After the End Read online

  Allison parks us in front of a tidy light-blue two-story home, with a front porch with a glider and two wicker chairs, and big windows. The white mailbox out front has WINSTON carefully painted on it in black letters.

  From the porch, an American flag hangs limply from a small pole jutting from one of the pillars.

  Allison switches off the car. Our drive from the Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport had been a quiet one, and I knew from experience that it was best not to press Allison about what was going on or what she had planned. I kept my mouth shut and she had returned the favor.

  “Here we are,” she says.

  “Nice.”

  We get out and I breathe in the Georgia air and look up at the dark-blue sky, not a cloud blocking anything. Allison comes around the car. She’s dumped her heavy winter coat for a light-blue blazer that fits her well and does a good job of concealing her weaponry.

  “What are you looking at?” she asks.

  “The sky.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “The little specks of airliners full of men and women in first class, sipping on their drinks, working on their papers or laptops, ignoring what they call ‘flyover country.’ They never quite care or understand that flyover country produces most of the fighting men and women who go out and bleed on their behalf.”

  “You get all that from looking at the sky?”

  I smile at her. “I’ve had practice.”

  She goes to the picket fence, opens the gate, and lets me through. I sense we’re being watched from inside. “What can you tell me about Ray Winston?” she asks.

  “Ray? Big as an East German car, tough, moves quickly and quietly. He can snap a sentry’s neck or break through a front door and terrorize a Taliban squad with just his voice.”

  I pause, memories getting unpacked from little boxes in the back of my mind. They’re demanding attention. I try not to give it to them.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “He’s smart, too,” I say. “When we were in Iraq, he could talk about Babylon and Ur and make it interesting. The same in Afghanistan. He loved talking about Alexander the Great. He’d say, ‘Imagine that cat Alexander, marching all the way to this cold and dry place, and for what?’”

  “Sounds like a one of a kind.”

  “One of the strongest, bravest, and smartest guys I ever served with.”

  Allison walks ahead of me and I join her on the porch. Before she opens the door, she says to me in a voice that’s slightly bleak, “Hold that thought, will you?”

  I do, because I don’t know what to say.

  Allison opens the door and we walk in, and I catch the pungent odor right away.

  The smell of someone dying.

  Chapter 5

  There’s a small entryway to the front and what seems to be a formal dining room to the right, but Allison expertly steers us to the left. In a few seconds, I take it all in. The room had once been a living room or a parlor or whatever the hell you want to call it, but the two couches and three chairs have been pushed aside to make room for the large hospital bed in the center.

  There’s a whir-click of a ventilator and I slowly walk forward. There’s a crumpled shape underneath the covers. I force myself to move on. I’m no stranger to the battlefield or medic tents or evac helicopters, but there’s still something bone-jarring about seeing what’s left after the fighting is over. It can make you ill, right down to the marrow.

  An African American man is asleep on the bed, his face swollen and sallow. A ventilator tube comes out from his throat and down to a machine. An oxygen tube with twin openings is around his nostrils. His left eye socket is empty and gaping. His right arm is on top of the light-blue cotton blanket, monitor devices clipped to the end of the fingers.

  There’s no left arm.

  Based on the shape under the blanket, there are no legs, either.

  A plastic bag dangling underneath the bed is half full of urine.

  On the walls are framed photographs of this man as a baby, child, and adolescent. Two of him in a football uniform, one high school, the other college.

  There’s another framed photograph of him in a uniform, Army this time, and a pretty African American woman is pinning a Ranger tab to his upper arm. Both are smiling, and he looks confident enough to take on the world at breakfast and relax in the afternoon with a good cigar and a snifter of Rémy Martin.

  I’m at his side. Allison is quiet in the corner.

  I’m thinking a lot, but there’s also fury building up inside of me, wanting to make Allison take me back to the airport, so I could be on the ground a day later, back in the ’stan, looking to kill everyone and anyone who did this to him. Then I’d kill their flocks and flatten their homes.

  Just like Alexander the Great.

  The sole eyelid flickers open, and the eye moves around, focuses, and snaps onto me.

  The man smiles.

  “Hey, Top, good to see you,” he says in a voice so soft it’s hard to hear.

  I touch his forehead, blink my eyes. “Good to see you, too, Ray.”

  “Liar,” he whispers.

  “If so, you taught me,” I say. “You were always the best at flinging tales around. You still think Alexander invaded Afghanistan just because he was horny and wanted to spread his seed?”

  The smile widens and for that sight alone, I would gratefully sign over my entire checking account to whoever wanted it.

  “You think he marched all the way from warm Greece with all those fine chicks and wine to go to the ’stan only for gold and glory? Don’t make sense, man…”

  His eyelid flutters and closes again. His voice is lower. “Don’t make sense, man…”

  My fists are clenched very tight. He falls back asleep.

  The woman from the photograph walks into the room. Marilyn, I recall. Marilyn. She has on black open-toed high-heeled shoes, tight jeans, and a white pullover top with the sleeves rolled up on her arms, the front showing a hint of cleavage. Her toenails and fingernails both have bright red nail polish on them, and there’s gold jewelry on her fingers and wrists.

