Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  Carrie took another breath of the room, leaned over and kissed the top of her girl’s head. In this little room, at least, Carrie was known as mom or mommy, but never, ever, was she called Splash.

  ~ * ~

  In the darkness and quiet of his kitchen, Randy Tuthill sat at the kitchen table, his first mug of coffee before him, just resting. It was just after five a.m. and already he was dreading the day ahead. From the light over the stove the kitchen was barely illuminated but he could still make out the bay window overlooking the small yard - installed several years ago, after more years of gentle nagging from his wife Sarah -and the nearby refrigerator. Its white enamel was almost entirely obscured by recipes, doctor’s appointment cards, and photos of their two sons - Eric and Tom, both serving in the Air Force - and their grandchildren.

  Randy picked up the mug, took a sip, put the mug back down. Looked down at the table. The mug was bright yellow and black, advertising AirBox, his home for the past fifteen years. He stared at his hands...huge and scarred and heavily callused from years of moving machinery and tools and parts in and out of aircraft. First in the Air Force, traveling across the world to bases like Incirilik in Turkey and King Khalid in Saudi Arabia, Anderson in Guam and Utapoa in Thailand, hot and cold places, rain and wind and snow, making sure those big damn gray birds flew and flew well. A twenty-year man, he would’ve been content to pull the plug and fish and chase his wife around the house for the rest of his life, but a retiring general had caught his attention, a retiring general who said he was going to set up an airfreight company and needed a good wrench-turner to set up the very first mechanic bays in a rented hangar in Memphis ...

  Another sip of coffee. Many years ago, many ups and downs ago, many union contracts negotiated and debated and settled. And now...well, not so good.

  Randy looked down at his hands again. Funny how when he was younger, that was the thing that bothered him the most. Whether or not he would ever find a woman who wouldn’t be put off by these rough fingers and palms. And then Sarah had come along ... Sarah who had worked as a civilian clerk-typist at Nellis in Nevada, and after their courtship and eventual engagement he finally had asked her that important question: hadn’t these rough hands been a liability of his, something she would have to overlook, in the years to come?

  Sweet girl! She had kissed the top of his head - at a time when there had been a lot of hair up there - and said, ‘Dear heart, I’ve been with a number of boys, boys with soft hands and soft skin and soft minds and bodies to go with them. When I’m with you, either at work or at play in the bedroom, I like the feel of your hands on me. It lets me know I’m with a real one, a real man, one who’s not soft.’

  And as if on cue, there was a murmur of noise and Sarah came into the kitchen, yawning. ‘Up early again.’

  ‘You know my habits.’ True enough, for at any point in time, when it was possible, Randy liked to get up before anyone else. His own private little oasis of time. Sip his coffee and plan the day and just let those thoughts come right up to the surface . . .

  Sarah ambled over to the coffee pot, poured herself just a tiny bit. Being polite, she called it, since she didn’t like coffee that much, and he smiled at her as she came over to the table. Twenty-five years of marriage and two boys later, she had added on a number of pounds and a few laugh lines, but he still felt like he had come out on top. She had on a thin robe and a knee-length nightgown that had a nice expanse of cleavage, and even at this early hour her short brown hair didn’t look mussed at all. Most of his own hair was gone, his love handles and gut were a daily embarrassment, but she still would smile and say he was the sexiest man alive, and during some brief moments he sometimes fooled himself into believing her.

  ‘What’s going on in that mind of yours?’ she asked as she sat down.

  There was a snappy response back there, like ‘seeing you topless’, but Randy knew her moods and tone of voice, and said, ‘Teeth.’

  ‘Teeth?’

  ‘Yeah, teeth. Like dental plan.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sarah said, raising the mug. ‘Dental plan. The contract talks.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, shifting his legs under the table. ‘The damn contract talks.’

  She eyed him as only a wife married to a lead machinist and union local president could, and he said, ‘The talks have been dragging on for months. We’re without a contract right now. We’ve made progress on a bunch of items...but it’s the damn dental plan. We pay a twenty-buck-a-month premium, with eighty percent coverage. The General wants to double the premium, reduce the coverage to seventy per-cent. And he won’t budge.’

  ‘And you won’t either, will you?’

  That familiar flash of anger sparked through Randy. ‘We’ve had years and years of concessions, givebacks and cutbacks. This is where we’re gonna make our stand, Sarah. I know it sounds petty and crappy and all that, but we’ve got to draw the line sometime. And this is where it’s gonna happen, and if they don’t budge, then by this time tomorrow the talks will be off. Shit.’

  He took a swallow from his coffee and Sarah rubbed her hand across his right forearm. She said quietly, ‘Times sure have changed.’

  ‘Shit, yes, they sure have,’ Randy said. ‘Time was, contract negotiations like this would take up an afternoon. Me and a couple of guys and the General and his accountant, we’d have a catfish barbecue, drink a few beers, and by the time it got to cigars and cognac we had a contract. Shit. Didn’t even have to sign any paper that night. Just a handshake, that’s all. Worry about the details later, and you know what? Didn’t have to worry about the details. The General’s word and handshake were his bond.’

  ‘Still are, aren’t they?’

  He shook his head. ‘Back when we flew from Memphis to Seattle, Memphis to LA, and Memphis to JFK. Back when the aircraft we used were one step away from being sent to a boneyard in Arizona. Back when payroll was sometimes met when the General maxed out his credit cards. That’s when his word was bond. Now...Christ, the goddamn number crunchers and pencil pushers are in charge. The General’s forgotten what made him rich, what made the company work. It wasn’t the pencil pushers. It was us.’

