Patriot Lies (Jack Widow Book 14) Read online

  Along the far wall, opposite the entrance, were a half dozen urinals. One of them was still running. Probably it was the one used by the trucker he’d bumped into. To his left, behind the sinks, were several toilet stalls. There were carvings of profanities and pictures all over the doors, inside and out. The walls in the bathroom were tiled white. There was more graffiti littered on the tiles. Some were chipped and broken. There was a janitor closet in the far corner of the room.

  Quickly, Widow searched the bathroom. No one else was there. He ducked into one of the toilet stalls and locked it. On the outside of the door, a sign switched from vacant to occupied.

  Several seconds later, Sathers caught up and stopped outside the bathroom hutch.

  Sathers looked around, checked every direction on the compass, and saw no one. No one was coming. No one was looking at him.

  He opened his jacket and brandished his Glock 34. He took a silencer out of an inside jacket pocket. He screwed it into the barrel and tucked his weapon hand into the open flap of his coat, concealing it in case Widow wasn’t the only guy in the bathroom. He wasn’t under orders to kill pedestrians. But he wasn’t going to go out of his way to not kill anyone else either. He would eliminate any witnesses; that was for sure.

  Sathers checked right and checked left once more. He saw no one. He put out his empty hand and pushed the men’s door open and entered the men’s room, armed and ready to kill Widow.

  Forty-One

  Sathers held tight onto his Glock. He hid it inside the flap of his bomber jacket. He pushed open the door to the men’s room and stepped inside. The bathroom had fluorescent lighting above. A few bulbs flickered off-kilter and off-key and out of sync. It was all random.

  He stepped through the door, quietly, and inspected everything in his first view. He saw the rows of sinks, the mirrors, the white-tiled walls, the toilet stalls, and the urinals on the opposite wall. There was a cove beyond the stalls that he couldn’t see. He stayed near the door and saw no one.

  He spun around fast and locked a deadbolt on the outside door so no one could come in behind him and interrupt him shooting Widow to death.

  After the door was locked behind him, he spun back around and pulled out the Glock. The silencer he was using was a bulbous, fat piece, but it was short, which gave him more maneuverability in tight spaces. He stuck it out and scanned the bathroom. He didn’t know where Widow was.

  He started to walk into the room. He heard the drip of one of the faucets. To his left, all of the toilet stall doors were closed. Down the end of the room, he worried about that cove he couldn’t see. He kept his gun pointed ahead of him.

  He made it to one sink and heard a new sound. It was streaming water, like someone was peeing. He looked left. The sound was coming from one of the toilet stalls. The sound was heavy, like Widow had drunk too much coffee.

  Sathers inspected the closed stall doors and saw the one door with the occupied sign.

  He walked over to it, kept his gun out, but pulled it in closer to him. He used his new position to check the farthest mirror. He used the reflection to check the cove around the corner. He saw a janitor’s closet and shadow and nothing else.

  He looked back at the locked stall door. The urine sound streamed continuously, like a broken faucet.

  He knelt on one knee and checked under the stall to confirm that Widow was in there. He saw the bottoms of Widow’s boots. His toes were turned toward the toilet. The stream continued.

  He stood back up and stepped back a meter and raised the Glock to point at the stall door. Bathroom stall doors are cheap and thin in general. The ones in a random truck stop in the middle of nowhere were double cheap and very thin. They weren’t going to stop a nine-millimeter bullet. Sathers’ Glock held nineteen rounds.

  He aimed at what should’ve been Widow’s center mass and smiled.

  Sathers squeezed the trigger five times in rapid succession. The weapon fired. Firearm silencers don’t silence firearms, not really. The name silencer wasn’t an accurate name for a silencer. They’re more like noise softeners. The five rapid succession shots were quiet, but not silent, especially in the tight space. The silent gunshots echoed through the bathroom. They bounced off the tiles and the sinks and the metal dispensers.

  The bullets Sathers fired through the stall door tore through the cheap metal like bullets through a sheet of paper. It was no question.

