After the End Read online

  “Really.”

  She gives me a smile that’s part mocking, part inviting. “What do you intend to do about it?”

  I say, “Kiss it and make it better.”

  I gently put my right hand around her neck and equally gently pull her to me, and I kiss her cheek, jawline, and her neck. I stay at her neck for delicious seconds, and then move to her lips.

  Maybe it’s just the sheer pleasure of feeling and tasting her after my days on the run, shooting and being shot at, but the sensation is intoxicating. I draw back for a moment and she puts a finger on my lips and says, “Wait.”

  “For what?”

  A peck to my nose. “You think I missed a couple of spots? You should see your neck. Ask the flight attendant for some more towels. And I’ll return the favor.”

  As we’re waiting for the towels, I think: to hell with the rules, to hell with the regulations. If Allison wants to know what happened in Serbia, I’ll tell her.

  I’ll tell her right now.

  I turn away from the aisle, toward Allison. “Hey, I want to—”

  Then I shut up.

  She’s curled up, fast asleep.

  So as not to annoy her, I take out a book and start to read.

  Allison stirs and wakes up at the sound of the Boeing 767’s tires striking the pavement of JFK’s Runway 4L-22R. She wipes at her eyes.

  “We’re here,” I say.

  She yawns and says, “So…what happened while I was sleeping?”

  “You were ravished and brought to levels of ecstasy not known to ordinary women.”

  She yawns again. “And yet I slept right through it. Poor me.”

  The aircraft starts taxiing and she says, “Owen…no offense, but it’s mission first, all right?”

  I squeeze her hand and she squeezes back. So at least there’s that.

  “Mission first,” I say.

  Chapter 27

  Back in New Rochelle and the pleasant suburban home of Walt and Rachel Cooper, there’s a sense that something wrong has happened, of some untold foul doing. The place looks the same and Rachel tries to be cheerful and welcoming, but she’s failing.

  Her eyes are swollen, like she’s been crying a lot, or staring back at something that has happened and not liking the way it looks. She has on jeans and a shapeless gray sweatshirt with a NY Giants emblem on the front, and she leads us through the living room, where two young girls are on the couch, watching some animated movie on television.

  Rachel says, “Stacy? Anna? I’ll be upstairs for a while with our guests. Keep it down, okay?”

  The girls murmur something and keep focused on the dancing dragons on television. Allison and I go upstairs and Rachel leads us left, to the master bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed and says, “This won’t take long.”

  Allison says, “We’ll give you as much time as you like.”

  She nods and she bites her lower lip, and she looks like she’s going to burst into tears, but she swallows and says, “Jack Zach was here earlier.”

  I keep quiet. So does Allison.

  Then I finally ask, “Where’s your husband?”

  “In Jordan, filming B-roll of refugee camps.”

  Allison says, “All right.”

  Rachel takes a deep sigh, pulls a piece of clothing from underneath the bed covering. It’s a black silk blouse, and it’s torn. Rachel crumples it up in her hands and puts them in her lap.

  “He…he said that if I didn’t cooperate, he could make things very, very bad for my husband.”

  “Doesn’t your husband work for the network?” I ask. “Aren’t there…protections?”

  “No,” Rachel says. “Walt’s an independent contractor, working for Jack Zach’s production company. He’s on his own.”

  I want to say something but Allison nudges me with her hip. “So much for loyalty,” she says.

  Rachel says, “So much.”

  She drops the ruined blouse on the floor. “You two…why do you want to see Jack Zach so badly?”

  Allison says, “He severely hurt a friend of ours, and killed others close to that friend.”

  “So…something bad will happen to Jack Zach if you meet him?”

  I say, “That’s the plan.”

  Rachel drops the blouse and kicks it under the bed, hiding it from view. “Then I’m going to give the two of you a tip. There’s a get-together tomorrow night, at an exclusive restaurant in Manhattan. Jack hosts it every year. You want to get to Jack? You go there.” She scribbles down the information on a piece of paper.

