Hostile Takeover (21 page)

47

I
sent the drone crashing into the river below and looked into the back of the limo. All of Zhen's men were dead. Judging from the bright red color of their skin, they had swallowed cyanide capsules. Zhen was nowhere in sight.

I looked back at the flames and the loss of Alice hit me like a bullet in the chest. She was dead. In trying to save us both, I had killed the woman I loved. I had risked my neck so many times to show her I loved her. The only thing that had been important to me
was
loving her. It was even more important than living. It was what made me truly strong, even if for a brief time in my life. The rest of me, the violence and destruction, the soullessness and depravity, were what made me weak. With her, I was solid as a rock. Without her, I was nothing.

How had I lost that? At what point did I decide to abandon my conviction, my truth? In her own moment of weakness, she falsely accused me of betraying her, and even tried to kill me as a traitor, but I should have seen right away that we'd been set up. And I should have demanded she allow me to prove her wrong. I should have done everything in my power to make her trust me again. Instead, my ugly, vicious ego stepped in and I did what I do best. Kill things. Even when I'm trying to do right, I kill things.

And all I could think was
What now? Where do I go from here?
Sure as hell not back to HR.
I should have ended this in Mexico,
I thought. I had my chance to rid the world of me and I punked out. And after seeing Alice die, killing myself felt like another selfish, bullshit, escapist John Lago card trick.

Now you see me
 . . .

“Lago?” I heard Zhen's weak whisper from inside the limo.

I looked inside. Zhen was sitting against one of his dead men with a huge gash on his forehead. His pupils were as big as dinner plates and his face was pale. His shirt was soaked through with his blood. When I looked closer, I could see that his head had more than a gash. It was a bullet entry wound. Based on the amount of blood, he was already breathing on borrowed time. He looked at me for a long beat, as if he were trying to remember something he wanted to say.

“Zhen,” I said.

“I am dying,” he said.

“Do you want me to call for help?” I asked, knowing there was no way I was going to do that.

He chuckled slightly and coughed up a bit of blood.

“You amuse me, Lago.”

“Happy to oblige. Now maybe you can oblige me with the name of your friend.”

“Come closer. There are eyes and ears everywhere, John.”

I moved closer and he whispered the name in my ear. It hit my brain like a sledgehammer.

“What do you plan to do?”

I was so stunned, I didn't even hear him at first.

“John.”

I turned to him.

“What are you going to do?”

“I think we know the answer to that question,” I said quietly.

“You can't just kill him. You have to destroy all of it. There are others, but he's the leader. If he's dead, and there is nothing left to salvage, then your revenge is complete.”

I thought about the sheer insanity of what I had to do.

“I'm not sure I have the means,” I said absently.

“I will help you.”

“How?”

“Money. With money, all is possible. All is . . .”

He wavered dizzily and fought to remain conscious.

“Listen and remember,” he said and gave me the number of an offshore account.

“There is more than enough . . . I am very—”

He tried to hug himself for warmth from shock but could barely move his arms.

“Cold,” he said, and died.

Then I heard a chirping sound. It was the sound of my phone, somewhere in the car. I searched for it among the stiff and stinking corpses of Zhen's men. When I found it, there must have been fifty missed calls and text messages from Sue. I looked at the latest text:

Alice is alive. She's been calling me for help. What happened?
Where the fuck are you? Call me!

48

I
ran flat out toward the chopper wreckage. It must have been a solid five miles from the bridge but I didn't care. Surrounding the wreckage was a massive forest fire. The smoke was thick and I had to crawl for what seemed like hours trying to find Alice. Sue was guiding me with the GPS, but the smoke and the heat and the weak phone signal made that spotty at best. I could feel my body being singed and seared by the flaming debris falling from the sky, but I pushed through it, keeping my face up and away from the heat as best I could.

When I was on the verge of exhaustion and smoke asphyxiation, I heard Alice calling weakly in the forest. Then I found her hanging from a burning tree by her parachute, upside down and beat up, but alive. I called Sue and told him to get his ass over there to pick us up. He had stolen a jacked-up Ford Bronco from some Brooklyn hipsters and was off-roading to our location. I climbed up the tree, the callused flesh on my hands sizzling and smoking like pork chops on a grill, to get Alice down. She looked at me as if she were dreaming.

“John? What . . . are you doing here? I must be dead. We're both dead, right?”

Her eyes were glassy and she was on the edge of losing consciousness, so I figured that was no time to start splitting hairs over semantics.

“Yeah, we're dead. And we're in hell,” I said as I blew out the
flames on my fingertips and worked on getting her out of the parachute harness.

“That explains the fire.”

“Right. Can you pull your arm out of there?”

Then she punched me right in the face.

