Bad blood vf-4

by John Sandford

  "I don't think so. She said there were a lot of them. And they're all farm guys and they'll have hunting rifles."

  "These vests won't stop a.30-06," Jenkins said.

  "Gotta try," Virgil said. "They might blow up hollow point, I don't know."

  "Lift your arm up." Virgil lifted his arm, and Jenkins said, "I'm putting four mags in your pocket. We got five apiece, thirty rounds each."

  "There they are," Virgil said. The house, bathed in car headlights, looked like a white lighthouse, sitting on a hill on the prairie. Virgil reached under the dash and threw a switch that killed his lights: the switch was normally used on surveillance operations, so a person being followed wouldn't see a car pulling away from a curb.

  The sudden darkness didn't quite blind them-he could see the dark ribbon of road between the snow-mounded shoulders on either side, but he had to slow down. The last half-mile took a full minute, and he hoped it wasn't too long; at the end of it, he took an even narrower lane that ran off the main road, parallel to the side of the Rouse place, and stopped.

  They piled out, and Virgil pulled on his vest and put his coat back on, made sure the extra mags were safely snapped inside his pocket, took out his phone, and called Coakley.

  "There are too many of them, we can't come straight in," he said. "There are a dozen shooters around the place… We're coming across the field in the back. If you see people coming in the back, don't fire at us."

  "Hurry," she said. "We've only got a minute or two before they get us. You gotta hurry, Virgil."

  "We're running in," he said, as he and Jenkins crossed the ditch to the first fence, snow up to their shins. "We're running."

  "Oh, my God, listen to that," Jenkins said. "It's a war. They're shooting the place to pieces."

  And it sounded like a war, like a battle, a spaced boom-boom-boom of heavier rifles, with a quicker crack-crack-crack of a semiauto, probably a.223 like their own. The field they were crossing was probably forty acres, a sixteenth of a square mile, some 440 yards across. It had been plowed in the fall, and the running was tough over the invisible, snow-covered hard-as-rock furrows.

  "Easy," Virgil said, when Jenkins nearly went down. "You don't need a broken leg."

  They were both breathing hard, running in heavy coats, vests, and boots. Jenkins said, "Listen, when we come up, I think, I dunno, it looks like they've got the place surrounded, but most of them are in the front. They're probably trying to make sure that nobody can get out."

  "Look, there's somebody inside, I think, on the ground floor. See, in the window… Coakley said they were upstairs…"

  "I say we hit them in the back, clear that out, get our people out a back door or a window… however-"

  Virgil, gasping for air: "Okay. She said some of them are inside the house. When we clear the back, I'll call her again, make sure they're still upstairs, and then we both fire full mags right through the house… blow them out of there, pin them down, really chop the place up, scare the shit out of the, the ones who survive… Watch for my burst."

  "Good, good. Slow down, slow down now, we're making too much noise… I'm going to move off to the right… watch for my bursts."

  They'd come at a back corner of the house, on the woodlot side, and the firing was continuing, which meant that maybe somebody was still alive inside. A hundred yards out, Jenkins dissolved in the dark, and Virgil closed in, to come up on the corner of the house, where he could see both the back and one side. He moved into the trees, stumbled over a downed wire fence, and then crept fifty yards through the trees, stalking now, slow hunting, aware that time was passing, listening to the shots pounding the house.

  At the end of the woodlot, he saw a sudden flash off to his left, saw a shape, heard the metallic clatter of a shell being ejected and another being loaded, in a bolt-action rifle, and waited for another flash, moving toward it. He could see a lump, wasn't sure that it was a man, saw another flash, decided it was, and shot the man in the back. The man half stood, then pitched forward. Virgil moved up and found a body, an indistinct gray mass, trembling and kicking, as the brain died.

  Got on his phone, called Coakley: she came up and said, "Hurry."

  "Everybody still upstairs?"

  "Yes, but I think… we can smell smoke… I think they're gonna try to burn us out."

  "Stay there for a minute, stay on the phone, we're about to hose the place down."

  He looked to his left, then moved that way, slowly, slowly… saw another lump moving and with no alternative, called, "Jenkins?"

