They’re following us, she thought drunkenly. They’re following us, and I can’t go much farther.
But then, mercifully, Montana stopped. They had reached the edge of the woods where the pines most closely bordered the barn. Her heart hammered, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
The barn seemed millions of miles away, as if it lay on the other side of a vast arctic waste. Crossing that endless space, there would be no place to hide.
“Where are they?” she asked. Speaking tore at her chest and parched throat.
“They’re in the pines, too,” he said, wrapping the bedspread more snugly about Rickie.
A bedspread, she thought in despair, a bedspread isn’t warm enough.
In the shadows, she could just make out Rickie’s confused face. His chin quivered, and tears glinted in his eyes.
“Shhh,” she said softly and pointed to her watch. He sniffled, but he nodded. He understood and gazed unhappily at his own watch. He choked back a sob.
“Good boy,” Montana encouraged, and hugged the boy more tightly to him. “Good kid.”
He turned to Laura, bending close to her. “We have to run for the barn. Are you up to it?”
She nodded, although in truth she was exhausted and shuddering from both cold and fear.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go first. I don’t want them to get us both in their sights at once. If I make it, then you come. Stay low and run for all you’re worth. Got it?”
She nodded again. Her teeth had started to chatter. She took a deep breath. “What if you don’t make it?”
“Try to circle back to the house. Get to the van. And get away. Here.” He put his gun under his arm, fumbled in the back pocket of his jeans for the keys, and tucked them into her jacket pocket.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going for it. I love you.”
“I love you,” she managed to say, her voice choked. Her vision blurred with tears that she blinked back, but he was already gone from her.
He ran with sure strides. He and Rickie looked so alone, so vulnerable in the snowy emptiness that her heart seemed to freeze.
She found she was holding her breath and forced herself to let it out. Then she heard an explosion; to the east the night sky filled with an orange-red glow.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
They’d set the house afire. She thought of Jefferson, shot down without a warning or a chance. The house would become his funeral pyre. Jefferson, I’m sorry. So sorry. Again she blinked back tears. She forced her numb hand to clutch Jefferson’s gun more tightly.
She realized, with a start, that Montana had disappeared from view. He’d made it. It was her turn. The empty white space yawned before her, and the child in her arms seemed impossibly heavy.
Then she heard a man’s angry voice yelling something. In her confusion, she could not tell how far away it was.
“The bastard’s in the barn,” the man cried. “I saw him.”
“Why didn’t you shoot, stupido?”
“I saw him go in is all. He was there—he was gone. He’s inside. He was carrying a kid with him, I think.”
“Is the woman with him?”
“I don’t know, man.”
One of the men stepped out of the pines and into the moonlight. He was perhaps forty yards from her. If she ran for the barn now, he would get a clear shot at her.
Then a second man appeared, perhaps another ten yards farther away. Like the first, he carried an assault weapon.
Trapped, Laura watched them. She stayed where she was, holding Trace and trembling.
I won’t give up, she thought. I won’t let us die without a fight.
Santander was high on the excitement of killing. His blood throbbed. But his thrill was spiked with anger.
Luppler had had a chance for both the black man and one of the boys. But like the fool he was, he’d been shooting either scared or wild, and despite emptying fifty rounds into the house he’d killed only the man.
Now they’d lost De Mosquera—the white man had hit him first in the leg and then in the head, leaving De Mosquera with his skull shattered, his brains spattered across the snow.
Luppler had stayed behind to torch the house. Its light blazed the night sky in the east. Snow fell lightly, and the orange light gave it a pleasing eeriness.
Now he and Alvirez had at least the white man pinned in the barn, and maybe one of the children. Santander’s guess was that the other two were with him, as well. The four were cornered like rats, and the rats, both big and little, would soon be dead.
Santander was too smart to rush the barn, for the man, after all, had a gun. But little good it would do him.
“Luppler!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Over here! The yanquis are in the barn! Bring the gasoline.”