  I take the paper, and Allison and I get up to leave.

  And right before we reach the door, we hear Rachel’s voice again. “Oh, and when you see him?”

  I turn around to listen carefully.

  “I want you to hurt him. Hurt him bad.”

  “We’re on it,” I say.

  Chapter 28

  The next night, I’m back with Allison in a black GMC Yukon, parked illegally on Seventh Avenue, in front of a row of office buildings and high priced shops, including one place that has a double-glass door—darkened—with a simple pink neon sign above that says JEAN-PAUL.

  Allison says, “This place is so exclusive that you have to give them your name, your background, and credit report, and then they call you to extend an invitation.”

  “I thought Jack Zach said he was a man of the people.”

  “He is,” Allison says. “He just doesn’t say what kind of people.”

  Like the last time we were in Manhattan, the weather is wet and overcast, but it’s dark out, meaning I can’t see anything of the upper floors of the buildings. Traffic flows past, and umbrella-covered pedestrians trudge by.

  Allison checks the time. “Our boy should be in there, working on his second martini and his first married woman of the night.”

  A blare of horns and a taxi cab zips by, nearly running down a couple. I say, “Hey, about our flight to JFK…”

  “Mission first, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember,” I say. “But on the flight back, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “What?”

  “My last op.”

  She stares at me. “Now? Now you’re ready to be noble and give it up? Why?”

  “Because…because I want to. To hell with the rules.”

  “What a bad boy you are.” And then comes the big surprise of the evening when she says, “But don’t.”

  “Excuse me?” I ask. “Twice before you’ve pushed me, and twice before I’ve pushed you back. Now I’m ready to roll over and present up my belly like a goofy Labrador retriever, and you’re saying no?”

  “That’s right,” she says. “It’s not the time. Mission first, Owen. Go out there and do your job. You ready?”

  “I am.”

  “Good.”

  No time for debate or discussion.

  She’s right.

  I open the Yukon’s door and step outside into the darkness and rain.

  Chapter 29

  As I enter the luxurious and glamorous world of the restaurant called Jean-Paul, I remember sitting under a Georgia pine tree, eating a cold MRE of pork and beans, while a special operations instructor repeated the most important word in certain missions: confidence, confidence, confidence.

  “If you can show you’re confident and that you belong there, you can walk through Grand Central Terminal wearing just a jock strap, and no one will blink an eye,” he said.

  Well, I’m dressed in my nice suit and I have a big smile as I walk in, come right up against the maître d’ station, and I nod and whisper, “I’m from INN and need to see Jack Zach.” The maître d’ is a silver-haired man dressed in a crisp evening suit. He says, “Please, sir, can you wait…” as I confidently stride right past him.

  I go through a small but comfortable dining room with tiny tables, white tablecloths, and well-dressed people. I recognize a competing news anchor and two NBA players. Moving with confidence, I know exactly where I’m going,
thanks to some quick, dark work on Allison’s part, who had given me a floor schematic of Jean-Paul.

  Striding down an unmarked hallway, I pass rows of shelving containing wine bottles. I open an oak door and go right into Jack Zach’s private room. It’s wood paneled and decorated with small oil paintings done in the Hudson River style of the mid-1800s.

  “Jack!” I call out, stepping up to his table. It’s rectangular and covered with a white cloth, with Jack sitting at the head—which is to my left—and there are seven other diners there, four women, three men. I instantly note the two men sitting at my right, on either side of the table. The muscle. They’re dressed well but they don’t look comfortable in their suits, like trained Doberman pinschers being forced to wear a ballet skirt for a photo shoot. The three women are in their early twenties, dressed spectacularly in varying degrees of exposed skin, and the other man is older, perhaps Jack’s attorney or business manager.

  There are open wine bottles on the table, and Jack is grinning at me, his hair and beard carefully coifed and trimmed. He’s wearing a dark-blue suit with a white turtleneck, looking like some retro-hip Hollywood director from the 1960s.