  Her skin is mahogany and flawless, and her ink-colored hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail. With her looks and style, she could easily be a runway model, save for two things: she’s just a tad too short and her brown eyes are staring at me with a mix of fury and disdain.

  Marilyn says to Allison, “This him?”

  “It’s him.”

  “Doesn’t look like much.”

  Marilyn goes to her husband and touches his forehead, checking the readouts on the ventilator and looking over the medical supplies on the nightstand.

  I gently clear my throat. “Ma’am, however I look, I can do whatever needs to get done.”

  She nearly spits the words out.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Allison is near me, like she’s ready to take some of the brunt from the angry Marilyn. “How’s he doing today?”

  “Not much change,” she says, bustling around the nightstand. “He drifts off too much…sleeps too much…and those damn dreams.”

  I say, “Shouldn’t he be in a VA hospital, or some intensive care unit?”

  Marilyn drops a tube of ointment and says sharply, “You trying to tell me how to take care of my man?”

  “No, it’s just that I know it can be overwhelming and—”

  She looks me up and down, and for a few ugly seconds I feel like I’m back at basic, facing my first drill sergeant. “You’ve been here exactly ninety seconds and you know shit, that’s what you know.”

  I nod. “You’re absolutely right. My apologies. No disrespect, ma’am.”

  She stares and stares, and then picks up the tube she dropped. “Stop calling me ma’am, all right? Sounds like we’re at a church meeting or something.”

  Marilyn puts some ointment on two fingers and gently applies it to Ray’s lips. “Thing is, the hospital, they do their best, but I’m not interested in them doing their best. I want thi
ngs to be above and beyond. So I took Ray out of there and brought him here, thinking being home would help him bounce back faster, with me and the home health aides. Hasn’t happened yet, but it will. I know it will.”

  I say, “Ma’am…” and then correct myself, and say, “Marilyn, I served two tours with Ray. I’m here to help in any way I can. What do you want?”

  She says, “Allison, you didn’t tell him?”

  “No,” she says. “I thought it would be better coming from you.”

  “Fair enough,” Marilyn says. Those hard brown eyes are now boring right into me. “I want you to find the person responsible for doing this to my Raynie. The one who hurt him so bad. And I want payback.”

  I look at the sleeping man, hard to contrast this Ray with the Ray I knew back then, who was among the best in my unit. “Allison is probably your best bet there,” I say. “I can talk to Ray, and if Allison and I can get good intel on when and exactly where this happened in Afghanistan, that’d be a start. Allison could locate the exact group who did this, put in a word, run it through the chain of command and the targeting officers…”

  Marilyn laughs, interrupts me. “Damn, girl, I guess you didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

  Allison seems suddenly interested in the view outside.

  Ray’s wife says, “It wasn’t the Taliban who did this. Or al-Qaeda. Or ISIS.” When I look puzzled, Marilyn gestures to the other room. “If you want to find out more, come with me. Both of you.”

  She leaves and I don’t hesitate.

  I walk right behind her.

  Chapter 6

  The other room is the exact size of the one where Ray lies, but is much more cluttered. The walls are colored light-blue and pink, and there’s a baby crib and bassinet in one corner, and two mobiles on the ceiling of little plastic birds and pigs circling in the strong Georgia sun.

  Marilyn sees the look on my face and says, “Ray was promised a training command here in Georgia, after his last tour. Then we were going to…well, we waited too long.”

  There’s a couch with a pillow and some blankets piled up, and I can see this hard and beautiful wife, dozing here when she can, waking up instantly at the slightest sound and murmur from the next room. There’s a crowded bookshelf against the wall, piles of magazines on the floor, a light-brown mini-fridge, and a wide-screen television. Marilyn pushes aside some of the blankets and sits down on the couch. Allison joins her.

  There’s no other seating in the room.

  I keep on standing.

  Marilyn picks up the remote, and pressing the button, says, “Just watch.”

  The television flickers to life and a shaky recording fills the screen, featuring a very familiar-looking television correspondent named Jack Zach. He’s about twenty years older than me and a bit less defined, with a thick white beard that under the right light and angle makes him look like Ernest Hemingway to Jack’s more breathless and dumber contemporaries.

  Something I know Jack Zach has never discouraged.

  He whispers, “I’m special field correspondent Jack Zach, filing this report under very dangerous circumstances.” Then he continues speaking about this dangerous outpost of America’s will…the daily mortar attacks…vicious attempts…deadly area…hotbed of terrorism…incubator of hatred against the West…and I tune out everything he’s saying and just look.

  He’s dressed in a blue helmet, dark-blue Kevlar vest with PRESS imprinted on it in white letters—as if any of these local Pashtun tribesmen would even know or care what the word meant—and a camouflage jacket that’s not Army issue. As he talks, the camera shows footage of the FOB—forward operating base—where he and his meager crew are located.

  I start remembering the highlights (and mostly lowlights) of his career. Starting off as a local New York TV correspondent, he did some groundbreaking stories about police and gangs, then did a stretch for one of the three big networks, and then started bouncing around after that.

