Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(101)

Ten crates in, one of the men lost his grip. His end crashed into the ground as both men leapt back with a shout. The crate splintered on impact and the man in charge yelled.

Avi said, “He is telling them to fix it. To hurry with another box. And also a few other things I should not translate.”

The two men who’d been carrying the box moved away, and the camera panned to the ground, then to the side of the truck. I caught a flash of a door handle.

Malik, moving to a different spot.

I glanced at Dougie. He was pensive, his index fingers pressed to his lips, a crease between his eyes. Then he leaned toward the screen and his hands came down.

“There it is,” he said. “Pause it.”

I looked back at the computer.

The camera had zoomed in on the crate. Avi rewound a few seconds, then hit play. He paused the video just as the camera closed in on the shattered crate and two large cylinders with copper-lined concave faces sitting on the ground.

Cohen drew a deep breath. “What are they?”

“Warheads,” Dougie said. “For Explosively Formed Penetrators. The explosive is inside the case. The copper face becomes the actual weapon. Now look closer. You see the winged V on the side?”

“Valor’s logo,” I said.

On the video, the man in charge snapped out a command.

Avi said, “He is asking for the boy. He wants the boy to help.”

A few seconds later, the camera went dark.

Around me, the room was utterly quiet. A clock ticked on the wall. The dogs next door had stopped barking, training done for the day.

I placed my hands on the back of Avi’s chair and leaned into it, no longer trusting my legs to hold me.

Avi broke the silence. “Clyde is the hero.”

“And Rick Dalton,” Dougie said.

I pulled out my phone. “You guys ready to call the Feds and loose the dogs of war?”

“Do it,” Cohen said.

I pulled up my contacts and dialed a friend at the FBI, Madeline McConnell.

She answered with, “Sydney, where the hell have you been? It’s been weeks. We were supposed to have drinks.”

“I need you to copy down something, Mac. It’s the access to a cloud account.”

“This isn’t a joke, is it? Today has been long and frustrating.”

“No joke. And your day is about to get brighter.” Or maybe darker. I gave her the name of the cloud company and read off Rick Dalton’s username and password.

“Okay. Let me take a look.”

There came a long silence. Then a whistle. “The hell is this? Emails. Videos.”

“Just look at it.”

Through the phone I heard Malik’s video play again as Mac started it up. I closed my eyes and thought about Marines and soldiers in Iraq. About Dougie’s shattered life and Cohen’s injuries, and Clyde’s. My mind pulled up pictures of those who had paid the ultimate price. Haifa and PFC Resenko. Jeremy Kane. Angelo Garcia. Sarge.

Mac came back on the line. “Who took this video, Sydney? This is in Iraq? What does it mean?”

I thought about Malik. A boy who’d lost everything.

But who now, with this, might get a little bit of it back.

“Justice,” I said. “What it means is justice.”





ONE MONTH LATER





CHAPTER 29

Wisdom is earned trench by trench, street by street, from one battle line to the next.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

I stretched out my legs in the Mexico sun and watched Malik dribble a soccer ball down the grass at Parque Tezozómoc. The shouts of the other children echoed through the air as the game went back and forth across the grass.

Malik was good with the ball. But maybe his greatest skill was his speed. He was a boy who knew how to run.

At least now he was running toward something. Not away.

Overhead, leaves rustled. Shadows stretched across the park. A squirrel darted across open ground and vanished up a trunk into the safety of high branches. Seven o’clock in the evening, and the light was long and low. But even with the approach of twilight, the sun held a warm embrace. In Denver, it was officially autumn, and the nighttime air would swirl with the promise of winter.

But here, in la ciudad de México, it still felt like summer.

Beside me on the bench, Ehsan Zarif sat with his elbows on his knees, watching the game. When one of the opposing players knocked an elbow into Malik’s chest, Zarif leapt to his feet and shouted, “Foul!”

No one looked over, and he sat down with a self-conscious smile. “It is just a practice match. I get carried away.”

“It’s because you care. You can be forgiven.”

He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and turned them around and around in his hands.

“I am grateful for what you have done,” he said. “Malik is like a son to me. And now he has a life again.”

I’d been in Mexico for three days. Time enough to visit with Jesús and take him and his friends out to dinner. To meet with Angelo’s widow and put her in contact with David Fuller, who had promised to help the family. And to give Se?ora Torres a check, courtesy of a fund-raiser I’d run in Denver. It wasn’t nearly enough to cover the lost tunnel. But it was a start.

Mostly I’d spent the time with Malik, who was heartbreakingly relieved to see me. This time I hadn’t lied when I promised him I’d be back. His world was a little more stable.