by Jon Mills
“Angelo,” Vito looked up at him from the ground below. “As you requested.”
He nodded as he made his way down. The female he was familiar with, he didn’t consider her a threat, more of an annoyance that would eventually go away, but the other one he wasn’t sure about. He smiled as he approached, they struggled within the grasp of his men. “Ms. Armstrong.” He tutted. “I thought you were smarter than this.” His eyes bounced to the guy. “And who might you be?”
One of his guys had already frisked them. He tossed him Dalton’s wallet and Angelo cracked It open, removing a driver’s license. “John Dalton. California.” He looked at him. “You are a long way from home.” He tossed the license and pulled out a business card. “A mission.” He chuckled. “A man of God, huh?” He continued rifling through, dropping one card after the next until he reached a family photo. Angelo turned it. “That’s a beautiful family. What’s your wife’s name?”
“Look. I think there’s been a mistake.”
“Of course there has,” Angelo said, dropping the wallet like it was nothing. “The mistake is you got tangled up with Jack. And the mistake is that you came to my neighborhood. So, tell me. Where is he?”
Neither one of them spoke.
The corner of his lip went up as he walked over and grabbed Dalton’s face and squeezed it hard. “My patience is wearing thin. Now you better start speaking or I’m going to cut out that…”
An explosion of epic proportion rocked the warehouse, followed by multiple eruptions.
Through the opaque windows, a glow of fire lit up the night.
Angelo gritted his teeth. “Jack.”
He knew the cops and the fire department would be swarming the port in a matter of minutes. Angelo turned and began bellowing out orders. “I want all of this money out of here now. Vito, take some of the men and make sure he’s dead.”
Yelling ensued.
Orders were barked.
A chaotic scene played out as workers hurried to complete their task.
A group descended from the catwalk and went with Vito, armed with assault rifles.
Under the hail of gunfire, a few of his guys strong-armed Kelly and Dalton into one of the ground offices while he had another start the Humvee parked at the back of the warehouse. He knew Jack well enough to know that if it came down to him or those he cared for, he’d get them out first and that would give Angelo plenty of time to slip away.
“Hurry it up!”
Duffel bags were thrown one by one into the back of the Humvee. Angelo climbed steps and entered his office. Whether it was Jack, the feds or another crime family, he always had a plan B ready to deploy. Frantically he opened a safe and removed paperwork, a passport and additional money and stashed it all inside a brief case.
Minutes earlier, Jack had brought the tanker around and driven it down to the ship where three more were waiting to be loaded with cocaine. He’d accelerated and in those final few seconds, jammed a tire iron against the accelerator and the upper portion of the frame, then jumped. The collision was perfect, igniting and sending up a fireball that lit up the night. It was one of many explosions that erupted causing workers to flee. But his focus wasn’t on the ship or the destruction of cocaine but the warehouse. And just like clockwork, the doors opened and a slew of men burst out, guns at the ready.
From there it was just a matter of picking them off.
He took up position near the corner of a steel container and watched as an SUV came barreling down, and men jumped out. With the sawed-off shotgun in one hand, a Glock in the other, they didn’t know what hit them. Darting out from behind them he unloaded a flurry of rounds dropping three of them before racing back into the dark, narrow passageways between the steel containers. He scaled up to the top of a container, and took another out before jumping down and changing position. Keep moving. Never stay in one spot. Confusion worked to his advantage, as did the darkness and maze of steel.
At some point in the disarray Jack dropped the shotgun that was now empty and replaced it with a Beretta 92, a pistol stolen from one of the downed men.
“He went that way.”
Confusion and fear was getting the better of them.
Finding their guys dead only made them more careless.
With two more down, Jack scooped up a Heckler and Koch MP5k submachine gun. He darted out of the darkness and hopped into the driver’s side of the SUV that was still idling and smashed his foot against the accelerator, swerving it around and heading for the warehouse.