  There was the radio talk show, the television talk show, a couple of reality television programs, lots of gossip tales about his fights and marriages, and articles on Page Six and in People. Now he’s a roaming correspondent for the latest scrappy cable news network. From the looks of it, he creates his own videos and then decides whether to submit them. I have an itching feeling that this one never made it to press.

  The footage continues with Jack interviewing the FOB commander and some of the guys in the field. There’s lots of joshing and back-slapping, and finally, in a five-second shot, I see Ray Winston, all decked out in full battle rattle, watching the circus going on.

  “There’s my Raynie,” Marilyn whispers. “Don’t my boy look good?”

  Then there’s a few seconds of jerky camera work as two mortar rounds explode outside of the FOB perimeter. Some shots of bombs being dropped from an American B-52 quickly follow and there’s one last glamour shot in front of a sandbag-covered building with an American flag draped near the doorway where Jack looks into the camera and says nothing of substance.

  Marilyn pauses the action on the screen, and now it comes to me.

  “Jack Zach,” I say. “He said something or reported something he shouldn’t have. Classified or operational plans. Information that allowed the Taliban to attack and hurt Ray and the others. Am I right?”

  Allison looks uncomfortable and if anything, the anger and fury in Marilyn’s eyes increase.

  “No, Owen,” she says. “You’re wrong.”

  “Then why are you showing me this?”

  Her hand goes back to the remote. “You’re about to find out. It’s worse than anything you can imagine. Much, much worse.”

  Chapter 7

  The image on the big screen television comes back to life, and Marilyn works the buttons and zip-zip-zip we fast-forward through some similar shots.

  Something starts tickling along the back of my arms and my neck.

  Jack Zach is back on the screen, and there’s more mindless talking, but it’s a shushed type of talking, because Jack isn’t embedded with the Army, my buds, and Ray Winston anymore.

  He’s embedded with a group of Taliban fighters, moving with them among the rocks and hills and gullies, and he and his cameraman film a three-man crew operating a Russian-made 82mm Podnoss mortar. They drop in three projectiles and Jack whispers as his cameraman follows the trajectory…

  …right to the FOB where Jack had previously been.

  I whisper, “I’ll be damned.”

  The FOB suffers two direct hits on the compound, and then the mortar crew, the other Taliban, and Jack Zach scurry away, and—

  It’s nighttime. The scenes are being filmed in ghostly green night vision.

  They’re by a road.

  More whispered reporting from Jack Zach. Three Taliban members are carrying what looks to be an artillery shell and they start burying it at the side of the road.

  Good God.

  When the three are done, they move back and Jack goes with them.

  They’re in a gully now, peering over, looking at the road.

  Lights in the distance.

  A small convoy is approaching.

  Ray’s wife then whispers, “They weren’t supposed to be there. But they were ordered to do it…ordered to get ambushed.”

  I feel like I might just get sick to my stomach.

  Jack’s whispers get more urgent as the vehicles approach. There are up-armored Humvees and two trucks, and Jesus God, can’t somebody warn them, can’t they see the IED buried before them, won’t Jack do something and—

  A loud explosion, ball of light overwhelms the night vision gear. The camera shakes and there are the exulted shouts of the Taliban crew. As gunfire erupts, there’s a quick shot of burning, overturned vehicles.

  Then Allison speaks up. “I think we’ve seen enough.”

  Marilyn says, “No, you haven’t.” So the three of us sit there and watch the fighting. We watch the wounded and dying go on, and see the American soldiers fall, whi
le an American correspondent watches.

  Chapter 8

  When the television is switched off, I say, “When did this happen?”

  “Six months ago,” Allison says. “Didn’t you hear about it?”

  A half year ago, I was just getting settled into the lakeside home I’d dreamed about forever, so I say, “No. Back then I wasn’t watching the news, or reading any newspapers.”

  Marilyn carefully puts the remote down on a coffee table. “Jack Zach did nothing,” she says. “He’s an American and was embedded with Ray’s unit. He did a couple of stories with them, pretended to be their friend…and then went to the Taliban a week later to watch his own get killed and wounded.”

  I say, “I’m sure this caused one hell of a firestorm when it broke.”

  Marilyn crosses her arms. “Sure. Except no one knew that Jack Zach had been there, what he had known. No one knew that he could’ve stopped them…all the while my Raynie is barely alive, crapping in a bedpan, peeing into a tube, screaming every night from the memories. Two of his friends were killed. Three others were wounded. He and the others in that unit were forgotten.”

  It’s now clear.

  “What can I do?” I ask.

  Marilyn’s voice is crisp and clear. “You find this Jack Zach, and for what he did to my man…and the others…I want you to hurt him. I want him destroyed. I want him…gone.”

  Not much to say after that. There’s a moan from the next room, and Marilyn disappears.

  Allison says, “Well.”

  “I…what the hell is this?”

  She waits.

  I say, “You bring me all the way here to Georgia to see my old bud, and for what?”

  Allison says, “I’ve known you…for when it counts. I’ve read your after-action reports. I’ve gotten verbal debriefings—with no official records—of other activities you’ve done. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Really? You think you know me that well, that I’d put my butt on the line, do something so wildly illegal? I’d like to remind you, I’m retired.”