"See, I'm going to get you all out of your comfort zone and into your learning zone."
A sudden explosion came from somewhere outside: the loud pop of a gunshot.
But it made no sense. This wasn't a hunting area. Everyone turned.
Lampack looked both ways, shrugged. "Guess a grizzly must've got into someone's garbage."
"Really?" Ali said.
"Happens all the time. Tons of grizzlies and black bears in the woods. Not supposed to shoot 'em, though people do. Get up early in the morning, and you might even see one washing himself down by the shore. Just leave 'em alone, and they'll leave you alone." He nodded sagely. "Now, we'll be evaluating the progress of your team development at the end of each day using the Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model-"
Another loud pop, then a door banged: the front door of the lodge, it sounded like.
A large man in a hunting outfit, camouflage shirt and matching pants, and a heavy green vest, traipsed into the room. He was well over six feet, wide, and heavyset: a giant. He was around forty, with a powerful build that had gone somewhat to fat. He had short jet-black hair that looked dyed, dark eyebrows, a neatly trimmed black goatee. Mephistopheles, I thought. There was something satanic about his short black goatee, his jutting brow.
He stopped in the middle of the room, looked around with beady dark eyes, then approached the dining table.
"Man oh man," he said. "What do we got here?" His teeth were tobacco-stained.
Lampack folded his arms. "Private party, friend. Sorry."
"Party?" the hunter said. "Jeez Louise, don't it look like a party, though. Ain't you gonna invite me in?"
He spoke with a Deep South accent so broad and drawling he sounded like a hillbilly, some backwoods rube. But there was something cold in his gaze.
He took a few steps toward the sideboard, where some of the serving dishes had been placed, his brown smile wider, greedy black eyes staring. "Christ, will you look at that spread."
"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave," Lampack said. "Let's not have any trouble."
"Chill, Bo," warned Bross quietly. "Guy's probably drunk."
The hunter approached the table, arms wide as if awed by the opulence of the spread. "Man, looky here. Christ on crutches, look at all this food."
He shoved Ron Slattery aside and grabbed a partridge right off his plate with grimy hands. Slattery's eyeglasses went flying. Then the intruder stuffed the partridge whole into his mouth and chewed openmouthed. "Damn, that game bird's good," he said, his words muffled by the food. "No buckshot in it, neither. Do I taste a hint of garlic?"
Grabbing Danziger's wineglass, he gulped it down like Kool-Aid, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Mmm-mmm! Even better than Thunderbird."
Hank Bodine said, "All right, fella. Why don't you just go back to your hunting party, okay? This is a private lodge."
Bo Lampack folded his arms across his chest. "If you're hungry, I'm sure we can get you some food from the kitchen."
The giant leaned over the table, reached for Cheryl's plate. He dug his soiled stubby fingers into the mound of porcini-potato gratin.
"Oh, God," Cheryl said in disgust, closing her eyes.
"Mashed potatoes, huh?" He made a shovel out of his forefingers, scooped up a wad, and eyed it suspiciously.
"The hell's all these black specks doing in it? I think the potato mush is rotten, folks. Don't eat it." He cackled, crammed it into his mouth. "Not half-bad, though. Dee-licious."
"Where the hell is the manager?" Cheryl said.
From the far end of the table, Clive Rylance said, "All right, mate, just get on your way, now there's a good fellow. This is a private dinner, and I'm afraid you're outnumbered."
Inwardly I groaned. Outnumbered. Not the right thing to say. The hunter gave Clive a stony look. Then a slow grin.
"You a Brit, huh? Limey?" He leaned over between me and Upton Barlow, jostling us aside. He smelled of chewing tobacco and rancid sweat. Grabbing a crepe from Barlow's plate, he said, "You folks eat flapjacks for supper, too? I love flapjacks for supper." Then he took a bite, immediately spit it out onto the tablecloth. "Nasty! Jee-zus, that ain't syrup, that for damned sure."
Barlow's face colored. He pursed his lips, exasperated.
"Will someone get the manager already?" Cheryl shouted. "My God, are you men just going to sit here?"
