by Scott Blade
Patriot Lies
A Jack Widow Thriller
Scott Blade
Contents
Also by Scott Blade
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
The Double Man
A Word from Scott
The Jack Widow Book Club
The Nomadvelist
Also by Scott Blade
The Jack Widow Series
Gone Forever
Winter Territory
A Reason to Kill
Without Measure
Once Quiet
Name Not Given
The Midnight Caller
Fire Watch
The Last Rainmaker
The Devil’s Stop
Black Daylight
The Standoff
Foreign & Domestic
Patriot Lies
Copyright © 2020 Scott Blade
All Rights Reserved.
Visit the author website:
scottblade.com
ISBN-13: 979-8649404556
ASIN: B07Z2XFT6F
The Jack Widow book series and Patriot Lies are works of fiction, produced from the author’s imagination. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination and/or are taken with permission from the source and/or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or fictitious characters, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This series is not officially associated or a part of any other book series that exists.
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Published by Black Lion Media.
One
The old man on the park bench was outside, freezing on a cold October night.
It was typical for him. October. August. January. July. None of it mattered.
Every night, he slept somewhere that didn't belong to him. He slept wherever he was. Sometimes, he was in the same place as the night before. And sometimes, he wasn't.
The locations changed, but two things remained the same. The exact time of year meant nothing to him, all but one day, his daughter's birthday. He always remembered the date and the year she was born, but he never knew if he was on that exact date or not. He didn't know because he couldn't keep up with what day of the week he was in.
He knew the current month was October. He recognized October by the cold setting and the leaves changing colors.
The second thing that never changed was that he was drunk. He drank himself to sleep every night. He was a man trying to forget.
An empty bottle of Old Crow Whiskey lay out sideways on the brick sidewalk below him. The last drops streamed back and forth, slowly, across the inside of the bottle, like a carpenter's level.
The old man had drunk most of the bottle, but not alone. He’d shared it with other homeless men. One of them he knew by face. One he knew by name. And three of them he had never seen before in his life and would never see again.
The three he didn't know were friendly enough. They drank with him that very night. They helped him to the park bench and left him there. It was one of his nightspots, a good spot, too, because it was nestled in a tree-covered nook in the park that was often overlooked and well hidden. A pedestrian passing by on the street would miss it unless he was looking for it.
The night trees weren't the same as the day trees. Technically, they were the exact same trees, but not to him. The night trees whistled in the wind. They swayed heavily, making creaking and rocking sounds like growing pains, all in the stillness of the night.
Cars barely passed along the four streets that surrounded Lincoln Park.
Everything was quiet in a way that made him think of the open desert nights in Iraq.
The bench was all metal, painted deep red. It was hard and cold and not long enough to support a tall man. Luckily, the old man wasn't tall. He stood five-foot-nine and a half, when he wasn't hunching over. That half-inch used to be very important to him, when he cared what people thought. Those days were long gone. And it showed.
He had let his beard grow wild to the point where even his friends from twenty years ago wouldn't recognize him. He’d let his pores clog over time. He hadn't showered in days. He couldn't remember the last time a razorblade had touched his face. He couldn't remember the last time he had brushed his teeth or combed his hair or laid hands on a bar of soap.
Not to mention, he couldn't remember the last time a woman had touched him. No woman would touch him now. He knew that for sure. Now, all he got were dirty looks and people going out of their way to avoid him.
Lincoln Park wasn't his first choice for spending a cold October night. He usually rotated between the back of a 7-Eleven on Benning Street or the Kingsman Field Dog Park on Tennessee Avenue or one of the ten churches in less than ten square blocks or the back alley of a yoga studio over on Tenth Street, past the Maryland Avenue overpass.
But not tonight.
