Page 104 of Walking Wounded

16

Matt’s office looks like it’s always been one. A massive cherry desk occupies most of the floor space, but there’s still room for a white-painted mantle above the fireplace and a dainty-legged settee beneath one window. The computer, desk lamps, and wall-mounted TV are jarring against the century-old backdrop of the room.

On the TV, a CNN anchor says,“Police have intensified efforts to find the senate bomber, combing through his social media, questioning relatives, and canvassing door-to-door in his neighborhood, and those of his friends.”

“They have a name?” Luke asks from the door.

Matt looks up from his computer with a tired, but welcoming smile. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you ought to sit before you fall over.” He motions to the settee.

Luke would deny that claim, but between the meds and the muffled pain, he shuffles into the room on unsteady legs. He glances out the window – this room has a perfect view of the driveway, and on it he can see the Leesburg Sheriff’s Department patrol car parked at the bend, and behind it, Hal, in a long black coat, sipping coffee with his head on a swivel – and eases down onto the pale green velvet of the settee.

Matt mutes the TV. “They do have a name, yeah. Local kid, Malcolm Davis. He did three years inside, converted, apparently, now he goes by Muhammed. His social media’s full of radical jihad posts. The day of the bombing, he posted that he was, quote, ‘Doing it for ISIS.’”

“Same story, different verse,” Luke says.

“He traveled to Iraq last year, and he doesn’t have any family there.”

“Radicalization.”

“Training. You’re already radical if you want to go hang out with terrorists.”

Luke nods. “So he goes all the way over there, joins up, trains, and comes back here with a mission. But isn’t a terrorist supposed to do the maximum amount of damage? That’s their goal, right? Inflict a bunch of terror on regular everyday people?”

“Seems to be the consensus.”

“But he targeted you, specifically.”

Matt shrugs. “I’m one of the senators that wants to alter the rules of engagement, and allow our military to actually engage the enemy. Terrorist attacks are increasing across the world. ISIS has to be dealt with.”

“And…what does your opposition think?”

“That upping our attacks in the Middle East will incite more violence abroad. That we’d essentially be egging them on. Violence begets violence and all that.”

“And what do you think personally?” Luke asks.

Matt takes a deep breath. “I think it terrifies me to send my children to school. To know that my wife has to go to the grocery store. I want to wrap all of them up in bubble wrap. But I also think,” he says, gaze honest and even, “that if people are blowing shit up in the name of something…you take that something away, and the blowing up of shit stops.” He gives a self-deprecating grin. “To be blunt about it.”

He continues: “The terrorists obviously don’t want us to step up military action. They want to live. They want to spread their hatred of the Western world and everything it stands for. So of course they want to silence the voices in the American government calling for stronger action against them.”

Luke takes a breath, an uneasy thought crawling down the back of his neck. “This guy – the bomber – do you think he was a lone wolf?”

“It fits the pattern. There’s lots of those running around. But last night, around midnight, all the major news channels reported that the FBI found fifty-thousand-dollars cash in Davis’s apartment.”

“Someone paid him to kill you,” Luke says. He wants to be horrified – he is, on a personal level – but this just feels like more of the same. Corruption, backstabbing, guerilla warfare amongst people who are all supposed to be part of the same system.

Matt sits silent a moment, staring over Luke’s shoulder and out the window. “Do you remember what Senator Maxwell said in my office?”

Luke remembers. An edgy smile like a knife wound in the man’s face.“You’d think you could at least try to get along. In what little time you have here.”

Little time.

“Jesus,” Luke breathes. “Maxwell. FuckingSenator Maxwelltried to have to you killed.”

Matt doesn’t say anything.

“Dude, he’s in your own party!”

Matt sighs. “My sisters and brother don’t, but I’ve always loved hearing my dad’s old war stories. There’s something very straightforward about a soldier – I’m sorry, Marine – out there in the brush, fighting for his life, defending his brothers in arms. You do what your commander says, and you do it to the best of your ability.

---