The Double Man (Jack Widow Book 15) Read online

  Widow stayed quiet.

  Voight took a hefty swig from the whiskey. He asked, “Widow, have you read the Bible?”

  Widow stared at him blankly.

  Voight said, “No. I’m guessing not. You strike me as a man without a country, without a God. All the information I could get on you suggests you’re a man with a high sense of morality. You literally think you’re a one-man army, taking out people who you think are bad.

  “Since you don’t read the Bible, I assume you never heard the story of Isaac and Ishmael?”

  Widow stared at him, into his eyes, but stayed quiet.

  Voight said, “Abraham and his wife couldn’t get pregnant no matter how hard they tried. Desperately wanting a child, Abraham and their slave girl had a baby—a son. His name was Ishmael. Shortly after that, however, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, did get pregnant with a boy—Isaac. Not wanting anything to do with Ishmael, Sarah convinced Abraham to force them out. Ishmael and his mother were banished into the desert. Isaac was given all the love and riches of his father, while Ishmael was left in the desert to suffer and die, but he did not die. Do you know what happened to him?”

  Widow finally spoke. He said, “Ishmael grew up to build his own kingdom, rivalling that of his half brother. Ishmael represents the Arabs; Isaac the Jews. Two brothers warring over old grudges.”

  Voight smiled and said, “One was the rightful heir! The other came second, but he got all of his father’s love! His fortune! The other went to the desert, living a life of double-crosses and betrayal.”

  Widow said, “But in the end, the two brothers joined together to bury their father.”

  Right then, it clicked in Widow’s head. He was slow getting there, but he did get there. He said, “You and Ruffalo are half brothers.”

  “Same father. Different mothers, just like in the Bible,” Voight said, and he sucked down the rest of his whiskey. He said, “So I took over the family business. I killed our father. James’s whore mother was already dead. My mother died long ago. I confronted him with a gun and a proposition. Instead of accepting it, right off the bat, he got the FBI involved. I took care of that and let him live. I set him up in a good life. That sheriff took his daughter, and his wife died giving birth. Everything was great for thirty years until my niece started asking questions, hired Kloss, and you know the rest.”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  Voight said, “I’m sorry. But I can’t afford to leave you alive. I’m going to give you the same treatment that Kloss got. And you will tell us everything you know. Who have you told? All of it. Do this, and maybe we’ll let your friend die fast. And maybe I’ll let my brother and his daughter live. Resist and we’ll give your woman far worse than you’ll get. And I’ll be forced to kill Jimmy and his kid. Family or no family.”

  Widow said nothing.

  Voight said, “Take him down, show him the others, and then set him up. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  The two pit bulls in rain ponchos scooped Widow up by his arms and hauled him up to his feet out of the chair. They must’ve been pretty strong because Widow was no sack of hair. Right then, he weighed two hundred and thirty pounds of solid mass. He got to his feet, and they pushed him back through the door, through the control room, where they passed the two pilots. They were sitting around one of the control consoles, feet up on the desk. One of them was drinking a coffee and the other shoveled a donut into his mouth.

  The third pit bull stayed behind with Voight.

  They hauled Widow out into a hallway and took him over to elevator. They hit the button, and the elevator came up and they got on. They hit a floor that was down. Widow had no idea how far down. The buttons were all smeared and cracked. One of them was missing completely.

  The doors closed and they rode down. The elevator cables echoed above them.

  Widow asked, “What the hell happened to this rig?”

  At first, the pit bulls said nothing, but one of them decided, What could it hurt? and he answered. He said, “The rig’s old. It’s been through earthquakes and blizzards and storms, but a major earthquake mixed with the tsunami that followed destroyed a lot of structural integrity.”

  They stayed quiet the rest of the way down. Finally, the doors opened, and hard wind blew at them. Widow’s hair danced around the top of his head. Rainwater whipped into his face.

