by Scott Blade
He reached down and grabbed a handful of trouser leg of the guy in the blazer and dragged him out of the elevator.
The guy squirmed and fidgeted like a snake, but with less power.
Widow dragged him over to the other guy. He stopped and reached down to check the guy’s pulse. It was weak, but it was there. He was breathing, but he was not conscious.
Widow took his gun too and stuffed it into his front pocket. Then he hauled the other guy up by the arms and then held him there by his collar.
“Who the hell are you?” the guy asked, nasally with a defeated tone.
“How many are in the room?”
“What?”
“How many guys are left in the room? With the girl?”
The guy paused a beat.
“You’re the one she called? Staying in nine-eleven?”
Widow nodded.
“Just you?”
“I asked how many are in the room?”
The guy did not answer.
Widow reached up with one hand and grabbed the guy’s nose, over his hand, and pulled down on it.
The guy let out a nasal, pathetic screech.
“Wait! Wait!” he shouted.
“How many?”
“Two. There’s two other guys.”
“Thank you,” Widow said. Before the guy could protest, he whipped his head forward in a violent arc and head-butted the guy right in the forehead. Not the hardest that he could do, but enough to put the guy out. Which it did.
One minute there had been somebody home and the next there was not.
Widow lowered the guy to his butt and looked around once more. No sign of anyone coming out.
The elevator doors sucked shut and he heard the low rolling sound of the cables. The elevator had been called and was on its way to another floor above him.
Widow saw a door marked as the fire stairwell.
He dragged the guy in the blazer across the floor and pulled open the door, hauled the guy through it and tucked him away in the corner behind the door.
He went back into the hall and repeated the process with the other guy. In their pockets, he found wallets and IDs that looked fake, professionally done, but fake. He also found cellphones and cash.
Widow left the wallets, took the cash and the phones, left the Bible in the stairwell with them, and left both men behind.
He checked the Maxim 9 from his front pocket and ejected the magazine, emptied the chambered round and dry fired it at the floor. It worked.
He reinserted the magazine and scooped up the bullet that had ejected. He slid the bullet into his pocket and kept the gun out, ready to use.
Widow continued toward room nine-twenty-one.
CHAPTER 21
ONE OF THE PHONES was passcoded, but the other was not. He tossed the passcoded one into a wastebasket in the hall and stuffed the cash into his pocket, a bonus.
He opened the home screen of the cellphone and pulled up the internet, searched for The Plaza Hotel. He found it and clicked the contact button and waited. He saw the house phone number and clicked on it. The phone asked if he would like to call it. He clicked the yes button and waited. The phone dialed and rang.
“Hello, The Plaza Hotel?” a voice said.
Widow said, “Can you connect me to room nine-twenty-one?”
“One moment, sir.”
There was another click and a dial tone.
Widow picked up the pace and walked on until he was standing outside room nine-twenty-one. He stayed out of sight of the peephole.
He moved the phone away from his ear and slid it into his pocket, left it on speaker phone.
He heard the ringing on the other side of the door and then it stopped. He heard a voice say, “Hello?”
In a wild, mad-dash scramble, he stepped out in the middle of the hall and charged forward and kicked the door as hard as he could. A lot of times, hotel doors are made hard enough to withstand the brute force of unwanted intruders’ attempts to break in.
Luckily, Widow applied the right amount of force and the door was not dead bolted.
It slammed inward in a heaping swing.
One of the guys had been standing on the opposite side of it, looking through the peephole. The force of the kick and the blow sent him tumbling back onto the floor.
Widow barged into the room and pistol-whipped the guy square in the mouth, which had been a miscalculation. He had meant to hit the guy in the forehead, hoping to knock him out. Instead, he heard a tooth chip and crack and the guy yelped.
The back of his head did hit the carpet, hard, but not enough to submit him to unconsciousness.
Widow did not go for a second punch; he did not want to give the guy answering the phone time to react.
He pointed the gun at the guy and shouted, “FREEZE! FREEZE!”
The old cop voice came back like he had used it yesterday.
The guy froze. His gun was out, but it was on the tabletop. The room phone was in his hand, near his face, and his other hand was holding a corked syringe. The contents were clear and filled up to the halfway mark.
They had been about to sedate the woman, Widow figured.
There was something sickening to him about that kind of procedure versus the old-fashioned way of keeping a prisoner. Injections and sedatives and drugging and tranquillizing seemed clinical to him, almost inhumane.
On the other hand, it also confirmed in his mind that he was dealing with a group of bad guys who had some government ties or even backing.
He said, “Slow, stand up.”
The guy stood up.
Widow stepped forward into the room and reached back with his free hand, shut the door, only it would not close. The inside door latch was cracked and splintered.
Keeping his eye on the guy by the phone, he used his foot to push it shut as much as it would go.
He stepped forward, stopped over the guy on the floor.
