Once Quiet (Jack Widow Book 5) Page 2

  He had spent the last couple of years touring around the country, living like everything was single serving. He only commandeered the things he needed and ignored what he didn’t. He bought secondhand clothes, wore them for days, and threw them out when he was done with them. He slept in motel beds when he could or he slept out under the stars or in truck stops or train stations or bus depots, or even the occasional docked boat.

  Whenever he was near a body of water, he had discovered that docked boats were frequently left abandoned for weeks or even months. He didn’t follow this practice often, but if he was tired enough, then he would trespass and spend a night sleeping below deck of someone else’s boat.

  In the morning, he would leave it as he found it.

  He found that sleeping on a docked boat always felt the most at home for him, since seafaring had once been his life.

  If a boat owner ever discovered him, he would just pretend the confusion of a drunken act of stumbling onto the wrong boat. Simple misunderstanding. But so far, he hadn’t been discovered.

  The first time that he had heard of Route 93 was when he had overheard the college kids talking about it, which he guessed was Highway 93. He immediately thought of Route 66, a popular route for road-tripping. Probably the most popular. He had never heard of 93 being a popular scenic route before.

  That’s when he had decided to walk over to the kids and ask. He introduced himself and they talked for the better part of an hour. They were young and had all the stigmas of being young. Some of which were true and some were not.

  One of them, a tall scrawny kid with short dreadlocks that looked inauthentic had taken Highway 93 before. He said it was a great route to take because it ventured down south into the Sonora Desert in Mexico and then north into the Canadian Rockies. According to the kid with dread locks, “It was totally awesome!”

  Widow was lucky enough to hitch a ride south with the kids. They all wound up riding in an old Dodge pickup with a Mexican gentleman who knew hardly any English.

  The guy was driving south to Nogales, Mexico.

  Widow rode in the back of the pickup with the dreadlock kid and another guy, while two girls squeezed onto the front bench, next to the driver. That seemed to make him very happy. The whole drive, Widow saw him grinning from ear to ear.

  Widow hopped out of the truck at a gas station before the Mexican border. He wasn’t interested in going to Mexico. But he decided to backtrack and head back north on old Highway 93, see what the scenic route that the kids were talking about looked like for himself. What else was he going to do?

  That’s how he ended up passing back through Wikieup, Arizona, which was a small no-nothing town, one of hundreds that he had seen before and imagined he would see again.

  The night had swept across the state. He stood at a Shell station with little traffic for over an hour.

  There was a sculpture in the parking lot, right at the end of a row of gas pumps. It was a model fighter jet made from a cheap metal alloy. Widow wasn’t sure what the significance of it was, but it reminded him of the life-sized model jets that were posted on the outer rims of Air Force and Naval Air Stations all over the world.

  He had hoped to convince someone to give him a ride soon, but it didn’t seem like it was going to happen and he was getting hungry.

  All of a sudden, as if things couldn’t get worse, it started pouring rain.

  WIDOW STOOD UNDER THE TIN CANOPY above the pumps and watched the rain. His stomach growled. He didn’t want gas station food. He decided to try his luck at a sports bar down the street, which turned out to be a painful mistake.

  The parking lot was full, which didn’t surprise him because it might’ve been the only place in fifty square miles to get food and beer and sports off satellite TV, all in one place.

  The bar’s interior was open and inviting. It wasn’t a dreary, dark place like a lot of bars he had seen before.

  Widow walked past a hostess station and took up a barstool at the end of the bar, next to the waitress station. He ordered a coffee, which made the bartender look at him sideways. She quipped that this was a bar and that they had beer on tap, but he wasn’t interested at the moment.

  He did take her suggestion to order the Buffalo hot wings. She had challenged him to try the hottest option, which was called “Nuclear.” Widow guessed that was meant to intimidate people. He took her up on that challenge.

  While he waited, he drank the coffee and asked for a refill. He noticed that the place was pretty busy. He counted at least four different waitresses. Each of them wore the same uniform, a tight pair of shorts, that he believed were called boy shorts, and a button shirt that was too small for each of them. Each girl had a similar body type. Each was small-waisted. Each had long legs. Each was young. The only real differences between them were hair and skin colors.

  Widow figured the owner was probably a man, but then again maybe it was a woman who exploited the waitresses’ looks to appeal to customers. Not an uncommon business tactic in the sports bar market.

  At the same time that Widow’s plate of “nuclear” hot wings arrived from the kitchen, and steaming like they deserved their name, a group of six guys walked into the bar.

  They were loud and already appeared to have been drinking. They all wore various versions of the same garb, like today’s college prep frat boy. They had designer polo shirts that were awkwardly colored, probably to give the impression that they weren’t designer brands. But they were.

  As they half walked and half stumbled in, the bar crowd turned and looked at them and studied them for a brief second. Then they all went back to drinking beers and conversing and watching the football game being played on various TVs.

  Widow kept one eye on them. They were familiar in a way. Not the specific kind of way, like he had met them before, but in a general way, like he knew the type. He just wasn’t sure what type it was, not exactly, because they dressed preppy, but looked more like Spartans, the old Greek warriors. They were all big guys, most had that thick Spartan beard and some had tattoos. It was weird.

