But in the end, what did it matter? The brutality of war, the random nature of man’s existence: she represented none of those things to him. All Maven got out of it was a few weeks of speech therapy, and a reminder of something he already knew: trouble had a way of finding him. Always had, always would.
As the strap creaked tighter behind him, the now smooth tongue notch pushed against the inside of Maven’s bite. The second guy’s free hand came around to pat Maven’s chest and gut through the wet poncho. He felt each side of Maven’s waist, pausing at his pants pockets, gripping a mobile phone, then continuing, the guy stooping now, his hand at the cargo pocket along the lower left thigh of Maven’s camo fatigues.
The guy’s molesting hand squeezed excitedly, closing around the wad of bills inside, his grip on the strap easing just a bit.
Maven shoved backward, driving the guy off-balance. He kicked back with the heel of his left boot and got lucky — catching the guy’s nose, a crunch and a dull pop, like the bursting of the glass tube inside an old-fashioned fire alarm.
The knife came thrusting at him, Maven seeing only the blade, pivoting away from it and kicking out, catching the first guy’s front left knee. His leg wouldn’t bend that way, the guy going down face-first onto the slick pavement.
The guy behind Maven had released the strap, doubled over now, holding his gushing face with both hands.
Maven watched the first guy up on all fours, looking at his knife, the blade edge tipped in blood. He had landed on it when he fell. Maven gave him no time to find the wound, punting him in the ribs, the knife skittering loose.
Maven dropped and rolled over the knife, feeling for the handle with his hands still trapped against his sides, beneath the poncho. He grasped it and sawed at the strap, cutting his arms free — just as a blow from the side knocked the knife from his grip, sending Maven tumbling.
He sprang up fast into a fighter’s crouch. He faced the second guy, who still had both hands up protecting his busted nose and bleeding face. Maven threw two low jabs, quick-quick, cracking ribs on either side of the guy’s midsection. He tried to go down but Maven shoved him backward, up against the rear of an SUV, driving the heel of his boot into the guy’s crotch as if he were squashing a tarantula there. The guy’s hands sprang open off his bloody face, a wail escaping his mouth like that of a drunk thrown through saloon doors.
The other one was back on his feet behind Maven, retrieving the knife. Maven saw him reflected in the SUV’s rear window, and when Maven turned hard, the knife guy seized up, thinking Maven’s powers of perception were beyond human. He reset himself, holding the bloody slash in his side, and led with the blade, Maven sidestepping the clumsy thrust almost before it started.
Behind him, Maven heard the scuffing of the other guy’s footsteps as he hobbled off the lot, making his escape.
The knife guy came in with a wild, diagonal slashing move, its tip catching the nylon of Maven’s poncho beneath his raised arms, slicing it as Maven pulled away. The knife guy’s face sharpened as though he had drawn blood, and not just ruined a $7 surplus poncho.
This sneer of victory made Maven snap.
The knife came at him again and Maven stepped into it this time, catching the guy’s hand and twisting, rotating the entire arm. He peeled two fingers back off the knife handle, all the way down, fracturing both. He wrenched the man’s wrist like the cap on a stubborn jar, cracking bones. The guy was screaming and trying to fall but Maven would not let him go. Maven gripped the knife in the guy’s own broken hand and stabbed down into his leg just above the knee, slicing upward, opening the guy’s thigh. Then Maven bent the guy’s arm back upward, ignoring his cries as he forced the trembling knife toward the strained muscles of his screaming throat.
Another arm hooked Maven’s. Not the guy who had run away; this was a good pro grip locking his arm, keeping him from slicing the guy’s throat. Maven’s legs were pushed out from behind, putting him off-balance, taking away his leverage.
Maven never saw the third man’s face. Only the woman a few cars down, a man’s black jacket draped over her shoulders, her silver dress shimmering like rain within the rain.
It was Danielle Vetti, watching him, her hand covering her mouth.
Maven released the knife guy, who had already fainted. The man behind him released Maven, and Maven backed away from Danielle Vetti’s eyes, walking, then running full out, so hard that even the rain couldn’t catch him.
See, once upon a time, there was this kid.
A lonely kid from a wrecked family, no father, barely a mother. A kid who didn’t know how to be liked, never mind loved. Growing up, this kid never guessed hundreds, if not thousands, of other kids out there were just like him: teenagers spurned by their parents and peers, outwardly quiet but inwardly raging.
It turned out he was one of an entire subset generation of would-be terrorists, adolescent time bombs sitting alone at the foots of unmade beds, managing their misery by drawing up scenarios of violence, vengeance, and immortality.
But he didn’t know this at the time. No one did.
These were kids for whom simple self-destruction wasn’t enough. Suicide would only have confirmed other people’s view of them as a nothing, a no one, a defeated outcast.
So why go out as a question mark when you can go out as an exclamation point instead?
But for this kid, as for most, the flip-switching bully’s punch or crushing social slight or failing grade never quite came to pass, at least not with the annihilative force he had imagined. Fantasy, in the form of death lists, detailed school maps, and first-person-shooter visualizations, appeased his teenage longing for mayhem in the same way that masturbation alleviated his longing for sex.
When the Columbine school shooting occurred in the spring of his graduating year, he was more appalled than fascinated. He saw his own dark shadow there, in the cafeteria video of the two trench-coat-clad shooters, and knew then, more than ever, that he needed to get the hell out of Gridley, Massachusetts.
So he visited his local army recruiter before graduation, stayed off pot all summer to pass the drug screen, and returned on his eighteenth birthday to sign on the dotted line and swear to uphold the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
That was two Septembers before 9/11.
Before Afghanistan.
Before Iraq.
Many speak of the fog of war, but for this kid, war brought clarity. It gave him a mission, clearly defined. Rules of Engagement. A six-article Code of Conduct. He experienced the fellowship of men in combat and learned to give and to earn respect. He was commended, awarded, promoted. Honor, Discipline, Integrity: all those formerly bullshit, silver-plated words came to mean something to him. He was recommended for the six-month Q Course training and even learned passable Korean to earn his Special Forces tab.
He wore the Green Beret. He was accepted, even esteemed, if never totally understood. For the first time in his life, Neal Maven belonged.
And that vengeful, damaged kid, the one everyone tried to piss on? He was gone forever.
Or so Maven had thought.
It happened too late for anything to be in the next day’s papers. Maven spent the morning walking around in a daze, waiting for a call from... who? The police? His boss?
He returned to work that night without any idea what he might be walking into. The rain had cleared, the night mild and almost meek in comparison. The day guy had nothing for him. Maven had stashed the previous night’s take under the counter and would make a double deposit that evening; with banks closed for the weekend, his boss would never be the wiser.