The Survivor: A Novel Part 20

Luis's hand rose to his brace, which, Nate realized, was upside down. "You from the insurance company?"

"No."

"You look familiar. Did you go to North Hollywood High?"

"Nope." Nate glanced at his watch. Three hours before he'd attempt to get Janie and Cielle on a plane to Manhattan, where they'd try to lose themselves among 9 million people. "Listen, I'm sorry to walk in on your Sat.u.r.day, but I really need to talk to you."

Luis stepped back, letting him in. "Go on, homeys. You heard the man."

His friends grumbled and rose, administering elaborate handshakes and shuffling out. Luis grabbed a Pacifico from the fridge and leaned against a cabinet in the galley kitchen. "You sure you ain't with the insurance company?"

"I'm sure."

He ripped off his brace with a groan, tossing it aside and rubbing the red skin beneath. "Screwed up my neck. Whiplash. Had to do rehab, all that. But the bulls.h.i.t insurance companies don't believe you unless you look like Christopher Reeve, so my lawyer, he says I hafta wear the thing."

He palmed a few aspirin and downed them, which reminded Nate he was late for his own morning dose. Removing the riluzole and antibiotics from his pocket, he popped them in his mouth, then looked around for a gla.s.s. Luis tilted the beer bottle at him, and Nate shrugged, grabbed it, and washed them down.

Luis took back his bottle. "What's yours for? The meds?"

"Just some aches."

"The worst, isn't it? Not like when we was younger." He paused, thoughtful. "I got off lucky, I guess. Coulda been worse."

"Yeah," Nate said. "It could." He leaned against the fridge. "I have to ask you a bunch of weird questions."

"Shoot."

"Ever heard of somebody named Pavlo Shevchenko?"

"Nope."

"Do you know a Patrice McKenna?"

"Uh-uh."

"How about Wendy Moreno?"

"No, man. This one of those talk shows, you gonna tell me I got a daughter I don't know about or something?"

"No, nothing like that." Nate tried for another possible point of connection. "What do you do for work?"

"Auto-part sales." He gestured at the pa.s.s-through counter, stacked high with tool catalogs and invoices pinned to clipboards.

"You work here?"

"Based in Torrance. But I travel a lot."

Nate glanced around the small apartment. An antique L.A. Raiders poster sagged from tacks on the far wall. Pep Boys magnets pinned a variety of material to the fridge-Domino's Pizza coupons, an airport-shuttle brochure, pictures of Luis on a boat with several bikini-clad women, a Pacifico, and a grin wide enough to show his molars. A heap of wrenches lay on the spent living-room carpet like a scattering of bones, something about them recalling Urban's box of mail-ordered lock-blade hunting knives.

Nate decided to go at it directly. He took a breath. "Do you have any idea why someone would want you dead?"

The beer was almost to Luis's lips, but he pulled it to one side, the skin of his forehead twisting. Then he laughed. "Ex-wife count?"

"I'm serious."

"Why the h.e.l.l would someone want to kill me?"

"I have no idea."

"You talking 'bout this guy? Pablo Shovec.h.i.n.ko? What the h.e.l.l? How's he know me?"

"I don't know."

With thumb and forefinger, Luis smoothed his pencil-thin mustache. "What'd you say your name was again?"

"I didn't."

Luis nodded once, slowly. He knocked back a last gulp and lowered the empty bottle to his side, his fist tightening around the long neck. "I think maybe you should go, homey."

"Okay. But you should know: Your name was on a list. Some people are looking to hurt you. I don't know why. I'm trying to find out. But if you can get out of town, take one of those business trips, now might be a good time."

Luis's eyes turned to slits. "Wait a minute. I recognize your a.s.s. You're the guy from that bank shooting, lost his s.h.i.t during the press conference."

"Nah," Nate said. "Wasn't me."

They stared at each other, blinking, both of them unsure of the next move. Nate trapped in the narrow kitchen. A standoff.

Finally Luis shifted to the side, opening up a slender gap for Nate to exit. Nate slid past him, smelling the beer on his breath. Luis kept a tight grip on the bottle but never raised it.

As Nate stepped outside, Luis lifted a black boot and kicked the front door shut behind him.

Chapter 30.

They huddled together at the boarding gate, trying to blend in with the businessmen and students, the families laden with diaper bags and cameras. Janie had bought Nate a ticket for American Flight 4 as well so he could accompany her and Cielle right up until they crossed the threshold to the Jetway. He had been in a continuous state of alarm, scrutinizing every face, peering at every cl.u.s.ter of travelers, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. There'd been the predictable LAX tangle slowing them down at security, and groups three through six were already boarding. As he watched the throng leak slowly through the checkpoint and onto the plane, it struck Nate that these could well be the final minutes he'd have with his wife and daughter.