  Widow ignored them and went back to eating his wings and half watching the game.

  WIDOW STAYED AT THE SPORTS BAR for another hour. He finished his wings and a pitcher of water because they were indeed very hot. Although, “nuclear” was a clear case of false advertisement because they couldn’t be that hot. But Widow found out the hard way that they could still be very hot.

  He pushed the plate of chicken bones and untouched celery stalks aside and asked for his check. Then he gave the bartender his bankcard. She went to the computer and tapped a few buttons onscreen and then swiped the card. He watched as she greeted a new customer and then went back to get his bank card and ticket off a little dark gray printer for him to sign. He looked around the room and saw that the six big guys were playing pool in the far corner, using two adjacent tables. They were loud, but weren’t bothering anyone.

  He saw one of them sitting on a stool. The guy was staring at him and it wasn’t the first time. The same guy had looked at him several times earlier, like he knew Widow, but couldn’t quite place him.

  Widow saw the guy had also been texting in between his turns to shoot. Then the guy’s phone rang and he answered it.

  Widow couldn’t hear what he was saying, but part of that was because of the distance and the other part was because he wasn’t saying much of anything. He was doing a lot of listening and nodding his head. It was almost like he was taking orders.

  Widow ignored him and stared at his bar tab. He signed the copy marked “Merchant” and pocketed his card.

  The sports bar didn’t have any windows, but he saw it was still raining because four customers got up and walked out the front door, revealing the heavy downpour continuing.

  Just then he felt someone standing next to him. It wasn’t one of the waitresses either. This new person had a bigger presence. Widow turned back, sat straight in his seat. He saw that one of the guys was standing at the counter, rig
ht up next to him. The guy was only a couple of inches from Widow.

  He was the shortest of the six, about as tall as Widow was when he was seated, which was about average height. Because Widow was a tall guy.

  The guy stood there, waited for something. He had thick stubble on his chin, not quite a beard, but getting there. Regarding his beard and his size, he didn’t match up to his friends.

  Widow had noticed that the Spartan beard was becoming very trendy among the bodybuilders of the world. He didn’t know why.

  This guy was the smallest of the bunch, but still big. He was shorter than Widow, but he had a lot of girth, like a tree trunk, sawed in half.

  The bartender came over and handed the guy another pitcher of beer. It was blonde, which told Widow that it was Budweiser, his preferred brand. He knew it was Bud because it was the only big-name domestic that they had had on tap. No way were these guys drinking imported or craft beer. They didn’t strike Widow as a bunch with a little worldliness to them.

  The guy left a five-dollar bill on the counter, to which the bartender made a face because pitchers were on special for five dollars. No tip.

  Widow kept his eyes forward on the nearest TV.

  The guy turned to walk past him and slammed, not bumped, but slammed right into Widow’s chair. The pitcher of Budweiser was good and cold. Widow knew that because the guy had spilled it—all of it. It hemorrhaged out of the pitcher in one giant spill. It was all over his clothes, his face, his neck, and dripping down his back in seconds.

  Instead of apologizing with a couple of words, the guy started bowing up the way an ape does in the wild. He said, “Watch it, bro!” Only he said it in that fake millennial-surfer kind of way, like brauh.

  Widow hated being called bro. He stood up in a quick leap from his seat. The barstool rocked back on its legs but didn’t tip over. Widow said, “Sorry about that.”

  They both knew whose fault it was, but Widow wasn’t in the mood to fight one guy who would turn into six. Which seemed to be the opposite of what the guy was expecting because he looked shocked. He looked like he expected Widow to react differently.

  Widow said, “I must’ve been sitting too far back. Totally my fault. Let me pay for the next pitcher.”

  The guy just stood there. He leaned away and looked past Widow at his friends like he didn’t know what to do next.

  Widow chuckled and said, “Guess my cash will be soaking wet though.”

  He looked at the bartender and asked, “Is that okay?”

  She nodded, said nothing, but gave him another sideways stare. Part of him thought it was because earlier he had paid with a bank card, instead of cash. And part of him thought it was because she wouldn’t have offered to buy the drunk guy another round.

  Widow pulled out a ten-dollar bill, wet and handed it to her, giving her a big tip right in front of the guy. And then he said, “Well, excuse me. I’d better go dry off.”

  He started to walk past the guy, squeaking his shoes on the tile. The guy held his hand out in front of Widow. He said, “What makes ya think ya getting away dat easy, bro?”

  He put his fingers on Widow’s chest.

  Widow smiled at him, breathed in, and thought about the last time he went to jail for beating up a bunch of drunk guys. Then he breathed out. He said, “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” the guy asked. He retracted his fingers and then shoved them again into Widow’s chest plate, which was harder than most and the guy noticed. It was harder because Widow had had calluses built and knotted up all over his bones. He’d broken a lot of bones in his life. Most of them belonged to other people, but many of them were his. He’d been hit a lot and he had hit a lot. Intense trauma, repeated, over the course of a long military career, will do that. He had the bones of a street fighter who never stopped fighting. He’d never been beaten before, not really, but he certainly had marks, notches, and wear on his bones as a result of the fighting.

