The Double Man (Jack Widow Book 15) Read online

  In boxing, all punching was done above the belt. The blows are all to the face or body. Widow wasn’t above breaking rules, especially when there are none. He shuffled his hands again and telegraphed that he was going to throw a right hook at Eddie, using his shoulders. Like a lot of boxers and boxing spectators, Eddie watched the shoulder. He knew enough to know that. He saw Widow’s movement and prepared to defend against a right hook. The only thing was that Widow never delivered that right hook. Instead, he came up off his right foot, stood on his left, and fired the right foot forward at a dizzying speed like an NFL kicker going for the goal post. The top of Widow’s hiking shoe slammed into Eddie’s groin like a wrecking ball. The damage was immediate and immense.

  Eddie let out a squeal that was somewhere in the vocal range of alto to soprano. He folded over, dropped both fists, and cupped his groin. He dropped to his knees. He looked straight up at Widow. The pain on his face was unmistakable. It was the worst pain he ever felt in his life. Eddie’s eyes rolled back a little. His face flushed over. Widow came at him again. This time he did use a right hook. Widow bashed his right hook straight into Eddie’s cheek. The guy toppled over without a squeal or a whimper because he hit the concrete and was out cold.

  Widow turned his attention to the third and last guy. The third guy came at him. He punched with the fist that had the knuckle-duster first. Widow slapped it away with his right hand. He came back at the guy and smashed the elbow from his right arm into the guy’s gut. He followed it with the same elbow to the guy’s chin. It was a one-two strike, like it had been printed with stick figures in a diagram of a book on hand-to-hand combat.

  One. Two. And the guy stumbled backward.

  Widow grabbed the knuckle-duster as the guy fell back on his ass. He ripped them off the guy’s hand and slipped the knuckle-duster on his right hand and smashed a straight jab into the guy’s forehead—knuckle-duster and all. It was instant goodnight. The third guy sprawled out on his back and didn’t move. He joined his friend Eddie in dreamland.

  Widow slid the knuckle-duster off his fingers and tossed them off into a cropping of weeds and grass. He started to walk away, but he forgot one thing. It was a momentary mistake anyone could’ve made. He actually forgot about Johnny for a split second.

  Widow heard shoes scuffling on concrete behind him, and he spun around. Johnny was back on his feet. He had his Springfield XD-S out again, and it was pointed right at Widow’s face … again.

  Widow saw Johnny’s eye lined up right over the sight. It stared at him. Johnny’s hand trembled again, but not like before. This time was different. He was different. This time, there was a look in his eyes. He intended to pull the trigger—first time or not. The look in his eyes told Widow all he needed to know. Johnny was dead set on shooting him.

  “You stay right where you are!” Johnny said. He stood about five feet away from Widow, close enough to lunge at but far enough to make it a risky move.

  Widow stood his ground. He raised both hands up in the air like he was surrendering. His palms open. He showed them to Johnny and stayed quiet.

  Carl coughed and gagged behind Johnny. But Johnny didn’t turn around to check on him. He called back to his brother but didn’t take his eye off Widow.

  “Carl, you hang in there. I’m coming to get you.”

  “You better hurry. He really does need a doctor,” Widow said.

  Johnny inched closer, stuck the gun closer to Widow’s face. His arm was stretched out all the way. He held the gun one-handed, waved it at Widow.

  “Shut up! You, shut up!”

  Widow stayed where he was. He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.

  Widow said, “Seriously, he’s turning blue. The damage to his throat could cause lasting effects.”

  “Shut up!” Johnny said and inched closer.

  Widow said, “If he doesn’t get medical attention soon enough, the damage might be irreversible. He might need one of those holes in his throat to help him breath. You ever seen one of those before?”

  Johnny stepped closer, and this time, he was going to pull the trigger. Widow knew it. Widow counted on it.

  Johnny stepped in. It was the final time. He was going to shoot Widow in the face. He knew it. Widow knew it. No backing down now. He didn’t care about repercussions or consequences or jail time. It was time to pop his cherry. Widow was going to die.

