“I dunno.”
The hell you don’t, Neal thought. He grabbed Randy by his broken arm and yanked him up.
Randy howled. “I don’t knooooow!”
Neal cranked the broken arm around in a complete circle. “You tell me, you little Nazi piece of shit,” Neal said. He threw Randy face-first into the wall, straightened the fractured arm out along the concrete, and slammed his hand into Randy’s broken elbow.
Randy pointed frantically with his good arm-pointed down at Jory. “He killed him, he killed him,” Randy panted. “Carter said the boy had to die… the seed of a traitor… none of us wanted to do it… he volunteered. Took him out into the rabbit brush and shot him.”
Neal let Randy go, looked down, and saw the guilt on Jory’s face. He grabbed the knife off the floor and slid to his knees in front of Jory. “You filthy…” Neal pressed the knife point against the soft part of Jory’s throat.
Neal felt the heavy whack of Graham’s artificial hand hit his wrist and knock the knife out of his hand. He grabbed his arm and looked to see Graham kneeling beside him.
“What?” Graham asked. “Did they turn you into one of them?”
Neal let go and sat staring at the floor. He couldn’t meet Graham’s eyes. I’ve just tortured a wounded man and tried to kill a sick boy, Neal thought. Maybe they have turned me into one of them.
Then he heard Jory whimper, “I didn’t kill Cody.”
What? “Who did?” asked Neal.
“Nobody. I was supposed to, but I didn’t. I took him away and hid him.”
“Where?” Neal demanded.
Jory’s eyes had a glassy stare. “To the Place of the Beginning and the End.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Jory smiled a shy, secretive smile. “I’ll take you there,” he offered. “I’ll take you to see the Son of God.”
Then Neal heard Strekker’s voice outside the door yell, “Mackinnon, we have the money!” The door opened and Cal stood at the top of the stairs.
Strekker was just too goddamn quick. He took in the scene, made his evaluation, and kicked the door shut.
Neal could hear him outside, yelling to the rest of the men. Then came the sounds of boots pounding in the snow, the clickity-clack of rifle bolts, and the clang of the compound gate swinging shut.
Great, Neal thought, we’re locked in the bunker, locked in the compound, and surrounded by a couple of dozen well-armed, well-trained fanatic killers.
“So,” Ed said, “you guys ready to blow this joint?”
Steve Mills adjusted the small cap on the back of his head and stood up at the end of the table.
He cleared his throat, looked at Peggy, Shelly, and Karen, and said, “As you know all too well, I’m not usually at a loss for words. But tonight, for the first time in my life, I’m celebrating a holiday in honor of my father and my grandparents. I never knew… never really cared… what made them give up their identities as Jews. I always supposed it was just to fit in a little easier in America. And I guess it worked, because I’ve always felt just a hundred percent at home in this country. But until recently I guess I never realized that there was a price to pay for that comfort, and that my grandfather and my father paid that price. That price was their heritage, and their identities, and I’m afraid some of their pride. And so tonight I’m honoring a holiday I don’t know much about to try to give a little back. Maybe to reclaim a piece of myself that got lost. And to give something back to you, Shelly, that you were cheated out of.”
He saw tears well up in his wife’s and daughter’s eyes and had to stop and clear his throat again.
“It wasn’t that we were ever ashamed of being Jewish… and we’re damn well not ashamed of it now. It just wasn’t something we thought a lot about, just like we don’t think a lot about being Christians too, I guess. It just wasn’t a big deal.
“But then I saw my daughter”-he paused to smile at Shelly- “being abused because her father is half Jewish, and it sure started being a big deal then. I figure my grandparents suffered for being Jews in Russia. That’s probably why they came here. And they had that fear in them, so they laid low about being Jews because they didn’t want their kids to suffer the way they did.
“And God bless them, but I think they got it wrong, because this country… if it means anything it means that you don’t have to hide who you are and you don’t have to bow down to idiots who hate you for it. And I love this country.
“Karen, thank you for being our honored guest tonight and sharing this new tradition with us. And Peggy, I hope all your Irish Catholic family forgives you for sitting in here…”
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Peggy said.
“So, Shelly,” Steve said, “in honor of your grandparents and great-grandparents and the whole bunch of them who came before, would you light that candle now?”
As Steve watched and Peggy cried softly into her dinner napkin and Karen Hawley beamed, Shelly Mills in her white dress, her hair hanging long and straight and shining in the soft light, stood and lit the candles in the menorah.
When she finished, Steve poured the traditional wine into everyone’s glass and gave the traditional toast, “L’chaim-to life.”
“You know I’ll kill him!” Neal shouted out the firing slit. He had Jory in front of him, Ed’s pistol pointed at his head.
“I know!” Hansen shouted back.
“We’re coming out now!” Neal yelled back. “We’re getting in that truck and we’re driving to Austin! We’ll let him go when we get there! If I see, hear, or even smell anything I don’t like, I’ll blow the shit out of him! Do you understand me?”
“I understand!” Hansen yelled.
Neal turned to Ed, who had Graham over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. In his other hand he held the little black box.
“You ready?” Neal asked.
“Let’s do it.”
Neal took his hostage by the collar and pushed him to the door.
“Are you sure you can make this shot?” Hansen asked. He was worried. They’d done everything Neal had demanded. They’d unlocked the bunker door, opened the compound gate, and put the keys back in the truck’s ignition. They’d shut off the searchlights and taken the men out of the guard towers.
But a lot could go wrong, especially if Cal missed the shot.
“I’m sure,” Cal answered.
He was lying beside Hansen just inside the fence on the other side of the compound. Cal had the sniper rifle, its bipod planted in the snow, trained on the bunker door. The infrared scope gave him a perfect view in the darkness.
He had a man crouched in each tower and more men in the main bunker. Each one had his new M-16 locked, cocked, and ready to rock. One of Carter’s bodyguards was behind the machine gun in the main bunker, ready to sweep the forty yards of open ground that lay between the prisoners and their truck.
The gate was open now, but Cal had Craig lying out in the sagebrush ready to swing it shut just as soon as the firing started, just in case any of the intruders did make it into the truck.
But none of them are going to make it, Cal thought. Not carrying a wounded man. That’ll slow them all down, and Neal buddy will make an easy target, no matter how hard he tries to hide behind Jory. I’ll just have to shoot young Hansen first and then take out Neal.
And on the odd chance that the big son of a buck gets to the truck, we’ll just blow him to hell with the mines.
So come on out, boys. We’re ready for you.
“How many do you think are out there?” Ed asked.
“Twenty or so,” answered Neal. “Each of them with one of the rifles you brought them.”
“Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“It’s about to be,” Neal answered.
He grabbed his hostage tighter and pushed the door open.
Cal watched through the night scope as Neal came out, holding his hostage in front of him. Ed followed, holding the one-armed little bastard over his shoulder like a grain sack.
“Is that Jory?” Hansen whispered. It was hard making him out in just the moonlight.