by Scott Blade
“Drive!” he said.
She hit the gas and spun the wheel all the way. They turned around and accelerated, tearing through the parking lot and hopping over a curb onto the service road.
Harvard took them back down the service drive, and back into Hellbent.
Widow glanced at the same sign he saw posted the day before with the town name on it.
Welcome to Hellbent.
Chapter 30
W ITHOUT NOTICING each other, the Jeep blazed out of the gas station parking lot just as a man on a motorcycle was turning in.
Warrens went over the hump into the front of the same gas station. He rode slowly and cautiously, pulling down the hill and turning in under the roof over the pumps. He stopped the bike, left the engine on.
He heard the sirens in the distance and saw the gas station attendant and two customers and several truckers piling out of the station and staring toward the back of the lots, back to the parked trucks and trailers.
Warrens took out his phone, dialed a number, and put it to his ear.
He let it ring and ring and ring. It was Lareno’s phone. No answer. Then he hung up and dialed Major.
The phone rang, and Major answered after the first ring.
“What? You find the airman?”
“No. We got a problem.”
“What? ”
Just then, he saw the old woman whose house they were occupying. She came walking out from behind a trailer. Her face was bloody, but she was okay. She stumbled on for ten yards, until two truckers, running back to see what was happening, caught her.
“Lareno and Ethans are dead.”
“What? How?”
“I think some outsiders.”
“Can you confirm?”
“No. Cops are coming here now. But I see the old lady. She’s alive and not with them.”
“Shit!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get back here. Now!”
“You got it!”
They hung up the phone.
Major texted Arnold and ordered him to return, which he responded with an affirmative.
Chapter 31
W IDOW AND HARVARD drove past many of the same stores and shops they’d seen earlier, but Widow pointed at a road leading to a residential area and told her to go that way to avoid Cole, which she did.
They passed the grave he had seen the day before, but he didn’t point it out. And they wound up back on the route to Dorothy’s house.
Widow took the phone out and redialed the same number from memory that he had called earlier, the Pentagon and the Air Force intelligence. He got the same woman as before and asked for the director.
Director Carr came on the line.
“Commander Widow. You’re back.”
“I am. Did you look me up?”
“I did.”
“Did you look up Captain Harvard?”
Harvard looked over from the steering wheel at him.
“I did,” Carr said.
“And? I’m guessing that you found some interesting things. ”
Carr sighed over the phone, then asked, “Is this a private conversation?”
“It is. More or less.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m with Star Harvard now.”
“The captain’s wife?”
“Yes.”
Carr sighed again and said, “Have you found the captain?”
“Negative.”
Carr said nothing to that. He said, “I was actually about to call you.”
“I figured you were.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I figured you’d check me out and somehow you’d conclude that I’m the real deal. And that you need to listen to me.”
“That’s partially true.”
“So explain.”
“You understand I can’t tell you things.”
“And?”
“So I called my friend who works over at NCIS. He’s in Special Ops.”
“Go on.”
“He’s fairly high ranking. He’s an old college buddy. He was my dorm mate for a summer session.”
Widow listened.
Carr said, “We used to golf together. He’s very competitive.”
Harvard took a curve, fast. Widow hung on to the handle on the passenger door, bracing himself .
Carr said, “He’s kept that competitive spirit, even though we are both old men now. So what he does now is he brags to me about cases they’ve cracked or intel they’ve gathered about rogue terrorists or whatever. Stuff like that. All friendly.”
“I’m listening, Carr.”
“I asked about you. Mentioned your name. He told me he’d call me back. So, when he finally did, he casually mentioned that he’d never heard of you.”
“And?”
“And that means he has heard of you. Or at least he knows something about you, now.”
“He told you nothing?”
“No. In fact, he asked me not to call him at work again. He said there’s some kind of crackdown over there about interdepartmental rah, rah, rah.”
Widow nodded but stayed quiet.
“So, I looked up Harvard, and he’s working on a new project. That’s about all I can say.”
“If you can’t say more, then why did you call me back?”
Carr said, “That’s all I can speak.”
Widow said, “Can you answer my questions?”
“I can say yes or I can say no. On most things.”
“Is Harvard here because of a nuke?”
“Yes. More or less.”
“Is there a secret silo here or an installation that is manned and nuclear-capable? ”
“More or less.”
“Is this nuke off the books?”
“Yes.”
Widow gazed up out the window. His eyes looked over the horizon. The sun was high in the sky. He suddenly imagined nuclear fire everywhere.
“Widow, are you there?”
“Carr, you’ve got a big problem here. There are hostiles on the ground, and Harvard is nowhere to be found.”
“Hostiles?”
“It gets worse. We’ve got three dead airmen here. Missileers, I’d guess.”
