“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he said in Uzbek.
The crowd was parting just enough that he could catch a glimpse of the municipal building. The door was still open, beckoning to him.
He rose, the wounded girl in his arms, the day’s testimony inside the camera which now dangled over his shoulder, determined to make it to that door.
He got only three steps before an impact jarred him from behind. He turned and saw a small fireplug of a soldier brandishing an assault rifle. Only then did he realize he’d been slammed in the kidney with the butt of the gun. The soldier swung at him again. Instinctively, Charlie curled up to protect the girl and dodged to the side. Instead of hitting him full in the head, the gun grazed his face. Still, the impact was enough to make him see stars.
Charlie fell to his knees, trying to shelter the girl from the blows.
But there were no blows coming. Miraculously, it seemed, the soldier moved on.
The building was only forty yards away now. It had been a long time since he’d graced the gridiron at Ohio State, but Charlie could still move, in spite of the once-ruptured knee that had ended his football career. If he’d done the forty then in 4.6 seconds, how long could it take him now, even with this girl in his arms? Ten seconds? Maybe twelve?
He cradled the girl and barreled toward safety. If he could just make it into the welcoming darkness of that door . . .
Three seconds.
Five.
The dark rectangle swelled larger and larger as he pounded ever closer.
Six seconds.
Halfway now. At least.
Seven. Eight.
Nearly . . .
Crack.
At first, Charlie thought he must have sprained a ligament in that bum knee of his. But then, as he felt the searing pain shoot through the right side of his back, he realized he’d been shot.
For a second or two, his adrenaline disguised the stinging pain and he continued forward, a laser beam of purpose, focused on that door. He was ten yards away, maybe fifteen, before he felt the searing, white-hot fire ignite inside his body.
Feet pounding across the big flagstones, he refused to acknowledge the import of this fire, convincing himself it was something that could be dealt with later, once he was inside the building.
That was when the second shot hit him.
His leg, penetrated just below his injured knee, gave out underneath him, as though it had been chopped off, and he slammed to the ground, still cradling the girl as he absorbed the impact of the fall.
A wave of nausea overcame him and his eyes hazed. He was only three or four feet from that door, but he knew his leg had been completely shattered. The only way now was to crawl.
He dragged the wounded girl with him, reaching the building in just a few seconds. It took nearly every ounce of strength to reach for the door, but he managed to pull it open.
He was greeted by a hailstorm of wailing and screaming and as he pulled himself and the girl inside, he saw nearly a dozen wounded people.
Dizzy and disoriented, his consciousness slipping away, he had the vague sense that there were people here to help the wounded. He let go of the girl, intent now on finding Julie.
And then he heard her voice cutting through the bedlam.
“Charlie! Charlie!”
But it wasn’t recognition that he heard in her voice, it was desperation. She was in trouble. And she was screaming for her man.
On his hands and knees, he struggled toward her voice, pushing and crawling past everyone in his path.
When he came upon her at first, he couldn’t register what she was doing. She was lying on her back, face twisted in agony. And then he saw that her knees were raised, her legs spread far apart. The floor beneath her was soaking wet and stained with crimson.
She might have been giving birth. But she was surely hemorrhaging.
“Doctor,” Charlie tried to say, though the words came out as barely a whisper.
“Charlie,” he heard her say. This time, there was gratitude in her cadence. She had seen him. He had made it.
He reached for her hand, hoping that if he could simply grasp her, they would all somehow survive this. But as their fingers touched, everything slipped into a white fog.
And faded away.
PART II
RETURN
Chapter One
Santa Monica, California, six years later
The sizzle of frying bacon and the burble of childish laughter filled the air as six-year-old Ollie darted into the kitchen, followed by his three-year-old sister Meagan, nearly colliding with Charlie as he cooked breakfast.
“Hey, guys!” Charlie warned cheerfully. “Daddy’s working the grill here. Elbow room, huh?”
“Daddy, why aren’t you coming to Disneyland?” asked Meagan.
“Because your mother just got home from New York and she hasn’t seen you all week, so this is going to be a special time for you and Ollie to be with her.”
“And you have to work!” Meagan reminded him proudly.
“And I have to work,” Charlie confirmed, returning his attention to the grill.
Julie had only been away four days, but for Charlie it had felt like an eternity. They’d moved to Santa Monica nearly six years ago, with Charlie taking a job covering local politics for the LA Times and Julie forgoing her work in favor of raising the children. They had traded their lives of adventure for a cushy, suburban existence, but even so, any time he was separated from Julie or the kids for more than a day or two, Charlie’s worry would overtake him. He had never forgiven himself for allowing Julie to leave the Square that day without him, for not being by her side when she and Oliver nearly died as she gave birth. And from the moment that he recovered from his own wounds, he swore that he would never place his family in that kind of jeopardy again. Besides, what had he managed to accomplish in Uzbekistan? Next to nothing. In the wake of the tragedy in Babur Square, life for the people there had only gotten worse. And so he’d told himself that it was time to grow up: that he was done trying to change the world, that his world now had to be his family.
