by Scott Blade
Widow picked up the duffle bag and said, “I’ll put this back.”
She nodded, and watched him do it.
He came back out of the outhouse, and said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
“No. Just go back.”
“Okay. Radio me. Whenever.”
He turned and reluctantly left her.
CHAPTER 39
WIDOW WAITED FOR DEGORNE to communicate with him. He regretted leaving her alone, but what was he supposed to do? When a woman asks you to leave, you leave. Still, if did not feel right. He wanted to call her. He wanted to go back there, talk to her. Hear what she had to say, but he figured she would tell him the whole story when it was right.
He spent the rest of the night going over the checklist that he could go over at night. Everything was good, as he expected.
Widow played with the Osborne Firefinder for a while, sliding the ruler around, peering through the slits in it. He aimed it at the wildfire to the south.
After he got bored doing that, he sifted through the audiobooks that Danvers had. He stuck one into the cassette player on the desk and cranked the volume. He heard a familiar voice that he had heard before, but he didn’t know the name of the performer.
The book was one of Agatha Christie’s. He listened for a while and then switched it off. He paced around the fire watch tower’s balcony, until he saw something that stuck out. In the distance, he saw something indistinct, shadowy, and dark, hovering in the air like a dark, flying machine.
He saw it yaw and ascend and circle around in a long, oval flight pattern. It might’ve been a helicopter. It was.
It was an NPS Papillon Helicopter. It had National Park Service printed along the side. The helicopter hovered over his tower, and a spotlight switched on. They shined the light down on him, directly.
He stared up at it. Then he saw a woman staring back at him from the cockpit, passenger side. She signaled something to the pilot, and they took off, switching off the light. They looked lost.
He watched them ascend and vanish over to the east.
THREE AND A HALF MINUTES LATER, Widow saw another helicopter, only this one wasn’t a National Parks helicopter. This one was a military Black Hawk. A UH-60. This one had no blinking lights, like the last one, like all helicopters were required to carry and turn on at night.
It had one headlamp on, dousing the forests with a cone of yellow light.
This helicopter did as the other. They yawed and hovered above his tower. He saw dark figures staring down at him. Then the helicopter realized he wasn’t who they were looking for, so they took off.
He watched them, also heading east.
What the hell is going on? he thought.
Maybe they were searching for someone. That’s what it appeared to be. But it wasn’t him.
Just then, he looked to the east. DeGorne’s tower, that was the direction they were heading.
He scrambled over to the walkie. It wasn’t in the charger. He looked on the desk. Not there. He searched the cabin. No sign of it. He looked in his pack. It wasn’t there either.
He closed his eyes, tried to remember where he saw it last.
It was on the desk in DeGorne’s fire tower.
CHAPTER 40
WIDOW RAN EAST as fast as he could. He had to cover a lot of distance. He had snatched up the pack as he jetted out of his tower. He practically leapt down the staircase.
Halfway to DeGorne’s tower, he had stopped to take a breath. His chest hurt. His legs hurt. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had to hump a pack through rough terrain like this at full sprinting speed. It must’ve been a decade in the past.
He grabbed a water bottle out of his pack and drank it down, crumbled up the bottle and ditched it. He wasn’t worried about littering. Then he took off again. He ran and sprinted as fast as he could without overheating.
The helicopters were both out of sight. He ran through trees. He ran for more than an hour. Then he came through a clearing and saw it.
He felt the heat first. Then he saw the fire.
DeGorne’s fire lookout was up on the hill. It was engulfed in violent, powerful flames.
CHAPTER 41
WIDOW WAS COMPLETELY OUT of breath by the time he reached the trail to DeGorne’s fire tower. He stopped, saw the burning fire tower from over the trees. He saw the glass had blown out. The shutters dangled low on broken splinters of wood. They raged in fire. The roof started caving in. The balcony was on fire. The stairs. All of it except the stone rock at the base.
