The Good Killer Read online

  She’d been awakened by the noise of the front door crashing open and tried to hide under her bed. Cole had found her and dragged her out. She was still struggling with him.

  He pushed her down to the floor and she sat there with her back against the bed. She was quiet for a moment, eyes wide, and then she let out a steady stream of Arabic that started out frightened and soon turned angry and indignant.

  She’d been sleeping in a long nightshirt and her legs and arms were bare. Cole handed her a blanket to cover up.

  “Take it easy,” Cole said. “No one’s gonna hurt you. I need to know if you’re alone. Is anyone else in the house? Is Zaman here? Munir Zaman?”

  She shook her head fiercely, said something sharp that no one understood. Sometimes when they rolled out, they brought a translator. But not tonight. The plan was to bring the woman back to the base to be questioned.

  Cole tried to calm her. Explained to her in English that she needed to come with them. She might have understood some of it, Sean thought. If she’d been panicky before, she seemed to be getting it under control. Sean found her clothes on a chair and handed them to her, and she pulled them on over her nightshirt while he and Cole and two other soldiers stood by and made an effort not to stare.

  They took her down to the ground floor, and Sean kept watch over her. While he’d been upstairs, his platoon mates had been searching the downstairs rooms. Now they rolled back a rug in the sitting room and discovered a trapdoor that opened into a crawl space less than four feet high. Captain Webber sent a young private named Park down there, and Park began passing up AK-47s. Twenty-five of them. After they came through, Park started handing up boxes of ammunition.

  But the house had other secrets, apart from the trapdoor and the crawl space.

  The sitting room opened into the kitchen, and the kitchen was where they found the safe.

  It was next to the refrigerator and almost as large. A hunk of black steel with gold lettering on the door:

  MOSLER SAFE & LOCK CO.

  CINCINNATI, OHIO

  “Cinci-fuckin’-nati,” the captain said.

  Sean heard him through the doorway. He was standing with his M4 pointed down and away from the woman. She was in a chair in a corner, hands folded in her lap.

  “Bring her in here,” Captain Webber said.

  Sean brought her. Cole came, too, and lingered in the doorway.

  The captain pointed to the safe. “Do you know the combination?”

  The woman looked at him blankly.

  He spun the dial back and forth. “The com-bi-na-tion,” he said. “What is it?”

  Her blank look gave way to a shrug.

  The captain sighed. He tapped the safe with a gloved hand. “What’s in there?” he said. “What’s inside?”

  Another shrug.

  The captain crossed his arms and stood staring at the safe as if he could will it to open.

  “How much do you suppose the damned thing weighs?” he said softly.

  Sean had no answer.

  Cole said, “Seven hundred pounds, at least.”

  Captain Webber nodded. “Well, somebody got it in here. I imagine we could get it out. But I don’t think we’ll fit it in a Humvee.” He turned to Sean and Cole. “Do you?”

  “No, sir,” Sean said.

  “You’d need a truck,” said Cole.

  “I guess you would,” the captain said. “And if I send for a truck, we’ll be here half the night.” He glanced back at the safe. “But I would dearly like to know what’s in there.”

  He reached for the dial and spun it right, then left, then right again, as if he might hit on the combination randomly.

  “One in a million,” Sean said.

  The captain looked back at him.

  “The numbers on the dial go from zero to ninety-nine,” Sean said. “If there are three numbers in the combination, that’s a million possibilities.”

  The captain gave the dial a final twist. “Do you know something about opening safes, Corporal Garrety?”

  Sean shook his head. “Not really, sir.” He looked at Cole, who was still in the doorway.

  The captain saw him looking. “Do you have something to add to this conversation, Corporal Harper?”

  “Sir?”

  “Garrety seems to think you have something to add.”

  Cole gave Sean a dark look. “My father was a locksmith, sir.”

  “And?”

  “He taught me a few things.”

  Captain Webber let out an impatient breath. “Did he teach you how to crack a safe?”

