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  I turn my head, trying to see the pickup trucks that have met Jack Zach, but there’s nothing out there.

  The pilot comes on the intercom. “How was your training mission, sir?”

  “Routine,” I say.

  Chapter 38

  A day later I’m back at the home of Ray and Marilyn Winston, sitting on the couch in the room that had been designed for a nursery. The television is on—though muted—and Marilyn is in the kitchen, making us coffee. Allison is sitting next to me, making her dull government clothes look like high fashion, and I say, “And you let that precinct captain live?”

  “Too many witnesses,” she says, frowning.

  “But…you actually complied? Really?”

  I sense she’s getting angrier with each passing moment and I hate to admit it, but I find it amusing. “Look, a police precinct captain came up and was giving me a ration of grief for being parked in a fire lane. He told me to move, and I told him I couldn’t. It must have been the first day of his promotion and he was looking to flex his muscle. He refused to check my credentials, call anyone. Finally, he said ‘I don’t care who you are. You’re under arrest and your car’s impounded.’ I could have taken him out in about three seconds but that would have led to a lot of paperwork. Luckily, the NYPD tow truck hadn’t arrived to impound the car when you dragged Jack out of there.”

  I don’t quite know what to say, but I’m enjoying this. I’m also enjoying the bright sunny day in this house, a scent of cinnamon and the slight smell of something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

  “So when I was leaving the restaurant, dragging Jack Zach next to me, you were being interrogated and fingerprinted at the local precinct? Boy, I’d pay a month’s pension to get prints of those photos.”

  She snaps back. “They don’t exist. And it’s your damn fault. It took you too long to get the job done.”

  “So says you.”

  “And I’m right.”

  Marilyn comes in, holding two mugs of coffee, and I take one and take a sip, tasting harsh bitterness, and without a word, I trade it with Allison. Marilyn smiles. “You two fighting again?”

  “Like cats and dogs,” Allison says.

  “Like star-crossed lovers,” I say, and Marilyn’s smile gets wider while Allison stomps on my foot.

  That’s a good excuse to get up, which is what I do. I give up my place on the couch to Marilyn, and Allison says, “Hold on, we’re coming up to the top of the hour,” and she picks up a remote and unmutes the television.

  It’s a competing cable news network from INN—Jack Zach’s network—and their top story is Famed Journalist’s Desert Ordeal.

  There’s a male and female duo on the screen that crack jokes at each other and comment on the morning news. This time, though, they remain silent as the news package is broadcasted.

  And whaddaya know, it’s Jack Zach, in the desert, crying and sniffling and confessing all of his sins. And said sins were very well recorded by some of the new gear I was carrying.

  Thank God I figured out how to make it work.

  When the news package is completed, there’s a moment of silence in the competing network’s newsroom, and the woman picks up some of her script, shuffles it around, and says, “Well. That’s a story.”

  “Sure is,” her male counterpart says, peering down at something on his immaculate desk. “According to this latest news report, Jack Zach reported that he was, ah…kidnapped from Jean-Paul in Manhattan—”

  “At least he had a nice final meal!” she interrupts, and her partner laughs and goes on. “Right. Kidnapped. To an isolated airstrip in New Jersey, and…forced on a black airplane, and taken to the Mojave Desert.”

  “A black airplane?” she says, smiling with perfect white teeth. “I thought black helicopters did deeds like this.”

  “Me, too,” he says, now laughing. “And I thought they always ended up in Area 51. You know, where they can get probes stuck up their butt.”

  Both of them are convulsed in laughter.

  Allison switches off the television.

  Marilyn sits quietly, arms crossed, and says, “I told you I wanted that man destroyed. Why is he still breathing and alive?”

  I say, “You asked us to hurt him, to destroy him, to make him gone, and that’s what we did.”

  Allison says, “His network has fired him. He’s a laughingstock. He’ll never work in television or print or write for a website, ever again. And New York state attorney Ester Clark is looking at what he did to Rachel Cooper in New Rochelle. We got his confession to sexual assault. Ester will make sure that man goes straight to jail and that he’ll be marked as a sexual predator for the rest of his life. All the while, we’ll stay out of the slammer and be here for Ray instead.”

  “Not to mention,” I say. “Do you know what they do to guys like Jack Zach in the can?”

  Marilyn slowly nods—in acceptance, I hope—and a loud voice comes from the other room, “Hey! Anybody out there gonna check me out?”

  The three of us get up and Ray Winston is sitting up, smiling. His complexion looks better, and his open eye is bright and shiny. Marilyn goes over, hugs him, and kisses his cheek, and I’m surprised and choked up when Allison kisses his other cheek.

  I go up to him and he holds his hand out, and I give him a squeeze and he squeezes right back. “Good to see you, Top,” he says, his voice firm.

