by Scott Blade
The right-hand guy spun around. He’d heard the cracking of bone and the wet sound of blood splatter. How could he not hear it?
He shone a flashlight attached to the end of his LAR-15. The beam washed across Widow’s face.
The guy might’ve had time to react. He might’ve had time to get a shot off. It would’ve saved his life too. But he wasted his last seconds of life screaming. He saw Widow’s face and screamed in utter horror.
Then he was dead. The ice axe cut his chest wide open. Widow left it planted there. The guy fell back. He was dead before he hit the ground. He had to be. There was far too much blood for him to have any left in his body.
Widow looked back at the left-hand guy. He smiled because he saw one incendiary grenade clipped onto the guy’s belt.
Widow took it. He jerked the ice axe out of the right-hand guy’s chest and he continued forward.
He changed his route and stepped over between two huge redwood trees and walked the same direction as before. He saw lights up ahead. They were from the flashlights under the LAR-15s.
He heard more gunfire. It sounded like the Glock. It came from less than a hundred yards ahead. Maybe even fifty yards. Widow saw the muzzle flash over some hills, past more huge redwoods.
Widow sprinted forward, a bit faster. He breathed heavily. His body was worn and tired, but his adrenaline pumped out of his brain. He was not stopping.
He sprinted on until he got close to another guy. He could hear radio chatter. It was muted and quiet, like it came from an earpiece. By now the leader must’ve realized some of his guys weren’t answering him.
Widow stopped and saw three figures in the dark. He crept closer, closing the gap between them. He got close enough to know it was the enemy. He saw the LAR-15s. The flashlight attachments. The black gear.
They walked in a three-man formation. Like the points of a perfect triangle.
Widow looked at the incendiary grenade and smiled. He pulled the pin, tossed it right in the middle of them. Then he whistled, to get their attention. He ducked behind a tree.
They opened fire at him. But they didn’t get a lot of shots off because five seconds later, they exploded in liquid fire. Skin ignited. Bones burned. The heat was so intense; he had heard of victims having their eyes explode in their sockets.
He wasn’t sure about that. He peeked out from behind the tree and saw one guy still all in one piece. Still alive. He danced around like he could escape the fire. But he couldn’t.
Widow took the ice axe, reared it back like a professional knife thrower. He threw it at the guy, hard. The axe blade tore right into the guy’s fiery center mass. He went flying back off his feet.
Widow left the axe right where it was.
He took up the LAR-15 and left it on single-fire mode.
He stalked through the trees. Counted the paces in his head. Then he counted the dead bodies. The pilot, the two he killed with the axe, and the three with their own grenade. That made six down. And two left.
Widow stopped and squatted on his feet. He looked around, waited. All was quiet. Then he saw gunfire from a Glock. Then he saw it suddenly stop. She was out of bullets.
CHAPTER 47
WIDOW SPRINTED DOWNHILL. He ran between more trees and over foothills. He heard a wolf howl in the distance, off the mountain. He realized this was as close to the mountain as he had been.
He moved on until he lost the last position of the gunfire. He squinted his eyes and scanned the area. Nothing.
He waited. Then he heard voices. He heard shuffling feet.
He turned and followed it.
Forty-seven seconds later, he was hugging close to a redwood. He looked around it, and saw the FBI agent, her hand up in the air, surrendering. He saw DeGorne on her knees, her hands still handcuffed behind her back. Tears streamed down her face.
Both women were trapped under a high gorge. Tall trees hung thirty feet above them.
The FBI agent’s Glock was on the ground at her feet. The chamber exposed. It was fired empty.
DeGorne pleaded and begged for her life.
“The money! You can take it! Take all of it! I should’ve never stolen it!”
The FBI agent stayed quiet.
Two men stood over them. Both armed with Glock 21s. The leader had a LAR-15 strapped to his back, but he wasn’t planning to use it. Not in close quarters.
DeGorne said, “Please, Danny! Please! Let us go! We won’t say anything!”
The FBI agent stayed quiet, stayed still.
The leader spoke into a receiver pinned to his collar. In Spanish, he said, “We got them.”
Which Widow understood well enough.
But he got no answer.
Then he said, “Pedro! Come in!”
No answer.
Widow wasn’t going to get a better chance. He set the LAR-15 down against the tree and drew the Glock. He stepped out, aimed. But just then the leader turned around, saw him.
Several fires burned behind Widow, lighting him up from the back.
“Danny!” the leader shouted in English.
The leader fired his Glock in Widow’s direction.
CHAPTER 48
WIDOW DROPPED TO ONE KNEE. He heard wood from the tree splinter behind him. Several shots rang out from the Team leader’s Glock. The bullets exploded bark from the tree behind him on impact.
Shooting guns at live enemy targets wasn’t about speed. That was a factor, but it was low on the totem pole of what was important. What was important was staying calm. Breathing. Staying steady. And being accurate.
Jack Widow wasn’t the fastest shooter, but he was calm.
He aimed at the team leader. He squeezed the trigger, twice. BANG! BANG!
