by Scott Blade
Then a voice from the window spoke. It was followed by a face that came forward and peered out at him.
A woman said, “Better let them in.”
CHAPTER 44
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW opened the front door and walked out onto the porch and welcomed Widow.
“Who are your friends?”
“Well, ma’am, it’s kind of a long story.”
The woman was a little younger than the bearded guy. She had blonde hair, pulled back. She wore glasses and she glowed, like a woman who smiled a lot. She wore a big winter coat, blue, and far too big for her. Probably the man’s, Widow figured.
She walked with a wide stance, like she was carrying something underneath the coat.
“Are you good guys or bad guys?” she asked.
Widow looked back at Cassidy and back at the woman in the oversized coat and said, “Good guys.”
“Okay then. This is Lawrence. I’m Lara. Gagnon. He’s my husband.”
The guy named Lawrence smiled and lowered the shotgun.
“Jack Widow, ma’am.”
“So, get your friends and come on in.”
Widow waved back at the Explorer and everyone got out, followed by slamming doors. The pilots, who were more than pilots, stepped out with the duffle bag.
They all stepped up onto the porch, following Widow and Cassidy, who went into the house first, after Lara Gagnon.
The enormous dogs sat at attention at the base of a grand staircase.
Widow thought, like Dobermans. Like the town’s name.
He asked, “Doberman, is that related to the snow dogs?”
Lara said, “You know, everyone who comes here asks that. I have no idea, to tell the truth. I like it ‘cause it’s a quiet lake town. Hardly anyone lives here and the people who do mind their own business.”
“Do you guys have an actual town?”
“Like a downtown?”
He nodded.
“Sure. It’s twenty-five kilometers south.”
“All we saw was that little airport.”
“They built it way out from the town.”
“What for?”
She said, “No clue. Hide the town from visitors, I guess.”
He shrugged.
The inside of the house was clean and warm and filled with the smell of baking bread.
Widow saw a living room with high ceilings. There were posts and log paneling and brick around a fireplace and heavy furniture and wood everywhere, surrounded by white walls. The floor was wood with woven rugs.
The main floor was wide open. Widow could see she was cooking something in the kitchen. The dining room table was set for two.
“I’m sorry if we’re disturbing your breakfast,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. Getting visitors is the most excitement I’ve had in months.”
Lawrence was the last person to step in. He suggested to everyone to take off their coats and boots and leave them in a mudroom, to the side of the entrance.
Widow stepped back in that direction.
“Sorry, for dragging dirt in.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lawrence said.
Widow took off a winter coat he had been given by Lin, and so did Cassidy. Widow kept his bomber jacket on. He had worn it underneath and so had Cassidy.
Lin and Lu and the pilots took off their winter coats and Lawrence found a place to hang most of them.
Lawrence kept the shotgun nearby. But the pilots kept the duffle bag near as well.
They all sat around a roaring fire on soft oversized, too comfortable sofas and armchairs.
But before they did, Lara took off her coat last and revealed that she had been carrying something.
She was pregnant.
CHAPTER 45
“WHEN ARE YOU DUE?” Widow asked.
“Can’t you tell?”
He shook his head.
Cassidy pinched his leg and said, “He was raised in a cave. We think.”
“It’s okay. I’m due soon.”
“Not today?”
“No. Week or two.”
“Are you having a home birth?”
“Sure.”
“No hospital?”
“My husband is a doctor.”
Widow looked at Lawrence, who stayed standing. He was near a huge white island that acted as part of the kitchen and a bar for the rest of the house. He was on the bar side, shotgun resting across the countertop. He was drinking coffee. It steamed out of a white mug. If he had offered any to their visitors Widow would’ve had one too.
The pilots sat together. Lin and Lu sat in armchairs. And Widow was on a sofa with Cassidy.
“Lawrence is a doctor?”
Lara nodded.
Cassidy said, “That makes you the sniper.”
Lara said, “I was in the Canadian Armed Forces.”
“JTF2?” Widow asked.
“Yes.”
“Amazing.”
“Why? Because a woman can’t be a soldier?”
Widow shook his head.
“You a soldier?” she asked.
“SEAL. Once.”
She nodded.
“You’ve never seen a woman in uniform before?”
Widow shook his head again.
“I’ve known plenty of woman who were in the Navy and the Marines. They make damn good sailors and Marines and soldiers, I imagine. Better than a lot of men I knew.”
“No women SEALs though?”
“Not yet.”
“So why are you surprised?”
“I just never pictured a world-record-breaking soldier being pregnant.”
Lara said nothing to that.
“You might be the first. That might be a new record in itself.”
Lara asked, “So you figured out I’m the sniper who holds the world record. Why are you here?”
Lawrence said, “You said something about protection.”
Lin spoke up.
“I’m Wai Lin of the Chinese MSS. We’re all here because we have united interests.”
“Which are?” Lara asked. She didn’t ask about the MSS. Widow figured she knew about them.
“Have you ever heard of the Rainmakers?”