In a moment, Luppler appeared, sprinting awkwardly through the snow. He carried two cans of gasoline and the Calico slung over his shoulder.
Good, Santander thought with satisfaction. He didn’t use up the gas. Perhaps Luppler was not such a fool as he seemed.
Santander’s plan was to strafe the barn. They would shoot it so full of holes that anything inside, even anything so small as a field mouse, would be blasted to bits. They had ammunition enough to do it; they had enough ammunition to kill a platoon of men.
When they finished shooting, Santander would send Luppler to douse the barn with gasoline so that their enemies were finally consigned to hell in flames. Santander would have Luppler do it just in case, against all odds, the man survived and could still shoot.
Luppler reached them, panting. He handed a gasoline can to Santander. It felt half full, maybe five gallons left.
“The other can,” Santander said. “It’s full?”.
“Yes. The house—” Luppler said, gasping for air. “The fire didn’t want to take. But it did—Mother of God!”
Luppler seemed vivified and excited by the fire, which burned fiercely in the background. His eyes flashed in the moonlight, and his girlish face had turned hard and wolfish.
“They’re in there?” Luppler asked, nodding toward the barn.
“Yes,” Santander said. “Shoot the shit out of it. Start from this side. We need to get closer. Just a little. Stay out of pistol range.”
Cautiously, they moved nearer. If the yanqui was fool enough to fire on them, they would see where he was, and would riddle that place with bullets. They would fill the wall with so many holes that it looked like lace.
“Enough. Here,” Santander said. The three of them stopped, spread out slightly, like men at practice on a rifle range. Luppler set down the full gasoline can, and Santander put down the half-empty one.
They put their weapons to their shoulders. Santander’s Uzi held thirty rounds; Luppler’s and Alvirez’s Calicos each held fifty. In their first burst, they would fire over a hundred bullets into the barn. They would fire a thousand before it was over.
“Start at the bottom,” Santander ordered. “Rip it apart.”
At that moment, a popping noise came from the pine woods. Three sharp reports barked on the night air. Simultaneously, something hot buzzed Santander’s cheek, like a bee of fire.
He’d seen the flash of gunfire out of the corner of his eye. The woman—it had to be. And less than forty yards away. Rage filled Santander. He spun angrily, aimed into the woods, and squeezed the trigger.
Alvirez caught on immediately, and joined him, opening full fire. Luppler simply stared at the woods, his mouth open. Together Santander and Alvirez fired eighty rounds into the pines.
“The whore,” Santander said with contempt. “She hit me.” He rubbed his stinging cheek.
“I thought she was in the barn,” Alvirez said, sounding offended.
“You were wrong,” Santander snarled. “I want to make sure she’s dead. And see if she has a kid with her.”
“What about the barn?” Luppler asked.
Santander looked at the blood that darkened his fingertips. His cheek had only been grazed
, but it hurt. He would find the whore, and if she wasn’t dead, he would set her on fire and burn her alive. If she had those imps from hell with her, he’d burn them, too.
“Keep firing at the barn,” he said from between his teeth. “Do it until you’re sure he’s dead. Then set it on fire.”
He slipped another magazine into the Uzi and made his way toward the woods, carrying the half-full can of gasoline. He moved carefully, ready to hit the ground in case she fired again.
He hoped he’d already hit her and she was lying in her own blood in the snow with the kids beside her, shot to pieces. Even if she was dead, he would burn her, and with pleasure. But first he would do all the obscene things that he could think of to her body. That would be her punishment and his pleasure.
He began to move more boldly. No more gunfire spurted from the pines. She—or what was left of her—was his for the burning.
• • •
Laura had taken cover to shoot, crouching behind a boulder of granite. When the men opened fire on her, she instinctively dropped flat to the ground, throwing her body over Trace’s.
She and Trace were virtually buried in snow, and it burned her face and hands with cold. The bullets ricocheted off the granite with wild pinging sounds; they ripped bark and branches and needles from the pines.
The noise from Jefferson’s gun had almost deafened her, and then the barrage of the men’s bullets made her ears ring even more hellishly.
