The End Read online

  “Best offer I’ve had today, but I’ll have to decline, Deputy Director.” I glance at my watch. “We both know that if your perimeter guards don’t check in every fifteen minutes, a quick reaction force is dispatched to ride to the rescue. It’s been eight minutes. We have maybe twelve or so minutes left of fruitful discussion.”

  “Not interested.”

  I make a point of sighing. “Dunton told me you’d be a hard case.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Dunton also asked us to do something after our op was done. Was that your order or his?”

  “Don’t know,” Hunley says. “What did Dunton ask you to do?”

  “To come back with Darko’s head on a stick.”

  I pick up my assault pack, unzip it, toss it on the bed next to Hunley.

  And then I add, “Sorry, I don’t have a stick.”

  Hunley won’t move, but I do.

  I get up, turn the pack over, and a plastic-wrapped object rolls out.

  He swears, pushes back, and sits up against the polished dark wood headboard.

  I say, “Darko’s in little bits of bone and burnt flesh, so I did the next best thing. Brought back your boy Dunton.”

  Chapter 23

  To add a bit of clarification, I pull back the hammer of my SIG Sauer, a nice loud click in the pleasant bedroom. “Let’s have a frank and open exchange of views, Deputy Director. I’ve made my statement. Let’s hear yours.”

  I glance at my watch again. He licks his lips, quickly, not daring to look at the bloody package in his lap. “Above your pay grade…so above your pay grade…”

  “You’re repeating yourself again. Not impressed. Go on.”

  “Negotiations were under way…very sensitive negotiations.”

  “They always are sensitive, aren’t they? We were told that eliminating Darko Latos would be a good thing, to quiet his district, tilt the balance in favor of a peaceful outcome. Maybe it’d stop World War III. What else was going on?”

  “With you?”

  I say, “Me personally? Or my team and I?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “Probably not,” I say. “I bet you can’t even remember their names. Can you?”

  “It…well, no. I can’t.”

  I stand up and dig out something from a battle-pack pocket.

  Four name tags, stripped and deposited some weeks ago on the floor of that Stealth helicopter.

  I drop each name tag on his pajama-clad lap.

  CLAYTON.

  SHER.

  GARCIA.

  And lastly, BOROZAN.

  He looks down and looks back up. “You…you know how it is. Do I really have to explain it to you, Taylor?”

  “No, but I want to hear the facts from your mouth. I’m funny like that.”

  He wipes at his lips. “The negotiations…the Russians were backing the different Serb factions, and they were willing to end this conflict, but we had to show how serious we were in getting the agreement settled.”

  “They knew we were going in.”

  “Yes.”

  “They didn’t care about Darko.”

  “No.”

  “The Russians didn’t like well-armed Americans traipsing around in their backyard, what they think is their sphere of influence.”

  “Correct,” he says.

  “The Russians only cared if we were offered up to the Serbs, as a gift, to show how committed the diplomats were to concluding the deal. By sacrificing my teammates and me, you were showing the Russians just how serious our side was.”

  “That’s how it was,” Hunley says. He glances over at the small digital clock on the nightstand, and I know he’s counting down the minutes. “You’re an experienced man. You know how it is. Soldiers, professionals, sometimes they’re sacrificed for the greater good. No offense, you and your team were pawns in a very high-stakes and important chess game.”

  “Always thought of myself more like a bishop,” I say. “Liked their fancy hats.”

  He takes a breath. “The quick reaction force will be here shortly, Taylor. I don’t think you came here to get captured. What do you want?”

  “I want it made right,” I say.

  “Define right.”

  “The families of my teammates are compensated above and beyond the standard government insurance. Also, they receive official letters acknowledging their relatives’ service, and if they have direct relations who are children aged under eighteen, those kids get their education paid for.”

  Hunley’s face tightens and I don’t think he’s taking this well, but I go on. “Oh, and a letter of apology. From the secretary of state would be nice. From what I’ve seen in the newspapers, he’s calling this latest Balkans deal his signature accomplishment. It would be nice for him to acknowledge those sacrificed to make it happen.”

  Hunley makes his quick decision. “Not going to happen.”

  “It better.”

  He says, “It can’t. Your unit…so dark in the shadows that we can never, ever allow even a hint of its existence. It can’t be done.”

  “Make it happen.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I guess we’re through here, and I’ll have to go work up the command structure until I find someone more agreeable.”

  “Ah…what, you thinking of doing me like you did Dunton?”

  “Yes.”

  Hunley shakes his head. “And then what? Go after my boss? The secretary of state? Everyone who had a hand in this decision?”

  “It’s a thought.”

  “Go to hell,” Hunley says.

  “After you,” I say, and then I shoot him.

  Only once.

  No need to overdo it.

  Chapter 24

  After all those years of dreaming and planning, the lake is just as I had imagined it. It’s in a remote part of New Hampshire, near the small town of Nansen, and I’m told that there aren’t too many tourists who pass through here. The water is clear and dark blue, with lots of freshwater fish and nesting loons that come in the summer. Even though there are over 1,300 acres of land around the lake, it is sparsely populated.

