by Scott Blade
Lenny moved his finger away from the trigger, in case the movement he saw was another human being. He did not want whatever it was to startle him again. He might squeeze the trigger, accidentally. And kill someone. He did not want that. He had enough problems.
Another strange thing was that he was far from the nearest village, and at least five miles from the nearest farmhouse. So, who the hell would be out here?
He looked through the scope, adjusted it again. Repeating all the same steps to bring it into focus. He veered the rifle up and stared over a ridge into the trees beyond. It must’ve been almost four thousand yards. Farther than he had ever fired accurately before.
He saw a sparkle of light flash. It was quick, like someone was signaling to him with a flashlight or a mirror. Then he saw it a third time. It was not a flashlight. It was a reflection, maybe a mirror.
What the hell? he thought.
He adjusted the sights and the zoom and the focus again. Something came into focus. He saw a figure, lying above the lip of the ridge, behind the watermelon, far in front of the tree line. Someone was lying prone on the ground, looking back at him.
How the hell had he not seen him before?
The figure was blurry. He adjusted the scope again until he could see more detail.
He saw the shadow of the figure on the ground, like a heap. It was small and tight. Then he saw the reflecting surface that flashed at him. He saw it clearly. It was the glass end of a rifle scope. The wrong end.
It flashed a reflection at him once again. He breathed in heavily.
He saw one last flash from the rifle, only it did not come from the scope. He knew that because he heard a distant POP! that became an echoing BOOM!
Seconds later, maybe less, he would never know for sure. He would never know, because right then James Lenny’s rifle scope exploded, and a bullet ripped through it and blasted out the back of his head. His skull exploded. Deep red mist sprayed out. Along with parts of the front of his brain that had mashed into the back of his brain.
From a bird’s-eye view, Lenny’s clothes and back and a couple of feet past his sniper mat, everything was painted red.
His head had blown back with the force of the bullet, in one quick whiplash, and then his neck muscles had whipped it back forward, like it was spring loaded. His empty right eye socket beat against what remained of the scope and stayed there.
THE SNIPER, almost four thousand yards away, stayed down for a long moment, watched through the scope, until there was no sign of Lenny getting back up.
The sniper stood up, slowly, picked up a pair of field glasses and zoomed in on Lenny’s position, saw the damage, saw the red mist, wafting in the air like a smoke plum that would not die.
The sniper smiled, then turned back to the rifle and disassembled it in seconds. The rifle fit neatly into a black backpack—the stock, the weapon system, the magazine, the bolts, the barrel, and a box of ammunition, all of it. It all had a place in the backpack, because the backpack and the rifle were built and designed together.
After it was all reset to smaller parts, the sniper zipped up the backpack, rolled up the sniper mat, took off a pair of black shooting gloves, and set off to the kill to take a photograph of the dead body, for a keepsake.
CHAPTER 2
FOUR THOUSAND MILES AWAY, but twenty-five miles southeast of St. Marks Memorial Hospital at the center of Minneapolis, Jack Widow rode the Empire Builder, a long, historical passenger train, departing from Seattle first, then easing away from the Emerald City, mostly threading parallel with the Canadian border, and winding along only hundreds of miles from it. The train passed through the Cascade Mountains, raged across heavy tracks over the Columbia River Gorge, twisting through Glacier National Park, baking across sandy low and high deserts, barreling through endless grassy fields in Big Sky Country, and wayfaring the plains of North Dakota.
Symptoms of a long, cold winter dredged along for half of the trip out of Seattle and finally relinquished a little of its hold on the land at the last leg of Widow’s forty-six-hour trip from Seattle to Chicago.
Widow had walked the train several times, ate in the dining car, slept twice in the sleeping car—two full seven-hour cycles, gone to the bathroom several times, and showered twice. On the last shower, he stepped into the sleeping car in the daytime, to avoid sharing a car, and hung his clothes over the side of an empty bunk across from him to dry. He lay down on the opposite bunk and closed his eyes.
When he woke, the car was still empty. No one had entered to bother him. Perhaps, the sleeping car attendant had checked on him once or twice, without him noticing. Normally, Widow wouldn’t have believed that anyone could sneak up on him in his sleep, but after meeting the staff, he knew differently. They were professionals. The sleeping car attendants were as quiet as church mice.
They should teach classes in Navy SEAL school, he thought.
Widow had served with top-notch SEALs who made more noise on covert raids.
After his clothes had dried enough, he put them back on and returned to the spot where he’d spent most of his thirty-eight hours so far—the Sightseer Lounge car.
Widow sat at the same chair, most of the time. It was in the back corner, south side, which gave him a good view of things coming, and cut him off after they passed.
He drank coffee, which wasn’t the best in the world, but probably the best he had ever had on a train. It ranked up there with the best he had ever had in his life in regards to freshness. It was like they made a fresh pot every time he wanted a refill, which was a lot because the cups were these dainty, white ceramic things, that probably cost fifty bucks apiece. They looked more like fancy British tea cups then coffee mugs. Widow seemed to remember a similar design and pattern and trim when he’d visited Buckingham Palace, once in another life.
