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THE AIR WAFTED IN AGAIN as new customers entered the diner. It chilled two old guys who sat at the counter. Widow watched as they visibly shivered. He drained his coffee cup and started to plan out the rest of his day. He pulled up what he could remember of the road map in his head and thought about the best way to get out of Yellowstone and move on with his life. He decided he would head south on Grand Loop Road and around Yellowstone Lake. Eventually, he would get to Cheyenne.
Widow stood up and began to head out of the restaurant when the guy in the booth behind him said, “Widow?”
Widow turned and looked at the guy who remained seated. He wore cowboy boots under black chinos and a matching blazer. A thick black sweater was underneath the coat. He had a shoulder rig that poked out when he stretched his hand out to motion for Widow to have a seat.
The guy’s face had a ghastly, white scar that cut diagonally down the side of his face and took off half of his lower nose. It was hard to look past it, but once he did, Widow saw that he had one grayed-out eye and one piercing blue eye. The guy smiled and tried to look as friendly as he could, but given his traits, it wasn’t easy.
Widow didn’t make any acknowledgment of the guy’s scar. He asked, “Do I know you?”
The guy said, “You don’t. Please sit down. I’ll buy you another coffee.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Sit down. Join me.”
Widow thought for a moment and shrugged. He dumped himself down in the booth and waited for the guy to explain.
Maggie came over and asked Widow if he wanted another cup of coffee. Widow nodded, and a moment later she returned with a fresh cup. Black. No thermos this time. Just the coffee.
“So what can I do for you? How do you know my name?”
“My name is Alex Shepard. I know your name because the two guys you beat up last night at the reservation work for me. I got your name from the database. Red Cloud entered it, but she didn’t see anything. Not like what I saw.”
“What did you see?” Widow asked and realized that maybe he should’ve kept walking out the door. But then he thought it might not have made a difference. If this guy was implying he had seen Widow’s real files, that meant he was part of a shadow agency like the NSA. Which meant he wouldn’t have had much of a chance trying to run. Those two agents were most likely waiting outside in the parking lot, probably in a van or an SUV with tinted windows. And they were probably armed with stun guns.
“I know you aren’t just any run of the mill ex-vet turned drifter.”
Widow said, “I didn’t mean to attack federal agents. I can explain that.”
“It was a misunderstanding. I know. I got that from their side of things.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“They overstepped their boundaries, and things got out of hand. You were only trying to help Officer Red Cloud. I see that.”
“They were harassing her. That’s what it looked like to me.”
Widow kept Shepard’s hands in his peripherals and calculated that if the guy went for his gun, he could beat him down with two moves. One, hot coffee in the face like a smoldering grenade. Two, smash the cup into the guy’s good eye. Job done. Case closed.
Shepard nodded and said, “I know. They admitted to me that they had stepped out of line. Don’t worry. I’ve put them aside for now. They’re waiting back at our motel.”
He watched as Widow glanced around the parking lot through the window.
“We’re alone. I promise.”
“They told the cops at Red Rain that they were FBI.”
Shepard nodded.
“They aren’t FBI. And neither are you.”
“No, we’re not. We’re federal agents.”
“I believe that. So who do you work for?”
“We work for the CIA.”
“Bullshit! The CIA can’t operate on American soil. That’s illegal. Big time.”
Shepard smiled. The hole where half of his nose used to be turned into one half of an upside-down heart. Widow wondered what had caused such a vicious wound. The guy must’ve seen some serious war time.
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“If you said the NSA, I might believe you. But the CIA can’t operate on American soil. They’re bound to spy only on foreign soil. And besides that, the CIA isn’t a law enforcement agency.”
“Technically, you’re both right and wrong,” he said and paused. Then he said, “I’ve got to tell you that when I learned who you were and that you were the guy who beat up my two agents, I was flummoxed.”
Widow furrowed his brow.
“The CIA isn’t allowed to operate on American soil. That part’s true. But there is one exception.” Shepard paused a beat, and then he said, “Indian reservations. We can engage in missions on Indian reservations. There are real-life terrorist cells that are born on Indian reservations. It has always been a real concern that one of these groups might rise up and try to overthrow the government or create an act of terror for their cause.”
Widow stayed quiet. He wasn’t really buying it.
“As you can imagine, many Indian people feel a little bitter that we ran them off their lands. They feel oppressed by this. So there is a real concern about them.”
Widow asked, “Is that true about the reservations? I never heard that.”
“It’s true.”
“So your two guys were posing as FBI agents to find this Mike Jacobs?”
“That’s right.”
“What do you know about me?”
Alex Shepard paused a beat and then he said, “I know you’re a Navy SEAL. Used to be. I know that really isn’t true, though, is it?”
Widow stared at him.
“Really, you worked for the NCIS. A part of Unit 10. You worked undercover among the SEALs. Investigating crimes sometimes committed by SEALs. I know you lived a double life. Look at me.”
Widow’s stare didn’t budge.
“I know about living a double life. I’ve been a spook for decades.”
Widow stayed still.
Shepard asked, “What, you don’t believe me? I’m a patriot son. I work for the agency. Believe me. How do you think I got this scar?”
Shepard leaned in and twisted to the side, giving Widow a close-up of his scar.
“I got struck clear across the face by shrapnel in a bomb blast in Iraq. The blast erupted, blew a soldier to bits, and shards of bone and metal whipped all around the place. I got hit. Took a piece of my nose and left me with one good eye.”
Widow said, “It’s a cruel world.”
“You got that right.”
Widow asked, “What do you want from me?”
“I want to make a deal with you.”
“I’m listening.”