  Sarah stroked his arm again. ‘So what happens next?’

  Another shrug. ‘The talks will break down. Today or tomorrow.’

  Sarah said, ‘And what then? Take a break? Begin again?’

  Randy looked down at the coffee cup, with its bright and cheery logo for a company that he had helped found, all those years ago, and whose success had been due in part to some very long working hours, some very hard dedication, and even a little blood, here and there, spilled onto aircraft tools and hangar floors.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice just a tad shaky. ‘No. The talks won’t begin again. And we won’t take a break.’

  Sarah was one bright woman, and he was sure that she already knew the next answer. But she pressed on, like she needed to hear those words.

  ‘Then...what will happen?’

  ‘Strike,’ he said. ‘We’ll go on strike. And AirBox will be grounded.’

  Sarah brought her coffee mug up to her face, stopped, and then lowered it to the kitchen table. ‘I read the news-papers, Randy. That might drive AirBox out of business.’

  ‘Then that’s what’s gonna happen. AirBox will go out of business.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘Over teeth.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Randy said, looking out the bay window, to the brightening sky in the east. ‘It’s all about teeth.’

  ~ * ~

  In his sixth-floor office Brigadier General Alexander Bocks, US Air Force (retired) sat behind his desk, looking across its clean and shiny expanse at the man he had depended on these past six months, and a man he admired for his intelligence, tenacity and imagination. And, also, a man he had come to despise.

  Frank Woolsey, his chief financial officer, crossed his legs and said, ‘Alex, you know and I know there’s no way around it.’

  He looked at the lean man who - even at thi
s early hour -looked like he had been well-dressed and groomed since two a.m. Outside there was the faint gray of an approaching dawn, and Bocks heard the low-pitched hum of his airfreight empire out there, bringing in and sending out packages, flying hither and yon across the United States. Right now, as his CFO sat before him, this whole empire was being held up by fraying black threads, ready to part and toss everything down to disaster.

  Bocks said, ‘I know you’re making sense. I just hate hearing it again.’

  Frank looked down at a yellow legal pad and said, ‘The numbers are what they are. To keep AirBox flying and working, you’re gonna need to expand. And if you’re planning to expand into the Pacific, you’re gonna need investors. And you’re gonna need investors who have confidence in what you’re presenting, what you’re planning, and how you’re gonna deal with your mechanics’ union.’

  Bocks eyed his sharp-eyed and smooth-shaven CFO, knowing that the bright little bastard had been passing one test after another. Bocks knew his strengths, knew his weaknesses, and one particular strength was that he knew he got his best ideas and best output early in the morning, while everybody else dozed or worked-out or grazed through their morning breakfast. He had thought Frank here would have bulked at getting his gym-buffed body out so early, to break bread with the company president and CEO, but the sharp little guy had done it without complaint.

  ‘“You”?’ Bocks asked. ‘What do you mean, “you”?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Frank was questioning but he wasn’t rattled. It was like he had the supreme self-confidence of either knowing the answer to the question instantly, or knowing that he had the answer’s source.

  ‘What you were saying, back there,’ Bocks said, leaning slightly back in his chair. ‘You kept on saying “you”. What you’re planning, what you’re going to need. There was no “we” spoken, Frank. Don’t you think you’re part of the team?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘Not saying “we” doesn’t give me a good feeling.’

  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.

  An accident, the very first time. Adrianna had been working for the CIA for two years, and the burden of carrying the secret had seemed almost too much to bear. She had been lonely, too, and had occasionally dated the sharp and muscular young men who worked for a number of agencies and administrations that sprouted immediately outside that enormous ring of power known as DC. Yet in dating those men - who’d always been track stars or football stars or baseball stars at college - she had often remembered those innocent but loving touches from her first boy, poor young Hassan, probably dead now, after all these years, no doubt wondering to the end what had happened to his special girl.

  Ah, yes. His special girl. And her first special man. Craig Poulton. Some sort of liaison to Congress with the Department of the Army. First date, back in his apartment, he showed off his war souvenirs, for he had served in the first Gulf War, and proudly displayed a framed Iraqi flag, tattered and stained with blood, that he had retrieved from the Highway of Death after the ceasefire. When he had turned to put the framed flag back up on his apartment’s wall, Adrianna had picked up an unopened bottle of wine and had smashed it against the back of his skull.

  Again and again.

  And had finished him off with a knife.

  The very first one. Never caught. And after the shock had worn off that first night, when she hadn’t been questioned, hadn’t even been considered a suspect in Craig’s murder, Adrianna had felt a thrill that she had killed, had killed the enemy in his own home, and never had she felt better.

  That had lasted for many months, before the tension returned, the sleepless nights, the jittery days. Then she realized what she had to do. To keep that ed
ge up, that hate, that anger that allowed her to pass through this American culture day and night with a smile and bright eyes, meant that occasionally she had to strike back.

  Just like tonight. Against that lumpy Henry Spooner.

  She sighed with satisfaction. The last one, no doubt, until. . .

  Until Final Winter.

  That brought forth a smile.

  She looked in the mirror again, just before leaving the bathroom. Adrianna Scott was not looking back at her.

  It was Aliyah Fulenz.

  And she knew it was going to be a good day.

  ~ * ~

  Brian Doyle waited impatiently outside the man’s office, sitting there, reading the day’s Washington Post. His left foot jittered a bit while he waited. The wait-and-see tremor, his old partner called it. Whether on surveillance at some bodega in Queens, or waiting in an ER while one of his precinct buddies was being worked over, or waiting outside some office like this one, the old wait-and-see tremor would start.