Vacation

6. Recovery

Jack raised his left leg slowly, feeling the dead pull of a massive weight working hard to pull the leg down.

From the start, he had quickly ignored the cautious advice of his physical therapy team, and pushed his rehab work. And his undamaged leg… he would push it to the limit.

If I have only one good leg, it’ll have to get as strong as it can be.

I may not run again. But one way or the other, I’ll be able to move.

The leg reached its full horizontal extension, and then he resisted the always present temptation to rush lowering it. That thought, that urge only promoted him to make the descent even slower, even more torturous.

Until it was time to work with the other leg.

The damaged leg, the bum leg. The bad leg.

Weeks after the attack, the bandages had finally come off.

And now, though he could still see the indentation where he had lost some muscle mass, it didn’t look too bad. Nothing that would scare anyone, even his kids, who had been so curious about what the leg would look like when all the surgeries were done and the bandages finally came off for good.

“See,” he said to Kate and Simon, “not so bad.”

But he quickly looked at their eyes, and that had told him the truth of the situation.

They weren’t used to seeing their dad wounded or damaged in any way. He was never anything less than their protector. Whatever their idea of police work was in this world, they always saw him as the best and the strongest.

Now? With his leg so obviously damaged, their eyes said—what?

Fear?

Worry?

And that drove his rehabilitation.

Besides working the machines they had installed in his basement, Jack started walking again, way ahead of schedule. He ignored the pull of the healed, tight skin, and the pain that was always there.

And if it didn’t go away, fair enough. He’d deal with it.

He walked around their community on Staten Island, past rows of neat and boring suburban houses, all encircled by a fence.

Everywhere, fences.

Even here, far from the “real” boroughs of New York.

Gradually, he was able to suppress the urge to limp, and the need to always favor the right leg.

Despite the warning of the surgeon, Dr. Kleiner, and his rehabilitation team, he didn’t slip backward. The wounded leg grew stronger. The shock of each step grew less.

His walks grew and grew, and eventually, until when he returned home, he started to see a flicker of worry in Christie’s eyes. Concern. Why are you out there so long? Why are you away for hours?

The few times they had talked about it hadn’t gone well.

Now he just did what he did. They didn’t talk about it.

While his family simply watched.

He looked at his right leg. The padded bar pressed against his lower shin.

He’d begin slowly, with only a few pounds of weight.

And then, with each slow up-and-down movement, he’d add more weight, staring at his damaged leg, wishing it stronger, better.

He took a breath, and began to raise the bar.

Jack heard Christie’s steps coming down the stairs.

He let his right leg slide off the bar. Not bad, he thought. Not anywhere as strong as the left leg, but all things considered…

He grabbed a towel dangling from the weight machine and turned to Christie.

“How’s it going?” she said.

They had fought over that question during those first weeks. How are you? How’s the leg? Are the dreams over? Did you sleep through the night?

They’d had fights.

He wished she would stop asking.

Until he realized that Christie was scared and worried. He forced himself not to react.

Now, with weeks of rehab behind him, he could hear her question, and answer it. No problem.

“Good.” He smiled. “In fact, I’m pretty damn impressed. All things considered, my leg seems to be doing really well.”

She took a few steps closer.

The exposed lightbulb caught her face. “That’s good. Real good. Though at the risk of sounding critical—”

Jack rubbed his face, mopping up the beads of sweat. The floor around him was dotted with the drops.

“It stinks down here. You really need a hot shower, my friend.”

Jack laughed. The rough patches they had gone through were fading. He never told her everything about that night. He knew—and she knew—he never would.

The attack. Rodriguez. Shooting him because it had to be done. Then, being stuck here, working his ass off to get better, to get back to being a cop.

“I hear you, boss. I’ll hit the showers ASAP.”

Christie took another step closer to his machine. Only then did Jack notice that she had her hair pinned back. It always made her look like the teenager he’d dated in Bay Ridge.

“You done doing the school-thing with the kids?”

“You mean trying to teach them? Not sure I’m much of a teacher. Think we should reconsider some of the families getting together, getting our kids together—”

He started shaking his head before she finished.

“No. It’s better they stay here. Better that than bounce around to other people’s houses.”

“You mean trapped here.”

He heard the edge in her voice. It was an edge that he had grown used to. Perhaps it was his recuperation, perhaps the world she was forced to live in, perhaps it was his paranoia. Whatever, it was getting too easy for them to snap at each other.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wish we could think about it.”