  But Johnny made two mistakes. The first was the same mistake he made minutes earlier. He pulled a gun on Widow. That was the first mistake.

  The second mistake was that he did something all novice shooters did. Not that he was a novice. Not firing a weapon. But he was a novice at killing a man. The second mistake Johnny made, which Widow counted on, was he closed his eyes before pulling the trigger. Johnny stepped forward, gun out, aimed, shut his eyes—briefly like a flutter of a butterfly wing—and pulled the trigger.

  Widow waited for that butterfly flutter. He was counting on it. It was a hunch that Johnny would do it, but it was a hunch formulated from sixteen years of combat and cop experience. Widow took a final step closer and exploded from his feet like all great boxers. He danced right and turned himself to the side so that his target profile was much thinner. Johnny pulled the trigger with his eyes closed, but by that second, Widow wasn’t standing in the same place. The bullet ignited out of the muzzle and blind-fired into open air. The bullet would go on to slam into the brick of one of the nearby buildings. A burst of dust and gravel from the brick exploded into the air, leaving a cloud of white smoke.

  Widow clamped a hand down on the gun and wrenched the other all the way back and punched Johnny square in the nose, shattering it. Blood gushed out in all directions like a loose firehose. The nose cracked in a violent, deafening sound like someone slamming a drum set with a sledgehammer.

  Johnny released the weapon completely and clawed at his broken nose. He was desperate to stop the bleeding, to stop the intense pain. He pawed and scraped at his face. There was so much blood. In seconds, he was blinded by the red blood that gushed from multiple holes in his face.

  He tried calling out in pain, but blood rushed into his mouth.

  Widow watched him for a long second. Johnny stumbled back several paces. He was dazed and blinded by the blood. He couldn’t see where he was going. He couldn’t see where Widow was.

  Widow took the opportunity to deliver another painful blow. Not that he had to. Johnny was immobilized for the most part. But the guy did try to shoot him in the face.

  Widow took several strides forward and lined Johnny up like he had Eddie. And Widow drove another powerful kick right into the guy’s groin.

  Johnny’s hands grabbed at his groin in horror, and he collapsed to the concrete. His mouth hung open like he was screaming in pain, only there was no sound. He couldn’t speak.

  Widow stepped passed him and took the gun with him. He walked over to Carl, bent down and checked him out. The guy looked up at him in terror.

  Widow reached down and moved Carl’s hand out of the way. Carl tried to swat him away but couldn’t.

  Widow said, “Relax. I want to see.”

  Carl didn’t relax, but he didn’t fight back either. He was too afraid to anger Widow. Widow inspected the guy’s neck wound. He felt genuinely bad about that.

  Widow said, “Keep your head up. You got a phone?”

  Carl nodded and patted the left-hand pocket of his coat. Widow fished into it and pulled out a cell phone. It was one of those cheap flip phones from ten or fifteen years in the past. Widow flipped it open. There was no passcode or thumbprint scanner or facial recognition on it. It worked just like an old landline phone—ready for use.

  Widow dialed 911 and asked for a paramedic. He told the operator there was a medical emergency and informed her about Carl, about the damage to his windpipe, and gave her their location. He also told her about the four other guys who were all unconscious. But the moment she asked for his name, he clicked off the phone, folded it, and returned it to Carl’s pocket.


  Widow stood up and pocketed the gun. He walked away from them. Leaving the scene of the whole incident was probably illegal in Alaska. He didn’t know for sure. But he wasn’t interested in sticking around to be questioned by local police. He also had a real fear of a place like Kodiak having what he knew in the South as “good ole boy” syndrome. Which was where local police in rural or small-town communities often sided with locals over strangers. This was especially true when local police were drinking, hunting, or fishing buddies with the local boys.

  Widow had no proof that Johnny and his friends had even known any local cops, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out. Widow had had enough of Kodiak.

  He walked away, out of the alley, and out of suspicion—so he hoped.

