“How did you know to come if the radio was broken?” Jonathan asked.
“We heard the radio call from your mother,” Tomás explained. “Gloria had the radio, but she refused to answer it. I fought with her, and she threw it down on a rock.”
“But how—”
“You said that the only reason you would call was to change the pickup rules.” Tomás smiled. “You were about to leave us?”
“Not because I wanted to,” Jonathan said. “We gave you nearly two hours.”
Tomás said, “I knew that if we found the road, you’d be here.”
Jonathan smiled. “You showed strong leadership, Tomás. I’m proud of you.”
The kid beamed. Then his expression grew dour. “I think Gloria may betray us,” he said.
Jonathan sat on the bench seat on the opposite side of the aisle. “Tell me,” he said.
Tomás got distracted by one of the older girls who approached them from the front of the bus.
“Angela, right?” Jonathan asked.
She smiled. “Yes. May I sit here, too?”
“No,” Tomás said. “We need to talk in private.”
Jonathan patted the bench in front of him. “Have a seat,” he said. “Help yourself.” He saw that his invitation had annoyed Tomás. “Relax, kid,” he said. “We’re all on the same bus, headed into the same future. Secrets don’t matter a whole lot anymore.”
Tomás didn’t like it.
Jonathan prompted, “You were about to tell me how you think Gloria is going to betray us.” As he spoke, he cast a sideward glance to Angela to gauge her reaction. From what he could tell, her biggest interest was in watching Tomás. He sensed adolescence happening.
“Gloria was very close to Nando,” Angela said. “I don’t know if they were lovers, but they were very close.”
“And both of them were close to Alejandro Azul,” Tomás said. He looked at Angela.
She said, “It wasn’t natural, the way she threw down that radio.”
“And it was the first time in the history of forever that she cared even a little bit about what happened to us,” Tomás added.
“So, tell me what you think she’s going to do,” Jonathan said.
“I think she’s going to trade us for herself and the kids who stayed behind,” Tomás said.
Jonathan looked from one to the other. “Did you know this at the time you left the cave?” he asked. “Or, should I say, did you suspect it?”
“I did,” Angela said.
“Yes,” Tomás agreed.
“So, if you’d stayed . . .” Jonathan let his voice trail off so they could finish the sentiment on their own.
“The Jungle Tigers would have killed me,” Tomás said. His tone betrayed no doubt. “And Alejandro would have taken his time. If I stay in Mexico, I’m dead.”
“I think he would kill us all,” Angela agreed. “I think it would be harder for the girls than the boys. It’s good that Gloria is left alone.”
“What do you expect will happen to her?” Jonathan asked.
They shrugged in unison.
“It depends on how angry Mr. Azul is,” Tomás said.
Jonathan took a moment to process the new information. He wasn’t yet sure what to do with it, but he trusted that they were telling him the truth. “Do the other children know your concerns?”
Tomás and Angela looked at each other.
“I haven’t said anything to them,” Tomás said.
“Nor have I,” Angela agreed.
Jonathan rubbed his scalp through his soaked, greasy hair. “Maybe we should,” he said.
Both kids seemed surprised.
“I’ll take care of it, but I think they should know what the stakes are. You’ve all got weapons, and as we get closer to the shore, our movements are going to become more predictable.”
“I don’t understand,” Angela said.
“He means that there are only so many roads to the shore,” Tomás said.
“Exactly,” Jonathan said. “And that means . . .” He took his time, making sure that he had their attention. “That there’s almost certainly going to be a fight.”
“You mean guns,” Angela said.
“I mean guns and whatever else it takes to survive,” Jonathan said. “Big Guy and Dawkins and I are going to do everything we can to make sure you all get out of here safely.”
“But some of us may get shot,” Tomás said.
“But some of you may get shot,” Jonathan echoed. “When people are facing that kind of risk—and I don’t care how old they are—they deserve to know what the stakes are.”