  The two pit bulls took a second and pulled their hoods back up. They half carried, half led Widow out onto catwalks beneath the hull. They walked and turned corners where they had to. A lot of the railing was missing. There were even parts of the metal floor grating missing. The two pit bulls had to point out different areas to Widow so he wouldn’t slip and fall through. One of them quipped that they didn’t want him to die before they could kill him. It was lame but refined, like he had made the same joke before.

  Widow looked down. He saw the ocean below. The waves crashed into the stud tanks and the legs.

  He asked, “What happens if someone falls over the railing?”

  “If you don’t die, then you could swim and climb up on the bottom of that leg,” the pit bull said and pointed at one of the legs, “The elevator will go down there. There’s also a ladder over there. But it’s missing rungs, and I wouldn’t want to climb it.”

  Duly noted, Widow thought.

  Finally, they turned another corner and went down a few metal steps and came to an alcove. Everything was metal. A large section of the railing was missing there. The wind was harder there than earlier.

  Widow saw it—the place where Kloss was tortured.

  At the center of the alcove, there was a metal chair. It was welded to the flooring. It was covered in dried blood. There was a bucket beneath the chair that also had blood on the lip. Next to it, there was a very large open toolbox. Inside, Widow saw all kinds of bloodstained tools—hammers, knives, pipes, wrenches, a length of chain. There was even a battery-powered heavy-duty drill. There was blood on the bit.

  Widow’s eyes didn’t linger on the chair or the toolbox because behind them, at the far end of the alcove, he saw Keagan, Tessa, and Liddy. They were all handcuffed to the railing. They sat on their butts on the floor. And they were each gagged with duct tape over their mouths.

  Widow made eye contact with Keagan. She had a black eye on one side of her face. Her hair was completely disheveled, and she looked terrified, but otherwise, she was in one piece. Tessa looked find, just scared, as did Liddy.

  One of the pit bulls stepped out in front of Widow. He was going to grab Widow by the handcuffs and force him to sit in the chair, which was the way it went last time with Kloss. But Widow had other plans. He knew that if he got strapped to that chair, he wasn’t coming out in one piece.

  Widow bent his knees—fast—and heaved his shoulders back and catapulted forward like he was fired out of a cannon and headbutted the first pit bull right in the face, full force. He used all of his leg muscles and core strength and delivered a colossal headbutt. The pit bull’s nose broke instantly. His front teeth shattered like glass. He was blinded by the splatter of blood from the top of his nose and he swallowed more blood from the bottom of his nose. It gushed blood everywhere. Blood splashed onto Widow’s face.

  Lightning cracked in the distance.

  Widow whipped around and saw the second pit bull already had his gun out. It was a Glock. He raised it to fire. He was fast, but Widow was faster.

  The guy pulled the trigger blindly, but Widow was on top of him. The gunshots blasted out, but the wind and rain and thunder meant that no one above them would hear them.

  Widow danced right and came in at the guy and grabbed his gun hand two-handed because Widow was in cuffs. The Glock fired multiple times. The bullets all went out into the night.

  Widow rushed forward, while grabbing the pit bull’s gun hand and slammed the guy into the railing. He danced back, released the Glock and kicked the pit bull right in the groin. He used all his force. The kick was as hard as his headbutt to the first guy had been. Widow wa
s no doctor, but if the first pit bull’s nose had busted wide open, he could only imagine what happened to the second pit bull's lower regions. The pain on the guy’s face said it all.

  The second pit bull wasn’t out of the fight though. He raised the Glock toward Widow. Widow slapped it out of the guy’s hand, and it bounced once on the floor grate and between the railing and plummeted off the platform completely. Widow grabbed the second pit bull by the rain poncho and pulled him and twirled on his feet, spinning both of them, and then he released the guy, catapulting him over to the railing that was broken. The second pit bull went flying off the platform. He slammed into the water and never came back up.

  Keagan was shouting at Widow, only he couldn’t hear her because of the duct tape. But he knew she was warning him. So Widow turned to the first pit bull, who now clamored to find his Glock under his poncho. He managed to brandish it, only he couldn’t see a thing because blood kept spurting into his eyes from his nose. He blind fired in the direction he thought Widow was in.

