Detective Cross (Alex Cross 24.50)

Tears welled up again. Mickey wiped his sleeve frantically at them. He couldn’t be seen crying here. Out in the rain was one thing, but not here.

Be a soldier, man, he thought as his eyes drifted shut. Be a soldier.

Mickey dozed and dreamed of scenes he had imagined many times. He felt tires hit potholes, and he was no longer in the bus, but deep in the back of a US military transport truck taking him away from the firebase for good, heading straight to Kandahar, then Kabul, and home.

“You happy, kid?” Hawkes asked. “Going stateside?”

Hawkes, the sniper, was sitting on the opposite bench, next to the tailgate, his Barrett rifle balanced between his legs, grinning like he’d just heard the best joke of all.

“Damn straight, I’m happy, Hawkes,” Mickey said.

“You don’t look it.”

“No?” Mickey said. “I’m just nervous, that’s all. We’re so close, Hawkes, I can taste it. No more crazy mofos in turbans lobbing mortars. Leave this shit behind for good. Go home and just…what are you going to do when you get home, Hawkes?”

Hawkes threw back his head and laughed, from deep in his belly. “Kiss my wife and play with my little boy, Mickey.”

“He’ll be happy his daddy’s home,” Mickey said. “That’s so—”

Automatic weapons opened up from high in the rocks flanking the road.

“Ambush!” Hawkes shouted. “Get down, kid! Everyone get—”

Hawkes vanished in a roar and a blast of fire that knocked Mickey cold.

For what seemed an eternity, there was only darkness. Then neon light played on his eyelids, and someone shook his knee.

Mickey started, and awoke to see the Latino guy with the attitude staring down at him. “Union Station.”

“Oh?” Mickey said. “Thanks.”

He took his knapsack and left the bus, running to the terminal to get out of the rain. There were police officers all over the place, and dogs, and reporters. But not one of them paid Mickey any mind as he moved with the evening crowd toward the subway and train stations.

Avoiding the train or Metro platforms, Mickey instead cut through the main hall and out the front door. Four or five television news satellite vans were parked along Massachusetts Avenue, facing Union Station.

When the klieg lights went on, he almost spun around and went back inside. Instead he put up his hood and waited until two men much taller than him exited the station. He fell in almost beside them, within their shadows, until they were a full block east of the television lights.

Mickey left them and kept heading east past Stanton Park. He went to a brick-faced duplex row house on Lexington Place, and used a key to get inside as quietly as he could.

Television light flickered from a room down the hallway. He could hear a woman singing with a back-up band, really belting the song out, probably on one of those star search shows his mother loved, and he hoped the singing would be enough to cover his climb up the stairs.

But when he was almost at the top the song ended. His mother yelled drunkenly, “Mick, is that you?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“I’ve been worried sick.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“There’s left-over Popeye’s in the fridge, you want it. And get me some ice.”

“I’m tired, Ma,” he said. “And I gotta be up early.”

He didn’t wait for a response but dashed up the stairs, around the bannister and into his room. He locked it and waited, listening for an indication of how drunk she was. A little plastered and she’d shrug it off. A lot plastered and she was likely to pound at his door and shriek curses at him.

A minute passed, and then two.

Mickey tossed his knapsack on the floor, took off his raincoat, and dug beneath his mattress, coming up with a dog-eared paperback book he’d bought online for twenty-two dollars. He’d read A Practical Guide to Improvised Bomb Making at least eight times in the past few months, but he climbed on the bed and returned to the chapter on radio-controlled explosives.