by Scott Blade
A male voice answered, and he asked for Cameron.
The male voice asked, “What is this in reference to?”
Widow said, “Tell him my name.”
Harks stared at him, and Widow realized that they had patted had him down but had never taken anything from his pockets. His passport was still in his pocket.
“Tell him Jack Widow is calling for Cameron.”
Harks told the guy, and the male voice told him to wait a second. Harks looked at Widow and moved the phone from his lips. He said, “Jack Widow?”
Widow nodded.
Harks was about to make some remark, but a voice came over the line, and Harks said, “No, ma’am. This is Sheriff Ron Harks.”
The voice on the other line asked another question.
Harks said, “Texas. Romanth.”
The voice said something else, and the sheriff pulled away from the phone and put it up against Widow’s head. He leaned into it and said, “It’s me.”
NCIS Special Agent Rachel Cameron was Widow’s old boss and still commander of Unit 10, an off-the-books division of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. She was one of the only members of NCIS who knew his real name. She had been the voice in his ear for sixteen years.
Cameron was older than him, but not by much. He had never known her age. And he had asked many times. She’d never tell. But he guessed she was probably about forty now. If she still looked the same as the day he’d left, she was still a lean and muscular woman. When he had last seen her, she had long blond hair with short bangs. She didn’t look like a special agent in charge, but that was part of what made her dangerous. Widow had never seen her in action, but he had heard stories of her taking down men twice her size. Easily.
Cameron said, “Widow, I’ve been here all night and was just about to leave. So tell me…what the hell is going on? Are you under arrest?”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“What for?”
“Murder.”
Cameron sighed over the phone and asked, “Who did you kill?”
“Nobody. Not yet anyway.”
“So what’s going on?”
“Listen, I don’t have time to explain, but I will. Right now I need some information, and I need it fast.”
“What is it?”
“I need to know about a company called Auckland Enterprises.”
It sounded like Cameron wasn’t writing it down but was typing it into a computer. He heard keystrokes, and he imagined her sitting in a dark office, typing on a state-of-the-art computer.
“I also need you to look up a guy named John Glock.”
“Glock? Like the gun?”
“Yeah. Could be an alias. But maybe not.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Get on the phone with Border Patrol and find the cell number of an agent named Donna Leon. She’ll be near here somewhere. Tell her my name. Tell her she gave me a ride yesterday. Tell her I need her to call me ASAP.”
Cameron typed some more. She paused a beat, and then she asked, “What number does she call?”
Widow looked at the sheriff, and he said, “This one. Tell her to call this one.”
“What about you? You’re in jail now?”
“Yes. I’m in cuffs. Well, those cable ties actually.”
“Do you need me to get you out?”
“No time. That’ll take time. Even for you.”
Cameron asked, “What’s the rush? Something time sensitive?”
“Yeah, a little girl’s life.”
Cameron said nothing to that. She didn’t need to. She didn’t need to ask Widow any questions. She understood. He’d get free. She had known him a long time.
He said, “I’ll call you back in a half hour.”
Harks shook his head and pulled the phone away. He said, “No you won’t, son. You’ll be behind those bars over there for the rest of the morning.”
Harks pulled the phone up to his head and was about to ask who the woman was that he was speaking to, but there was nothing on the line but dead air. She had hung up on him. He clicked off and said, “Now, we had a deal. You’re gonna sign a confession.”
Widow didn’t wait. There wouldn’t be a better chance.
In a quick one-two movement, he whipped his head back like a turtle and launched it forward. One of his favorite strikes was the head-butt, a move that often got the job done. He had killed a guy once with a head-butt. He didn’t want to kill Harks. The man was only doing his job.
He landed a solid head-butt. The front of his forehead cracked and broke the sheriff’s nose. Harks flung backward off his feet and tumbled violently over the desk. He dragged the filthy keyboard with him, and the wires dragged the monitor along the desktop. He landed on the other side.
Before the deputy could react, Widow ran backward at him for almost ten feet, and then he slammed him into the wall. Widow stepped away and turned. The deputy was still standing but stunned. Widow kicked him square in the nuts—hard enough to kick a football out of the stadium.
The deputy clamped his balls and toppled over like a glass pyramid stood up straight on its point. He puked right after.
Two of the deputies had puked in one morning.
Widow didn’t wait for a victory lap. He kicked off his shoes—fast like he was back at his mother’s house as a teenager. Then he dropped to the ground, on his back, and lifted up his legs to pull his zip-tied arms past the back of his knees and over his socks. He jumped back to his feet and shot his hands out straight in front of him as fast as he could, and then, even faster, he stabbed them back into his center mass as hard as he could.
In the SEALs, they had taught Widow many, many tricks of the trade, or tradecraft as they called it. And one was how to escape from zip ties. The trick was to use force plus speed to rip them apart. He had seen a guy wear twenty zip ties before, and he had used this move and escaped.
As he stabbed them toward his midsection, he pulled apart in both directions, away from his body. By the time the zip ties touched his abdomen, they were shredded to pieces. He was free.
