by Scott Blade
Widow returned to the rear cabin and looked down under the seat. He moved a loose metal flap and pulled out a parachute. It was white, which wasn’t good, but the night sky was fairly cloudy, maybe enough to not worry about it.
He pulled off the flight helmet and the headset. He took out the package and strapped it on. Then he went back to the pilot and yelled over the noise in the helicopter, “You got a tactical bag onboard? A waterproof one?”
The pilot said, “I don’t know. I didn’t prep the chopper. Check under the back bench.”
Widow started to turn, stopped, and yelled back to the pilot, “Lower us to three thousand feet.”
The pilot knew that was a low drop altitude, normally designated for emergency jumps, but he didn’t protest.
Widow went to the rear bench and pulled up the cushion and looked in a small cargo space. There was a small bunched-up bright orange bag. The color wasn’t appealing to him, not for night work, but it was made to be waterproof, and he needed to protect the dead guy’s cell phone. So he took the bag, opened it, and pulled out some stuffing that must’ve been left inside from when it was first opened. He put both phones in and inspected the rest of the cargo space. He found a small tactical flashlight, which worked, and a pair of small field glasses. Both would come in handy. He put the field glasses and the tactical light in the bag, as well as the Glock 17.
Widow took the bag and walked over to the side door. He kicked off his shoes and socks and stuffed them into the bag, zipped it closed, and pulled the strap tight around him—shoulder to underarm. The bag was tight to his chest.
The chopper yawed and tilted, and in seconds, the pilot said, “We’re here.”
Widow jerked open the door, and the metal scraped along the track. The door came open, and immediately he was slapped in the face with a cool wind. He looked out over the terrain. There were some thin clouds beneath him.
Luckily, Lake Hills wasn’t a major town. The lake was called Lake Medina. From a bird’s-eye view, it looked like a squid with only two tentacles. They waved in opposite directions, the legs to the west and the south and the head to the north.
At the head, he could see Sheridan’s family house. He jumped.
The freefall was only three seconds, or it should’ve been, but he held pulling the chute for an extra two seconds, which was dangerous. He pulled the ripcord, and the chute blew out and jerked him back.
The wind wasn’t too cold, but he was still damp from the fire sprinklers. He shivered. He fell slowly, like a kite that hung in the air. He aimed for the center of the lake between the squid’s head and its legs. As he fell, he kept his eyes on Sheridan’s house. He didn’t want the Secret Service to see someone parachute in.
On his way down, he checked the bag, made sure it was still zipped shut and secured to his chest. He needed everything in it and couldn’t afford to lose it.
He waited until he was about fifty feet from the water and then snapped himself out of the chute and hell dove the rest of the way—feet out, legs straight to break the water’s surface.
He curled in his toes and made fists with them, and he took a deep breath. The air filled his lungs, and he held it. The water engulfed him. Bubbles erupted and fizzed around him like a stomach tablet thrown into a glass of water. He let himself sink about ten feet, and then he checked his chest for the bag, which was still there.
The lake water wasn’t cold, but wasn’t warm, either. The temperature was somewhere below being called chilly. A month later and it would’ve been cold, but it was still October.
He kicked with his legs and started to swim north. He made it about twenty yards before he stopped. Widow had been a SEAL, and even though he was undercover, he’d still had to learn how to swim deep and hold his breath for long periods of time. But he was no longer a SEAL, and long breath-holding was a perishable skill. He needed air. He looked up at the surface, then back at the ground he had covered so far. He didn’t want to come up under the parachute. He thought he had passed it but wanted to be certain. He saw the edge of the chute floating in the water. One good thing about jumping with a white chute was that it was easy to find.
He swam up and broke the surface, took a deep breath and breathed in and breathed out. He stayed on the surface for several long seconds. He twisted and turned, scanning and getting a three-hundred-sixty-degree awareness of his surroundings.
No sirens. No flashlights. No loud shouting or even newly lit windows on the houses around the lake. No one had seen him come in.
He stayed in the water for another twenty seconds, flipping the pages of his old SEAL playbook in his head, searching for a tactical play. He had to deal with an unknown number of Secret Service agents, with which he didn’t want to engage in combat. Secret Service weren’t the bad guys here. Plus, they were not a group of law enforcement guys he wanted to tangle with. He doubted he’d get away from a group of them like he did the three small-town cops back in Romanth.
After ten more seconds, the right play came to mind.
Widow looked back at Sheridan’s house, which was pretty big, the biggest on the block. It was three stories—red brick and white pillars with white shutters. There was a large, wooden deck built around the back. Widow imagined it had a barbecue pit and a porch swing, maybe even an outside, fully stocked bar.
There was a T-shaped pier over the lake, about a hundred feet from the water’s edge. Two boats were roped to the pier. One was a huge boat, like a yacht. Which only made sense to Widow if there was a river or canal that led out to the Gulf, but Lake Hills was pretty far from the Gulf. That made Widow think the yacht was just for extravagance. Then again, Lake Medina seemed pretty big. Not Great Lake size, but big enough.
The second boat was a twenty-footer—good boat.
Widow made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and started to swim to the opposite shore from the squid’s legs.
