Reamde

Nothing else was in here except for a maroon minivan with a BABY ON BOARD sticker in the window and an assortment of SUPPORT OUR TROOPS ribbons scattered around its liftgate. Standing next to the minivan was a man in civilian clothes. His bearing and haircut would have marked him as a military man even if Seamus hadn’t already known who he was: Marcus Shadwell. A major in a locally based special forces unit. Seamus had been in some funny places and situations with Marcus.

None funnier than this, apparently. “Where are they?” was how Marcus greeted him.

“They’re on the fucking plane, Marcus. What did you think, we bungeed them onto the roof rack?”

“Let’s get a move on,” Marcus said. “My orders are to get you off this base and into the civilian world.” He held up his hands, palms out, and pantomimed backing away. Then he whisked his hands together as if washing them.

THEY ENDED UP at a regional airport a few miles away, outside of Olympia, only because it was big enough to support a couple of car rental agencies. Seamus went in and grabbed an SUV. His credit card was good for that much, anyway. Marcus helped them transfer their absolutely minimal baggage from his minivan into their new ride as Marlon and Yuxia huddled in the backseat, chafing their arms and shivering. Csongor, by contrast, seemed very much in his element and looked around at everything curiously to a degree that Seamus found slightly irksome. There was a U.S. customs office at the airport, and Seamus was troubled by a paranoid fear that some armed and uniformed agents would swarm out of it and demand to see papers.

But no such thing happened.

“I’m out of here,” Marcus said.

“Appreciate it. Maybe we can catch up later,” Seamus said. But Marcus already had his back turned and was hustling toward the open driver’s-side door of his family van as if he expected gunfire to break out at any moment.

Driving at exactly the speed limit—difficult for him—Seamus got them out onto the interstate and backtracked a few miles to a strip mall complex out in the middle of nowhere, which he had noticed, and taken the measure of, as Marcus had driven them out into the civilian world. It was anchored by a Cabela’s outdoor superstore, where he reckoned they could get warm stuff. But this, like every other Cabela’s, was surrounded by restaurants and other small businesses that fed off the stream of Cabela’s traffic without actually competing with the mother ship.

They ended up in a teriyaki joint, confronted by live news coverage of the car bomb explosion on the Canada/U.S. border, showing on a flat-panel above the cash register with the sound turned down.

This, then, became the topic of the conversation Seamus had with the boss at Langley. He spent most of it outside, strolling up and down before the windows of the teriyaki place, watching the Thing, the Human Torch, and Not-so-Invisible Girl snarfing their teriyaki. Above them, pictures of the crater and the body bags on the TV. Out here, the rain was spitting into his face, which seemed fitting somehow.

“I’d say this operation is all over,” said the boss, “except for writing reports.”

“I don’t believe that,” Seamus said. “This thing with the car bomb is obviously…”

“… a diversion that Jones used to draw attention from his real plans.” the boss said, finishing his sentence.

This left Seamus speechless, an unusual state of affairs for him. “You got that too?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” said the boss. “You are not the only person in the world who knows what a diversion is.”

“But in that case…”

“It is of no practical relevance, at least for the next ninety-six hours—probably more like a week—because it worked, Seamus. Like it or not—whether it’s a diversion or not—the fact is that when a terrorist blows himself up at a border crossing and takes a hundred and fifteen U.S. and Canadian citizens with him, then that is what the FBI and the Mounties and everyone else in the chain of command are going to be focusing all their energies and personnel on for a while.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“You’ve got a car?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got money? Credit cards? Everyone’s healthy?”

“Everyone’s fucking great.”

“Then start driving east,” the Boss said. “Show the kids Mount Rushmore along the way, and by the time you make it here, maybe I’ll be able to devote some resources to debriefing your friends. And Little Bighorn, while you’re at it. Foreigners eat that shit up.”

“What about Olivia? What’s she up to?”

“Olivia!” the boss exclaimed. “She’s lucky that guy blew himself up.”

“Why does that make her lucky?”

“Because, (a) it proves she was right, and (b) it gives the FBI and the local cops something to focus their energies on besides complaining about what she did in Tukwila.”

“What is Tukwila, and what did she do there?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“I have no idea,” said the boss. “And believe me, that’s a good thing.”