  “He did his best,” Cole said. “I never practiced on a Mosler, though.”

  The captain looked up at the ceiling, laughing. “Never practiced,” he said. “Well, now’s your chance.”

  *

  Cole tried to teach him once.

  Sean remembered: sneaking into the repair shop late at night, when they should have been sleeping. Cole had a key to the shop and another to the door of his father’s private office.

  The safe was in a corner behind the desk. A black hulk with a silver-gray dial.

  They were fifteen years old.

  They’d go into the office and find the bottle Cole’s father kept in his desk drawer: Jack Daniel’s. They’d drink a little at a time, because Cole’s father was gruff and scary and mean. You wouldn’t want him to catch you drinking his whiskey.

  Sean remembered pressing his ear against the door of the safe, turning the dial, and listening. Cole telling him to picture the wheels that were in there—the tumblers. Each one had a notch, and if you could line up all the notches you could open the door. You had to turn the dial and search for the notches, and if you knew what to listen for, the sound would tell you when you found them.

  Sean couldn’t do it. But Cole could. His father changed the combination of the safe every month. With practice, Cole reached a point where he could open it every time.

  In the house in Kamaliyah, he worked on the Mosler safe for more than an hour.

  Captain Webber cleared the house so Cole could work. The other soldiers carried out the AK-47s and the crates of mortar shells, and the only people who remained were Sean and Cole and Sergeant Ross and the captain and Zaman’s mistress. They were gathered in the kitchen with candles burning around the room because there was no electricity. Zaman’s mistress sat at the table, her face unreadable. The captain sat with her. The sergeant leaned against a counter by the sink. Cole, with his gloves and helmet off, had pulled a chair up to the safe. Sean stood nearby, watching.

  No one spoke, because Cole needed quiet. He laid his cheek against the black door to listen and turned the dial, sometimes fast, sometimes slow.

  After almost half an hour, he pushed himself away and exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath. He ran the fingers of both hands through his hair and over his face.

  “I got one,” he said softly. “Fifty-seven.”

  “Fifty-seven,” the captain repeated.

  “Could be fifty-six or fifty-eight. But I’m pretty sure it’s fifty-seven.”

  “Good,” the captain said.

  Cole went back to work, looking for the other numbers. Sean listened to the sound of the moving dial—but there were other sounds, too, and other movements: Zaman’s mistress picking at her nails. Sergeant Ross drumming his fingers on the stock of his M4. Captain Webber shifting in his chair. The candle flames flickering.

  Another forty minutes passed before Cole found the second and third numbers.

  Thirty-one and twelve.

  The final step was to put the numbers in the right order. There were six possible combinations and nothing to do but run through them. Cole worked the dial with a smooth confidence now.

  Fifty-seven, thirty-one, twelve. Try the handle.

  No.

  Fifty-seven, twelve, thirty-one.

  No.

  Thirty-one, fifty-seven, twelve.

  No again.

  This part didn’t require silence, but no
one said anything and no one moved. Cole spun the dial four times to the right and started in on the next combination.

  Thirty-one …

  The candle flames wavered in the air.

  Twelve …

  Sean heard the crackle of the wicks burning.

  Fifty-seven.

  Cole worked the handle, and the black door opened.

  Somewhere overhead, a floorboard creaked.

  “What was that?” Sergeant Ross said.

  “Fuck,” said Sean, looking up at the ceiling.

  Captain Webber looked up too. “You cleared those rooms.”

  “Yes,” Sean said.

  “Definitely,” said Cole.

  The captain grabbed Zaman’s mistress by the arm. “Who’s up there? Is someone up there?”

  She turned away from him, her hair falling over her face.

  The captain looked at Sean, then at Ross. “Go,” he said.

  Ross made it to the stairs first. Sean was close behind. Zaman’s mistress slipped free of the captain’s grip and tried to follow them. She passed from the kitchen to the sitting room, screaming in Arabic. The captain caught her and shoved her to the floor.

  When Sean hit the top of the stairs, Ross was in the doorway of the bathroom. “It’s clear,” he said.