Tonight, he
slept in Lincoln Park. Not planned. He had gotten drunker than usual. It was just the way things worked out. He’d ended up there by a series of events that seemed random, like every other day of his life. Nothing had been planned. There was no predestined reason for him to be drinking with the other homeless guys. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Early that night, he’d met a guy, got a ride, and found a bottle of booze, which he shared with other homeless guys. He got drunk, too drunk, and, now, here he was, sleeping on a park bench. It was all a typical night, except this time he spent it with drinking buddies and a full bottle.
His drinking buddies numbered five guys. There was the one he knew by name, the one he knew by face, and the three he didn't. When you're homeless, you take all the drinking buddies you can get—random or not.
The five of them gathered around a trashcan fire to stay warm. Autumn nights in DC could be relentlessly cold. Not like winter nights, but still, at best, he ran the risk of catching a cold; at worst, he could freeze to death.
The five homeless guys stood around and bullshitted about bullshit and not much else.
Within forty minutes, he was buzzed. Within two hours, he was piss-drunk. Thirty minutes after that, he was fast asleep on the park bench. His homeless drinking buddies were gone. The trashcan fire burned out.
He was alone.
The old man slept for nearly an hour before the black Cadillac Escalade pulled up to the curb on East Capitol Street from North Carolina Avenue. Both one-way streets were marked with clear one-way markers.
The Escalade's engine ran and purred under the hood. There were four guys in the truck. The driver left the engine on and hopped out with the rest, shutting the doors behind them.
They wore all black. Black jackets. Black pants. Black boots. They matched, like a secret private security force.
The first guy led the way into Lincoln Park and over to the homeless guy on the bench. He walked as if he knew the way in advance, like he had been there before, like he had rehearsed it at this exact location.
He approached the old man's position as if he knew exactly where the old man was perched, like there was a tracking beacon on him.
The second guy followed the first guy. The third and fourth guys followed halfway over to the old man, and then they branched off, walking toward different entrances to the park. Three of the guys formed a perimeter as if they were guarding against anyone coming in or going out.
The first guy led the way to the bench and pointed out the sleeping homeless guy to the second guy. Then, the second guy turned and faced away as if he were standing guard. He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets to look like just a guy standing around.
All four men carried firearms in concealed hip holsters under their clothes. All four holsters' safety buckles were unsnapped. All four firearms were chambered with a nine-millimeter bullet. All four weapons were well-oiled and well-maintained. All four weapons had been fired before. All four men had killed before.
The first guy walked over to the sleeping homeless man on the bench. He carried a brand-new bottle of Clyde Brothers’ Whiskey. The price tag was two hundred bucks, far more than a cheap bottle of Old Crow.
The first guy couldn't use the Old Crow, not that there was any left to use. He needed a flammable whiskey. Old Crow wouldn't do the job. Not the right way, even if it was a full bottle.
It's a myth that any old bottle of alcohol will make a good accelerant. It's true that alcohol is highly flammable. The right bottle of alcohol makes for the perfect Molotov cocktail. But most cheap alcohol is cheap for a reason. There's not much pure alcohol left in a cheap bottle of whiskey. Not enough to do the job that the first guy needed it to do.
To get the most bang for your buck, you need a cask strength whiskey. Bottom-shelf whiskey is watered down, which reduces its strength and its cost.
Cask strength isn't the highest proof nor the strongest alcohol content in a whiskey, but it burns well enough. Cask strength whiskey will catch on fire and burn just right.
The first guy stood directly over the homeless man, watching him sleep, listening to him snore. The homeless guy snored with his mouth wide open.
The first guy looked up. He looked left, looked right. Making sure no one was watching.
He saw no one, just his guys.
The wind gusted around him. It brushed through Lincoln Park. It whistled through the crevices and ridges over the Emancipation Statue, a life-size memorial that portrayed President Lincoln, standing over the last enslaved man to be captured under the Fugitive Slave Act of Missouri.
All around, the first guy heard nothing over the wind noise, except the usual weeknight sounds of Washington DC.
Horns honked far off in the distance. Sirens wailed, but far away. Mechanical motor sounds grumbled along the city streets. Tires rolled over pavements. Worn brake pads hissed. A dog barked to the south. But no one was around. No witnesses.
