by Scott Blade
Three bullets erupted through his stomach and chest, fast, before the pain could even register in his brain. He dropped the revolver and slumped down to his knees, stared up to the shadow.
A man stepped out. He wore a Kevlar vest and expensive slacks and shoes. His watch looked like a Rolex.
Gade pointed the MP5SD at Wallace and stepped closer to him.
He said, “Sorry, amigo.”
Wallace slumped forward and was dead.
Gade left him there and walked up to the fourth floor.
Chapter 44
W IDOW DESCENDED the stairwell slowly. He had been serious about the coffee grenade because that was all he had.
The coffee slurped and brimmed with every step down.
He stopped at each landing and each door. He saw a few staff members walking casually, but no one who fell into the category of a bad guy.
At the ground floor, he stepped out of the stairwell and looked around to see if he could locate the electrical room.
There was a dead guy sprawled out on the floor, and the lock was shot out.
He checked the dead guy. It was a maintenance worker—no phone on him.
Widow turned and went back to the stairs. He had to get back to Rower.
He entered and heard shouting and screaming above him. People started to come down the stairwell. He stepped aside and saw people in scrubs and a few patients.
Widow pushed past them and climbed.
He went past the first floor to the second-floor landing. It was quieter.
Suddenly, the door burst open and a hospital security guard, an old guy, tumbled backward. He had two bullet holes in his chest. Widow hopped back and hugged the wall on the opposite side of the door.
The door swung open, and he saw a gun barrel suppressor dart out, followed by an MP5SD.
The guy holding it wore a ski mask. He wore expensive clothes under a Kevlar vest.
Smoke pooled at the end of the MP5SD’s muzzle.
Widow waited till the guy was in the doorway and slammed the hot coffee into the guy’s face.
The liquid scalded and burned him.
Widow didn’t stop there.
He grabbed the muzzle with his left hand and jerked the guy forward and kicked him hard in the groin.
The guy screamed. His eyes shut, and his face burned, even through the mask.
Widow ripped the MP5SD out of his hand, reversed it. He pointed it up, behind the guy, in case there was another.
He saw no one else, just shadows and two more dead hospital staff on the floor.
Widow jerked forward and jerked the guy’s mask off his face. He was Middle Eastern.
The Middle Eastern guy clutched his groin with one hand and his face with the other.
Widow kicked him again in the solar plexus hard because he wanted him to feel it through the vest which he did.
The guy fell back and rolled around on the tile, squealing in agony.
Widow stepped into the hall and sidestepped, so his back had a wall behind it. He didn’t want any surprises.
He lifted his boot high and slammed it down into the guy’s groin again.
The guy’s eyes shot open like someone had slammed an adrenaline shot into his heart.
Widow shoved the barrel of the MP5SD into his face.
“How many?”
“What?”
Widow moved the gun and fired one round into the guy’s kneecap.
He squealed again, loud and painfully.
“How many are with you?”
“Two others.”
Widow looked up again, checked the hall and saw no one.
“Where?”
“One below us and one above.”
“What floors?”
“First and four.”
Widow looked back into the stairwell. It was automatic.
The guy shouted at the top of his lungs.
“JARRAH!”
Widow turned back and shot the guy twice more—both in the face.
The guy’s head slammed back down on the tile. He was dead.
Widow backed up into the corner. He heard footsteps running up the stairs.
A voice called out, “Idris?”
A second later, another masked man stepped onto the landing and saw his friend on the floor—dead.
Widow switched the MP5SD’s fire selector to full auto. He stepped out with it from behind the doorway and shoved the muzzle of the weapon into the guy’s vest.
“You must be Jarrah?” he said and squeezed the trigger.
The MP5SD fired faster than he could count and Jarrah went flying back into the stairwell.
His MP5SD dropped to the ground.
Widow stopped firing and checked Jarrah. The guy lay on the stairs, sieving around like a turtle on its back.
Widow bent down and picked up the other weapon, ejected the magazine from it with one hand and dropped the gun. He kept the MP5SD trained on Jarrah and knelt down, scooped up the extra magazine, pocketed it.
He stepped into the stairwell.
Jarrah was pulling a Glock out of a hip holster.
Widow squeezed the trigger, and three more rounds blasted out into Jarrah’s vest.
He dropped the Glock.
The guy was coughing blood. It seeped out from the mouth hole in his mask. And more blood pooled around him onto the concrete.
Widow said, “How many?”
“Go to hell.”
“You’re Jarrah. That’s Idris. Who’s the other dude?”
Jarrah stayed quiet.
“There are three of you, right?” Widow asked.
Jarrah looked at him, fast, like a reflex.
“Good enough,” Widow said.
He took it for an answer, and he pointed the MP5SD at the guy and squeezed the trigger.
The gun purred and fired bullets until it purred nothing.
All of the shots went into Jarrah’s Kevlar vest.
Widow stared at him. More blood pooled everywhere, and he coughed and gasped until he stopped gasping and coughing and breathing.
