The Standoff Page 9

“You work for Starbucks?”

  “I do.”

  “What do you do for them?”

  “I work for corporate. I’m a corporate hitman.”

  The second distraction.

  “A what?”

  “A corporate hitman. Oh, don’t worry. It’s not like an actual hitman. And it’s not my actual job title or nothing. Officially, they call me a corporate consultant .”

  Widow finger-quoted the word consultant as he said it, like he was giving the cop a wink and a nudge.

  “What do you do for them?”

  “I take out the trash.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I handle their ugly business, like reconning the competition and noting their weaknesses. You know? I record their vulnerable spots. I form strategies to take over regions and markets. If mister and misses so and so own a small, but lucrative regional coffee shop I take them out. I analyze them, check for weaknesses. I access the best course of action to take them over. Sometimes, we buy them out. Sometimes, we strategize to run them out of business. It’s all perfectly legal. Not ethical, maybe, but legal.”

  The patrolman paused. He looked both dumbfounded and suspicious and amazed all at the same time.

  He asked a question that seemed like he didn’t know what to ask.

  “Reconning. You ex-military?”

  Distraction worked.

  “Former military. We don’t say ex. Once military, always military. That’s what G.I. means.”

  “What does G.I. mean?”

  “It means Government Issue , which translates to government property. Once you sign on the dotted line, your ass belongs to them for life.”

  “Really?”

  “When they get you, they get you for life.”

  “I thought you served and then got out.”

  “We do, but they can always recall us.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yep. You ever serve?”

  “Nah, I didn’t. My daddy was a cop, and then I was a cop. Cop family.”

  “Same here. Military family.”

  “So, even if you’re an old man rotting in a nursery home, they can reinstate you?”

  “Recall. They recall you. Technically, they got policies terminating the use of recall at a certain age, or certain situations, but the government makes the policies. They can always break them. There are loopholes in everything when it comes to the government.”

  The patrolman seemed to buy it. He nodded along. They were both quiet for a long moment.

  The patrolman asked, “Starbucks, huh?”

  “Yeah. Business is where war is fought nowadays.”

  Just then, the patrolman’s radio burst to life with clicks and chatter and voices saying radio codes.

  The patrolman tossed the passport back to Widow, who caught it, and the patrolman stepped back and away to get a better listen to the radio.

  He stepped out of earshot. Widow tried to listen to hear the radio code being used, but couldn’t. Instead, he watched the patrolman’s lips.

  He read partial words, which wasn’t enough to pinpoint the exact conversation, but the gist that he got from it was that there was an officer down. At least, that was his best guess.

  After another few exchanges from the patrolman and then the voice on the other side of the radio, the patrolman clicked off the radio and gave an “over” prompt. Then he walked back to Widow.

  “Sir, I’d advise you to get your tires aired up. Then get back in your car, turn on your radio, listen to the local news, and keep heading south to wherever you’re headed. Don’t stay here.”

  “What channel?”

  “Any of them. I’m sure you’ll hear what’s going on. For now, good luck with the tire pressure light and Starbucks. Be safe out there.”

  The patrolman said nothing else. He just turned and jogged away, back through the dim parking lot, back to his cruiser.

  Widow was left confused.

  Apparently, the roadblock wasn’t for him, but something was going on. Still, he thought it best not to be caught in a stolen vehicle that was linked to the events of South Dakota and Chicago in case the cops at the roadblock got more thorough in checking him out.

  He had pressed his luck too far already.

  Time to ditch the car.

  He returned to the Lexus, reached a hand in to the trunk button, and popped it. He walked back to the trunk and looked inside for a rag or cloth so that he could wipe the car down and get rid of his fingerprints.

  He started to think about the chore ahead. Wiping the car down was going to be a nightmare. His prints were all over the place. Then he realized so were the prints of the dead guys back in Deadwood.

  He found a pair of car rags on the floorboard. They were still punched together by the plastic tab they had when bought from a store.

  Widow took both rags, tore the tab away, and dropped it into the trunk. He came out of the trunk, closed it. He paused and looked around when he noticed a sign that solved part of his problem.

  It was for an automated carwash.

  Widow returned to pumping air in the front tire with what time remained of his dollar in quarters. He wanted to maintain the lie in case the patrolman was watching him. He wasn’t watching. That fact was confirmed when Widow saw the cruiser pull out of the gas station with the patrolman at the wheel. The sirens were off, but the light bar was on, flashing blue.

  The cruiser pulled out into the direction of the traffic on the interstate.

  Widow watched him drive off until he was lost to sight. He continued to fake-pump air into his tire until the machine stopped humming and stopped pumping. Once, it was quiet, he put away the hose and returned to the Lexus’s driver seat and drove the car to the carwash to take care of the car’s exterior for him.

  Chapter 14

  T HE AUTOMATED CARWASH took care of any fingerprints or forensic evidence that Widow may have left on the exterior of the vehicle. He paid for the full service, including the tire wash.