She thought of Trace, sick and still feverish, lying beneath her, crushed into the snow. He could die because of this; he could catch pneumonia and die. And she would have let it happen.
Then the men’s guns went silent, and the silence seemed as loud as the gunfire. She waited a moment, counted to thirty, then peeped cautiously around the boulder. Her heart churned sickly. One of the men, the one who’d been nearest, walked purposefully toward her hiding place. He carried his large gun and a can like a gasoline can.
She licked the snow from her cracking lips, wiped it from her cheek. She pulled Trace to her, laying his cold face against her breast. She wrapped the sleeping bag more securely around him.
She picked up Jefferson’s gun, not knowing how many more bullets it held. Jefferson had fired at least three times, and she’d fired three times, but she wasn’t sure she’d kept count right. Did she have one shot left? Or more? Or none at all?
She’d hit none of the men as far as she could see. The knowledge made her sick with failure. Now one was stalking her, and the other two were raising their weapons again and aiming at the barn. They fired, and their volley roared, incessant, terrifying. She winced, breathing hard and chewing her lip.
She could wait for the man approaching her and try to shoot him when he was near enough. But she wasn’t sure she could hit him; she was shivering too hard. And the gun barrel was clogged with snow. Would it even work?
Lead him away from the others, she thought, watching the man. Get him away from the others. That’s one less for Montana to face. If Montana’s alive, maybe he can handle only two of them.
If Montana was alive.
The other two men had reloaded and were sending another hail of bullets into the barn.
“My God,” she said to herself hopelessly. “My God.”
How could Montana and Rickie survive such a firestorm?
The lone man was still walking toward her, straight for her without wavering, drawing closer with a horrible inevitability.
She stood, her legs unsteady, and hoisted Trace so that his head rested against her shoulder. She was no longer cold, no longer exhausted, no longer weak. Sheer adrenaline drove her, and she ran harder than she’d ever run in her life.
Sometimes she stumbled in the drifts, but she always caught herself and kept running. The pines were thick, and the wind and snow stung her face. Then, through the dark trees, she saw the flat, white sweep of the pond.
The snow that fell on the pond’s flat face drifted like surf before the wind.
If I cross the pond, I won’t leave tracks, she thought, trying not to panic. But I’ll be in the open.
Then she saw the ice-fishing houses, standing like frail sentinels on the pond.
She remembered that the door of one was unlocked.
Montana, waiting for Laura, had watched for her from the darkened barn through a crack in the door.
Come on, he’d thought. Run for it. Now. Now. Now.
Then he saw the two men emerge from the woods; he saw their assault weapons; he heard the explosion of the house. Stunned, he watched as the eastern sky flared orange.
And Laura—she was out in the pines, half to her knees in snow, alone with Trace.
She could not make it to the barn. She could not make it to the van. The house burned so brightly that surely the van, next to it in the carport, was burning, too.
He held Rickie and felt a sickening dread. He knew what would happen next. The men would strafe the barn until they were sure he was either dead or wounded. Then they would burn it to the ground.
Rickie struggled. Montana knew the kid was cold, disoriented, and frightened by the absence of Laura and his brother.
Rickie made low, inarticulate sounds in his throat, but he hadn’t spoken a word. He stared resentfully at his watch, and Montana could feel the frustration building to explosion level in the kid.
“Twenty more minutes,” Montana told him. “You stay quiet twenty more minutes.”
Rickie’s eyes flashed with disbelief and his chin quivered. “Twenty more minutes,” Montana said with ferocious intensity, trying to convince the kid. “Some bad men want to hurt us. We’re hiding. Rickie has to be quiet.”
Rickie, tears in his eyes, doubled up his fist and hit Montana in the shoulder as hard as he could. “Twenty minutes,” Montana told him. “Be good. Twenty minutes.”
Then, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, Montana saw the old cast-iron tub used as a watering trough. By God, no bullet would go through that.
