Black Widow - 58. Chapter 58

 

September 13, 2003

The Bowery, NY

JJ

 

I laughed as Carullo poked the oxtail tortellini on his plate in a suspicious manner, as if it may come to life. I’d chosen the restaurant this time, which was why were at Capitale. It was a restaurant, but also an event venue, a truly impressive place built out of what was once a similarly impressive bank. “What’s this sauce?” he asked suspiciously.

“Try it,” I said. He stabbed a tortellini and shook off most of the sauce then popped it in his mouth.

“Kinda spicy, but not bad,” he said. “What did you get?”

“Salad,” I said simply, even though it was pretty exotic for a salad.

“I’m gonna have to eat after I eat,” he grumbled. I wasn’t sure if that’s because the portions were relatively small, or because he didn’t think he’d be able to eat all of the tortellini because he didn’t like them.

“We can swing by a Wendy’s or Burger King on our way home,” I teased.

“Yeah, I’ll bet they have Maybachs going through the drive through every day,” he said, making me laugh. “This place is amazing.” The prompted us to gaze up at the tall ceilings, and note the ornate décor.

          

“It said it was the Bowery Bank on the outside,” I said.

“Yeah, this is one of those old building that they force them not to tear down, so they make them into places like this,” he said simplistically.

           “You’re evidently not big on historical architecture,” I joked. 

“Sometimes if shit is old, you need to tear it down and start over,” he said.

“And sometimes, it’s worth fixing,” I said. “You ever been to Europe?”

“No,” he said, and frowned.

“You should go there with me sometime,” I said. “I think you’d appreciate old shit a lot more after that.”

“Maybe,” he said dubiously. I’d waited for him to raise the issue of his inability to be in a relationship, but he hadn’t, and I was starting to lose patience with the entire situation. It had finally gotten to the point where I was irritated enough to call him on it.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked.

“The deal?” he asked, pretending to be clueless.

“Yeah,” I said abruptly. “The deal with us, the deal with you and Luka, and the deal with you not being able to be in a relationship.”

“Is that what you want? You want a relationship?” he asked, trying to throw this whole thing back on me.

I glared at him. “You’re forcing me to put myself out there, and if I do and I’m wrong, you’ll cut me off at the knees. I don’t handle rejection well.”

“You don’t like it when you don’t get your way,” he said, smiling at me, trying to cajole me out of my bitchiness.

“I don’t,” I said with a smile, then got serious again. “I need you to help me out here,” I said, almost pleaded, which just made me even angrier. I’d been completely candid with him, or as candid as I could be. I needed him to toss me a lifeline. He said nothing, which just about set me free. Before I went totally psycho-bitch on him, I managed to ask him one more question. “Is it me?”

That question seemed to give him clarity. “It is not you,” he said firmly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get where you were coming from.”

“I talked to Will about this, and he told me that if you didn’t like me or find me attractive, then there really wasn’t anything I could do about it,” I explained.

“He told you I wasn’t attracted to you?” he demanded, all pissed off.

“No, dumbass, he said if you weren’t attracted to me, there wasn’t anything I can do, with a big emphasis on ‘if’. He didn’t think that was the case. And of course, I couldn’t imagine how that could even be possible,” I joked, trying to get my psyche back on an even keel.

“So that’s why you were so pissed off at me for going away this weekend? Because you thought I didn’t like you?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said that one word so firmly and definitively that it was clear he meant it.

“I’m glad,” I said, and smiled at him.

“What else?” he demanded, knowing there was more.

“I was jealous,” I admitted. “When you said you couldn’t be in a relationship, I didn’t know that meant there were other guys you were into. It caught me off guard, before I had a chance to think it through.”

“And to calm down,” he said with a grin.

“Right,” I said skeptically, like I didn’t agree with him, even though we both knew he was right.

“It’s hard for me to be with just one person,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the one time I did it, it left me ripped up and shredded,” he said, and got so emotional that a tear fell down his cheek. I reached over and gently wiped it away.

“So that’s it?” I asked. “You’re one and done?”

He frowned at me. “I can’t handle that kind of pain again.”

“That’s a bunch of crap,” I said. “You pretend like loneliness isn’t pain. It is.”

“I’m not lonely,” he objected.

“Bullshit. Fucking someone doesn’t make you less lonely,” I said. This was surreal. I was having this conversation and talking about things I didn’t know anything about. I was going on pure instinct. If he listened to me, I hoped that I was right.

“Maybe not, but it’s a lot of fun,” he said with a leer.