Both bullets hit the leader right in the neck and face. He tumbled backward in a heap.
The one called Danny didn’t shoot back. He was a different kind of man. He thought on his feet, only he thought about protecting himself, like a coward. He leapt forward and spun around DeGorne. He grabbed her by the hair. He got a handful of her long locks and jerked her to her feet. He held her close to him like a human shield.
Widow moved his arms, aimed at the one called Danny.
“Ryman! Let her go!” The FBI agent shouted.
“Shut up! Shut up! You should be dead! All of you!”
Widow rose to his feet, slowly. He stepped forward.
“Stay right there! Or I’ll put a bullet in her! I swear!”
Widow stopped dead, fifteen feet from them.
“Danny, listen to me! No one knows what you’ve done here! No one but us! You can still get out of this!” The FBI agent said.
She was good, Widow thought. She was brave.
“Drop your gun!”
Widow stayed still, aimed over the Glock’s sights. He saw Ryman’s forehead, ducking, shaking, trying to stay behind DeGorne.
DeGorne stared at Widow. Her avocado eyes were huge with fear.
He stayed quiet.
“Drop it!” Ryman shouted, and he made a mistake. He made the mistake that Widow hoped for. He jerked DeGorne’s hair. That long, Rapunzel hair. He pulled it so hard that her head whipped back with it. Her shoulders tightened and her head ducked down and Ryman’s face became a bigger target over her shoulder. It was only a second, but it was good enough.
Widow squeezed the trigger, and the Glock fired. The muzzle flash was bright in the darkness. The bullet rocketed through the space between them and hit the dead center of Ryman’s teardrop tattoo. It blew a small, dark hole into his face. The bullet never came out the back of his head. And he never said another word because a split second later, he was on his back, dead in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere.
A man that Jack Widow had never met, never spoke to, never knew, was now dead by his hand. And he didn’t give him a second thought.
DeGorne ran straight at him, her hands still handcuffed behind her.
Widow held her close.
“It’s okay. You’re safe now,” he wh
ispered.
She didn’t move. She just stayed there, her face buried in his chest.
The FBI agent walked over to him.
“I’m FBI Agent Joanna Watermoth. Who are you?”
Widow said, “Me? I’m just a guy. I’m no one.”
CHAPTER 49
SPECIAL AGENT JOANNA WATERMOTH was personally called and apologized to and congratulated by the director of the DEA, himself. On the phone, of course.
He told her that Ryman was a bad egg. And not to judge his guys based on one rogue agent. He told her that the SWATters had always been a bad idea. They had become corrupt, but the corruption stopped at Mike Lee and Danny Ryman.
Apparently, they had been getting kickbacks from one of the cartels. They were paid to look the other way, at first. Eventually, the payments got bigger and the crimes got worse.
The DEA director swore to clean up that department. They disassembled the SWATter team and reassigned all the agents. By the end of the year, Watermoth heard the director had resigned. It was all over the papers. It was scandal related.
Agent Watermoth was promoted to her old SA’s job. And Smith was moved to a new field office, same job.
AS FOR JACK WIDOW, only one person knew where he was. After the last bullet was fired, the authorities were notified by a fire watch lookout named Forman. She had seen the explosions from her tower and she had had the only telephone.
When the FBI arrived, and took in Agent Watermoth, they also took Widow and DeGorne. They were all choppered to a hospital in Sacramento.
But Jack Widow and Molly DeGorne vanished from the hospital. It was like they never checked in.
The truth was they did check in, but not to the hospital. They checked into a hotel on Bay Street. And they didn’t check out for three whole nights.
The Author
Scott Blade has written six bestselling books, two of which reached the top 100 on Amazon.
He is the creator of the Jack Widow Series.
Scott isn't a traditional writer who spends his time stuck behind a computer in a dreary office. He is almost always traveling around the world, looking for Starbucks.
Currently, Scott is developing a new series called Jesse Waylander and he is working on his next Jack Widow book.
If you liked this book, then please leave a review, go to his website, and sign up to receive previews, communications, and free content, which sometimes includes exclusive stories.
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THE LAST
RAINMAKER
a JACK WIDOW thriller
Life is full of coincidences and mistakes. It was a coincidence that Jack Widow ended up in a hospital, after riding a passenger train cross-country. It was a coincidence that it crashed and derailed. Passengers were injured. The driver had been killed.
Widow suffered a mild concussion. He considered himself lucky. He didn’t mind resting up in a hospital bed for a day. It was no big deal. The doctors and the nurses had been nice enough. They had kept him happy for a day. He had free room and board. The tab was picked up by the train company, naturally.
But when CIA Agent Benico Teller walked out of Widow’s past, and into his hospital room; he wasn’t sure what to think. Teller shows Widow a photograph of a dead man, a dead man that Widow had killed. Long ago. Only the dead man isn’t dead. Couldn’t be. He was right there. Plain as day. Alive.
Now, Teller has an offer that Jack Widow can’t refuse.