CHAPTER 36
THE SOUTHERN BEACH was beautiful. Widow had never heard of this lake before, but he was discovering that Texas was a lot more diverse than he had thought when it came to the terrain. It had greenery, mountains, lakes, beaches, cities, and desert. Reminded him of California in that way.
He came up on shore, lay back on the sand, and stared at the sky. He had swum too hard and was soaking wet, again. Being a Navy SEAL once didn’t mean he was still a champion-level swimmer. He felt out of shape. Swimming muscles were different than others, and he hadn’t used his in a long time.
He caught his breath and sat up, looked back over at the north end of the lake. Sheridan’s house had lit windows, but no backyard activity that he could see.
Widow stood up and took a look around. The nearest house was several football fields away. He figured the beach was natural and not manmade because there were large disc-shaped rocks jutting out of the sand. He left his shoes in the bag because he was going to be back in the lake in a moment. He opened the bag and took out the dead guy’s cell phone, checked to make sure that it hadn’t gotten wet. It worked fine.
He placed the phone back in the bag and took out the flashlight, flicked it on. The beam fell down across the dirt. He looked around. There was a hill, a small parking lot with three rows of three spaces, and a small cluster of trees. He walked up the hill, watching the ground, avoiding stepping on sharp rocks and debris. There wasn’t much debris. The locals kept the beach clean.
At the top of the hill, he scanned the area. No one was around. He turned back and looked at Sheridan’s house. It was the same, but he eyeballed it for a long second. He moved over to the west side of the hill and eyeballed the house from there as well. Then he went to the east, near the forest, and checked out the house and the rest of the lake. He found the angle he was looking for and turned toward the trees. He didn’t have to look far to find the right one.
He walked over to a younger tree and studied it, looked back over his shoulder at the Sheridan house and then back at the tree. He pointed the flashlight beam at the ground and flicked the switch
again, changing the beam. The first setting was a straight, low beam. The second was a bright beam. And the third was strobe flashes. He left it on the strobe and jammed it into a hole in the side of the tree. He tugged it around to make sure it would stay, and it did.
Widow stared back at Sheridan’s house. He took the dead guy’s cell phone out of the waterproof bag, looked through the missed calls. He saw a contact labeled “Principal.”
CHAPTER 37
JOHN SHERIDAN tried to call the last member of the team he had spoken with, and there was no answer. There was no answer at Danny’s. No answer from Glock’s phone. No answer from Kill Team B. He called several times, each phone number. He even tried to call from the house phone, which was dangerous. The burner phone masked his identity even though both Kill Teams knew who he was. But no one else in their organization did. That’s why he always insisted he be referred to as the Principal. Now, no one was answering him. Therefore, no one was calling him anything.
He sat in his study on the second floor of the house and held papers in his hand, like he was reading them thoroughly, in case one of his extended family members walked in. Downstairs, he was having a party, a family gathering. Not anything too big, just about twenty or so people, including his wife, her family, his kids, and his brother. None of them had any idea who he really was. Well, they knew him, but only part of him. Like most great men in history, Sheridan had great flaws. That’s how he thought of himself, as a great man. Only he hadn’t been given the chance to show how great he was. Not yet. So far, he’d had to play the politics game the way it had always been played, like he was concerned about every citizen in his constituency. He had to behave and act like no one else mattered more to him than them. He had to pretend he didn’t have foreign influences in his life. To be fair to what was left of his conscience, he did start out caring about all Americans. He used to believe all men were created equal, to a point.
But the Mexicans, they shouldn’t be here. He knew that. He’d always known that. Why couldn’t they stay in their own country? Make Mexico great. That should be their focus, not coming over here and stealing American jobs. Stealing American women. Stealing the American dream.
He didn’t hate them, not necessarily. He liked to keep himself in the dark about what Danny’s crew did. Those boys were worse than he was. He knew that. Sometimes he had problems sleeping, but the money helped. Knowing that Auckland Enterprises would secure border wall contracts would help his bank account. Then he could provide good futures for his children, right?
These were the thoughts he focused on. He tried not to wonder where the hell Glock was.
WIDOW CALLED the contact labeled Principal in the dead guy’s phone. The phone rang not even a half second, and a voice answered. Not a lizard voice like Glock’s, but a normal Texas voice with a deep accent, almost like it was fake. It said, “Where the hell have you been?”
Widow didn’t answer. Instead, he breathed heavily, in and out. He wanted to put some fear into Sheridan, and he had seen this trick work in one of the Rambo movies. It seemed to work here because Sheridan said, “Who the hell is this?”
Widow hung the phone up and slipped it back into the waterproof bag.
He looked through the field glasses out across the lake at Sheridan’s big backyard. He clocked a figure in the dark on the second-floor balcony. It was a Secret Service agent, standing near a set of French doors that led to the second floor of the house. The agent was good. He looked left, looked right, and stopped at the center of the backyard each time. He was like a robot. He wasn’t leaning against the wall but had his back close to it. Widow couldn’t see his eyes or the details of his face because he stayed out of the lights over the backyard. Well-trained.