“I’m just different than you,” I said.

“Better than me?” he demanded, getting all offended.

“No dipshit, different,” I snapped. “I can’t do that. I can’t sleep with people I’m not into. So it makes it hard for me to understand how that makes you feel better.”

The waiter, with absolutely horrible timing, chose that moment to bring the check. We had to talk to him, and that broke the intimate mood.

“You ready to go?” Carullo asked, as soon as I’d signed off on the credit card receipt.

“Let’s go,” I said grumpily, leaving my conversation with him only halfway completed. We got into the car and I put up the privacy screen. “You want to drive through Wendy’s?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Nah, I’m good.”

“What’s the deal with you and Luka?” I asked him. He gave me a foul look for prying, but seemed to realize that in this situation, it was a relevant question.

“I’ve been going out with him for a couple of months now,” he said.

“That sounds like a relationship,” I said.

“At this point, we’re friends.”

“Friends?” I challenged.

“Friends,” he repeated. “Not saying we don’t fuck, I’m just saying that we’re friends.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, totally confused. That sounded like a relationship to me.

“We go out and do something once or twice a week,” he said. “It’s pretty relaxed.”

I frowned at him. “How do you feel about him?”

“I like him,” he said simply. I didn’t know if I was too naïve to understand what he was saying, or he was being purposely obtuse, but I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about.

“I’m still not following you,” I said, and not all that nicely.

“It means that things are casual between us. It means that we’re not going to move in and be a couple like I was with Joey,” he said. Those last words had slipped out, but hearing himself say that out loud fucked him up. I reached over and grabbed his hand in a supportive way, knowing that anything else I did would probably just upset him more. “Sorry.”

“I get it,” I said. “I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, I’m just trying to figure things out.”

“Things with Luka are going along slow, and I think we both like that,” he said. “Right now, the whole situation is pretty confusing.”

“No shit,” I said, since I still didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“You know, up until about a week ago, you hadn’t shown any interest in me at all,” he said, and sounded a little bitter about it.

“I didn’t think you were into me,” I said. “I told you I don’t handle rejection well. I couldn’t put myself out there only to have you shoot me down.”

“You think I’m that big of an asshole?” he demanded.

“I think you’re probably not used to dealing with someone who’s as neurotic and high-strung as I am,” I said.

“Sometimes I don’t get you,” he said, shaking his head in frustration.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, and not all that nicely.

“You are really smart, really talented, amazingly attractive, and a total class act,” he said, words that totally fed my ego and made me smile. “I can’t believe you’re that insecure.” That comment, in turn, made me frown.

“Believe it,” I said grumpily.

“Things could have gone farther with Luka, but then you rocked my world,” he said.

“I did?” I asked happily.

“You did,” he confirmed. “So that’s why I’m confused, and that’s why I came back early.”

“Because you don’t know which one of us you like better?” I asked, dreading his response.

“It’s not like that,” he said, then sighed. “Maybe it is a little bit.”

“Dude, you have no idea how competitive I can be,” I said it as a warning, but playfully at the same time.

“I don’t want that, a big fight over me,” he said. “You want to know what I want?”

“Duh,” I said, getting an eye roll in response.

“I want to keep things easy, where we don’t have any commitments, so I can see how things work out,” he said.

“What does Luka think about that?” I asked.

“He’s not real happy about it,” he said.

“Neither am I,” I said candidly. “It’s like you want to string us both along so you can finally decide which one of us you like best.”

“I’m not stringing anyone along,” he objected. “I’m not demanding commitments from either one of you.” This was one of those times when I wished I were sluttier. If that was the case, I could go out and fuck around like crazy, making him jealous as shit.

“Then I guess that’s how things are,” I said crisply. The car pulled up to our building and we both got out and walked up the stairs, saying nothing, then when we got to the condo we both vanished into our own rooms.

 

September 13, 2003

Goodwell, VA

 

Will

 

This had been one freaky as fuck day, but at least this time, most of the drama wasn’t about me. I felt really sorry for Alex, since it seemed like he’d had about a ton of bricks dropped on him. He was always so calm and composed, just like Grand and Wade, so to see him lose his cool and start to come unglued was pretty upsetting. The end result of the whole thing was that I’d ended up feeling dirty, so I’d taken a shower, but it didn’t really help all that much.