“Suppose they want to surrender and quit?” Angela asked.
Jonathan arched his eyebrows and sighed loudly. “Then that’s a choice they need to make.”
Jonathan watched as the two kids thought about his words.
“Promise me that we’re really going to America,” Tomás said.
Jonathan understood the importance of the question in Tomás’s mind, and he took his time formulating his answer. “I know that you know that the first step is to survive the next few hours. Right?”
Tomás nodded vigorously. “Yes. Of course.”
“Okay. I promise that everyone who survives what’s coming will make it to America.”
“Will America want us?” Angela asked. “I’ve heard . . .”
Jonathan touched her arm. “There’s a lot of ugliness everywhere,” he said. “But America and Americans have big hearts. If you come to America with a desire to work hard and to help others, I guarantee that you will thrive. If, God forbid, you come to America merely to live off of American charity, or if you hope to perpetuate the business of Alejandro Azul—as far too many immigrants do—then you will be very unhappy in America. It’s all about choices.”
For the first time, Jonathan saw tears glistening in Tomás’s eyes, and he felt an obligation not to embarrass him. He stood. “You and your friends need to get some sleep,” he said. “When what’s coming finally arrives, I want you all to be one hundred percent.”
As he started back toward the front of the bus, he pretended not to see Tomás and Angela reaching out to join hands.
CHAPTER 33
Senator Clark lived in a sixty-year-old house in the Lake Barcroft area of Falls Church, Virginia. The homes here had no common construction theme, with sixties ultramoderns commanding acre lots immediately adjacent to classic Southern center-hall Colonials. The senator’s house was a stone-front Cape Cod that no doubt cost five times more than its apparent value—ten times what a similar structure would go for in his home state of Nevada.
The senator answered his door before Marlin could knock or ring the bell. He was fully dressed in a fresh gray pin-striped suit with full accoutrements, sans necktie.
“You needn’t pull stunts like this to impress me with your work ethic, Marlin,” Clark said. “I’ve always assumed that you burned the midnight oil.”
Marlin knew that his boss was joking but had difficulty summoning a sense of humor. “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour,” he said. “But—”
“You’ve already told me that it is urgent,” Clark said. “Did you park around the block, as I asked you?”
“Yes, I did. I had to come and see you, Senator. Some things just cannot be discussed over the phone,” Marlin said.
“So, here you are at nearly three in the morning.” Clark’s attitude seemed strange, something between angry and aloof.
Marlin felt a little off balance in the conversation. Something was a bit off. “May I come inside?” he asked.
“No,” Clark said. He stepped out onto the stoop and closed the door behind him. “Some things are best not discussed in my house, either,” he said. He pointed to a small garden in the front yard, where four wrought-iron chairs sat arranged in a square around some kind of lawn sculpture. “We’ll sit over there.”
The glare of a streetlight across the street, combined with that of the porch light, cast mot
tled shadows. As he got closer, Marlin saw that the chairs had been cast in the form of intertwined ivy and that the sculpture was of three children dancing in a circle around a featured bush that Marlin didn’t recognize. Senator Clark sat first. He crossed his legs, threw his arm over the seat back, and waited.
Marlin didn’t feel much like sitting, but it didn’t seem right to stand, so he helped himself to the opposite seat. Despite the lateness of the hour, the metal felt warm through his jeans and golf shirt. “We’re in trouble, Senator,” he said. “This thing in Mexico is spinning out of control.”
“What thing in Mexico?” Clark asked. He held his head cocked to the side, and he’d pressed his lips into so fine a line that his mouth disappeared in the dim light.
Marlin felt a new stab of fear. “The Dawkins thing,” he said. “Somehow, Irene Rivers is involved now, and she has effectively tied the hands of our Mexican friends. Dawkins is still alive, and—”
“Dawkins,” Clark said. “Who is Dawkins?”
Marlin’s heart started to flutter. “Please don’t do this to me, Senator. Don’t play dumb. Please. Dawkins is the guy Alejandro Azul took into custody for us.”
