by Scott Blade
“We’re already tailing the bus now. It’s headed to Laredo.”
The voice on the other end said, “Good. Stay with him.”
Then there was a click, and dead air followed.
“So? What do we do?” asked her partner.
“We stay with the stranger. He’ll lead us to the target.”
CHAPTER 6
WIDOW FELL ASLEEP on the bus to Laredo about an hour after they had turned onto 83 South. He woke up three hours later when a loud gunshot sound rang through the cabin.
His eyes darted open, and he looked around, his primal senses on high alert like he had been sleeping in his bed and all of a sudden someone fired a gun in his house. But his alertness died down quickly at the realization that the sound hadn’t been a gunshot because if it had, all of the other passengers would’ve reacted accordingly, and none of them had. Instead, they all appeared to be annoyed.
He sat up. He had planted himself in a seat next to the window—on the driver’s side. No one sat in the chair next to him. The bus was only half full. Maybe a little more, but not much.
He knew that the left side of his face must’ve been red because he had fallen asleep with his face against the window.
The bus skirted to the left, and the loud sound of scraping metal and the scrape of concrete blasted through the interior of the bus. Widow realized they had blown a tire.
He looked at the bus driver, who was a bald black guy with a blue ball cap. He seemed competent. Without looking over his shoulder, he shouted back to everyone, “Blown tire! It’s okay!”
He pulled the bus over to the shoulder of a highway that Widow didn’t know the name of. He hadn’t been paying attention to the drive, but it was definitely a highway and not an interstate. That was obvious.
The bus driver struggled a little with the steering, but not for long, and the bus skidded slightly to a stop on the shoulder. The remaining tires stopped hard, and the brakes squealed and dust rose up from the sandy shoulder. The driver put the gear into park and switched on the hazard lights. He stood up and said, “Okay everybody. Y’all stay put. I’m gonna check out the damage, and I’ll be back.”
Widow looked around and saw that most of the passengers were older people—not senior citizens—but most were over fifty. There were some kids and two teenagers, both girls. There wasn’t anyone but him who looked like someone who could help change a bus tire. So being the guy he was, he figured he’d better volunteer for the job. He reached his arms up, extending them as far as he could, and stretched. He twisted his torso to the left and then to the right to loosen himself up and wake up his body. He scooted over to the seat next to him and then stood up in the aisle and started to walk to the front of the bus.
The other passengers watched him as he went.
Widow followed the aisle to the front and stepped off the bus. He looked left and then right. The highway was basically in the middle of nowhere, or at least that was what it appeared. The landscape wasn’t quite desert, but wasn’t quite anything else, either. There were some patches of grass here and there, and some trees off in the distance, but then there was also dry desert-like land as well.
To the south, he saw a road sign that said there was a town called Third Crossing seven miles away. It was the next exit. At least there was a town nearby in case he decided to just start walking. Seven miles wasn’t that bad.
But he didn’t want to get ahead of himself.
He walked around the front of the bus and heard the engine humming. He stepped past it and onto the gravel on the shoulder and saw that the driver was bent over, studying the blown tire. It was one of the back driver side tires.
Widow approached and saw that it wasn’t bad, because bad would indicate it had some chance of survival. This was worse.
The tire was completely shredded. It had been removed almost completely, like a shotgun had blown it off. There were fleshy strips of it left on the rim, but not much. And the rim looked entirely bent. Probably because the bus was too heavy to be driving sixty miles an hour on it.
The driver had removed his ball cap and was rubbing his head.
Widow stepped five feet from him and stopped. He said, “It looks bad.”
The driver turned and looked up at him. He stood up and said, “That’s the understatement of the year.”
Widow asked, “No chance of throwing on a spare?”
The driver shook his head from side to side in big movements. He said, “There’s no way in hell.”
Widow said, “Not even if I help you?”
The driver said, “No. Can’t happen.”
Widow said nothing.
The driver said, “I couldn’t let ya. Insurance thing. And I’m not supposed to because we’re in Texas, and Texas has a union for us drivers. Ya see?”
Widow stayed quiet.
The driver said, “Ya see, it’s a matter of the union. I ain’t supposed to change tires this bad or do mechanical work on the bus while in route. In dis situation, I gotta call it in.”
Widow asked, “And then what?”
The driver said, “Then we wait. They send out a tow truck and another bus.”
Widow asked, “How long will that take?”
The driver said, “Well, the tow truck will probably take an hour. But the other bus? I don’t know. Could take all afternoon.”
Widow nodded and looked up and down the highway again.
A car passed.
Widow said, “Well, then I don’t think I’ll hang out for that.”
The driver said, “Ya can’t leave. I ain’t allowed to take your luggage out of the bus until the backup bus arrives.”
Widow said, “I don’t have luggage.”
The driver said, “Well, if you leave, you can’t get a refund or transfer your ticket.”
Widow thought about this for a moment. Fifty-five dollars was a lot of money for a bus pass, but then again, waiting for hours and hours in the middle of Texas seemed like a heftier price to pay than the money. Widow viewed time as being similar to money because it could be spent, but there were no refunds on time. So he nodded at the bus driver and turned and started to head south toward the sign for Third Crossing.