I dried off, put on a pair of white boxer briefs, and lay face down on the comfortable queen-size bed, even as I pulled out my laptop and started fiddling around with it. I chuckled to myself, thinking I looked like a tech junkie, with my laptop and mouse out, and next to that was my cell phone. I looked at the phone to see if anyone had called me, but I was disappointed as usual. Even Dally had stopped calling me, or at least he didn’t call all that often. He’d finally put his issues behind him and started dating this girl at his school, so now he was all into her, and all in love. He reminded me of how Ryan had been when he’d started dating Shiloh. I was happy for him, but it was just one more person pulled out of my support network. I frowned when I looked at the clock and saw that it was 11:30pm. My birthday started in half an hour, and the way things look, I probably wasn’t going to get laid. The one thing that would make me feel better at this point probably wasn’t going to happen. I looked at my “travel pack” of lube and condoms that I brought with me in case I got lucky and got irritated enough to put it in the drawer of my nightstand.

A knock at my door pulled me out of my pity party. “Come in,” I said casually.

“Mr. Schluter?” a deep masculine voice said. I looked behind me and saw Ramon, one of the mercenaries Jake had hired, peeking in.

“Call me Will,” I demanded forcefully, but smiled. He looked nervous. “Come on in.”

He smiled back at me, came in, and shut the door behind him. “I just came by to give you something.” I briefly fantasized about this stud ripping off his pants and fucking me senseless, and that created a pretty big reaction in my shorts, otherwise I would have sat up to talk to him.

“What?” I asked, raising an eyebrow in a flirtatious way.

He walked over to the bed, and it was flattering to see that he was having a hard time not staring at my ass. I squeezed my ass cheeks a little bit, just to mess with him, and almost giggled when his pants bulged a bit. “This.” He handed me what looked like a walkie-talkie.

“What is it?”

“It’s a communication device for this evening,” he said.

“Sit down and explain it to me,” I said, patting the bed next to me, on my right side.

His bulk caused the bed to sag toward him, moving me so my waist rubbed up against his left hand. Neither one of us moved, which gave me a raging erection. “We’re supposed to be watching out for intruders,” he said. “If we have one, we’ll broadcast it on this device.”

“Cool,” I said, even as I fiddled with it. “Did you already deliver all the others?”

“We did,” he said, and grinned, getting some game. “I saved the best for last.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I was pretty bored until you came by.”

“I should probably get back,” he said, and made to get up.

“You’re in amazing shape,” I said, stopping him with my words.

“It’s just part of who I am,” he said. “You’re not doing too bad yourself.”

“You think?” I asked suggestively.

He ran his hand over my shoulders. “Good muscle tone,” he commented.

“What about my lower back?” I asked. He moved his hand sensuously down my spine, stopping at the waist band to my underwear. He had turned slightly, so when I looked to my right I was staring at his crotch, and there was no mistaking that it was bulging pretty big.

“Good muscles there too,” he said, even as his fingers gently traced my back just above my waistband.

“What about lower?” I asked.

“Those look good too,” he said shyly.

“You sure?” I asked.

He smiled and then I felt his hands moving across my glutes, squeezing my ass as he did, and making me moan. “Nice,” he said.

“I think you need an even comparison,” I said. I lifted my waist up and pulled my underwear down one leg, then the other, then kicked them off.

His hands were back now, with his fingers tracing down my crack. “Much better,” he said. I reached over and grabbed his crotch, making him jump in alarm at first, then he relaxed.

I gauged his size and guessed that he was normal, so I reached into my nightstand drawer and grabbed a condom and some lube. “Fuck me,” I ordered as I handed them to him. I thought for a minute he was going to argue with me, but he didn’t. He stood up, lowered his pants down just enough to expose his thick, five inch cock, then put the condom on, lots of lube, and lay down on my back.

The feeling of him on top of me, with his massive bulk and all of his equipment still attached, even as he thrust his dick slowly into me, was erotic as hell. He hadn’t prepped me, so it hurt a bit, but I adapted quickly enough, and then I was with him, bucking my hips back into him in time to his thrusts. He groaned and grunted into my ear, even as he picked up his pace. He didn’t last long, but I expected that, since he had work to do. He froze up and moaned loudly, then blasted his load, making these little thrusts that banged against my prostate in the sexiest way. If he’d have lasted another minute, I’d have blown a major load, but he didn’t. When he was done, he pulled out, pulled the condom off, then took it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. “Thanks,” he said, even as he headed for the door.

“Thank you,” I said. “Stop by anytime.” He chuckled, then he left. I sighed, and was about to roll over onto my back and jack off when my phone rang. I looked at it and saw that it was Zach, and saw that the time was 12:01.

