The Survivor

Chapter 60

The grille of the Jeep pointed up the paved walk at Pavlo Shevchenko’s front doors. A stretch of twenty or so feet, two drops of three concrete steps each, then the house itself, nestled into the hillside.

The engine ran, though Nate was not behind the wheel or even inside the vehicle. With an AR-15 assault rifle slung over his shoulder, a Glock 19 shoved into the band of his jeans, and a frag grenade wedged in his front pocket, he stood behind the open driver’s door, holding in his hands a football-size hunk of fine-grained granite he’d pulled from Pavlo’s own front yard.

Around the corner, parked under the protective cover of a neighbor’s drooping sycamore, he had prepped everything. Danny Urban, with his militia-like sensibilities, had made Nate’s job easier by acquiring gear familiar to an army grunt. Nate had wrapped two blocks of C4 with tape, adhered them above the gas tank, and sunk a military-issue M6 electric blasting cap into the white putty. Then it came down to junior-high physics, creating a simple circuit.

There was no leg wire in the duffel bag, an omission owed to Nate’s haste in raiding the evidence locker. After pondering the dilemma, he’d removed one of the Jeep’s rear speakers and stripped out several lengths of radio wire, which he’d connected to the blasting cap and the car battery before laying the two ends well apart on the ground before the front bumper. From his pocket he’d removed the two soup-can tops and taped one lead to each. When the jagged metal circles touched, they would complete the circuit and the Wrangler would go apocalyptic.

Now he needed a piece of paper to buffer the soup-can tops until contact. He searched the Jeep, finding nothing. No flyers, no CD jewel case from which to pull a cover. The service manual was long gone, his registration tattered and thin, and the proof-of-insurance slip too small to risk. How was it possible that there wasn’t a single piece of sufficient paper in the vehicle? His concern mounted, edging on panic. He couldn’t imagine coming all this way and having to deconstruct the bomb, drive down the hill, and go paper shopping.

A young father approached with his daughter, laughing and splashing through puddles in their rain boots. As they passed, the man stared at Nate curiously. The wires, C4, and duffel were not adequately indistinct even in the darkness. Nate forced a smile and said, “Engine trouble,” and the pair hurried along.

Watching them leave, hand in hand, Nate felt a solution take shape. He reached for his back pocket, removing the two photographs. Cielle crouching beside her soccer ball, her grin punctuated by gaps. Janie laughing with him at their wedding. Closing his eyes, he kissed them each. Very carefully, he taped the soup-can tops around the pictures, sandwiching them, and adhered the makeshift pressure plate to the Jeep’s grille. A collision of any force would tear the photographs and push the metal circles into contact.

He’d seen this make of car bomb a half dozen times at checkpoints in the Sandbox, and he knew what the aftermath looked like. Two point five pounds of explosives supersized by a half tank of gasoline should be enough to open Pavlo’s front door.

Standing now at the end of the walk, his weakened arms straining under the weight of the granite, Nate said a silent prayer to Lady Luck and dropped the stone onto the gas pedal. The engine roared. Reaching across, he cranked on the radio, and Shithead Jason’s AC/DC disc spun to life, Brian Johnson wailing from the remaining car speakers: “-won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives-”

Below, the front door cracked open, Valerik poking his head out, the stub of his sleek ponytail wagging into view. The heel of his hand rode the stock of an AK-47. They were ready and waiting.

But not for this.

Nate yanked the gearshift into drive, and the Jeep rocketed away, knocking his arm.

Valerik’s head reared back, the whites of his eyes pronounced, and the big door slammed shut.

The Jeep caught air off the first set of stairs, bounced off kilter, and hurtled toward the front door at a tilt, Nate already walking behind, tugging on the sling, rotating the assault rifle into his hands.