Widow heard loud voices. He heard helicopter blades humming, slowing. He continued up the trailer. Stopped ten feet behind the outhouse. He stayed in the darkness. He slipped the backpack off, ditched it. He slid out the ice axe. The blade was meant to be a tool, but it could be a deadly weapon. Tonight. If he needed it to be.
He crouched low, knees bent. Elbows bent.
Silently, carefully, he stepped up the path, behind the outhouse. He stopped, stayed out of sight. He heard the voices, muffled over the fire.
He peeked around the corner.
He saw the green NPS Papillion helicopter parked on its landing skids, out in front of the tower. The flames high above made the rotor blades shimmer as they twirled, reflecting the firelight.
Widow saw five people. Cops, had to be. There were two men in plain clothes. One man in a park ranger uniform, like the one he saw Gordon wearing, only regular size. And there was a woman, early forties, athletically built. She was the best dressed of the four. And she was FBI. No doubt about that. Widow had seen enough cops and feds to know the difference. The FBI had a standard of how you dress, and how you carry yourself that hadn’t changed in nearly a century. Not really.
The park ranger was standing near the cockpit, like he also flew the helicopter. Which Widow guessed he did because there was no one else to be a pilot.
DeGorne was also there. She was alive, which was good news. She hadn’t been in the fire tower when it exploded. But there was bad news too. The bad news was the FBI agent had her in handcuffs, stuffed in the rear of the helicopter.
The voice Widow heard were them arresting her. Arguing with her. Ordering her to surrender.
Why was the fire tower on fire?
And just then, Widow got his answer.
The Black Hawk flew overhead, fast, like it was making a pass. A pass like a bomber would make.
Widow witnessed the rear door slid open all the way. He saw two men in all black, like SWAT team gear. They hurled out two objects. They were round like baseballs. They had rugged, jagged edges etched into them, not like a knife’s serrations, but more like in jagged rocks.
The baseballs flew to the ground. One went flying into the trees, just beyond the fire lookout. The other hit right underneath the nose of the parked Papillon helicopter.
The FBI agent screamed, “Look out!”
She turned and grabbed DeGorne by the underarm. She jerked her out of the helicopter, violently. Both women went tumbling backward to the ground.
Widow saw them roll out of sight, into the trees and the brush.
Just then, the first baseball turned out not to be a baseball at all. It wasn’t a baseball because it exploded in a ferocious blast of heat and fire that was so hot it had blue outer edges and a white-hot center.
CHAPTER 42
THE FIRST EXPLOSION lit up the trees, igniting them like they were nothing but kindling. Within seconds, fire consumed two whole trees and the brush below. Within minutes, it would consume twenty feet of forest.
The second baseball exploded and it confirmed what Widow suspected. These were not fragmentation grenades. They were incendiary grenades, which explode in a massive fireball. Flames are sent out in all directions, burning and fuming and killing everything.
The second grenade erupted fire all over the parked helicopter. The windshield exploded and glass shattered. The rotor blades continued to spin, but fire flung off the tips. The outer shell was all lit up, all
of it blazed and raged, and a second later, black smoke plumed up over the trees, and the clearing in front of DeGorne’s lookout.
Widow lost track of the two women.
He scanned the surroundings for the three men. He saw one of them, the pilot. He was on the ground, bleeding around his neck and face. The helicopter had exploded right behind him.
Widow saw the other two men to the right. One of them was dressed like a detective. The other he wasn’t sure what he was. But the guy had a blood red teardrop tattoo.
They had both been thrown by the exploding helicopter.
Widow listened. He heard the WHOMP! WHOMP! of the Black Hawk. It was coming back over for another pass. He rose up and sprinted as fast as he could to the pilot. He scrambled across the field. No one saw him. Not yet.
He held the ice axe down low, right hand.
He made it to the pilot.
“Can you stand?” he shouted.
The pilot’s eyes were shut tight. Blood soaked around his sockets.