For most of the morning, Cielle had remained leaden and, aside from numerous whispered calls to Jason, silent. While Nate had paid the visit to Luis Millan, Janie had busied herself withdrawing wads of cash from the bank and making sure she'd have full remote access to her funds, dwindling though they might be. It wasn't exactly a long-term plan, and Nate well knew that if he found himself ensconced in another ice block come Sunday night, there would be no end of troubles accelerating to meet Janie head-on. Now she checked and rechecked her purse, her phone, her carry-on luggage, a nonstop cycle of small distractions that no doubt kept her from confronting the terrifying big picture.

The check-in agent called for group two, Janie and Cielle's departure now one announcement away. Time was scarce in another regard: Nate had to get to that next name on Urban's. .h.i.t list, Wendy Moreno of Westchester, and hope he nailed down a connection to Shevchenko firm enough to bring to the FBI. The geography was convenient, Moreno's place just a few miles north of the airport.

Nate took a deep breath and stepped over to Cielle to say good-bye. She looked up into his face, her expression blurred with concern. He felt a faint elation that, at long last, she was going to say something warm and daughterly, but she wiped her nose and asked, "When can Jay come?"

The sensation was a bit like having a battering ram swung into his gut, but he covered as best he could with a lame parental standby: "Why don't you talk to your mother about that?"

And now group one was boarding, and they were out of time. He moved to hug her, and she half started for him, and they wound up clutching at each other briefly, like robots simulating a human custom.

When they parted, he bent so he could look at her directly. "When you were a baby, we got you home and we were gonna sleep you in our bed, between us. But you were so little and I was so big, I was worried I'd roll over and smother you or crack your neck. I was so scared I'd hurt you that I stayed awake all that night and the next, until finally your mom said she needed one of us to get some sleep, so we put you in a cradle by the side of the bed. And then finally I could fall asleep."

Cielle searched his face. "Why are you telling me this?"

His thoughts roiled; he could find no clarity in the heat of a dozen conflicting emotions. The remaining pa.s.sengers were funneling toward the checkpoint, an hourgla.s.s down to its final grains. "I don't know."

Janie nudged her. "We have to go." Cielle started for the gate, Janie following, rolling her carry-on, Nate watching them walk away.

Janie got two steps, and then she let go, the handle cracking the speckled-tile floor as she spun, and then she was in his arms, squeezing him. "I'm sorry I never went to Paris with you for our makeup honeymoon and for all the times I yelled at you and for us fighting so stupidly and for the time I called you a useless a.s.shole."

His hands remained raised in the air behind her in stunned flotation, as though he were fearful that if he embraced her back, she'd evanesce. "I don't remember you calling me a useless a.s.shole," was all he could manage.

"You don't?" Her face was hot against his neck, moist with tears. "You can't imagine how many nights I've lost beating myself up over that and everything else I did wrong."

"Actually, I can."

Ahead, Cielle waited at the zipped-back stanchion, ticket in hand, chewing her gum impatiently and tugging on her purple-and-green Seuss-like scarf. The check-in agent gestured, a pert smile hiding her irritation.

Tentatively, Nate lowered his arms to Janie. She remained, firm and alive in his grasp. "Thank you for this," he said, and let her go.

She turned and boarded briskly, not looking back. He paced a bit before the vast windows as the crew loaded the luggage and unhooked the Jetway. Finally, the 767 pulled out of the gate and turned majestically for the runway. Nate watched, hands pressed to the gla.s.s, counting the airplane windows from the front. Row 7, Row 8-and there was Cielle, her frayed sweater a spot of black against the blinding white panels of the jet. She pressed a sleeve-covered hand to her window, and he waved back.

The plane drifted forward, the rest of its sleek body pulling into Nate's line of sight. In the row behind Janie and Cielle, a pale face loomed into view against the pane. Bullet-shaped head fringed with bristle.

Even from this distance, he could make out the displaced nose, the broad seam of the mouth twitching with something like amus.e.m.e.nt. Nate's fists ached, and he registered distantly that he was beating them against the window. Spittle flecked the reflection of his own roaring face.

Yuri lifted a hand in mock farewell, and the plane glided forward to the runway.

Chapter 31.

"Sir, you'll have to calm down."

Nate leaned over the check-in counter. "I told you-"

"You want us to stop a flight? Because you don't like one of the pa.s.sengers? Whose last name you can't even produce?"