THEY DROVE the same highway as the bus the stranger had been on, and they had been along the side of the bus when the tire had blown out. They drove a white Dodge Charger, not a particularly inconspicuous vehicle, but fast and reliable, and it seated four comfortably. And the Principal was footing the bill on the vehicle they rented.
The woman had picked out the car because she liked fast cars, but the other guy was the one who drove it.
They passed the broken-down bus and didn’t stop to offer help because they didn’t want the stranger to identify them.
“Now what the hell do we do?”
“I guess we go to the next town and wait,” the woman said.
“Wait for what?”
“I guess for them to replace the bus with a new one.”
“That could take hours.”
“So what?”
The guy said, “What if he decides to walk?”
She said nothing.
“What if he gets a ride? And we’re in the next town? We’ll lose him.”
“I don’t know. Should we just park off on the shoulder and watch him?”
“Look around. The land is flat and empty. He’ll make us for sure.”
The woman said, “Then I don’t know. Where the hell do we go?”
“We go to the next town. We can get some gas and a couple of coffees. Then we come back and pass on the other lane.”
“You’re right.”
Kill Team B headed on to the next town.
TWO AND A HALF miles later, Widow was again covered in sweat. The heat seemed to get hotter, and the air seemed to get drier, and the sun seemed to have gotten closer to the Earth. His body was telling him the temperature was rising and rising and maybe it was time to make better decisions instead of blindly following the path ahead. He st
arted to recalculate his decision-making process. Maybe he should start to follow the weather instead of just picking a choice based on no established yardstick for making a decision.
He wore a tight, black, long-sleeved shirt that was probably meant for yoga, which was okay by his standards because even though it was getting hotter the farther he went on, the shirt was cotton and thin. He had plenty of breathing room in it. He thought about taking it off, but he didn’t know what kind of impression that that would give to drivers who could potentially give him a ride.
On the one hand, Widow had had good luck with women drivers in the past—he was young, and he knew he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. He was far from pretty, but he was in good shape from all of the walking, and he ate about as healthy as any American. He was blessed with good genes and was a naturally big guy. He had naturally shredded, hard abs like the side of a brick house. He had broad shoulders, and from the back, his shoulders and torso looked like an upside down equilateral pyramid, the kind made from giant stones and decades of slave labor.
On the downside, Widow had some tattoos. He had discovered after leaving NCIS that he had quite an addiction to ink. He had started with a sleeve tattoo and learned that he really enjoyed getting them. He had tattoos on his chest and arms and shoulders. No facial tattoos or neck tattoos or any of that nonsense. He believed you should be able to cover tattoos. Even though he didn’t plan on having another professional career in his life, he still thought it was best not to have tattoos that might hinder his ability to get a job. On occasion, he still had to do casual labor. You couldn’t get around America these days without money.
He also had the three ugly field scars from being shot in the upper back. Amazingly, he survived, and the bullets hadn’t caused any irreversible damage because his ribcage had done exactly what it was designed to do—protect his vitals. Although, it hurt like hell and he was hospitalized for a long period of time. He recalled the months and months of physical and psychological therapy, required by the NCIS and Naval Law, that he had to endure.
Widow continued to walk south on the highway. He left his shirt on because the drivers who passed would most likely be men, and most men wouldn’t pick up a hitchhiker who looked the way he looked with his shirt off.
He realized then that he was giving the whole premise of walking shirtless far too much thought. The heat must have been getting to him.
It was only five seconds later when he heard the sound that was the very best sound he could’ve heard in that moment. It was the sound of a car slowing behind him. Tires over gravel, the calm hum of a car air conditioner, and the low whistle of good brakes.
Widow turned and saw a white Chevy Tahoe with green markings and letters on it. It was covered in dust and sand and had large tinted windows and four doors. On the top was a thick, low light bar, all one solid color. In the bright daylight, Widow couldn’t tell the exact color, but a guesstimation told him it was all red because the vehicle was a United States Border Patrol SUV, and he didn’t think they used blue in their light bars. But he couldn’t be sure about that.
The US Border Patrol Tahoe stopped, and dust rose from the gravel on the shoulder. Sunlight reflected intensely off the tinted windshield, blinding Widow. He put his hands up over his vision to block out the light. He tried to let his eyes adjust, and they squinted tight.
The driver side door opened, slow like a gate, and a small figure stepped out and didn’t shut the door. The driver just stepped slowly up toward the front tire.
A female voice spoke with perfect English but a rather thick Mexican accent. She said, “Need a lift?”