There was no easy, foolproof way of doing this. He knew that he had made peace with death if the reaper came calling. Jack accelerated towards the closed double doors and leaped at the last moment. He hit the ground, rolled and was up just as the vehicle crashed through wood and glass, coming under heavy gunfire seconds later.
He sidled up to the opening and unleashed a flurry of rounds at the distracted shooters on the catwalk. Bodies dropped over the railing, collapsing on tables full of money. Screams from workers followed. Jack entered as partially nude Chinese women ran out. He felt like a fish swimming upstream. Crouched and moving fast, he used them like a human shield as he took out those on the opposite side of the catwalk in rapid succession.
Jack surveyed the warehouse taking note of everything: a Humvee, an open office door, movement behind opaque glass high above.
“Jack!” Dalton yelled, a little too late. A round hit him in the right shoulder sending him down around the side of an idling Humvee. Exhaust fumes billowed out the back. No one was inside but the rear door was open. With the knot of workers thinned out and the final few exiting, Jack saw his attacker approaching beneath the Humvee. Boots moving fast. He took aim and squeezed the trigger. A bearded man dropped, wailing in agony before he finished him. Piercing heat and excruciating pain gripped him as he scrambled to his feet and rounded the Humvee heading towards the office on the ground floor. Keeping the submachine gun out in front of him, he unleashed another round at the sight of movement off to his left, then again to his right. Before he reached the door he heard a commotion, as if two people were fighting; a round erupted, then another. Jack entered to find Dalton shouldering a man and driving his knee into his groin. Without hesitation, or even thinking he might hit Dalton, Jack fired, a single shot through the man’s skull.
“Watch out,” Dalton yelled.
His eyes shifted to a mirror, a blur behind him. Jack dropped, turned and fired a rapid flurry of rounds into another guy but the guy managed to get off a round. It was only when he got up and looked back that he saw Dalton grimacing in pain. It had hit him in the upper portion of his shoulder, not far from the heart.
Jack scrambled over to check it out.
“He took her upstairs, Jack. Go.”
Jack pulled open his jacket and saw that it had been a clean shot, straight through, but there was a still a chance he could bleed out. “I need to get you out of here.”
“Just cut me loose. Hurry.”
The distant sound of sirens echoed.
After breaking the plastic zip tie, he helped Dalton out of the warehouse before heading back in and coming under fire from above, this time from a few more of Angelo’s men. It never seemed to cease. Seconds turned to minutes as he took cover, and methodically took out the final threats. Moving quickly, pain still shooting through his shoulder, he made it up to the top of the catwalk, stepped over dead bodies and reached Angelo’s office.
“Come on in Jack.”
Jack glanced in.
Angelo had Kelly with a gun to her head.
Behind him a large window let in the glow of the moon.
“Um. That was one hell of a performance. So hard to find good men. They just don’t make them like you anymore, Jack.” He grinned, his head darted back and forth behind Kelly, his arm wrapped around her. “Should have known you’d eventually break out. Can’t keep a good man down, isn’t that right?”
“Let her go, Angelo. Cops will be swarming this place in a mat
ter of minutes.”
“I know. So what’s it gonna be? Your freedom or hers? I know you won’t go back.”
Jack eyed him; his jaw clenched.
Angelo smiled. “Fucking ironic, isn’t it? The twists and turns of life. You. Me. New Jersey. You and I were always going to come back here. This was always going to happen, Jack. Live and die by the gun, remember? Live and die. Well I’m ready to die, are you?”
He wanted to kill him so bad. For Dana. For him. For every person he’d harmed.
“If you want me dead, you’re going to have to shoot her. You can’t do it. Can you, Jack?”
Kelly had tears streaming down her face. She struggled in his grasp but he held her tight.
He smiled. “They’re getting close, Jack. Cops. Prison. Locked doors. They’ll send you back to Holbrook and believe me, you won’t get out a second time. C’mon!” he taunted him. “What’s it gonna be?”