“Motherfucker,” she whispered and passed out.

I anchored myself to the tree and with one of her parachute lines pulled her the rest of the way out of the harness. Then I threw her over my shoulder and climbed down the tree. She was still out cold, so I carried her two miles out of the blazing forest to the rendezvous point where Sue picked us up.

He drove us into the city in his urban hillbilly wagon with Alice passed out in the back. On the way, I filled him in on the situation, about the mystery puppet master that Zhen had named for me and how we'd been set up by that motherfucker from the moment Alice and I started running HR. Sue seemed relieved, like a kid whose parents told him they'd decided not to get a divorce after all. It was weird, in an
Outlaw Josey Wales
kind of way, but it felt like we were all one big happy family on a road trip.

When we got back to Manhattan, we went to my favorite cash-only chop shop hospital for wounded bad guys. They sedated Alice and treated her for smoke inhalation and a couple of broken ribs. I treated Sue and myself to a bottle of their low-grade mob doctor Scotch from the medicine cabinet while she got some rest. Sue polished off half the bottle in one gulp. Kid can drink like a Siberian oil worker who just lost his woman and beaver socks in a card game. I sent him to check in on HR so I could be alone with Alice when she woke up.

“Mom and Dad need some quality time,” I said.

“Hit me when you're ready to circle the wagons, JL.”

It was around midnight when Alice came to. She started crying when she saw me sitting next to the bed.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “Aside from all the obvious things?”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

She saw the utterly bewildered look on my face.

“I heard what you and Sue were talking about in the car. I feel like such an idiot. Even worse, I'm the traitor for not trusting you. You should put me out of my misery, right now. I'm not worth it, John.”

I hugged her tightly, being careful not to squeeze her ribs.

“We both stopped believing in each other, Alice. Never again.”

“Never again.”

She pulled me closer and winced from the pain.

“Broken ribs. You need to sleep,” I said.

“Don't leave,” she said wearily.

“I'll be right here,” I said.

She started to doze off but then grabbed my arm.

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“When I wake up, promise me we're going to kill that motherfucker.”

“I promise,” I said, kissing her on the head. “Sweet dreams.”

49

I
got a call from Sue early the next morning. He had been locked out of HR. When he tried Alice's access code, same thing. Later that morning, when he went looking for Rebecca to figure out what was up, he found her dead in her apartment. She'd been shot in the head and her body was in the tub, decomposing in an acid bath. Professional job, albeit sloppy. Someone was cleaning up.

Sue was completely freaking out, rabid with anger and raw with grief. I told him not to go home and to get off the street. There were no safe places left and we had to assume anything that was a part of our lives before was now part of a very intricate death trap. He pulled himself together and met us at the chop shop hospital. Alice tried to comfort him, but he was in a very bad way about Becca. And it hit too close to home for me. Eva all over again.

We had to make a move on the puppet master. With what had gone down at HR, it was a solid bet we could find him there, no doubt holding the recruits hostage until he decided either to kill them all or find them another slave master. When I wrote
The Intern's Handbook,
my intention was to help the recruits, to lend guidance where I'd had none. I failed. If anything, I was the reason they were all staring down the barrel of yet another person in a position of power looking to use them up and throw them away.
No más
. It was
time to end the nightmare and try to salvage what was left of those poor kids. It was time to destroy HR from the top down.

The three of us stayed holed up at the hospital for the next few days. As long as the money kept flowing, I could rely on the ghoulish docs there to keep their traps shut. In that time, we worked out our entire plan to take down HR and our own personal Wizard of Oz. Zhen's account had roughly $80 million in it. He was right. It was more than enough. Infiltration wasn't all that complicated, as Alice and I had designed the HR security system and there was no way they'd had time to replace it in her absence. All we needed was some backup.

“How many swinging dicks you think we need, JL?”

“At least twenty.”

“Thirty,” Alice said. “Let's stack the deck.”

“Thirty it is. Now, where are we going to find thirty cold-blooded killers who know how to handle a gun and won't soil their britches when they see someone pointing one at them?” I pondered.

Sue started laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“I got this,” he said and started making calls.

It was going to cost us a good chunk from Zhen's war chest, but Sue guaranteed we'd have the ballers we needed to get the job done. Alice and I worked on the weaponry. Within twenty-four hours, we had everything and everyone we needed to turn Human Resources, Inc. into a smoking ruin. The problem was, we had no idea what had happened to the recruits because Sue had not heard from any of them since he'd been locked out of HR.

50

T
he night before the siege on HR, I carved out some much-needed alone time with Alice. Since being reunited, all we had done was draw up battle plans and spend copious amounts of money on weapons and ammo. I needed to take a moment with her because, quite frankly, I was fairly certain we were not going to survive another day in Oz and I wanted to make up for lost time. When darkness fell, I handed Alice a Barneys bag and told her to get dressed. She looked stunning in the Helmut Lang black jumpsuit and black Belstaff boots.