"You folks having fun? Celebrating something, maybe? Way out here, middle of nowhere?"
Another door slammed. It sounded like it came from somewhere in the back of the lodge.
A second man now entered the great room from a side hallway. This one was maybe ten years younger, also tall and bulky. He, too, wore a camouflage outfit, only the sleeves of his shirt had been sloppily ripped off, exposing biceps like ham hocks, covered in tattoos. His undersized head was shaved on the sides, a blond thatch on top. He had a big, blank face and a small, bristly blond mustache.
"Wayne," the first hunter called out, "you ain't gonna believe what kinda situation we just lucked into."
The second one smiled, his teeth tiny and pointed. His eyes scanned the table.
"Get your butt over here, Wayne, and try one of these here game birds. But stay away from the pancakes. They're nasty."
"Bo," Cheryl said, "would you please get Paul Fecher right this instant?" Cheryl said. "We've got the cast of Deliverance here, and the man's nowhere in sight."
Obviously she didn't see what it meant that the manager still hadn't emerged. When the waiter had spilled wine on Barlow, he'd popped out of the kitchen like a jack-in-the-box. He had to have heard this commotion; the fact that he wasn't here meant that something was very wrong.
"We don't need to shoot no deer," the goateed hunter said. "Never liked venison anyway."
Bo, relieved to get out of there, ran toward the kitchen.
"Hey!" the goateed guy shouted after him.
With a shrug, he turned to his comrade. "Wait'll he meets Verne."
The blond guy snickered.
Bodine rose slowly. "That's enough," he said.
I whispered, "Hank, don't."
The goateed giant looked up at Bodine, and said, "Sit down."
But Bodine didn't obey. He walked down the length of the table slowly, shaking his head: the big man in charge. He could have been running a staff meeting, that was how confidently he asserted his authority.
"Back to your seat, there, boss man."
As Bodine passed me I reached out and grabbed his knee. "Hank," I whispered, "don't mess with this guy."
Bodine slapped my hand away and kept going, a man on a mission.
Lummis muttered to Barlow, "Gotta be a hunting party that got lost in the woods."
"We're in a game preserve," Barlow replied, just as quietly. "Great Bear Preserve. Hunting's against the law."
"I don't think these guys care about the law," I said.
24
Bodine stood maybe six feet away from the black-haired guy, his feet planted wide apart, hands on his hips, obviously trying to intimidate him.
"All right, fella, fun's over," Bodine said. "Move on."
The goateed guy looked up from the food and snarled, mouth full, "Siddown."
"If you and your buddy aren't out of here in the next sixty seconds, we're going to call the police." Bodine glanced over at the rest of us. He was playing to the crowd. This was a man used to being obeyed, and there really was something about the sonorous authority of his voice that made most people want to do whatever he told them to do.
But the black-haired hunter just furrowed his heavy brow and gave Bodine a satanic smile. "The po-lice," he said, and he cackled. "That's a good one." Then he looked over at his comrade, potato mush on either side of his mouth. "You hear that, Wayne? He gonna call the po-lice."
The second intruder spoke for the first time. "Don't think so," he said in a strangely high voice. His eyes flitted back and forth. His arms dangled at his side, too short for his bulky torso.
Everyone ha
d gone quiet, staring with frightened fascination, as if watching a horror movie. I said, "Hank, come on."
Without even looking at me, he extended his right arm and waggled his index finger dismissively in my direction, telling me without words, Stay out of this. None of your business.
From the kitchen came a cry. A man's voice.
I saw the realization dawn on people's faces.
Bodine moved just inches away from the goateed man. He was doing what he must have done hundreds of times: invading an adversary's personal space, intimidating him with his height, his stentorian voice, his commanding presence. It always worked, but right now it didn't seem to be working at all.
"Let me tell you something, friend," Bodine said. "You are making a serious mistake. Now, I'm going to do you a favor and pretend none of this happened. I'm giving you an opportunity to move on, and I suggest you take it. It's a no-brainer."
Suddenly the man pulled something shiny and metal from his vest: a stainless-steel revolver. The table erupted in panicked screams.
