The Third Brother Read online

  Carefully, quietly, I squirmed and inched my body down the floor.

  “Closer. Next to my hands.”

  Squirm, inch, slide. Squirm, inch, slide.

  “Freeze.”

  The sound of voices. I froze. Voices close by, but not in the same space. On the other side of a thin wall of some kind. I recognized the voice of Renner, speaking in formal, uncontracted phrases, and then of the custodian. Dwayne.

  I lay there for nearly a minute while we waited, my heart pounding as if I’d climbed a long flight of steps after surviving a car accident. No one came. Nothing happened.

  “OK.”

  I craned my neck, looking around. Realized I was in a vehicle of some kind. A truck.

  “Come on.”

  Squirm, inch, slide. Squirm, inch, slide.

  Beside me, tucked below gleaming metal counters, big bags. I made out a word. Fertilizer. On top of the bags, wires, and small packets of some kind.

  A fire of pure white flame.

  Squirm, inch, slide.

  My head came level with the speaker’s hands.

  “Closer.”

  I shifted until I felt fingers at the back of my head. Fingers that pulled and dug and twisted and—

  “Ahh . . .”

  “Would you shut the fuck up?”

  “Sorry.” The word indistinct, with the gag loose but still in my mouth. “Can you—?”

  “I can’t do nothing. Can’t take it off. They’ll see. Now slide back up.”

  Squirm, inch, slide. Squirm, inch, slide. The other direction, now. After a tense minute I was even with him again, back to back.

  “Who are you?”

  A pause. “JaQuan.”

  It took me a second, synapses firing sluggishly through the storm of my headache.

  “JaQuan Williams?”

  “Yeah. I know you?”

  “No.” JaQuan Williams. One of the Agler Road Crips. The gang Hassan Mohamed ran with before he radicalized. A guy Abdi laughed at good-naturedly, friends with everyone.

  “Are we gonna die?”

  “No.” I’d rarely been less sure of anything. “Where are we?”

  “Truck.”

  “Truck?”

  “Food truck, far as I can tell.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Couple hours. Maybe more.”

  “Where were you before this?”

  “Not sure. A room. It was all black. I got moved today sometime. I’m . . .”

  I waited.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too. How long were you in the room?” I thought of the storage area behind Brenda’s storefront where they’d kept me. Of the pole barn up on the hill.

  “Couple weeks, maybe. I don’t know. It was always dark.”

  “How’d you get there?”

  “Got zapped.”

  “Zapped?”

  “Motherfucker hit me with a Taser. I went down, next thing I know I’m in the dark in this room, all tied up.”

  “Who tased you?”

  “Dwayne.”

  “Why’d he tase you?”

  “Fuck if I know. I was just trying to collect.”

  “Collect what?”

  “Money. For starting the fire.”

  “What fire?”

  “At the church.”

  “What church?”

  “Mount Shiloh.”

  Idly, I realized how comforting I found the rumbling engine of the food truck. Memories popped up of overnight trips with my sister in the backseat when seatbelts still didn’t matter. In another context, I might have dozed off. A context that didn’t include several bags of fertilizer beside me topped with wires and packets whose content I didn’t want to think about.

  “You started that fire?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Dwayne promised me a couple hundred bucks. Gave me the bottle and the gasoline and some clothes to wear and a scarf—a bandana thing.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Needed the money. Plus that church, they got me arrested. Threw me out just for breaking in and playing basketball one time. Why not?”

  More advantages to having Dwayne on the inside. He knew JaQuan. Would have helped with the approach, about the job.

  “We need to yell. Scream. Get help.”

  “I tried that. Kicked at the side. Dwayne came back with a knife. Said he’d cut me if I did it again.”

  “Is it just him and the other guy?”

  “Far as I know. And the kid.”

  “What kid?”

  “Somali kid, up front.”

  “What’s he doing up there?”

  He paused, and when he spoke again his voice cracked. “I think he’s going to blow us up.”