“Gonna take you to-”

The explosion was expansive, the front door and surrounding wall obliterated, the front windows turned to shrapnel. Nate kept on through the blowback, heat and wind scorching his cheeks, his dropped left foot shushing across the concrete. The air stank of gasoline and burned metal. He sliced through a billowing wall of soot and drifted into the crumbled foyer, the Angel of Death. Cloaked in the swirling cloud, rubble loose underfoot, he listened for sounds of life.

A gurgle.

Squinting, he cut through the dense air and found Valerik slumped at the base of a blown-out wall. The blast overpressure had ruptured the air sacs in his lungs, thick dark soup pouring down his chin, drenching his collar. Nate pictured McGuire in his green-and-khaki ACUs, joking over a failed suicide bomber rustling and gagging on a dirt warehouse floor: Looks like homeboy won the wet-T-shirt contest.

Valerik burbled up at Nate.

“Hi there,” Nate said.

Crouching over him, Nate pulled the pin from the grenade and nestled it under his body so the spoon held. He jogged a few steps into the powdered air, hid behind a burning cabinet, and waited.

Panicked voices, feet pounding a staircase, then creaking overhead. Pavlo, retreating to safety.

Nate was about to press on when he heard ragged coughing coming from the kitchen, followed by hoarse cries. “Valerik? Valerik?”

Gun in hand, Dima jogged by, his form resolving briefly from the dust, though Nate couldn’t risk stopping to aim and fire, not with his weakened left hand slowing his reaction time. He kept his back to the cabinet, the AR-15 at the ready. It was a low-end model-single-stage trigger, uncollapsible stock, and no floated barrel-and he reminded himself to use it calmly and carefully.

There came a moist choking as Valerik tried to warn his friend, and then a blast blew a tunnel of clear air through the foyer and partway down the hall. Shrapnel studded the cabinet and the adjoining wall. Nate heard Dima’s body strike tile, then the sound of scrabbling limbs. He was up, moving; Valerik’s body must have shielded some of the blast.

Nate pivoted out from behind the cabinet, fire licking at his sleeve, and headed toward the kitchen. Dima staggered away, a bobbing run, his silhouette framed by the lights sparkling through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear of the house. As Nate approached, Dima turned, broad chest flexing as he tried to lift the gun, and Nate stitched a line of bullets from groin to clavicle. Dima flew back against the blinds, knocking them flat, the bright skyline beyond disappearing. His body stood propped against the glass. Taking no chances, Nate unleashed a torrent of bullets into the standing corpse, the pane shattering, the blinds stretching to hold the body’s weight and then ripping free. Dima tumbled through, vanishing into the abyss of the canyon, followed by a cascade of glass pebbles.

Nate released the mag, letting it clatter to the floor, and slammed in another with his quaking left hand. He was just starting to turn when it happened.

He felt the impact first, a sledgehammer swung into his shoulder blade, and he staggered forward, a bent knee barely supporting his weight. Ellipses of blood, his blood, sprayed the kitchen floor, giving off a pleasant shine. The sound of the gunshot registered vaguely, an afterthought. The AR-15 had flown from his body, sling and all, to spin at the kitchen’s edge near the blown-out glass.

Nate pitched forward to the floor, bracing himself from total collapse with his one functional arm as Yuri approached from behind, chuckling. Nate could feel the handgun pressed into his belly, but his left hand was useless, his right bearing all his weight. If he dropped fully to the floor, freeing his good hand, Yuri would put a bullet through the back of his skull.

He closed his eyes, focusing through the throb in his shoulder. The Glock 19 in his waistband had no thumb safety, and the trigger pull was the same every time out. No extra double-action resistance at the front end. Which meant a quicker first shot.

Yuri said, “Now we can begin.”

Nate whipped his right hand off the floor, his torso falling even as he grabbed for the gun at his waist. Through a miracle he hooked the handle properly, yanked, and twisted, squeezing off a shot before his bloodied shoulder struck the floor and sent a lightning bolt through his torso. The Glock bounced free as Yuri reeled back, one arm pinwheeling, and hit the floor. The big man’s black guayabera grew even darker at his side, blood seeping through. Injured, handguns out of reach, they lay panting, staring at each other across the glass-strewn floor. The AR-15 still spun listlessly a few feet from them both by the window’s edge, rasping quietly as it wound down.

