“What’s his name?”
“Cap.”
“Cap? What’s it short for?”
It was short for nothing, which made it, and him, a little cuter. “Nothing. He said it’s his name. Cap.”
“Ooh, I like it.”
“Me too.”
“So, you’re going to see your dad?”
I wasn’t excited about it, and my response did little to hide my lack of enthusiasm. “Yeah.”
“What’s Michael doing?”
“Working late.”
“What about your brother? Is he back yet?”
I shook my head. “Still in Argentina.”
“I swear,” she said. “Your dad’s probably got him making a drug deal. Anything for fuckin’ money.”
“Yours isn’t any better,” I snapped back.
“I know, right? Seriously, I’ll get this. Go ahead and go.”
“You sure?” I asked. “I’d stay, but I have to change clothes before I go over there.”
“Positive,” she said. “Yeah. Your dad sees you wearing that, and he’d freak out.”
“I know.” I stood up and put my wallet in my purse. “Okay. I’ll find out about Cap, and I’ll get with you.”
“Okay.”
Michelle and I had met for a drink on a whim. The bar she chose was in Shawnee Mission, the suburb I lived in, but spent very little time eating, drinking, or socializing in. The location was a nice choice considering I had to drive home, change clothes, unpack a day’s worth of shopping and drive back to greater Kansas City to meet my mother and father.
Racing against the clock, I ran from the bar to the parking lot, hopped in my car and tried to quickly decide what the quickest way home was. After a sixty-second-long argument with myself, I chose a path and took off.
A few wrong turns and several one-way streets later, and I was unsure of where I was. Frustrated, I searched for a place to pull over and program my navigation system. Halfway down an unfamiliar block in an industrial neighborhood, and I spotted several businesses that had well-lit parking spots and decided to choose one that was unoccupied to pull into. As I passed one of the buildings, I noticed a car that looked like Michael’s.
I glanced at the rear of the vehicle as I drove past.
TRIPP.
I hit the brakes.
It seemed like an odd location for investors to be working. Michael said he was working late, and I had no doubt that the car was his, so I turned around and pulled into the parking lot. Parked beside Michael’s car was Cap’s truck, an SUV, a Mercedes-Benz, and a black Suburban.
I parked beside the Suburban and turned off my car.
My mind raced. I tried to think of whatever possibilities I could be exposing myself to, and decided no matter what it was, it wouldn’t be bad. Obviously Michael’s work brought him to the facility, and for whatever reason, Cap was there with him.
I sent Michael a text.
After waiting several minutes for a response, I called.
He didn’t answer.
I walked in the front door. The thick layer of dust that covered the empty receptionist’s desk just inside the entrance led me to believe no one had sat down at it in years. The hallway turned to the right, so I followed it in hopes of finding Michael and Cap drinking a beer with two of Michael’s investors. The sound of muffled voices got quiet halfway to the only door I could see, which made me slightly anxious and a little apprehensive. I continued nonetheless.
A few feet from the doorway, and I could see that it was open, so I stuck my head inside.
I gasped. Michael, Cap and two gentlemen I didn’t recognize were in the room. They looked like they just got back from playing war games. Dressed in all black with their faces painted with green, gray and black makeup, they stood in apparent shock. Each of them either held a gun or had one strapped to their shoulder.
“You said you had to work late. What’s going on, Michael?”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said openly. “Give me a few minutes with her.”
He handed one of the men the rifle he held and walked toward me. Each of the men, Cap included, sat down. I felt like I was going to vomit.
“Look,” he said as he walked up to me. “I know you’re probably wondering what’s going on, and it’s not an easy thing for me to answer. But I’ll do my best.”
“Why are you dressed like that? What...I don’t...”
“I’ll explain. Just follow me,” he said.
I followed him down the hallway and through the door of another office. The room was filled with boxes, but had no furniture. I followed him inside.
He didn’t look the same. His face was covered in horrid makeup, and he was wearing a black outfit with black boots. He inhaled a deep breath, exhaled and looked at me. “I can’t tell you what I’m in the middle of, but I can tell you it isn’t bad.”
“Well, it sure doesn’t look good. Why do you have guns? And why are you wearing that stuff? You look like you’re going to rob a bank. I feel sick that I came here.”
“Terra, it’s...I...” he stammered.
I tossed my hands in the air. “Is this where you work? This building?”
He nodded.
The carpet was dark blue and I stared at it for some time. I felt like I was going to vomit. “You’re an investor in what?”
“Let me...I can...I’ll explain. But I’m going to have to do it later. I really...”
I had no interest in later. I wanted the answers right now, and nothing less. “No. I want an answer. There’s not a telephone at the receptionist’s desk. And it’s covered in dust. If you work here, something isn’t right. What do you invest in?”