Widow’s eyes adjusted as best they could with the bright sunlight in them, and he saw a woman of Hispanic heritage dressed in a United States Border Patrol officer’s uniform. She was about five feet five inches tall—thirteen inches shorter than he was. She looked to be a hundred twenty-five pounds, but that was probably way off because she undoubtedly wore a bulletproof vest under her uniform shirt, which Widow assumed was mandatory for Texas Border Patrol agents. As he looked closer, he saw that her shirt wasn’t the standard uniform shirt, which he was sure was a green button-down thing with the Border Patrol’s badge insignia on the upper left breast. This agent wore a black T-shirt instead, and there was no insignia on the left breast or the right breast or anywhere on the shirt. And Widow looked closely enough that he would’ve seen it. Even with the obvious bulletproof vest on under her T-shirt, he could tell she was blessed with bigger breasts than the average girl. And they were certainly bigger than her Border Patrol colleagues. He couldn’t tell how large, and he didn’t want to stare at them, but they must’ve been big enough to make her bulletproof vest protrude more than it normally would’ve.
Her hair was black and thick and long, but she had it pulled back tight underneath a hunter green ball cap that did have the badge insignia on it, right smack in the center.
The agent wore a regular belt, not a department-issued cop belt with attachments and a holster. She did have a holster on her belt, on her left side. Therefore, she was left-handed.
Widow took a peek at her sidearm, which looked like a Heckler and Koch P2000 SK. He assumed it was probably the standard-issue weapon of the Border Patrol. He wasn’t sure because he just didn’t have much interaction with them. Mississippi certainly had a Border Patrol presence. He knew this because he had seen their vehicles before, but why did it have a presence? That was a question he didn’t have the answer to. Was it because Mississippi shared a border with the Gulf of Mexico, and the federal government was afraid of Mexican aliens swimming from Cancun to the Mississippi Gulf Coast? That was a distance of six hundred and sixty miles. Not a possibility, not even by boat. Certainly a boat coming that far would be seen by the US Coast Guard, which made more sense in the first place.
The female agent asked again, “Do you need a lift?”
Widow said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been out in this heat for a few miles.”
She said, “I figured. I saw the bus back there.”
“I think the heat is scrambling my brain.”
“It’ll do that. Don’t take Texas heat for granted. Many men have gone crazy in it and even dropped dead thinking they were tough and could handle it.”
Widow nodded.
She asked, “You don’t even have any water?”
He shook his head.
She said, “So get in. I got bottles.”
Widow said, “Thank you.”
And he lowered his hand and walked around the hood to the passenger side, opened the door, put one foot up on the step rail, and rose up and dumped himself into the seat.
The agent followed and got in the driver seat. She looked over at Widow and said, “You’re supposed to sit in the back, but I guess under the circumstances, it’s better this way because Jake will probably not take kindly to sharing.”
Widow turned and looked back over the seat at what she was referring to. On the backseat was the biggest dog he had ever seen outside the Great Dane breed.
Jake was a massive Belgian shepherd with black and tan mixed into his fur, leaning more toward the black. His face was painted black, straight down his snout.
Although he didn’t growl at Widow, he wasn’t very warm and friendly, either. He was on guard but nonthreatening at the same time. Widow supposed Jake must’ve been trained to know that if a new rider wasn’t in handcuffs and in the back, then he was friendly. But still, he had a look of distrust in his eyes.
Good dog, Widow thought. He was a big fan of dogs.
The agent smiled and said, “Don’t worry…he won’t bite you. Unless you give him a reason. And believe me, you don’t want him to.”
“I can see that. He looks vicious.”
She said, “Oh, he is! His bite is deadly.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes! He’s killed a man in the line of duty before.”
Widow asked, “Really? With you?”
She said, “No. He’s a former Marine. A m
ilitary service dog. He supposedly saved his master’s life in combat by attacking an Afghani fighter. He bit the guy’s jugular.”
Widow paused a beat, and then he said, “I’ll try not to give him a reason to kill me.”
“Good. I would hate to do the extra paperwork.”
Widow smiled.
The agent said, “We’d probably just dump you out in the desert anyway. No reason to go through the hassle for a nobody like you.”
Widow smiled. She had quite a good sense of humor, which Widow had found was an imperative part of good police work. A sense of humor was almost as important as a good sidearm because ninety percent of scars from police work came in the mental form and not the physical. And a good sense of humor could keep a police officer sharp.
Widow extended his hand and said, “My name is Widow.”
“Donna Leon. United States Border Patrol.”
And they shook hands.
“So where are you headed, Widow?”
He said, “I’m headed to a place called Romanth.”
Leon slid the gear into drive and hit the gas. The Tahoe jumped to life, probably like Jake would with the right instant command from Leon. And they were back on the road headed south. She asked, “Romanth?”
“Ever heard of it?”
“Of course. It’s a small border town. It’s more like a settlement. It’s about a hundred feet from the Mexican border.”
“Is that legal?”
“Not really. But it started as private property. Nothing wrong with that. It was a settlement, decades ago.”
“What happened?”
“The original owners died, and it became a town. It’s not big enough for anyone to challenge the legality of it. Or at least it’s not worth it.”
“How small are we talking?”
“Small. Like no one goes there. They don’t get visitors.”
“A few hundred residents?”
“Try a hundred residents. Maybe.”
Widow asked, “Does it even count as a city?”
“It’s a registered municipality. It’s got a school. A church. A sheriff. It even has a court.”
“Wow.”
