Harlan had told him, “You are the only one I trust to send out alone. Everyone else goes out in pairs. Will you be okay by yourself?”
“If I get lonely, I’ll listen to the tapes. Can I ask a question, Harlan?”
“You need not ask permission, my special friend.”
“Where did we get the money for all this, the compound, the animals, the weapons? I mean, it cost a lot of money. We used to be broke.”
Harlan had smiled and touched Orrin’s wrist and Orrin had actually felt power and goodness flow into him, even through the thick leather of Harlan’s glove.
“Oh, my dear friend. HE provides.”
Military Road intersected with 13th near the Maryland line, and he turned right to stay inside city limits. Thirteenth was a gauntlet of detached homes that brought him toward the Mall. Orrin floated toward his fate as Harlan, on tape, rode along. The old tape recorder whirred on the passenger seat.
Harlan’s voice sounded strong, in Latin.
“‘Cum autem descendisset de monte, secutae sunt eum turbae multaem.’ Matthew 8:1–4. It means, ‘And when he had descended from the mountain…’”
Sykes’s lips moved silently, following along. He knew the next words. “‘Great crowds followed him.’
“‘Et ecce leprosus veniens, adorabat eum, dicens, Domine’… ‘And behold, a leper, drawing near, adored him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can cleanse me.”’”
Sykes’s lips formed, “‘Jesus touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be cleansed.” And his leprosy was cleansed.’”
The Honda glided into a snowy urban fog. For a moment Sykes missed Upstate New York — his friends, his lovers, the certainty of knowing each minute what you had to do. Until Harlan, Orrin had known rage but not direction, logic but not clarity, resentment but not reason, what passed for happiness sometimes, but not peace.
Sykes saw himself at eighteen years old. He saw a headline in the Crystal Lake, Illinois High School paper. SYKES WINS STATE SHOOTING CHAMPIONSHIP. ORRIN, OUR HERO!!!
Sykes passed Logan Circle at P and 13th, and turned left on busy Massachusetts Avenue, which would skirt downtown on its way toward Union Station and Capitol Hill. He kept to the speed limit. The vial in his pocket seemed alive.
Harlan said on tape, “The ancient Jewish general, Flavius Josephus, beat the Roman army. He outmaneuvered them, enraged and taunted them, and then, besieged finally, he slipped from doomed Jerusalem and went over to their side and wrote a history. The Hebrews were a little people, but their determination stopped an empire. Their tenacity changed history.
“Josephus wrote, ‘And King Uzziah put on a holy garment and entered the temple to offer incense to God. But that was prohibited. Only priests could do it. And a great Earthquake shook the ground, and the rays of the sun fell upon the King’s face. LEPROSY seized him, as punishment.’”
Harlan said, “‘Uzziah died in grief and anxiety.’”
Massachusetts Avenue was a corridor for thousands of human drones who served the anonymous, insatiable needs of the capital. Sykes and the bacterial bomb kept to the speed limit. He eyed D.C. cops on the roadside, waiting to pounce on speeders. Near Union Station, traffic went stop and go. Harlan reached the part about the Koran. He was a charismatic speaker, but the prophets he quoted all seemed to speak with the same tone, as if Moses WAS Jesus WAS Mohammed and they all turned into Harlan Maas.
“Verse 5:110, chapter 5, Siral l-merdah—‘Allah will say, “Oh Jesus of Mary, remember my favor upon your mother… Remember when I taught you wisdom and the Gospel. Remember when you healed the leper with my permission…”’”
Remember? Sykes approached the heart of the empire as surely as a bacteria rides an artery toward a heart. Harlan’s voice became a mélange of other voices, old ones that had led Sykes on his journey from obscurity to rage, shock, failure, and finally, belonging.
— IS THERE NOTHING THIS BOY CANNOT DO?
— ORRIN SYKES TO STAR IN THE SPRING PLAY!
Sykes sauntering the polished cinderblock halls in Crystal Lake, Illinois High, accepting accolades from boys, adoration from girls. Sykes unremarkable scholastically, but his talents were physical. And physically speaking, he and Carol Ann Held spent long, sweet afternoons in her bedroom, since her parents both worked, and were not at home during the day.
Portrait of a future killer. A normal kid. A Chicago Cubs fan, who liked detective shows on TV. A kid like a million others, who nobody beat up, nobody abused, who dreamt of being famous. Sometimes he was in Hollywood in the dreams. Sometimes in battle. Sometimes the Olympics.
“You’ll go far,” his guidance counselor said.
When did the trajectory alter? Later, lying in a trash Dumpster in West Hollywood, watching a gray rat crawling near his feet, he’d decided it started when he announced to Grandfather that college was out. He’d join the Army, he said, as they sat one morning in the sunny breakfast nook, Sykes smiling, Grandfather frowning, which was odd, as he thought Grandfather would be proud.
— Orrin. Don’t do it.
— YOU served in the Army, Grandfather.
— Which is why I know a bad war when I see one. The President can’t make war. Only Congress should do it.
Grandfather arguing, pleading, finally coming up with something that swayed Orrin, which was, “If you join the Army and don’t like it, you’ll be stuck.” Grandfather suggesting a compromise. “I’ll call your uncle Merrill. He can get you into Iraq, but in a way that, if you hate it, he’ll get you out.”
Six months later Orrin manned a plywood desk in a trailer near Baghdad, processing pay forms on a computer. Sykes working for Uncle Merrill’s company — DIAMOND & SPEARHEAD — providing drivers and guards to convoys bringing supplies to troops, and aid to Iraqi towns. They did the same job as soldiers. They got four times the pay.
“We do good,” Uncle Merrill said.
Like all D&S personnel, usually former soldiers, Sykes had gone through basic training, under two former Marine sergeants. He impressed the sergeants with his shooting, quickness, and fearlessness, at least during the training.
BUT ALL I AM IS A FUCKING CLERK, BECAUSE UNCLE MERRILL TOLD THEM TO KEEP ME AWAY FROM FIGHTING!
His opportunity came when a planeload of guards was held up in Newark due to engine trouble. The company was shorthanded but a food convoy still had to go out.
An hour later, Sykes, wearing body armor, sat beside the driver in the third truck in the convoy. The trip was supposed to be easy. Convoys had taken the same route ten times before. Just before the first truck blew sideways, Ray Charles sang “Georgia on My Mind” on CD. The next moment, the second truck in line — in front of Sykes — almost went off the embankment. It stopped, smoking, blocking the road. Orrin jumped out of his cab. He’d spotted bursts of fire coming from behind rocks. His pulse pounded in his forehead. There was no time to be afraid. Instinct and training took over. He lay on his belly beneath the truck, firing three round bursts at the men on the roadside, as shouted orders came over his headset.