Darkest Hour Read online

“I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.” Jackson picked up the shovel again, sticking the head into the ground so that the kid could hear. “But you will be in a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Listen, I’m crazy. Okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m sick, and I’m crazy. That’s why you made a mistake coming here. I don’t have anything to lose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “And if you don’t do exactly what say, then I’ll just shoot you in the fucking head. Got it?”

  The kid could barely stand now, his legs wobbling uncontrollably, his head turning from side to side as if to fight off the reality of it, to shake it all away. Or to look for an escape. But Jackson was right there, behind him, approaching with a shovel.

  “No,” the kid whimpered.

  “No? You won’t do what I say?”

  “Don’t shoot. Please.”

  “Then take this shovel and start digging.” Jackson tossed it to the ground in front of the kid. “Go ahead.”

  The kid tried turning around to face him.

  “Don’t turn around.”

  He stopped.

  “Just pick it up and start digging.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Right in front of you.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  Slowly, shakily, he bent down and picked up the shovel. It looked heavy in his weak, unsteady hands.

  “Go ahead,” Jackson said, “Just start digging. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  His shoulders were shaking now, like he was crying.

  “Go ahead, tough guy, get started.”

  He stuck the shovel into the ground, and then just let it sit there.

  “Trust me, this is better than me calling the cops. You don’t want that, right?”

  He might have actually wanted that, preferring the cops to whatever Jackson had planned for this new hole in his backyard. Whatever he’d planned to fill it in with.

  The kid finally, awkwardly, put his sneaker onto the shovel’s shoulder. He tried to stand on it, to force his weight onto it, but his foot slipped off and he stumbled. He seemed so weak and disoriented. Jackson watched him struggle.

  “That’s it,” Jackson said, watching him finally start digging with some success. It began slowly at first, halfhearted stabs into the dirt with only minimal amounts of it coming up and getting tossed onto a pile. Jackson figured he could use some advice.

  “You want a tip? Cut a rectangle into the grass, and then you can just peel it all back like a carpet.”

  Jackson had dug holes before. For all kinds of reasons and all kinds of burials. And he knew how to do it quickly and efficiently. Here, he watched the kid work with a lot less zeal and confidence, struggling to rip up a little rectangular section of Jackson’s lush green lawn.

  “That-a-boy,” Jackson said after he’d returned to digging in the freshly exposed soil rectangle.

  The kid took a moment to wipe the sweat, or blood, off his face, and then said, “Can I ask what this is for?”

  “No.”

  He went back to digging without much more protests, working more evenly now, and with a tempo. He’d gone from robber to landscaper, all with minimal coaching and gun threats. Jackson had even relaxed his grip on the Glock, too, realizing that the kid’s will had been broken a long time ago. He was just a worker now. A slave indebted to him, though still probably scared for his life—as he should be.

  After he’d made it down a few feet, Jackson told him to stop digging and to toss away the shovel.

  “Can I go now?”

  “Not yet,” Jackson said, approaching him. “One last thing. Get on your knees and keep looking away from me. Look down in the hole.”

  The kid turned around to face him, tears streaming down his dirty, bloodied face. The morning sky had begun to lighten up and he could see the youth and the fear on his face.

  “I said turn around,” Jackson said, waving the gun at him.

  “Please, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are. It’s okay.”

  He put his hands together. “Don’t kill me. Please.”

  “Okay. Just turn around.”

  He turned around and then dropped to his knees.

  Jackson approached, now with two guns in his hands. He pointed the gun from the bag, not the Glock, against the kid’s quivering, shaking shoulder blade. He was full-on crying now, begging for his life. Jackson held it to him firmly. And then he pulled the trigger.

  There was a loud snap as the RFID tracking chip was implanted in the intruder’s shoulder. And he was scrambling away on his knees, crawling away from Jackson and his chip gun, crying loudly. “What the fuck? What the fuck, man?”

