by Scott Blade
The bullet hit the SUV’s hood.
There was another boom and gunshot and echo.
This bullet nailed the passenger side front wheel, and the tire exploded and air whizzed out.
Widow held his head up and stared down at the girl. He grabbed her face and pulled her head up. There was blood everywhere. In her hair, on her clothes, on his.
He stared at her eyes to see if she was still alive. He saw nothing there.
TWENTY-ONE MINUTES PASSED.
Widow tried not to think. He tried to fight the immediate guilt he felt. His training told him she was dead. Lyn was dead. They were all dead. No reason for heroics. Nothing he could do anyway.
The only thing he could do to stay alive was to stay still. Stay hidden. Right now, he was invisible.
Every two minutes, the sniper fired another round in his last known location. The sniper team knew he was alive. They were searching for him, frantically.
The bullets kicked up snow all around him. Every single time. Once, a hit kicked snow up into his face. It nearly hit him. Nearly killed him.
He started to think that the kill shot that killed the girl was meant for him. It must’ve been.
The girl with the volcanic eyes had saved his life.
Just then he heard a new sound. It was high above him. It was mechanical.
Then he saw the lights and heard the rotor blades. He heard chatter come on over his earpiece.
Americans.
They were calling him. He reached up and pressed his throat mic and responded.
The helicopter acknowledged. He heard Tiller’s voice. He was onboard the chopper.
“Widow? What the hell happened?”
“They’re all dead.”
Silence.
“How?”
“A sniper team from the border. Careful, they’re still shooting at me.”
The helicopter yawed and faced the border.
“Where are you?”
Widow said, “The headlights on the SUV. See them?”
“Yeah.”
Widow moved the dead girl and reached down and drew his sidearm. He pointed it at the headlights and shot them out. One after the other.
“I see your gunfire.”
“Come get me! Watch for the snipers. They’re on the border. Near the lights.”
A voice that wasn’t Tiller’s acknowledged and the helicopter yawed again and started descending to him.
Widow figured the sniper wouldn’t fire on the helicopter because shooting on a US vehicle was different than firing on an unmarked, unidentified American combatant. The snipers couldn’t deny that they knew an American Black Hawk helicopter was American.
The Black Hawk descended, landed twenty feet from the SUV, and waited. It blocked the path of any bullets fired from the direction he had given them.
Widow stood up, slowly.
He scooped up the dead girl and took her with him.
Two SEALs got out of the helicopter and Tiller followed. They were all decked out in gear and weapons.
“What the hell happened?”
“I told you. Snipers.”
Tiller’s face lit up, like it wasn’t a surprise.
He asked, “From North Korea?”
Widow nodded.
One of the SEALs saluted him and took the dead girl from him. The other one started to inspect the bodies and the SUV.
“There all dead,” Widow told him.
Tiller waved him on and they all regrouped at the helicopter.
The SEAL carrying the dead girl put her in the Black Hawk, laid her down and started looking over her.
Widow stepped in and dumped himself down on a rear seat. He was out of energy.
Tiller got in and ordered the SEAL to leave her behind.
Widow said, “What? No. Take her.”
“She’s dead, Commander. We can’t take her.”
The SEAL looking her over looked up, a look of shock on his face.
He tried to speak, but Tiller reordered him to dump her.
The SEAL didn’t move.
He ordered him again. And then Naval Command of the nearest ship came in and asked what was hold up was. Tiller explained and the same order was issued again.
Widow didn’t fight back.
What was the purpose?
She was dead.
They dumped her out and the helicopter took off.
He remembered learning latter that the SEAL who took her in told him something. Something he’d never forgive himself for. He told Widow that she was still breathing before they took off.
CHAPTER 40
WIDOW HEARD BIRDS CHIRPING. He thought he smelled grits cooking. He knew he was having a case of déjà vu. He started to come to. His mind wasn’t racing in the way it normally might have. Instead, it was more like jumbling. He had a splitting headache from the concussion.
The sounds of birds started to fade away as he drifted into consciousness. The grits smell also faded.
The sounds were replaced by the motor hum of twin engines. He recognized the sound immediately. The sound from jet engines. He heard wind. He felt the soft rattle of a finely made aircraft traveling at top speed.
He opened his eyes and saw a blur. Again. But it didn’t last as long as the previous day, when he woke up in a hospital.
He knew he was seated, leaned back, but seated and buckled in. The chair was something very comfortable, a captain’s chair, like the helm of a spaceship on a nineteen-sixties television show.
He craned his head up and looked down at himself and then the chair. He was still in his bomber jacket. Same blue knit long-sleeve shirt underneath. Same pair of pants. Same boots. And same white cast, only now it looked weeks old rather than one day old because it had been through the ringer. The rain in Ireland. The rolling around on the cobblestone.
His arm hurt.