  I’m sitting at the end of a dock, warming myself in the sun. It feels good. It’s been some months since my trip to Virginia, long enough to get things settled after negotiating with folks more amenable than Hunley. There’s a thick light-brown envelope in my lap, and so far, I’m ignoring it. I’m just taking in the view and trying to relax.

  Trying.

  I turn in the old lawn chair, glance up at the house that I’ll make into my new home. It’s about fifty or so years old, with an enclosed porch that overlooks some rocks and the lake. It’s a solid house but needs work, as does the yard. It’s overgrown with brush and saplings, and mounds of dead leaves.

  Lots of work ahead, but I don’t mind.

  I’m actually looking forward to it.

  After a long time wandering and a short time threatening and negotiating, I got here to Nansen and purchased a house right along the shoreline of Lake Marie with the assistance of your somewhat friendly federal government. I didn’t waste much time and I didn’t haggle or bargain. I found a place I wanted and made an offer that was about a thousand dollars less than the asking price, and in less than a month it belonged to me.

  I had never had a residence that was actually mine. Everything else had been apartments, hotel rooms, or temporary officers’ quarters. The first few nights I couldn’t sleep inside, and I would go outside to the long dock that extends into the deep blue waters of the lake. I bundled myself up in a sleeping bag and rested on a thin foam mattress, and lay back and stared up at the stars, listening to the cries and howls of the loons getting ready for their long winter trip. The loons don’t necessarily fly south; the ones here go out to the cold Atlantic and float with the waves and currents, not once touching land for the entire winter.

  I snuggled in my bag and thought that was a good analogy for what I’d been doing. I had drifte
d for too long. It was time to come back to dry land.

  But at night the memories would come, of that last op, of their names and what we had gone through, and always Emily, always Emily.

  Out on Lake Marie there’s a shout. A young couple is going by in a dark-blue fiberglass canoe. They both wave.

  I wave back.

  That feels good, being welcomed.

  I pick up the thick envelope, shake out the papers.

  Pretty impressive collection. The title to the house, in my name. A nice fat account at the local Citizens Bank, with paperwork indicating how much will be deposited every month for the rest of my life.

  Copies of the correspondence and documentation sent to the families of Clayton, Sher, Garcia, and Borozan.

  Very thorough and complete. I made phone calls yesterday to each family to make sure they had received the same package, so I knew I wasn’t being spoofed by fakes.

  Two thick pieces of correspondence are revealed as I flip through. The first is a nice, thorough, apologetic letter from the secretary of state. I hold up the letter to the light, check out the signature. It looks like the real deal, not an autopen.

  A little tingle of satisfaction.

  That little tingle grows some more as I look at the second piece of correspondence. At the top are two simple lines:

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON

  And underneath that is a sentence that begins Granting pardon and goes on with my name and then a carefully crafted and thorough paragraph, with another scrawled signature.

  Definitely not an autopen.

  There’s another envelope in there, one with a doctor’s name on the front, but that envelope’s not for today.

  I put all of the papers back into the envelope.

  You get this op done.

  I whisper, “You got it, Emily.”

  At the bottom of the envelope is a piece of Velcro-backed cloth. I take that out as well, rub old and callused fingers across the raised letters: TAYLOR.

  A bass boat floats by, one of those boats with huge twin engines in the rear with enough power to cross the Atlantic in a day, and a small electric outboard thruster at the bow for close-in maneuvering.

  Two burly fishermen are at work. They have beards and thick, hairy, tattooed arms, and they’re wearing shorts and tank tops. They get pretty close to my new home, and I give them both a pleasant wave, thinking of the canoe couple from before.

  The two fishermen look at me through their dark sunglasses, camo-style baseball caps turned around.

  They don’t wave back.

  And a thought comes to me, so quick it almost makes me gasp: that I wish I had my old SIG Sauer with me under these papers.

  Just in case.

  I wave again.

  No wave back.

  One hell of a way to spend my long-awaited first day on the lake.

  I take a long, deep breath, hoping it calms me down, and it doesn’t.

  Not at all.

  I look down once more at the piece of cloth.

  TAYLOR.

  Chapter 25

  After I got the power and other utilities up and running, and moved in the few boxes of my belongings, I check the bulky envelope that accompanied my unusual retirement situation and pull out an envelope with a doctor’s name.

  Inside the envelope are official papers that direct me to talk to him, and I shrug and decide it’s better than sitting here in an empty house, getting drunk, and so I phone him and get an appointment for the next evening.

  His name is Ron Longley and he works in Manchester, the state’s largest city and about an hour’s drive south from Lake Marie. His office is in one of those refurbished brick buildings along the banks of the rushing Merrimack River, and I imagine I can still smell the sweat and toil of the French Canadians who worked here for so many years in the shoe, textile, and leather mills, until their distant cousins in Georgia and Alabama took their jobs away.

  I’m not too sure what to make of Ron during our first session. He shows me documents that prove he’s a Department of Defense contractor and give his current classification level, and then after signing the usual insurance nonsense, we get right down to it. He’s about ten years younger than me, with a mustache and a merry grin, and not much hair on top. He wears jeans and a light-blue shirt and a tie that looks like about six tubes of paint had been squirted onto it, and he says, “Well, here we are.”