Their stares pulled to the assault rifle. Back to each other.

They both scrambled for it, lunging and crawling. Four hands grabbed the barrel simultaneously. Not letting go, Nate pivoted, kicking Yuri, who slid to the edge, his movement slicked by the round pebbles of glass rolling beneath him. Yuri’s grip firmed on the AR-15, and then one leg went over the brink, the weight tugging at him. His eyes widened in that swollen face. His other leg poured over the brink, then his hips, and then he grunted and sank into the open air, pulling Nate with him, the two men bound by their death lock on the assault rifle. Nate was dragged toward the edge, the tips of his shoes scraping across the tile, and he was just about to let go when they reached some magical equilibrium of friction and muscle and halted. His head and arms dangled over the lip. His left shoulder screamed in agony. Broken glass bit into his chest. But he kept his grip. The assault rifle was completely vertical, aimed straight down off the ledge.

Hanging on with bloodless hands, Yuri swayed back and forth, bucking and yelping, the canyon falling away beneath his feet. Then he stilled, realizing suddenly which end of the assault rifle he’d wound up with.

The wrong end.

Nate slipped his finger through the trigger guard. Yuri stared helplessly straight up into the bore, inches from his eyes, and, adjusting his grip, Nate discharged the assault rifle through the other man’s head.

As Yuri plummeted, Nate jerked away painfully from the edge. He grabbed the Glock, stuffed it back into his waistband. It took a full minute for him to get up onto his feet, but then he was limping toward the stairs, leading with the AR-15. His weak left arm, further compromised by the gunshot at the shoulder, could do little more than prop up the barrel.

As he came up onto the concrete plain of the second floor, the vast open space with its walls of windows caught Nate off guard. Minimal cover. In fact, aside from a giant mattress with heaped sheets, several pillars, and a floating staircase, the great room was bare. Not a sign of Pavlo or Misha.

The staircase led to a hatch thrown open to the night air. Had they already escaped to the roof?

Nate made a snap decision to clear the floor before moving on. Breathing hard, he hurried behind the first pillar. Moonlight tumbled through the huge skylight, laying a distorted block across the concrete. Motes swam in the shaft of faint light. Every direction was pale, silver, gray, the red silk sheets on the mattress providing the only splotch of color. The walls of glass and evenly spaced pillars created a hall-of-mirrors effect.

The strain of holding Yuri’s body for all that time had cost him, his right arm, too, now weak and tingling. He waited, listening. Was that the faint sound of breathing he heard off the concrete and glass? Someone else’s or his own, thrown back at him?

The pillars were broad, industrial; Pavlo could even be hiding on the opposite side of the very one Nate had shouldered into. Bracing himself, he pivoted around the corner and then the next, keeping an eye out for movement behind the other pillars as well. His left foot dragging, his shoulder complaining with every jolt, he broke cover, running to the next pillar. He made the same painful progress around it. When he sprinted for the third, he heard footsteps somewhere else in the room, echoes disguising the source. Gunshots blew out the windows behind him, and he arrived at the far pillar, panting, the fresh draft chilling the sweat on his face.

“I’m here, Pavlo,” he called out.

No response.

The AR-15 rattled in his grip. Blood streaked down his left arm, dripping off the elbow. Each limb, skewered by pinpricks. He looked down at his fingers, willing them to hold on. A spate of light-headedness came on in a fury, then departed just as abruptly.

He risked a glance across the enormous space. Three equidistant pillars marked the long stretch of the opposing wall as well. The glow of the moon through the skylight cast ghostly reflections off some of the windows. Peering out, he studied the glass behind the far pillars for mirrored images, finally spotting a shard of a figure, barely visible given the angle. Narrow build, cap of blond hair, gun held in both hands, pointing at the floor.

