Night Fall

He surprised me with a left hook that I didn’t see coming, but I managed to snap my head back in time, and he just clipped my jaw. I fell back into the sand, and he made the mistake of diving at me. I planted both my feet in his solar plexus and heaved him up into the air and over me. I flipped around and scrambled across the sand toward him, but he was on his feet and backpedaling fast as he pulled his gun from his holster and the magazine from his pocket. Before he could put Tab A into Slot B to make bang-bang, I rose into a sprinter’s stance and sprung forward. But the damned sand was too soft, and I lost traction and couldn’t get to him before he got the Glock loaded. He was pulling back the slide to chamber a round when I got my hand on his ankle and yanked hard.

He tumbled to the sand, and I was on top of him, my left hand clamped around the barrel of his gun, and my right hand delivering a roundhouse punch to the top of his head.

This stu

We started rolling together down the slope of the beach into the surf. A few breakers smacked us as we grappled and locked together, and the undertow began to carry us out farther.

Each of us was trying to find some traction on the ocean floor so we could get in a good punch, but I wasn’t letting go of the gun in Ted’s hand, so we were locked together as the tide and the undertow took us farther out.

Every time I thought about him and Kate together, I butted my head into his, and we were both becoming dazed. He must have realized by now that I hated him so much that I’d become psychotic, and I didn’t care if we both drowned.

After about a minute of wrestling, we’d both swallowed a lot of salt water, and Ted was being weighed down by his heavier clothes. I was in very good shape-thanks to Yemen-and I knew I could drown him if I wanted to. He knew it, too, and he suddenly stopped struggling. We both looked at each other, our faces only about a foot apart, and he said, “Okay…” He let go of the Glock and swam a few yards to where his feet hit solid ground, then he stumbled up on the beach, walked a few more yards, then turned and flopped down in the sand. He’d lost his shoes, and he was barefoot and covered with wet sand.

I scrambled up on the beach and stood about five feet from him, breathing hard. The salt water was burning my jaw where he’d clipped me, my balloons ached where he’d kneed me, and my head was throbbing from butting him. Other than that, I felt great.

It took about a minute for him to get to his feet, and he stood bent over, taking deep breaths, and coughing up seawater. Finally, he stood up straight and I noticed a stream of blood ru

“Come on, Ted. Be a good loser. Didn’t they teach you sportsmanship at that Ivy League school you went to?”

“Fuck you.” He wiped his nose with his hand. “Asshole.”

“I guess they didn’t.” I ejected the magazine and put it in my pocket, then pulled back the slide, and saw that indeed he’d gotten a round into the chamber, though he hadn’t squeezed it off while we were having a dispute over who should hold the gun. I ejected the round, and I stuck the Glock in my waistband.

He said, “I could have blown your head off about six times.”

“I think once would have been enough.”

He actually laughed, which made him cough, then he wiped the salt from his eyes, and said, “Give me my gun.”

“Come and get it.”

He staggered toward me and held out his hand for the gun. I took his hand and shook it. “Good fight.”

He pulled his hand away and gave me a push.

He still had some fight left in him, which I admired, but I was getting tired of his act. I shoved him hard and said, “Don’t do that again, asshole.”

He turned and began walking away. I stood there, watching him as he approached the dunes. He turned back to me and said, “Follow me, stupid.”

How could I resist an invitation like that? I followed him, and we climbed the same sand dune that Kate and I had climbed back in July.

We stood at the top of the dune, and he said to me, “I’m going to tell you what happened here on the night of July 17, 1996.”

He could have done that a half hour ago and saved us both a dunk in the ocean. But there had been other issues to settle first, which still weren’t fully settled. I said to him, “No lies.”

“The truth,” said Mr. Nash, quoting from his company motto, “shall set you free.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“It’s a better deal than I wanted to give you. But I follow orders.”

“Since when?”

“Look who’s talking.” He stared at me and said, “We have something in common, Corey-we’re loners. But we get the job done better than the team players we work with and the political wimps we work for. You and I don’t always tell the truth, but we know the truth, and we want the truth. And I’m the only guy who will tell you the truth, and maybe I’m the only guy who you’ll believe.”

“You were doing okay there for a minute.”

“I’m not going to insult your intelligence with more bullshit.”

“Ted, from the first minute I met you, and through two major cases, all you’ve ever done is bullshit me.”

He smiled and said, “Let me try again.”

I think I detected a double meaning there, but I said, “Talk.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Ted Nash stayed silent awhile, still catching his breath, then said, “Okay, this couple left the Bayview Hotel, at about sevenP.M., carrying a hotel blanket. In their SUV was an ice chest with wine, and a video camera with a tripod.”

“Yeah, I know all that.”

“That’s right,” he said, “you’ve spoken to Kate, and you’ve done some snooping on your own. What else do you know?”

“I’m not here to answer questions.”

He said, “Kate’s in some trouble, too, for telling you about this.”

“And how about you? Are you in some trouble now because you blabbed to her about this five years ago? Is that why you were resurrected and dusted off? To deal with your screw-up?”

He stared at me awhile, then replied, “Let’s just say that I’m the best man to handle this breach of confidence and set matters straight.”

“Whatever.” I glanced at my watch, which was still working, and said, “Say what you’ve got to say. I have a long ride back to Manhattan.”

Ted looked a

“How do you know this?”

“I spoke to them. How the hell else would I know that?”

So, if I was to believe him so far, this couple had been found, and she was alive-at least she was at the time. I said, “Continue.”

“All right, so they ran down to the beach, as the camera recorded them, and they ski

“And if this guy had two erections in one night, he wasn’t CIA.”

Ted let that one slide, and he pointed to the beach. “As they were having sex on the beach, they wouldn’t notice anything in the sky, but they didhear the explosion, which would have reached them about forty seconds after it happened. By the time they turned toward the sound of the explosion, the aircraft had already come apart, and the nose section was already in the ocean, and the main fuselage was still climbing, then it began its descent. Interestingly, they thought they saw a streak of light rising toward the aircraft atthis point in time-afterthe destruction of the aircraft. But they realized it was a reflection of a stream of burning fuel that they saw mirrored in the glassy ocean, which they confirmed later when they watched the tape.” He looked at me. “Understand?”