“I can’t see! I can’t see!” he shouted.
Widow looked up, saw the Black Hawk returning. The same two men hanging out the side. The same baseballs in their hands.
“We gotta move!” he shouted.
He grabbed the ranger by the back of his pants waistband, hauled him up to his feet, and shoved him forward, to the trees. They ran past the fiery structure that used to be DeGorne’s fire tower, past the outhouse, and into the dark trees beyond.
Behind them, Widow heard two more explosions. He felt the rush of heat spraying out behind him. He leaped into the trees, knocking over the pilot. They both hit the ground hard. The wave of blue fire barely missed them.
Widow said, “Stay down!”
The pilot did not argue.
Widow looked back. The outhouse was not on fire. Flames ate their way to the generator next to it. Ten seconds later, like it was on cue, the generator exploded into a fireball of gasoline.
The rest of the outhouse exploded next. The wood crackled and splintered and burned.
And Widow saw the two other men who came with the FBI agent. They were next to each other staring at the outhouse. Both of their jaws dropped.
Widow’s jaw did not drop because he had already known what was inside the outhouse. The money. Which was now floating through the air and raining back down to Earth. There was lots of it. And it was all on fire.
CHAPTER 43
THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of shreds of exploded, fiery cash rained down over the clearing. Widow didn’t know how much had been in DeGorne’s duffle bag, but he knew it was a lot. And it was all ruined now.
He also knew that whatever this was, whatever these two opposing teams of people with guns were, they were all here for that money. No question.
Maybe DeGorne stole it. He had no idea, but it didn’t matter. Not to him. Not then.
What mattered was that the Black Hawk helicopter was landing. He watched it through the smoke. The machine came down.
The rotor wash sped up the falling money until now it looked like a huge whirlwind of cash. The money twisted and wound around and around, up into the air.
Widow shouted to the pilot, “Stay put!”
He didn’t wait to listen to the pilot’s objections. Instead, he reached down to grab the guy’s gun off him. But there was no gun. Just an empty holster. He must’ve dropped his gun in the explosion.
Widow picked up the ice axe and started running through the trees, staying in the darkness.
He didn’t know exactly who anybody was. But he knew that the Black Hawk passengers were enemy combatants.
He slowed as he neared the landing zone. He stayed back in the trees and waited.
The helicopter stopped on three landing wheels, and seven men stepped out, including the pilot. They were dressed in SWAT gear from head to toe. All black. All wore lightweight Kevlar vests. They each had earpieces for close and quiet comms.
They had their faces painted black. Black waves with dark green waves crisscrossed in between.
Widow waited. He listened for them to speak.
One of them did. The leader. He spoke Spanish. They all did.
These guys were cartel. Had to be. Widow had been in a firefight with cartel guys once. Not an experience that he had wanted to repeat. He had been down in Colombia. A Navy SEAL mission. A lifetime ago.
He remembered in their briefing some of the intel shared with them. The cartels had small armies. Everyone knew that. But they also had the best that money could buy. Mercenaries, mostly. And they provided them with major equipment. And drug cartels had a lot of connections.
If Widow had to guess, he’d wager these guys snuck into the country and then were given the Black Hawk from a military post somewhere. Maybe an Air Force mechanic looked the other way. Maybe they were only supposed to borrow it.
Whatever.
The seven men were armed with LAR-15s. And Glocks in side holsters. Serious weapons. Then Widow noticed something else. He hadn’t noticed it before.
On the side of the Black Hawk was three letters, only they had been painted over.
He saw the remains of the letters: DEA.
CHAPTER 44
WIDOW WATCHED AS THE TEAM LEADER walked casually, the six men at his back. They walked over to where the two detectives were. The two men came out of the path up ahead. The younger, clean-looking one was out front. He had a Glock in hand. The one with the teardrop tattoo stood behind him, also with a Glock.
They needed help. Widow had to do something.
The younger one held his gun up and shouted at the seven men.