  In reply: "Yes. We clear that way?"

  "We're clear to the corner," Virgil said.

  "There were two guys here," Jenkins said. "They're gone."

  "Let's clear out the bottom floor. Find a tree and get down. Are you ready?"

  "Go ahead; I'll follow."

  Virgil got half behind a thick tree, clicked his rifle over to full auto, stood and aimed at windowsill level and lashed out with a full-auto burst, blowing the whole magazine through the house, playing it across the clapboard siding, which shuddered with the impact. As the burst ended, Jenkins opened fire, the muzzle flashes suppressed but still visible, a stuttering flash that flickered across the snow.

  Virgil had just slapped the second mag into the rifle when he saw movement to his right, turned and lashed at it, couldn't tell if he'd hit it.

  Jenkins shouted, "Going around right, get them out of the house."

  "If I have to go in, I'll go in the back door," Virgil called back. "Keep up the pressure." He got on the phone, and Coakley was there. "Can you make it down to the bottom floor, to the back door?"

  She said, "Dunn's hurt; he's hit in the foot. He's bleeding pretty bad. He can't walk."

  There was another long stuttering burst, Jenkins working around to the right. Virgil said, "I'm coming through the back door. I'll be there in a minute or two. Don't shoot me."

  "There's a fire-"

  "I'm coming."

  First he moved down to his right, where he'd seen the movement. Didn't see more. Moved slowly up, still didn't see anything. Had he imagined it? Possible. Had to make a decision, and made it.

  Scared out of his mind, Virgil ran down the tree line, banging through the underbrush and ricocheting off the smaller trees that he couldn't see coming, until he was even with the back door, and then dropped on the ground, silent, listening for reaction. Somebody was shooting one of the semiautos, but most of the other guns were silent, and then there was a BOOM-BOOM on the far side, a shotgun, and he feared for Jenkins, but then got an answering burst. Jenkins wasn't dead yet; other than that, there were no guarantees.

  A truck backed wildly down the driveway, and another followed it, and men were screaming. He was directly at the back of the house now, couldn't see anybody in either direction-heard another short burst from Jenkins, now firing down the far side of the house-and dashed across the open space to the back door.

  He kicked it once, as hard as he'd ever kicked a door in his life, felt it sag, kicked it a second time and the lock and latch blew open, and he was inside, at the bottom of a four-step set of stairs. He climbed the stairs, leading with the muzzle of the M16, did a quick peek, saw that he was coming into the back of the kitchen. The kitchen floor was smeared with blood. Light from heavy flames, and a boiling black smoke, poured from the living room beyond.

  There were no more bullets going through the house. He heard another burst from Jenkins's rifle, and thought that the farmers around the place were probably more worried about being attacked by a guy with a machine gun than continuing their attack.

  Whatever.

  He looked both ways, and dashed across the kitchen. The living room had apparently been splashed with gasoline, and the fire was large and growing quickly, the furniture fully involved. He could see a body stretched in the flames, already badly burned, unrecognizable. Nothing to do about that. He turned up the stairs, shouting, "Virgil, Virgil," turned the corner at the landing, saw a dead man lying on the stair
s. He hopped over him, shouted, "Virgil," turned the corner at the top and saw Coakley standing in the open bathroom doorway.

  He went that way, saw Dunn sitting behind the bathtub, and a young girl inside it. He shouted, "Come on," and Dunn said, "My foot's gone," and Virgil said, "Push yourself up the wall."

  He handed the rifle to Coakley, who was holding the cardboard photo box, said, "Give the box to the kid. C'mon, you lead."

  Virgil half squatted, told Dunn to drape himself over his shoulders, got one arm between the other man's legs, and lifted him in a fireman's carry.

  They went down the hall, Coakley leading with the rifle muzzle, the girl following, and then the girl darted into a side room, and Coakley screamed at her, and she came back out, carrying a coat. Virgil and Dunn last; Dunn probably weighed two hundred pounds, but wasn't so much heavy as awkward.

  Nobody on the stairs, the fire growing wilder, and down they went, into the kitchen, to the top of the stairs by the back door, and Coakley said, "Oh, shit," and turned and gave the rifle to Virgil and said, "I'll be right back. Ten seconds."