  16

  Widow knew nothing about the local police in Kodiak. He wasn’t sure about their capabilities, infrastructure, force size, or jurisdiction. He wasn’t sure if the township of Kodiak had a police force or if the whole island was under the jurisdiction of a sheriff’s office like the county, he grew up in. He knew none of it. He didn’t know the police response time or their procedures for shots-fired scenarios. He figured on an island as vast as Kodiak Island but with a population of only thirteen thousand people, give or take, that there was most likely only one police force. Probably with wings of solo officers stationed in hamlets across the island. Maybe Bell Harbor had one of its own?

  Of course, Widow was wrong. Not completely. There were two law enforcement entities on the island. Kodiak had a police force with a chief and captains and desk sergeants and patrolmen and watch commanders and so on, like a regular police structure. But it wasn’t the only law enforcement unit on Kodiak Island. Also, there was the US Coast Guard, which had its own police presence in Kodiak. That jurisdiction entailed the waters, the coastline, anything off the land, and all property which belonged to the USCG, which included all of the service members. Like the Army and the Navy, coastguardsmen are considered GI, government issue, or government property. In other words, once you sign the dotted line, your ass belongs to Uncle Sam.

  Widow ended up back at the place he knew, Kodiak Espresso. He walked in and discovered the baristas had rotated. This time, he ordered another espresso from the kid with the band haircut. It was just as good as the first. He took it to go and headed back down to the docks, where the ferry would leave. He thought it best to wait there until the six o’clock ferry boarded.

  Widow popped the collar on his jacket to help fight off gusts of sea breeze. He perched himself on a concrete wall, stayed away from the sight line of the entrance to the parking lot, and sipped his espresso and cracked open his paperback book. He read for a couple of hours without interruption.

  Later on, the sky was too overcast to find the exact location of the sun. But, he knew the time was sometime after noon. He didn’t need a watch to know when it was time to board his ferry. In a few hours, it would be there, waiting, plain as day.

  Suddenly, Widow saw what he was hoping to avoid. A white police car rolled up into the parking lot. It came up over a dip at the entrance and stopped. The back tires were still on the main road. Widow saw the side of the vehicle had "POLICE" written in block font, with the word "Kodiak" underneath in a smaller font, less intimidating. The car was a Ford Sedan with the Police Interceptor package. There was a black metal ram on the front grille. The windows were tinted, but Widow figured the officers inside were probably looking straight at him. He was a stranger, seated all alone, waiting for his ticket off the island.

  Widow crossed his fingers and hoped that the patrol car would roll on, but it didn’t. He knew it wouldn’t. He didn’t have luck that good.

  The patrol car turned and came into the parking lot, off the main road completely, and stopped near the first line of parking spaces. There were cars parked in some of the spaces. There was only one cluster of three cars right in the middle distance between Widow’s perch and the patrol car. The rest were scattered in different spaces all over the lot.

  The Kodiak Police car stayed where it was. The engine idled, and a plume of exhaust came out of the tailpipe. The car’s heater was running. With low sunlight, Widow was never going to be able to see through the tinted windows. He took a sip of his espresso and just stayed where he was. He wasn’t going anywhere. If they were looking for him, they’d found him, and he wasn’t going to run. Widow never ran, not from the police. Although, the thought did cross his mind. But that wasn’t the right answer. If they were looking for him, the worse thing he could do was run.

  The patrol car stayed there in the center of the aisle under a streetlight, which was off. Widow continued to sip his espresso, hoping for the best, planning for the worse.

  A minute later, another Kodiak patrol car drifted into the lot. It went forward and turned down the next aisle. The second patrol car was the same model, same interceptor package, and it had the same tinted windows. The second car pulled up halfway down the aisle and stopped. The engine idled like the first one, and exhaust plumed out of the tailpipe, same as the first.

  The chances that these cops were gearing up to confront Widow were probably ninety-five percent. That changed when a third police vehicle skipped over the dip at the entrance and drove up into the lot. This one was an SUV, same tinted windows, same ramming bar on the front. The SUV seemed to be the leader of the pack. It drove slow past the first car and then past the second and pulled onto a third row of empty parking spaces and moved past the second car. The SUV pulled right up to the end of the third row and turned and headed straight for Widow.

