by Scott Blade
He dragged him. He lowered his grip and grabbed the dead guy from behind. He dragged him, shoulders first, back to the river off the road. He dumped him down the bank and watched the dead guy roll down the hill like a bag of rocks.
Then he made his way back to the three dead sniper kills and did the same to them. He wasn’t concerned with burying them or hiding them in a hole. Just off the highway, out of view, was good enough. They’d be up in the air and out of there in twenty-five minutes, he figured.
By the time he was done disposing of the bodies, Lyn showed up on the road. Rifle in hand. He held it down in a safe trail carry position.
Lyn walked past the SUV, up to Widow, patted him on the bicep, congratulating. A gesture used by SEALs all over the world.
He said, “Nice work.”
“Back at you.”
Lyn nodded and walked over to the edge of the highway. He kept the rifle in one hand and used the other to wave out into the gloom.
He shouted something in Korean to the Kweon family.
A moment later, they emerged from out of the mist. They came up out and around the dumping ground for the four dead soldiers.
The father led the way. He climbed up the edge of the highway first and Lyn held his free hand out to help bring him up. He followed by doing the same to the daughter and then the boy. He had to step down a little farther to get the mother.
He spoke to her in Korean.
Something about medical attention, Widow figured because he started inspecting her like a combat medic doing a quick onceover a wounded soldier.
He said something else in Korean. Then he offered her assistance and he helped to guide her up the edge of the highway. They all gathered out in front of the lights of the SUV.
Widow joined.
Lyn made introductions in Korean.
The girl with the volcanic eyes looked at Widow, a bit of terror in her eyes. He could only imagine how he appeared to a child. She was maybe five feet tall and less than a buck in weight. Maybe she was ninety pounds, soaking wet. At the time, he was six-four, like now. But at that time, he had weighed more. He was in the Navy and the SEALs team and had to lift on a regular basis. He had a lot of gym muscle mixed with real world muscle. He might’ve been pushing two-forty to two-fifty pounds, all muscle, all heavy muscle.
The girl moved back out of the light. She hid behind her father, who was still talking to Lyn.
Lyn noticed and spoke to her in Korean. She looked at Widow and whispered something, which he was certain had a comparison of him to a Korean bogeyman.
Lyn laughed out loud and pointed at Widow. He bent down, whispered to her.
She giggled and stepped half out from behind her father. She looked at Widow and said an English word.
She said, “Chicken.”
CHAPTER 16
TWELVE YEARS LATER, Widow woke up in the passenger seat of the Air Force Humvee, secured to the bed of a V-22 Osprey.
He squinted. His vision was still iffy.
The Humvee and the plane and the cargo around him rattled as the plane’s twin rotor engines stopped the flight and transferred to a slow hover mode. He heard the metal bang and pull and resonate, until the plane wasn’t moving forward but was hanging, suspended above the ground. Then he felt the combination of a helicopter descending to the ground and being in a shipping container, transferring high above the ground by a crane.
The V-22 Osprey lowered seconds later.
It landed on the edge of an airstrip at the Royal Air Force base of Lakenheath. Which he had guessed was where they were landing.
Tiller unbuckled and his two guys followed him. He moved to the cargo space and told Widow to come out.
The engines were louder just before the plane’s wheels hit the concrete.
Widow unbuckled, stepped out of the Humvee.
They left the V-22.
The rotor wash breezed through Widow’s hair. No big deal. He hair was short, but Tiller was a different story. His hair was thicker than the brush he must’ve used in it. Widow was amazed at how much it blew around and, yet, whipped right back where it was after he distanced himself from the V-22.
They walked twenty-five yards away from the landing spot and met a local airman in another Humvee. This one blue, like the last. But this one seemed smaller, lighter, thinner. Widow figured it wasn’t armored as heavily, which made him wonder where the other one was headed. He figured it must’ve been slated for Iraq to continue the fight with ISIS or to Syria, to help the rebels, all while pretending not to be fighting the Russians, when actually they were basically fighting the Russians there.
The airman was a staff sergeant. His nametape said Meter, which made Widow think of the word meteor. Not pronounced the same. He learned quickly because the staff sergeant introduced himself, pronouncing it METer. Not MEETer, like the British measure close to a yard.
Tiller introduced himself and Widow and no one else. Not his guys. They didn’t complain.
They piled into the Humvee, Tiller in the front passenger seat, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the window seats in the rear bench, Widow squeezed in the middle, crammed like a sardine in a can. He didn’t complain. His arm hurt. His head hurt from the air pressure. He was feeling jetlagged, even though he’d slept on the plane. And he felt double jetlagged because he had part of the nightmare of the memory of twelve years ago and he had been ripped out of it.
He stayed quiet.
Meter drove them out to the front of the base, where they stopped in at a main office. Tiller got out, alone, and met an Air Force officer who stayed too far away for Widow to see his rank or name. But he was sure the guy was an officer, in charge of something. Maybe the base. He knew that because the guy walked like an officer, stood like an officer, nodded like an officer, and shook hands with Tiller like an officer. All of which was a bureaucratic nature and demeanor. Widow had seen it a million times before. Perhaps he was a guy who had started out with ideas in his head and love of country in his heart, but over the course of years, he had gotten swallowed up and beaten up and molded and transformed into the system’s version of a good military citizen, someone who goes along to get along. Not a boat rocker. A simple yes man.