“Dead! How?”
“Tortured and burned alive!”
Silence fell over the phone.
Finally, Carr asked, “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
Silence again.
Widow said, “Give me your cell number. I’ve got photos to send you. I killed two of the hostiles. I need to know if you can identify them.”
“Of course. Send it to me. I need to get off the phone for now. I’m gonna try to get in contact with the installation.”
“Of course. Good thinking. Warn them that the hostiles may already be on their way or watching them.”
Carr said nothing to that, but Widow heard him breathing as if he wasn’t sure if he should trust Widow or not. Then he hung up .
Widow went into the photos and fumbled around with them for a moment.
Harvard looked over at him.
“Need me to do that for you?”
“Can you do that and drive at the same time?”
“I’m a woman. I can do anything at the same time as driving.”
Widow smiled, handed her the phone. She thumbed through the photos, selected them both and then left it on a text screen with an empty space where the phone number went. She handed the phone back to him.
“Put in the number and press send.”
Widow did as instructed and heard a whoosh sound.
He put the phone down on the center console.
Harvard said, “Widow.”
He looked at her.
“I think we’re being followed again.”
Widow twisted in his seat and saw a motorcycle behind them, not far, but not close.
Behind the motorcycle was an F150. They might’ve been hostiles; then again they mig
ht not have.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Keep on going to the house.”
They drove for another five minutes and then the phone rang, breaking the silence.
Widow picked it up. The number was private.
“Hello?”
“Widow. Carr. ”
“That was fast.”
“Listen, this is very serious.”
“I told you that.”
“I’ve dispatched two teams from Pease Air National Guard Base. But it won’t reach the installation for thirty minutes.”
“Why the urgency? Talk to me?”
“No one’s answering at the installation.”
“Would they?”
“Absolutely.”
The thought of God knows how many hostiles taking over a nuclear missile smack on American soil sent a chill down Widow’s spine.
Carr said, “Widow?”
“I’m here.”
“The photo you sent is a man named Sgt. Rick Lareno. He was Special Forces and Army for five years, and then he was imprisoned for five years after that. A string of charges. Eventually, he got out with a dishonorable discharge on some sort of early release. He’s not alone. He ran with a bad crew. All kinds of jail time and dishonorable discharges.”
Widow listened.
“The leader is a guy named Major Mercer.”
Widow absorbed the info and stayed focused on the road ahead, keeping one eye on the motorcycle and truck in the side mirror.
“Mercer got into some hot water over a manifesto he wrote. The short version is he’s a nihilist. He and his crew want to dismantle the world order. They’ve all gone offline over the last month. I checked, and no one knows where they are.”
“I do. They’re here.”
“I agree.”
“Looks like they’ve come to get your missile, Carr.”
“No. There’s no missile on that site or plutonium or anything like that.”
“So what’s the deal?”
“Since the nineteen-seventies, missile silos have never been updated. The tech is ancient, and it’s kept that way so it can’t be hacked. It’s been left ancient and heavy, so it can’t be stolen. You follow?”
“I do.”
“Hellbent is a prototype, an experimental idea to change that, down the road.”
“And?”
“And the installation at Hellbent is all new tech. It’s linked to a satellite, which has been linked to the missile silos.”
“Which missiles silos?” Widow asked.
Carr was deadly quiet for a long, bumpy moment.
Widow realized that either he was reading the intel about the program in Hellbent or someone who knew it was telling him.
Carr said, “Theoretically, it’s all of them, but to start with there are only five operational.”
“Which five?”
“We don’t know. It’s picked at random by an algorithm. ”
Widow stayed quiet, pictured the sky of nuclear fire again. Everything was on fire. The trees. The skyline. Everything.
Carr said, “Widow.”
“I’m here.”
“There’s one more thing. The missileers are down deep in a silo, below ground as they all are. Their elevator is on a time lock. Meaning that it only operates when their shift is scheduled to end, and the shifts are always different. Like twenty-four hours and forty-eight, etc. The current shift is scheduled to end in less than thirty minutes.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that you’d better get your ass over there! Pronto! Those boys are about to end a shift, and that elevator will operate, and the security blast doors at the top of the shaft will open automatically.”
Widow paused, waited for more, but the phone went dead.
Chapter 32
T HE JEEP ROCKED on its springs as they sped up and flew around a corner.
Widow said, “Dorothy’s house should be right up here.”
Harvard took another curve hard and fast and then she slowed at a street corner that led down straight in one direction and turned slightly down a gravel road.
Widow pointed to a longhouse, hidden behind trees and shrubs.
“That’s her place.”
“So this must be the road to the installation?”
“Must be. Pull over here.”
