Joseph Finder - Vanished

My phone rang: a call, not a text message. Garvin.

“Where are you?” I said.

“No goddamned cabs around here. I had to call for one. I’m waiting. Where are you?”

I told him.

“Get out of there,” he said. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t control the timing here.”

“You can if you want to. Just leave.”

“No. Get over here as soon as you can.”

“Heller, you idiot.”

“Just get here when you can,” I said, and I ended the call.

Then I heard the squeal of tires, and two vehicles careened around each end of the building, the timing synchronized. Two black Humvees barreling toward me.

I stood still.

Looked to either side.

The two Humvees pulled up about thirty to forty feet in front of me, nose-to-nose, two feet apart, their brakes screeching. Dark-tinted windows: I couldn’t see inside. Mud on the license plates.

I waited. The Ruger in my right hand, at my side. The driver’s side door of the Hummer on my right opened, and a guy got out. Tall, bullet-headed, his head shaven down to the skin. Odd-shaped head, too. He looked like a human-sized penis.

In his hand was not a gun but something small and oblong that looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t immediately identify.

“Don’t move,” the guy said.

“I’m not,” I said.

He held up the device. A garage-door opener, I realized, but I knew what it was for.

“Drop the weapon.”

“Convince me.”

“This is a detonator,” the penis-shaped man said. “Do anything sudden, and your brother dies.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“Drop the gun.”

“Drop it? Rather not scratch the finish.”

“Drop it now.”

“Why?”

“You want to find out?”

I didn’t. I lowered the Ruger, safety still off, still fire-ready, and set it gingerly on the hard-packed earth.

He signaled with his free hand, and the back door on the other vehicle opened. I heard it open, didn’t see it. Heard voices. Commands uttered in a low voice. A figure came around the far side of the car, walked between the two vehicles, stopped to the right of the bullet-headed guy.

A figure in baggy, shapeless clothes. Dun-colored overalls that were too big for him, under an old trench coat.

Roger.

He looked as if he’d been drugged. He appeared even older and more haggard than in the picture they’d sent me. He was sweating profusely.

“Nick,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Stop right there,” the bullet-headed guy barked to Roger.

“Hey, Red Man,” I said softly.

“Hold up the card,” the guy said. “Take it out slowly.”

I pulled it from my pocket, held it up.

“You understand the deal,” he said.

I nodded. Roger was wearing some kind of vest, maybe a fly-fishing vest, that had been rigged up with blocks of M112 demolition charges wrapped in olive drab Mylar film. C4 explosive, army-manufacture. I could have recognized them a mile away. Wires came out of each block. The whole thing duct-taped to him. Sloppy, but professional.

He was a walking bomb.

A second guy got out of the Humvee on the left, the same one Roger had emerged from. He, too, was holding a garage-door opener in one hand and a pistol in the other. That guy was beefy, had a goatee. A real type. Like Neil Burris, like a hundred other guys I’d served with.

Both Humvees had been left idling. This was going to happen quickly. They wanted to make a speedy getaway.

“Here’s how it’s going to go down,” the first guy said. “Your brother’s going to get the card from you and hand it to me. I check it out. If it’s good, I take off his vest.”

“Sounds like you don’t want to get too close to me,” I said.

“Try anything stupid, one of us hits the detonator. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“In case you’re thinking maybe you grab your gun and try to take us both out, lemme tell you, you don’t want to do that. The detonators are on a dead man’s switch. So either of us lets go, the bomb goes off. Then there’s a pressure switch on the vest, and you don’t know where it is. You try to take off the vest, it’s gonna blow, and both of you get vaporized. You getting all this?”

“Seems sort of complicated.”

“It’s not. It’s real simple. Don’t play games, and you and your brother go home. All there is to it.”

I glanced at Roger. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be trembling.

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?” the first guy said.

“No,” I repeated. “I hand you the RaptorCard, what’s going to stop you from setting off the vest and killing us both anyway? Your sense of honor?”

The second guy said, “We don’t need this. Let’s get out of here.”

“ Here’s how it’s going to go down,” I said. “I’ll hand my brother the card. Only you’re going to stand right next to him. Then you take off the vest, and he gives it to you. And we all go home.”

There was a beat of silence. The goateed guy looked at the bald guy.

They really wanted to keep their distance from me. I suppose I should have been flattered.

The bald guy nodded. “Go,” he said to Roger.

Roger walked toward me slowly, unsteady on his feet. By then, his eyes were open, and staring, and frightened. His face was ashen. As he approached, the two Paladin guys watched, gripping their detonators, thumbs at the ready.

Roger seemed to be trying to tell me something with his eyes. I looked at him as he came closer, step by step.

He was shaking his head ever so subtly.

Telling me No .

I gave him a puzzled look in return: What do you mean?

He mouthed the word No .

He was just a few feet away. Slowly he reached out his left hand. Dad’s Patek Philippe was on his wrist.

I handed him the RaptorCard.

He whispered, “They’re going to kill us both.”

I shook my head.

He spoke a little louder: “I won’t let them kill you, Nick.”

His eyes were wide. “Run,” he said.

I whispered back: “ No .”

The bald guy shouted, “Hey, let’s move it!”

“ Run ,” he whispered again.

“No,” I told him.

Suddenly he lurched to his right. He spun, raced toward the Hummer on the left. Collided with the goateed guy. Knocked him to the ground.

The detonator dropped to the ground.

But nothing happened. There was no dead man’s switch on the detonator. That had been a lie. What else were they lying about?

Then I saw Roger fling the car door wide open, ramming it into the goateed guy just as he was getting back to his feet, knocking him over again.

“ No! ” I shouted. “ Roger, don’t! ”

“Hey!” the bald guy shouted.

Roger leaped into the Hummer, and I propelled myself toward the bald man, slamming his body to the ground. His detonator went flying, and even as I had him down on the ground, I braced myself for a terrible explosion.

But nothing happened that time either.

The Hummer roared to life, speeded forward, raced to the end of the building. The bald guy wrenched himself free of me and jumped into the other vehicle. The goateed guy vaulted into the car as well, and it took off in pursuit of Roger.

One of the garage-door openers still lay on the ground, abandoned by the bald guy.

I picked up the Ruger and took off on foot, but both Hummers were gone. I could hear them squealing around a corner, then I heard the screech of brakes.

Shouted voices.