To his credit, the guy doesn’t hesitate or start crying when they all step from the truck. When Milo and Jordy start walking ahead of him, he seems to relax. His only frame of reference for a moment like this has got to be TV shows or movies, so he probably assumes the fact that they’re in front of him and not behind him means they aren’t planning to shoot him.
And they aren’t.
Not really.
Henricks is lucky. He’s got choices.
The air’s a few degrees colder up here, and they’re close enough to the top of the mountain to smell the salty tang of the Pacific. Wind rustles the pine branches, shifts the dense foliage underfoot. Jordy’s reminded of what the world could really be like if it were cleansed of pollutants and nonbelievers. Peaceful and tranquil and devoid of those temptations that act like sandpits for good, honorable men. It’s the type of world men like him and Milo and the others deserve, men who’ve been run through the inferno of combat and forced to return to a degenerate country that keeps adding wood to the faraway fires, all without thought to the good soldiers those fires consume, all without respect for the good soldiers who survive those flames.
The foot soldiers in the nearby trees are doing a good job of staying back. Jordy can’t see them, and Henricks doesn’t seem to be getting any more nervous than he already is, so he probably can’t see them, either.
“I’m serious, you know,” Henricks says. “I mean, I’m committed, is what I’m saying. You guys are special. What you’re doing for us, all the things you’re doing for us, I don’t take them for granted, and I never will. Never.”
“That’s real good, Henricks,” Milo says. “We appreciate that.”
They’ve reached their destination. Through the branches off to his right, Jordy can see one of the seismic geophone stations they’d set up a few weeks before, a slender pyramid of plywood about Milo’s height. The geophone’s hung at the apex, pointed down toward the earth. Tucked against a copse of nearby pines is one of the storage sheds they built on-site.
He and Milo have discussed exactly what needs to happen next, but it’s not like they’ve physically rehearsed, so Jordy feels a little flutter in his chest as he pulls his Glock from his holster, and Milo does the same.
Henricks sees both guns, starts saying the word no over and over again. Then he realizes that neither gun’s pointed at him, and his protests turn to gasps and swivels of his head.
Milo opens the door to the shed, disappears inside, then reemerges, dragging Lacey’s hog-tied body like it’s a sack of potatoes. There’s enough dope in her that as soon as Milo releases her wrists, she collapses to the dirt in the fetal position, gazing at nothing with wet, slitted eyes.
Henricks has raised his hands like a suspect. But he’s staring at Lacey as if she’s the only thing in his world, as if her bruised forehead and the gag in her mouth and the flex-cuffs on her wrists and the nylon rope around her ankles are all evidence his life will never be the same again.
And it won’t be. If he’s lucky.
“It’s all right, Henricks.” Milo’s also got his hands up; he’s pointing his Glock skyward as he closes the distance between them like a stalking snake. “This isn’t what you think it is. Seriously. We’ve heard you. We’ve heard your willingness and your commitment. So consider this an invitation.”
Tears are sliding from Henricks’s eyes as he stares at Milo in evident disbelief. “But I . . . but I . . .”
“You what?” Jordy asks.
“I made her leave. She was talking crazy, and I made her leave before she could do anything.”
“I know,” Jordy says, “but then you quit. You were our man inside the department, and then you quit, Henricks. Can you see how that’s a problem for us?”
“But I’ll do anything . . . I’ll do anything, please.” The last word unleashes a wrenching sob in the man so pathetic Jordy almost shoots him right there just to have this done with. But that’s not how they’re doing this. Milo insisted on something different. Given the momentousness of their mission, and how central Altamira’s about to become to their operations, they need local men to do more than spy and listen, to jump when they say jump. They need men who believe.
That’s why Milo reaches up and places the handle of his Glock in one of Pete Henricks’s raised hands. Henricks looks up at the gun and his hand as if neither are really connected to him anymore. He lets Milo take his wrist and lower his hand to chest level. Milo nods at Jordy. Jordy lowers his own gun toward his feet and rests it there.
When realization dawns, Henricks goes very still, and then, slowly, brings his free hand to the gun’s grip.
“You want me to . . .” Henricks’s words leave him, but he’s got the gun pointed at the earth a few feet in front of him and in Lacey’s general direction, so there’s little doubt in Jordy’s mind the guy knows exactly what they want.
“She lied, Henricks,” Milo says quietly. “She’s a lying cunt who told that cop Jordy beat her when he did no such thing. Tell me, how many men have been destroyed by the type of thing she did? But you. You weren’t fooled. You saw right through it. You knew better, knew what kind of man Jordy is. You knew he’d never lift a hand to his girl like that. You weren’t like Prescott.