“Hey,” I answered cheerfully.

“Hey,” he said. “I am so sorry I didn’t call you on the eleventh.”

“That’s fine,” I lied.

“I figured if I called you now, I’d be able to be the first one to wish you a happy birthday.”

“You are,” I said cheerfully. “How are you doing?” He went through this lengthy description of his game today, telling me how well he did. I listened patiently, saying the appropriate things so he thought I was into what he was saying. He’d just finished rambling on about that, when I heard voices in the background.

“I gotta run,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“Big party to celebrate,” he said enthusiastically.

“Have fun,” I said, and managed to sound sincere.

“Have a great birthday!” he said, then ended our call. It was sweet that he’d called me, but that was about it. The rest of the conversation was pretty depressing. It was all about him. He didn’t really give a shit about me, and he really didn’t want to hear what was going on in my life. A tear fell out of my eye, and rather than wipe it off, I just buried my head in the pillow and cried yet again over losing yet another piece of Zach Hayes.

Another knock on my door pulled me out of my pity party. I wondered briefly if it was Ramon coming back for another round. “Who is it?” I asked.

“Alex,” I heard him say.

“Just a minute,” I said. I threw on a pair of sweat pants, going commando, and sprayed some cologne on me and the bedspread just to mask any residual sex smells. I went over and opened the door. “Come on in.”

“I hope I am not disturbing you,” he said.

“Not at all,” I said. We went over and sat on the bed. I could almost feel the turmoil within him. “How are you doing?”

“Not well,” he said. “Not well at all.”

“Dude, you had some pretty heavy shit dropped on you,” I said sympathetically.

“It is your birthday, yet I have come here to ask you for a favor.”

“What do you need?” I asked, more than willing to help him out, or at least I was until he planted a major liplock on me. Alex was a really good kisser, and I found myself floating away with him, until I thought of JJ and froze. “I can’t do this.”

“I am certainly not trying to force you, but I think that the only thing that will help me stabilize myself at this point is having someone fuck me. You are the only candidate,” he said. That made sense. Darius was straight, and there’s no way Matt or Wade would jeopardize their relationship to help him out. Probably the only other person who could fuck him would be my father, and that was pretty much out of the question.

“So you came here because I’m your only choice?” I teased, pretending to be all offended.

“I assumed you would worry about Jays, and that would make you reluctant, but I needed you enough to risk it,” he said. “I am willing to pledge that I will say nothing to him.”

“I don’t know,” I said, confused.

“I was hoping you would not make me beg,” he said, a comment that was part desperation, part irritation. He clearly wasn’t used to groveling to get someone to have sex with him. I could say no, but that seemed incredibly cruel. I decided that JJ would probably understand, and if not, at least it would give him something to hold over my head.

“You sure you want me to fuck you?” I asked in my sultry bedroom voice, even as I stood up and lowered my pants. I was still really horny from my fuck with Ramon, so my dick hardened in no time.

“Tonight, I need that kind of challenge,” he said, then I felt his lips on my cock, and that overwhelmed any residual arguments I may have had. Unfortunately, I was still pretty worked up from Ramon, and I felt the warning signs too late.

“Gonna cum,” I said, and then blasted my load into his mouth. “I’m sorry,” I said, when I was done.

“I enjoyed that,” he said.

“I recharge fast, and the good news is that when I do, I’ll last even longer,” I said.

“And that is even better news.” We stripped off our clothes and got into the bed in a 69 position, then while he blew me and brought my dick back to life, I tongued and probed his ass to get him ready for my big dick. When he seemed loose enough, I reached into my drawer, pulled out a magnum, and using lots of lube, I slowly pushed into him. I was surprised that he took it as well as he did, and even more surprised at how, once he got used to me, how into it he was. He was one really good fuck. I was able to last long enough to get him off, and only after he’d blown did I give myself permission to cum.

We lay there on the bed, side by side, panting and smiling. “That was one hell of a birthday present.”

He chuckled. “Thank you for helping me out. I feel as if my head is clear now.” He hung out for a few minutes, then left. I thought about our fuck, and decided that he’d cleared my brain out too. My two sexual encounters for the night had helped me erase the sadness over my conversation with Zach from my mind, and that enabled me to actually sleep.

 

September 14, 2003

Goodwell, VA

 

Brad

 

“You should go to bed,” Jake said. “We’ve got things covered.”