Jack studied him; his mind knew what he had to do but it went against the one rule he’d never broken. Dana’s face flashed in his mind. Every conversation. Dalton telling him that he could change. Eddie’s letter. Words. Rules. He wanted what was best but was it realistic? Could he ever be more than his past?
Angelo laughed. “See, that’s the difference between you and me. I know when to pull the trigger.”
The cops were closing in, the sirens almost upon them.
Jack saw the glint in his eye, the pulse in his throat beating faster, his muscles tighten.
Jack took the shot, purposely obliterating the glass behind Angelo. Shards showered over him like pebbles, his body reacting as they stuck into his head and neck. Angelo shifted ever so slightly but it was enough. In less than two seconds, Jack had unloaded another round, this one hitting his weapon arm. In an instant, Jack lunged forward over the table slamming into both of them. Kelly broke away. Jack yelled for her to get out as he held down Angelo, releasing anger, rage, and punishing him for Dana’s death.
With Angelo’s face bloodied and swollen, he stopped when Angelo said, “It’s too late, Jack. I told you, I’m ready to die. Are you?” He looked off to the right where a simple timer was ticking down. Numbers flashing red. Less than thirty seconds. His brow furrowed.
“You should thank me, Jack. I made you. The Butcher of New York! I brought you back!”
Jack clenched his jaw, staring at his pitiful face. “I never fucking left.”
With that said he took Angelo’s own gun and shoved it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Jack’s eyes darted to the timer. Twenty-two seconds and dropping fast. Angelo didn’t need to explain, he already knew what he’d done. He’d rigged the place. Jack nearly lost his footing, his shoulder slammed into the doorway as he scrambled to get out. His boots echoed on the steel catwalk as he leaped over the dead.
Outside, multiple cruisers swerved in with EMS and fire trucks no far behind. Blue and red strobe lights flashed, a dizzying sight. Dalton and Kelly stood nearby among a group of frozen Chinese workers, staring at the chaotic scene as cops rushed toward the building, weapons drawn. “Put it down!” he heard them order. Gunfire erupted for a brief moment before a series of what sounded like controlled demolition explosions erupting from inside the warehouse. Every window burst. Cops ran for cover as a monstrous cloud of dust, grit and glass billowed out. The whole damn thing went up in a fireball of orange and black smoke before the structure collapsed.
Dalton’s jaw dropped as his stomach sank.
“Jack.”
22
A week later
Thunder rumbled overhead, heralding the arrival of more bad weather. Dark clouds hung fat and heavy, releasing droplets that drizzled over the tombstone in George Washington Memorial Park. A cold wind blew in, nipping at his ears and turning his cheeks red. With his arm in a sling, clothed in a long black coat, Dalton stared at the plot covered with fresh flowers. Etched into the black granite headstone with gold lettering was the name Jack Winchester. Below that, his date of birth and death. Beside it was an empty plot set aside for Dana’s body once it was recovered. Gaining no success or help from police, Dalton had paid a local team of divers to search bodies of water in and around Apalachin with the hope of finding her. If and when they did, she would be buried close to Jack. He would have wanted that.
With a sigh he tucked his hands into his pockets. It seemed hard to believe he was gone and for forty-eight hours after, he expected Jack to show up or call but he didn’t. No names were released regarding the charred bodies found inside the crumpled warehouse but a local paper did mention that the Mafia were still operating and had been tied to the port. They didn’t want to taint the good name of New Jersey or scare away tourists. It was easy to cherry coat, brush it under the rug and spread false news, but he knew better.
He’d seen it with his own eyes, witnessed the brutality and now understood better the horrors of Jack’s past. It was one thing to hear it from him, another to see it up close and look into the eyes of evil. How could a man not be changed by that? He stood there thinking about how much of a struggle it must have been for Jack to try and walk away. Freedom came with a high price tag. Always looking over his shoulder. Unable to settle. Never allowed to form close connections out of fear of reprisal. It was no life for anyone.
How could anyone understand unless they were him?
At least now he could be at peace..
