by Scott Blade
It rocked him to his core. He felt faint. The blow was so hard he didn’t even realize it had knocked him off his feet and onto his back.
A second after he realized it, the bald guy had already drawn his weapon and tossed it to the other agent.
Tunney’s vision was blurry, half from his eyes watering over and half from the dizziness.
The bald guy stood over him.
The other agent said, “Get his phone.”
The bald guy knelt and combed through Tunney’s pockets until he found his phone. He pulled it out of Tunney’s coat pocket and tossed it back to the other agent.
Blood streamed out of Tunney’s broken nose, unlike any other wound he’d ever had before.
The bald guy stepped back into the beams from the BMW and watched as the guy with the forgettable face sifted through Tunney’s phone, which was not password protected. Not that it would’ve made a difference. They would’ve gotten the passcode out of him.
After several long seconds, the bald guy asked a question.
“Anything interesting?”
“Not really. There’s no communication with the stranger: Jack Widow.”
They had finally gotten Widow’s name, his Naval record, and they knew about Unit Ten, in parts. Bank accounts as big as their clients could buy any information.
The guy with the forgettable face slipped Tunney’s phone into his pants pocket and looked at the bald guy and then down to where Tunney was, only he wasn’t there.
“Where did he go?”
The bald guy sidestepped to see beyond the BMW’s headlamps and saw a trail of blood from where Tunney had been lying to the car’s driver’s side door.
Tunney was pulling himself up by the door handle.
“Where are you going?” the bald guy asked.
Just then, Tunney released the handle; his back fell back against the side of the car. He reached down his pants leg and jerked up the cuff.
The guy with the forgettable face moved to the passenger side of the BMW. He was looking in through the passenger window.
He watched as Tunney pulled up his pants leg to grab a small firearm in an ankle holster.
He shouted to the bald guy.
“Milo! Gun!”
Milo Sathers was the bald guy’s real name. He heard the guy with the forgettable face, and he sidestepped farther to the right.
Tunney drew a small gun and fired it in Milo’s direction.
He squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. He blind-fired. Bullets hit the rear of the Escalade, shattering the taillights, slamming into the bumper. The rear window shattered after three bullets burst through it.
But none of the bullets hit Sathers or the guy with the forgettable face. Instead, Tunney’s backup gun clicked empty.
Sathers stepped back into view and sauntered over to Tunney.
He reached down, knocked the backup gun away, and kneed Tunney square in the broken nose.
Tunney let out a scream. Sathers bunched up his shirt and lifted him, one-handed, off the ground.
He looked right into Tunney’s battered and bruised face and spoke.
“That was a big mistake, my friend.”
The guy with the forgettable face appeared from behind Sathers and stared into Tunney’s eyes.
It was obvious to Tunney that he was the guy in charge.
Tunney asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
The guy with the forgettable face didn’t answer that.
He said, “We’ve got some questions for you?”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“You know about the fifty million dollars in stocks. You know about Eggers.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know anything about him.”
“That’s okay. My questions aren’t about Eggers. My questions are about Jack Widow.”
They questioned Tunney for over an hour before he gave up any information. And then they shot him in the head and left him for dead.
Twenty-Four
The ride in Haspman’s Raptor lasted only about fifteen minutes from start to finish. But once the Raptor was safely parked in Haspman’s driveway, with the engine off and truck locked, Widow pulled back the panel cover over the bed and peaked out.
What he saw threw him for a loop at first because he had seemingly gone from DC to the middle of the English countryside.
All around him were acres of wooded fields and rolling hills and darkness.
At first, he thought he had been drugged and tricked and put on a plane, taken out to the New England countryside. But then he veered his view to the right and saw DC city lights on the horizon.
He scanned the terrain and saw a neighbor’s house off in the distance. It looked huge. He pulled himself out of the truck’s bed and stood up straight. That was when he saw the house that Haspman had stopped at.
It looked more like a large cottage in the south of French than a house in DC.
The house was built of huge concrete blocks and brick. It looked around five thousand square feet. He guessed maybe it was five bedrooms. Widow hoped that Haspman didn’t have a family. He saw no other signs of anyone else living there. There was no other car in the driveway. And the house had a cold, empty look to it like it hadn’t seen a woman’s touch in decades.
On the front end, where Haspman presumably entered, was a large round section of house that on a small castle would’ve been called the keep.
“Jesus,” Widow muttered to himself.
Widow was in a neighborhood called Massachusetts Avenue Heights. Looking around, he guessed the average house for sale there was skyward of a million dollars, maybe two million.
With the Rolex, the Raptor, and now this property, Widow figured it was safe to assume Haspman had another source of income. No way did he afford all this on his salary.
Widow turned his attention to the front door. It was a huge thing, solid wood. He wasn’t busting it down; that was for sure.
He scanned the windows. They were small and all over the building. Most were dark, but there a light was glowing on the main floor.
The Raptor was parked on a driveway facing the entrance. To the left, the driveway veered off to a garage, also made of solid concrete and brick.
