Power and Empire

He should never have allowed the boy to tie the woman at the bow. She’d gotten loose at the worst possible time, warning the boarding party. The boy had panicked at his mistake, shooting through the deck at the women and drawing fire from the U.S. vessel. Mamat was struck in both knees early in the gunfight, causing him to topple sideways and drop the push-button detonator that was hardwired to the explosives. Then the foolish boy chanced a shot with the RPG and took an American bullet through the eye for his trouble. He lost the back of his skull in the process. Even as the sailors ran for their lives, rounds continued to punch holes in both the sailboat and Mamat. He must have lost consciousness for a moment because the sound of the boat motor was dying away when he came to.

At last, he was able to drag himself to the detonator and grasp it in a bloody hand. The Navy boat was gone, but it was much too late to change his mind now. Closing his eyes, Mamat bin Ahmad said a final prayer and pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

Mamat shuddered, flooded with a heady mixture of relief and shame. Then he shifted his weight, moving the wire under his chest. The movement completed the shorted connection and the cabin vaporized in a ball of orange flame.

29

Special Agent Kelsey Callahan could not recall the moment, but she’d seen photographic evidence that her father had broken down and cried when he dropped her off on her first day of kindergarten.

The elder Callahan was a well-respected heart surgeon at Providence St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula. He was also a champion of strong women — forever pushing his only child to “get out front” and “show them how it’s done.” A burly, buffalo-plaid-wearing Montana man who looked more like a logger or mountain guide when he wasn’t dressed in hospital scrubs, he was also the most overprotective father Kelsey had ever heard of.

Big Ben Callahan made it clear to every boy Kelsey dated in a jovial, not-quite-joking way that he was capable not only of saving lives but also of ending them in quiet and undetectable ways.

Kelsey made the mistake of sneaking out of the house late one night during her sophomore year of high school. Somehow her father had known, and he approached the boy’s pickup just as they were about to drive away. He materialized from the shadows of the tall blue spruce in their front yard — nearly causing the poor kids to pee their pants when he knocked on the passenger window. If that wasn’t bad enough, when the boy rolled down the window, Big Ben Callahan leaned in across a mortified Kelsey and asked in a quietly piercing voice if he’d brought a gun with him.

“N-n-no,” the boy stammered.

“A big-ass knife?”

“Of course not!” The boy looked like he was about to cry.

“Some kind of stick or club?”

“No, sir.”

Her father had considered the answer for a moment, then said, “You’d better bring one the next time you come to my house in the middle of the night.” Then he opened the door so Kelsey could get out and follow him back inside.

It turned out that Austin Herbert McKay had been carrying a knife that night. He was just too terrified of Ben Callahan to use it. McKay went on to sexually assault three girls around Missoula — all of them redheads — over the next few months before he was finally arrested. Ben Callahan never once rubbed the incident in her face — though he had, over the years, raised an eyebrow at her questionable taste in men. Sadly, he hadn’t been around to run off her ex-husband before she’d tied the knot.

Her dad had grown misty-eyed when she graduated with honors from Hellgate High School, but he’d broken down completely when she graduated from FBI training at Quantico, admitting that the thought of her strapping on a gun every day terrified him. She reminded him of that night he’d stood under the spruce tree — and pointed out that there were a lot of bad guys in the world. He’d understood with no further explanation, returning to Missoula and his life as a cardiac surgeon while she went hunting for all the Austin Herbert McKays she could find.

Kelsey Callahan inherited her father’s protective nature along with his sense of justice, but she’d gotten a penchant for expensive silk blouses, her red hair, and her defined hourglass shape from her mother. If anyone ever asked what happened to those underwear models in the Sears, Roebuck catalogs, Sue Callahan would point out that some of them married cardiac surgeons and raised promising young FBI agents. Her mom’s previous career wasn’t something Kelsey ever talked about in high school — she didn’t relish the idea of boys knowing there were pictures of her mom in lacy bras floating around out there — especially since Kelsey looked so much like her.