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“Okay. But where are you going with this?”
Driver raised a finger. “Hear me out. Flowers and Mac make it back in enough time to get the kids they were carrying onto a transport. Meeks meets up with them, sohiskids are accounted for. That means a total of thirty kids, give or take, when you factor in the load you gave Drummond. But thatstillleaves ten boys unaccounted for, right? Because Shahida came back with a bunch of boys while you were on the road to Drummond.”
“Which means there should’ve been upwards offortykids.”
“Instead of thirty, right.” Driver nodded. “When Mac figures that out, they go looking for Shahida and Musa.”
“And?”
“And they don’t find them.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You need me to draw a picture? Worthy, they weren’t there. None of Mac’s contacts reported seeing them or the kids they were bringing in.”
He felt his lower jaw unhinge. “They didn’t make it in time?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then whatareyou saying?” But, in the next breath, the light bulb went off. “Oh, my God. They didn’t make it atall?”
Driver touched off an imaginary round with thumb and forefinger, like a kid playing at war. “Bingo.”
“Whathappened?” But his mind was racing now.This is my fault, this is on me, if Mac hadn’t waited, if he and Flowers had just left, if they hadn’t waited to see if we would make it…Roni would be just as dead, but so would he. All those kids would still be alive if not for him. “Did they ever find them?”
“Not long after the PJs left with you, Mac got an SOS from Shahida that they were under attack. Mac was too farbehindto help and Meeks too farahead. The PJs didn’t see anything either, but they might have taken a different route, I don’t know.”
“But, how? How did anyone know to evenlookfor her on the road? Driver, I shot a damned flare at those guys. I killed a couple, and you said Meeks took care of the last two. I’ll grant you that others might have found Roni’s body later, but there were no other Taliban around when Mac left, right?”
“Worthy, did it ever occur to you to wonder how the fighters who targeted the aqueduct got there to begin with or knew where to go? No? Well, take a wild guess. Wait, I’ll help you.” Driver held up a thumb. “Who routinely disappeared and then reappeared?” An index finger to join the thumb. “Who kept bringing more and more kids in?” Another finger. “Who was Mac arguing with when you and Flowers showed up? WhoforcedMac to break his own rules about radio silence and risk letting you go halfway with a vehicle full of kids to meet up with Drummond because that was theonlyway to accommodate yetanotherload of boys? Don’t misunderstand me. I was just as anxious to get those kids out of there as anyone else. But who made that doubly difficult?”
“Shahida.”
“Got it on the first try. And who said you aren’t a bright boy?”
That ticked him off. “I understand that being an asshole seems to come naturally but try not to live up to your reputation.”
“An asshole? Worthy, has it ever occurred to you, atall,” Driver said, his voice low and quiet and more than a little deadly, “that there are days I want to blow my brains out? Because I am just as much at fault, if not more so. If I’d had my shit together, if I hadn’t popped so many uppers, I might have been able to get that kid, Buri, and we’d have been out of there. We lost time because of me. I’m the reason that youdied, man. I’m the reasonRonidied. She could’ve been out and safe, but she waited for us.”
Hadn’t he gone through the same calculus? If only this, if only that, if only Driver hadn’t popped those pills, if only hehadn’t needed to go back for Driver, if only Roni had kept going…
“I can’t tell you what to think, but you keep that up, you’ll drive yourself crazy,” he said. “Trust me. Been there, done that, drunk the Kool-Aid. Before I checked myself into treatment, I got to admit that there were a lot of days when I wondered what gunmetal might taste like.”
They fell silent for a few moments and then Driver sighed. “And they say time heals all wounds.”
“They don’t heal,” John said. “They just don’t hurt as much so long as you don’t pick at the scabs.”
As they were sippingmorning coffee.
“What do people think happened with Shahida?” he asked. “That she was followed when she came back with that last group of boys? It would explain why the bad guys knew where we were.”
“Best guess. Meeks kept an eye out for ShahidaandMac but didn’t think much about not seeing her because there was a lot going on. Getting those kids situated and out on those last few transports was a logistical nightmare. Besides, he couldn’t have known she and Mac didn’t leave at the same time.”
“And Mac didn’t see anything out of the ordinary after the PJs took me?”
“You mean, did he notice blood spatter, bullet-riddled bodies, and a smoking, overturned vehicle? No. Best guess is whoever took Shahida’s boys forced Musa off the road. By the time Mac realized she hadn’t made it, it was too late.”
“Because the trip took six hours one-way.”