Julie knew that Charlie would always be haunted by what had happened to them in Uzbekistan and she’d willingly sacrificed her loftier ambitions to make a more “sensible” life in California, but as she lay here in their bed, staring at the snaking cracks in their ceiling, she found herself blaming him for the chasm that had grown between them. Of course she knew that wasn’t fair. It takes two to tango and at this point, she had done more than her fair share to create the distance.
But how would they even begin to come together again? The task seemed so daunting that rather than search for the solution, Julie tried to pinpoint when exactly they’d started drifting from each other.
Had the seeds been sown that day in Babur Square? No. Those first few weeks in London, when he was recuperating from his injuries and she was recovering from Oliver’s traumatic birth, they had never been closer.
And when Charlie had suggested that they fly to Los Angeles, she hadn’t blanched. At the time they were, in effect, homeless. They couldn’t go back to Uzbekistan yet, and neither had a place in the U.S. or the UK. She had no family to speak of in London—her father had died a year earlier and her mother was dwindling away in a rest home in Sussex—so when Charlie’s old college buddy Sal Peretti extended an invitation for them to “come out to the coast” for a few weeks, it had seemed like a perfect place for them both to clear their heads.
In short order, Sal had offered Charlie a coveted, well-paid gig at the LA Times and Julie had to agree that making a life for themselves in Southern California made a world of sense.
But as she rose now from their bed and gazed out the window at the palm trees in their yard, she realized it was that first concession which had started them on this path. At the time, she thought Los Angeles was going to be merely a pit stop, assuming that at some point they would resume their old careers abroad.
She had tried at vari
ous moments to broach the subject with Charlie, but he was always adamant. He would not subject Julie or the children to any kind of danger just to serve their adventurous inclinations or overdeveloped sense of heroism. Julie thought that he was being unfair—to both of them—but she understood his position. And she told herself that he wanted to stay more than she wanted to leave.
So she had let it go. Because she wanted to make him happy and she knew she had little to complain about. Charlie was a devoted father and loving husband—smart and funny, sweet and giving with the kids yet tough when he needed to be. More important, she felt grateful every day that they’d all survived that brutal day in Andijan, that they’d become a family. It so easily could have gone the other way. Of course, it was precisely this cocktail of compassion, gratitude and guilt that kept her from confronting the simmering resentments that had been building in their marriage.
And now she had betrayed his trust.
Out of the shower now, she lifted her suitcase onto the bed and began to unpack her clothes when she saw that she’d forgotten to remove the baggage claim ticket.
It was a stunningly careless mistake. Or had she subconsciously left it there, hoping that Charlie would notice it and catch her in the lie?
She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and rolled her eyes. Here she was, wearing a pink Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, preparing for a day at Disneyland. If any of them downstairs only knew where she’d been the past four days.
She grabbed hold of the sticky ticket and ripped it off her luggage.
Charlie put the childrens’ food on their plates, turned off the stove and checked his watch. He knew Julie had gotten in late and wanted to let her sleep, but the kids would be getting antsy soon enough and he had to be at work by nine.
“Jules, are you up? Breakfast is ready!”
As if on cue, Julie bustled into the room with an exuberant rallying cry. “Is everybody ready for the Magic Kingdom?”
Meagan assaulted her mother, wrapping her arms around her neck. “We missed you!”
“Oh, and I missed you guys so much!” Julie cooed, smothering her with kisses, then setting her back on her feet.
“I didn’t,” Ollie announced with the straightest of faces. Charlie knew this was his son’s way of saying he wasn’t particularly thrilled with his mother’s recent excursion to the Big Apple.
“Well, did you miss . . . Derek Jeter?” Julie winked at Charlie and whipped out an autographed baseball.
Ollie’s eyes widened. He had started playing t-ball the year before and now considered himself the world’s biggest baseball fan. “Wow!” He grabbed the ball and studied the signature. “That’s really Derek Jeter’s autograph?”
Julie laughed. “It’s really Derek Jeter’s autograph.”
“Does this count as a birthday present?”
“I don’t know,” Julie teased. “What do you think?”
“No!”
“What about me?” Meagan demanded, tugging at her mother’s sweatshirt. “Did you get something for me?”
Julie bent down and put her arm around her daughter. “For you, I got a promise. Anything you want from the Disneyland store.”
“I want Donald Duck!” Meagan’s favorite cartoon character.
“A stuffed animal or an action figure?”
“Both!” she shouted.
“We’ll see. Maybe we’ll even let Ollie pick out something.”
“If he’s nice,” Meagan added with the utmost seriousness.
Watching his wife with their children, Charlie felt a burst of happiness and relief. She was home. The planets were realigned. All was right again.
“Okay, who’s hungry?” Charlie called cheerfully.
“Me! Me!” The kids waved their hands, beaming at him.
“And here we go,” Charlie said, setting down the plates, “one French toast slightly-burnt-so-you-don’t-see-the-egg for Prince Ollie; one blueberry pancake, maple syrup, light on the butter for Princess Meagan; and one English porridge, warm skim milk, for my queen.”
“You’re too kind, my liege,” Julie quipped as the kids dug in noisily.