He saw the sheets of corrugated iron roofing leaning against the wall.
Hell, he thought, he’d barricade the two of them. He’d take the kid and burrow behind all that iron as if they were a pair of cockroaches.
He holstered his gun and flung together a primitive, ramshackle fortress of roofing sheets around the tub. It was a pathetic shelter and a desperate one. It was all they had.
Montana was about to drag Rickie into the makeshift foxhole when he heard an unexpected sound.
Gunshots—handgun shots. Three of them.
My God, he thought, Laura—is Laura shooting? They’ll kill her in a minute.
He allowed himself a swift glance out the door. There were three men now, and they were carrying gas cans.
Two of the men turned to fire into the woods. The barrage was followed by a moment of silence more silent than any he’d ever heard.
The man nearest the woods reloaded, picked up one of the gas cans, and with deliberation stalked toward the dark and silent pines.
He’s going after her, the bastard. And any second the other two will start firing on the barn. One’s already leveled his gun at it.
Montana dived for the cast-iron tub, dragging Rickie with him, and pulled a sheet of roofing over the two of them. He curled up as tightly as he could in the cramped space, his body wrapped around Rickie’s.
Gunfire roared again, relentless and thunderous. Bullets ripped into everything around him. He heard them tearing through wood, ricocheting off metal, hammering the sides of his makeshift shelter, raining on its roof.
The bullets were an endless fiery hail. Sometimes the sound paused, only to burst out again, inexorable and ear-splitting.
He held Rickie more tightly. Bullets struck the rafters, raining chunks of wood and splinters down on the iron sheeting. Then the target must have been the loft, because the air was stifling with the dust and haze of hay drifting down.
Rickie coughed, but Montana barely heard him. How many rounds had been fired? A thousand? More? His ears r
ang so hard he could hardly think, and hay dust filled his nostrils, his throat, his lungs.
Then, as if by miracle, the world went silent again. His heart beating hard, Montana knew why. They were changing positions, probably drawing nearer as well.
Rickie coughed and sobbed. Montana didn’t know if the kid was scared or angry, but his small body flailed, fighting hard to get away. He couldn’t. Montana held onto him so tightly he feared he might hurt him. But he had no choice.
Laura, he thought in despair. If they’d hurt her, he’d kill them, even if he had to come back from the dead to do it. He swore he’d do it, even if they killed him.
But then there was no time to think because the bullets tore through the walls again, deafening him. All he could do was hang onto the kid and pray. He heard wood ripping, metal ripping, and cast-iron ringing like a gong in his ears.
Then the rafters rained chunks and splinters down on them again, and he shielded Rickie as best he could. The barn shook with the onslaught, as if it were a massive creature systematically being riddled to death.
Montana’s teeth rattled; he felt the barrage vibrate his innards and the very marrow of his bones. Then the loft was under attack again, and the air thickened with dust and shattered hay. If he and Rickie weren’t shot to death, they’d choke.
He couldn’t hear Rickie’s coughing in the uproar, but he could feel it, convulsing and contorting the kid’s body. “It’ll be over soon,” he yelled in Rickie’s ear. “It’ll be over soon, and then we’ll go.” He knew he yelled in vain. He couldn’t even hear himself.
There was another pause. The silence rang like a great bell in Montana’s head. Rickie’s coughs had weakened until they sounded like the coughs of a cat. Montana wondered if the kid was going to pass out.
Then they were strafing the barn again, from yet another direction. Bullets crashed through wood, shrieked against metal. The fusillade came in hellish staccato beats.
He told himself to hang on, just hang on. Soon they’d be sure he was dead. They’d have to approach the barn to douse it with gasoline. That would be his chance to take them.
More pieces of rafters hurtled down on the sheeting. Montana was vaguely aware that his cheek was bleeding. He gagged and choked as another assault on the loft, a long one, filled the air with another suffocating cloud of dust and hay. Rickie went limp. He’s passed out, Montana thought. Maybe he’s better off.
See How They Run Page 28
