by Scott Blade
James Hood had made a fire, and a good one at that, not his first time camping. There was a bright red tent with zippers in front and back. The flap was open. The wind blew and punched at it like a sail on the sea. Widow could see that inside there were two rolled-up sleeping bags.
They sat on two small lawn chairs, the kind that were low to the ground.
What he didn’t see anywhere was a chest or ice cooler. There were no cans of food. No bags. Nothing. They had no food.
Jemma was dressed like she was going to school. She had a little blue skirt on and clean shoes with big white socks. Her hair was pulled up and styled. She wasn’t dressed for camping, but she did have a man’s jacket on. Widow figured it was Hood’s because he wore a white thermal shirt and blue jeans. No jacket.
Widow looked at Jemma and tipped an invisible ball cap. He said, “Ma’am.”
“I said we ain’t got any money!” Hood said in a voice that must’ve registered in his head as firm, but by the time it released from his mouth, it was full of fear and regret, like he regretted saying it.
Widow said, “Relax. I’m not here for money.”
“Yeah, what you want?”
“I’m a passerby. I’m just passing by.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Can I sit with you guys? By the fire?”
Hood looked skeptical, but Jemma was excited. She said, “It’s warmest over on this side.”
Widow said, “Is that right?”
“Yeah. The wind blows the flames this way.”
“That’s a great observation,” he said, and he started to walk over to them. He walked up to the fire and stopped in the light. He stayed quiet for a moment and let Hood size him up. Hood’s eyes looked from top to bottom and bottom to top. It took a moment because Widow was harder to take completely in when he was close up.
Hood said, “I guess it’s okay.”
Widow said, “Thank you. I promise I have only good intentions.” And he reached back quick with his right hand and shoved the Sig Sauer back, deep into his pocket. The last thing he wanted to happen was for it to fall out of his pocket as he sat down.
He walked around the fire and stared down at Jemma.
She said, “Do you want my seat?” She jumped out of it and offered it to him.
“No thanks, ma’am.”
She said, “It’s comfortable.”
“I’m sure it’s very comfortable, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t fit in it. It’s too small for me.”
She had her neck back and her head cocked all the way back just so she could look up at him.
Hood said, “Pip, take your seat. Sir, we have sleeping bags. You can sit on one of them while it’s rolled up.”
“That’s not necessary. I can squat,” Widow said, and he popped a squat next to Jemma. He asked, “So did I hear right? Your name is Pip?”
“No,” Jemma said and leaned forward in her chair. She was full of energy.
“It’s a nickname,” Hood said.
Widow nodded.
Hood said, “Like Pipsqueak.”
“My name is Jemma.”
Widow nodded and said, “Mine is Widow.”
Jemma took a deep breath, her face very animated, and she asked, “What kinda name is dat?”
Widow paused a moment, and then he said, “What kind of name is Jemma?”
She fell back in her seat and waited for her dad to look at the stranger. Then she stuck her tongue out—fast, like a gunslinger.
Hood said, “We’re just passing through as well.”
Right, Widow thought.
Hood stuck his hand out and said, “John Smith.”
Widow took his hand and nearly rolled his eyes at the man’s terrible choice in fake names. He said, “Jack Widow.” And they shook hands.
Widow moved back near Jemma, but not too close. He figured Hood was already jumpy, and he still wasn’t sure whether or not Hood had a gun. He doubted it, but there was no being certain. So he squatted down and stayed that way for a few moments, and then he decided to just plop his butt down and take a seat in the grass.
Jemma said, “Huh! Your jeans are going to be filthy.”
“No. See, the grass is dry. Which means I’ll be able to just brush the back off.”
The one thing Widow had to ignore was the Sig Sauer jamming into his ass.
Hood broke the ice and said, “So Mr. Widow, what are you doing out here?”
Widow thought for a moment. He wanted to be honest, but he didn’t want to tell Jemma her grandmother was dead. Plus, he didn’t even know if Hood would believe him in the first place. So he said, “Like I said, I’m just passing through.”
“What, like a drifter?”
“You got it. That’s right,” he said, and it was. That’s almost always what he was doing, traveling from one ocean to the next and back again. On the one hand, Widow was all about going forward, and on the other, his journey was a circle. It went to one edge and then back to the other.
“What are you, like ex-Army?”
“Navy, actually.”
Hood was quiet for a moment, and Jemma said, “Are you a soldier?”
“I was.”
Jemma’s face turned curious, and she asked, “Were you in a war?”
Widow wasn’t sure she even had a grasp of what a war was. He figured if she was six, then she must be in the first or second grade. He hadn’t been in those grades in over twenty years. He couldn’t remember what the hell they were teaching back then. He thought it was probably spelling and reading, but hell, he couldn’t remember.
He said, “I saw some combat.”
Hood stayed quiet. Widow could see his suspicions diminishing, but Jemma’s curiosity was intensifying. She said, “The Navy. Does that mean you were on a ship?”
“I’ve been on ships.”
“One of those big ones? Like in Battleship?”