  His aim had been perfect. All those five shots should have made body contact. Any one of them should’ve torn through the door and through Widow’s back and filleted his organs and exploded his blood vessels and ricocheted around inside his ribcage, doing fatal damage to his lungs and heart. He should’ve been dead before his body slumped over the toilet in front of him.

  Widow should’ve been dead. No question. But there was just one problem. The urination sound continued after Sathers shot five bullets through Widow’s back.

  He mumbled to himself.

  What the hell?

  Sathers took a step back and forward, fast and hard, and he kicked a boot into the stall door. It nearly burst into two pieces because it was already shredded by the bullets. The lock broke under his heavy boot, and the stall door slammed open. Widow’s body should’ve been there, bloodied and battered and leaking out of five bullet holes in his back, but he wasn’t there. Instead of a dead body, Sathers found an empty pair of boots stood upright on the floor and a large water bottle with holes poked in it so that water streamed out of it and didn’t gush out too fast. The water bottle was lying across the toilet seat.

  In addition, Sathers saw a pair of nail clippers on the floor. Even the toilet wasn’t quite right. The tank cover was gone.

  The next thing Sathers noticed was that he wasn’t standing there alone, not anymore. He turned and looked over his shoulder and found Widow staring at him.

  Widow stood there in his socks and he held the cover of the toilet tank in his hands. He had it up, leaned against his shoulder like a baseball player holding a bat, waiting for the pitch.

  Widow smiled back at him. Then he slammed the toilet cover across Sathers’ face, at least that’s what Widow aimed for. But the guy was fast on his feet, faster than Widow had anticipated.

  Sathers dropped the weight off one foot and ducked into the stall. The toilet cover and swing were hard, as hard as Widow could swing it, which was pretty damn hard. But Sathers’ quick dodge saved his life. He took the heavy cover on the shoulder and not the head.

  The toilet cover CRACKED and shattered half on the guy’s shoulder and half on the outer wall of the stall. It shattered in Widow’s hand and scattered into smaller pieces all over the bathroom floor.

  Sathers screamed in pain from the blow to his shoulder.

  But he didn’t want to let it slow him down. He spun around and countered with the gun. There was no time to aim; every second counted. He didn’t wait. Sathers fired the weapon blindly into the open stall doorway, in Widow’s direction.

  Sathers was surprisingly fast, but so was Widow.

  Widow dropped the fragment of toilet tank that was left in his hand after the shattering blow. He dodged to the right, out of the stall doorway, and pressed his back up against the other door.

  Sathers’ Glock came out after him and fired three rounds, blindly. The bullets CRACKED through the air and shattered two mirrors over sinks directly in front of the stalls. The muffled gunshots echoed through the bathroom.

  Sathers’ wrist came all the way out with the weapon, turning and twisting to follow the direction Widow had moved.

  Widow didn’t wait for him to fire any closer in his direction. He clamped a hand down on Sathers’ wrist and jerked the guy forward off his feet a little. Then he grabbed Sathers’ gun hand with both his hands.

  Widow rammed the back of his shoulder and back into Sathers’ torso, putting the gun out in front of both men. He jerked and twisted, trying to rip the gun free.

  Widow used his weight and the muscles in his legs and reared back as
hard as he could. He rammed Sathers into the opposite stall partition.

  Sathers continued to pull the trigger, violently, haphazardly, which was fine by Widow. Better the bullets fired in a direction he could control rather than at him.

  The best thing for Widow was to get possession of the gun. Running it dry of bullets was the next best thing. But the guy wasn’t giving up possession of the Glock that easy. With Widow’s back turned to him, Sathers used his free hand, which was also better than his right due to the blow to his right shoulder, and punched Widow in the kidney.

  It wasn’t a full-force blow, not even close. The inside of the stall was too tight and the distance was too short, but Sathers was a strong guy. Even a short jab could do serious damage.

  He jabbed Widow once in the kidney. Twice. Three times.

  It hurt like hell.