There were lit houses and boathouses and piers all around the lake, not enough to light up the lake, but enough to distract the agent from the flashing tactical light. Also, the distance was too far for him to notice it with the naked eye, which was good because Widow didn’t want the attention of the Secret Service, just Sheridan.
Widow slipped the field glasses into the bag and zipped it up, checked it again to make sure it was strapped tight around him, and then returned to the water. He took a deep breath and dove in. He targeted the north shore, Sheridan’s house, and swam.
THE LAKE was calm, which meant Widow had to either swim slowly or stay underwater for most of the trip across. He chose the latter. He stayed as deep as he could and swam at a nice, steady pace. He made few waves. He came up four times for air, which wasn’t bad for as long as the lake was.
Widow swam to the surface and lifted his head out of the water slowly, like a crocodile—eyes first and then nose and mouth. He stared ahead and saw the bottom of the yacht and then the other boat. He looked up to the house. He saw the Secret Service agent.
The agent was still swiveling his head from side to side with no notice of Widow. Widow took a breath and dove back underwater and swam toward the yacht.
He swam for less than another minute and was at the bottom of the yacht. He kept his head behind it and out of the agent’s cone of vision. He moved around and saw a pair of WaveRunners he hadn’t noticed before. He took another look at the agent from around the double motors of the yacht. He waited until the agent looked to the east then dipped down and swam across the surface, past the WaveRunners, to the twenty-foot boat. He reached up with his right hand, hauled himself up, and rolled into the boat. He stayed on his back and waited. He knew that if the Secret Service had noticed him, all hell would break loose.
He waited, but nothing happened. No floodlights. No alarms. No shouting. And no shooting, which was the most important thing.
He lay on his back and unzipped the waterproof bag. He felt around for the phone and pulled out the sheriff’s phone by mistake. He tossed it back in and felt around for the other one. He found it and hauled it out. He had several missed calls—all Sheridan.
He called back.
Sheridan said, “Who is this?”
“Listen carefully.”
“Okay.”
“Are you alone?”
Sheridan said, “Yes.”
“Got a pair of field glasses?”
“A pair of what?”
“Binoculars?”
“Yeah.”
“Get them and walk outside. Backyard.”
Sheridan said, “Okay. One minute.”
But one minute was really about five seconds. Widow leaned up against the side of the boat and peeked his eyes over the side. He watched the house.
The French doors next to the Secret Service agent opened up, and a man stepped out. It was Sheridan, must’ve been. He wasn’t a young guy, but he was far from ancient. Maybe in his fifties. A bit of a belly—nothing that a month of walking and eating better wouldn’t cure. Widow couldn’t tell if he was bald or not because he wore a baseball cap—Red Sox maybe. He looked clean-shaven, wore a button-down Oxford, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A black or brown sweater vest over the shirt and a pair of chinos, maybe navy blue. He looked like a typical politician trying to look casual.
Sheridan had a cell phone in one hand and a pair of heavy black binoculars in the other. The binoculars were twice the size of the ones Widow had.
Sheridan said, “What am I looking for?”
Widow said, “Look straight across, south side.”
Sheridan looked through the binoculars and didn’t need to look long. He said, “I see it. The flashing light.”
“Yes.”
Widow watched the Secret Service agent, who was just out of earshot. He started to move closer to the senator.
Widow said, “Get rid of the Secret Service.”
Sheridan turned to the agent and said, “I’m all right, Steve. Can you give me some privacy?”
Widow watched carefully. He didn’t want Sheridan giving the agent any signals or signs that he needed help.
Steve said, “No problem, Senator. I’ll head to the front. Do a sweep of the perimeter.”
“Sure thing, John. Holler if you need me.”
And the agent walked in through the doors and was lost to sight.
Widow said, “Good.”
“Who are you? Where’s Glock?”
“Glock’s dead.”
Silence fell across the phone.
“That got your attention?”
Sheridan gulped and said, “Yes.”
“Good. ’Cause they’re all dead.”
“All?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I killed them.”
Sheridan said, “You? Alone? Who are you?”
“I’m nobody. Just a guy interested in one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Got any money in the house?” Widow asked.
Sheridan said, “What?”
“Money. Got any money?”
“Yeah. In a safe. Not much, though.”
“How much?”
Sheridan was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “About fifty thousand.”
“You lie. You got more than that.”
Sheridan said, “I’ve got over a hundred thousand in cash. There’s more in jewelry.”
“Forget the jewelry. I only care about the cash. That’s all I want, John. Cold, hard cash,” Widow lied. “Bring all of it.”
“Bring it where?”
“Across the lake, John,” Widow said.
Sheridan was silent.
Widow said, “Put the cash in a bag. Get in your boat and come straight across to the flashing light. Otherwise, I’m sure the cops will be interested to know what I know.”
Sheridan asked, “What do you know?”
“Oh, I know everything, John. I know about Hood. I know about Glock.”
Sheridan was silent.
“I know about the wall, John.”
More silence.
“I know about the Jericho Men, John. I have proof. Lots of proof, actually. I have so much proof that I’m sure it will do much, much more than put you in prison for the rest of your life. I’m sure that your kids’ kids won’t be able to outlive the shame. In fact, I bet their lives might be in danger as well.”