Jarrah was dead.
Widow ejected the magazine, fed in the new one, and loaded the chamber.
He switched the fire selector to his favorite, which was a three-round burst.
He knelt down and scooped up the Glock too. Stuffed it in his pocket.
That’s when he noticed that the borrowed thermal shirt he wore was not white anymore. It was red. Blood had splattered on it and virtually dyed it.
Widow turned back to the one called Idris and saw the mask on the floor. He bent over, scooped it up. Then he looked at Idris’s Kevlar vest. He went for it and unstrapped it and pulled it on. The vest was snug on him, but they come in one size fits all. He buckled it and slipped the mask on over his head, kept it pulled up in case he ran into Wallace.
He ran through the open doorway to the stairwell and headed back up the stairs, taking big, giant steps.
Chapter 45
R OWER STOOD in the center of the room, Glock pointed at the door. She waited.
She heard screams from down the hall.
“What’s happening?” Olsen asked.
“Quiet!”
Suddenly, someone knocked on the door from the other side.
“FBI, are you in there?” a voice asked.
Rower said, “Don’t come in! I’ll shoot you.”
Silence, then Rower and Olsen heard multiple soft purrs and wood cracking sounds.
The door rattled and shook. Parts of it pelted out like someone was stabbing it from the other side.
“What was that?” Olsen asked.
“Quiet!”
Rower knew what it was. It was bullets from a silenced submachine gun. Had to be. They were dead quiet and too fast to be fired by trigger pull, from most people anyway.
“I’m armed!” she shouted.
“That’s okay. So are we.”
“I’ve called for backup!” she lied. And suddenly she thought, why not call for backup?
>
She reached for her phone until she realized it was in her jacket pocket, downstairs.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“Liar,” the voice said. “Come on. Nobody’s coming for you.”
“The FBI is! They’ll be here soon!”
“Now, I know you’re lying. I’m counting to ten. Then I’m coming in. If I have to come in, I’ll kill you both.”
Gade didn’t count like he said. Instead, he kicked the door open and unloaded the MP5SD’s clip, full auto like a madman.
He fired until the purrs dulled down to empty bullets.
Smoke filled the air.
Chapter 46
G ADE EJECTED the spent magazine from his MP5SD and let it fall to the floor. Quickly, he pulled the backup out and slipped it home and chambered a round.
He called into the room, through the smoke.
“You still alive in there?”
He sidestepped to the right, in case Ms. FBI fired at him and aimed down the sights of the gun. He swept left to right, but couldn’t see completely through the smoke.
From behind him, he heard a sound at the other end of the hallway.
He stepped back and looked. It was the other stairwell door slamming open.
He saw one of his guys barrel through it and stop and bend over. The guy put his hands on his knees like he was out of breath.
“You okay?” he called out to him.
The guy stood up tall, taller than he recognized. The guy put up a hand and waved at him with one finger like he was trying to tell Gade to hold on.
“You look like you’re out of breath.”
His masked guy stayed quiet.
“Jarrah, what’s up?”
The masked guy kept walking to him, passing through shadows, staying out of the cones of light from the backup bulbs.
“Jarrah? Why’d you run?”
The masked man kept pounding on his chest and having a hard time getting the words out, but he kept walking.
As he got thirty yards away, Gade squinted his eyes and stared at the guy. He seemed really tall.
Gade saw blood all over the guy’s mask and Kevlar vest.
“Damn! You been enjoying yourself down there?”
The masked man kept waving his left hand, his right hand on his MP5SD.
Gade saw the guy’s trigger finger go into the housing like he was waiting to fire it.
Gade stepped closer, stepping into the doorway.
Suddenly, the masked man raised the MP5SD like he was going to shoot it.
Gade jerked his up and started to fire, but several gunshots rang out from inside the hospital room.
Rower fired until her Glock ran empty.
Widow fired two sets of three-round bursts.
Gade fired zero shots.
Instead, his Kevlar vest took several shots from the front and the side. His legs and neck took the rest.
Widow pulled his mask up, left it on like a beanie.
Gade dropped his MP5SD and clutched at his throat, which was spraying blood and running out like a geyser run dry.
He dropped to his knees.
Widow stopped dead over him and stared down.
Gade released his neck and clutched at Widow’s legs and jeans.
He tried to speak, but no words came out.
Widow looked into his eyes as he died.
Chapter 47
W IDOW TOSSED THE MP5SD and pulled up the Kevlar and dropped it to the ground.
He walked into Olsen’s room, through a dying halo of gun smoke.
He saw Rower lying up against the bed. She was clutching her stomach and chest.
She was hit.
He ran to her.
“No. Alaska!”
He grabbed at her, using his hands to cover the bloody holes. There were too many for him to plug and he couldn’t determine them all. So, he pressed down on the stomach one and the chest one. They were the two that seemed the worst.
“Alaska! Stay with me!”