  “Relax, you’re okay.”

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “I put a tracking device in you.”

  “What!?”

  “I don’t know who you work for, but I don’t want you around here anymore. I’ll be able to see you, where you are at all times.”

  He was lying on the grass, on his side, his hand massaging where the chip had been inserted. “Ow, fuck. Man, that hurt.”

  “Better than a bullet.”

  “What the fuck . . .”

  “And better than the cops.”

  “Can I go?”

  “And don’t come back.”

  Jackson walked him out of the yard, the walk turning into a jog, the kid having to reach back and hold up his pants as he limped out of the yard and down the walkway, past the busted-up screen window, through another gate, and then onto the road where Jackson watched him hobble away toward the faint early light of a sunrise.

  It was looking to be a beautiful day.

  It hadn’t started that way for Jackson, with the intruder, and with the sad task he had to carry out early this morning. But at least he’d made it alive to see another sunrise. He wasn’t gunned down in his garage by some punk.

  Returning to his backyard, Jackson oversaw the punk’s handiwork, the six-by-nine grave he’d just dug into his yard. It wasn’t a bad job. It looked big enough. Jackson let out his breath, holding back any threatening emotions, pulled out his phone, and called Jasper.

  4

  JASPER

  Poor Charlie . . .

  He’d been laid out in the backseat of Jasper’s car, wrapped up in a blanket for as much comfort as possible. It was the least he could do, to ensure a comfortable ride. And to bring him back to his human, Jackson, and then put him out painlessly. God damn . . . It was the very least anyone could do.

  Jasper hadn’t gotten too far with the idea early in life of becoming a veterinarian. Bigger things and bigger patients had gotten in the way of that. A higher calling: defending his country, and providing aid to others who did the defending. The career switch happened before he could experience too many pet euthanasias at the clinic he’d volunteered at as a teen. They were always harder than he’d anticipated, but it had been a long time.

  He’d never “officially” euthanized a human being. Though there was that one time, unofficially and of his own accord, that one thief in Indonesia who’d been caught trying to steal someone’s motorcycle. By the time Jasper arrived, mob justice had run its course for half an hour, and the villagers had all carried out their beatings, and their dragging and stoning, until the man was a bloodied pulp. And then someone dumped a few tires on top of him, and some gasoline, and a match, and then it was all Jasper could do . . . putting a bullet in the poor guy’s head. A mercy shot to stop the screaming. To do what he could, not as a medic, but as a fellow human, to stop the pain. The screams still haunted him, like the ones that were haunting Jackson now.

  This case was slightly similar. A living creature in pain and with no hope to survive.

  “Good boy,” Jasper said, reaching back over his seat to lay a hand on the warm mound of blanket. He patted Charlie. “Good boy, we’re almost there. Almost home to see Da
ddy.”

  Whether or not Charlie coming home to see Daddy would help or hinder Jackson’s already troubled life, it was the right thing to do. Charlie had to come home.

  “Good boy, Charlie.”

  It was just another one of those things that were a real son of a bitch to do. But necessary.

  When Jasper pulled into Jackson’s driveway, he began the last round of preparations. Mental preparations, mainly, trying to harden himself against the sadness of the act, convincing himself of the cold, hard logic of it all. He’d also have to prepare himself for whatever state Jackson was in.

  He ran over the scenarios in his head. Jackson passed out on the grass again. Or maybe he was awake, working manically at his car, destroying it through “repairs.” Jasper imagined everything, except the reality of Jackson standing outside next to the garage, a blank look on his face, and with nothing on but a pair of boxers, and a Glock in his hand.

  “You okay?” Jasper stepped out of his car and pointed to the gun. “What’s with that?”

  “Caught a guy breaking in the garage.”

  “Everything okay?”

  Jackson shrugged.

  “Is he still alive?”

  “I let him go.” Jackson waved Jasper toward the backyard, holding open a wooden privacy-fence gate. “But I had him help out with a bit of work before he left. Clothes got a little dirty.”