  "Where the hell…"

  But she was gone, and a minute later, over the sounds of shouting outside, and the sounds of cars, and more gunfire, there was a sudden crash of glass, and then Coakley was back, took the rifle and they were out and Virgil was shouting, "Right into the trees, right into the trees."

  He ran as best he could, with Dunn on his shoulders, and when they got into the tree line, they stopped, crouching behind the thick-trunked box elders, and Virgil put Dunn down. Dunn groaned as he did it, and then said, "Man, thanks. Thank you."

  Virgil took the gun from Coakley and said, "You guys stay here. There's another guy with me, he'll be coming round the back of the house, probably, don't shoot him. His name is Jenkins."

  "Where're you going?" Coakley asked.

  "I'm going to shoot some more people," he said.

  He didn't. There'd probably been a dozen of them, or even twenty, but they'd taken casualties and had finally broken, running for it, piling into their trucks and cars as Jenkins gave them a send-off. One truck was nose-down in the driveway ditch, with its headlights still burning. There were two bodies on the ground in front of the house.

  And it was silent, finally, and then somebody moaned. Virgil, moving slow again, walked down the side of a shed and found a man on the ground, his face and neck a mass of blood; he'd been hit in the face with a shotgun, Virgil thought, and if he didn't die, he'd be blind.

  The man had been firing a hunting rifle into the house, and the rifle lay on the ground next to him. Virgil kicked it away, and the man heard him and tried to say something, but was so badly hurt that he mostly swallowed blood: but he might have said, "Help me."

  Virgil got down behind a tractor wheel on an old John Deere parked next to the shed, and called, loud as he could, "Jenkins!"

  A moment later, "Here."

  "You okay?"

  "Okay. I'll meet you back where we started."

  Virgil moved slowly to the back of the house. He got to Coakley, Dunn, and the girl just before Jenkins came in. Virgil was on the phone, calling the highway patrol guys and the local cops off the watch at the Einstadt meeting, and to warn them about men with guns.

  "We need you here, but stay clear of any big bunch of cars-they may be coming your way. We've got one dead cop and one wounded. We're gonna need a fast run into town… We need a fire truck…"

  "We're coming."

  Coakley asked, "Are we clear?"

  "I think so," Jenkins said. "There may be some wounded who still want to fight. Gotta be careful."

  "Bob's dead," Coakley said. "Ah, God, what am I gonna tell Jenny? Ah, God…"

  Virgil ignored that and asked Dunn, "How bad's the bleeding?"

  "I tied a couple strips of towel around it," he groaned. "They're soaked, but I don't think I'll die from it. My foot's a mess… I can feel the bones moving around. Man, it hurts. It really hurts."

  "You warm?" Virgil asked.

  "Huh? Yeah, warm enough."

  The fire was really blowing up now, had climbed the stairs as though it were a chimney and was spreading into the second floor. Coakley stood up and said, "I've got to run around to the other side. Right now. Somebody needs to cover me."

  She started moving and Virgil said, "I'll take it," and followed as she dashed around the back of the house, and then down the far side. Virgil kept the rifle up, now on its third magazine, looking for movement. Heavy black smoke was boiling out of the house now, and glass was beginning to break, and Virgil could smell burning meat.

  Two bodies, at least. Could have been Coakley and Dunn and the girl, as well.

  Coakley went to the side of the house, knelt, then stood, staggering a little, carrying a computer. She got back to Virgil and said, "I threw it out the window. Eight thousand pictures. I couldn't let it burn. I hope the hard drive's okay."

  Jenkins said, "Our guys are coming in," and Virgil looked out of the woodlot down the road and saw a car coming fast, light bar on the roof, and, at right angles to it, on another road, another car with a light bar. The highway patrolmen. The first car pulled into the driveway and Virgil's phone rang: "Everything clear?"

  "I don't know. We've got at least two wounded, one of us and one of them. I don't think anybody's holding out to ambush us, but take it easy. Wait for your other guy, check the truck across the road, and we'll start clearing out the buildings here. Watch your gun, careful not to shoot each other-"

  "Okay. Every ambulance in three counties is on the way. It looks like a fuckin' war, man."