  “Very good to see you, too, Ray. Looks like you’re finally bouncing back.”

  “Word is, if I keep my head straight for the next few weeks, I’ll start the job of being fitted out with new legs and a new arm.” He looks to Marilyn with sheer, open love. “Lord knows, I don’t want my wife to get used to having a guy named Stumpy getting in the way around her house.”

  “Our house, fool,” she says, kissing him again. He looks at me and says, “You watch, Top. A year or so from now, when I’m movin’ again, I’ll be just like that boy Alexander the Great, huntin’ around for warmth and fun.”

  Marilyn says, “Don’t you go huntin’ without me, Raynie, or I’ll hurt you.”

  That makes Ray laugh, and we join in. The four of us laugh and talk some more in that room. And that’s when I know what the scent is, the other one I couldn’t quite figure out earlier.

  It’s the scent of hope.

  Chapter 39

  Outside in the strong Georgia sun, something must have gotten into our eyes, for both Allison and I are wiping at them. We go to our rental car and Allison stops, so I stop with her.

  She looks back at the house and says, “You know how some people believe revenge is a waste of time, and that one should live and let live.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “They’re wrong.”

  “No argument from me.”

  Allison turns, takes the car key out, waits again, this time looking at me. “Ask you a question?”

  “Ask away.”

  “My friend Emily. Did she die…bravely?”

  “None braver,” I say, “save for two other women I’ve met.”

  I gesture to the house. “The one in there, for fighting for her husband. And you…for fighting for them both.”

  Allison says, “I was just doing what’s right.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  She seems to think about that, and says, “About doing what’s right…did you do anything once you got back to the States, after Serbia?”

  “I squared things away.”

  “How?”

  I say, “Remember a few months ago, there was that death of Henry Hunley, Deputy Director for Directorate Operations at the CIA?”

  “Sure,” she says. “The guy died of a heart attack.”

  “Not really,” I say, knowing this woman has already seen me violate about a half dozen laws. What’s one more? “He died of lead poisoning.”

  A smile comes over Allison’s face as she finally unlocks the door.

  “That’s my boy, my teammate.”

  Chapter 40

&
nbsp; But we don’t go to the airport, since Allison declares the rest of our time in Georgia as a mental health day. I don’t argue. She finds us a nice bed-and-breakfast outside of Atlanta, and we have a filling meal of chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy, and homemade biscuits.

  When dinner is through, I escort her up the stairs and I say, “What now?”

  “Tomorrow I head back to DC. I imagine you want to get back to your frozen paradise up there in New Hampshire.”

  “If I’m welcomed back.”

  She says, “Oh, you might not be welcomed back, but I bet your neighbors will give you a wide berth in the future.”

  “That was always the plan.”

  As I did in Manhattan, I go into Allison’s room to make sure everything is safe and secure. The room is decorated with lots of throw pillows, vintage wallpaper, and hand soaps in the bathroom.

  As before, Allison sits on the edge of her bed, jacket off, resting back on her hands, and looking up at me.

  I go to the door.

  Put my hand on the knob.

  Then I make sure it’s locked.

  I walk back to her and I say, “I’m sorry…I’m sorry I couldn’t save Emily.”

  She nods. “I don’t need the details. I just need to know you did your best.”

  “I did. But it wasn’t good enough.”

  “Sometimes that happens.”

  I wait now, my heart pounding, mouth dry, feeling a bit out of place. It was like the time I was about to parachute out of an aircraft into the abyss for the first time, when I knew I’d have to jump blindly and trust everything would go all right.

  I lower my head, kiss her sweetly on her lips, and she responds, gripping my head with her two hands. We kiss, and we kiss, and we kiss.

  I pull away, smiling at my deadly yet sweet Allison. I start to unbutton her blouse, and she whispers, “Stop.”

  I’m confused. “Why?”

  She laughs, a sound that reaches in and charms me. “We’re a team now, aren’t we?” and she starts unbuttoning her blouse as well. A race quickly ensues, over who can unbutton the blouse faster, and I don’t know who wins. And as I sweep her up and lie her down on the soft bed, I don’t think it matters one bit.

  About the Author

  James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.

  Brendan DuBois lives in New Hampshire and is the award-winning author of twenty novels and more than 150 short stories. His work has appeared in nearly a dozen countries. He is also a Jeopardy! game show champion.

  If you enjoyed reading about Owen Taylor in

  AFTER THE END,

  you might like reading his story in THE END.

  Please turn the page for a special preview

  Chapter 1

  In a remote hangar at the Aviano NATO air base in northern Italy, I’m holding my government issue SIG Sauer P226 9mm pistol in my right hand, hammer pulled back, finger on the trigger, deciding when and how I should shoot the intelligence field officer standing before me.

  Dunton is skinny, with thick brown hair, round wire-rimmed glasses, and a snippy attitude. He’s wearing a BDU, a Kevlar vest, and heavy boots.