The grip was so incredibly tiny that Widow could barely fit his pinkie finger through it, joint to fingernail, before it got stuck. These were clearly designed for smaller people.
The lounge car attendant served the coffee on little saucers to match. They clinked when the coffee cups contacted the small circular surface. The lounge car was relaxing and quiet in the way a café can be relaxing and quiet. All he heard were the ambient sounds of clinking coffee cups, the tinkering of stirring spoons, and the low murmur of surrounding conversations.
The car wasn’t full, but it wasn’t empty either. Widow would guess that it was nearly half full of likeminded passengers who’d rather spend their time staring out the window, sipping coffee, sharing in life stories with fellow passengers, over sitting back in coach.
Widow didn’t know much about train design or train engineering or train construction. He considered himself a layman in terms of details of the processes involved in building a train like this one. But he wasn’t completely in the dark about the Empire Builder. He liked to learn things. Life is boring without constant new information.
Widow had read a thick booklet about the Empire Builder that the lead attendant had retrieved for him. It was a courtesy gift.
The lead attendant had told him so. He had told him that he was free to keep it, but if he wasn’t going to keep it, then he should return it when completed. Turned out that Amtrak used to hand them out like oxygen, but most people trashed them or left them behind or used them as coasters, leaving coffee rings on the cover. The booklets were expense to make, expensive to maintain. So, when the publisher hiked up the prices and Amtrak started losing business, maybe ten years ago, according to the lead attendant, corporate had no choice but to limit the books to purchase only. The lead attendant kept a handful of them for the purposes of loaning them out. It was an extra little touch that he added to the experience. He said that occasionally he met a passenger, like Widow, who was alone, who took the train more out of tourism than travel. And he would offer the booklet, in case the passenger showed interest.
Widow set the Empire Builder booklet on the tabletop in front of him. He sat in the Sightseer Lounge, stared
out the panoramic windows to the south, watched rolling hills in the distance, saw storm clouds a few miles after that, and swiveled his head to the north, looking past empty seats and empty tables out the large windows.
He had noticed that most of the people who were in the lounge car stayed away from him. He wondered about it for a brief moment, and then he let it pass.
Widow was a tall guy, six-foot-four, and two hundred twenty pounds, all natural muscle. He had dark features, short dark hair, and a slight beard to match. He had been told that his eyes were both welcoming and terrifying. They were ice blue. To be honest, this was something that he used to his advantage when the situation called for it.
Like back in California, when he’d met a woman named Molly DeGorne. With her, he had used his eyes to portray trust, intimacy, and friendliness. But with his enemies, he offered a different look. A look that wasn’t called for in his current moment. But he wondered if his eyes were a factor in why the other passengers had decided to sit far away from him. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe, it was because he had taken off a black, leather bomber jacket, and rolled up the sleeves of a blue, knit long-sleeve shirt to reveal a pair of sleeve tattoos. Both arms. Both colored in red, white, and blue—American flag designs—draping over his forearms and wrists. Tattered, ripped, and torn flags. They represented battle flags from a lifetime ago.
To the onlooker, they were tattoos. To Widow, they were symbols, like scars, in a way. He saw both his tattoos and his scars as scars. They were reminders, mementos of past lessons and past friends.
It was reasonable that the other passengers avoided sitting near him because of the way he looked, his size, his tattoos, or his eyes, whatever it was. He understood all of it. People judge other people by the way they look, books by their covers and all. It wasn’t just an American thing; he had been judged all over the world.
No big deal.
Widow stared down at his watch. The time was just eleven past midnight. The wristwatch reminded him of a woman because he had picked it up, secondhand, at a military consignment store, back in Seattle, back after saying goodbye to Molly DeGorne.
He had stuck around with her for a while, after the events at Gray Wolf Mountain National Park, after the cops told her that she could return home.
But she had no home to return to. It turned out that it had been burned to the ground, before he met her. So, they rented an apartment north of the city center, a nice area, overlooking the Puget Sound. DeGorne seemed happy for a time. Widow was happy for a time as well. Before they knew it, a week had gone by, and then two more days, and then the inevitable happened.
The honeymoon was over. Reality slapped them in the face like a crack from a baseball bat. Widow had experienced it several times before, but every time it took him by surprise. It shouldn’t have.
He was a nomad. By definition, Navy SEALs are violent nomads. It’s one of their common nicknames. They trained to embrace the life of being far out in the field for long stretches of time without support, without communication, without orders. And Widow had been an undercover NCIS agent, embedded with the SEALs, the first of his kind. He had endured very long stretches of being out in the cold.
It was hard, at first, but by the time he retired from the SEALs and quit the NCIS, it had become a lifestyle that he couldn’t let go of.
DeGorne had to reboot her life, after she lost everything. At first, she wanted Widow to be in it. But the reality had caught up to her, too.
Her husband had died, her house gone. She was reborn, a fresh new start. She didn’t want a man to take up a significant portion of it. She wanted her freedom. She’d told Widow that the night before he boarded the Empire Builder. She told him as he was already thinking about leaving in the back of his own mind. Her anxiety about starting a new life with him in it had been a blessing for him. It had been a way out. It had been an escape hatch that she opened for him with red carpet laid out. He could leave her, guilt-free.