  “That we are,” I say. “And would you believe that I’ve already forgotten if you’re a psychologist or a psychiatrist?”

  That makes for a good laugh and a casual wave of the hands. “Makes no difference. What would you like to talk about?”

  “What should I talk about?”

  A shrug, one of many I would eventually see. “Whatever’s on your mind.”

  “Really?” I say, not bothering to hide the challenge in my voice. “Try this one on, then, doc. I’m wondering what I’m doing here. On the surface, I know it’s because of the agreement I signed when I left, and because of the circumstances leading up to that agreement. And if there are no doctor’s visits with you, there’s no monthly check, and maybe that pardon gets revoked.”

  He says, “Pretty direct, but pretty true.”

  I go on. “But is there more than that? And another thing I’m wondering about is all that nice paperwork you have. Are you going to be making a report down south on how I do? You working under some deadline, some pressure?”

  His hands are on his belly, and still, he has that smile. “Nope.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Not at all,” he says. “If you want to come in here and talk baseball for fifty minutes, then that’s fine with me.”

  I look him in the eye, and maybe it’s my change of view since retirement, but there is something about him that makes me trust him, something that I’ve long ago learned to pick up. This time it’s my turn to shrug. “You know what’s really on my mind?”

  “No, but I’d like to know.”

  “My new house,” I say. “It’s great. It’s on a big lake and there aren’t any close neighbors, and I can just sit on the dock at night and see stars I haven’t seen in a long time. But I’ve been having problems sleeping at night.”

  “Why’s that?” he asks, and I’m glad he isn’t one of those stereotypical head docs, the ones who have to take a lot of notes.

  “Weapons.”

  “Weapons?”

  I nod. “Yeah, I miss my weapons.” A deep breath. “Look, you’ve seen my files, you know the places I’ve been sent and the jobs Uncle Sam told me to do. You know the recent…events that brought me here. All those years, I’ve kept pistols or rifles or heavy weapons, always at my side, under my bed, or in a closet. They help me sleep. But when I started living in that house, well, I don’t have them anymore. According to the agreement I reached with the government, I had to start fresh. So there aren’t any weapons.”

  “How does that make you feel?” Even though the question is friendly, I know it’s a real doc question, and not a friendly end-of-the-barstool-type question.

  I rub my hands. “I feel glad that they’re not there. I really feel like I’m changing my ways. But damn it…”

  “Yes?”

  I smile. “I sure could use a good night’s sleep.”

  Chapter 26

  Well, as I drive back home, I recall what I said and think, hell, it’s only a little white lie.

  The fact is, I do have weapons.

  It’s just that they are locked up in the little basement, in strongboxes with heavy combination locks. I can’t get to them quickly, but I certainly haven’t tossed them away.

  It’s a bit of progress, and it has to be considered as such. And I wasn’t fibbing when I told Ron that I couldn’t sleep. That part is entirely true.

  But there’s another fib that gnaws at me a bit as I drive up the dirt road to my house and scare a possum, scuttling along the side of the dirt and gravel. There’s another problem about living at
my new home, and one that’s so slight I’m embarrassed to bring it up.

  It’s the noise.

  You see, I’m living in a rural paradise, with clean air, clean water, and views of the woods and the lake and mountains that almost break my heart each time I climb out of bed, stiff with old dreams and old scars, the whispers of Emily calling to me. The long days are filled with work and activities that I’d never had the time for. Cutting old brush and trimming off dead branches. Planting annual bulbs for the next spring. Clearing my tiny beach of dead leaves and other debris. Filling up bird feeders. And long evenings on the front porch or on the dock, reading thick history books that I can really sink my teeth into.

  But one night after a dinner of roast pork and red potatoes—I’ve surprised myself by enjoying cooking—I’m out on the dock, sitting in one of those 1950s-era web lawn chairs, a glass of red wine in my hand and a history of the Apollo space program in my lap. It’s dusk, and out along the shoreline of Lake Marie are the dim lights of cottages and other homes. Every night there are fewer and fewer lights, as more of the summer people close up their places and head back to suburbia and whatever the hell kind of life they have that they think is better than being on this lake.

  So I’m enjoying my wine and the book and the slight breeze, but there’s also a distraction: three high-powered speedboats, racing around on the lake and tossing up great spumes of spray and noise. They’re dragging people along the rear in inner tubes, and I guess they’re having fun, but it’s hard to concentrate on my book. After a while the engines slow down and I’m hoping they’re heading back to their docks, but the boats drift together and ropes are exchanged, and soon they form a large raft. A couple of grills are set up. I hear more hoots and yells, and then a sound system kicks in, with rock music and a heavy bass that echoes through the hills.

  It’s then too dark to read and I’ve lost interest in the wine and I’m still sitting there, arms folded tight against my chest, trying hard to breathe. The noise gets louder and I give up and retreat into my new house, where the heavy thump-thump of the bass follows me. If I had a boat—a purchase for next year, I suppose—I could have gone out and asked them politely to turn it down, but that would have meant talking to people, and I don’t want to do that.