Widow approached the garage but stopped in his tracks when he noticed an outdoor floodlight over the garage. He figured it had a motion sensor.
He looked to the right. The front yard was on a slope. The ground floor of the house was built into the side of a hill. The upper floors, which he wasn’t sure numbered two or three because of the windows and the layout, were above the hill.
Widow circled the perimeter, staying more than sixty feet from the edges of the walls in case there were more motion lights.
He walked the landscape slowly and steadily like the tortoise versus the hare. The grass was damp. The air was brisk.
He saw his breath as he exhaled.
Widow was unarmed, which was both good and bad. Technically, Haspman could shoot him just for trespassing. The good part of being unarmed was that if Widow sensed a gun pointed at him, his reflex was to fire back, and he didn’t miss. But he wouldn’t want to kill Haspman, at least not at this point.
The bad part was that if Haspman shot him, he’d be dead. And he didn’t want that.
It was worth the risk because he knew Haspman wasn’t clean. The missing video feed from the traffic cameras was enough to tell him that much. Throw in the Rolex, the Raptor, and this house, and he had enough evidence to get a warrant—if he was still in the warrant-getting game.
Widow needed to do a little recon before making his presence known. So, he continued to check out the perimeter.
He climbed the hill alongside the house and entered into backyard territory. That was when he made his first mistake.
In the backyard, chained to a post, was the biggest Doberman pinscher mix that Widow had ever seen in his life.
The dog had been resting his head in the grass when Widow was in view. Suddenly, it reared its head, stared in his dir
ection, and jumped to its feet. It barked like a rabid dog. It took off running straight at him.
Widow hated seeing a dog on a chain, but this time he was grateful because the dog ran to the end of its chain and stopped. It barked and raged like it was bloodthirsty.
So much for checking the rest of the perimeter.
A light flashed on through a rear window, and then a light came on over a back entrance.
Widow eased himself down the hill and back around the front of the house.
He heard Haspman open the backdoor and yell at the dog to stop barking.
Widow came back to the driveway and decided to just go at this the easy way. He walked right up to the front door and rang the doorbell.
A flurry of sounds followed from behind the door.
Haspman cursed at the dog from the back of the house. He slammed the backdoor and walked through the house, down the stairs, and stopped at the front door.
Widow rang the bell again and stepped to the side and hugged the wall, staying out of view of the peephole.
He heard Haspman’s voice.
“Who’s there?”
Widow didn’t answer.
Haspman unlocked the deadbolt and wrenched the door open fast.
Widow saw the barrel of a shotgun. It stuck out of the open doorway first. Haspman stepped out following the weapon, still in his fire marshal jumpsuit, the matching hat, and dark-framed glasses. He still wore the Rolex and the expensive shoes and overpowering cologne.
Widow supported every responsible American’s Second Amendment right. On paper, Haspman could shoot him and he would be in the right. But Widow also was against the murder of his brothers and sisters, both in and out of uniform.
In a fast, violent explosion of force, Widow bounced off the wall and clamped down on the barrel of the shotgun with one hand. He jerked it forward and away, ripping Haspman’s trigger finger out of the trigger housing, which was the goal. He didn’t want the man firing the weapon, even if it wasn’t pointed at him. The house was located on more than one acre of land, maybe two, but the gun blast would’ve been heard by the neighbors, clearly.
At the same time and with the same explosion of force, Widow elbowed Haspman right in the jaw. Any fighter in the world worth his salt—boxers, MMA fighters, brawlers, street fighters, and SEALs—knew that being struck in the jaw in a certain way, with a certain amount of force and power, could rock a man to his core. It could disorient, discombobulate, disenfranchise, disembody, and disconnect a man from all his senses.
It could make you forget the day of the week. Make you forget where you were. It could make you forget who you were.
The elbow that Widow threw into Haspman’s jaw wasn’t full force. It wasn’t powerful enough to make him forget. But it was enough to throw the guy’s center of gravity out of whack.
Haspman stumbled backward and back into the open doorway. He slammed into a table in the foyer, knocking over some trinkets and knickknacks. One of them was a tabletop plant in a vase.
It shattered on the ground. Dirt and plant went all over the floor underneath the table.
Widow said, “Oops. I hope that wasn’t expensive.”
He took a quick glance around the street. It was still empty. No passing cars. No prying eyes.
Widow took a look at the shotgun. He almost didn’t recognize it at first. It was a modified Remington 870. Black. Pump-action. Reliable. But this one had some after-market modifications to it.
Widow two-handed it, one hand on the pistol grip, one on the pump. He pumped it. No shell ejected. He thumbed the breech bolt and saw a shell and released it. The weapon was loaded, pumped, and ready to go.
He looked down at Haspman, who was gripping his jaw, moving it from side to side as if he was trying to set it back into place.
Haspman’s vision might’ve been a little out of sorts due to the elbow to the jaw, but he recognized Widow from his size and height. Then he recognized Widow’s voice.
Widow said, “You gotta pump the action to load a shell in it. Otherwise, it’s useless. What were you planning to do? Slap an intruder with it?”
Haspman stared up at him.
“Widow?”