He inhaled a deep breath.
I pressed my hands into my hips and stared. “Don’t lie to me, Michael.”
“Firearms.”
“What about them?” I asked.
“I invest in firearms.”
I wrinkled my nose and stared. “You collect firearms?”
“I don’t collect. I buy, sell, manufacture...”
“You’re a fucking gun dealer?” I snapped.
He slumped his shoulders and shrugged. “Kind of. It’s complicated.”
I hated guns and almost everything they stood for. I couldn’t believe my ears. “Tell me. I swear,” I fumed. “I am so mad at you right now.”
“I’m sure you are, but I haven’t got a lot of time. We can talk later. And I’ll explain everything.”
One of the things he said came to the front of my thoughts. “Wait a minute,” I hissed. “You said you buy, sell, and manufacture guns? This is your job? This is what you do?”
He nodded.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Terra, it’s not...”
“Not what?” I fumed. “Not what? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s you fucking lying to me.”
“Terra, I’m an investor. I invest in firearms. Huge shipments of them. And I sell them for profit. It’s my job. But it’s not something a person goes out and advertises. Let’s talk about this later,” he pleaded.
“Who do you sell them to?”
His lips parted slightly. He shrugged.
Everything that he had said slowly sank in. I can’t tell you everything. I can’t explain. My face felt hot. I had been deceived. Lied to. And, most of all, I found out that the man I loved was a gun dealer, and that his huge shipments of them was complicated. I hated guns. I hated the violence and death they left in their wake. I hated the shady criminals that relied on them for income, and I felt terribly sorry for the people they crippled, killed and maimed.
“What kind of guns?”
I reserved a glimmer of hope that it was civil war relics or old war memorabilia. I had
reached a point that I was afraid that it didn’t matter. There wasn’t much I felt that he could say or do to change the fact that my heart was on fire and a knot was building inside my stomach.
A knot I was sure would be there for a lifetime.
He shrugged again. “It’s really something...we should...we just need to talk later.”
“No. Now!” I demanded. “Guns like the ones you had in that room? Do you sell those? Don’t lie to me.”
He nodded.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
He reached for my face.
“Don’t touch me,” I barked. “I know what those guns are. You sell machine guns? Assault weapons? Don’t fucking lie.”
It seemed I was prying information from him that he didn’t want to reveal. After a moment of what was obviously an inner struggle, he responded. “Yes, I sell assault weapons.”
“I can’t fucking believe this,” I cried.
“Terra...”
“Don’t Terra me.” I raised my hand between us. “I can’t believe this. I should have known.”
I could forgive him for not telling me exactly what he did for income—hell, I hadn’t been close to truthful with him, either. His chosen profession of dealing in machine guns, however, was simply too much for me to accept.
And I couldn’t help but feel that he knew what he was doing was unacceptable, or he would have told me the truth.
I stomped out of the office and into the hallway.
“Terra, it’s...”
I spun around. “Save it. And, I suggest you tell the next girl the truth from the beginning. Then she can decide if she wants to be with someone who sells death.”
“Terra...”
“I hate you.” My stomach convulsed. I fought to breathe. My. Heart. Hurt. I stumbled toward the exit, blubbering and crying as I walked away. As I reached the door I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand and turned to face him.
Covered in black, he stood at the end the hallway and stared back at me.
“Don’t ever come near me again!” I shouted.
And, as hard as it was to believe, I meant every word I said.
Chapter Twenty
Michael
Through thermal imaging surveillance, we learned there were three people in the building, and that two of them were mobile. Based on the stationary position of the third person, we assumed he was our objective.
“Northwest and southwest entrances will be blown simultaneously. Lucky will toss two M84s in the southwest. We’ll enter northwest, extract the target and be out in thirty seconds. ROE are clear. If you’re identified or threatened, engage. Shoot to kill.”
It was the plan for Lucky to throw flash-bang grenades into the area where the two mobile targets were positioned. When the devices detonated, it would disorient anyone exposed by subjecting them to a two-hundred-decibel explosion and a one-million-candlepower flash of light. The two occupants would then be blind and deaf for five seconds, and they’d experience loss of balance and disorientation for several seconds beyond that.
I believed the time we gained from their inability to function would be almost enough for Cap and me to get in and out of the facility without the need to harm anyone. “You’ll blow the doors on my command.”
“Roger that,” Lucky said.
“Now’s the time,” I said. “If anyone wants out of this clusterfuck.”
The two thumbs-up replies were all I needed to see. In a matter of seconds, we were positioned at our respective doors.
“M1 to M4, I need a status of the tangos,” I said.
Trace’s voice came over the headset. “This is M4, we have two tangos currently at number one entrance three meters from exterior wall. Tango three is stationary, over.”