“You help me out, and I’ll forget about the assault on my guys.”
“You aren’t gonna do anything about that anyway. Why don’t I just walk now?”
Shepard said, “You’re right. I’m not.”
“Then I’ll just be on my way.”
“That’s fine. I’m sure Amita will live with your decision,” Shepard said.
“What about Amita?”
Maggie came back over to their table and asked if they needed anything else. Widow told her he wanted another cup of coffee. Shepard looked out the window and said nothing.
After she returned with a fresh cup and left again, Shepard looked back at Widow.
He said, “First, I need to clarify that this is a matter of national security. Remember signing a ton of paperwork back when you were in the NCIS? For your security clearance?”
Widow nodded. He did remember it. There were a bunch of lawyers in a small room. He was being inserted into a program that had never existed before, but for a small, elite unit, they sure had plenty of lawyers.
“That means you’re still bound to it. Just because you quit the Navy doesn’t mean you’re out of their control. You can’t tell anyone. I’m trusting you with privileged information. Got it?”
Widow said, “Spit it out already.”
“I need you to say it.”
“I got it.”
“Good. That means that even though you don’t have top security clearance, you can still be prosecuted for giving away this information.”
“So can you. For telling me,” Widow said.
“You got it. That’s right.”
Widow took a long pull from his coffee and waited.
Shepard said, “Mike Jacobs is one of my guys—a CIA agent. He’s my protégé actually. I handpicked him over a year ago. We have operations in North America. Mostly in Mexico, and sometimes in Canada.”
Widow stayed quiet, just listened.
Shepard said, “Two weeks ago, we got intel that there’s a terrorist threat here on Red Rain Reservation.”
“What intel?” Widow asked.
“That’s need-to-know. Just listen. There’s a cell that moves throughout the Lakota world. We’ve known about them for some time, but mostly just whispers and rumors. No real credible threat. But two weeks ago, we became more interested because we learned that the terrorist cell might have acquired a weapon.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“We don’t know. We think it’s something biological. It’s small, something that was being transported in a metal suitcase.”
Widow said, “That could be anything.”
Shepard nodded, and then he said, “Because Jacobs was from the Red Rain Reservation, he was the obvious candidate to go undercover.”
“So what happened?”
“I sent him in three days ago. I lost contact with him forty-eight hours ago.”
Widow stared. The reason why those two agents were so pushy clicked in his head. They were trying to find this weapon. He asked, “And then you sent in your two guys?”
“Right. They went in as FBI agents and were told to keep a low profile in case he was in deep cover. Only they ran into you.”
Widow looked down at his coffee, felt bad. He said, “Sorry about that.”
Shepard shook his head. “Under the circumstances, it’s all water under the bridge. Don’t worry about it. The crucial thing here is to find Jacobs and the weapon before it’s too late.”
“What do you want from me? I’m a stranger there. I’ve only been there one night.”
“Look out the window.”
Widow craned his neck to look outside.
“Look at the sky,” Shepard said and raised his hand and pointed to the horizon to the north.
Widow saw the gray, gloomy clouds that puffed up high above the mountain peaks in the distance. They looked foreboding and menacing and unstoppable, kind of like slow-moving lava where all you could do to escape was to run.
“In the next six hours, the Red Rain Reservation and Tower Junction and all of the wilderness and mountains and rivers in between are going to be buried in that snowstorm. The Indians don’t trust my guys. They don’t trust outsiders. But you’ve already won over their cops. And that girl, she likes you. I could see that.”
Widow doubted that Amita had given any sign that she liked him. He asked, “So what? You want me to go back and ask her to find your missing agent? You could’ve done that when she was here.”
“Widow, that storm is the only thing protecting Red Rain Reservation.”
“What does that mean?”
“The reason we think the terrorists have a biological agent is because we don’t think it. We know it. That briefcase has a canister inside that contains a weaponized version of the Ebola virus.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“Do you know what that sickness can do? We have no cure.”
Widow remained silent.
Shepard said, “If Jacobs doesn’t surface by the time this storm passes over with news of where the Ebola agent is, then we have no choice but initiate other methods of containment.”
“Containment?” Widow asked.
Shepard leaned in close again and said, “I’ve been ordered to send in a military strike against the reservation.”
“Bullshit! The military wouldn’t bomb an American target. Not only that, but no pilot would do that, either.”
“It’s not going to be done by a pilot. We’d use a UCAV.”
An unmanned combat aerial vehicle was what he was referring to. Widow looked down at the table. He studied Shepard. He couldn’t tell if Shepard was bluffing or not. The whole thing sounded like it was straight out of a spy movie. Then again, that was the kind of thing the CIA did.
Widow had met spooks before. In his experience, he always found it hard to trust them. Saying that they were all on the same team wasn’t an accurate description of CIA agents. It was better to say that the agencies in the US were part of the same family. And as with all families, if you dug deep enough, you found members that weren’t quite on the same level as the rest of the family.
“Right. So now you see my concern. I don’t want to bomb a bunch of helpless people. But it’s better to say that the UCAV malfunctioned than to say that the US government brought canisters of Ebola onto American soil and had one stolen by a small terrorist cell. See my point?”
Widow looked out of the window again at the looming snowstorm, and then he looked back at Shepard. He understood. It did seem plausible. If it were true, and this weapon got into the wrong hands, then steps would be taken. The government wasn’t in the habit of bombing its own citizens, but then again, the CIA was different. Widow had seen enough in his sixteen years undercover to know that anything was possible.
“So will you help me find Jacobs and stop a terrorist from releasing a deadly virus?”
“What choice do I have? I’ll help. What do I need to know about Jacobs?”