“What's the occasion?” she asked. “Alice Cooper's funeral?”

“We're going out,” I said. “And by out, I mean . . . out.”

I donned my all-black Ralph Lauren Black Label gear and escorted Alice to the nearest rooftop, where I uncorked a 1988 Krug champagne. We drank straight from the bottle.

“Darling wife?”

“Yes, handsome husband?”

“I'm going to take you on a little adventure tonight.”

“Really? Do tell.”

“As you know, I'm fond of rooftops. I chose this particular rooftop because, from here, we can go on an entire date without ever touching the sidewalk.”

“Sounds lovely,” she said, kissing me.

“Are you and your ribs up to it?”

“Absolutely. Oxycontin is my new best friend.”

“Outstanding. Shall we go to dinner?”

“By all means.”

We finished the champagne and went roof-hopping. Alice loved it. For dinner, we landed on Ichimura, my favorite sushi restaurant. The chef himself had prepared a private rooftop dinner for us and we ate under the stars, just a normal couple, enjoying an evening out. We actually talked about subjects that had nothing to do with high-velocity ammunition or the most stable explosive compounds.

After dinner, I had a real treat for Alice. I took her back to the Four Seasons, where we got married. We couldn't be seen checking into a hotel, so we hopped on the lower-level roof and took the service elevator to the top. The Ty Warner Penthouse, our old stomping grounds, was still being renovated from when we blew a nine-foot hole in the floor and massacred Bob II and his goons. So, the suite was vacant for the night!

Sue had already dropped off my supplies for the evening—via a construction crew drink cooler—earlier in the day. I had a full bar with mixers, snacks from Dean & DeLuca, and other . . . things that Alice was fond of . . . We walked in and I lit some candles and made us both a drink.

“John, what did I do to deserve you? I am racking my brain and nothing but bad things come to mind.”

“Maybe that's it. I'm opposite karma. I'm what you get when you live an evil, murderous existence.”

“When you put it that way, it actually makes sense.”

We kissed and I walked her to the spot where we had our ceremony. The hole in the floor was still there, although partially repaired.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “We're going to fall in.”

“We're going to finish what we started here.”

“Is there someone else down there for us to kill?”

She peered into the hole.

“No, we never said our vows on our wedding night and, if you don't mind, I'd love to say them now.”

“Oh, honey.” She kissed me. “But we don't have the preacher man and that . . . book.”

“The Bible?”

“Right. That one.”

“We don't need either. Let's just say what's in our hearts. I know it's cheesy, but I feel the need to do it. To voice our truth about each other. Man, that's even cheesier. Sorry.”

“It's not cheesy,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I want to do it. You go first.”

I held her hands and looked into her eyes and we both started laughing immediately.

“Okay, sorry,” I said.

“Yeah, me too. Serious now,” she said.

And that made it worse. We were both laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

“I got this!” I said. “Sorry . . .”

We both took a deep breath and Alice kissed me.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready.”

She held my hand.

“Then please proceed.”

“I, John Lago, being of somewhat sound mind and ripped body, take you, Alice, being totally insane and with smoking body, to be my wife. I promise to love you, above all else, and to never go to bed mad—or to engage in hand-to-hand combat with you, shoot, stab, burn, or bludgeon you, or fire an air-to-air ballistic missile at you again. I promise to trust you with my life, to allow you to trust me
with yours, and to always have your six, even in a noncombat situation. Till death, or a lengthy prison term, do us part.”

Tears were streaming down her face. And she was still laughing.

“That was beautiful,” she said.

“Now you,” I said.

“I, Alice, take you, John Lago, to be my hot husband. I promise to love the shit out of you, maybe even until it hurts. Actually, definitely until it hurts. I promise to be an aggressive, predatory, highly disagreeable bitch to everyone
but
you, and I promise never to attempt to maim, cripple, or kill you, even if you leave dishes in the sink.”

“I knew you hated that.”

“So why do it? Anyway, shut up, I'm not done. I promise to trust
you
with not only my life, but also my soul, and I promise that you can trust me with yours. And I promise to always make love to you with rabid enthusiasm and a willingness to try anything at least once. Oh, and I promise to do old-school wife things for you, even though I don't have to—like cooking, buying you cool clothes, and running a bath for you when you've had a hard day—because I want to, because I love you, John. I fucking love you, baby.”

We were both crying at that point.

“You may kiss the groom,” I said.

We kissed and melted into each other, and with half of Manhattan glancing away from the TV to witness, we made love like two people who meant everything they just said.