I placed the explosive charge on the door. “M1, charge in place.”
“M3, charge in place,” Lucky said.
“On my three count.”
“Roger three count M1.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
The small explosive charge blew the locking mechanism completely off of the door. Immediately following, the sound and concussion of the two flash-bangs rang out through the building.
Although thermal imaging will show hot spots, there is no indication of where walls, doors, rooms or any other interior surfaces are located. Cap and I entered the building blind to the layout, aided only by the night-vision goggles we wore.
As fate would have it, the corner of the building we entered was well lit, making the use of our night-vision equipment impossible. Upon entering, we each flipped the goggles up and cautiously worked our way to the corner of the building.
We advanced toward a room in the rear of the building with our weapons at the ready until we reached a closed door. Knowing surveillance indicated only one man in this area of the building, the door was opened and we entered with the expectation of finding Peter.
What we saw was in no way what I—or anyone for that matter—would have expected. A man with what appeared to be an explosive device strapped to his neck—and his body fitted with an explosive vest—was lying flat on a bed.
If I tried to move him, the three of us could be dead instantly. If I waited too long to make a decision, we’d be in a firefight with two angry Bulgarians, and I had no way of predicting the outcome. I ran through the possibilities and quickly realized as soon as the two men in the opposite room regained their senses they may simply detonate the device, which would obliterate the entire corner of the building, Cap and me included.
My thoughts immediately went to Terra. If I somehow lived through the situation I was in, I needed to find a way to right my wrong with her. But the first thing I needed to do was to decide how to get out of the situation alive.
I glanced at Cap.
Positioned beside the door with his weapon pointing toward the corridor, he met my gaze. For an instant, he studied me.
He nodded once.
Prepared for the situation that had been presented to me or not, I made a man a promise that I’d do the best I could to retrieve a man’s only son.
And I intended to keep that promise.
Forgive me, Lord...
“M1 to M3.”
“M3, go M1.”
“Eliminate the two tangos.”
“M1, say again?”
“M3, eliminate the two tangos, over.”
“Roger that, M1.”
I heard the distinctive sound of a suppressed weapon being fired twice. The dull thud of two bodies falling to the floor followed.
“M3 to M1. Two tangos have been eliminated.”
“M1 to M4.”
“M4, go M1.”
“M4, we’ve got a situation. We need the Snowman.”
“M1, say again.”
I stared at the bomb. Since the war, I had seen nothing like it, and never expected to see anything in my civilian life—regardless of my chosen profession—that resembled it. It was one of the most intricate bombs I had ever seen.
“We need the Snowman, over,” I said.
“M3. Can I get a description of the situation?”
“Haditha, 2007,” I said, recalling a battle in Iraq that Trace, Lucky and Cap all fought in with me. A similar device was strapped to a man in the center of the town square. It wasn’t defused in time, and the man exploded in front of our entire platoon. A crater large enough to park a truck in was the only remaining proof of his existence.
“Heaven help us,” Trace said.
“Amen,” I responded.
“Peter,” I said sharply. “You need to stay as still as you can. Blink your eyes if you understand me.”
His eyes blinked.
And
I began to pray.
Chapter Twenty-One
Terra
I caught my breath and tried to speak without completely breaking down emotionally. “I can’t even...I can’t begin...to explain,” I said. “He was everything to me.”
“There will always be another,” my mother said.
“No. There won’t.”
I began to hyperventilate as I tried to breathe. I needed comfort that I felt only my mother could provide, so I decided to tell her about Michael, and about our breakup. By the time I got to my parents’ home, my father, like always, was gone.
“Mia figlia,” she said. “Respirare.”
Breathe, my daughter, breathe.
“It...hurts,” I said. “So...much...”
She wrapped her arms around me and held me against her chest. In a few minutes, I felt like I could breathe again, and pulled away from her.
“I just can’t...”
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
I couldn’t tell her the complete truth, and a portion wouldn’t suffice. “There’s nothing to say. It just ended.”
“But. If you feel.” She shook her head. “If you love him. You find a way.”
“There is no way.”
“It’s because he was American.”
“Mother!”
“American men don’t understand.”
“Mother,” I snapped. “You sound just like Father.”
“It’s true,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s a good man.” After I spoke, I wished I would have said was. A few seconds later, I did. “He was a good man.”
“If he was good...” She shrugged. “You wouldn’t be upset.”
I initially felt some comfort in talking to her about Michael, but I was quickly growing angry about her stubborn nature.
“I’m going to go,” I said.
“No, stay,” she pleaded. “Let me see a picture of him. Do you have a picture?”
I didn’t see what good it would do to show her, but stubborn pride caused me to grab my phone from my purse. After flipping through the photos on my phone, I selected one of him I had taken at my house when he was dressed in his work clothes.