He took the weapon by the barrel, and slammed the grip against the side of Bodine's face. It made an audible crunch.
Bodine let out a terrible, agonized yelp, and collapsed to his knees.
Blood sluiced from his nose. It looked broken. One hand flew to his face; the other flailed in the air to ward off any further blows.
The reaction around the table was swift and panicked. Some seemed to want to come to Bodine's assistance but didn't dare. Some screamed.
Cheryl kept calling for the manager.
If he could have come, he would have.
"God's sake, somebody do something!" Lummis gasped.
I sat there, mind racing. The second hunter, the one with the blond crew cut, hadn't moved. He was speaking into a walkie-talkie.
The goateed man, muttering, "Call me a goddamned no-brainer," held the weapon high in the air. It was, I noticed, a hunter's handgun, a.44 Magnum Ruger Super Blackhawk six-shooter. Gray wood-look grips and a barrel over seven inches. A big, heavy object. I'd never used one: I didn't like to use handguns for hunting.
Then he slammed it against the other side of Bodine's face. Blood geysered in the air.
Bodine screamed again: a strange and awful sound of vulnerability.
He fluttered both of his hands in a futile attempt to shield his bloodied face. He cried hoarsely, "Please. Please. Don't." Blood gouted from his nose, seeping from his eyes, ran down his cheeks, spattering his shirt.
I wanted to do something, but what? Go after the guy with a steak knife? Two armed men: it seemed like an easy way to get killed. I couldn't believe this was happening; the suddenness, the unreality of it all, froze me as it must have done everyone else.
"Buck!"
A shout from the front door. The black-haired man paused, handgun in the air, and looked. A third man entered, dressed like the other two, in camouflage pants and vest. He was tall and lean, sharp-featured, a strong jaw, around forty. Scraggly dark blond hair that reached almost to his shoulders.
"That's enough, Buck," the new man said. He had a deep, adenoidal voice with the grit of fine sandpaper, and he spoke calmly, patiently. "No unnecessary violence. We talked about that."
The goateed one-Buck?-released his grip on Bodine, who slumped forward, spitting blood, weeping in ragged gulps.
Then the long-haired guy pulled a weapon from a battered leather belt holster. A matte black pistol: Glock 9mm, I knew right away. He waved it back and forth at all of us, in a sweeping motion, from one end of the table to the other and back again.
"All right, boys and girls," he said. "I want all of you to line up on that side of the table, facing me. Hands on the table, where I can see 'em."
"Oh, sweet Jesus God," Hugo Lummis said, his voice shaking.
Cheryl said imperiously-or maybe it was bravely-"What do you want?"
"Let's go, kids. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, it's up to you. Your choice."
25
We gonna do this the hard way?"
Dad's shadow fell across the kitchen floor. He loomed in the doorway, enormous to a ten-year-old: red face, gut bulging under a white sleeveless T-shirt, can of Genesee beer in his hand. "Genny," he always called it, sounded like his mistress.
Mom standing at the kitchen counter, wearing her Food Fair smock, chopping onions for chili con carne. His favorite supper. A snowdrift of minced onion heaped on the cutting board. Her hand was shaking. The tears flowing down her cheeks, she'd said, were from the onions.
I didn't know how to answer that. Stared up at him with all the defiance I could muster. Mother's little protector.
"Don't you ever hit her," I said.
She'd told me she'd slipped in the shower. The time before that, she'd tripped on a wet floor at the Food Fair supermarket, where she worked as a cashier. One flimsy excuse after another, and I'd had enough.
"She tell you that?"
Blood roared in my ears so loud I could barely hear him. My heart was racing. I swallowed hard. I had to look away, stared at the peeling gray-white paint on the doorframe. It reminded me of the birch tree in the backyard.
"I told him it was an accident." Mom's voice from behind me, high and strained and quavering, a frightened little girl. "Stay out of this, Jakey."
I kept examining the peeling-paint birch bark. "I know you hit her. Don't you ever do that again."
A sudden movement, and I was knocked to the floor like a candlepin.
"Talk to me like that one more time, you're going to reform school."
Tears flooding my eyes now: Not the onions. What the hell was reform school?