  The cops driving the two patrol cars behind the SUV released the brakes and followed on a slow roll behind. Widow stared at them. They were there for him. Had to be. There wasn’t anyone else around him but the seabirds marching around the lot near a public trash can. As the SUV pulled up and stopped just ten meters from Widow, the seabirds took off and scattered and circled above like confused scavengers.

  Widow took the lid off his espresso and chugged the rest of it, thinking he may not be able to if these guys put him in handcuffs.

  The SUV’s driver door opened, and a jarhead police officer stepped out. He had ten years on Widow in age. He was short but thick with a barrel chest. Besides the jarhead buzz cut on his head, his whole demeanor and look screamed Marine Corps, which made Widow wonder why he was here and not on a Marine station somewhere? Maybe he was already retired. A lot of guys figured that out early. You sign up right out of high school, work twenty years, and retire at an early age. It’s a pretty good way to have a steady retirement income from a young age and still be young enough to start a whole new career. Widow had almost made it. He had gone in the Navy at eighteen and stayed in for sixteen years. That was technically true.

  The jarhead cop stepped away from the vehicle and left his door open. No one got out the other side. There was no passenger. The other two patrol cars followed suit, like they probably rehearsed in arrest drills involving a three-car formation around a suspect. Widow knew all the moves, all the drills. He may not have run the exact same, but he knew enough. The drills they ran were here on Kodiak Island. It was a small community with a small law enforcement force with a modest police budget. He ran drills in Quantico, Virginia, on vehicle maneuvers and arrests with the world’s very best FBI and NCIS instructors. Plus, Widow went through SEAL training and operations. So he knew the maneuvers—no question.

  The two rear officers stepped out of the other two patrol cars, right out of the driver's side doors, same as the jarhead cop. They left their doors wide open, same as the jarhead cop. They took positions behind his trajectory, which was targeted right at Widow.

  The officer from the first car was a man, brown hair cut short, and clean-shaven, but not former military like the jarhead cop. The officer from the first car had that civilian look on his face. The officer from the second car was a woman. She was shorter, maybe five foot one. She may have served in the military somewhere before. She held herself with the r
ight professional confidence. But Widow couldn’t be sure. The bulletproof vest under her uniform shirt puffed her torso up and made her look about two sizes bigger than she actually was underneath. All three had vests under their shirts. All three had serious looks on their faces. And all three had their hands resting on the butts of their service weapons like they were ready to draw at a moment’s notice and put Widow in the ground.

  The jarhead cop stepped out and around the nose of his SUV. He walked up to the curb and stepped onto the sidewalk. Widow sat on the perch over the water. He had one leg dangling off over the water and the other on the parking lot side. He straddled the wall and watched the cops. He glanced at a trash can and gently tossed the empty paper espresso cup into it. He didn’t want to litter. The earth had been good to Widow. He wanted to be good back.

  All three cops watched him do it. He knew they would, that’s why he did it slow. He didn’t want them thinking he was ditching evidence or some other action that could be taken as a threat. Two of the cops didn’t react. But the rear male, the clean-cut one, he did react. He drew his weapon and left it down by his side. Widow saw it.

  It was a Glock 19. They all had Glocks, same model. They must’ve been department issue. This one fit neatly in his hand. He held it down by his side, ready to go, but he didn’t point it at Widow. It was likely he drew it as an overreaction to Widow tossing the paper cup into the trash can, but he had it out now. No sense in putting it back.

  The clean-cut cop said nothing.

  The jarhead cop stepped to the middle of the sidewalk, stayed about fifteen feet from Widow and stopped. The two other cops moved in closer and stopped at seven and five o’clock positions at his back. They both stayed about ten feet behind him.

  Widow looked at them, made eye contact, and stopped on the jarhead cop. Widow spoke, and maybe he was a little sarcastic, but these moments are always awkward. What should he have said?