“I see. Yes, I remember. How many people are dialed into this scheme of yours?”
Marlin set his jaw. “Ours, Senator. This plan of ours. Nobody. You, me, and your friend Raúl Nuñez. That’s it.”
“Plus the contractors,” Clark reminded. “How much do they know?”
“Only the details of their mission. Raúl coordinated through Nicole Alvarez. So, yes, Nicole is one more. But that should be it.”
Senator Clark made a clicking sound as he shook his head. “So how does Director Rivers know?”
“I have no idea,” Marlin said.
“Do we know the extent of her knowledge?”
“All I know is what Azul told me,” Marlin said. “Rivers reached out to the head of their police force and, through a threat or a plea, talked them into telling the Jungle Tigers that they could provide no backup on this.”
“What kind of backup might they have provided?” Clark asked.
“I don’t know,” Marlin said. “Firepower, I suppose. Azul is assuming that when Dawkins flees the country, he’s going to have to do it by sea. He also says that there are two teams operating down there, both in support of Dawkins’s rescue.”
“Who do the teams belong to?”
“We don’t know that, either,” Marlin confessed. “All we know is that the team we sent was wiped out by the teams that are with Dawkins now.”
“The team you sent. And what does ‘wiped out’ mean?”
“The team that you told me to arrange,” Marlin pressed. “And ‘wiped out’ means dead. Down to the last man. If Dawkins gets back to the U.S., we’re done, sir. Serious prison time.”
“If not the death penalty,” Clark said. “I guess you need a plan to control the damage when they’re back in the United States. I’d reach out to Nicole again, if I were you.” He stood. “Thanks for coming by with this, Marlin. We’ll talk again in the morning.”
“Wait a second,” Marlin said. “Why don’t you reach out to Nicole? Get a little dirt under your fingernails. You’re as deep into this as I am.”
Clark looked at him for a long time, seemingly amused. It looked like he was about to say something, but then he abandoned it. “Good night, Marlin,” he said, and he strolled back up his yard to the house.
Marlin watched his boss disappear inside and continued to stare until the foyer light went out. Then he walked back to his car, started his engine, and began his drive back to his lonely apartment.
He was less than a half mile from the senator’s home when the panic attack hit him. Marlin’s hands started to shake, and his heart pounded so fast that he worried it might actually be a heart attack. But there was no pain.
And, he realized, there was no future. Senator Charles Clark of Nevada had set him up perfectly. The senator’s fingerprints—whether literal or figurative—were nowhere to be found on this abortion of a decision. To be sure, he’d taken his share of money, and he’d approved every step Marlin had taken, but there was no record of those conversations or decisions. And now that Raúl Nuñez was dead, there were no witnesses other than Marlin himself—and Nicole Alvarez, of course, but in his experience, assassins were disinclined to step forward to help a colleague in need.
Hands trembling, and squinting to see through the prism of his tears, he made the right turn from Sleepy Hollow Road onto Columbia Pike, headed toward Annandale.
Swiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he sniffed and announced to the car, “I’m screwed. I can’t win.”
“You’re right,” said a voice from the backseat.
Marlin yelled at the sound and jumped a foot. “Jesus Christ! Nicole! Dammit!”
Nicole Alvarez sat directly behind him, barely a shadow against the rear windshield. “You’re such a baby.”
“How did you get in my car? And what happened to you?” Her entire left side appeared to be one giant bandage.
“You should lock your doors,” she said. “Even in nice neighborhoods.”
Marlin looked in his mirror, tried to get an idea what—
He heard a loud pop, the sound of a single clap, and his breath was driven from his lungs. Lightning bolts of pain shot down both legs, and then his legs felt nothing at all. The car started to slow.
“Good Christ, Nicole! Did you just shoot me?”
She remained silent, but the smell of gunpowder answered his question for her. It dawned on him that she’d shot him in the spine. She’d paralyzed him.