I looked at him dubiously. There was absolutely no way I could sleep. If they were going to come after us here, they were going to do it tonight. I was much too big of a control freak to not be here. “I’m fine,” I said crisply.

“As am I,” Wade said, to preclude Jake from trying to get him to leave as well. We were situated in a small room off the kitchen, one that had a lot of books and records in it. We’d picked this spot as our ‘headquarters’ because it had no windows and that meant it could remain dark, and because it was conveniently located close to the door that went out to the stables. In the back were three rifles from Wade’s armory here at Goodwell, just in case we needed weapons.

I hadn’t really known much about modern defense systems, which was surprising considering I was the chairman of a defense electronics firm, so this was quite the educational experience. These guys had first studied the topography carefully, assessing where any threat would have to come from, and where it wouldn’t. They’d deployed a whole bunch of electronic monitoring devices, including sensors and cameras, all of them linked into this room. It was an amazing setup, especially considering how little time they’d had to set it up.

I looked at the large screen in front of Ramon, and noticed there were stationary lights marking the monitors, and they completely surrounded Goodwell at varying distances away from the house, forming what looked like multiple rings of defense. “Why is there a gap there?” I asked, pointing to a spot where there were no lights.

“That’s a lake,” Jake said, and tapped Ramon, who hit a button, causing a picture of the lake to appear on one of the other monitors.

“How will we know if we have visitors?” I asked.

“A couple of ways,” Jake said. “Joe and Kenny are out on the grounds, so they may physically spot someone.” He gestured at the main screen, where in addition to the stationary lights on the screen, there were two other lights that were moving around. Those indicated where Joe and Kenny were. “More likely, we’ll pick them up on sensors.” Jake tapped Ramon on the shoulder.

“Nothing yet,” Ramon said, briefly taking off his headphones, then he was back at his task. He seemed remarkably calm, composed, and focused. The only way I’d probably be close to as relaxed as he was is if I’d just fucked someone.

“We’ll either hear something on his headphones, or he’ll see an infrared or signal,” Jake said, pointing at the master screen showing that those things were deployed. “Otherwise, we’ll pick them up on camera.”

“Impressive,” Wade said.

“What kind of force do you think they’d send?” I asked.

Jake shrugged. “Could be one guy, a sniper type person, could be a large group. If it’s a large group, they’ll be easier to track. They’ll be like thugs.”

“They won’t know we have these kinds of systems deployed,” Wade said.

“Most likely,” Jake cautioned, since we had no way of knowing what they did or didn’t know. “To be honest, your security was pretty shitty. They would have expected more than what you have.”

“Unless they had someone who could clue them in,” I said. Wade got really annoyed at that, since it implied that a member of his staff was disloyal, but he got over it. In this situation, you couldn’t really take anything for granted.

We sat there for a long time, just staring at the screens. Periodically, Jake would take over from Ramon, but not for long. I was starting to relax and get complacent when one of the icons representing a monitor began to flash, indicating that it had a signal. “That’s an audio monitor,” Jake said.

Ramon patched the audio through, and I heard someone speaking Spanish. “Fuck, they have monitors,” he said. “We’ll have to take them out.” I interpreted that to Wade, since he didn’t speak Spanish.

“He said that into his radio, most likely,” Jake said.

“Monitor 7 is out,” Ramon said. That was a camera monitor.

“Malfunction?” Jake asked. Ramon punched some buttons, and the video came up. There was a shadowy figure in front of it, then something must have taken it out from behind. “Alert Joe and Kenny,” Jake said. Ramon was on the radio immediately.

“We’re dealing with some people who know their shit,” Jake said. “Have Kenny observe Monitor 9.” Ramon relayed that.

“Why Monitor 9?” I asked. It wasn’t in the direct path to Goodwell.

“If they’re pros, they’ll try to work around and develop an erratic approach pattern,” Jake informed us. He got on his cell phone, presumably calling in reinforcements.

“Who did you call?” Wade asked.

“The FBI,” he said. “I already told them we were worried about a narcotics related assault, and cited the deal with those properties as a reason. They told me to call it in if it happened, so I called it in.”

“Another monitor out,” Ramon said. “Monitor 3.”

“They went the other way,” Jake said morosely. “Let Kenny and Joe know.”

“Got a gunshot,” Ramon said. “Monitor 2.” He was already passing that info on to Kenny and Joe. I’d felt really comfortable just a few minutes ago with this string of lights around Goodwell, indicating that we were securely entrenched behind our electronic wall, only these guys were taking out monitors and dancing around them remarkably fast.