Lara looked at Widow. Her eyes wide. She nodded.
“I’ve heard of them.”
“They’re real.”
Widow said, “There’s one left. He’s coming here.”
“Why?”
“He’s taken upon himself to eliminate the best of the best.”
Lara said nothing.
Lawrence said nothing.
Widow asked, “You know James Lenny?”
“I know him.”
“He’s dead. Shot from three thousand-plus yards.”
She said nothing.
Lin said, “We’re here to stop him.”
Lawrence stood up and said, “You’re here to ambush him.”
“We are.”
“So what? You want to use my wife as bait?”
Lin said, “That’s right.”
Lara said, “Lawrence. It’s okay. If he’s killed Lenny, then he’s gotta be stopped.”
Lara looked at the duffle bag.
“What’s in there?”
Lu said, “Type 05 submachines guns, ma’am.”
She nodded and said, “That’s not gonna help you very much unless you can get close.”
“It’s what we have,” Lu said.
“No. We have more.”
She stood up and walked past everyone and stopped and looked at Widow.
“You coming?”
He nodded and looked at Lin, who nodded to Lu.
Lu followed.
They moved down a hall, passed a bathroom and a study and stopped at a door with a padlock on it. Lara took out a set of keys and unlocked it.
The room was about the size of a large walk-in closet or a tight bedroom. It had a table in the center of the room with four expensive sniper rifles. They were standing upright in inserts
and unloaded.
“We might need these.”
Widow nodded.
“How long till they get here?”
Widow shrugged.
Lu said, “We think a day or two.”
They returned to the living room and Lin explained the whole story to the Gagnons. She told them her role, her side. Everything. She told them about her family. And her medical condition and how it saved her life.
Lawrence Gagnon was familiar with it. He told her she was lucky she hadn’t died. Not because of situs inversus. Life expectancy rates with situs inversus are similar to everyone else. But the bullet wounds, unsterile environment and delayed treatment sounded like they should have killed her.
Lin ordered the pilots to secure the perimeter. They took their weapons and coats and headed outside, to walk the house and the lake and stand guard.
After Lin’s version of the story finished, Lawrence stopped eyeballing the shotgun every minute and offered them all coffee. Widow was the first to except. And Lawrence returned with breakfast on plates for his wife and himself. He offered them all the extra food, but no one wanted anything.
The Gagnons ate and Widow drank his coffee while telling his side of the story. He told them about the train wreck, the concussion, the broken hand, which they could see, and Lenny and Tiller and the op, twelve years ago.
By the afternoon, they all knew everything about what had happened so far.
All but Cassidy’s dead partner, which Widow did not want to bring up and Cassidy did not want to talk about.
CHAPTER 46
BY NIGHTFALL, the pilots were sitting on the porch. They had bottles of water and had split up break times, taking turns going back inside to get warm.
One of them took smoke breaks. His cigarette butts were stuffed into an empty soda can on the porch.
Lu went to check on them every hour and then he returned to the back of the house, facing the lake.
Occasionally, Widow went outside to have a look. And Lin did the same. Cassidy stayed with Lara. By this time trust had been earned all the way around and she had been given her sidearm back.
Lawrence had the shotgun. Lara kept one of the sniper rifles with her, loaded. Widow had no idea why. It wouldn’t be much good to her as a close-quarter combat weapon. Unless she planned to climb up to the roof and use it there.
Lu was armed, of course. The only two people who weren’t armed were Widow and Lin, but she had Lu and two other guys for that.
Widow said nothing about it. He knew where the weapons were.
He and Cassidy and Lara and Lin wound up sitting on a deck on the back of the house, overlooking the lake.
Just then, they heard a sound in the distance, beyond the lake, echoing over a cluster of snow-covered trees. It sounded like a lawnmower or a Honda Civic that Widow had heard before.
“What’s that?” Lin asked.
Lu came running around the side of the house, gun in hand. He was spooked by the noise.
They saw distant plumes of smoke. And the sound continued.
“Relax,” Lara said. “It’s a Mosquito.”
“A what?” Cassidy asked.
“A Mosquito. It’s a one-man helicopter. The neighbors have one.”
“You have neighbors?” Lin asked.
“We call them neighbors. They live two kilometers that way.”
She pointed across the lake.
“Out here, people have all kinds of hobbies. The Mosquito is Mr. Hardy’s hobby.”
A second after she said that, Widow saw it. A small black dot on the sky, at first, and then it buzzed the treetops and headed toward them.
Widow felt himself rising to his feet, a precaution. He readied himself to jump over Lara and protect her, if he had to.
The black dot grew larger and he saw a small helicopter, like Lara had said. It flew across the frozen water and buzzed the house.
Widow returned to his seat when he saw the pilot.
He was a short, old white man in a wool cap with goggles over his face. He had a scarf wrapped tight around his neck.
He took the little chopper close and down to an altitude of maybe forty feet above them, staying clear of one old leafless tree.
He waved down to them.