  Jasper, while still striding a little cautiously into the backyard, could hear the solid clunk of the gun being placed on the closed lid of a barbecue grill. And then he focused his gaze to the yard, in the center of it, a deep hole. “What’s that?”

  Jackson joined him at the hole, but said nothing.

  “Charlie?”

  Jackson sniffed and said, “Yeah.”

  Jasper put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You want to see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  He watched Jackson toss his shovel down before the work was finished, and it landed on the grass with a sort of bouncy, clanging sound. He kept watching as his friend sat in a dark smudge of grass which once held a pile of fresh dirt. He watched him raise the bottle to his lips.

  Jasper finished up with the grave, patting the dirt on top and then leveling it, before turning to Jackson with his hand held out for the bottle. Jackson, without making eye contact, passed him the almost empty fifth of rum before leaning back on his hands.

  Jasper took a hot swig of the alcohol. It was way too early for such libations, but he’d been up most of the night with Charlie, and then this morning. It had been miserable work.

  “Thanks,” Jackson said. “Thanks for doing it.”

  Along with the dog, Jasper had brought over a small toolkit of syringes. Deadly medicine. The whole thing went well enough, and it was a peaceful, dignified end. But it was damned miserable work.

  “I tried doing it,” Jackson said as he stared into his bottle, swirling the golden brown liquid around. “I tried, with the gun. But I just couldn’t. You know?”

  Jasper tried not to imagine it, the shakiness of Jackson’s gun, the misery of it. He was such a strong man, but everyone has their limits. Lately, it seemed Jackson had run up against many.

  “It’s understandable,” Jasper said. “You did the right thing by calling me, but, I’m just sorry I couldn’t be more of a help.”

  “No, don’t be sorry. That was . . .” He shook his head, muttering some quiet obscenity down at his chest. He swirled the bottle again. “But you went above and beyond. You could have caught a lot of shit for that.”

  “Nah . . .” Jasper tried to make it sound convincing.

  “And you did everything you could. More than any of those fuckers did.” Jackson took a swig, the almost empty bottle making a splashing sound as the rum fell up and down.

  “Well, we did the right thing here.”

  “Yep.”

  “There wasn’t any way around it.”

  “Yeah . . . Fuck, I’m gonna miss him.” Jackson offered the bottle.

  Jasper refused. “I know what it’s like.”

  “It’s the worst.”

  “Yeah,” Jasper said. “But I find that days leading up to it is the worst. And then after . . . It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also a relief. It’s over. Do you feel that at all?”

  “Somewhat,” Jackson said. “I’m just glad he’s not in pain anymore.”

  “And now, after it’s over and he’s passed on, you can focus back on yourself. Because you were sick right with him. And a part of you died with him. But now it’s time for . . . I dunno . . . rebirth?”

  Jackson nodded solemnly.

  “Know what I mean, Jack?”

  “I know I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “You were sick.”

  “I still am.”

  Jasper rubbed at some dirt that had dried onto his forearm, breaking it up and brushing it off, and then brushed his hands together. “And the drinking . . . Hey, you gotta cut out that shit, man.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe now that Charlie’s gone?”

  Jackson didn’t answer.

  “I know it was hell, in those last days. I can’t blame you. But now . . . Like I said . . .”

  “I’m good,” Jackson said. “I’m good.”

  “We’ll start jogging again.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hit the gym.”

  “Sure.”

  “Get in shape, go out and find some ladies.”

  Jackson chuckled a little bit, screwing the cap on his rum and then laying it aside in the grass.

  “It’s all good, Jack.” He watched his friend, his wet eyes and the dark circles under them, the sweat on his brow glistening with the tears on his cheeks in the early sun. “We’ll get through this.”

  “Thanks, man.” Jackson sighed, rubbed his face, and then patted his thighs. “How long are you in town for?”