That was the first thing he asked before he started to panic. He started to scramble away, crabwalking to Widow’s left, past the foyer, back into the house.
Widow followed him into the house. He trail-carried the shotgun in one hand. He didn’t point it at Haspman. He didn’t want the guy to be able to say he had pointed a shotgun at him in front of a jury someday—if it ever came to that.
Haspman continued to crabwalk. Widow followed him. He was already a tower over most people, but with Haspman shrunk down to the size of a toddler, Widow looked massive from that angle.
Like a lot of seemingly tough guys Widow had confronted, Haspman shrank down to a coward’s level.
“Oh, no! Please don’t kill me! Please!”
“Why would I kill you?”
But Haspman didn’t answer that. He just kept going on and on. The same plea. The same fear in his voice.
“Please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!”
Widow took a look around the house for signs of life. There weren’t any. A fire was burning in a gas fireplace. That he hadn’t noticed from the outside, which made him feel a bit like he was losing his touch.
He saw no other signs of humans living in the house. No wife. No children. All the photographs scattered around the place were of Haspman and Haspman alone. No other family photos.
Suddenly, Widow felt sorry for the guy. Not that he had children or a wife of his own, but at least he wasn’t stuck alone in a huge house. Widow saw it more like a prison than a thing to cherish.
From the looks of the place, the only living thing that Haspman shared his life with was a dog, and even that was chained up outside like a wild animal and not a companion.
Next, he scanned the house for weapons. Above the fireplace, he saw twin rifles. They were on display and they looked like antiques from the Old West. They were well cared for. The wood stocks were clean and shiny. The metal was polished to a shine.
They looked like they cost a fortune. Haspman had probably bought them in a sumptuous collector’s auction.
Once he stepped beyond the foyer, the main part of the house revealed a huge open floor plan. The main room was enormous. The twenty-foot ceilings had oak beams above his head. The furniture all matched, like it was bought straight out of a country home magazine for the rich.
The rifles above the fireplace weren’t the only collector’s items. The walls were littered with them. There were rapiers, old swords, more rifles, and old six-shooters. Even an eighteenth-century cannon was displayed on a table off in the distance.
In a den to the west, where a second fireplace lay dark, Widow saw hunting trophies all over the walls. There were mounted elk, deer, moose, pronghorns, and even one lion’s head.
Widow took a look back at Haspman and doubted with almost full certainty that he ever killed any of them. The possibility of it just seemed unbelievable to him.
By now, Haspman stopped had crabwalking backward because he ran into the back of a huge sofa, which was across from another matching sofa. At the end of both was a set of matching lounge chairs.
“Please don’t kill me!” Haspman begged.
Widow said, “Get up!”
Haspman froze for a moment, but then he saw Widow’s eyes, and he rose to his feet. He put his hands above his head as if Widow had been pointing the shotgun at him.
Widow asked, “Got any hidden weapons?”
“What?”
“Are there any other guns on this floor?”
Haspman was silent.
“Haspman! Guns?”
Haspman said, “On the walls.”
“Any working firearms stashed around here for home protection?”
Haspman pointed at an end table near the fireplace, not far from a side door that led outside.
Widow kept his eye
s on Haspman and walked over to the table. He jerked open the drawer and saw a Browning 1911 handgun. It was olive green, which meant it was special ordered. It burned him up a little bit.
Widow’s color was Navy blue, always would be, but olive green was Army, not Navy, but still a part of his military brotherhood. Haspman was no military man. That was obvious.
Widow scooped up the 1911 and closed the drawer. He turned back to Haspman, who was still frozen in the same place, still had both hands up above his head.
Widow said, “Put your hands down.”
Haspman put his hands down.
Widow said, “Take a seat on the sofa.”
“Which one?”
Widow didn’t answer that. He just stared back at Haspman.
Haspman took that as his answer and moved to the sofa that faced Widow and dumped himself onto the plush cushion. It was so soft that he sank into it.
Widow walked around to the other sofa. He stopped in front of it and faced Haspman. He stuffed the 1911 into the waistband of his jeans and two-handed the shotgun. He pumped it rapidly. Unused shells flew out of the ejection port. They bounced off a huge stone coffee table that rested between the sofas. Each bounced and rolled off the tabletop onto a rug underneath.
He pumped the shotgun until it was empty. Then, he set it aside against the sofa.
He took out the 1911 and ejected the magazine. He racked the slide to eject the chambered bullet. There was none. The gun was completely empty.
He set the empty 1911 on the sofa and dumped himself down onto the sofa next to it. He faced Haspman. Widow sat up straight as best he could and tried to maintain good posture; slouching during an interrogation was never good optics. But it was hard because the sofa was about the most comfortable thing he could remember ever sitting on in his life.
Widow ran his hand along with the cushion next to him, keeping his fingers between his thigh and the 1911.
He said, “This is nice. Where did you get it?”
“What?”
“The sofas. Where did you get them?”
“My interior decorator picked them out. I don’t know where she got them.”
“Interior decorator?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me, Haspman. How much does the leading fire marshal get paid?”