"No, that's not why." He glanced through the giant windows. The plane, now taxiing to the end of the runway. "My wife and daughter's lives are at risk-"

"We've already left a message for them at the arrival gate. If they are uncomfortable in any way in the air, they can report it to the flight attendants. We have a very competent crew aboard, and-"

The rest of the agent's response was drowned out by American Flight 4 roaring into takeoff. Nate backpedaled from the counter despondently and watched the 767 mount the mockingly clear blue sky. Onlookers returned to their newspapers and laptops as the plane shrank to a speck.

Again he called Janie's cell phone and then Cielle's, but both were of course still turned off for the flight. Arguing with himself, he vacillated between fleeing and staying, rising and sitting at intervals, a liturgy of panic.

What if Yuri killed them en route? Or right upon landing? Nate couldn't let his wife and daughter spend a five-and-a-half-hour flight unaware that their prospective killer was sitting right behind them. But what the h.e.l.l could he do?

Flight 4 was now a memory lost to the c.u.mulus clouds heaped at the horizon. Gone. Thin air and all. His lungs felt incapable of drawing a full breath, and for once he knew that the ALS was not to blame. What would Shevchenko have planned for Janie and Cielle when they set down in New York?

He turned from the window, nearly banging into a man standing behind him, facing away. As he started to apologize, the figure made a stiff, horror-movie pivot.

Charles.

He opened his mouth and puffed out a ghostly sheet of smoke from his charred insides. As it rose, he grinned, impressed with himself. "Know who my favorite officer always was?"

As usual, oblivious to the context.

Nate was almost too infuriated to reply. "Right now I don't give a s.h.i.t who your favorite officer was."

"Lieutenant Spick-'n'-Span. 'Member him?"

Nate glowered at his dead friend, barely resisting the urge to inflict more bodily damage.

"One time we were rolling out for recon, and I stopped by his office to grab coordinates," Charles continued. "He was gone, but he'd left a note nailed to his door, said, 'In the absence of orders, figure out what those orders would be and execute aggressively.'" He took a step to the window, his fingers leaving red-wine streaks on the pane. "Funny motherf.u.c.ker, LT was."

Nate followed Charles's gaze to the sky into which the plane had vanished, the vapor trail already starting to dissipate. Charles's ill-timed story bounced around in his head, two words sticking: Execute aggressively. That sounded about right.

He turned and walked briskly away from the gate, pa.s.sing a continuous loop of storefronts-newsstand, Starbucks, McDonald's. Just before the escalator to baggage claim, he spotted what he was searching for-a white courtesy phone. s.n.a.t.c.hing it up and turning his face to the wall, he waited for the operator. When the pleasant voice came on, he said, "I'm calling about American Airlines Flight Four. There's a bomb on board, planted by the Ukrainian man in the tenth row. If you don't turn the plane around, it'll detonate."

He set down the receiver and, keeping his face lowered, strode the six steps to the escalator. As he descended, he dialed Janie on his cell phone, waiting for voice mail. "Janie, listen to me. I know you can't turn your phone on till you're taxiing in, but Yuri's on your flight, in the row behind you. Don't look back. Don't be obvious. But watch yourself. Delete this message now. There'll be security all over when you land. Get yourself and Cielle to them, and I'll figure something out by then. Okay. I-"

The question of how to sign off caught him by surprise. He was still searching for words when the escalator sank into the floor and he stepped out into the chaos of the baggage-claim area.

At once the phone was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his grasp, an arm slid around his waist, and a point dug into the side of his lower back, pressing so hard it seemed his skin would pop at any quick move.

He grunted and jerked away, making out only the bill of a baseball cap just behind his shoulder. The arm tightened across his waist so that he and the small man moved as a piece, their bodies in lockstep. Twisting, he craned for a look beneath the cap.

Misha's boyish face peered up, dense bangs shoved down nearly to his eyes. "Keep walking or I will push the screwdriver straight through your kidney."

The pressure intensified, sending flames across the band of Nate's lower back and down the back of his thigh. "Okay," he grunted. "Okay. Where are we going?"

"To Pavlo."

"How do I know he won't just kill me?"

"Because you're still breathing."

They hadn't stopped moving, a brisk pace across the floor. People cl.u.s.tered all around, and yet no one paid them any mind. The automatic doors rolled open, the dry midday heat enveloping them. As they stepped to the curb, a white van pulled up, the side door rolling back with a screech. Valerik waited on a bench seat, gun resting flat against his thigh, the sleek stub of his ponytail so solid it looked carved from wood. The point of the screwdriver prodded Nate up and in, and a moment later Misha hopped up front with Dima.

Valerik pressed the barrel of the pistol to the top of Nate's knee, and they coasted out into the flow of traffic, Dima returning the traffic cop's polite nod as they pa.s.sed.