Boom. For a second Ben thought Kidwell’s gun had fired. The door flew open from a kick.
A man stood there with a gun. He aimed at Kidwell, who lifted his pistol to fire.
The man shot first. He nailed Kidwell in the leg. Kidwell collapsed with a scream. The man rushed Kidwell, freed the gun from Kidwell’s grip with a vicious kick.
Kidwell wore a look of utter surprise.
The man regarded Ben, who stayed in the chair as though locked to it. Kidwell kept screaming. Ben thought: He’s right, a bullet in the leg does make you talk. He felt like slapping himself to set his mind back to order.
“Where is Teach?” the man asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Ben frowned at him as if he were speaking gibberish.
“Identify yourself,” the man said. He looked first at Kidwell, who writhed in pain on the floor, blood seeping between his fingers as he gripped his leg.
Ben managed to speak. “He’s Agent Kidwell, Homeland Security. Supposedly.”
“Where is the woman you took from the lake house? Tell me or I shoot.” The man stood over Kidwell. “Did Barker work for you? The Arabs?”
“Don’t know… what you mean…” Kidwell gritted his teeth, closed his hand over the flesh wound in his leg.
“You. Up. Against the wall.” The man’s gun tracked him as Ben obeyed.
“I haven’t seen any woman,” Ben said. “I’m not with Homeland Security; he brought me here.”
The man glanced between Ben and Kidwell again. “Who are you?”
“Ben Forsberg.”
The gun wavered and naked shock crossed the big man’s gaunt face. “Say again.” As if Ben had spoken in Latin.
“My name is Ben Forsberg,” Ben repeated. Then in panic the words seemed to spill from his mouth: “They think I knew some hit man and I don’t, I shouldn’t be here…”
The man shushed Ben, bringing his gun to his own lips like a hushing finger. He blinked as though thinking. Then Ben could see a decision made, in the man’s sudden resolve. “My name is Pilgrim. Come with me. Help me find her.”
“No… other prisoner here.” Kidwell had pulled himself up to a sitting position and leaned against the wall, clutching at his torn leg. “Just this man, and you’ve shot a federal officer, and you’re in deep shit.”
“I clean up fast,” Pilgrim said. “You. Come with me.”
Ben wasn’t inclined to trade in Kidwell for this new jerk, but he had no choice. He followed the man into the hallway. Pilgrim ran to the other doors, yelling “Teach!” and listening for a response.
“Who are you?” Ben asked.
Pilgrim didn’t spare him a glance. “I’m the guy who’s getting you the hell out of here.”
At the middle of the hallway, between them and the room they’d left Kidwell in, the elevator door pinged and opened.
“Get behind me,” Pilgrim said.
Khaled’s Report-Beirut
My recruitment was a seduction. Not in the physical sense; there was of course none of that. But in the long crush of weeks after my brothers and my father died, I began to realize I was being followed. By a man I now know as J.
At first I was very afraid. No one had been brought to justice for the bombing, and I wondered if my brothers’ enemies-whether they be domestic or foreign-might target me. Paranoia is not a healthy life but often I noticed J-in the market, as I made my way home from the university, returning home from my aunt’s house with my mother. J watched us, followed us. I said nothing to Mama; her worries were already crushing her.
He approaches me at the school library. Sits down across from me at a table. We are alone.
“Hello, Khaled.”
I say nothing.
“I know who killed your brothers and their friends,” he says.
I look back down at my financial analysis textbook. The charts and tables swim before my eyes.
“Don’t you wish to know?” he says after my silence becomes uncomfortable.
“Yes,” I say.
Then he surprises me. “Why do you wish to know?”
“Because I want to fight back against whoever killed them. I want them dead. I want them suffering.”
Now it was his turn to be silent.
“You seem a stuffy sort and you are thin. I’m not sure you will be useful.” J puts his hands flat on the table.
I let all the strength gather in my body. “I’d like to be useful.”
“Come with me,” he says.
I do. Over the next day he shows me the proof-financial trails, photos, a picture of the Khaled boy with the deformed lip, now lying on a morgue slab.
“I killed him,” J says. “He cried before I shot him. I didn’t much like him. He wouldn’t betray his friends, he wouldn’t work with us.”
I don’t take any relief in seeing the dead man, even though he planted the bomb. He is just a cog; I want to break the machine. “You could give all this evidence to the police.”
“They would do nothing,” J says. “You could do something.”
“What?”
J leans back in his chair, lit his cigarette. “Join us.”
“No.”
He offers the cigarettes to me and I shake my head. “I expected you to say yes.”
“I’m not a fool.”
“No, you’re not, Khaled. That’s why I’m issuing the offer to you. You are ideal. You’re young, smart, and motivated.”
“I’m just one man.”
“We have several young men lined up for this sort of dangerous work.”
“Where would I go?”
“America.” J almost says it with a growl.
I hesitate on how to answer. I want to strike back at the murderers. I want to make something happen so another family does not go through this horror. I put my face in my hands. If Papa hadn’t died
… maybe I could say no to J. But my brothers’ deaths have shown me the ripple effect. My brothers’ murders killed more than themselves. Blood of Fire’s enemies remain unpunished. And if I decline J’s offer
… am I suddenly, well, dangerous, to J and his people? I know about them. The thought chills.
It is the single biggest moment of my life. Decide whether to avenge my family or whether to walk away and be safe. But there is no safety in this world.
“What do I have to do?” I ask.
“First? You have to sneak into America, Khaled,” J says.
“Will I have help?”
“Yes. But if you’re caught, we do nothing for you. You never heard of us. You speak of us and I don’t think American prison will go very well for you.”
I swallow. The decision makes itself. I nod. “When do I leave?”
11
Ben saw two men-hard-faced, pale, wearing jeans and dark T-shirts. One sported wraparound sunglasses, the other a punkish thatch of black-and-white hair. He didn’t see the guns until the one in sunglasses raised a pistol and the other gunman hoisted a rifle.
“Run,” Pilgrim said, putting himself between Ben and the gunmen, firing at them as he ran. Ben turned and sprinted down the hallway. In the narrow corridor the sudden blasts of two shots boomed like thunder yanked close to earth.
Ben headed for a stairwell at the end of the hallway. An exit sign hung above the door, and as he bolted toward it the sign shattered, a stray bullet slamming through the X.
As he reached for the door, heat hissed past his ear. He tried the door. Locked. Then Pilgrim jerked Ben back from the door, fired a bullet into the lock, a punch of fire and metal. Pilgrim kicked the door open and shoved Ben into the stairway. A faint, dying-bulb glow lit the stairs.
“Stop,” Pilgrim said. “There could be more downstairs. I’m sure there are at least three of them. I’ll kill these two here.”
Okay, fine then, you’ll kill them here. Ben couldn’t believe Pilgrim’s calm. Ben took a step backward onto the stairs. “They’ll shoot us…”
“We need to get to the ground level.”
They heard a man down the hallway, pleading “No,” then the bang of a shot.
Kidwell, Ben thought. Where was Vochek? The two guards? He wasn’t going to stand here and get shot. The solution was distance between him and the guys with guns. Including this one.