“I SEE YOU GOT FRIENDS,” he called out to Lara.
“I do, Colonel,” she said and waved back.
The pilots from the front came running through the house to see what was happening. They had their guns out.
The dogs were barking, but not at the Mosquito. They barked at the pilots. They were used to the Mosquito, like the old guy flew it over the house every day.
Lin barked orders at the pilots in Chinese and they quickly hid the Type 05s.
“WELL, OKAY THEN. HAVE A GOOD NIGHT, LARA,” the old guy shouted and he waved and piloted the tiny helicopter higher and back over the lake.
Lara waved after him.
Widow asked, “Colonel?”
“Yeah. He’s retired too.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“No. He’s just a nice old guy.”
Lin asked, “Does he fly that every night?”
“Not every night. Sometimes in the early mornings too. He’s a widower. Gotta do something out here during the cold months to pass the time.”
No one spoke about it after that. The pilots and Lu returned to the front of the house.
A SHORT WHILE LATER, they were conversing about other things.
Widow said, “I can see why you retired out here.”
“Thanks. It’s my husband’s doing.”
“How does he get any work, way the hell out here? As a doctor, I mean?”
“He works from the internet.”
“How?”
“He started one of those medical diagnostics websites.”
Widow stayed quiet.
Cassidy said, “Like WebMD?”
Lara smiled.
“Is it WebMD?”
“I can’t say.”
“Whoa. Explains the nice house.”
Lara smiled.
Lara looked at the sky; the darkness was coming on fast.
“Up here the sun sets so fast,” she said.
Widow said, “Seems like it does that just about everywhere.”
The dogs were out running in the backyard, through the snow, playing.
Lin said, “Thank you for letting us do this.”
“Just make sure you get this guy.”
Lin nodded.
Widow said, “We don’t know how long it’ll take them to make a move. I think we’d better take shifts sleeping for now.”
“How long will we be out here waiting?” Cassidy asked.
“Not long. He won’t wait long. Trust me,” Lin said. “Two, three days, tops.”
“I’d better call my unit. They have to be worried about me.”
Lara said, “No phones out here and the internet is out again.”
Cassidy frowned.
Lara said, “I know how you feel. Lawrence business depends on the internet. Good thing a lot of it is automated somewhere else.”
Widow shrugged and said, “Better to say you’re sorry than ask permission.”
No one responded to that.
Widow volunteered to take the first shift sleeping. Mostly because his head was hurting again.
Lara showed him to a bedroom on the top floor and he waited till she left and then hit the bed. He slept over the covers. Bomber jacket still on. Pants still on. Everything still on, except his boots, which were in the mudroom.
CHAPTER 47
WIDOW DIDN’T DREAM about the dead girl with the volcanic eyes this time. He didn’t have to. She was alive.
Instead, he dreamed about Cassidy. A good dream, except he woke up before it got really good.
He woke up to the same buzzing that he had heard earlier, which made him uneasy. Until he remembered Lara had said the old guy was a widower and he flew the Mosquito in the early morning, sometimes.
He opened his eyes and looked around the room. His head wasn’t hurting so much anymore.
The buzzing chopper was far away. It grew a little louder, slowly. After a few minutes, it sounded as if it buzzed around the house once.
He listened.
The buzz came and went and was gone, suddenly.
Not a big deal, if the guy does that a lot, and Lara had said he does. The dogs weren’t barking, which was a good sign.
Still, it bothered him. It bothered him because he didn’t hear any commotion from whoever was outside guarding, which he assumed were the pilots and Lu.
Best to check it out anyway, he thought.
He sat up in the bed, knew where he was for the first time in two days right off the bat after waking up. He looked over and saw a tray resting on a nightstand. It had a bowl of cereal on it, covered. For him, he guessed.
He left it and got up, tried not to make a sound. He didn’t know the time, but it seemed as though the family was asleep.
No dogs barking. They were used to the buzzing helicopter though.
His room didn’t have a clock. He walked over to a window and looked out.
The nighttime revealed that this place wasn’t so empty. He saw the lights from the neighbor’s house, across the lake, the old colonel’s house.
Widow tried to find the Mosquito. No luck. Not in the dark. Even if it had lights turned on, which it may or may not have, it would’ve looked like a star, depending on how far away it was.
He looked to the south and saw a bit of light in the sky. Must be downtown Doberman.
The sky was full of stars.
He went out to the hallway. Saw no one around.
A door was ajar two doors down from him.
He peeked in. It was another bedroom, the Gagnons’ master. They were asleep in a king-size bed. The dogs on the floor. One of them looked up at him as he peered in the open door. The dog didn’t make a sound.
He left the door and checked out the other rooms. Found Cassidy asleep in one. Her Glock rested within reaching distance on a nightstand. She too slept in her clothes, over the covers. Her boots were also in the mudroom.
Next, he found an empty bedroom.
He went downstairs and found Lin asleep on one of the sofas. The fire was still alive, but glowed less than earlier.