  51

  FOOD TRUCK AS WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. Jesus. No—what was it Roy always said? “Don’t say Jesus when you mean shit.” Fine. Shit. David Derwent. Seth: The third brother. Trey—the third. It made perfect sense, the more I thought about it. Perfect, painful sense. Downtown was flooded with food trucks right now. Portable restaurants offering everything from barbecue to burritos. Even fried kale balls. The new craze. The new normal. They were everywhere. Especially tonight. Because four hundred thousand fireworks-loving visitors were a lot of mouths to feed.

  Four hundred thousand—including Joe and Mike, and Anne and Amelia, assuming they’d somehow made it downtown anyway, after I never showed to pick everyone up—

  We will build a fire of pure white flame that reaches to heaven.

  Jesus shit Jesus.

  I thought back to what McQuillen said, was it just a few hours ago? True-blue Americans sitting around in trailer parks with more guns than an artillery unit in Vietnam and ten bags of fertilizer around back they’re trying to figure out what to do with. And believe me, they’ve got plenty of targets to choose from.

  Red, White & Boom was plenty big. The biggest target Columbus had, other than an Ohio State football game, but that came with the inconvenience—to terrorists, that is—of most potential victims protected inside the stadium. But not the fireworks celebration. What did the experts call people in that situation? Soft targets? I’d never considered just how dehumanizing that expression was until now. Until I realized my sons were in that category.

  Bits and pieces. Because that’s all that’s going to be left.

  Lucky me. Renner, in his fanaticism, spared me—and JaQuan—quiet deaths in the countryside in favor of evaporating in a ball of flame at the moment of his greatest triumph. The unfortunate beneficiaries of an ego gone mad.

  His triumph. Yet it was Abdi Mohamed sitting in the front of the truck. What was his role in this? They didn’t need him to detonate explosives. Any true believer with a cell phone could do that.

  My mind raced, trying to figure everything out. A truck. Terror. Blame. Hassan Mohamed, an exception to the rule, choosing terror over integration, but enough to kindle flames of prejudice in a nervous world. And now his brother missing, posting inflammatory threats . . .

  I recalled the attack along the waterfront in Nice, France, a few years back, the tractor-trailer plowing into Bastille Day crowds, an assault that killed scores. Similar attacks in Berlin, Barcelona, and London. And now here, in the heart of the heartland. How would it look if Abdi—the brother of a confirmed extremist, someone who’d died in the name of jihad—was seen in the front seat of a food truck as it careened into the crowd, just before igniting into a fireball? Plenty of downtown security cameras would catch that perspective—

  Light illuminated the interior. I turned my head and saw Trey Renner step inside, followed by Dwayne the custodian.

  “Almost time.” Renner said. His voice grave, like a minister beginning a sermon.

  “Mmmph.” Careful not to give away my ability to speak.

  JaQuan pressed himself against the side of the van, hiding his own loosened gag.

  “I did not quite catch that, Mr. Hayes.”

&n
bsp; “Mmmph.”

  “I tell you what. I’m going to loosen that for a second. If you say anything louder than a whisper, Dwayne is going to cut your throat and then rearrange your intestines. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, heart racing again. If they realized what happened with the gag . . .

  “Dwayne.”

  “What.”

  “I told you to tie these things tightly. His is practically falling off.”

  “I tied them plenty tight.”

  “Not tight enough.”

  Renner fiddled with the back of my gag but said nothing further. Sweat pooled in the small of my back as I waited for the thrust of Dwayne’s knife. But it never came. Renner pulled the fully loosened gag down onto my chin. I made a big production of gasping in relief.

  “Quiet,” Renner warned.

  “What is this?” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Making history.”

  “History?”

  “The end times are nigh. Ours are the snow-white wings of salvation. The battle that will decide everything is before us. Just like my father predicted.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The final cleansing. The race war. Throwing the garbage out once and for all.” He kicked JaQuan, who gave a little moan. Playacting, or real fear?

