Chapter 43
Jed
Holy fuck. What have we done? A panicked voice in his mind kept asking that burning question, over and over again with increasing intensity.
The right thing. So don’t whine. Only response he could offer. Cold comfort.
Goddamn. Yes, he would do his duty, no matter the cost. But something inside him screamed out loud for what he was sacrificing.
This precious thing he’d found with Freya.
The shining miracle of it. The adventures, the laughter, the fights.
Passionate nights and lazy mornings. Long years, to pass with her.
Winters and summers, growing old together.
Kids, maybe. And Holly. Already, she was like his own child.
His friends, too. They had been his salvation, back when he was young and dumb and monumentally fucked up.
Ethan, Shane, all of the Unredeemables. Even Mick, for fuck’s sake.
Mick hadn’t redeemed himself for what he’d done, not by a long shot, but here he was, voluntarily driving the car bomb from hell, so he was definitely making an effort.
Call it a down payment on redemption. A guy had to start somewhere.
Mick was bug-eyed, sweating, breathing hard.
His hands were white-knuckled, clamped down hard on the wheel as they sped past factories, warehouses, parking lots, containers, water towers, mountains of crushed rock.
Finally, they had reached an area that was emptier, more wide open.
Good for the rest of the world, but it still sucked for them.
Lots of green, various parking lots. He saw tugboat docks at the shore of the river, boats docked alongside them.
The clock had ticked over. It was now after twelve.
“What time is that keynote speech supposed to start?” he asked.
“It’s well underway,” Mick said grimly. “Make your peace with Jesus, buddy. Those fuckheads will blow this thing sky high any time now, so live every moment.”
Jed processed a fresh jolt of panic as Mick directed the van suddenly off the main road and onto a smaller, older one, that was ill-kept, full of potholes and cracks and broken cement. Every bouncing jolt made him intensely aware of the massive quantity of ordnance packed into the van behind them.
“We were so focused on getting Kat out of her rolling bomb, we never planned what we were going to do with this thing,” he said. “So, ah…”
“I’m open to suggestions.” Mick’s voice was curt. “But if you don’t have any brilliant ideas, don’t distract me.”
Thump. We veered off cracked, bleached asphalt and accelerated onto a dirt road that paralleled the river. There was a chain-link fence between us and the water.
The van rattled and bumped as we sped along in grim silence.
The river was visible through a fringe of trees, about a hundred yards away.
There were buildings all around them. Maybe far enough away to be out of the immediate blast range, maybe not.
They hadn’t had a chance to study the bomb itself, so who the fuck knew.
The road choked off abruptly at another chain-link fence, delineating a big lot full of containers and trucks. Mick skidded to a sudden halt at the big metal traffic barrier that blocked the road. “Move that thing out of my way,” he said. “Quick!”
“Mick—”
“Fucking move it, Jed!” he bellowed. “We don’t have time to argue!”
He jumped out, dragged the heavy thing out of the roadway, but when he reached for the car door, it thunked shut. The door lock was engaged.
Jed grabbed the handle. Rattled it. “What the fuck?” he yelled. “Mick!”
The window rolled, just an inch. “This job doesn’t require two people,” Mick said. “Get behind one of those containers. Tell Holly I love her. That I’m sorry.”
“Mick!” he yelled. “Don’t! We’ll just leave the van here, and run like hell!”
“Too late.” The van surged forward, bumping and rattling over the uneven track through the dirt toward the river. Mick was heading for one of the docks. It looked deserted. It stretched way out into the water. No tugboats were docked there.
Jed sprinted for the nearest container, his sense of impending disaster getting sharper with every step.
He dove behind it for whatever shelter it could give.
Maybe the blast wave would knock it down over him and crush him where he lay.
Who knew. Who could possibly know any goddamn thing for sure, ever. God, what a clusterfuck.
He crawled to the edge, peering around it. The van was on the dock. He faintly heard the rattle of the weathered, water-swollen wooden planks as Mick drove faster, and faster…and then pitched off the end.
He was too far away to hear the splash, the gurgle.
The van went down fast. Mick must have opened the windows so it wouldn’t float. There was nothing else to look at after the van had disappeared, so he put his arms over his head, eyes squeezed shut.
Memories rushed through his mind. Those tours in Afghanistan with Mick.
They had trusted each other. Had each other’s backs, time and time again.
His throat hurt, like someone was squeezing it in an iron claw.
Maybe Mick could swim free of the van. If he got out of the water in time, he could be on land before the blast wave could—
Boom.
The explosion shook very the earth. He looked up, saw water fountaining into the air. The dock was blown up, pieces of wood rising up, up, up…and then arching back down again to the ground, thud, thud, thud.
A huge piece of some wooden structure landed heavily, and bounced just a few feet from him, knocking dirt into his face.
His chest heaved with sobs as the river water pounded down around him.