Boomer threw his hands in the air. “Hey, trust me, we looked. I wanted to shoot that dog personally.”
Lipsky shook his head, then took the phone out of Boomer’s hand and held it so Peter could see the screen. “This is why you’re going to give me that C-4. My guys went in and took them this morning.” Dinah and Miles, wearing rags as blindfolds, bound with the same yellow plastic handcuffs, sat on a bare dusty floor with a pale brick wall at their back. They were somewhere in the warehouse, maybe even the next room.
They looked so small and helpless. This wasn’t supposed to happen. And where were Charlie and the dog?
But this, he knew, changed everything.
His plan with Lewis was out the window.
37
Peter
Go watch the woman and the kid,” Lipsky told Boomer. “Don’t touch them. Just keep them calm and quiet. Start prepping the drums. And send Midden back here.”
Boomer scooped up the coils of conduit from the table, glared at Peter, and walked through the door to the warehouse.
Peter pulled hard at the plastic cuffs. “What did you do?”
“We took them,” said Lipsky. “Your other friends are dead. Collateral damage. I believe you know the term.”
“If you harm them, either one of them,” said Peter, “I will kill you in the most painful way possible.”
Lipsky didn’t seem to notice. His X-ray eyes were focused on Peter, and his voice was calm. “Here’s how it is, Peter. You and I are men of the world. We’ve been to war. We’ve killed other men to protect our friends and our own skins, and to do our job. So I’m going to be honest with you. You’re going to die. There’s no way around that. You can’t save yourself.”
Lipsky held up the phone with the picture on it. Reached out and cleared a space in the bomb parts on the table, and set the phone where Peter could stare at it.
“But you can save that woman out there, and her son. They haven’t seen anyone’s faces. They don’t know where they are or what’s going on. They won’t be touched. You can save them. If you give me that C-4.”
Breathe in, breathe out.
The door to the veterans’ center opened again, and the man in the black canvas chore coat came through.
Peter watched him read the room in a single silent glance, including Peter cuffed to the chair behind the desk, the flag on the wall, the video camera on its tripod, and Felix working feverishly at his laptop. There was a kind of empty, coiled stillness to the man, like some purpose-built mechanism awaiting only the triggering of his function. But he looked at Peter with a kind of curiosity.
To Lipsky, Peter said, “You’d kill an innocent woman? A child?”
Midden’s head swiveled to stare at Lipsky.
The detective just shrugged. “Collateral damage? That’s up to you.”
“Not collateral damage,” said Peter. “This is taking hostages. Killing hostages. For money.”
“I don’t want to kill them,” said Lipsky, sounding like the voice of reason. “I hope I don’t have to kill them. But again, that’s up to you. Where’s the C-4?”
38
Midden
Midden looked at Lipsky, trying to gauge his seriousness. Was he bluffing?
Midden had killed many people in war, and more after. So many he’d long ago lost count. Even women, when he’d had to.
But he’d never killed a child. Not knowingly.
Was this the man he had become?
Midden knew there was a point of no return. He thought he’d gone past it long ago. That he was past any salvage, let alone redemption.
But he understood now that there were additional waypoints on the path to hell that would change him further. Beyond his own recognition of even this damaged version of himself.
Would he become a man who would kill a child?
39
Peter
Peter looked at the image on the phone on the desk in front of him. On the small screen, Dinah sat on the dusty floor with Miles on her lap, her arms wrapped protectively around him. Their torn blindfolds gave them a ragged, haunted air. He knew hostages were almost never set free.
He thought of other times when he’d needed to make a similar decision.
It was different with his own men. It was part of the job to send his Marines into the fight. Knowing that men could be injured or die. It was part of the job. Part of what he had signed up for, what they all had signed up for.
Peter wasn’t a lieutenant who hung back, who directed his men from the firebase. Peter went to the fight with them. His job was accomplishing the mission, yes, but his job was also protecting his men, making their jobs as safe as he could. Which didn’t include leading from behind. The risk of his own injury or death should be no less than that of his men.
And men had died at his orders. As a direct result of his orders. Of his mistakes. That was part of his life now. Living with it. Those consequences. Those sacrifices.
Dinah and Miles had been drawn into this battle despite everything he had done to prevent it. Whether they would die as a result of his decision was still undetermined. But if he handed over the C-4, the odds were good that more than two would surely die.