Misha.

Which meant Pavlo was on the roof.

With the blood loss and the state of his muscles, Nate wouldn’t have much time before he was too weak to be useful. Quietly, he withdrew the light Glock from his waistband. The AR-15 slipped in his left hand, almost clattering to the concrete; he’d have to do everything with his right. He set the Glock silently on the floor beyond the pillar, the handle positioned for a quick grab. Then he switched the assault rifle to his right hand. Easing from behind the pillar, he knelt in a shooter’s position. Using his remaining strength, he tossed the assault rifle to the side of the pillar.

Before the gun reached the peak of its trajectory, he snatched up the Glock, doing his best to steady the pistol in his right hand. Insensate as a slab of meat, his left hand pressed to the base of the handle, propping it up. Static fuzzed his vision, and he blinked it away, and then everything went down in three quick claps.

The assault rifle striking the floor.

Misha darting from behind the pillar, firing at the blank air above the rifle.

And Nate squeezing the trigger.

Misha spun, a spray of blood painting the window behind him, then struck the floor, half concealed by the pillar, his shoes twitching.

Grunting, Nate started across, each step a fresh agony. His limbs felt so weak that it seemed he was moving himself with his core, dragging his feet along with his stomach muscles. The cold air of the room smelled of spicy cologne. He passed the mattress, rotating the gun barrel from Misha’s feet to the square of black sky atop the floating staircase.

Step, pause. Step, pause. Keep moving.

To his left he heard a whisper of fabric, and, too late, he realized.

He flung himself away, landing on his back and firing as Pavlo reared up from the mattress, a silk sheet fluttering behind him like a cape. The room exploded with gunfire, each crack amplified, each muzzle flare multiplied off the walls of facing glass. Concrete chipped near Nate’s face, flecks biting into his cheek, and he saw two holes open up in the still-descending sheet behind Pavlo, everything miraculously missing until a bullet slammed into Nate’s side. The howl issuing from his lips was little more than a heated rush of air.

The old man leaped from the mattress onto the floating staircase and bounced toward the laid-open hatch, lunging two, three steps at a time. On his back, Nate aimed the trembling pistol and squeezed off one shot after another, the sparks catching up to the man until a round finally caught his calf just before it pulled up out of sight.

Pavlo’s body thumped down on the roof, unseen. Not so much as a yelp. An instant of silence.

Then a scraping.

Nate looked down at his side. A quarter-size hole, leaking ink. He reached behind, found the exit wound. Through and through.

Rolling to all fours, he forced himself to his feet. The only way he could walk was in a half shuffle, tugging one leg along. His right hand held the gun, so he tried to clamp the wound with his left but could apply virtually no pressure at all. He mounted the stairs, drizzling blood in a neat line at his feet.

His vision spotted, his legs growing wobbly beneath him. He pictured Cielle with her coloring book on that airplane, bouncing over the Rockies.

Is it gonna be okay?

Yeah. It’s gonna be okay.

Climbing the stairs took such focus that he barely noticed when his head pulled up into the sight line. A flash of light and a bullet wavered the air inches from his temple, the bark of the gun coming on a split-second delay. Across the roof Pavlo backed up, tender on his wounded leg, readying for a second shot.

Nate lifted the gun as far as his strength allowed and fired. A bullet embedded in Pavlo’s thigh, tearing his pants, revealing the tattooed star on his kneecap. Pavlo’s gun clattered to the rooftop, sliding to the edge and then off, and he clenched his jaw and took a few hobbling steps toward Nate, his sinewy face contorting with rage.

“I will not kneel to you.”

Nate’s next shot shattered his hip. Pavlo jerked ninety degrees, red mist puffing from his waist. He wobbled on his feet, then squared himself again, screaming, tendons standing out on his blue-inked neck.