"Now, say you're sorry."
"Never. I'm not."
"We gonna do this the hard way?"
I knew what he was capable of.
Through eyes blurry from tears, I examined the ceiling, noticed the cracks, like the broken little concrete patio in back of the house.
"I'm sorry," I said at last.
A few minutes later, Dad was lying back in his ratty old Barcalounger in front of the TV. "Jakey," he said, almost sweetly. "Mind fetching me another Genny?"
Slowly we all began to gather on one side of the table. Except for Bross and Rylance, I noticed. They both seemed to be edging away, as if trying to make a sudden break.
"Where's Lampack?" Slattery said.
"Let's go, kids," the long-haired man said. He pointed the Glock at Bross and Rylance. "Nowhere to run, compadres," he said to them. "We got all the exits covered. Get over there with the rest of your buddies."
Bross and Rylance glanced at each other, then, as if by unspoken agreement, stopped moving. I looked for Ali, saw her at the far end of the table. She appeared to be as frightened as everyone else.
Was this guy bluffing about having the exits covered? How many of them were there?
And what were they planning to do?
The man took out a walkie-talkie from his vest, pressed the transmit button. "Verne, you got the staff secured?"
"Roger," a voice came back.
"We got a couple of guys itching to make a run for it. You or Travis see 'em, shoot on sight, you read me?"
"Roger that."
He slipped the walkie-talkie back into his vest, then held the gun in a two-handed grip, aiming at Kevin Bross. "Which one of you wants to die first?"
Hugo Lummis cried, "Don't shoot!" and someone else said, "Move, just move!"
"Don't be idiots!" Cheryl shouted at the two men. "Do what he says."
"Makes no big difference to me," the long-haired man said. "You obey me, or you die, but either way I get what I want. You always have a choice." He shifted his pistol a few inches toward Rylance. "Eeny, meeny, miney, mo."
"All right," Bross said. He raised his hands in the air; then he and Rylance came over to the table.
"What do you want from us?" Cheryl said.
But he didn't reply. He wagged his pistol back and forth in the air, ticking from one of us to the next like the arm o
f a metronome. He chanted in a singsong voice: "My-mother-told-me-to-pick-the-very-best-one-and-you-are-not-it."
His pistol pointed directly at me.
"You win."
I swallowed hard.
Stared into the muzzle of the Glock.
"It's your lucky day, guy," he said.
My reaction was strange: I wanted to close my eyes, like a child, to make it go away. Instead, I forced myself to notice little things about the gun, like the way the barrel jutted out of the front of the slide. Or the unusual keyhole-shaped opening machined into the top.
"Huh," I said, trying to sound casual. "Never seen one of those up close."
"It's called a gun, my friend," he said. His eyes were liquid pewter. There seemed to be a glint of amusement in them. "A semiautomatic pistol. And when I pull this little thing here, which is called a trigger-"
"No, I mean I've never seen a Glock 18C before," I said. "Pretty rare, those things. Works like an automatic, doesn't it?"
Humanize yourself. Make him see you as someone just like him.
He smiled slowly. He was a handsome man, except for those eyes, which were cold and gray and didn't smile when his mouth did. "Sounds like you know your weapons." He kept his gun leveled at me, aiming at a spot in the middle of my forehead.
"Of course, seventeen rounds on auto won't last you very long," I said, then immediately regretted saying it.
"Well, why don't we find out?" he said in a voice that, in any other context, you might describe as gentle.
Everyone was quiet, watching in mesmerized terror. The air had gone out of the room.
"Do I get a choice?" I asked.
26
He looked at me for a few seconds.
Then he grinned and lowered the gun. I exhaled slowly.
"All right, boys and girls, here's the drill. I want all of you to empty your pockets, put everything on the table right in front of you. Wallets, money clips, jewelry. Watches, too. Got it? Let's go."
So it was a holdup. Nothing more than that, thank God.
"Buck, some backup over here," he said.
"Gotcha, Russell," said the goateed guy, taking out his.44. I noticed he was no longer speaking in that hillbilly accent. He'd been putting it on.
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