The deputy was still on the ground. His face was blistering red, and he had one hand still clamped on his groin. But in his other hand, he held out his M9 Beretta. He should’ve fired it, but he didn’t. Widow kicked it away and stomped down on his hand and groin—hard again.
The deputy winced forward and heaved but didn’t puke. He was all out of ammunition to puke with.
Widow reached down and twisted the deputy so he could grab the weapon he wanted from the moaning man.
He ripped a stun gun from the deputy’s belt. It was a smaller version of the ones he had seen before. It didn’t have a holster but was clipped onto the belt. That made it easy to draw it quickly, but what the manufacturer had added in convenience, Widow figured it had sacrificed in power.
Widow spun around and saw that the sheriff was just getting up over the desk. He didn’t have his Glock out, not yet. Maybe it was because he was too shocked, or maybe it was because his nose had bloodied his entire lower face. He was probably having extreme problems breathing.
Either way, Widow put him down. He aimed the stun gun and fired and watched the cable whip out behind the prongs. The sharp prongs stabbed into Harks’ chest right below his badge, and Widow squeezed the shock trigger. Electric current jolted through the cables and shocked the sheriff. For a long moment, he shivered violently, and then Widow released the current. He didn’t want to kill or severely injure the sheriff.
Harks fell back to the ground. Widow scrambled over to him and took his Glock. Hours ago, he’d had a Sig Sauer with only five rounds, and now he had both a Glock and an M9. He slid both guns into his pockets. He knelt down over the sheriff and patted him down. He found the cell phone and the keys to his truck.
Harks writhed around and took in deep breaths, trying to regain his senses.
Widow said, “Sorry about this.”
He stood back up and checked the deputy. He was stil
l on the ground.
Both men were done.
Widow waited and gave them five minutes to recover and get their bearings. Harks took only the five minutes and looked like he was ready for more, but the deputy wasn’t even close.
Widow took everything from their pockets and told them both to get into the cell. He locked them in.
Before leaving the station, he jerked the cords of all of the phones and computers and the fax machine and anything else that looked like it was capable of communication, either through the phone lines or the internet. He ripped them all apart. He didn’t destroy the phone or computer or any other machine. They could all be repaired with a trip to Radio Shack for some new wires.
He closed all the blinds and took their keys and locked the doors behind him.
He jumped into Harks’ truck and fired it up and sped off. He wanted to get outside town. He drove north and found no way out, so he turned around and headed west.
CHAPTER 25
WIDOW DROVE past dirt and rock and sporadic tree lines. In the distance, the rocky terrain settled into yellow and green grass, bushes, and some trees that were bursting with life and others that were wilting away. As he ventured west, the Rio Grande Valley moved farther south. Morning clouds scattered the sky with no signs of bad weather.
He checked his rearview mirror, which wasn’t the best view of what he saw behind him because the back window of the truck had a rifle rack. But there was nothing following him. He was safe.
Two guns were attached to the rack. They were locked by key lock. The bottom weapon wasn’t a rifle. It was a Browning tactical shotgun with a pistol grip. Above that was a Winchester Model 94 with lever action and a short barrel, a weapon that Widow had never fired before. Being in Texas, he did feel a craving to fire it, and he imagined he would.
He checked his radius in a complete three-sixty and saw no one. He pulled the truck over to the side of the road, which wasn’t very wide. He left the engine running and stepped out. First, he checked his weapons. He dry-fired the Glock and then the M9. Both worked well, but he didn’t need both of them. He opened the glove box and tossed the M9 in. Before he shut it, he found ammunition for the rifle and the shotgun. An ammo box had eight rounds left for the Winchester rifle. There were only two shells for the shotgun—disappointing—but what made him smile was that they were Magnum shells. The downside was that he had only two uses. The upside was that anyone standing in the path of just one wouldn’t be standing anymore because the Magnum shells would remove him from his legs as if he’d been hit by a speeding locomotive. Widow had seen guys hit with these shells before, three or four times. And he could remember at least one of them being blown out of his shoes.
He had full magazines for both handguns, but he picked the Glock simply because it had been the sheriff’s weapon of choice. And he figured that Harks was more likely to have a reliable weapon. The deputy didn’t convey the same level of confidence in him.
After he checked the handguns, he searched through the keyring for a little key that would unlock the rifle and shotgun. He unlocked them, took them down, and loaded and unloaded them one at a time, checking the loading actions. He took them out, aimed down the sights, and dry-fired them. Both were good weapons.
He liked the Winchester, but it would’ve been more practical if it was equipped with a long-range scope—it would be nice to pick off several of the enemies from a distance. But in the end, he didn’t care. Stealth was better for Jemma’s sake. And up close and personal was better for Widow’s sake.
He laid out the weapons across the truck bench and stepped back and pulled out the sheriff’s cell phone. He dialed Cameron, gave his code to the voice on the other end, and waited.
