“That ledge with the two bushes on the right?”
“Affirmative!”
“I got it. Just has to show himself.”
A fourth voice shouted, “Smoke him, Hawkes! Turn the sumbitch inside out!”
The mortar attack had slowed to a stop. Mickey got up, the debris falling off his uniform as he spat out dust and poked his head out of his foxhole.
To his right about twenty yards, Hawkes was settled in behind the high-power scope of a .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. Muscular and bare-chested under his body armor, Hawkes had the stub of a cheap unlit cigar dangling from the corner of his lips.
“Take him out, Hawkes,” Mickey yelled. “We got better places to be.”
“We do not move until that good son of Allah shows his head,” Hawkes shouted back, his head never leaving the scope.
“I wanna go home,” Mickey said. “I want you to go home, too.”
“We all wanna go home, kid,” Hawkes said.
“I’m going surfing someday, Hawkes,” Mickey said. “Learn to ride big waves.”
“North Shore, baby,” Hawkes said as if it were a daydream of his, too. “Banzai Pipeline. Sunset Beach and…Hey, there you are, Mr. Haji. Couldn’t stand the suspense, could you? Had to see just how close you came with those last three mortars to blowing the infidels past paradise.”
Hawkes flipped off the safety on the Barrett, and said, “Sending, boys.”
Before anyone could reply, the .50-caliber rifle boomed and belched fire out the ported muzzle. In the shimmering heat Mickey swore he could see the contrail left by the bullet, ripping across space, sixteen hundred and ninety-two meters up the face of the mountain before it struck with deadly impact.
The other men started cheering. Hawkes came off the rifle finally, and looked over at Mickey with a big, shit-eating grin. “Now we can go home, kid.”
Mickey felt someone shaking him, and he startled awake.
“Union Station,” the bus driver said. “End of the line.”
Mickey yawned, said, “Sorry, sir. Long day.”
The driver said, “For all of us. You got somewhere to be?”
Mickey felt embarrassed to answer, but said, “My mom’s. It’s not far.”
The driver stood aside for Mickey to go out the door. He went inside the bus terminal, following the signage toward the passenger trains and the Metro. Most of the shops inside Union Station were closed and dark, though there were still a fair number of passengers waiting for Amtrak rides.
Mickey acted cold, pulled his hoodie up to cover his face from the security cameras, and went to short-term lockers, where he used a key to retrieve a small book bag. He reached into the book bag to retrieve a greasy box of cold fried chicken from Popeye’s. The last drumstick and wing tasted nice and spicy.
Mickey dropped the bones back in the box just as an overhead speaker blared: “Amtrak announces the Northeast Corridor Train to Boston, departing 10:10 on Track Four. All aboard!”
With the cardboard box in his hand, he fished in his pocket for the ticket, fell in with the crowd and moved toward the door to Track 4. He showed his ticket to the conductor, who scanned it with disinterest, waved him through, and reached for the ticket of the passenger behind him.
Going with the knot of passengers, Mickey walked through a short tunnel that led out onto the platform. He passed the dining car and several others before spotting a trash can affixed to a post two cars back from the engines.
H
e walked past it, never slowing as he dumped the greasy, fried chicken take-out box that held the bomb.
Then Mickey boarded the train and settled into a seat. His ticket said Baltimore, but he would get out at the first stop—New Carrollton—and catch the Metro back into the city, where he’d try to get a little sleep before making a call to Chief Stone.
Chapter 16
Bree’s phone jangled at five minutes to three in the morning.