pivoted on his right foot, and drove a side kick into the man’s jaw. Dave’s head banged into the wall and he slumped to the floor again.

“Neither of you smoke, huh?” Ed asked. “I need a cig.”

He bent over Dave’s unconscious body and found a pack of Marlboros and some matches in his top shirt pocket. He took a cigarette and lit it, then took a drag and exhaled with a contented sigh. “It’s been a long day,” he said.

“Uh, Ed?” Neal asked. “Maybe you could let me loose?”

“Sorry, I got carried away.”

He took the key ring off Randy, found the right keys, and unlocked the handcuffs.

Neal rubbed his wrists to work the circulation back into them. “It’s nice to see you, Ed,” he said.

“It’s nice to be seen,” Ed answered. His back to Graham, he mouthed the words can he walk?

Neal shook his head.

“You asshole,” Graham muttered. “Why didn’t you tell us what you were planning?”

Ed handcuffed Dave to the wall as he said, “What if you got captured, which you did… and tortured, which you did… and you broke? Which you didn’t, but it’s early. This way you had nothing to tell them.”

“Thanks a lot. So, you have an army out there?” Graham asked.

“I came alone,” Ed answered. He pointed at the bodies slumped on the floor. “I am an army.”

Which is a pisser, Ed thought. He had a hit squad standing by in Reno. This was supposed to have been a recon trip. Find out what the hell was going on with Carey and Graham and also set SOS up on a federal arms charge as well as the robbery rap. Not to mention get the Bank’s money back. He hadn’t planned to find Neal and Joe chained in a bunker. And when he’d seen Graham trussed up, bleeding and in pain, he knew there wasn’t going to be time to get to Reno and back. Not unless he just wanted to recover their bodies.

Jory was crawling over to the wall.

Ed gestured with the handcuffs, “Come here, kid.”

Jory stuck his hand out and Ed chained him to the wall.

“So do you also have a secret plan to get us out of here?” Graham asked.

Well, I did, Ed thought. “That depends on how many of us there are,” Ed answered. “Cody?”

“He’s dead,” Graham answered.

Neal started to say, “He isn’t-”

“Neal doesn’t think so,” Graham said.

Neal kicked Randy in the stomach. “What happened to the boy?” he asked.

“I dunno.”

The hell you don’t, Neal thought. He grabbed Randy by his broken arm and yanked him up.

Randy howled. “I don’t knooooow!”

Neal cranked the broken arm around in a complete circle. “You tell me, you little Nazi piece of shit,” Neal said. He threw Randy face-first into the wall, straightened the fractured arm out along the concrete, and slammed his hand into Randy’s broken elbow.

Randy pointed frantically with his good arm-pointed down at Jory. “He killed him, he killed him,” Randy panted. “Carter said the boy had to die… the seed of a traitor… none of us wanted to do it… he volunteered. Took him out into the rabbit brush and shot him.”

Neal let Randy go, looked down, and saw the guilt on Jory’s face. He grabbed the knife off the floor and slid to his knees in front of Jory. “You filthy…” Neal pressed the knife point against the soft part of Jory’s throat.

Neal felt the heavy whack of Graham’s artificial hand hit his wrist and knock the knife out of his hand. He grabbed his arm and looked to see Graham kneeling beside him.

“What?” Graham asked. “Did they turn you into one of them?”

Neal let go and sat staring at the floor. He couldn’t meet Graham’s eyes. I’ve just tortured a wounded man and tried to kill a sick boy, Neal thought. Maybe they have turned me into one of them.

Then he heard Jory whimper, “I didn’t kill Cody.”

What? “Who did?” asked Neal.

“Nobody. I was supposed to, but I didn’t. I took him away and hid him.”

“Where?” Neal demanded.

Jory’s eyes had a glassy stare. “To the Place of the Beginning and the End.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jory smiled a shy, secretive smile. “I’ll take you there,” he offered. “I’ll take you to see the Son of God.”

Then Neal heard Strekker’s voice outside the door yell, “Mackinnon, we have the money!” The door opened and Cal stood at the top of the stairs.

Strekker was just too goddamn quick. He took in the scene, made his evaluation, and kicked the door shut.

Neal could hear him outside, yelling to the rest of the men. Then came the sounds of boots pounding in the snow, the clickity-clack of rifle bolts, and the clang of the compound gate swinging shut.

Great, Neal thought, we’re locked in the bunker, locked in the compound, and surrounded by a couple of dozen well-armed, well-trained fanatic killers.

“So,” Ed said, “you guys ready to blow this joint?”

Steve Mills adjusted the small cap on the back of his head and stood up at the end of the table.

He cleared his throat, looked at Peggy, Shelly, and Karen, and said, “As you know all too well, I’m not usually at a loss for words. But tonight, for the first time in my life, I’m celebrating a holiday in honor of my father and my grandparents. I never knew… never really cared… what made them give up their identities as Jews. I always supposed it was just to fit in a little easier in America. And I guess it worked, because I’ve always felt just a hundred percent at home in this country. But until recently I guess I never realized that there was a price to pay for that comfort, and that my grandfather and my father paid that price. That price was their heritage, and their identities, and I’m afraid some of their pride. And so tonight I’m honoring a holiday I don’t know much about to try to give a little back. Maybe to reclaim a piece of myself that got lost. And to give something back to you, Shelly, that you were cheated out of.”

He saw tears well up in his wife’s and daughter’s eyes and had to stop and clear his throat again.

“It wasn’t that we were ever ashamed of being Jewish… and we’re damn well not ashamed of it now. It just wasn’t something we thought a lot about, just like we don’t think a lot about being Christians too, I guess. It just wasn’t a big deal.

“But then I saw my daughter”-he paused to smile at Shelly- “being abused because her father is half Jewish, and it sure started being a big deal then. I figure my grandparents suffered for being Jews in Russia. That’s probably why they came here. And they had that fear in them, so they laid low about being Jews because they didn’t want their kids to suffer the way they did.

“And God bless them, but I think they got it wrong, because this country… if it means anything it means that you don’t have to hide who you are and you don’t have to bow down to idiots who hate you for it. And I love this country.