Widow didn’t care what they were saying, but he could imagine it was something about their being there. And a lie about their goals and another lie about where they were going.
After words were exchanged, Tiller walked back to the Humvee, and dumped himself down into the front passenger seat. Meter drove off, took them to the main gates. He drove through and nodded to the guards, who were already aware to see them come through. A prearranged phone call from the bureaucratic officer, no doubt.
They drove out of the gates and onto the main streets. They drove for thirteen more silent, uncomfortable, sardine-squeezed minutes before Widow decided to speak.
He asked, “Where are we going now?”
Tiller spoke, didn’t look back.
“We’re going to the airport.”
“We just left an airport.”
“That’s a military airport. We need to fly commercial.”
Widow didn’t ask where they were headed. He already knew. He dreaded another flight, even if this one was a shorter trip than the last two.
After fifty-nine minutes of driving the English countryside, partially suburbs and partially cityscapes, they arrived at Norwich International, where Tiller had everything already prearranged as a CIA agent often does, part of why Widow never trusted him. Constant preparation at his level of operations equaled a man who planned, schemed.
They got through ticketing and local security. Tiller gave Widow a boarding pass, which said Cork, Ireland, as the destination. He was in economy with one of the guys. Either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern; he still didn’t know which. Still did not care.
He got a window seat this time and got comfortable and stared out the window, hoping to see one of his favorite views out of all the flights paths he had seen, the greens of Ireland. He figured
he wasn’t going to be able to because it was night outside. He wondered what time it was. He had lost track of time from the flight from Minneapolis to Andrews, the international flight from Andrews to Lakenheath, and now another flight from Cork.
Plus, he had lost his wristwatch. He pictured an orderly back at St. Marks Memorial Hospital finding it, keeping it. An occupational hazard.
The last captain he had flown with had mentioned the time in an announcement. He was an Air Force pilot. No need to mention it.
Widow shrugged to himself, in his seat. Rosencrantz, or Guildenstern, whoever, looked over at him as he did it.
Widow moved the fingers on his left hand, felt pain in his broken arm under the cast from the movement. Then he turned, stared out the window at the night stars, not green, but he was satisfied with it.
CHAPTER 17
THE WOMAN FROM BEIJING told Lu what to do and he did it. Why wouldn’t he?
She waited in the car in the back alley behind Cathery’s Pub.
Everything was as green as Ireland was famous for. All the clichés of the local dialects were there. All the clichés about the men and the drink were also apparently something they took literally.
Lu went into the pub, alone. No backup. She was his backup, but he wouldn’t need it she figured.
She heard a crackle of thunder in the sky. She leaned forward from the passenger seat of a rented black two-door Lexus, made by Toyota, not the official choice for a person in her position, in her line of work. Not something that she’d advertise back home in Beijing.
Her coworkers wouldn’t approve. After all they were Chinese, and it would embarrass them to have one of their employees renting a Japanese car. They weren’t fans.
She figured they wouldn’t care because there was no other option on the lot that was Asian. And Lu wasn’t going to say a word about it, not to her.
Just then lightning flashed. She saw it. High to the west. A jagged flash cracked and spiderwebbed across the sky, lighting up the gray from copious cloud cover. Then came a thunderclap, echoed by rumbling.
The rain came next. It started as a drizzle for about ten seconds and then it was a full-on downpour. The drops pelleted off the windshield. She looked over at the keys hanging in the ignition, where Lu had left them. He had left the engine running. He had left the headlights on. She sat in the passenger seat. She leaned across the seat and the console, reached around the steering column and clicked the switch for the wipers. They fired on and wiped at a medium pace. The water cleared for fractions of a second and then returned, and cleared and returned. It repeated in a kind of ominous, menacing predictable pattern. Soothing. In a way.
She sat back up and heard gunshots. Two of them. Followed by thunder, which would’ve masked the gunshots.
Cathery’s Pub was closed, naturally. The time was too early in the morning. It wasn’t an all-night establishment. Although, she figured it could’ve been. All the other clichés about the Irish had been proven, in her mind.
She looked back and around. Saw no one coming. No one heard the gunshots. And if they had, they’d ruled them out, chalking them up to thunder.
The back door to the pub, right there at the top of a flight of stone steps, one o’clock on the dial from the hood of the Lexus, came slamming open in a single violent arc, like someone had kicked it open from the other side. Which was almost true.
What actually happened was that Cathery, himself, came flying out the door.
He rolled and bounced off the bottom step. He rolled again on the dirt and cobblestone in front of the car. He stopped right in front of the car, about a yard in front of the grille.
He got up, slowly, on one knee. Then on both.
The woman from Beijing saw blood on his face. He had taken a beating. Nothing too serious. Nothing fatal. Nothing hospital-worthy. Not so far. Outpatient maybe. That’s all. His nose was broken. That was obvious. It was black and blue and gushing blood. One of his eyes started to swell.