  They moved together to the middle room—the one where they had found the mortars. It was empty now. Nowhere to hide but a small closet covered by a curtain. Sean tore the curtain away. “Clear,” he said.

  Which left the bedroom at the front of the house.

  It held a full-size bed with a metal frame and a thin mattress. Space to hide underneath—that’s where Cole had found the woman.

  Sean took hold of the frame and jerked it upward, slamming the mattress into the wall.

  There was no one underneath.

  He dropped the frame to the floor. Sergeant Ross was standing by the closet. This one didn’t have a curtain; it had a door. Ross reached for the knob. Sean got into position, took aim with his M4. “Ready,” he said.

  Ross swept the door open.

  Clothes on hangers. Dresses. Blouses.

  Sean lowered his rifle, then stepped forward and started tearing the clothes out and throwing them on the floor behind him.

  Munir Zaman was a small man. Short and thin.

  He was there at the back of the closet.

  He was holding something in his right hand. Something silver.

  Sean had learned a few phrases in Arabic. He’d never had a chance to use any of them, but he did now.

  “Iisqat albunduqia!” he yelled. “Drop the gun! Drop it!”

  Zaman looked terrified. He was a middle-aged man with a sheen of sweat on his face. His hair was a mess from hiding in the closet. It hung limply over his forehead.

  And the silver thing in his hand was definitely a gun. It was down at his side—but it was a gun.

  He began to lift it up. Maybe to shoot, maybe to toss it from the closet. Sean didn’t know. He would never know.

  He brought up his M4 and put two rounds in Munir Zaman’s chest.

  *

  For the next little while, Sean felt numb. Zaman bled out fast on the floor of the bedroom, wild-eyed and gasping, reaching up like he wanted someone to hold his hand.

  Sean stepped back from him, but he couldn’t look away.

  You should have stayed quiet, he thought. You should have been better at hiding.

  Sergeant Ross patted Sean on the shoulder, told him he’d done the right thing.

  “Could have been either one of us,” Ross said. “I would have shot him too.”

  There was something comforting about the idea. That it could have gone either way. Later on, Sean would give a lot of thought to what might have been—to the alternate history where he had been the one to open the closet door and Ross had been the one to pull the trigger.

  Random chance. That’s all it was.

  The same was true of the ride back to the base. Five Humvees in a convoy. On the trip out, Sean had ridden in the third one, with Cole and Captain Webber and a private named Ortiz. On the trip back, they took Zaman’s mistress with them. She got Sean’s seat, and Sean rode in the fourth Humvee.

  Musical chairs.

  It saved Sean’s life.

  The ride started smooth, Sean in the left rear seat with a cardboard box on his lap—the haul from the safe. Full of loose papers, a ledger, a laptop, and three hard drives. The captain hoped they might yield some useful intelligence.

  Sergeant Ross was in the seat next to Sean. Keeping an eye on him, Sean thought. But he felt better even now. Less numb.

  A mile from Zaman’s house the convoy turned onto a wider street—a commercial street with two- and three-story buildings on either side. They passed a grocery store and a boarded-up restaurant, and then a taller building loomed up: brick and stone on the facade and the ruins of a marquee. A movie theater. Abandoned, because they weren’t showing movies in Kamaliyah these days.

  As the convoy passed the theater, Sean saw a flash like lightning at the roadside. A boom of thunder came with it, the shock wave pulsing through him. Up ahead, the third Humvee jerked sideways and rose up. Almost tipped, hung still for a moment. Came down again.

  When it came down, it was on fire.

  Chaos then. Sergeant Ross barking orders. Sean hit the door and was out on the street before his Humvee rolled to a stop. He started running, still gripping the cardboard box. Then tossed it away. The papers spilled out over the ground.

  The boom of the explosion still echoed in his ears, but there were other sounds with it: the clip-clip of rifle fire, someone screaming. Up ahead, the driver’s door of the third Humvee swung open. Cole leaned out. Fell into the street.

