“Move back,” I said to him. “Keep away from the window.”
He stepped back until he was covered by the brick.
“He’s trying to keep us right where we are,” I said. “So where is number three?”
“Where did they come from?” Alain asked.
“There’s plenty of forest to hike through… it’s not like the Marchands control anything north of here.”
I heard the sound of a vehicle, but from where I was standing I couldn’t see it; someone was driving up to the terminal building from the access road.
“Maybe that’s the third guy,” the skinny kid said.
More automatic fire came, from the trees to the north again. I heard the screech of tires followed by the opening of more than one car door.
“You guys hold here,” I said.
“Will do,” Alain said.
“And I need the truck keys.”
Alain reached into his pocket for the keys, and once he’d fished them out he tossed them over to me.
I threw myself to the ground, crawling back toward the parking lot so the man in the grass wouldn’t see me. I found my way back to Jordan and the Girards, who were still crouched behind the engine block. I could see the two Marchand boys from the roadblock hiding behind their truck, too.
“I think Stems is sneaking up behind us,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” Justin said.
“No… I need you right here.”
I held out the shotgun to Denis, who looked like he’d already emptied his handgun. “Try this,” I said.
He took it and nodded.
I ran over to our truck, trying to keep as low as I could while I climbed in. I drove it down toward the runway, scanning the area for any sign of movement.
Stems could be on foot; I expected that I’d draw him out with the truck, that he’d pop out and start shooting, but maybe he’d just hold tight and wait until I’d driven right by wherever he was concealing himself.
I pulled onto the runway and followed it toward the west, moving closer to where the tarmac came right close to the edge of Lillabelle Lake. I hadn’t seen anything, and it made me wonder if I’d made a costly mistake, if I’d gone south when I should have stayed up near the first two gunmen, so sure of myself that I’d given Stems and his Spirit Animals a chance to take everyone out.
I turned around and headed back toward the air terminal building, and that’s when I saw something. Just a glint of reflected light… maybe nothing, coming from a small shed not far off the runway, between it and the parking lot. I tried not to slow down as I passed by. I watched out the rearview window and saw a man in a painted helmet and body armour poking his head out the door of the shed. No tiger stripes… a grinning shark.
I slammed on the brakes and pulled my Sig Sauer. I leaned out the window and took the shot.
He returned fire, spraying the truck with automatic bullets. I scrambled across the cab and out the passenger side door, making my way to the tail instead of the engine block at the front. I hadn’t even had time to turn off the engine.
My corps was protected, my head was somewhat safe, too… I knew he might try to take out my legs, but they’d be tough targets to hit.
I reached the end of the truck and ran out toward the back of the shed, shooting at the door as I went. He hadn’t been expecting me from that side, and by the time he swung his assault rifle around to find me I was already crouched behind the shed.
I expected him to start shooting right through the shed walls, so I crouched as low as I could, hoping to hit one of his armour folds with my handgun before he had a chance to knock me down.
But he didn’t shoot.
He’d already ran a good twenty steps before I’d realized he was heading to my truck.
He reached the truck before I had a chance to take aim. He climbed in the driver’s side door and hit the gas pedal without bothering to close the door on the far side.
I emptied a clip at the cab of the truck, but I don’t think I hit him. I ran after him but obviously I couldn’t keep up. As I worked to reload my gun I watched the truck speed up on its way toward the terminal building.
I aimed for the tires on my second attempt, trying to slow the truck down. I managed to take one of them out.
The truck swerved as it neared the end of the parking lot.
I heard two shots.
The grain truck slammed into the back of the Girards’ Ford F-350, splitting the pickup’s bumper and lower frame from the box, which was thrown up onto the hood of our truck. Together the two vehicles careened forward into the corner of the air terminal building. The Ford pickup tore open a large gash in the brick, but that was as far as it went.
By the time I reached the scene of the collision Justin was already there.
“Looks like Sharky is pretty fucking dead,” Justin said.
The man hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, and he’d been thrown from the cab of our truck, through the windshield, and into the back of the F-350 just as it was being crumpled upward by the bumper from the grain truck. The helmet had kept his head intact, but the neck panels hadn’t kept a shard of metal from slicing through his throat.
“I hope to god that’s Ryan Stems,” Justin said.
“I doubt we’re that lucky,” I said.
Justin leaned in and pulled off the helmet.
It wasn’t Stems. His hair was too light of a brown, and his eyes were green. You could kind of tell that Stems was half-native, but this guy looked about as far from Cree as you could get.
I saw that Alain was still pinned to the wall, despite the hulking mess that was only a few meters away.
But the skinny kid was standing beside the wreckage, holding his hunting rifle like a trophy.
“Good shot,” I told him. “And a lucky one.”
I walked over to Alain.
“He’s still out there?” I asked.
“I think so,” Alain said. “I haven’t seen any movement.”
“No gunfire?”
“Nothing… nothing from the other guy, either.”
“Okay… keep holding here, alright?”
Alain nodded.
I went back to find Justin, who was still standing by the wreckage. “We still have two more shooters,” I said.
“I think they’ve run off,” Justin said. “Been nothing since you left in the truck.”
I saw Eva Marchand poke her head out the door.
“What is happening?” she asked. “Is everyone safe?”
“Just stay inside,” I said. “We haven’t cleared the area.”
She didn’t argue and disappeared back into the terminal building.
“Are you ready?” I asked Justin.
He nodded.
We slowly walked around the Girards’ truck, me with my pistol and Justin with his rifle. We walked toward the trees, both of us crouching as low as we could. I kept my eye on the metal tubing, and as we passed far enough for me to see behind it, I could see that there was no one there.
We reached the trees and searched through them, and I found where the second shooter had been positioned, a pile of expended shells littering the forest floor.
“They’re long gone,” Justin said.
“They left a man behind,” I said.
“Do you think Stems was one of the other two shooters?”
“I’m not sure… I’m not even sure Stems was involved in this. It all seems pretty amateur.”
“Amateur? They seemed to have some pretty big guns for amateurs.”
“Think about it, Justin… even with their assault rifles we were still pretty evenly matched, especially since we have three guys in body armour. And the first guy opened fire too early, before the second was in position, and long before the third was close enough to take his shots.”
“They still came pretty damned close to ramming that truck into us.”