“I was on carriers more often than battleships, but they aren’t much different.”
She struggled with the word for a moment and said, “Carry on?”
“Carrier. As in aircraft carrier. They’re really big ships. Airplanes land on them.”
She looked amazed. “Airplanes land on them?”
“And take off. Mostly fighter jets.”
She asked, “Fighter jets? Like the Angels?”
“Angels?”
“You know the blue ones?”
Widow nodded and said, “You mean the Blue Angels. No, they don’t go out on aircraft carriers. They’re stationed in Pensacola and El Centro.”
She looked perplexed, and she grunted in a low voice and said, “El…el…”
“El Centro. It’s a base in California.”
She nodded like she understood, but he could see she was probably more confused.
Widow said, “So what grade are you in?”
Hood interrupted and said, “She’s homeschooled.”
Widow nodded and decided not to push it.
Jemma pressed on with a different question. She asked, “How tall are you?”
Hood interrupted and said, “Pip, that’s enough questions.”
She nodded and slumped back in her chair, and they sat in silence.
Widow looked around the horizon and figured they were about as safe out here as they were anywhere. He couldn’t foresee any way the guys who were after Hood could possibly find them out in the middle of nowhere.
LESS THAN an hour passed, and two vehicles pulled into Romanth from the west. They didn’t belong to locals. The front vehicle was a black Ford Explorer, new with all the bells and whistles of a new SUV, except this one had after-factory qualities not normal to the Explorer. It was lifted on big tires, tires built for off-road driving. A blip of dust and dirt rose up behind it as it passed the first suburb and made its way onto the blacktop. Following behind it, not close but close enough to see the dust in the dark, was Glock’s Chevy Tahoe. He followed behind with three passengers in tow.
The passenger in Glock’s Tahoe�
��s front seat was a big guy who looked like he had grown up in Nebraska and had been corn-fed his whole life. He had red cheeks and pale skin. Glock wasn’t sure about his age because he had gray hair, but his face was young. The other passengers were similar in description. They were all big white guys. They ranged in age from the late twenties, at best, to late forties. Then there was Danny, who drove the Explorer. Danny was their leader, and he was the oldest and the only one with a college degree. Glock didn’t interfere with Danny’s hiring processes, so he really didn’t know who had gone to college and who hadn’t. He was making an educated guess because most of them had volunteered for this kind of work.
Working with Danny meant they were aware of Glock, and working for John Glock meant you were a certain type of person. Not the kind of guy who went to college and graduated top of the class and then went on to a career in the militia. No—these guys either had nowhere else to go, or they loved the idea of killing Mexicans who crossed the border.
The Jericho Militia wasn’t filled with the usual type of gun nuts who joined together to protect America from illegal aliens crossing the borders. These were mercenary wannabes. They didn’t arrest people and turn them over to the Border Patrol, like some of the other militias did. Danny’s guys did the necessary work themselves.
In Danny’s SUV, there were four more guys, including Danny. Between the eight of them, they had sidearms and five AR15s and two riot guns. They had brought the necessary hardware.
CHAPTER 18
IT WAS AFTER midnight. Widow wasn’t sure of the exact time, but he figured it was zero dark thirty, a time he always naturally knew. In the SEALs, he’d had plenty of missions that took place at zero dark thirty. It was the preferred time for SEALs to infiltrate. In his experience, he had found that any time between midnight and five was a good time. Most people tended to be asleep, and people in a dead sleep were a lot less likely to retaliate in full force. In his experience, hitting enemies in those hours and finding them ready meant his team had been betrayed somewhere along the chain.
Jemma had fallen asleep and was curled up in her father’s lap. Her head rested on his thigh, and her hands were shoved into the pockets of her jacket.
The firelight was still burning, but it had died down to a small fire, which was good enough to still keep them warm.
Hood said in a hushed voice, “I don’t mean to sound rude, but I think it’s time for you to move on. We need to get to sleep. You understand?”
Widow stared up at the stars for a moment, and then he said, “They’re beautiful out here.”
Hood stayed quiet.
Widow said, “Listen, James. I gotta come clean with you.”
Hood’s eyes perked up as he realized that Widow had called him James and not John. He asked, “What’s this?”
“Sorry, James. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I needed to speak to you.”
“I don’t understand. What about?”
“I needed to know a little more about you.”
“Like what?” Hood said. He started to tremble. His fingers clenched tightly on Jemma’s shoulders.
“Take it easy,” Widow said. “Take it easy. I’m not here to hurt you. I promise.”
“Who are you, mister?”
“I told you. I’m just a guy. But James, I have some very bad news for you.”
“What?”
“Your mom is dead.” Hood looked dead in Widow’s eyes. He still looked confused and untrusting. So Widow continued, “I’m just a drifter. I didn’t lie about that.” He paused and said, “I met your mom at a bus stop in El Paso.”
“What was she doing there?”
“She was coming after you. She was coming here to Romanth.”
Hood stared down at the fire and said, “She remembered it.”