Lu appeared behind him, standing in the doorway, top of the steps. He looked both ways. Up and down the side street. Saw no one watching. No one coming.
He had a Glock 17 in his hand, down low, in line with his chest. Smoke exhausted out of the muzzle.
She decided it was time to get out, play her role, play good cop, only without the cop part. Which would’ve made both of them dangerous, deadly, not to be trusted.
Hopefully, Cathery wouldn’t figure that part out.
She looked up at the pouring rain and looked to the side of the pub near the stone steps. There was an awning, but it was too high and far from Cathery to be an effective interrogation point. She was going to have to get wet. She looked around the car’s interior. Checked the foot wells in the front. Checked the backseat. She smiled. Lu had brought an umbrella. She grabbed it and got out.
She popped the umbrella and stood under it.
Rain pellets sounded over the top and echoed underneath the umbrella’s dome. She walked out in front of the headlights.
Cathery was up on both knees. Face bloody, but not serious. He could talk. He could answer questions.
“Who are you?” he asked and spit blood, far. The projectile hit her shoes.
She looked down and sighed. Guess good cop was out.
She raised her boot, like she was inspecting it and, in a swift, vicious blow, she kicked him right in the same broken nose.
If it hadn’t been all the way broken before, it was now.
The remaining unbroken bones in it snapped and cracked and split. The sound was loud, like a habitual knuckle-cracker in a dead-silent church. It was so loud that the woman from Beijing looked around, instinctively for more thunder.
Cathery grabbed at his face and howled in pain.
“What the hell do ye want?” he shouted.
Lu walked down the steps into the rain. He circled around Cathery like a predator.
“I dun told ye that I don’t work for the Chinks anymore.”
Lu tapped the guy on the top of the head with the Glock’s barrel. A hard tap. The sound was audible, not the metal on skull sound that one would expect to hear, because the Glock 17 was constructed mostly out of a hardened polymer, but it was loud enough.
“Mr. Cathery, that kind of talk isn’t necessary.”
Lu brushed the barrel of the Glock against the guy’s ear, a reminder, in case he forgot the last one, that there was a gun present. A reminder that he had already fired it into the guy’s ceiling, twice.
The woman from Beijing said, “I’m not here for the matter of unearned wages that you took from my government and, so far, haven’t held up your end of the deal. In fact, I don’t even know exactly what it is that they would want with a flatfoot like you.”
He stared up at her.
“What I do want to know, which I’m sure that Lu has asked you already, is about a stranger.”
“The only strangers here, lass, is you!”
He spat more blood, in defiance, but not on her boots. He had learned that lesson. Which meant that he was capable of learning. That was good. That was going to keep him alive.
She said, “Mr. Cathery, if you don’t cooperate, I’m going to have my associate shoot you.”
“You won’t do that. This is Ireland. You can’t get away with that here.”
The woman from Beijing laughed.
“Of course I can.”
“No way, lass. If you shoot me here, you better kill me here.”
She smiled at him, bent down, stayed out of grabbing distance. The umbrella came with her. The whole move was a dramatic thing. She knew that, but these things were about shock and awe. He had gotten the shock part. Now it was time for some awe. Theatrics.
She said, “What do you think I meant when I said he was going to shoot you?”
Cathery said nothing.
“He’ll shoot to kill. We don’t waste time. We don’t have time to waste. You don’t tell me what I need to know, we’ll just shoot you dead. No problem. You think the
Gardaí will give a shit? They’ll find your dead body out here in the trash. And when they do, they’ll search your pub and discover that you’re an arms smuggler. They’ll think you were killed in a deal gone bad. That’s all.”
He stayed quiet. Spat more blood. Not at anyone, just out on the ground.
“What do you want?”
“I told you. A stranger bought a weapon from you.”
“I don’t sell to strangers.”
“You must’ve. You’re the most prominent arms smuggler within fifty kilometers.”
“A hundred,” he corrected her, smugly.
“A hundred. You must know who it is.”
“I didn’t sell to any strangers. But might’ve been one of my guys.”
“You already know who I’m talking about. Don’t you?”
Cathery’s thin hair was soaked. The rain ran the blood down off his face.
“It’ll cost you.”
She looked back at Lu, who nodded.
“It’ll cost me? It’ll cost you if you don’t tell us.”
“Come on, lass. I’m a business man. I can’t give up one of my guys without some form of compensation.”
Selling out a colleague. Not an Irish stereotype, but a common criminal one, she thought.
“Give me the name and I’ll make it worth your while. Fair enough?”
“Reestablish the payment arrangement I already had in place with your people?”
“That’s a done deal. But I tell you what, I’ll get them to give you some business.”
“They’ll buy some weapons from me? China looking to expand into Ireland?”
She chuckled at the thought.
“No, Mr. Cathery. China’s not looking to expand into Ireland, or the UK, or Europe. We’re already here.”
He said nothing to that, but a look of fear of something too big for him to understand washed over his face.
“One of my guys, sold to a Chink…er…sorry, one of you.”
She said nothing.
“It must be what you’re looking for. It was a big order. One item. Expensive. Unusual.
“When?”