  He says, “You must be that thick man who’s intent on meeting me. Sorry, I don’t have anything with me to sign.”

  The women and the older man laugh, but the muscles stay silent.

  I say, “Jack, it’s time for you to make amends.”

  Jack says, “What? Are you going to shoot me here, in front of all these witnesses?”

  No more laughter. Just quiet looks among his guests, and very sharp looks from his two bodyguards, whose right hands have slipped inside their suit jackets.

  I stand still, and then move two steps to the right, to the near bodyguard.

  “Jack…you know, you’re right. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, and your meal.” I slowly start moving to my right. “I really just wanted to meet you so bad, Jack, I see you on TV all the time and it’s not often I get to meet someone famous!”

  Then, with no warning, I punch the nearest bodyguard in the back of the head, knocking him out. Simultaneously, I grab a bottle of wine with my other hand and hurl it at the other guard’s head. While he throws his hands up to block it, I run around the table and smash him in the face.

  Once.

  Twice.

  He stops moving.

  Chaos.

  The young ladies scream and the older man huddles forward, like he’s trying to reduce his target signature. I move up the table and Jack starts speaking, and I give him a good slap to the face. Then I grab his right arm and pick him up from his chair.

  Overwhelming and sudden force is the key. These people are in an exclusive restaurant—safe, warm, and well-fed—and they have no imagination that something bad will happen to them. Even when it does happen—like right now—they can’t comprehend, they can’t process, can’t do a thing.

  Like how some determined men with box cutters hijacked jet airliners back in the day.

  Jack says, “Hey, hey, hey—”

  But I interject and say, “Keep your mouth shut.” I twist his right arm up, grab his thumb, and tuck it under his armpit, and I propel him out of the room.

  He arches his back and tears are in his eyes. I’m using an old police tool, called a “come-along,” which radiates sharp pain through his right arm and shoulder, and makes him do what I want him to do, which is to quickly get out of Jean-Paul.

  I go through the main dining room, holding Jack close to me, and the pain radiating in his right arm and shoulder is keeping him under my control. The other diners look up and I can sense their confusion: what’s going on? Is Jack being arrested? Is he in trouble?

  And most of all: what should we do?

  I get past the maître d’ station and what I knew would happen, happens.

  Which is nothing.

  In one of the most exclusive restaurants in Manhattan, the scene is over in a few seconds. No one is going to stand up from their table and disturb the meal of a lifetime.

  We go outside in the rain, among the pedestrians, and I’m feeling pretty good.

  The night is off to a good start.

  Then it all goes wrong.

  I’m at the edge of the sidewalk, where the Chevy is parked.

  But Allison’s gone.

  And she has the keys.

  Chapter 30

  Jack senses something is up and through his pain says, “What’s the matter, pal? Your ride go missing? You get abandoned?”

  I say, “You’re no pal.”

  I start moving him and he emits a sharp groan, and says, “Let me go, right here, and I won’t call the cops, won’t cause a problem. Christ, it hurts!”

  “Shut your mouth, Jack. This is my remote stand-up, not yours.”

  I move him past the people walking quickly in the rain, glad to see that the typical New York pedestrian habit—eyes down, don’t pay attention, not your business—is working in my favor. All it would take would be a passing NYPD cop or building security guard to ruin everything.

  Resources.

  I need to use available resources.

  Cabs are driving by; there’s no way I’m going to find an empty taxi in the rain.

  What to do?

  Resources.

  At the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 57th, there’s a black Lexus LS parked illegally, engine running. I open the rear door, push Jack in, get in, and slam the door behind me. A Hispanic man wearing a white shirt and black tie turns from behind the steering wheel and says, “Are you Mister Tremain, my pickup?”

  I thrust a fistful of bills over the driver’s seat. “Better than that,” I say. “I’m Mister Grant and this is Mister Franklin.”