He knew he was in the cabin of a plane. He tried to focus on the chair and the cabin around him. He saw colors right away. The chair was all white, leather and very comfortable, the most comfortable chair he had ever ridden in on a plane. Then his eyes came more into focus and he saw white ceilings. He saw glossy walnut paneling and cabinets and dark gray carpet, thick and comfortable looking. For some reason, it made him want to slip off his boots and run his toes through the carpet. An intended design by furniture engineers, perhaps.
He recognized the plane. It was a Gulfstream jet, maybe a G650, or something like it. Same class.
He was on another plane.
Sick of planes, he thought.
He moved his right hand up to rub his forehead, to cope with the intense feeling of a hangover. He stopped it halfway, expecting to feel the denial of metal clanging to his chair from handcuffs. But there was none.
He was facing a cabin about eight feet wide. He sat in the tail end. He could see a cluster of blurry people, seated from the wing and up. Then he saw a cockpit door and a steward service station. No steward onboard that he could see.
No one was serving coffee.
He stayed still. He didn’t want to alert the other passengers that he was awake yet. He still wasn’t sure who they were. Friend or foe?
After he was sure that his senses had returned he started moving. He sat up in his chair and looked out the window. It was daylight outside. Looked like early morning hours.
The cluster of people stopped talking and looked back at him.
They all stood up and started moving back to sit around him.
There were three people.
The first that he recognized was Cassidy. She was alive and unharmed.
She made her way through the cabin the fastest and leaned over him and hugged him, tight.
“You’re okay?” she said into his ear. Not a whisper, but just as intimate as one. He felt her breath in his ear and on his neck.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“You blacked out on us,” she said, pushing up off him. She stood in front of him, blocking the view of the two others behi
nd her.
He nodded and said, “I got a concussion.”
She said nothing, but a questioning look came over her face.
“Long story,” he said.
She remained quiet.
“What’s going on? How long was I out?”
“You’ve been waking up on and off all night.”
“All night?”
“Yeah. We’ve been flying for hours.”
“I’ve been out that long? That’s not good.”
“It’s not from blacking out. They gave you a painkiller. You’ve been asleep from it.”
“Painkiller?”
“You don’t remember?”
He shook his head.
“You woke up complaining about your head. You asked for your Tylenol. Something about it spilled back in Cork.”
Widow looked at her, dumbfounded.
“Wai Lin offered you a painkiller. You took two. She said you’d be out for a long time.”
Widow stayed quiet. He didn’t remember any of that.
“How do you feel now?”
“Like a million bucks. If it had been run over by a truck and woke up with no memory of how it got on a plane.”
She smiled and said, “You’re okay.”
She hugged him again.
She whispered one more thing in his ear.
“They took my gun.”
Widow nodded.
After that she moved back and sat in the seat next to him.
The two strangers behind her came into view. They stepped up and Widow stared at them. It was a man and a woman. Both Asian. The man was armed. Widow could see a Glock in a pancake holster on the guy’s pants. He wasn’t hiding it.
The man wore a thick brown winter coat, open at the front. He took a window seat in the aisle across from him.
The woman stayed standing. She stared at Widow, like she wanted him to recognize her, like she was an old, long-lost friend.
He looked at her. She wore a dark green pantsuit with a Chinese collar, notched. The jacket had sleeves pushed up over her elbows. She was a very attractive woman. Nicely built, from effort not genetics, he figured because she had a muscular frame like a woman who spent a lot of time in the gym. Not bodybuilder status, but like an endurance competitor. If he had to guess, he would have guessed that she was one of these busy people who woke up at five-thirty every morning to go to CrossFit, lifting and pushing blocks and big tires.
Then he saw a flash of recognition. Her eyes. They were eyes that he had seen before. They were dark and swirling and volcanic.
She smiled at him. She saw that he recognized her.
She spoke in a hushed, low voice. Like she too, was seeing an old, long-lost friend.
She said, “Hello, Chicken.”
CHAPTER 41
WIDOW WAS ON HIS FEET. Involuntarily. Unknowingly. Unintentionally. And he wrapped his arms around the girl with the volcanic eyes, tight.
An old, long-lost friend.
She said, “I’m so glad to see you.”
He let her go and backed away.
“How? How? Is this possible? I thought you were dead? You were shot in the heart?”
She smiled and stepped back. She looked at Lu, more than a look. It was a look asking permission for something.
Lu said, “Show him.”
She said, “My name is Wai Lin now.”
Widow stayed quiet.
Lin said, “I was shot. Twelve years ago. You know. You were there.”
Widow nodded. It was her. No doubt about it. The eyes, the face that had haunted him for years.
Lu repeated, “Just show them.”
Lin nodded again and she backed away, three steps farther. She reached up and took her jacket off and then started to unbutton her blouse.
Widow stayed quiet.
She untucked the blouse and finished unbuttoning it and took it off. She let it fall into one hand.
She faced Widow and Cassidy, topless.