  "It was a fuckin' war," Virgil said, and clicked off.

  He said to Jenkins, "Let's clear the outbuildings, and the trucks."

  Four trucks were sitting empty in front of the house and along the sides, all pocked with bullet holes. Jenkins said, "I was doing everything I could to scare the shit out of them, get them running. Nothing scares a shitkicker like somebody shooting up his truck."

  Virgil might have laughed but Jenkins sounded so intent that he didn't; instead he said, "Let's clear them."

  They went off together, using Coakley's flashlight, cleared the first, small shed, a repair shop smelling of gasoline; and in the second, large shed, which was full of farm machinery, they moved the light around and a man's voice said, "Don't kill me."

  "Come out of there," Virgil said. He came out with his hands over his head, a tall, rawboned man maybe twenty years old, with long hair, in a camo jacket. In the dark, and in the military jacket, he looked like a surrendering German in old World War II books that Virgil had seen.

  "Move out into the light," Virgil said. And, "I can't fool around here. If you do anything quick, I'm gonna shoot you. Get down on the ground, flat on your face."

  The man got down, and Jenkins came up and cuffed him, and then patted him down. The man said, "They left me. Ran like chickens."

  "Don't worry," Virgil said, "You're gonna have a lot of time to talk to them about it."

  They cleared the trucks, found another wounded man, an older man, face wet with pain-sweat, going into shock, shot through both legs. He said, "Help me," and they threw his gun into the snow and then hastily cut strips of cloth out of the back of his coat and put pressure pads on the leg wounds.

  They cuffed him to the steering wheel when they were done, and moved on, but found nobody else. Virgil said, "Jesus, Jenkins, you went through here like Mad Dog McGurk."

  "I was feeling uncharitable," Jenkins said. "And hell, I didn't even see most of these guys. Once they got in the trucks, I just started unloading on the vehicles, to mark them."

  Another car came steaming down the highway and up the drive: Brown and Schickel.

  Virgil met them at the top of the hill: the house was now fully aflame, and he could feel the heat on his back, and water from melting snow was starting to run down the driveway.

  "We need to get Dunn to the hospital like right now: can you take him?"

  Brown took hi
m, and five minutes later the first of the ambulances arrived. They put the blind man in first, and then the man shot through the legs. The second ambulance arrived, and the highway patrol cops loaded a man from the ditched truck; he'd been hit in the back. One of the ambulance people said he thought that one of the men lying in front of the house was still alive. But maybe not.

  They took him.

  More cops started coming in, everybody from Warren, Martin, and Jackson counties, cars parking up and down the road, searchlights and flashlights looking behind trees, following tracks out across the fields.

  Coakley said to Virgil, "We need to get Kristy to town while she can still talk. We need a batch of warrants, and we need to get all these cops in there. We can leave three or four out here to watch the place until morning, but there's not much left…"

  "You do it," Virgil said. "You're the sheriff. I just want to sit down for a couple of minutes."

  So she did it, and he sat, looking at the shambles.

  Jenkins said, at one point, "Fifteen."

  Virgil asked, "What?" and, "Oh, yeah." The weird-shit-o-meter.

  Jenkins asked, "How you doing?"

  "Sorta freaked, 'cause you know what? I feel pretty fuckin' good, like I could do it again," Virgil said. "Man: what a fuckin' rush."

  Jenkins grinned at him in the firelight and said, "Shhh. We don't tell anybody that."

  21

  Coakley was good at organization, and the shoot-out-with one of their own among the dead-galvanized what Virgil thought of as a "community reaction" among the arriving cops. He'd seen it often enough in small towns, usually after a tornado, where there wasn't the infrastructure to deal with a major emergency, and so everybody pitched in simply because there wasn't anybody else to do it.

  Warren County was twice the area of all of New York City, and Coakley had twelve deputies to cover all but the city of Homestead, and had to have at least one patrolman on, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. She also had two sergeants and an investigator, two part-time deputies, and fifteen corrections officers; plus twenty or so officers from adjoining counties.