“I drop this phone, the IED goes off.”
Officer Larson blinked and said, “Let’s calm down a second here, son. I can’t just call into the Senate. I wouldn’t even know how.”
“Bullshit.”
“She’s right, Mickey Hawkes,” I called loudly, and got up.
He looked at me as I started past Kate. “Sit down, man.”
I hesitated. Kate tugged on my pants leg. I looked down at her, and saw she wanted to tell me something.
“What?”
She glanced at Mickey and said, “Nothing.”
Mickey had turned to the Capitol Hill cop. “Call your boss, lady. Or call his boss. I’m sure one of them knows how to contact the senators blocking the vets’ bill.”
“Is that what this is about?” I said, moving up the aisle.
“Sit down, or I blow this now!” he shouted at me.
I sat down seven rows from the front with my hands up.
Mickey looked back at Officer Larson, who hadn’t moved.
“Call now!” he yelled. “Or do you want to explain how you could have stopped the bloodbath that’s about to happen?”
Larson held up a hand, said, “Calm down, and I’ll try to make the call.”
I said, “Mickey, how about letting some of these people go while she tries?”
He glared at me. “Why would I do that?”
“To show your goodwill.”
“There’s no such thing as goodwill,” Mickey said. “Why do you think I’m here?”
Larson backed through the door into the guard shack.
I said, “Mickey, why are you here?”
“I’ll tell those senators.”
“You could start with us,” I said. “Convince us, maybe you convince them.”
The teenager didn’t look at me, but I could see him struggle. He said, “I’m saying this once, my way.”
“You could—”
“Shut up, Dr. Cross!” he shouted. “I know what you’re trying to do! I’ve seen what all you goddamned shrinks try to do!”
Officer Larson emerged from the security bunker. I looked out the windows and saw the silhouettes of armed officers racing from all directions to surround the bus.
She said, “Mickey, I can’t call the senators.”
“You can’t?” he screamed. “Or you won’t?”
Larson said, “I don’t make these kinds of calls, Mickey. But there’s no way we’re going to let a senator anywhere near you and your bomb.”
His jaw clenched. He looked out the windshield, and back at the cop.
“Get them on the Senate steps then. And give me a bullhorn.”
Larson started to shake her head, but I yelled, “Call, Officer. See if it’s possible.”
I was standing again. Larson could see me through the windows. She hesitated, but then nodded. “I’ll ask, Dr. Cross.”
When she disappeared back inside the bunker, I said, “If you get your chance to talk to them, Mickey, you’ll let us go?”
He shook his head and said, “I want to see some action.”
Before I could reply, Larson exited the bunker again. “I’m sorry, Mickey, but they won’t allow it.”
His jaw tensed again as he struggled for another option. But then he straightened and gave Larson a sorry look. “I guess I have to make a different kind of statement then, don’t I?”
He held up the cell phone, and looked back at me. “Sorry I had to hack into Jannie’s phone, Dr. Cross. I always liked her.”
I saw flickers of anger, fear, and despair in his face. I’d seen the same in Kate Williams’s face when we first met. I understood he was suicidal.
“Don’t, Mickey!” I said.
“Too late,” Mickey said. He moved his thumb to the screen.
Chapter 33
There was a flash of brilliant light, and I started to duck—but then I saw it was behind Mickey. For a moment the kid was silhouetted there.
I felt sure there would be a blast. We were going to die.
Then Kate Williams stood and yelled, “The bullhorn’s behind you, Mickey!”
The teen looked confused, then glanced over his shoulder through the windshield. There were news cameramen running toward the bus, klieg lights flaring in the rain, and satellite trucks following.
“Go, Mickey!” Kate shouted. “Before they figure it out!”
Mickey stared at her as they shared an understanding that eluded me, then addressed Gordon Light. “Open the door!”
The driver pushed a button. The front and rear doors whooshed open. Mickey looked at us. “Sorry it had to come to this.”
He climbed out.
I waited two seconds before I ran forward, saying, “Everyone out the back, and move away. Now.”
The other passengers lunged for the rear exit. I went out the front door, and watched Mickey Hawkes go toward the barrier that blocked access to the Capitol, his jacket open, exposing the vest.
Officer Larson was aiming her rifle at him. “Not a step further, Mickey.”
He stopped at the thick, solid steel barrier, which came up to the bottom of the vest, and stood there squinting as the cameras and lights came within yards and formed in a ragged semicircle facing him. Kate climbed from the bus and stood by me.
“You should get out of here,” I said.
“No,” she said. “It’s all right.”
One of the journalists shouted, “Who are you?”
“What do you want to tell the senators?” another cried.
We watched silently, transfixed. Mickey put one hand on the bomb vest and showed them the cell phone with the other.
“My name is Michael Hawkes,” he said in a wavering, emotional voice. “I am seventeen years old. When I was eight, my father, my hero and my best friend, was blown up by an IED on his ride back to Kabul to muster out of the Special Forces for good.”
“Shit,” Kate said under her breath.
“Maybe he should have died,” Mickey went on. “Most of the time he says he should have. He lost both legs and an arm, and suffered a closed head injury. When I went with my mother to see him at the hospital in Germany, he wouldn’t let me into his room.”
His shoulders heaved, and I knew he was crying. “My dad said to forget him. He told my mom the same thing. But I wouldn’t forget my dad. No matter how many times he swore at me, no matter how many times he told me to never come back, I went to see him in every hospital he’s lived in since the explosion.”
Mickey paused, and looked around at Officer Larson, who had lowered her gun.
He glanced over at us. I nodded. Kate said, “Keep going. You’re doing fine.”
Mickey turned back to the cameras, and said, “I finally started to get through to my dad two years ago. There are daily support group meetings for IED survivors and their families at Veterans Affairs Medical Center. I go every day I can because I want to be there for my father, and because it’s the only way I really get to see him when he doesn’t get angry, and it’s the only way he stays sane, and…”
His voice cracked as he said, “If I don’t…”
Mickey looked at the sky, coughed, and cleared his throat before pointing toward the Senate.