He took it. He didn’t apologize. He stopped her from apologizing. He remembered kissing her, one last, passionate time. He remembered her latching on to him like she was saying goodbye to an old friend, like she was on the docks, watching her sailor sail away to war, never to return.
Widow hated goodbyes like that, but it was unavoidable. And it was necessary. It helped with closure. He wasn’t a robot, after all. He had a heart. He knew that he would think about her from time to time, but like relationships he had had before, he would move on.
Widow brought his coffee up to his lips, recalled DeGorne’s lips. Then he took a drink and finished the coffee.
He set it down on the tabletop and stared out the window.
Then suddenly, the train hissed and roared. Time seemed to slowdown. He saw flashes of light out the north window. He felt the air around him fill with tense soundwaves, like violent ripples.
Metallic sounds surrounded him, echoing at first; then they turned into fierce metal singing and then to brutal screeching. He heard people around him screaming and saw them moving, even running. He heard the horrendous sound of the train brakes squealing in the cars ahead of him. They squawked and wailed.
Widow saw the attendants running up the aisles. He saw the people in the far end of the train fight to stand up. They piled on top of each other to stare out the window, to try and see what was happening, far up the rows of train cars.
One last attendant, the one who had waited on him, started running up the aisle, until a sudden ripple of metal and torque and booming that had started at the nose of the train had undulated back through the tailing cars and impacted theirs.
The train derailed in front of Widow’s eyes. He knew that because a second after the booming sounds and the piling of passengers to the front windows, the running attendant had come up off her feet and slammed into the roof of the Sightseer car.
Instinctively, Widow grabbed a safety rail, at the base of the nearest windowsill and held on tight with his right hand. His left hand went up into the air, as did the rest of him.
Outside, the train car tore up off the tracks and plowed into the backend of the car in front of it, and the lock bolts ripped off. The front cars derailed at an intersection and plowed, one after the other, into each other.
Cars passing under the overpass, below the train tracks, were crushed into mulch and shrapnel as the front train cars came tiling down. They scattered across the highway below.
Fires exploded out of the front train cars and two gas tankers that happened to be passing as the train overturned off the tracks were crushed.
The Sightseer Lounge car erupted off its hinges and tore forward and pulled the cars behind it, veering off the tracks, crashing through trees, and leveling empty warehouses.
Widow’s left arm crashed into the glass of the window and broke, instantly. He heard the bones crack, internally, and felt the sweltering pain shoot up his nervous system to his brain. He curled into himself, as best he could to minimize any more damage.
He tried to protect his head the most, but was limited because he knew that if he let go of the safety bar, he would go flying and tumbling like everyone else. Which happened right there. The Sightseer Lounge car came up again, ramming through a warehouse wall, and tumbling over once, twice, twisting free from the cars behind it.
Widow saw the passengers at the front of the car tumble through the air, somersaulting like clothes in a dryer. Tables and chairs banged around. Dishes and saucers and the dainty coffee cups shattered into small pieces. Hot coffee spilled out of the attendant’s bar area.
The last thing that Widow saw was the attendant who waited on him, the one who had run forward to help the passengers, only seconds ago. She slammed into the roof, banging her head, cracking her forehead open. Now, she rolled around, unmoving.
The instincts that protected Widow while everyone else tumbled around inside the rolling train car betrayed him in that moment, because they told him to help her. He let go of the safety rail, tried to scramble ove
r to the attendant, but that’s when he realized the train car wasn’t done rolling.
It rolled one more violent cycle, and he went flying in the air. He held his broken left arm against his stomach, but he kept his eyes forward on the attendant.
The last thing that happened, that Widow would forget, was that he flew up, headfirst, into the ceiling, not unlike the attendant had done.
He heard a CRACK! He felt pain in his head that could only be described by a medical examiner as blunt force trauma. The last thought that ran through his mind, after wondering if the attendant was still alive or not, contained five words, words that he had heard many times before, but never about himself.
Medical Examiner. Blunt force trauma.
CHAPTER 3
WIDOW HEARD BIRDS chirping. He smelled grits cooking. Like Mom used to make, he thought. Until he opened his eyes and remembered that his mother was a terrible cook. She never cooked grits. At least, he never ate them, which was why he learned to cook on his own as a fourth grader. Back then he only did mac ‘n’ cheese or simple things like that. He remembered reaching fifth grade and thinking that he could transition to culinary excellence by cooking some kind of complicated Mediterranean thing that he’d never heard of and couldn’t identify today in a police lineup, if he were asked to do so.
The whole experiment was contingent on two important things. The first was his mom not being present. She never let him cook on the stovetop due to the gas. His mother was working another long night shift. Which ticked the first contingency box.
The next thing was that he had to refrain from burning down the house. That second contingency was what ended his chef career so early.
He remembered the fire. He remembered it getting completely out of control, too much for a ten-year-old boy to handle on his own. He remembered trying to put out the flames with an extinguisher. And he remembered feeling completely stupid when he learned later that you’re supposed to pull the pin out of the extinguisher before it will work.