  The Glock fired once. Twice. Three times.

  Widow ducked and dodged as best he could. One bullet nearly hit him in the arm. It barely missed. He got low and charged the guy—full speed, full force. Widow slammed into him like a linebacker. He charged and lifted the guy off his feet and took the two of them past the railing, past the hole in it, and off the platform.

  They both plummeted more than two hundred feet to the ocean below.

  The water was cold. Widow felt himself getting shivers before they hit it. He grabbed onto the first pit bull on the way down and used his body to break his fall into the water, which prevented him from breaking any bones on impact, but it didn’t prevent the freezing water.

  He had no idea how many bones were broken in the first pit bull’s body when he hit the water, but he knew the guy wasn’t dead because he kept trying to point the Glock at Widow underwater.

  They sank deeper and deeper and struggled over the Glock. Widow wasn’t sure if it would fire or not. There was no reason why it shouldn’t. At least, it would fire once. The bullet would be slowed down, but at close range, it could still kill him. He used both hands to keep it from aiming at him. The first pit bull was determined to shoot Widow in the gut.

  They sank and sank. Widow slapped the guy’s hand away and then released it, letting his gun hand go free, but Widow twisted and pushed off the guy and rotated around him. He put the handcuff over the guy’s head and around his neck before the pit bull knew what he was doing.

  It was already too late. Widow got his knees into the guy’s back and wrenched the handcuff chain as hard as he could. The pit bull released the Glock and reached up and tried to pull the chain. The Glock sank into the darkness beneath them. They thrashed around and around.

  Widow pulled and jerked as hard as he could. He did it until the guy went limp, and then he did it some more. Finally, he released and moved the handcuff chain off the guy’s neck and spun him around and looked into his eyes. He was dead. His eyes bulged out of his head and blood pooled around his face from the busted nose.

  Widow searched the guy’s pockets, hoping he was the one who had the keys to the handcuffs. And he did. He pulled them out and let go of the corpse. It slinked away slow like heavy driftwood.

  Widow unlocked himself and let go of the cuffs, watched them sink. He pocketed the key and swam as hard and as fast as he could. He broke the surface, and a wave crashed down on him, stealing his breath for a moment. He broke the surface again and took a deep breath before he was consumed by more ocean water. Widow got his bearings and swam toward the nearest leg.

  He reached it after a minute of fighting the swells. Widow pulled himself up onto the concrete block at the base. He was lucky that the first leg he tried was the one with the elevator and ladder. He sat there, feet dangling off the side of the block, and he collapsed back. He closed his eyes and just breathed.

  He didn’t manage to take one of their guns, but he was alive.

  After a long minute, Widow caught his breath and tore off his coat. It was soaked through and through. He actually felt warmer without it. He took out his passport, which was wet, but it could be salvaged. His postcard for Gray was a different story. It was soaked and ruined. He tossed it and pocketed his passport. He went to the elevator and pressed the call button. The elevator cables whined and echoed all through the lower structure of the rig. He watched it come down and prepared himself to leap at anyone who might be on it. But it was empty. He got onboard and pressed the button he remembered that the pit bull had pressed.

  The elevator lifted and whined back up. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Widow spilled out. He took deep breaths. He could feel a lot of his energy gone from fighting and swimming, and he shivered from the cold. He followed the path from memory back to the torture alcove and found Keagan, Tessa, and Liddy all still there, still handcuffed and gagged.

  Widow scrambled over to them and fished the key out of his pocket and started with Keagan. He undid her cuffs. She ripped the duct tape off her mouth. Widow tried to do Tessa next, but Keagan leapt on him and hugged him too tight.

  She said, “I was so scared. They were going to kill us.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” she whispered in his ear. She pulled back and kissed him again, only this time it was more like the movies. It was powerful and passionate. He figured it was probably the adrenaline and emotion, but he didn’t fight it.