  He pulled out of the carwash and drove the car back around to the dark side of the gas station, avoiding getting his face on any of the security cameras. He parked the Lexus back near the air pump because he needed to use the vacuum hose, attached on the opposite side of the machine, so he could clean out the floorboards and seats in case whoever found the car was thorough enough to have a forensic team go through carpet fibers and upholstery. He doubted that would happen, but in the million-to-one chance that the FBI was ever called to check out the vehicle, they might use a forensic team on it.

  Don’t run to your death was a Navy SEAL motto he lived by. Being a little overzealous wasn’t always a bad thing.

  Widow stepped out and started the vacuum machine. He vacuumed the seat he used, the floorboard beneath the pedals, the pedals themselves, and the dash. He vacuumed the cup holders and the middle console and the stereo. He did the knobs, the buttons, and the air vents. He vacuumed the other floorboards and the backseat and the rear footwells.

  He stepped out and did the same thing to the trunk. Next, he wiped everything down with both rags twice.

  After he was done, he locked the car, wiped down the keys, and threw them as hard as he could into the black woods and snow behind the station.

  He tossed the rags into a trash bin and popped the collar on his coat, blew onto his hands to warm them up and shoved them deep into his pockets. He headed out of the gas station with his head down, chin tucked in. He made no eye contact with anyone. He was just a drifter, a nobody.

  Widow wanted to head southeast, the direction he was already going. He had no intention of turning back, but he thought it best to avoid walking straight through the roadblock. A man on foot was far more suspicious than one driving through.

  He walked to the end of the gas station’s service drive and took a right and walked along the interstate’s shoulder. He walked over a hill and saw the roadblock up ahead. It was clear as day.

  He didn’t see the highway patrolman who h
ad spoken to him back at the gas station, which was good. There was no chance of anyone else recognizing him, unless they had a physical description of him, or worse yet, a photo.

  He knew they had neither of those things. If they had either, he would already be in handcuffs. If the cops had a photo of him, so did the highway patrolman who interrogated him at the gas station.

  Widow decided he had two options going forward.

  One, he could try to hitch a ride with one of the vehicles that were already waiting in line to pass through the roadblock unimpeded, but this was not a viable option as they would be wary of a roadblock. A total stranger asking for a lift right in front of it was going to get turned down ten times out of ten.

  The second option was to divert from his path and head into the woods, maybe fifty or a hundred yards out, and walk around them. This was risky, but would probably work. He was dealing with highway patrolmen after all and not a foreign military force. It was unlikely they were watching the woods.

  Widow looked to the sky. He saw no helicopters scanning with searchlights overhead. He saw no drones either. Of course, why the hell would they have drones just for him? Not likely. It was bad enough that they might’ve figured out the network of interstates that he had been driving on. All of this assumed they were even looking for him.

  Widow looked at the cops at the roadblock. Under the blue and red flashing lights, he counted them. He could see five. The cops were pretty distracted by the cars in line. No one paid attention to the shoulder. No one saw him. Not any of the cops, anyway. Some of the drivers sitting and waiting in the cars saw him, but they didn’t know what was going on. None of them looked concerned about one guy walking on the shoulder.

  He stood on the hilltop for another moment, double-checking everything one more time before making his move. After a second look, he descended and vanished over the other side of the hill toward the woods, back off the shoulder. His boots sank down into the snow up to the calf, burying it in some places.

  Widow slogged through it down to the tree line. He stepped into the trees like a crocodile sinking back into the brackish water of a river. Within seconds, Widow was camouflaged in the darkness and lost to the sight of anyone who might be watching him.

  He walked on, traversing the trees and the snow in the dark without any problem. The snow slowed him down a bit, but not much. It wasn’t so deep that he needed snowshoes, but it was deep enough to give pause to each step he took. He didn’t want to sink down into a hole.

  The cold and the wind created the biggest issue. The temperature wasn’t that bad, and he had a good winter coat on, but the wind picked up and gusted cold breezes in his face. Several times, it slapped his breath off his face.

  A good five minutes passed before he stopped in a clearing. He took the time to confirm his bearings. He stared up at the sky and took notice of the moon. It was exactly where he thought it was.

  The sky was too gloomy and overcast to see the North Star or any stars for that matter. But the moon was big and full and bright. It broke through the cloud cover. The moon told him he was a little off, so he readjusted his path and headed east, parallel with the interstate.

  Widow continued walking straight for a while. Then he began veering toward the road in a slight diagonal direction because eventually he wanted to get back on it. He walked until he figured that he was a good hundred yards from the interstate, which was close enough for now. He changed his path again heading back east, parallel with the interstate.

  He walked for fifteen more minutes, mostly being over cautious until he finally figured it was safe to return to the road, but he didn’t. He stayed in the concealment of the trees and the snow and maintained the same distance from the road for another fifteen minutes.

  Don’t run to your death , he reminded himself.

  After thirty minutes of walking through the brush and the snow and the trees and the darkness, he figured he had gone far enough under the cover darkness and woods. Any longer would be overkill.

  He turned and tracked back northeast. He walked until he saw the road, gave it another look over. He stepped out of the woods and walked up a low hill and onto the pavement and the shoulder.

