Need You Now

60

T he guard went down hard to the floor, dropped by two quick shots that left him motionless. His pistol skidded across the tile toward the bed. I dived for it as the gunman took Dr. Kern and moved away from the window, toward the closet. I grabbed the pistol and took aim, but he was using the doctor as a human shield.

“I have hostages!” he shouted in a voice that was loud enough for the officers in the hallway to hear him.

A voice crackled over the speaker box on my father’s bed: “We hear you.”

I recognized the voice as Andie Henning’s.

The alarm went silent, and an eerie stillness came over the room. Two guards shot, my father barely alive. Andie’s voice continued over the intercom speaker:

“We want to get medical treatment for the injured officers.”

“They’re dead! And if you make another run at this room, they’re all dead!” Then he looked at me, his gun pressed to Dr. Kern’s head, and said, “Drop your gun!”

I held my aim, my finger on the trigger.

“Do it!” he said as he shoved the pistol even harder against the base of the doctor’s skull.

I didn’t move. Andie’s voice was on the speaker again.

“Patrick, do as he says. We don’t need your help.” She paused and then addressed the gunman directly. “Mongoose, there’s no escape. We know who you are.”

“Mongoose,” I said quietly, a reflex, as if there were at least partial closure in knowing what he called himself.

“It’s hopeless, Mongoose,” said Andie. “Joe Barber is being arrested as we speak. Drop your weapon and surrender now.”

Mongoose glared at me from across the room, his eyes like lasers. “Put the gun on the floor and slide it toward me,” he said in a calm, but threatening tone.

The doctor’s eyes widened with fear. I should have done as I was told, should have followed Andie’s direction. But there was no guarantee that my father would ever wake, and I had Mongoose’s attention-a chance to get some answers. I couldn’t let go.

Mongoose tightened his stare on me and said, “There’s no one here worth dying for, Patrick. Your father is a traitor to the U.S. government.”

“You’re reaching,” I said.

“Your father cut a deal with terrorists.”

“Right. And yo’ mama eats worms. Now, put down the gun, asshole!”

“You think this is a joke?” he said, pressing the pistol even harder against Dr. Kern’s head.

It had been a knee-jerk effort to show Mongoose that he wasn’t in control, that I wasn’t afraid to shoot him. But the doctor’s terrified expression made me regret my words. “Not a joke,” I said, backpedaling. “Let’s put away the weapons and talk.”

“Just shut up and listen! I heard the truth last night from Manu Robledo. If not for your old man, Manu Robledo never would have seen the quant’s analysis showing that Cushman was a Ponzi scheme.”

I held my aim. Mongoose kept talking.

“Your father wanted to get someone riled up enough to kill Gerry Collins, and he didn’t care who else Robledo took out along the way. Didn’t care if he took me out.”

The anger in his voice was palpable. He seemed to hold as much animosity toward my father as he did toward Robledo-and, by extension, toward me.

Mongoose continued his rant. “For three years I was convinced that the government had forced your father to confess as part of Operation BAQ. Nobody forced him. Your father took the rap so that Robledo could stay out of jail and find the money that Collins had stashed away. We’re talking billions of dollars from terrorist financers who would have killed Robledo unless he got it back. Your father confessed for a cut of that money-money that he would leave to you and your sister.”

I had actually been with him right up till then-until the part about a cut of terrorist seed money. “You’re making this up.”

“Robledo spilled his guts last night.”

“I doubt that Robledo has ever told the truth in his life.”

“Trust me, he was in no position to be less than truthful.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I just spoke with Joe Barber. Even he can’t figure out who started this fiction about a government-forced confession.”

“Oh, now, there’s an honest politician.”

“I know a traitor when I see one. Your father is a traitor, Patrick.”

“You’re lying.”

“He is lying,” my dad said.

It happened in a split second. The Demerol wasn’t enough to force sleep through a gunfight, and the sound of my father’s voice had startled Mongoose more than me. I was standing in the marksman’s pose, holding a Glock that was identical to the one that Scully had taught me how to use in Connie’s apartment, the sights lined up, my finger on the trigger. Dr. Kern dived for safety, and I squeezed the trigger. The shot erupted like thunder, and in a crimson explosion, Mongoose’s head jerked back. His gun dropped to his feet as his body collapsed in a heap. Dr. Kern raced into the arms of the first officer to burst through the door.

I dropped the gun, fell on the bed, and squeezed my father so hard that I could barely breathe. Fifteen years of emotional confusion collided with a week of stress, anxiety, and my own near-death experiences to create a long, cathartic embrace. “I’m fine, it’s over,” I said. “Mongoose is gone.”

He laid his arm across my back, not really holding me, but doing the best he could with the strength that remained.

“ ‘Yo’ mama eats worms’? ” he said.

His muted chuckle was little more than a tremble, and I broke our embrace long enough to see a hint of a smile crease his lips. I wanted to laugh and cry in the same breath. It was beyond comic relief. It brought a moment of humanity to years of sorrow and separation.

And then it faded.

“Dad?”

I didn’t want to lose him. Holding on tight seemed like the only option.

“Go get your sister,” he whispered into my ear.

I took a breath and released him. I knew what he was telling me. “I’ll be right back,” I said, catching one last glimpse of Mongoose in a puddle of blood as I hurried out of the room.