“Yeah. She said you told her about it once. Said she figured you’d come here.”
“How did she die?”
“She was an old lady. It was very hot. She just passed on.”
Hood was quiet for a long, long moment. He stared at the fire and then said, “Oh God! Oh God! She died coming after me!”
Widow stayed quiet.
“It’s my fault!”
Widow said, “She only wanted to find you and Jemma. I don’t think she knew what was going on. I don’t think she knew why you ran.”
Hood broke out in steady tears, but not a waterfall of them like Widow had seen before in men a lot bigger and a whole hell of a lot tougher. They were the tears of a man who had lost his mother. Next would come the guilt and, possibly, paralysis. Which was something that needed to be avoided until Widow could get them out of danger, and right now they were still in it.
Widow said, “James, I know this hurts, but I need to know what’s going on. I can help.”
Hood lowered his voice back to a hush and asked, “What do you know?”
“I know there’s some bad people after you.”
He nodded and said, “Very bad people.”
Widow nodded. He said, “I already encountered two of them.”
“Two of them?”
Widow stayed still.
“Oh man! Did they threaten you? How did you escape?”
“I wouldn’t worry about them.”
“Why?”
“They’re dead.”
“You killed them?”
“They brought it on themselves.”
Hood said, “Who was it? I mean what did they look like?”
“They were professionals. They weren’t run-of-the-mill thugs. These were killers—paid killers.”
“Was it a guy? A guy with a messed-up voice? Big scar on his neck?”
“No. This was a man and a woman.”
“A woman?”
Widow nodded.
“I never seen her.”
“I told you. She was professional. These two were hired killers. They’d be too expensive for regular muscle.”
“How did you…” He started to ask for details about their deaths, but then he switched gears and said, “I’m glad you took care of them.”
“I need some info. You gotta tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Tell me what you got.”
Hood said, “I was hired two years ago. On the spot. Like a temp. They needed someone to help with a situation. They wanted to show strength in numbers. Their usual guy wasn’t available.”
Widow nodded, encouraging him to continue. He folded his arms and straightened his posture, accidently cracking his back.
Hood said, “It went bad, and I got caught.”
“What were you doing? Muscle for what?”
“It was persuasion. That’s all. No one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Who got hurt? Who were you supposed to be persuading?”
“It was just this guy who worked on the city council. No big deal. Some politician. He was blocking contracts.”
“Contracts? What contracts?”
“From what I got from the exchange, it was heavy equipment purchases or transport or something.”
Widow paused and asked, “Heavy equipment?”
“Yeah. You know. Like construction equipment.”
A wolf or a coyote or a wild dog howled far off in the distance, and Hood shot a look in that direction. After the howl died down and the night silence returned, he looked back at Widow, who asked, “Who hired you?”
“His name’s Glock.”
Widow said, “Glock? Like the gun manufacturer?”
“Right. No relation to the gun. Just John Glock.”
“What else?”
“He works for someone bigger. With money. A lot of money. A corporation.”
“What corporation?”
“Auckland Enterprises.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a huge corporation. It’s behind all kinds of major projects. All over the world. Under-the-radar kinds of things. I don’t know specifics.”
“Why do the
y want you dead?”
“After I got arrested, they threatened me.”
Widow asked, “Why?”
“’Cause I overheard enough of their conversation to know the name of the company, I guess.”
Widow said, “So you got hired, things went bad, and you got ten years? Then what?”
“They told me if I ever talked…” He stopped mid-sentence and looked down at Jemma. “They said they’d kill my family.”
“So you took your daughter and ran? But what about your mother and wife?”
A look that Widow had seen before in some criminals came across Hood’s face. He said, “I didn’t think. My mom is an old lady, and my wife is dying. I guess I thought they wouldn’t bother with them.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“But they didn’t kill my mom. You said she died of natural causes.”
Widow said, “That’s true, but the two I killed were following her. You put all of their lives in danger.”
“I know. I’m sorry. What could I have done?”
Widow almost said he should’ve told the FBI, but then he remembered Jemma and Lucy were illegal. He remembered Claire Hood begging him not to involve the police.
Widow said, “What about Lucy?”
“You don’t think they’d hurt her? She doesn’t even know anything. She’s about to die,” he said and whispered the last word—die. He didn’t want Jemma to overhear.
Widow said, “James, you don’t know the first thing about these guys.”
“And you do?” he said with a bit of defensiveness and humiliation in his voice, all at the same time, like he knew he had made a huge error but felt stubborn about it.
Widow said, “I’ve known guys like this all my life.”
“From being in the Navy? But don’t you guys just sit out on a boat all the time?”
“Ships.”
“What?”
“They’re ships, not boats. And I wasn’t that kind of sailor.”
“What kind were you?”
“Actually, I wasn’t—not for very long, anyway. I was an NCIS agent for most of my career.”
“NCIS? Like the TV show?”
Widow said, “I wouldn’t know anything about a TV show. Never saw it. But I’m sure it’s inaccurate. NCIS is like the FBI for the military.”