The first guy tore the seal off the top of the Clyde Brothers’ bottle and pulled out the cork. He tossed them both to the ground. He held the bottle out at full arm's reach and tipped it upside down, spilling the contents all over the snoring homeless man.
The alcohol gushed out, drenching the homeless guy and the bench beneath him in whiskey.
The homeless man was so drunk that he didn't wake up to the liquid dousing him all over. Not at first.
It wasn't until the first guy doused the bottom fourth of the bottle all over the homeless guy's face that he woke and reacted.
He half-leaped up and waved his hands over his face as if he were being waterboarded.
The homeless guy's eyes popped open in time to see the first guy standing over him, emptying the bottle of whiskey all the way until there was nothing left but glass and the label.
"What? What the hell're you doin'?" the homeless guy asked.
The first guy finished pouring the bottle over him. Then he tossed it over his shoulder. It landed off the track into some bushes. The bottle didn't break.
The homeless guy stayed lying on the bench. Frantically, he wiped the whiskey out of his eyes and spat some out of his mouth.
He squinted, staring up into the starry night above. Things were blurry, as if he were looking through a glass of water.
He saw the first guy standing over him. The first guy's features were all covered in shadows and blurred.
"What the hell's going on?" the homeless guy asked.
The first guy reached his free hand into his coat and came out with something palm-sized. He balanced it in his hand and pressed on it with his index finger. Then he swiped left. It was a smartphone.
"What're ya doing?"
The first guy said, "Hold up a second, Commander."
The homeless guy's eyes widened, as if he saw someone he thought he knew, but he couldn't see the guy's face, and he didn't recognize the voice. But the first guy had called him Commander, like people did back when he was a commander in the Navy.
"Who are you?" the homeless guy asked.
The first guy ignored him and said, "It's time."
"Time for what?"
The light from the smartphone's screen lit up the guy's face. The homeless guy's eyesight improved, and he focused. He looked over the first guy's face. He saw a clean-shaven chin and deep blue eyes, and not much else to speak of. The first guy's face was average and unremarkable. It was strangely forgettable. In a police lineup, he would blend right in. No one would identify him in a crowd. Besides his eyes and a pair of broad shoulders, everything else about the guy was average, like he was built for spycraft—an average-looking guy with no memorable traits made him someone who could pass through crowds with no problem. Witnesses would never remember enough details to describe him. There was nothing to remember. He was a vague man walking.
The guy was in his late forties. He had broad shoulders, with a lean lower half like a marathon runner, and short black hair, sprinkled with gray.
"Do I know you?" the homeless guy asked. He legitimat
ely wasn't sure. Part of him glimpsed some vague recognition from a deep past that he tried to forget.
The first guy didn't answer. He clicked a button on the phone's screen, and the phone rang—once. Someone answered it on the other end of the line. The first guy put it on speaker.
He said, "Found him, sir."
The first guy reversed the phone and faced it to the homeless guy.
The phone's bright screen lit up the homeless guy's face. Blue backlight bounced off the homeless guy's unkempt beard.
The first guy stared at him.
"You look like shit, Commander."
The homeless guy reached up for the phone as if he was going to take it, but the first guy jerked it back.
"Don't touch!" the first guy shouted.
The homeless guy stayed laid out where he was, like he was. He didn't budge. He didn't move. He just stared up at the screen. The first guy moved it in closer to the homeless guy's face.
The homeless guy stared at the screen until he realized that someone onscreen stared back at him.
The face was familiar. He knew the eyes. They were dark brown, not black, but they were just as soulless as the last time he’d seen them—twenty years ago. Unlike the first guy, these were not eyes he would forget. He saw them nearly every day in his dreams—his nightmares. They were eyes from a dead past that he wished would stay buried. He thought about that face often. He tried not to. He tried to forget it. He wanted to forget, wanted never to see it again, but here it was, staring back at him.