Two bodyguards stood on either side of him, identical slabs of muscle in black suits. Roach didn’t look like a grieving father. He looked like a board chairman shutting down a failing branch office.
“Come in, Alex. Have a seat,” he said, motioning to the chair across from him. “You’re the guest of honor.”
Alex sat without a word. He looked into Roach’s eyes, trying to find something there. But there was the same emptiness he carried himself.
Only this emptiness wasn’t grief. It was power. “I told my men to stand down at the hospital,” Roach said matter-of-factly, folding his hands on the table. “For now.”
“Your daughter is safe. For the next few hours, anyway. Her life now depends less on doctors than on you.”
“On how well you play.” “What game?” Alex asked, his voice rough.
“An old one. Cruel, but effective,” Roach said with a faint smile. “It’s called life for life. You took my son’s future. For all practical purposes, his life is over.”
“So I’ll take yours. But not quickly. You didn’t end his quickly.”
“You showed imagination. I appreciate that. So I’ll return the favor.” He paused, enjoying himself.
“You’ve got nothing left in this world but your daughter, right? Lone wolf. So the only way to hurt you properly is through memory. Through your past. Through the people who made you what you are.”
He snapped his fingers. One of the guards stepped out and came back a minute later leading an older frightened man in an old Army field jacket. The man had one arm.
“Recognize him, Alex?” Roach asked. “Sergeant Semyon. Your first commanding officer in the war zone.”
“The man you carried out under fire while losing two of your own men. Your war father, wasn’t that what you called him?”
Alex’s heart missed a beat. He stared at the frightened, aged face of his old commander, and the ice inside him cracked again. “He has nothing to do with this,” Alex said hoarsely.
“He has everything to do with it,” Roach replied. “He’s part of your legend. The first man who taught you how to kill.”
“There’s a pistol on the table. One round in it.”
“You either shoot him in the head yourself, or my men do it for you. Then they drive back to the hospital. Your call, soldier.”
Time stopped. The pistol lay on the green felt, black and heavy as a gravestone. In its dull metal he could see the frightened, confused eyes of Sergeant Semyon.
The man who had covered him from shrapnel with his own body, the man who had taught him not to fear death, now stood in front of him like a target. And the finger on the trigger had to be Alex’s. “What’s the matter, Alex?”
Roach’s voice dripped with poison and calm. “Don’t recognize an old friend? Or just don’t have the nerve?”
“You’re the hero, right? The rescuer. Well, here’s your chance to rescue him one more time. From a long, poor old age.”
“Just one shot.” Alex didn’t look at Roach. He looked at Semyon. And in the old sergeant’s eyes he saw not fear, but understanding.
Semyon looked at Alex, then at the table, then back at Alex. He understood it all. He had seen situations like this before, back in places where a life cost less than a bullet.
“Alex…” “Quiet,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Shut up,” one of the guards barked.
“Do what you have to do, son.” Semyon ignored the guard and looked only at Alex. There was fatherly sorrow in his eyes, and a soldier’s resolve.
“Don’t let them… her… Don’t you do it. You hear me?”
The ice inside Alex didn’t melt. It shattered into sharp powder that tore at him from the inside. He slowly reached out and picked up the pistol. It felt as heavy as his whole life.
He checked the chamber. One round. Just as promised.
He raised the gun. His hand did not shake. He was a machine now, and Roach had started the program.
He lined up the sights on the forehead of the man who had once saved his life. Their eyes met. There was pain in Semyon’s face, but no blame.
He nodded once. Short and clean. “Goodbye.”
Alex shut his eyes for a fraction of a second. Katie flashed before him. Then himself at twenty, a scared kid, with this one-armed sergeant dragging him out of fire, shouting in his ear:
“Stay with me, son. We’re getting out.” He opened his eyes. Pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked through the warehouse like thunder. Semyon’s body jerked and dropped to the concrete. The silence afterward was worse.
Alex stared at what he had done, at the dark stain spreading across the floor, and felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just emptiness and scorched earth.
He had just killed part of himself. The best part. He set the pistol back on the table.
“Excellent.” Roach’s voice carried quiet, sadistic satisfaction. “Lesson one learned.”
“Betrayal in the name of survival. Useful skill. You’ll need it again today.” He snapped his fingers.
Two other men dragged Semyon’s body away like stage props. A minute later the floor was clean again, as if nothing had happened. “You think that was the end, Alex?” Roach continued.
“That was just the beginning. You learned to kill in war. But you learned to survive somewhere else.”
“In the nineties, after you came home and realized the system had thrown you away.” He snapped his fingers again. A second man was brought in.
He was an elderly, thin man in an expensive but wrinkled suit, with quick nervous eyes. He was shaking badly. “Meet Uncle Mike,” Roach said….