Cameron said, “That was slow.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It took you long enough to get out of there.”
“I had to escape custody and commit a number of felonies.”
“So what? The Jack Widow I used to know would’ve been out of there ten minutes earlier.”
Widow said, “I don’t remember being that good.”
“Are they alive?”
“Of course.”
“So you’ve gotten rusty and weak.”
“You’re suggesting I should’ve murdered two police officers?”
“Of course not. Still, it did take you too long.”
“I thought it went well.”
Cameron said, “Anyway, I got some info for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“First, on the Leon thing. She hasn’t called me back, but her captain said she’s down there somewhere, in the field.”
“Okay.”
“Soon as I speak to her, then you will.”
Widow didn’t respond.
“The next thing is that you might’ve stumbled onto something here.”
“Go on.”
“Auckland Enterprises is an international entity. It’s big on a national scale, but small compared to the rest of the world’s economies. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange only.”
Widow shook his head even though Cameron couldn’t see him. He said, “Talk to me like an idiot. I don’t understand anything about stocks.”
“Are you still reading every day, or did you forget how?”
“As much as I can.”
“It means that this is a rich company. It’s rising.”
Silence fell across the phone like she was waiting for Widow to react.
She said, “It means this is an ambitious company that was small a couple of years ago, but now they’re aggressively competing to grow.”
Widow asked, “What’s illegal about that? Isn’t that all of them?”
“Of course, it’s all of them. Where do you think the expression corporate greed comes from?”
“So what’s the connection? What’s Glock’s position?”
“Okay. It’s circumstantial but interesting.”
“Tell me.”
“First, let me say that I don’t know what evidence there is, but the FBI has been looking into them. It appears they’ve had no luck. They have something that piques their interest, but no evidence to warrant anything further than interest.”
“I know what they got. What they had. It’s the reason I’m here. They had a witness. A guy named James Hood.”
“What do you mean they had? They lost him?”
Widow said, “They lost him, and now he’s dead.”
“Dead how?”
“I killed him.”
Cameron said nothing, but Widow could imagine her face.
“I didn’t actually kill him, but I led Glock straight to him. They beat him to death and framed me with it.”
“Okay. So now you want payback?”
“Yes. But that’s not the reason for the urgency. He has a little girl. They took her.”
“Oh my god!”
“She’s only six. They’ll kill her or sell her. I have to get her back.”
Cameron said, “Understood. You know I’ll help in any way I can. I got a can of Red Bull here, and I’ll stay by the computer to give you support.”
“Thanks. I owe you.”
“All right. So…there’s no connection between Glock and the company. But Auckland Enterprises dabbles in many things, and there are two things that are across the board. And a third thing that’s very interesting.
“First, they deal primarily in the construction business. Building things. Things that nobody really needs. They work in government contracts, which are more lucrative than drugs these days. Here’s the second thing. They’ve been buying up all the construction equipment and related businesses around the Texas border. They’ve also been purchasing a lot of the land along the border. Land that no one wants.”
Widow asked, “What about heavy equipment?”
“Did you get hit in the head? Heavy equipment is construction equipment. That’s what these businesses have.”
“I don’t know much about const
ruction. What else?”
Cameron said, “About five years ago, they were acquired by a majority shareholder. A guy named Sheridan. Ever heard of him?”
“Sounds familiar,” Widow said. He tried to recall the name in his head. It was right there on the tip of his brain.
He thought of the hotel chain, but before he could go any farther, Cameron said, “John Sheridan. AKA Texas Senator John Sheridan.”
Widow said, “I’ve heard of him. He’s pushing for a huge border wall.”
“I’m glad to see you’re paying attention to the world again. But you’re wrong. He’s not the one making a major push for it. It’s one of the candidates running for president.” Cameron paused a short beat, and then she asked, “You did know it’s an election year, right?”
“I knew.”
“Good. This is where your friend Glock comes into play.”
“How’s that?”
“Sheridan has a squeaky clean political history. He’s a real fringe in his party, but his constituents love that about him. Before he was in politics, he ran a unit of the DEA.”
“DEA?”
“Yeah. You know, the Drug Enforcement Agency?”
Widow said, “I know who they are.”
Cameron wasn’t lying about being up all night. And probably not about the Red Bull, either, because she was very snappy. And he had heard her like that before. Her job required her to stay up for long hours sometimes. He used to joke to himself that her moods were like the terrorist color warnings. Red was when her joking turned to insults. Right now she was in the orange somewhere.
“In the DEA, he was head of some unit that operated in conjunction with the Mexican government. A lot. Know what that means?”
“Yeah. It means they were in Mexico from time to time.”
“Right. And that’s where Glock comes into the picture.”
“How so?”
“Your friend was a SEAL, once upon a time. Not long, though. He was jailed for drug charges. But they couldn’t make them stick, so he was discharged. Fast forward, and he went to Mexico. Dealing for some cartel. Enforcer work. He got arrested. And then his trail goes cold for a while. And then he pops back up here and there.”