She pulled over. Widow took out the M9 and ejected the magazine and checked the rounds. He had ten in the magazine and one in the chamber.
He did a check on the sawed-off. He was good there but only could fire two rounds before having to reload.
Widow looked at Harvard.
She spoke before he could .
“Don’t you dare tell me to wait here! I’m a part of this. You’re not putting me out.”
“Okay. This is the plan.”
Widow took a quick look at the house and the terrain.
“Give me three minutes to get into position in the back. Then you drive up the driveway. Honk your horn.”
“Why?”
“Distraction. You’ve done this before, right?”
“This sounds more like you’re leaving me in the Jeep?”
“There’s a hostage in there. You distract them. When they come outside, I’ll be inside through the back.”
“Then what?”
“Whoever comes out that isn’t an old man or me, shoot him.”
He reached across the center console and squeezed her hand.
She said, “First it sounded like you were ditching me. Now, it sounds like I’m the bait.”
“You wanted to be included.”
She sighed.
He said, “Stay safe. Shoot first. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Widow ducked out the passenger side door and vanished into the trees and brush on the corner of the lot.
One minute later, he was around the house and at a back privacy fence, built around the rear of the house .
Widow had the M9 in his hand, down by his side. He peered through a crack between planks on the fence. He looked around.
No sign of anyone.
Widow walked to the gate and reached over the top, unlatched it from a simple metal hook and opened it.
He stepped into the backyard and pulled the gate closed behind him, quietly.
He surveyed the backyard. It wasn’t deep and had fewer trees than the front. There was an in-ground pool. Leaves littered the top of it. The water was dark, partially covered in shade and partially just dirty. He ignored it and headed for the patio and the back door of the house and stopped.
On the patio, he saw one of the sons from the day before. Dorothy’s son. He was dead.
He hung across a broken window, left there like a displayed body warning off intruders.
Just then, the wind blew hard through the trees. The sounds carried across the yard. The treetops swayed all in the same direction like they were grasping toward him.
And something in the pool moved like a wave in the water or something swimming in it.
Widow turned and pointed the M9 at a hump in the leaves in the pool that he hadn’t noticed before.
He crouched down and waited. He looked back at the house. The backdoor was a pair of sliding glass panels. There were no curtains. Widow could see into the house. He saw no movement.
Then he approached the hump in the leaves on the surface of the pool. As he got closer, he saw what it was.
There was a dead body floating face down in the pool.
Widow edged to the side of the water and bent down. He reached out with his left hand, kept the M9 pointed at the body and gripped a wet collar.
Red water pooled around the neck.
Widow turned over the body in the pool.
It was Bill, Dorothy’s husband. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. He was dead. No question.
Widow sat back on his haunches, stared into the dead eyes.
He felt terrible for Dorothy. She was all alone now.
Widow fel
t the hairs on his neck stand up, but not out of fear. It was a side effect from feeling his blood boil. He was furious.
This guy, Mercer, and the rest were going to die.
He stood up, tall, and crept over to the slider. He kept the M9 out, ready to shoot first like he’d told Harvard to do.
Then he slid the door open, fast. It was unlocked as he had suspected. People who lived way out here probably didn’t lock their back patio doors too often. What for? Bears don’t know how to click the button and slide the door open .
Widow rushed into the house.
Inside, he found everything he expected. Old family furniture, sofas, kitchenware, appliances, a family table, and another dead son.
This one was up against the wall on the way to the living room. Looked like he might’ve been dead first.
Widow stormed the living room, then down a long hallway, checked three bedrooms and two bathrooms and four closets.
No one was there.
The place was empty.
He walked back to the living room and saw another door off the kitchen. He opened it and found an empty, dark garage with two motorcycles parked in it. The same two he’d seen the brothers riding the day before.
Widow returned to the living room and headed for the front door to open it and walk out to the driveway to rejoin Harvard.
As he grabbed the doorknob, he realized something. She had never honked the horn.
Widow turned the knob and opened the front door and stepped out into view.
He knew immediately why she hadn’t honked the horn.
In the driveway, Widow saw Harvard, pregnant and standing out in front of the Jeep’s engine block. She had her hands up. They were empty.
Standing next to her was a man who looked familiar as if Widow had seen him before, but he was sure that they had never met .
The guy was unarmed. The look on his face was different from the others. It looked almost scared.
He was about Harvard’s age and a little taller. He had a bruised eye and split lip as if he had been roughed up within the last hour. Blood trickled from the corner of his lip. It streamed down his lower face to his chin. It wasn’t gushing but was still wet.
The guy wore tattered clothes, looking like he’d slept in them, a generic flannel and jeans.
Widow noticed something else, something stranger. The guy was barefoot.
