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“Nobody I know,” Cartwright said.
I said, “He had yellow eyes. Very well dressed. And he had a silver Desert Eagle on his passenger seat when he was killed.”
Cartwright shook his head slowly, but I caught the involuntary tic of his left eye.
“Didn’t do him much good,” he said. “You’re probably lucky he got killed when you weren’t in the line of fire. One less dirtbag in the world and the kid here survived. What’s not to like? Now I need to take a nap.”
Suddenly, a fury rose in me. Tim Lewis’ face hovered in my mind. And the baby I had held in my arms.
Cartwright asked me what I was doing.
“How do you set this thing off?” I was fiddling with the Claymore.
“You can’t.” He smiled at me like I was an idiot. “It’s disarmed.”
That did it. I threw the Claymore straight at his face. When he reached to catch it, I was up, crossed the eight feet separating us, and picked up the AK-47 from his lap.
“What the…” He let the dummy Claymore fall. It clattered on the wood floor. Next he reached for the pistol on his belt.
I chambered a round in the AK-47, although I didn’t aim it at him. Yet.
Peralta said, “I wouldn’t move, Ed. Mapstone here had a run-in with Los Zetas where they tried to put a hand grenade in his mouth, so he’s PTSD’d to the moon.”
Through his teeth, Cartwright said, “Why is he alive then?”
Peralta spoke softly. “That’s why I wouldn’t move.”
He spoke quietly, “How do you even know how to work that thing, kid?”
“A million child soldiers in Africa can work it. Want to take a chance that I can’t?”
He studied me through angry but uncertain eyes, his hand still on the butt of his sidearm.
If Cartwright had even started to pull the weapon, I would have pumped several shots into him before anything like judgment could have caught up with the rage I felt. A savage stranger’s voice started speaking. It was coming from my mouth.
“You listen to me, old man.” I spat out the last two words. “I’ve got two young people murdered and a missing baby. Now I’ve got an armed whacko survivalist sitting in front of me who thinks he can get off a shot before I send him to hell. Who knows how many weeks before they find your body? What I don’t have is time to waste finding that baby, and that means you don’t have time.”
“All right, son. Please calm down.”
I swung the barrel to his chest.
“Now you have ten seconds less time.”
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He saw my finger was on the trigger and a sheen of sweat appeared across his forehead.
“A dozen Claymores went missing from Fort Huachuca last month,” Cartwright said.
Peralta shook his head. “That’s an intelligence installation. What are anti-personnel mines doing there?”
“The military has this stuff everywhere. Makes it hard as hell to track. Who knows how much walks away from bases and nobody ever knows?”
I wanted to know who took it.
“Word is, soldiers.”
“Active-duty soldiers?”