  “War? I don’t see any war.”

  “You will. Once we light the fuse. Once they begin scraping what is left of a few hundred people off the pavement, people killed by a Somali refugee they welcomed here. Someone who turned on them. Yes, you will see a war. Well, you will not see it, you personally. But it will happen. It is my gift to you both to be there at the moment of victory.”

  “They won’t believe it. The boy. Abdi—that’s not his way.”

  “Do not kid yourself. His skin is brown and he prays to an alien god. They’ll believe it. Plus, his brother was a real devil. And he posted all those threats.”

  “You posted. Including the one after the firebombing, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Does it really matter, in the end?”

  “Of course it matters. Your whole plan is based on a lie. A lie that involved kidnapping and blackmail and Internet fraud. What kind of holy war is that?”

  “Just because people need a little convincing to get them motivated does not make the cause any less valid, Mr. Hayes.”

  “Bullshit. You’re only justifying what you know is wrong—”

  “Dwayne.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have changed my mind. Go ahead and take care of these two. We’ve kept them alive long enough. This black garbage”—another kick at JaQuan—“knows now the hell he has built for himself. And this one”—pointing at me—“I’m tired of his interference.” He moved back toward the front of the truck.

  “Happy to,” Dwayne said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I am taking one more look around. To be sure everything is ready. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Hey—” I protested.

  “History,” Renner said, stepping back up front and shutting the interior door. I heard another door open and close. And then it was just us and Dwayne the custodian and a knife that gleamed in the dark like a carnivore’s eyes reflecting firelight.

  52

  DWAYNE KNELT BESIDE ME. “THIS IS WHAT happens when people get in the way.”

  “You don’t want to do this.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “You’re talking about innocent people out there. Hundreds of them. Women and children, a lot of them. Is that what you signed on for?”

  “Every war has its casualties.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “Don’t tell me what to believe.”

  “You won’t get away with it. They’ll come after you. Then they’ll destroy everything you’ve worked for.”

  “In the middle of a war? I don’t think so.”

  “At least—”

  “At least what?”

  Good question. I thought about Joe and Mike. And Angela Mendoza. And Theresa Sullivan and Otto Mulligan. And Helene, staring up at me—

  “At least kill the kid first.”

  Dwayne sniggered. “What?”

  “You heard me. Kill him first. Please, for God’s sake.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a coward. Nothing but a baby.” I raised my voice a little. “I’ve been lying here for hours while he whined and moaned and carried on. You do me first, I’ll have to listen to him pissing his pants and crying for his mama because he knows he’s next. I don’t want that to be the last thing I hear. Listening to a big fat coward while I die. A pussy. A girl. This way—”

  “Hey, motherfucker,” JaQuan said, raising his head. “Shut your fucking mouth. I ain’t no—”

  Dwayne turned at the sound of the teen’s voice, caught off guard. I rolled hard to my right, knocking myself into the custodian and catching him off-balance. It was my only chance. He fell over with a grunt. I heard the chink of the knife handle hitting the metal floor. I braced my feet, arched my back, and dropped my full weight onto him. He gasped like a kid hitting the asphalt after falling off the monkey bars. I gasped too, at the pain shooting up my arms at the impact. I ignored it as best I could, arched and dropped again, harder this time. I heard what might have been a rib crack. I dropped a third time and he went still for a moment. I shifted myself upward and scrabbled for his throat with my bound hands, found his windpipe, and started to squeeze. He came to life, and after a moment began to flail with the knife. I squeezed harder, grinding my fingers into his fleshy neck. He choked and gasped and grabbed my hands and tried to loosen them. I arched my back again and came down on him a fourth time, never loosening my grip, and now he sighed like a man falling into bed after a very long day. I squeezed and Dwayne jabbed and I felt the knife slash at my forearms and for a second my resolve faded at the new pain. But just as quickly his strokes began to diminish, like the weakening motions of a swimmer deep at sea with no land in sight. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. At thirty I felt his body shudder, then relax; the swimmer giving in and sinking below the waves.