  Widow squatted down fast and lifted up full force and slammed Sathers into the partition again. He repeated it one more time, and the two men went busting through the metal partition. Like the stall doors, the partitions were weak metal and old. They crushed through the neighboring stall like two busting broncos running wild through a weak barn wall.

  The Glock fired over and over. Bullets burst through mirrors and sinks and pipes. Porcelain from the sinks shattered and exploded into pieces. Glass from the mirrors shattered and fragmented and detonated, flying all over the tile floor. Water blasted out of bullet holes in the pipes.

  Sathers kept jabbing Widow in the side every chance he got.

  Widow stopped trying to wrestle the gun free for a second and returned Sathers’ jab with a powerful elbow to the guy’s shoulder. But it wasn’t the busted shoulder. Still, it distracted Sathers for a moment, and the gun stopped firing because Sathers stopped pulling the trigger.

  Widow’s main concern was the gun. He jerked forward and towed the guy out of the wreckage of stall partitions and cheap metal and spun them both around back to the front of the stalls.

  Widow squatted again, low, and kept both hands clamped down on the weapon. Then, he jumped straight up and back, taking Sathers off his feet. Widow reverse body slammed the two of them onto the floor and the broken glass and sink porcelain.

  Widow was heavy, two hundred twenty-five pounds of solid muscle and bone. He landed hard on Sathers, knocking the wind out of the guy.

  But Sathers didn’t stop!

  He kept jabbing in that same kidney. It hurt worse than before. Widow felt his side pounding and throbbing like the guy was beating on him with a claw hammer.

  Widow stayed focused on the gun. He stayed diligent. He wrapped his hand around Sathers’ trigger finger. He pointed the weapon away from him at the ceiling and pulled the guy’s trigger finger in rapid sequence.

  The gun fired over and over, round after round. Ceiling tiles burst from the bullet impacts. Fragments of tile fell on top of them like dust from the sky.

  Sathers resumed punching Widow in the side.

  Widow lowered his left elbow, wrenched his arm back, and pulled his arm in as tight as he could without letting go of the gun. His arm took most of the side blows.

  Widow forced Sathers to fire the gun until it clicked empty. Sathers realized the weapon was empty about a second too late because Widow let go of his hands and grabbed a couple of Sathers’ loose fingers. He wrenched them about a hundred degrees the wrong way. Two fingers on the same hand snapped and broke.

  Widow heard the bones SNAP!

  Sathers felt the snap. He cried out in pain and released the gun.

  Widow released him completely and rolled off him and scrambled to his feet.

  Sathers tried to follow, tried to do the same thing, but Widow wasn’t having that. He slammed a knee right into Sathers’ face.

  This time, Widow wasn’t confined to the tight space inside the stall. He leaped and throttled his body forward with his knee out.

  The knee CRACKED! right into Sathers’ nose. It broke in two places.

  Sathers fell onto his back, but that didn’t stop him. He was on his feet fast. His good hand disappeared for a quick second into his bomber jacket and he jerked out a blade, seemingly from nowhere.

  Widow almost missed it. Sathers swiped at him.

  Widow dodged it easily enough. He took a long step back and glanced at the blade. He recognized it instantly. It was an Ontario MK III knife, a great knife. SEALs were trained and equipped with many times of weapons, but the MK III was a staple of the whole organization. It was given to SEALs right out of the gate as a go-to knife.

  It was black with a six-inch blade and a sawtooth edge on the top. The MK III could be used for cutting and sawing and it was strong enough to be used as a hammer or a pry bar.

  The MK III in Sathers’ hand was as sharp as if it just came from the machine-sharpening stage at the factory. Widow saw that.

  Sathers swiped at Widow once, twice, three more times.

  Widow dodged and moved and danced around. He waited. He knew he couldn’t dodge the blade forever, not unarmed. But he also knew that Sathers was busted up and bleeding and strained. He waited for the right moment.

  It came. Widow moved to his left, Sathers’ right. He stayed in that spot. Sathers lunged at him fast with the blade. Widow danced right fast and pivoted, letting the stab go right past him toward the stalls. Widow heaved a colossal kick right into Sathers’ stomach, slamming him back into a stall door. Sathers fumbled backward into the stall. He came back up fast, but not fast enough to stop Widow from sliding off his Havelock.