  Widow reached his hands up slowly and wiped the beer that splashed up, out of his eyes. He said, “You looking for a fight?”

  “What if I am? What you gonna do about it?”

  Widow looked around, looked at the bartender who had already started to pick up a phone. Then he looked at some of the other customers who stared at them. He saw the waitresses taking out their cellphones. They pointed them at Widow and the short guy. He assumed they were recording what was happening. That was a big problem with today’s world. Everybody was not just a witness; they were all walking surveillance cameras.

  He said, “Not here.”

  “Then where?”

  “Outside. Give me five minutes.”

  “What you need five minutes for?”

  “I just drank two cups of coffee. I need to take a leak. What? You wanna fight me here, take the chance of my pissing on you?”

  “Eww,” the guy said as he stepped back and took his fingers off Widow’s chest.

  Widow said, “Thank you.” And he walked right past the guy.

  The guy said, “Be there in five minutes or we’ll come get ya.”

  Widow believed the guy. That they’d come get him if he didn’t come out. But he never found out because as soon as he stepped out of sight, near the bathroom entrances, he skipped them. He walked through a door that was clearly meant for the staff only. No one saw him. He saw a fire exit that was propped open for the kitchen guys to take out the trash and to sneak their smoke breaks.

  He walked out the back and into the rain.

  CHAPTER 3

  JUST ABOUT TWO WEEKS before Jack Widow ran out the backdoor of a sports bar to avoid fighting six big guys in a small town in Arizona, far away, in a high-rise office in Los Angeles, California, a man answered the phone on his desk, not his business line, but a separate, secured line and was asked by a male caller to give his old Naval Intelligence passcode that he hadn’t used in nearly a decade. The code was used to identify one Intelligence Operator to the next.

  He imagined that this was an outdated method of spy craft. Today, they would be using voice recognition software and fingerprint analysis, if applicable, and special phones with chips in them.

  The man in California still preferred the old ways because sometimes the old ways were still the best. Especially, since he ran a Fortune 500 tech company, even if it was barely on that list—one from the bottom, last year.

  Being the CEO of a major medical tech company sounded great, but nowadays, he wasn’t so sure that he would’ve accepted the offer all those years ago if he knew the reality to come. The truth was that he wasn’t the one in charge. He was only the one who made the day-to-day decisions. He was the face of it all.

  Even though he had a lot of responsibility, nothing much concerned the man in the high-rise these days.

  The man worked for a company called Sossaman Medical Technologies. It was named after a man who wasn’t dead, a man that he would’ve killed, if he could. But Sossaman was not far from death, which was good enough. It had been for ten prosperous years.

  While Sossaman wasn’t in the picture any longer, it was still impossible for the man in California to ever forget his name because he had seen the name every day in his routine around the office.

  He had seen it because the name was printed on a big, metallic sign in the lobby, above the reception counter, which was the choice of the interior designer, not him. The designer had been some young thing with a short skirt and glowing green eyes, two things that he liked.

  She had raved about the metallic and modern designs that she was trying to bring to his office. She had said that the sign would both intimidate and impress his clients.

  She had said that whenever new or old clients got off the elevator, the name on the sign was the first thing that they would notice. And they would be so impressed that they’d never forget it.

  After the man in the high-rise in California had given his passcode and they were both satisfied that both men were who they claimed to be, the man in California said, “What
are you calling about?”

  The caller on the other line answered with a nervous undertone, like a gun was to his head. He paused a long second and then he said, “There’s chatter.”

  The man in California had gotten to where he was not by being cautious, but rather by being a little paranoid. The first time that he ever did something a tad illegal was after a colleague of his had told him “to be great at spy craft, a little paranoia goes a long way.”

  He never forgot that lesson. He asked, “You recording us?”

  “What? No!”

  The man in California asked, “Why the long pause? Just now?”

  “I’m not recording us! I’m scared. That’s all.”

  “About what?”

  The caller said, “A couple of things. The chatter I’m hearing for one.”

  “From where? What chatter?”

  Silence.

  The man in California said, “We’ve not spoken in ten years. Now you’re calling out of the blue. That can’t be good. So, what is it?”

  The caller said, “It’s not that bad. Just a rumor.”

  “It must be sort of bad. You’re calling me.”

  “I’m calling out of old friendship.”

  “We’re friends?”

  “Don’t you think so?”

  The man in California said nothing.

  The caller said, “I’m calling because I owe you. And I’m concerned.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you know where I work now?”

  The man in California asked, “Still in Naval Intelligence?”

  “NCIS.”

  “You’re civilian now?”

  “Yep.”

  “Coronado?”

  “No. Quantico.”

  “Home base. That’s impressive. And no one’s ever managed to catch you?”

  The caller remained nervous. He said, “I don’t do this sort of thing anymore.”

  The man in California said, “You don’t give away top-secret information to the highest bidder?”

  “No. I’m legit now.”

  “Then why the hell are you calling me?”

  There was silence on the line. The man in the high-rise in California imagined the guy from the NCIS contemplating hanging up on him. But the caller finally spoke.