  He says, “I’m telling you, Taylor, I don’t care what the weather reports are saying for tonight, you and your buds are ‘go’ for this mission. The diplomats in Geneva are in a delicate position. Your successful op could tilt things to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  I keep quiet. I’m sure he thinks I’m pondering his warning, but what I’m really pondering is the best place to shoot him. Dead center in the chest would break a couple of ribs and knock him flat on his ass, but a round to the center of that shiny forehead would get the job done in a final and spectacular fashion.

  But killing him would mean lots of paperwork and embarrassing questions, and I have no time for that.

  I say, “Dunton, you may have operational control, but I have tactical command of this op. It’s my job whether to say go, not yours. Or anybody in Geneva. Or Washington. Or Langley.”

  Dunton says, “Deputy Director Hunley has expressly—”

  “You say he’s a deputy,” I point out. “Does he get a nice five-pointed star to go along with it?”

  I sense the other four members of my team standing behind me, giving me quiet support, and Dunton glares at me before stomping toward one of the hangar’s side doors. “I’m off to the weather office,” he shouts back. “You better be ready when I come back!”

  I try to be helpful. “Don’t get lost.”

  The door slams and my teammates chuckle for a moment and wander away, their current mission achieved. It’s still raining. I slowly draw the hammer down on my pistol and return it to my side holster, taking in the miserable weather. We’ll wait for the final weather report, and that will tell us if we can go out on this rainy night to kill somebody in another country we’ve never been to before.

  My teammates—Borozan, Sher, Garcia, and Clayton—now keep to their own routines, talking or smoking or reading from battered paperbacks. I just wait, looking out at the rain coming down and hitting the windswept runway, not wanting to think, just waiting for that one last weather report so I can complete my final mission.

  We’re all dressed nearly alike, with custom helmets, camouflaged BDUs, heavy boots, knee pads and elbow pads, body armor, MOLLE vests with flashlights, knives, survival packs, compass, encrypted handheld devices, and holstered pistols. Our assault packs and parachutes are carefully stored in the corner of the empty hangar. We each carry a modified Heckler & Koch HK416 rifle with a 10-inch barrel slung over our shoulders.

  Occasionally air force personnel wander in and just as quickly wander out, knowing they shouldn’t be here, not wanting to be in the same area with who we are: stone-cold killers ready to do a job.

  I pace some more, feeling the wind hitting my face from the Southern Carnic Alps. On my BDU, my name tag, TAYLOR, is easily removable with one swift tear of Velcro, which I’ll do once we illegally cross into Serbia. And that’s it for any kind of identification in case I get wounded, killed, or captured.

  Oh, and who are we, my four teammates and I? I’m sure you’ve heard of Rangers, SEAL Team 6, Special Forces, Marine Recon, Delta Force, and other elite secret units. Well, we’re not any of them. For what use is an elite secret unit if its name is known to the outside world?

  One of my crew comes up to me. It’s Clayton, who looks like the cliché surfer dude from California, which is pretty much the truth.

  “What do you think, Gramps?”

  I wince at my nickname, knowing if I were to complain about it, my guys would use it more. My fault. Last time around with these special operators, I let slip that I was on active duty during the first Persian Gulf War, back in 1991.

  “Gonna be tight,” I say. “Dunton has his pressure, his boss Hunley has pressure, his boss’s boss has pressure, and it all comes down to us. You know the drill—shit rolls downhill.”

  “Always nice to know we’re here to catch it.”

  The door slams open and Dunton strides back in with a sheet of paper in one hand. Clayton says, “What do you think? I know he talks the talk, but is he really CIA? Or Defense Intelligence Agency? National Reconnaissance Office?”

  “Probably NSA, son,” I say to Clayton. “No Such Agency.”

  Dunton steps forward, thrusts the sheet into my hand. I glance at the map, seeing the weather report, the prediction for the next six hours. Iffy. It’s up to me, the team leader. My last op, and I’d like to make it a successful one. But the bad weather could force us down over the Adriatic Sea or into the Carpathian Mountains. I could kill myself and these guys with one second’s worth of decision.

  Some last op. Even if I were to pull the plug, I’d be done, and these guys would be up to bat again at some later date. In other words, I’d finally be safe, and they wouldn’t.

  Dunton says, “Well? Well?”
>
  I crumple up the sheet of paper, toss it at his chest. “We go.”

  Dunton smirks while I head over to our gear, and Clayton is behind me. He says quietly, “A question, Gramps?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I saw you draw on Dunton before he left to get the last weather report. Were you really going to shoot him?”

  I pick up my assault pack and parachute. “We’ll never know, will we?”

  Clayton grins, which is a nice memory for me, because in three hours and eleven minutes, he’ll be dead.

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