“Freeze! Drop your weapons!”
The seven men kept walking toward him, their LAR-15s in hand, but pointed to the ground. They kept walking like they weren’t afraid of getting shot. Not afraid at all.
Something was wrong.
The fire raged high above them, and the tower’s legs started to buckle and crackle. Just then the fire lookout broke at one of the stilts and the whole thing came tumbling, crashing down to the west. It fell just twenty yards from the Black Hawk.
The team leader barked orders back at the last man in formation. He was the pilot, Widow figured. Widow’s Spanish was basic, but he understood the leader was ordering him to take the bird up and out of the path of the flames. They didn’t want to be stranded out here.
The pilot turned and ran back to the bird, and Widow slumped back into the trees, staying low. He followed the pilot.
As the pilot reached the Black Hawk, Widow looked back. He saw something he couldn’t believe.
The other cop, the one with the teardrop tattoo, shot the younger cop in the back.
CHAPTER 45
WIDOW DIDN’T MOVE. He didn’t shout or protest. He stayed in the dark. But he did hear someone protest. He heard a woman shout from the forest. It was the FBI agent. He saw her. She was with DeGorne. Only DeGorne was still handcuffed. She looked terrified.
The FBI agent opened fire on the men. They started shooting back.
Widow couldn’t help them empty-handed. He snuck up to the Black Hawk. Hopped in the rear. The pilot was in his seat. He was flicking switches and checking gauges. The rotors hummed as they swung above. He was getting the bird ready for takeoff.
Widow didn’t know how to fly. He thought for a split second that maybe he should keep the guy alive. They might need him to fly them out of there.
But he shrugged, and reared the ice axe all the way back. With all of his strength, he swung the axe forward. The blade stabbed right through the guy’s pilot seat. Right through his Kevlar. It ripped through leather, and springs, and bone. It burst through the guy’s spinal cord, punctured his right lung, and broke through his ribcage.
Widow jerked it back out. And watched the pilot fling forward. Blood spurted out a huge hole in his back. But the pilot didn’t scream. He was already dead.
Widow was certain because his blood stopped spurting after several seconds. It just leaked out, instead.
The guy’s heart had stopped pumping.
Widow kept the axe in his hand, but he scooped up the guy’s LAR-15, checked the weapon, checked the magazine. He also took his Glock 21. Checked it as well.
He stuffed the Glock into the waistband of his pants. He slung the LAR-15 around his shoulder and back with the strap. He wanted to retain the element of surprise. They were still seven guys strong, counting the teardrop guy who was a turncoat.
Widow slid out of the Black Hawk.
He saw the seven guys scattering into the trees ahead. They were chasing the FBI agent and DeGorne.
CHAPTER 46
FIRE FROM THE SCORCHING TOWER and the trees burned and merged. Soon the area would grow enough to be a major concern for the National Fire Service.
Black smoke fogged the ground. Widow stayed back in the trees and in the smoke. He kept the axe in his hand. He heard gunfire ahead, followed it.
He walked for five minutes into the smoke, until he found a trail. He crouched low and listened. Occasionally, he’d hear gunfire up ahead. He heard the loud, echoing sound of gunshots from LAR-15s, and then he’d hear the POP! POP! of a Glock.
The FBI agent, he figured. Had to be.
How many rounds did she have left? How much longer could she fight back?
Widow kept going. After two more minutes, he reached the edge of the smoke. He saw a figure up ahead. Not one, but two. Two-man formation. They were separated from the group. They looked professional—trained men. But not trained well enough, because they made one fatal error. They forgot to watch their six.
Widow crept right up on them. He got close to the one on the left. He reared the ice axe back and then heaved it forward like he was sledgehammering a nine-inch nail into concrete. The blow pounded right into the back of the left-hand guy. He didn’t wait. He planted his foot on the guy’s back as he went down and ripped the axe blade out. Blood splattered across Widow’s chest and neck and face.