He took a breath.

“Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“Right. Sure.”

Then a shrug, and he watched her walk up and out of the basement.

Jack let the weights drop with a loud clang to the base of the machine. And he sat there, sweating in the shadows. Thinking…

He knew he looked at things differently than most people. Most people could block out the realities of this new world that they lived in.

With enough fences, enough guards, enough safe sectors, life could almost seem normal.

But even some safe sectors in the city’s outer borough were no longer safe. Chunks of infrastructure—water, electricity, government—fell apart. Power failures, sabotage to the city’s water supply.

Chaos—always close, always one attack away.

The pressure from the Can Heads always there, always mounting.

Jack got up and moved through the hallway to the door that led to the basement and the adjoining garage. Like most houses, the door to the basement had been reinforced. Double locks, and on the interior side, metal plating. Every house was vulnerable.

Not so different from when he grew up in Brooklyn, and their house suddenly had rats. His father saw the telltale signs—the small caches of food that the rats dug out off the basement shelves and planted behind furniture, the electrical wires chewed through.

Then his dad found a sea of their pellet-sized scat under a radiator, revealing that a tribe of rats, with their lousy vision but incredible gnawing teeth, had found a new home.

And his father, a veteran of twenty years as a street cop, took on the rats.

Rat traps with the poison appeared. Any opening to the outside, the slightest crack, was lined with a thick wire mesh that would dig into any rat even as they elongated their flexible bodies to sneak in.

Dead bodies appeared both in and out of the house. One went undiscovered until everyone got a whiff of the overwhelming stench.

Now on the job like his old man, years later, Jack had smelled far worse.

But he’d thought of his dad and his rat-fighting when he moved to Staten Island with Christie and the two then toddlers.

Every crack sealed.

Doors reinforced.

Motion detector lights and alarms. Nothing expensive, but all good, reliable stuff.

Backup generator. Everyone had one these days.

Double locks everywhere. Metal panels that could be closed tight over the first-floor windows at night.

And weapons?

There were the weapons under lock and key that Christie knew about. Then there were the weapons she didn’t know about.

Jack had thought through a variety of scenarios, and safely secreted around the house other supplies of ammo and guns.

Not unlike the rats and their caches.

7. Preparations

Jack unlocked the trunk of the Ford Explorer.

It was five years old, and he maintained it himself and had as much confidence in it as he would in something brand new. Maybe more.

He’d done all the modifications—expensive and time-consuming—himself. The standard safety glass had all been replaced with reinforced shock-absorbent windshields and side windows, the same glass they once used in the armored cars of the well-heeled in São Paulo.

São Paulo? Gone years ago.

A layer of sheet metal covered all the vehicle’s side panels and undercarriage. The hood got a double layer of the same steel. The SUV would be better than a Humvee in an accident.

Or an attack.

Tires were a problem. Even the best tires could be ripped and gouged and turned into a useless piece of spinning rubber.

But the latest steel-belted battle tires used on the NYPD’s patrol vehicles were layers thick. A puncture, even a good-sized one, couldn’t come close to deflating them. Jack made sure he carried two spares.

He unlocked the compartment hidden under the mat of the luggage area, revealing the cases containing guns and ammo. Two S&W .40 pistols, a pair of Glock 22s, and—in two pieces—an M16. Beside the guns, a foam “egg shell” held three compact C-4 explosives—“door-busters” the cops called them, all fitted with timers.

He shook his head.

If Christie saw all this, she would freak. Was it just paranoia? Or was bringing all this firepower borne of years of being on the streets, while the Can Heads kept on coming?

He’d wear his service revolver on his ankle as well. Christie had grown used to that.

“Just like your father,” she had told him. “You feel undressed without your gun.”

He’d smile at that.

And carefully not say anything in response.

Undressed? No. More like unprotected.

He slowly shut the back hatch door, gently, so no loud thump filtered upstairs.

Jack tried to do a good job of acting enthused about the trip. His family deserved that.

He walked to the side of the car—near the front, just below the engine—and knelt down. The SUV had been driven around for a few days, and he wanted to see if the most recent alterations he’d made to the underchassis looked completely intact.

He dug a small flashlight out of his back pocket.

The right leg at the knee sent out a painful burst as it hit the stone floor.