“What are you doing? Please don’t.”
“Try to keep the car on the road,” she said.
Why was she doing this? “You crippled me. You bitch, you crippled me.” He could feel himself getting dizzy. Fear? Blood loss?
Up ahead, a strip mall marked the beginning of a long incline. As the car lost its momentum, Nicole said, “This is probably the best place to turn off the road. You’ll hit something since you can’t use the brake, but you won’t hit hard.”
Even as he cranked the wheel to the right to make the turn, he wondered why he was doing anything that bitch told him to do. She’d just made him a paraplegic. For life!
The car was barely at a crawl when it hit a parking block and stopped.
“I need an ambulance!” Marlin shouted. He knew that no one was around to hear, but what other choice did he have? “Help! Someb—”
He felt the press of metal against the back of his skull.
CHAPTER 34
The SeaVee boat was big but not huge. The covered cockpit sat in the middle of the deck—amidships, if Jesse remembered correctly from Master and Commander —and the boat felt like it sat high in the water. Other than the small roof over the cockpit, there was no overhead cover. With four huge outboard motors in the back, it looked like it would be fast as hell. They ran in complete darkness.
Jesse sat adjacent to the cockpit, on a section of the continuous ledge that lined the perimeter of the boat. The ledges themselves had access panels in their tops, leading him to believe that the seats weren’t intended as seats at all, but rather as storage lockers for whatever one might need to store on a boat. He watched in silence as his father putt-putted the boat away from the marina and out into the bay that would ultimately take them out to sea.
“You’d better call your friend Mother Goose and tell her we’ve got the boat, but we don’t have a pickup location yet.”
“Mother Hen,” Jesse corrected. “And we need to talk about what happened back there on the dock.”
“Is talking going to change anything?” Davey asked.
“Of course not, but—”
“Then we don’t need to talk, do we?”
“Yeah, Davey, we do. You just killed a man.”
“I had no option, son. He was in the way of the mission.”
Jesse felt the press of tears behind his eyes. “I didn’t sign on to th
is for killing,” he said. “Jesus.” Something about the foreverness of taking a life took his breath away.
“Just what did you think those guns and ammunition were about?” Davey seemed to be making a point of not looking at Jesse as he spoke. His tone was not accusatory, but rather that of a teacher helping a student solve a problem. “There’s a very high likelihood that this is going to be a hot extraction. I thought you recognized that.”
“But this was not that,” Jesse said. “This was just stealing a boat.”
“Can’t do one without the other,” Davey said. “And keep your voice down. Sound travels forever over water on a night like this.” To their left lay the strip of occupied land that separated them from the Gulf of Mexico; to their right lay blackness. Davey waited for a few seconds, then said, “Go ahead and ask the question you really want the answer to.” Finally, with that, he made eye contact with his son.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “You didn’t just kill that guy. You killed him with a knife. And you looked like you knew what you were doing.”
“And you want to know where I learned to do that?”
“Yeah, I think that would be nice,” Jesse said. He heard himself speaking too loudly, and he dialed it back.
“Come closer,” Davey said. “We need to be very quiet for this.”
Jesse stood, but then he hesitated. Could this be some kind of trap? Clearly, there was a lot about this man that he didn’t know.
As if reading his thoughts, Davey said, “You’re my son, Jesse. I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
Of course, Jesse thought. Despite the overall calmness of the water, he walked carefully on the swaying surface of the deck to join Davey in the cockpit. There was plenty of room for both of them, but no place to lean because of various controls that Jesse didn’t recognize.
“And if I did want to hurt you, I’d have done it already,” Davey said with a grin that shone in the diminishing moonlight. He cleared his throat. “You know how I told you I was in the Navy?”
Jesse’s stomach tightened. He felt an unwelcome reveal on the way. “You’re going to tell me that was a lie?” Somehow it felt good to be preemptive.
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