  Widow slid his Havelock off and flipped it and tumbled it fast. His hands disappeared inside it. One came back out to hold it, and one stayed in.

  He pirouetted and paraded the coat out in front of him like a matador.

  Sathers stopped slashing and stayed where he was, knife out in front of him. He took a long moment to catch his breath.

  He said, “I’m going to put this knife under your ribcage, slip it into your lungs, and twist. I’m going to stare into your eyes as you bleed out.”

  Widow held the coat out, one-handed in front of him. His other hand was behind it, out of sight. He also caught his breath, but he didn’t make a full-court press about it like Sathers had done.

  Widow said, “Then you won’t mind telling me, why kill Eggers? Is it about the money?”

  “Money? No! It’s about protecting our client.”

  “Who’s your client?”

  Sathers said nothing.

  Widow asked, “Why not tell me? If you’re going to kill me, then what difference does it make?”

  “I am going to kill you!”

  “So, tell me.”

  But Sathers was done talking. His breathing slowed and regulated back to normal. He stood in an athletic position, which made Widow think of a bull the split-second before it charges, snarling and rumbling.

  Sathers charged at Widow like the bull against the matador. Only, unlike a matador, Widow shot him through his coat.

  The gunshot BOOMED! in the stillness of the bathroom. The sound was loud. It echoed throughout the structure and into the women’s room as well.

  Widow fired Gray’s backup Sig Sauer P226 MK25, and a single shot ripped a bullet-sized hole through his Havelock and blew out the back of Sathers’ bald head. Brain gristle and skull fragments blew out the back of his head and smeared the stall door behind him. His head was flung back from the blow, but he didn’t fall backward. Instead, his head whipped back violently, his legs took a quick step forward, and he toppled over frontward and crashed onto the tile and broken mirror glass and the ceramic shrapnel from the busted sinks.

  His eyes stayed wide open, but they were completely empty by the time he hit the floor.

  Widow paused a beat and watched the bathroom door. He waited for someone to come running in to check out the noise. But no one did. No one came. Maybe anyone who heard the gunshot assumed it might be one of the parked tractor trailers backfiring. It wasn’t likely that anyone was within fifty meters of him, but the truck stop parki
ng lot was vast, and the bathroom hutch was in the middle of it. It was possible that no one was close enough to know right away that they had heard a gunshot.

  Multiple gunshots would’ve been noticed and identified for sure, but a single shot? The brain likes to rationalize unidentified sounds. It automatically presumes the safest option when in question.

  Widow stuffed the Sig into the waistband of his jeans and covered it with his shirttail. He took a long moment to catch his breath, to calm himself down. His adrenaline was spiking. He examined his coat and fingered the bullet hole. It was pretty noticeable. He shrugged and slid the Havelock back on.

  Once he was all set, he glanced around, wondering where he could stash the body. Quickly, he realized how stupid that thought was. He couldn’t even begin to try and hide the body. Not with the mess they had made. The bathroom was wrecked. Sathers had bled out everywhere. The blood pooled in one spot and ran off and slid down a drain in the floor along with water that sprayed out from all the busted pipes.

  The second concern he had was evidence. Widow couldn’t remember all the things he’d touched, other than the door handles, the door into the bathroom, the stall door, the water bottle, and the nail clipper. He took the time and wiped them all down and pocketed the Sig. He couldn’t toss it or wipe it down since it was surely registered to Gray.

  Widow checked the dead guy’s pockets and took his cell phone, his ID, his cash, and his knife, which he figured might come in handy.

  He scanned the ID. It was fake, well done, well put together, but fake. He pocketed all of the things he took, except the knife.

  Widow used the knife and sawed off the guy’s index finger, right hand, for its print. He washed the knife and the finger in the sink to get the blood off and then wrapped the finger up in several layers of paper towels and stuffed it into an empty pocket; he didn’t want it bleeding out and soaking across his passport or his bank card or his toothbrush.