  Finally, he pulled back and Keagan stepped aside. He unlocked and ungagged Liddy and Tessa, who both rushed to hug each other for the first time in their lives. Then Liddy hugged Widow.

  He pulled Liddy off and said, “Okay. Let’s get the hell out of here first. Then we can celebrate.”

  Keagan said, “We don’t have any guns.”

  “I know,” Widow said.

  Liddy said, “What about my brother?”

  “He’s still up there,” Widow said. “There’s three more guys with him too.”

  Keagan said, “What do we do?”

  Widow looked over at the toolbox. He said, “The elevator only goes up to the hull. So I’ll go up and take care of them. Stay here.”

  He went to the toolbox and looked inside. It was like a dungeon master’s dream of weapons. In the end, he went with a clawhammer.

  Widow went to the elevator and got in and hit the button for the hull. The doors shut, the cables echoed again, and the elevator rode up. He stood there at the center of the elevator. He squeezed the clawhammer’s handle and waited. The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. No one was there. He stepped into the hall quietly and looked left, looked right. He went right for the control room. He stopped in the doorway and peeked in. He heard the pilots laughing and talking. He saw they were still at the same control panel. They still had their feet up, only this time, they had music playing on an iPhone. It was an old rock and roll song by Black Sabbath called "Iron Man." The song was just getting going.

  One of the pilots said, “Turn that up. I love this song.”

  The other turned the volume up.

  Widow walked straight into the control room. One of the pilots had his back turned to Widow. The other sat across from him about ten feet away. He could see Widow in his line of sight, but instead of shouting out a warning, he was frozen in terror.

  Widow marched into the room, walked straight over to the pilots. His coat was gone. He was soaked from head to toe, and his face was covered in the first pit bull’s blood. He looked like something that crawled out of the swamp, something that they tried to bury.

  The pilot that could see Widow lifted a hand and pointed his finger at him. He tried to say something but couldn’t speak.

  The pilot with his back turned said, “What is it, man?”

  He put his feet down and turned his head just in time to see Widow raise the clawhammer and slam it down hard into the pilot’s face. Widow used all his strength, and the blunt end of the hammer broke through the guy’
s skull and submerged into his brain pan.

  Widow looked at the second pilot, who still couldn’t speak but was trying to scream. Widow jerked the clawhammer out of the first pilot’s skull and released him. His body slunk down in the chair. Blood and bone and brain fragments dripped off the hammer. The first pilot was dead.

  Widow lifted the clawhammer, reversed it, and threw it at the second pilot. The sharp end of the claw stabbed the second pilot right in the eye socket. He fell back and slid off a control panel. He was also dead.

  Widow heard Voight from the inner office. He called out, “Hey. Turn that music down!”

  Widow checked the first pilot’s pockets and found another Glock. He checked it and chambered a round. He stood up and walked past the computer consoles, past the CB radio station, and straight into Voight’s office.

  The last pit bull leaned against the far wall. He was staring at his phone. Voight was sitting behind the desk, drinking a fresh whiskey. The leather jacket was on him this time and not hanging off his chair.

  Voight saw Widow, saw the blood all over him, and saw the Glock in his hand. He said, “No! Wait!”

  Widow raised the Glock and shot the last pit bull twice in the chest. The guy was dead before his body slid down the wall to the floor.

  Widow spun and pointed the Glock at Voight, who he knew right then was unarmed because he never went for anything—no gun, no weapon of any kind.

  Widow pointed the Glock at Voight’s center mass and stepped around the desk.

  Voight said, “I’m unarmed.”

  Widow knocked the glass out of his hand and bunched up Voight’s tie and wrenched him up on his feet by it. He checked his pockets and waistband for a gun quick and found nothing.

  Widow turned and dragged Voight out of the office and back into the control room.

  Voight choked from the pressure of how tight Widow pulled his tie. He clawed and grabbed at Widow’s forearm but kept slipping off because Widow was wet.