He was holding onto his mouth. Widow could see trickles of blood seeping out of his fingers, but nothing like the guy from the hall.
Widow looked down at him quick, took aim and said, “Sorry.”
The guy’s eyes looked up, wide.
Widow stomped down on his forehead with a heavy boot. Another lights-out blow to the head, which worked like a charm. The guy’s eyes closed and he went to sleep.
Widow turned back to the guy in the chair, next to the phone.
“Hang it up,” he said.
The guy hung it up.
“Who are you?” the guy asked.
“Not important. Who are you?”
“Can’t tell you that.”
“Wrong answer,” Widow said and he squeezed the trigger of the Maxim 9.
It worked as advertised, almost. A bullet fired out and hit the telephone, inches from the guy’s hand.
The phone actually dinged once, like it had an actual bell inside, which it probably did. Expensive plastic cracked and shattered into small pieces, exploding all over the tabletop.
The guy flinched, covered his face with the hands.
“Okay! Okay!”
Widow waited, aimed the gun at the guy’s center mass.
“We’re a paramilitary group.”
“Private?”
The guy nodded. Which was exactly what Widow had suspected and also what he did not want to hear.
“Government contract?”
The guy said nothing.
Widow closed the distance between them, stopped right in front of the guy, who had to look up to see him.
Widow lowered the gun, pushing the muzzle right on the guy’s right kneecap.
“Are you working for the Pentagon?” he asked.
“No! No!” the guy said, trembling.
“Who then?”
“I don’t know! I swear!”
Widow leaned his weight forward, intensifying the pressure from the gun down on the guy’s knee.
“I’m telling you the truth! I don’t know! I’m not in charge! I just take order
s! We all do!”
“Who is?”
The guy stayed quiet.
Widow said, “I’m not bluffing. Don’t make me shoot you to prove it.”
The guy trembled some more. His eyes darted back and forth. Looked at the guy on the floor. Looked back at Widow.
“His name is Connors.”
“Got a first name?”
“Danny Conners.”
“He’s in charge of your crew?”
“Yes!”
“He’ll know the name of your contractor?”
“Of course! He pays us! He tells us what to do!”
Widow stepped back, moved the gun away from his knees and pointed it back at his center mass.
“What did he have you do here?”
“Babysit!”
“Where is she?”
“Bathtub!”
“Why her?”
“I don’t know! I done told you that! We just are told what, not why!”
Widow nodded. He believed him. The guy was telling the truth. The good news was that these guys were not CIA or contracted by the Pentagon. They were too much of an unknown, untested bunch. Widow could see that.
They were not unqualified, just not professional enough.
In other words, they were good, but not good enough. Certainly, not better than he was. Which was a high bar to reach, but the Pentagon would not expect anything less.
Out of all the contracts that private military groups could get, the US government was the best because they paid the best.
Someone else hired these guys.
“What’s in the syringe?”
“I don’t know,” the guy said.
“You don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know how to pronounce it. It’s written on the bottle,” the guy said and gestured with his head where it was kept.
Widow did not look.
“You think I’m stupid?” he said.
“What?”
“You think I’ll look so you can charge at me?”
“No! I swear! I’m just telling you where it is!”
“Stand up!” Widow said and he stepped back a couple of paces, out of the guy’s reach.
The guy looked puzzled, but stood up as ordered.
“Turn around!”
The guy slowly turned around.
Widow moved forward and switched the gun to his left hand while he scooped up the syringe with his right.
He pressed the plunger, squirting out a short spray of the contents.
He said, “Bend over.’
“What?”
“You heard me!”
The guy did not turn around. He bent over as ordered, grabbed the rests on the chair to steady himself.
Widow stabbed the syringe into the guy’s butt and pressed the plunger, emptied most of the contents into the guy’s fatty tissue.
The sedative worked fast too, because within a minute, the guy was out. He toppled forward over the chair and sank forward in an uncomfortable position.
A few seconds later, he was actually snoring, in a cartoonish tempo.
Whatever was in the needle, it was powerful.
Widow used the rest on the guy on the floor. No reason to leave him to wake up before the other guy.
Widow tossed the syringe onto the floor and lowered the gun. He walked to the bathroom and opened the door.
Inside, he found the lights were already on and he saw a woman’s leg dangling over the edge of a claw tub.
He walked over and looked down.
Looking up at him was a beautiful Russian woman. She wore a tight, red dress, which was tousled and dirtied up a bit, but still on her body. Her shoes were at the bottom of the tub, and off her feet.
She had long dark brown hair that was disheveled and all over the place. It was thick enough to reject a motorcycle helmet.
Widow saw that her wrists had been double zip tied, which was overkill, he thought. And her feet were also zip tied, but she had not been sedated yet. Her eyes were wide open and alert.