  “I’m headed back tonight.”

  “Oh.” Jackson paused for a moment, and then said, “Well, then, how about some breakfast?”

  They were in Jackson’s kitchen a few moments later. And over the sizzle of onions, jalapenos, and garlic, Jasper decided to break the news. “So, I heard from Tansy yesterday.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jackson started beating some eggs in a measuring cup. “He called, but . . . I just didn’t feel like talking.”

  “You should probably get in touch with him.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Um . . .” Jasper didn’t quite know how to start. So he just said, “Tripoli.”

  Jackson stopped with the eggs, letting the fork drop against the glass rim.

  “Apparently, some journalist from Veteran’s Valor called him, asking about what ‘really’ went down there. Stuff like that.”

  “And what’d he say?” Jackson asked.

  “He said that you might be a better person to talk to.”

  “But did he say anything?”

  “Just the facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “The official story.”

  “Fuck.” Jackson rushed to grab a wooden spoon, scraping it back and forth across the smoking pan. “Fuckin’ . . .” He tipped the measuring cup and poured the eggs in. They crackled loudly as he stirred. His other hand reached up through the steam and smoke and clicked on the stove fan.

  Jasper sat quiet and still amidst the sudden noise of breakfast, waiting until the flame and fan cut out. When the larger half of a hasty egg scramble slid onto his plate, he figured it was safe to talk again. “So, her name’s Annica.”

  “Annica . . .”

  “And she claims to have already spoken with someone about it. Maybe multiple people.”

  “Any of ours, do you think?”

  “Not me. Not Tansy.”

  Jackson sat before his plate, thinking awhile before stabbing a fork into a steaming chunk of egg.

  “Probably not Matthias,” Jasper said.

  “Hell no. No way Matthias.”

  “Do you think someone
’s trying to help us?”

  “Help us?”

  “Someone looking out for us. Higher up.”

  “No one’s looking out for us.” Jackson filled his mouth with a bite of egg, and then toast, chewing while frowning, then swallowed. “Not back then, and not today.”

  “Well, I think you should talk to her. She won’t name her sources, and she won’t name you if you talk.”

  Jackson laughed, but it was harsh, cold. “We’ll see. Anyway, I’ll need to look into her. See who she really is.”

  “Tansy said he’s got a good feeling about her.”

  “She has breasts and a vagina. Of course he does.”

  “No, really.”

  “I was being serious. Is she pretty?”

  Jasper shrugged. Had Tansy mentioned anything about that? But he probably wouldn’t have said anything if she was. They all knew Tansy, and Tansy knew it.

  “See?” Jackson said between bites. “Easiest trick in the book. And it’s always a woman. Always.”

  “Yeah, I dunno . . .”

  “That’s how it starts. They’re trying to catch us, trying to get us to slip up and then it’s lights out for everyone.”

  In the previous few months, Jasper had become acutely aware of how much more often Jackson used the term “they.” “Them.” Always “them,” lurking in the background. “Them” setting traps. Maybe Annica was one of them. A trap. A “them.”

  “I hope Tansy didn’t just get us all killed. What’s his deal? Is he nuts?”

  “No,” Jasper said. “No, he’s fine. And he’s waiting on you.”

  “You’ve seen the way this administration treats whistleblowers . . .”

  “Jack, listen.” He laid his fork down and gave Jackson a hard stare. “We’re ready.”

  Jackson’s chewing slowed almost to a halt. He reached for a napkin and brought it to his closed mouth, all while maintaining that tight analytical gaze on his medic.

  Jasper held his gaze. “Tansy is. And so am I. We’re tired of hiding under this thing, and we’re ready to come forward, whatever the consequences.”

  “Really? Whatever the consequences?”

  “Whatever they are, we’re in the right. Nothing can change that.”

  Jackson took one last look at Jasper before throwing his napkin into his food and pushing the plate forward. He got up and went for the fridge. “Want a beer?”