Ignoring it, he craned down and looked under the car.

Why do I keep looking at this? he thought.

Checking it day after day.

As much as he didn’t want to accept it, he knew the answer.

His hand felt the reinforced underside of the car, the steel plate that ran from bumper to bumper, installed with the help of his cop friend Tim, who lived nearby. Jack then helped Tim do the same thing to his decade-old Land Rover.

But this new addition?

Nobody knew about that.

Positioned mid-car, in the center, it looked like a meter-long protrusion an inch and a half below the rest of the steel plate on the undercarriage.

The protrusion was lined with reinforced steel as well; it was also a compartment. Nobody would notice it. Not unless they did what he was doing now, sliding under the vehicle, a flashlight between his teeth.

And inside the meter-long compartment? Two rows of a mix of pentolite and RDX explosives. Compact and powerful. The NYPD used them to blow up and seal the holes made by Can Heads in their relentless desire to get under barriers.

He looked at the metal tube with its shielded wiring streaming from the compartment and to the front, up to just below the dashboard.

Did he look at this every day because he needed to comprehend what his fear—what installing this really meant? Was that why?

He slid out from under the car. Stood up. Opened the driver’s door and crouched down.

Jack aimed the light at a place to the right of the SUV’s steering column. The light showed the two-step switch that he had installed. There would be no chance of accidentally triggering it.

No, to make the switch active, he’d have to turn and open a protective cap a full 360 degrees. Only then would the detonation switch become active and be revealed.

And then—a single flick would send an electrical charge down to the compartment and explosives… and blow the car to pieces.

He straightened up, and sat back in the passenger seat.

Such a crazy precaution. Insane, really. But as long as no one knew, there’d be no harm.

Right?

His paranoia would be his alone.

And in what scenario would he actually throw that switch?

Despite his tendency to imagine the what-ifs, the possibilities, the dangers in detail—

Part of his job, to be sure.

—for this, he didn’t allow himself to go there.

“So where were you?”

“Just puttering with the car.”

“That car gets more attention than me.”

Christie’s tone was light—but Jack heard a dig anyway.

Then she said: “The kids are crazy excited, you know. I have them packing.”

He nodded.

“And it’ll be great. For them. For you. For us.”

“I know,” Jack said.

Then: “Think I’ll take that shower now.”

8. Home

“I’ll have some more,” Jack said.

Christie passed him a bowl. The mixture of soy and a synthetic protein had been flavored to supposedly resemble chili.

It only reminded Jack that there were no beans here, no meat.

It was filling. And that was about it.

“I don’t like it,” Simon said. He stuck out his tongue and tried to continue talking. “It makes my tongue feel hot.”

Christie laughed. “Okay, maybe a bit too spicy.”

“Not for me,” Jack said.

He noticed that Kate had barely touched hers. “Not hungry?”

“For this?” Kate said. “Can I go, like, read or listen to music or something? This stuff makes me sick.”

“Kate.”

The girl looked at her dad.

“Yes?”

“Something wrong?”

“Shelly’s having her party when I’m away!”

Jack shook his head. “Not sure we agreed that you could even go to that. I mean, a party—”

“Let’s cancel birthdays, too.”

Finally, Christie jumped in. “So, you’d rather stay and go to her party than this vacation?”

Kate looked as if she was actually weighing the choice.

“Maybe. No. I don’t know. I can’t even remember what parties are like.”

She turned back to her plate and took a forkful of the pretend chili. “This tastes weird.”

Doesn’t everything these days? Jack thought.

Real food, real fruit, vegetables, or even more rare, meat—when available—were incredibly expensive. The fact that the Paterville Camp offered regular meals, with food fresh from their own protected farm area, seemed nothing short of miraculous.

The kids couldn’t wait. For that, and the swimming, the boats, the fireworks, the mountains.

Like going to a different planet.

And despite his fears, Jack started to feel as if this was something he should look forward to.

It wasn’t just something the family needed.

I need this, too.

Jack waited until the kids left the table.

“Maybe this trip is a good thing.”

Christie turned to him. “Good to hear you say that.”

“Yeah. You may be right. Getting away. Having fun. Doing things together.”

She smiled. “Good. That will make for a less grumpy driver.”

He smiled back.

For a moment, the only cloud in the kitchen was his secret.

What he had done to the car.

But that would stay a secret.