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WIDOW WATCHED THE GUY. He remained in the shadows and followed him with his eyes. Widow had found a man-sized hole at the base of a tree. It felt like a shallow grave. He had jumped in and pulled snow down toward him as best he could. He felt he was packed in well enough to hide his bulk.
He watched as the clumsy mercenary approached. The guy seemed terrified. He wanted to open fire and kill him where he stood, but he couldn’t. He had a silencer. But a silencer on an assault rifle, like a G36C, isn’t silent at all. The sound from it probably would’ve echoed between the trees and the others would’ve heard it. Plus, the muzzle flash would’ve been like a bright bolt of lightning cracking through the sky. It would give away his position.
Widow could smell the cold, watery scent of snow mingled with the remaining smoke from the Vulcan’s gunfire. It still hung in the air—pungent and acrid. He watched the guy move in closer to him. He was too far away for Widow to grab him, which had been his plan. Grab the guy fast, drop him to his knees, and silence him. But something even better presented itself. The guy had passed Widow without even a second look, so he pulled himself slowly out of the hole and began to creep up behind him. The soft snow quieted his steps.
Ten feet from him, Widow saw the knife sheathed at the small of the guy’s back. In five fluid moves and a single agonizing one, the guy was dead. One. Widow stepped forward. Two. He clasped his enormous hand over his mouth. Three. He unsheathed the Ka-Bar. Four. He sliced it across the guy’s neck, severing his vestibular and vocal folds. Five. He jerked the blade straight out and let him drop to the ground. And six. The guy gurgled and rolled on the ground as he exsanguinated.
Widow could’ve helped him. He could’ve killed him quickly, but in the end, he thought about the dead dog from earlier. And Widow liked dogs. Instead of helping the guy, he watched him die.
After the guy was dead, Widow spat on the corpse.
*****
THE OTHER MAN HAD WALKED the farthest away from Shepard. He wasn’t scared of a Widow. But he was scared of Shepard.
He swept his area thoroughly and found no sign of anyone. No footprints. No noise.
His quadrant did seem to have suffered the most damage from the helicopter’s gunfire. If Widow had been hiding here, he was most certainly dead. And if he had survived the firefight, he would’ve been hit by a few bullets for sure. No doubt about that. But if that was the case, his blood would’ve been on the snow. But he saw nothing. He figured Widow was either dead somewhere or had headed in one of the other directions.
He was just about to give up when he heard a whisper. He turned. His goggles showed a vast green figure hulking in front of him. He thought it was a bear, but he saw no claws. Just one big, long one. And before he could react, Widow stabbed the Ka-Bar straight into his neck, just above where the collarbone dipped down. With his other hand, he swiped the guy’s G36. The second guy went down like a marionette whose strings had been cut. His hand clawed and scratched at his throat as he tried to pull the knife out.
Widow raised one large foot over him and stomped down on the Ka-Bar’s hilt, burying the blade straight into the back of the guy’s neck like a hammer hitting a nail. The guy stopped moving, and Widow spat on him as well. After all, he thought to himself; he wasn’t sure who had killed the dog—no reason to discriminate now.
He knelt down and pulled the knife from out of the guy’s neck and wiped the blood off on the guy’s white jacket. Then he searched him. He found a pouch with three grenades. They were fragmentation grenades. Each was the size of a snowball. He smiled.