“I will not-”

Hand shaking around the Glock, Nate shot out his ankle.

Pavlo collapsed onto the roof, his knees striking hard, jolting him before he fell flat onto his stomach. Then he started dragging himself away, elbow over elbow, toward the brink of the roof. Nate started after him.

The staggering openness and panoramic view snatched the breath from his lungs, and he paused for a drunken instant to regain his balance. It seemed he was standing on top of the entire city. Los Angeles unfurled below, a bejeweled blanket. The digital billboards and flashing club signs, green stoplights and stalled cars, all the stop-go, all that hot-cold, all those souls floating through the streets on gleaming rims, walking the corners on patched-up pumps, clogging the alleys gripping brown-bagged bottles. Everything was flayed open and laid bare, the gonna-bes and winged dreamers, the glittering lights coursing block to block, the blood of the city. Here Nate had soared and crashed. And here he had salvaged from the wreckage the slivers worth keeping, had pieced them together with trembling hands to form something better, something true.

The taste of the night air was oddly pleasing, wild fennel and sage of the canyon mixed with ash from the explosion. His blood felt warm against his skin and then quickly cold. He sent a signal to his legs, and a moment later they started moving again.

On his belly ahead, Pavlo grunted and scraped, grunted and scraped. Walking across the wide skylight, Nate left footprints of blood. He’d just reached the other side when a voice said, “Stop.”

Nate halted, gun lowered, shoulders slumping, his inhalations coming in weak rasps. For a moment he just breathed, and he heard Misha breathing behind him, too, waiting for a single wrong move.

Slowly, Nate turned. Misha stood on the skylight, aiming directly at his forehead. Nate’s Glock remained at his side in his all-but-dead right hand; he couldn’t raise it if he tried. Misha’s boyish face looked smooth and innocent in the pale light. Blood gleamed on one of his hands, a pinkie finger sticking out at the wrong angle, but that didn’t stop him from keeping the sights dead level.

“Did you really think you could do it?” Reluctant admiration found its way into Misha’s voice. With his damaged hand, he reached slowly for a pocket, pulling out a pair of matte-black handcuffs. The pinkie, bent perpendicular to the back of his hand, looked like a snapped twig. “Even if you killed us all, a man such as Pavlo Shevchenko makes one phone call and ten more of us get on a boat in Kiev. And if you kill all them, he snaps his fingers and twenty more come to fill their place.”

Nate’s gun hand twitched, and Misha’s eyes dropped to it. A single threatening movement and it was over.

Nate said, “Then I guess I’ll have to kill him, too.”

Misha’s rosy lips pressed together. Amused. “You cannot even raise your hand.”

Nate said, “Don’t have to,” and fired down into the skylight.

The center of the thick pane gave way, Misha lurching back, his arms flaring as his gun discharged, and then he dropped down into the break, fangs of glass biting into him. Sinking to his torso, he lunged to hold on, the handcuffs flying from his grip and skittering across the rooftop. He managed to clutch the crumbling edge, his fingertips sliding on the intact ledges of glass.

The points had raked through his body on its way down, one shard buried between his ribs. A tiny spurt of bright arterial blood splashed against the pane. As soon as the dagger of glass stopped damming that wound, he was done.

He stared at the tip of Nate’s shoe. “A hand,” he sputtered. His fingers slid another millimeter, leaving four streaks on the glass.

Nate raised his shoe, put it on Misha’s shoulder, and sank him through the shattered skylight. Misha landed in the block of moonlight, his limbs twisted this way and that, glass tinkling on the concrete floor around him.

Nate swayed on his feet, summoning strength, the wound in his side drooling. He’d lost a lot of blood.

Behind him he could hear Pavlo grunting, still dragging himself away. The breeze carried the sound of sirens. Down at the base of the hill, flashing lights turned off Laurel Canyon. Winding their way up, they swept around a bend, vanishing for the moment.