“Who did it?” Jake asked, referring to the gun shot. He was listening with one headphone. “Wasn’t us,” he said to me. “No one is hurt.”

“Another gunshot,” Ramon said. “They’re targeting Joe.”

“We need to give them some backup,” he said.

Ramon stood up. “I’m on it.” He hurried stealthily out the door.

Jake took over, and began coordinating things himself. I could see the beauty of having Ramon here, because it gave Jake the ability to focus more on the big picture, but that was a luxury we no longer had. We watched the screen and saw Ramon now, a third blinking light, as he moved toward Monitor 8. “Monitor 8 is out,” Jake said into the microphone. Our monitors were going dark, one by one, as they closed in on Goodwell.

“Should we get ready to defend ourselves?” Wade asked.

“Let’s wait a few minutes,” Jake said. “They still have a few obstacles to get through.”

A different alert signal blinked. “What’s that?” I asked.

“That’s a shed, of some sort,” Jake said. “It was rigged with a door alert.” He flashed a picture of it on the screen.

“That’s a maintenance shed,” Wade said. “It’s got mostly lawn and garden equipment in it.”

“So nothing vital?” Jake asked.

“Nothing vital,” Wade replied.

“That monitor is awfully close to us,” I said, watching as Monitor 4 blinked, then went out.

“Shit,” Jake said, then spoke into the microphone. “Fall back,” he told his guys.

“What’s happening?” I asked, confused by his urgent command.

“They’re trying to flank our guys, to get around them and cut them off from the main house,” Jake explained, pointing to how that last Monitor was at the edge of the woods before you got to Goodwell.

“How many do you think are out there?” Wade asked.

“Hard to say, but the way they’re taking out monitors and pinning Kenny, Joe, and Ramon back, I’d say at least 5, possibly 6. And these guys know what they’re doing,” he said.

“How long until we get some help from the authorities?” I asked.

“I’m guessing within thirty minutes,” he said. “You don’t want to call the locals, like the Charlottesville cops or county guys.”

“Why not?” Wade asked, confused.

“Because they’d roll right into an ambush,” he said, gesturing at the screen, where yet another monitor went out. “These guys would eat their lunch.”

“What should we do?” I asked.

“We’re going to have to fall back to the house, and fight them off here,” Jake said.

“Which gun do you want?” I asked Wade, even as we both looked at the rifles that we’d thought were merely symbolic.

“Another gunshot,” Jake said, interrupting my question. “We got one of their guys. Kenny did. He’s falling back fast.” He paused for a second, then flipped a button, turning on Monitor 14, a camera monitor. We saw a wounded man, completely dressed in black, with his hand grabbing the side of his body, where presumably he’d been shot. Then we watched in real horror as another one of the goons came up to his wounded colleague and shot him in the head.

“Holy shit,” I said. I looked at Wade in terror at the thought of what these guys could do to the people in this house.

Jake’s phone rang and he answered it, then spoke into the radio urgently. “Get back! Get back! Back to the house! We have incoming!” The guys had been falling back slowly, just as Jake had first ordered, but now we saw the indicators, showing where Kenny, Ramon, and Joe were, moving rapidly back to Goodwell.

We heard the helicopters before we saw them, but it didn’t take long before there were a number of them, military models, hovering around Goodwell, illuminating the woods and grounds around it. “We’re clear,” Jake said into his phone. “There’s a guy in the shed.”

Our broad cameras caught the action as an attack helicopter searched the grounds, while two others landed and disgorged the agents they’d brought here. We heard the unmistakable sound of machine gun fire as the attack chopper took shots at the bad guys. There was a streak of light, then a loud explosion, as a rocket obliterated the shed, and presumably the guy hiding in there. “Guess I’ll need a new shed,” Wade said ruefully, with a hint of humor.

“And some lawn equipment,” I added. We heard a loud commotion from outside our room, as the residents, guests, and staff of Goodwell were awakened by the blast. “That was close,” I noted, referring to the overall assault.

“Too close,” Wade said, shaking his head. “If Jake wouldn’t have brought those guys in, we’d probably all be dead.” I nodded in agreement, even as we heard more machine gun fire off in the distance. The FBI ground commander came into our headquarters, and I hung out with them while Wade went to try and calm everyone down. Only after I saw the hordes of agents blanketing the property was I willing to leave the room and go back to talk to my family, leaving Jake to coordinate the clean-up with the Feds.

Copyright © 2018 Mark Arbour; All Rights Reserved.