She grabbed at him. She pulled on his shirt and squirmed and gasped.
Blood came up out of her mouth.
“Alaska!”
She stared into his eyes.
He heard Olsen moving around. She had hidden behind the bed.
“Is she dying?” she asked.
“GET A DOCTOR! NOW!”
Olsen jumped out of the bed. Her bare feet hit the tile. She pulled off the medical patches that were hooked up to measure her heart rate and ran back into the hall, past Gade’s dead body. She vanished from sight.
Widow held onto Rower.
She looked up into his eyes.
She tried to speak.
“Don’t speak. Save your strength,” he begged her.
She said, “I got him.”
He smiled down at her.
“Yes. He’s dead. You got him.”
She smiled a big smile, all teeth, and all blood.
He smiled back at her.
A second later, she stopped smiling. She stopped moving. She stopped clutching. And she stopped fighting.
Her arms fell limp.
Her head fell back.
The life in her eyes was gone, like that. One second she was there, and the next she was gone.
Chapter 48
O LSEN RETURNED one minute later that seemed like ten. She brought with her doctors and nurses and people in scrubs that Widow couldn’t identify.
They took Rower from Widow, but it wasn’t easy. He held her for a long, long time. He wouldn’t let go.
He finally did, and he backed away.
Blood covered him from head to toe.
The doctors and nurses and other scrub people took Rower away on a gurney on wheels.
Widow stayed in the room for a long moment more. Olsen stayed with him.
She felt responsible, but she said nothing.
Widow stared at his hands.
Finally, he spoke.
“Who did this?”
Olsen said nothing.
“WHO?”
“I don’t know. That guy.”
She pointed at Gade’s dead body.
Widow looked at her.
“Who’s at the top?”
“I don’t know. But the company is called BioWaste like I told Agent Rower.”
Widow nodded and stepped away, out of the room.
He knelt down and bunched Gade’s vest in his hand and jerked the body up in the air.
He searched the pockets.
He found a set of Lexus car keys and a wallet. He took them both.
He walked to back down the hall, stuffed the keys and the wallet into his pockets.
He slammed into the stairwell and jogged down to the first floor and entered the hallway. He went to the emergency room where they had gone to patch up Rower’s eardrum.
People in scrubs passed him and didn’t bat an eye. They were all panicking from rumors of gunfire. Most were trying to work on patients who were shot, but alive—patients who were also hospital workers.
Widow walked to the cubby and found Rower’s jacket. He sifted through it until he found her phone. He looked at the screen. He couldn’t unlock it. It was passcode protected.
There were two missed calls from a guy named Agent Bukowski.
Widow figured he’d call back. So, he pocketed her phone, and then he sifted through the last pocket and found his passport and his bank card. He pocketed them in his back pocket.
Widow left the emergency room, back down the stairs, and back to the ground floor. He walked past the same dead maintenance worker and kept going.
He figured that had been the dead guy’s first stop, which meant they were parked out back, behind the hospital.
Widow found a black Lexus LS 500, parked at the loading bay.
Widow took out the wallet and stared at it. A license inside said the dead guy who killed Rower was called Gade. He was a resident of Illinois.
There was an address, but Widow doubted it meant anything.
He
shuffled through credit cards until he found something of interest. It was an ID card with a chip in it, like a security card to open doors at the Pentagon.
He took the license and security card and two credit cards that looked like they had huge limits and tossed the wallet.
The security badge read: “William Gade. Security. BioWaste.”
Widow pocketed the cards and IDs.
He took the keys out and clicked the button to confirm that the car was the dead guy’s.
The Lexus LS 500’s lights flickered and beeped. It was right.
Just then he heard something shuffling in the trunk.
Widow walked around and clicked the trunk button on the key. The lid opened. He pulled it open.
Inside was a guy all tied up.
Widow reached down and ripped the duct tape off the guy’s mouth.
“Who are you?” he asked.
He must’ve looked like a nightmare because terror filled the guy’s eyes. He turned white.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“Get me out of here, man. These crazy guys kidnapped me.”
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Holden.”
Widow stared down and smiled.
“What man? What?”
“Holden Drug Dealer?”
“Yeah. I know you.”
Widow looked around the lot. He saw no one.
He pulled the Glock out of his pocket and pointed it at Holden.
“What man? What?”
“Who’s the head of the snake?”
“What?”
“BioWaste. Who?”
Holden looked at Widow and knew he wasn’t joking around. So, he answered the question.
Afterward, Widow dropped him off in front of Deadwood’s sheriff station, unconscious from a head wound the size of Widow’s fist.
He left him on their doorstep, still zip-tied.
Shostrom would find him, eventually.
Widow got into the Lexus. He had a long night ahead, with a long drive.
Chapter 49
I N THE MORNING, nine hundred forty-nine miles from where Widow had started, plus one time zone ahead of where he’d started was Chicago. One of the several Saudi princes in the world was named Mohammed Al Serafi, and he lived in Chicago.