Final Winter

A brief pause, and Bocks knew what the man was thinking. Frank was the outsider, the one member of the AirBox hierarchy who had never served in the military, had never belonged to a group that looked out for each other, who were part of something bigger. Bocks hadn’t wanted to hire Frank in the first place, but the financial crisis he and the other airfreight carriers were still facing — thank you very much, al-Qaeda, you fuckers — meant that something drastic had to be done. Like hiring a sharp outsider and number cruncher who could come up with the tough recommendations.

Still didn’t mean he had to like it.

Frank said, ‘Nothing implied there, Alex. Just the way the words came out.’

‘Yeah,’ Bocks said, leaning forward now in the chair. He rubbed at his chin and said, ‘What’s the latest on the labor committee?’

‘The contract negotiations are probably going to collapse today. Over the dental-plan issue.’

‘And our fallback?’

Frank’s gaze was steady. ‘Once the union goes on strike, we give them one last chance. Then we bring in the contract force.’

‘Scabs, then.’

Frank said, ‘Scabs that are going to save this company. Scabs that will ensure that you still have a job, the AirBox drivers and package handlers still have a job, and the pilots and the ground crews. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, Alex. Surely you know that, because of your history.’

Bocks felt his hands clench into fists. He took a breath. ‘Frank, in the time I’ve known you, I’ve come to admire your skill, your fortitude and clear-thinking.’

A slight nod of appreciation, it seemed.

Bocks said, ‘But if you ever again try to bring in my military experience of life-and-death decisions to try to score a point about some budgetary problem, then I’m going to punch out your fucking lights, and then fire you. And no doubt you’ll come back at me with a civil complaint of assault and a lawsuit for improper dismissal, and I will gladly mortgage my home here and my vacation place up in Maine to settle it. Just for the satisfaction of punching you out and firing your ass. Have I made myself clear?’

‘Quite,’ Frank said.

‘Good. Now get the hell out of my office.’

And when Frank left, Bocks slowly swiveled his chair, to look out at the aircraft arriving that were part of his empire, an empire that was slowly crumbling away.

Damn this day, he thought. Damn these times we live in.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Adrianna Scott emerged from her third shower in as many hours, carefully wiping down her body with the towel, checking underneath her fingernails and examining her body carefully to make sure that there was not a shred or piece of anything on her — tissue, blood spatter, even dandruff — that had once belonged to the late Henry Spooner, whose flaccid body was no doubt still cooling down at the motel about twenty miles away.

Even though the bathroom was warm, she shivered as she wiped her body down again. It was always like this, always -and how many times, this was the ninth, right? — she felt depressed and blue and angry and everything else, like it would be for a drunk the morning after an all-night bender after successfully navigating years of sobriety through AA.

She took a brush, started working it through her hair. Number nine. Another shiver. She knew what it was, why it happened. Easy enough. She had been in this country for years and years, holding herself in tight, living a lie day after day, always wondering if today, this day, the CIA’s Office of Security would come into her office and take her away to a safe house somewhere out in Maryland, to be injected full of babble juice and squeezed dry of what she had been planning all these years.

All these years. From the very start, when Adrianna knew she was going to get revenge against her parents’ murderers, she knew that it would be something big, something spectacular, something lethal. And she knew that the only way to do that was to get into the power centers of this mongrel country and to take that one chance to do something spectacular, something that would make them pay for what they had done to her and to her family…

It had been hard, long, bitter work. And keeping everything closed up led to sleepless nights, shaky days, and a feeling that somehow, somewhere, she had to let off steam, make her feel sharp again, and to resurrect those old feelings of rage.