  The driver smiles as he sees the amount I’ve passed over to him. “Nice to meet you. Where to?”

  “Just start driving. I’ll give you the directions and a few more bills,” I say.

  Now free of my painful grasp, Jack starts to say something, but as the driver is distracted, I grab Jack in a two-hand choke, and carefully count off the seconds—one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, and so on—until he falls unconscious and he’s out, hopefully without suffering any brain damage.

  The driver looks up to his rearview mirror.

  “Everything okay back there?”

  I say, “He’s just been drinking too much, got too excited.”

  “He gonna puke?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Me, too,” the driver says.

  Chapter 31

  The driver answers his cell phone and speaks loudly in Spanish, hangs up and says, “Hey, Mister Tremain, he’ll get over it, am I right?”

  I pass over two more fifty-dollar bills. “Absolutely.”

  “Where to, friend?” he asks.

  “New Jersey.”

  “Oh, that’s a distance.”

  A couple more Ben Franklins join the group in our driver’s pocket. He chuckles and says, “What the hell, it’s been awhile since I’ve taken the tunnel.”

  I give our driver the directions. Allison had told me it would take about an hour to get there, but probably enthused by the money he’d received, our driver got us there in about fifty minutes, taking the Lincoln Tunnel and then I-95 South. Eventually, we get on Route 24 into northern New Jersey. Along the way Jack murmurs a few times but I give him a twist of the arm to keep him quiet.

  The last ten minutes are tricky. We go through some back roads and country lanes, outside of Hanover, and then our driver puts on the high beams in front of a rusty metal gate at the end of an unmarked road.

  “That’s where the odometer says we should stop,” he says. “This the right place?”

  “Perfect,” I say, passing over one more Ben Franklin. “And to be sure…if you’re asked what you’ve been up to the past two hours…”

  He snaps the bill from my hand. “Couple of Chinese tourists wanted me to take them on a slow-motion tour of Chinatown. Paid in cash. Pretty boring stuff.�
��

  “Good.”

  I open the door and start pulling at Jack, and the driver says, “Hey, I think I know that dude. Isn’t he famous?”

  “He’s nothing,” I say. Once we’re outside, the Lexus makes a crisp U-turn and is gone.

  Jack is gaining confidence as I walk him around the gate and along a gravel path. “What is this…a kidnapping? Is that it? Trust me, the network won’t pay what you’re asking for.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say, holding his arm tight, “seems like the network likes you a bunch, the way they’ve been sticking up for you lately.” The way is clear through some trees and high brush, and I hear engines idling not too far away. I check my watch. I should call and see if Allison is all right, but it’s going to be tight. Calling her in the livery cab hadn’t been an option, either, because I didn’t want Jack or our driver to hear what I was saying.

  As much as I hate to admit it, I have to leave Allison for later. But I know she can handle herself.

  The way in front of us opens up. It’s hard to see, but from the ambient night light of New Jersey, I make out a couple of unused buildings to our left. To our right, with its engines idling, is a four-engine Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft on an old abandoned airstrip. There are only a few lights, but enough to see that the aircraft is painted black and has no markings.

  Jack hesitates, and I tug him forward, saying, “Come on, I’m sure an inquisitive war journalist like you would jump at the chance to take a ride on an unregistered, secret aircraft. It’s all the rage nowadays, to transport naughty folks like you before they disappear.”

  His feet dig in and it costs me a few seconds, so I do the “come along” routine again on his right arm. Jack Zach walks on tiptoe as we go to the end of the aircraft, with its rear loading ramp lowered. There are dim red lights inside and the place is empty. We go up the metal ramp and inside there are two rows of red webbed seating, and lots of overhead struts, wires, pipes, and cables.

  I push Jack into one of the webbed seats, and fasten his seat belt. Then, just to make sure he’s a good boy for the duration of the flight, I fasten some plastic zip ties around his wrists and ankles.