  Widow turned right, walked on. He popped his collar up once more as the wind had knocked it down. He blew into his hands again and rubbed them together, trying to stay warm.

  He walked along the side of the road and popped out his thumb.

  Chapter 15

  T HE EXPLOSIONS QUIETED down to silence, but the ringing in her ears continued. Adonis lay on the ground, in the snow, like when she was a little girl, and her parents had moved her up to Albany, New York, where she would lie in the snow and make snow angels with her dad, one of her best memories with him in it.

  She looked up, shook off thoughts of snow angels, and looked at the same sky that Widow was seeing, only hers was covered in smoke. She couldn't see the moon.

  The fingers on her right hand were the first parts of her body to move. They wiggled for a while. She was grateful they worked, to begin with, and grateful that they were still attached. Without looking, she feared that many of her friends and colleagues weren't so lucky.

  She felt multiple sharp pains in her chest, like little needles stabbing her all at the same time. It hurt badly. It felt like she had taken a shotgun slug to the vest, but she didn't remember anyone shooting at her, just the explosions and the carnage.

  She lay there for a long minute, trying to let her body recover to a more normal state so she could do her job, so that she could act like a leader and a professional ATF agent. But there was also the possibility that she was stalling, not that she was afraid of seeing the devastation. That didn't scare her. What frightened her was that she would fail to handle it. She feared seeing it and not being able to manage it as she was supposed to do. If Clip was dead, then Adonis was the only one left in charge. She had no idea what to do. She stayed there on the ground, paralyzed until her heartbeat slowed to a normal rate and she couldn't stay frozen any longer.

  After finger wiggling, her strength returned, and her breathing returned to normal, and her heartbeat slowed to normal. The wind had been knocked out of her, unlike anything she had ever experienced before.

  Adonis hauled herself up slowly using her rifle like a crutch. She planted its butt in the snow and pulled herself up and plopped down on her butt.

  She reached up with her free hand, shoved it into her line of sight and stared at her other fingers. They were still there too. All fingers and toes accounted for.

  She pulled hard on the rifle and got up on one knee. She reached a hand over her Kevlar and felt what was causing her pain in her chest.

  Her Kevlar was covered with shards of glass busted out of the SUV's windshield by the blasts. There was some metal shrapnel as well, but she felt nothing penetrated through, which was good.

  Several tiny metal fragments of undeterminable origin had also stuck in her vest. One piece stuck out to her. She grabbed at it and pulled a short, headless broken nail out of her vest. That one could've gotten her if it had been an inch longer or had more force behind it or if it had hit her vest at a different angle. She was lucky.

  She dropped the rifle onto the snow and slipped off her coat, slowly as if she had just woken from a coma and had completely forgotten how to take off a coat. She dropped the coat to the ground. The cold hit her instantly like a bucket of ice. She shivered as her core temperature began to drop. She became more alert as she realized she needed to get warm again quickly.

  Adonis squirmed and wriggled to get the Kevlar vest off. She pulled it off and dropped it in the snow next to her rifle. She stopped and stared at the vest.

  The damage it took for her was far more than she had thought. There were more nails than she had noticed before when it was on her.

  Adonis gazed out over the area around her and the SUV. The SUV's windshields and windows were all busted out from the blast wave, but the police lights embedded in the grille were st
ill intact and swirling. Blues and reds washed over the snow around her, reflecting off the shards of broken glass and shiny metal pieces.

  Around her, she saw dozens of nails, screws, pieces of glass, and metal fragments—all homemade bomb shrapnel like the contents they’d found in the shipping containers in the postal station in Augusta, the thing that had kicked this whole operation off and led her to now. It was that event that she would later regret, deeply, but now she had no time for regrets, no time for second guesses or hindsight. Those things lead to doubt, and doubt kills an investigator's abilities to investigate.

  She forced herself to shake it off and scan the rest of the grounds around her. She saw more bolts and screws and nails and broken glass littered across the yard as if the bombs had been packed with them, which they had been, in a way because it wasn’t the dynamite on the vests that were packed with shrapnel. That’s not likely because dynamite sticks are already packed tight. There’s no room for shrapnel or anything else. It was the vests themselves which were packed to the gills with shrapnel.

  Adonis left her Kevlar where it was. It was useless now, anyway. She lifted the coat, shook it off and slipped it back on. She hauled her rifle up slowly, in case she needed it. She low-carried it and tried to walk straight, but she stumbled instead.

  Her head ached. Her vision was foggy. She waited for it to clear up, and when it finally did, she stared out and scanned over the damage that had been done.

  The main building burned in bright red flames. Thick, black smoke rose profusely from it and covered the sky.

  She watched the only section of the main building left standing as it burned and then collapsed in on itself while the fire raged on, consuming everything but a brick fireplace. Eventually, that would likely crumble and fall over too, but she wasn't going to stay long enough to watch it.

  Adonis slowly craned her head and let her eyes soak up the horror. In a way, she was glad that her vision was still foggy. She didn't want to see what she saw. In a way, it might've been worse not to see because her imagination filled in the gaps.