“You should’ve woke me last night,” he whispered, kissing her on the lips.
Charlie felt her body stiffen, her tone become defensive: “The flight was delayed, then there was a foul-up with my car service. I didn’t even get home until three.”
He regarded her for a moment as if he barely knew her. What was meant to be a sweet gesture of longing had been received as an accusation. This was unlike Julie, but Charlie wasn’t about to deal with it in front of the children. And maybe she was just tired after the long flight.
“Well, I’m glad you’re home,” he said. “Now sit and eat your breakfast.”
After cleaning up the kitchen, Charlie helped Julie bundle the kids into the back of her Prius, warning them as always about the perils of public adventure.
“All right, guys, now remember, there’s lots of people there and it’s easy to get lost. You remember the buddy system, right?”
Ollie wasn’t paying any attention, but Meagan, ever eager for favor, raised her hand and cried, “Always keep Ollie in sight.”
“That’s my girl!” Charlie kissed her, buckled her into her car seat, and gently closed the door. He leaned into Julie’s window to find her texting feverishly on her BlackBerry.
“My sister,” she explained.
“Do me a favor?” he heard himself say.
“No calls from the car . . . ?”
He ignored what he could have sworn was a slight roll of her eyes and pressed on. “I checked Sigalert. The 5’s going to be a mess. Drive carefully.” And then to take the edge off his command, he managed to add, “Please.”
He smiled self-consciously, a Cheshire grin which seemed to disarm her for an instant, and he leaned into the car for a kiss.
“Love you,” he said as half apology.
“Love you, too,” she rejoined in a more perfunctory spirit than he would have liked.
She made an ostentatious show of putting away her BlackBerry, flipped him a wave, and backed rapidly into the street.
As they disappeared around the corner, Charlie felt a thin reed of anxiety rising slowly up his chest. Unconsciously, he touched the scar on his back where he’d been shot. Every year around the anniversary of Andijan he’d get twinges of pain there, twinges accompanied by a feeling of just how fragile the life he and Julie had built together was.
He rolled his eyes, irritated at himself, trying to shake off his fears. Everything was fine. They were just going to Disneyland.
Chapter Two
John Quinn felt a little naked. Normally he wore his .45-caliber bobtailed Les Baer 1911 beneath his photographer’s vest, concealed in an inside-the-waistband holster. A lot of firepower, very inconspicuous. But Disneyland had too much security and the laws in California were too draconian to take the chance of going armed here. So he contented himself with following the happy little family around the park.
It was noon and they had worked their way through Adventureland to Frontierland. Quinn watched them carefully but couldn’t help notice the dumb ass dressed in a Goofy costume standing by the gift shop, posing for pictures, making hokey effeminate gestures with his three fingered hands. You had to wonder what kind of guy would do something that pathetic and humiliating for a living. God, he hated this place. The screaming children, the overweight people, the incessant jingles and jangles. It was enough to make you sick.
He happened to catch a glimpse of himself reflected in the window behind Goofy and regarded himself objectively, assessing his disguise as much as anything. He was a fireplug of a man with the build of a collegiate wrestler, his balding head hidden under a baseball cap with a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh on the crown. He knew there was something menacing about his eyes, so he kept them covered with a pair of mirrored Oakleys.
Acting the part of a dad waiting for his kids, Quinn waved at some random family on Thunder Mountain, as though
little Quinn Junior was up there having a jolly old time on the jolly old ride.
There was, of course, no little Quinn Junior. Not here, not anywhere.
He homed in on the woman again. She was watching her son shoot a toy gun at an arcade right next to Thunder Mountain. Her daughter tugged on her ridiculous Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, whining to be taken somewhere. Quinn couldn’t make out what the mother’s response was but it looked like there were gestures of reassurance and pleas for patience.
Thank God he’d never had children. What a colossal waste of time and energy.
The woman’s son blasted away his last few shots with the air gun, then she grabbed his hand and led both kids past Goofy into the gift shop. Quinn had to approach the shop’s entrance a little closer than he liked in order to make sure he didn’t lose her going through the door on the other side.
Of course, cell phones were God’s gift to surveillance operators. You could hide your entire face behind a Droid and nobody would make you—especially if you changed an occasional article of clothing. So he tossed the Winnie cap in the trash and pulled on a drab fishing hat that he kept rolled up in one of his vest pockets.
For a split second, the woman turned in his direction and he thought that perhaps she’d caught on to him. He turned his back on her casually, examining some of the overpriced souvenirs and waited a solid ten count before turning around again.
She was exiting in what looked like a hurry through the opposite door.
Afraid she might have spotted him, Quinn chose to retreat through the door he’d entered and pick them up again outside.
For a moment he thought he’d lost them in the sea of obese, ridiculously dressed tourists, but then spotted them again. She was pulling a point-and-shoot camera from her voluminous purse and setting up the kids for an all-important photo op.
“Come on guys, stay still,” she beckoned. “Say cheese!”
It was a pathetic shot: the boy was cross-eyed and sticking out his tongue while the little girl was waving her Donald Duck in front of her face.
Out of Range: A Novel Page 3