  I held my breath. The only sounds were the thrumming of the truck engine and in the distance the sound of music and an amplified voice. I rolled off the custodian’s body.

  I swallowed. “Knife.”

  “What?” JaQuan said.

  “We’ve got to get the knife.”

  “Fuck you, motherfucker. Calling me a coward. I ought—”

  “Nice job. You picked up on it perfectly. Started talking at exactly the right moment. Just the distraction I needed.”

  Silence.

  Then: “OK, man.”

  I slid back and forth across the floor, pushing Dwayne out of the way. My forehead grazed the rough plastic weave of a fertilizer bag. Targets to choose from. Where the hell was the knife? If it slid under the truck’s prep area or stove during the struggle, we were out of luck. We were bits and pieces. And we only had a few minutes, even seconds, before Renner was back. And I was guessing he’d have no trouble finding the knife, or a rough replacement. What would it matter now, how we were dispatched?

  “Got it,” JaQuan said.

  “Jesus. Shit. OK, good work. Now hang on.”

  Squirm, wiggle, slide. Keeping it up until I was back to back again with the boy. I moved my fingers around, found the blade, felt his strong grip on the handle. I maneuvered the plastic tie binding my hands against the blade and started rubbing.

  “Hurry up. My hand’s cramping.”

  “I’m trying.”

  The tie snapped and my hands came free.

  I tried not to think about how sharp the knife must have been to cut through a plastic binding so easily.

  I grabbed the handle, sat up, and sliced through the ties around my feet. I breathed a little hard as the blood rushed back through my appendages. I turned, crouched, and cut through JaQuan’s ties. When I was done he sat up too. He looked sixteen or se
venteen going on twelve. A baby face that didn’t fit the harsh language spewing from his mouth.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Go where?”

  “We’ve got to get Abdi out of here. And warn somebody. We’re sitting in a bomb.”

  JaQuan rubbed his wrists and ankles. “Fuck that shit, man. Not my fight.” He stood up slowly, waited to regain his balance, looked around, bent over, grabbed the knife out of my hand, walked to the rear of the truck, opened the door, and disappeared.

  53

  I LET HIM GO. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF following? He’d served his purpose, helping us escape our captivity, even if he only did it for the most selfish reason possible. Could I really blame him, after what he’d been through? I realized now JaQuan must have been kept alive in case they needed him again, to play the role of Abdi in another attack leading up to tonight. What must that have been like, an understudy always on the brink of death?

  I stood up myself, a little shakily. I staggered forward, pulled open the front panel door, and looked around. A person who could only be Abdi Mohamed was sitting in the driver’s seat. He was staring straight ahead. His hands were bound to the steering wheel with strips of white cloth, like bindings torn from a shroud.

  “Abdi.”

  Nothing.

  “Abdi.”

  Still nothing. Like trying to chat up a thrift shop mannequin.

  I stepped closer, took him by the chin, and lifted his face. His eyes were glassy and his mouth hung open slightly. He’d been drugged; that was obvious enough. Renner must have put him in a doped-up zone perfect for such a mission. Awake but not sentient. A detectable pulse, but not a purpose to it. Who knew how long the boy had been in such a state? How long had he been missing—six weeks? Plenty of time to create a zombie. I looked out the window, orienting myself. We were downtown, east on Broad, just past the cathedral, facing the crowds gathered near Broad and High a few hundred yards away. Far enough to avoid the attention of cops, but close enough for a straight shot down the street. With the steering wheel tied in position, the truck would careen directly for its mark—the throng of thousands. Toward Joe and Mike. I patted my pockets in vain for my phone. I looked at my watch. Three minutes to ten. Almost time for the fireworks to go off. I fumbled with the bindings around Abdi’s hands, regretfully recalling Dwayne’s knife, now in JaQuin’s hands. This was taking too long. I had to get Abdi out of here and get help somehow.