He looked up at Peter, his ruined face shining with the thought of it. Seduced by the fire blossoms of Iraq.
And all the while, his busy hands were arranging the assembled device neatly in the gray plastic junction box.
—
Peter’s shirt was wet with sweat in the cold room. His whole body was trembling, maybe with the cold. He hoped it was with the cold.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Felix came in with the hand truck for another load of fertilizer.
Come on, Lewis. Anytime now.
42
Midden
In the back of the truck, Midden slit open another fertilizer bag from the shrinking stack and dumped it into the last white plastic drum. The pellets slid beneath the dark surface of the fuel oil, raising its level slightly.
The smell was dense and cloying. It reminded him of the long fight through the Iraqi oil fields, always with the stink of the ruptured pipeline and the ferocious heat of the burning wells.
Stay focused, he thought. Although loading the drums required nothing of him other than the strength of his back and the blade of his knife. It was surreal, like before any operation. He had a pre-mission ritual in the bad old days, a system of checking his equipment that distracted him from the fact that they were about to step outside the boundaries of civilization and go kill people.
Although it was different in the war. In those days, they were fighting the enemy. People who were doing their best to kill Midden and his friends.
This was not like those days.
This was killing for money.
But it was what he had agreed to do.
No matter how he felt about it.
Stay focused.
He slit the last bag and poured it into the last drum. It disappeared below the surface of the black ooze without a trace. The drum lid with its junction box and flexible conduit screwed down snug with a slithering sound.
He left Cas to tie down the load and walked back to tell Lipsky.
One last time.
43
Peter
Lipsky took a gun out of his coat pocket and pointed it at Miles.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he told Peter. “Midden is going to cut the cuffs off the arms of the chair, then cuff your hands to each other. If you sneeze, if you so much as fucking blink, I’m going to shoot the kid. Do you understand me?”
Peter nodded.
“Then he’ll cut the leg cuffs and stand you up.”
Peter knew that Lipsky planned to kill them all, anyway. Himself, Dinah, and little Miles, too. But he was no longer willing to allow it to start early. He was counting on Lewis. So he nodded.
It happened just like Lipsky wanted. Midden had a wicked folding knife with a serrated blade that cut through the yellow plastic cuffs like they weren’t even there. Peter held out his hands to be cuffed like a good prisoner. Once the new cuffs were tight on his wrists, Midden cut the leg cuffs from behind the chair, so Peter couldn’t get him with his feet. Then he backed away while Peter stood, leaving no opportunity for a quick strike.
“Take him to the truck,” said Lipsky. “Cuff him to a cargo ring.”
Peter walked through the warehouse door, Midden two careful steps behind him. The loading dock door was rolled up, and the translucent roof panel gave him enough light to see the white plastic oil drums arranged in the Mitsubishi’s cargo box.
They were cinched together with webbing, which was strapped to the cargo rings on the sides of the truck, so the load wouldn’t shift during travel. Each drum now had a small plastic junction box stuck to its lid, with the flexible electrical conduit leading to a central point like a spider’s web in the making. From the end of each piece of conduit came those blue and white wires, with a quick connector on each end.
He stepped into the back of the truck and the smell of fuel oil hit him like a wall. The space was much smaller than the warehouse room, and mostly full of bomb. The white static was tired of waiting. Peter kept breathing, in and out. But it was harder and harder, and his chest felt tighter and tighter. The static began to spark up, heating his brain. Breathe in, breathe out. He could still look through the loading dock door, though, and into the open warehouse. When that truck door rolled down, things would get very bad.
Come on, Lewis. Do it.
“Take this,” said Midden, looking at him with a mild curiosity. He held out another plastic handcuff.
Breathe in, breathe out. “You’re really doing this,” Peter said, turning to face him. Midden backed automatically, the coiled mechanism inside him keeping Peter at an optimal distance. “A truck bomb. Hundreds of people.”
“Put one end of the cuff on you,” said Midden. “Run the other end through the top cargo ring, so your hands are over your head.”
Peter looked the man in the eye, but it was like staring down the barrel of a sniper rifle. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you involved with these jokers? Why are you doing this?”