  Sean got to him. Pulled him clear.

  “Ortiz is burning,” Cole said.

  “Okay,” said Sean.

  “I don’t think it’s okay.” Cole said. “Am I burning?”

  His sleeve was. Sean slapped out the flame with a gloved hand.

  “You’re all right,” he said.

  He scanned around for cover, saw a narrow alley between the movie theater and a tea shop. He dragged Cole into it.

  “I’m hot,” Cole said, pulling his night-vision goggles off. “Why does it always have to be so goddamn hot?”

  “I don’t know,” Sean said, distracted. He tore his own goggles from his face and slipped off his gloves. Unsnapped a pocket on his thigh and drew out a tourniquet.

  “What are you doing?” Cole said.

  “Never mind,” said Sean.

  At the mouth of the alley, a bullet struck the wall of the theater, chipping off splinters of stone. Another struck the ground.

  “Jesus,” Cole said. “Are they shooting at us? Why would anyone want to shoot at us?”

  Sean squatted by Cole’s right leg and pulled the tourniquet over Cole’s calf. It was simple. There was no boot in the way. And no foot.

  Sean tightened the tourniquet, taking out all the slack. He twisted the plastic rod to close off the artery. Used the Velcro strap to secure the rod in place.

  “Am I bleeding?” Cole said.

  “You were,” said Sean. “Now you’re not.”

  Cole was sitting against the wall of the theater, his head leaning against the stone. He took a breath in through his nose and bent forward to look at his leg.

  “Aw, shit,” he said.

  “You’ll live,” said Sean.

  “I hate this fucking place.”

  “I know. I’m starting to not like it either.”

  Cole’s body shook, and Sean thought he was coughing. But it was something else: a laugh, quiet and bitter. Cole tipped his head back against the wall.

  “How are we getting out of this alley?” he said.

  “Beats me,” said Sean.

  “I wish they’d finish shooting all those motherfuckers.”

  Sean listened to the gunfire. Heard the chut-chut-chut of the M50s, the big guns mounted on the Humvees.

&nbs
p; “They’re working on it,” he said.

  He crouched low and moved closer to the mouth of the alley.

  “What are you doing?” Cole said.

  “Trying to see what’s going on.”

  “There’s a war out there. That’s what’s going on.”

  Sean reached down and ran his fingers through the dirt. Rubbed it between his palms.

  “Come back here,” Cole said.

  Sean didn’t move.

  “I’m serious.”

  Sean brushed the dirt from his palms and walked back.

  “It was probably one guy, don’t you think?” he said.

  Silence for a few seconds. Then Cole said, “What are you talking about?”

  “I bet there was one guy, on a roof across the street, who saw the two of us come down here and tried to shoot us. But he’s not shooting now.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe they got him,” Sean said. “I think they got him.”

  “There’s other guys,” said Cole.

  “I know,” Sean said.

  “There’s no end of guys in this city who would be happy to kill you.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “So stay here. Don’t go out there.”

  Sean leaned against the stone wall of the theater.

  “Okay,” he said.

  A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and along his nose. He wiped it away.

  “Okay,” he said again, softly. “But what about Ortiz?”

  “He’s dead,” Cole replied. “He was on fire.”

  “Right,” Sean said, nodding. Then: “What about Zaman’s mistress?”

  “Who gives a fuck about Zaman’s mistress?”

  Sean moved his fingers over the surface of the stone. “No, you’re right.”

  “She’s dead anyway. They’re all dead.”

  Sean let himself slide down the wall until he was sitting on the ground. But he kept staring at the mouth of the alley.

  “The captain though,” he said.

  “The captain’s dead,” Cole told him.

  “He was on the left side of the Humvee,” Sean said. “Like you were. Away from the blast.”

  “He’s dead. And if he’s not, then somebody else already pulled him out. You go out there, you’re gonna get shot.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.”

  Sean listened to the sound of the guns. Felt the wall against his back. The sweat on his face. The air dense around him. Time passing.