Widow saw a gold necklace with a locket on it. The locket fell between two breasts, supported by an expensive-looking white bra. Hard for him to look at because instinctively he still thought of her as a girl he had let die.
Her skin was fair and smooth.
Lin stayed liked that, on display for them for a long second, like she was waiting for them to see something in particular.
Widow didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at. He could see just about everything. So far, she looked like a normal woman. Maybe she was more beautiful than most, but still she was normal. Everything was where it was supposed to be.
Lin turned around, slowly and revealed a long back.
She craned her head and looked back over her shoulder at them.
She had grown into a beautiful woman, but there was one major thing that set her apart from other topless women that he had seen in the past.
She had a long, thick scar that spiderwebbed just underneath her left shoulder blade. It was thick and old. It looked like a pruned, long-dead ocean starfish suctioned onto her back.
It was the Rainmaker’s bullet.
“How did you survive?” Widow asked. He was begging to know.
She turned back around and put her blouse back on, buttoned it, and tucked it back into her pants. She put her jacket back on.
“I still don’t understand. How is this possible?” Widow asked.
Lin stepped over to her right and plopped down in an empty seat next to Lu.
Widow sat back down.
“I saw you shot. Through the heart.”
“Have you ever heard of situs inversus?”
She looked at both Widow and Cassidy.
They both shook their heads.
Widow asked, “What’s that?”
“I was born with it. It’s a congenital defect where a person is born with some organs flipped.”
“Flipped?”
“My organs are reverse. They’re mirrored.”
Widow stared at her.
She said, “My heart is on the right side of my body. Not the left.”
She reached up and touched over her chest.
She said, “The Rainmaker missed. He thought he shot me through the heart. He didn’t.”
“Still. I thought you were dead. How did you survive?
“The missing police. The helicopter flying in to pick you up. The gunshots. Someone heard it all. I was taken to a hospital. I survived.”
Widow stared at her eyes, didn’t take his eyes off them.
“I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I didn’t choose to leave you behind. Any of you.”
She stared, shaking her head.
“I know. I know. It’s okay. None of it was your fault.”
He nodded, slowly, reluctantly.
Widow didn’t have a lot of regrets in his life. He didn’t believe in them. Doubt and regret are killers to a SEAL. But one of the big ones he did have was that night. Leaving her behind. Going there in the first place. Maybe her family would still be alive.
He wanted to tell her that. But he stayed quiet.
She could see his hurt on his face.
She got up and walked closer to him. Cassidy knew what she was doing and stood up, hopped over to the next seat across from him. Lin sat next to Widow and took his hand.
She said, “Hey. It’s okay, Chicken. You saved my life.”
He turned to her. A single tear streamed out of his eye. He said nothing. He couldn’t.
“Hey. You saved my life,” she repeated.
“How?” he asked.
“You just did. That night I was rescued and nursed back to health. The Chinese had a lot of questions. They kept me alive and gave me a life and a purpose.”
“What purpose?”
She looked at Lu.
“We’re MSS.”
She meant Ministry of Security Services, which was the Chinese equivalent to the CIA, but with six times the budget like the NSA, the style of MI6, and broad powers like the KGB.
“That expla
ins the sweet ride,” Widow joked, trying to get off the subject of his regret.
Lin looked around the cabin.
“It’s a pretty sweet life all around.”
“You’ve done well for yourself.”
“That’s because of you.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“If you hadn’t come, my family would still be dead and so would I.”
“How’s that?”
“Why do you think Tiller wanted my father?”
She knew Tiller’s name.
Widow said, “He was a nuclear scientist? We were told to get him out because he knew things about North Korea’s nuclear programs and back in 2007 we wanted to know what he knew.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“No?”
“My father wasn’t a nuclear scientist. He wouldn’t know the first thing about nuclear fission if ten thousand kilos of uranium fell on his head.”
“Then what the hell was he?”
“The Rainmakers.”
“What about them?”
“He was in charge of the program. The Rainmakers is…was a team of the best skilled snipers in the world. Back then, the former leader of the North, the father, wanted to create a dark force of elite assassins.”
Sounds like a comic book, Widow thought. But then he recalled stories of assassinations traced back to the North, without any proof beyond the borders. He recalled the assassination of an estranged brother of the leader, killed by an experimental poison. It killed him by simply touching someone who had it smeared on fabric.
Lin said, “He wanted to do this in secret. He thought that a group of mysterious super snipers could put real fear into heads of state.”
Widow nodded. It did sound scary.
“These guys were selected as children. They were orphans. My father helped design the program. It was a combination of twenty-plus years of daily, hourly sniper training, yoga, and medications.”
“Yoga?” Cassidy asked.
“What kind of medications?” Widow asked.
“Yoga helps snipers a lot. Teaches them how to breathe, how to remain calm. And so on,” Lin said. She turned to Widow.