What he also saw was that she was stunningly beautiful, only with a look of terror on her face that would have made a coldblooded killed uncomfortable. Which he realized because there was a blood-covered giant standing over her, holding the same gun that the guys who had done this to her had been armed with.
CHAPTER 22
JACK WIDOW TUCKED THE GUN away and reached down to grab the woman by her wrists. She fought back and squirmed and kicked.
“Calm down,” he said. “I’m here to help.”
She stopped fighting and mumbled something that he could not understand because they had stuffed and duct-taped a rag in her mouth.
Widow said, “Hold on a minute.”
He scooped her up and out of the tub, sat her down on the toilet.
“This might hurt,” he said. He grabbed the tape over her mouth and paused.
She closed her eyes shut like she was ready.
In one fast act, he ripped the tape off.
She did not make a noise, but her expression turned to a quick painful one. Then she spit out the rag.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Not important right now. I’m the guy you called.”
She nodded.
“Is there a knife here somewhere?”
She did not answer.
“For the zip ties.”
She shook her head and said, “I have no idea.”
Widow stayed quiet.
She said, “Take me out of here first. We can find a knife later.”
“Don’t worry. I made a good amount of noise, busting through the door. Someone probably called hotel security by now. They can get you out when they get here.”
“No! No! I can’t be found by security or police. You must take me out of here.”
“Take you out? Why no police?”
“Please! You must!”
Widow asked, “Where?”
“To your room. Let’s go there first. Then we get me out of these and then I go. No trouble.”
Widow thought for a moment. Normally, he would just call the cops, but considering he beat up four guys who may or may not have ties to the Pentagon and his past, the last thing he wanted was to be involved on any official level.
He shrugged and agreed.
“How do we get back there? Are you going to hop there?”
She paused and looked him over from his ankles back up his torso.
“You are a big guy. Carry me.”
“What?”
“Pick me up.”
“Like over my shoulder?”
“Yes. Like caveman,” she said and smiled, which made the terror that had been on her face sweep away at light speed replaced by warmth.
Suddenly, Widow realized that the last time a warm-blooded, straight man had ever told her no was probably a decade in the past, more even. The last time that had happened was probably when she was not even a teenager, before her body was more, developed.
As far as he could see, she had been blessed with the right amount of curves for a woman as petite and thin as she was. A second look at her told him that those curves were worked on. Her legs were muscular things like a dancer who did two shows a day. Meaning that she probably incorporated squats into her daily workouts.
“Well?” She interrupted his boyish contemplations.
“Sorry. Yes. Let’s go.”
He knelt down and reached around her thighs, above her knees and hauled her up over his shoulder, carefully.
He walked to the door and opened it, peeked out into the hall. No one was there. No security guard.
Quickly, he took her out and shut the door behind him.
He walked at a fast pace, but not running or jogging, with her over his shoulder.
They passed the elevator just as it dinged and the doors opened behind them, but they were well out of sight.
They made it back to his room. He set her down and opened the door with the keycard and stepped in. He helped her hop in beh
ind him.
The door shut and he watched her hop over to the table where one of his hotel phones had been and then she plopped herself down on the chair next to it.
“Let’s get these off, please,” she said.
And once again, he did not say no.
CHAPTER 23
THE LAST THING that Widow had expected to feel was hungover, but suddenly, he did. He figured it was not the glass of champagne that he drank, but the fact that he had been woken up from a deep sleep, had dredged up adrenaline and then took out four armed guys, that caused his body to crash from the high. And now he felt hungover.
He opened the minibar and pulled out a couple of protein bars, offered one to the Russian woman, tied up and sitting in his hotel room.
That thought made him smile.
“What’s funny?”
She noticed.
“Oh nothing. I’m not laughing.”
“Why smile? This is serious situation.”
“Sorry, it was just a thought I had from earlier. I was half asleep when you called. Still trying to get acclimated.”
“Acclimated?”
“Reoriented.”
She nodded.
Silence.
Widow asked, “You’re Russian?”
She nodded.
“My name is Jack Widow.”
“Anna Johannsen,” she said.
“Johannsen? Is that Russian?”
She looked at him and smiled.
“Sorry, I meant Eva Karpov. That’s my true name.”
Widow nodded. She used an alias. Interesting.
“What the hell is going on?”
“First, get me out of these?” she asked and gestured to the restraints.
“Of course,” he said. He set the protein bars down on the table.
Widow looked around the hotel for a moment and then decided to use the half empty champagne bottle. He took it into the bathroom and over the sink, considered breaking it on the countertop, but then thought about how expensive that looked.
He turned to the tub, dumped out the rest of the champagne, and used minimal force to break off the bottom of the bottle. One good, hard whack and he had several fragments of sharp green glass and a whole bottle neck, still intact.
Widow dropped the neck into a wastebasket and picked up a sharp piece of glass.
He returned to her.