Nate forced his body to turn, to walk. He caught up to Pavlo a few yards before the precipice. Despite his decimated lower body, Pavlo had reached a vent pipe and was prying at it, powerful forearm muscles flexing beneath their tattoo wrappings. Remarkably, he’d made some progress, the pipe rattling a bit in the flashing. His movements had slowed, but he was still at it, and Nate realized that he would stay at it until he tore free a weapon, pulled himself back to Nate, and staved in his head. Most shocking was how unfazed Pavlo seemed by it all-the still-smoldering house, his fragmented legs, the executioner stalking him across the roof. He grunted and tugged, his inked fingers relentless around the pipe, every last ounce of strength bent to dragging himself one inch closer to violence.

Standing over him, Nate aimed down at the back of his neck and pulled the trigger.

The Glock gave a muted snap. No more rounds.

Pavlo never looked up, never stopped tugging at the pipe, but he registered the sound and gave a rasping chuckle. “You think this is pain?” he said, panting, the roof pressed to his mouth, muffling his words. He released a few notes of laughter, sweat shining on his cheek, the nape of his neck.

Nate grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him across the roof, Pavlo’s hands scrabbling for traction, his feet dragging limply. Nate’s grip gave out just at the edge. A few hundred feet below, the canyon finally bottomed out in a seam of boulders and jagged rocks.

Pavlo’s legs were a mess, streaming blood, one foot twisted around on the ankle. He couldn’t rise or run, but he clawed his way up Nate’s body, tearing at his shirt, grabbing his shoulders, bringing his face close. The warble of sirens grew clearer.

Mustering one last burst of energy, Nate braced himself to hurl Pavlo from the roof.

There was a click between the men’s bodies, and Pavlo grinned maniacally up into Nate’s face. A victorious leer. Nate glanced down.

Pavlo had gotten Misha’s handcuffs and locked one cuff around his own wrist.

And the other around Nate’s.

“Now if you throw me, I take you with me,” Pavlo hissed.

The breeze came up, whipping Nate’s hair, carrying the earthy scent of the canyon and soot from the dwindling fire on the first floor. He turned his head, regarding the drop. Way down at the bottom, spotlit by a preternatural throw of moonlight, Charles stood atop one of the boulders, the breeze lifting his hair and sucking the smoke from his decimated torso. He gazed up. Waiting.

“You actually gonna help this time,” Nate asked, “or just stand there looking dead?”

“Help?” Charles said. “This is all you.” Even across the ember-flecked distance, the words were clear as day in Nate’s head. “It’s always been just you.”

Nate felt something that had been gripping his insides release, something so long forgotten that he knew it now only from its absence. Charles’s stomach began to fill in, the edges of the wound stitching together, and the dried blood on his face and hands moistened and flowed backward, sucked into his body like a horror movie on rewind. Charles touched his intact stomach in wonderment. Then he looked up at Nate again and grinned.

“’Bout fuckin’ time,” he said.

Pavlo sputtered and clutched at Nate, forcing his focus back to the roof and the steel rings enclosing their wrists, joining them. The weight of the man hanging on him, the muscles glistening with sweat, blood, and ink. One step to the left, the plummet.

Nate felt the grainy night take itself apart, pixel by pixel, and reconstitute itself. He thought about Janie’s body surrendering to him in the riptide. Wheeling her out of the maternity ward with that pink bundle in her lap. Cielle’s saving up at the car wash to try to pay for private school. His million-dollar life-insurance policy. Sitting on the bridge above that stream, his daughter’s head resting against his shoulder. Janie’s mouth at his collarbone, her ankles crossed at the small of his back. Their house with the loose brick of the front porch mortared into place again. The family portrait hidden in the depths of Cielle’s closet, waiting.

Pavlo held on with all his strength. He looked into Nate and must not have liked what he saw, for his grin ossified on his face, a skeletal grimace.

Nate tugged his wrist back, testing the strength of the handcuffs.

Then he gave the faintest of smiles.