Kelly stood beside him, silent and lost in thought.
“I can’t get something out of my head,” she said.
“What?”
“I stood between him and Angelo. He could have shot straight through me but he didn’t. He didn’t,” she repeated.
Dalton’s brow rose. “That was just his way.”
“I know but he didn’t know me or owe me anything.”
“Yeah.” He nodded and sighed. “That’s how I knew there was good in him,” Dalton said.
Kelly shot him a sideways glance. “But why though? I don’t get it. He harmed so many but refused to harm women or children?”
Dalton gave a strained smile. “Strange, right? I asked him many times and his response was always the same. Jack would just brush it off, change the topic. But there was no denying, beneath that rough exterior, a life hardened by brutality and murder, there was gold, something good, something valuable, and Jack guarded it with his life. Like it was the only thing left and he knew if he let that go, he might disappear with it.” He squinted and pushed down his grief. “I think Dana knew. I think she saw it. Gold, buried beneath dross. I used to think that one day he would let me in but I think she was the only one who really knew him.”
Someone cleared their throat and both of them turned to see a well-dressed, dark-skinned man. Behind him a black Audi was parked on the road, near to their rental. “John Dalton?”
“Yes?”
“Daniel Cooper. I was Isabel’s partner in the FBI.”
“Oh, right.” He smiled, his eyes bounced between Kelly and him. “Yeah, Jack told me about you. Hey, thank you for coming. I tried to reach out to a few contacts Jack gave me — you know, just in case problems arose. He spoke very highly of you.”
Cooper frowned. “He did? Strange. I always thought I was one step away from a bullet.”
Dalton laughed. “Didn’t we all.”
They shook hands and all three of them looked down at the grave. “No one else came?” Cooper asked.
“Afraid not. I reached out to his family — his mother and brother no longer reside where they were before. No idea where they are now. And his daughter, well, he told me if anything ever happened he didn’t want her to know.”
Cooper nodded. “You know we chased that man all over the country. Isabel was besotted with him. She was like a dog on a bone, she wouldn’t let it go. It was only when I got to know him that I understood why. He was something else.” He glanced at Dalton.
“That he was. I’ll miss him.”
Over the next half an hour they swapped stories, reminisced and laughed at how J
ack would say one thing and do another, how he rolled to the beat of his own drum, keeping many at a distance, and yet when it came to those in real need, complete strangers, he would risk everything.
“How’s the family?” Cooper asked.
“Good,” Dalton said. “Karen gave me heck but I think she’s just glad I’m alive. Deep down I kind of think she’s glad he’s gone. Though she wouldn’t say that.”
“Ah, that’s understandable,” Cooper said. “And what about you? Still moving ahead with plans to write a piece about him?”
Kelly frowned. “How did you know that?”
“You’re a reporter. Is there anything else you would do?”
Kelly smiled and shook her head. “Out of respect for him and Dana, I think it’s better to let it go. Besides, he gave me so much more.”
Brown leaves rolled across the grass like tumbleweed reminding them that one season had ended and another had begun. All three of them remained there for a few minutes longer. Cooper took a deep breath. “Well I should get going. It’s been a pleasure meeting you both.”
“Likewise,” Dalton said. “Thank you for coming.”
Cooper stabbed his finger at him. “Take care of that little one of yours.”
“I will.”
He wagged his finger at Kelly. “I’ll keep an eye out for your articles.”
She smiled as he ambled away. Tree branches rustled and as the wind picked up again, Dalton and Kelly returned to their vehicle.
Cooper blew out his cheeks as he sank into the driver’s seat and shut out the cold. Dalton shouldered the wind, squinting, and gave one final wave before he and Kelly entered their vehicle and peeled away. Cooper glanced back at the gravesite and sighed. “The things I do for you, Jack.”
From the back seat, Jack emerged, placing a hand on his shoulder. His own shoulder was bandaged up, and his arm in a sling. “And Isabel would have loved you for it.”
