"I'm calling the north team in, they're coming right by…If you got anything you can fire at the house, hose it down, hose it down…"
Virgil got the M-16 in the back of the truck, with two magazines, began popping three-shot bursts at the house as he saw a dust funnel coming down the gravel road from the north, moving fast.
One of the north group was trying to run right past the house. When he got close, Virgil emptied the last of the magazine at the upper windows of the house, where most of the fire seemed to be coming from, dumped the mag, slapped another one in, and as the north truck passed the driveway, hosed the house again.
The north truck slid to a stop in the shelter of the ruined truck. An agent piled out, wild-eyed, and Virgil shouted, "You know where the hospital is?"
"Yes, yes, we scouted it…"
They carried the two downed agents to the working truck, and the north guy shouted, "How bad are you hit?"
Virgil looked down at himself: blood, but not his. The agent touched his forehead, and Virgil reached up. More blood, and this time it was his. Didn't feel like much. "You go on," Virgil shouted. "Go on."
The agent took off, chased by a couple of slugs from the house when he broke from the cover of the wrecked truck.
Virgil dug through the back of the wrecked truck, found a box with six mags in it, stuck one in the rifle, stuck the others in his jacket pockets, darted across the road and into the ditch on the west side. From there, he was able to crawl through the swampy water toward Stryker's Ford.
HE COULD HEAR Stryker still firing from behind the Explorer, and he cleared the truck and Stryker turned toward him and said, "Need more ammo."
Virgil tossed him three of the mags he'd gotten from the truck, and Stryker shouted, "I think Pirelli's hit, he's in the ditch on the other side."
"I'll get him if you can dust off the house again," Virgil shouted. "Let me get my kit."
Virgil crawled into the truck and got his first-aid kit, then back out, crouched in the ditch, and shouted, "Anytime…"
Stryker popped up and unloaded a clip in one long burst and Virgil vaulted the narrow road, landing in the ditch on the other side, saw Pirelli with an M-16 shooting one-handed, blood soaking through his left shirtsleeve. Virgil crawled up and shouted, "How bad?"
"It hurts. I think it broke my shoulder," Pirelli shouted back. Everybody was shouting. Virgil could hear men screaming all around the house and hundreds of rounds pumping out. The house seemed to be falling apart, but there was still fire incoming.
Virgil pulled a heavy pad and a roll of tape out of his kit, and he and Pirelli eased to the bottom of the ditch, Pirelli on his back. Virgil found a bloody wedge knocked out of Pirelli's shoulder, just below the edge of his body armor. He jammed the pad under Pirelli's shirt and wound two yards of tape around his shoulder, cinching it up tight, shouted, "No artery, don't see any arterial bleeding," and Pirelli nodded and said, "Reload me."
NOW THE FIRING from the house had stopped, and an agent launched himself out of the east-side ditch to the car where the third wounded agent had been lying, the guy who'd covered Virgil while Virgil dragged the dead man's body. Another burst of fire from the house, but the agent made it, and the DEA shooters pounded the window where the burst had come from.
Virgil, down in the ditch, reloaded Pirelli's M-16 and then heard Stryker scream, "Watch out, watch out!" and Virgil looked up and saw, at the shed, Franks walking out through the shed door with a long revolver in one hand. He took three steps and shot at the agents behind the truck, no effort to cover himself, and the unwounded agent stumbled back away from the man on the ground, trying for his gun, and then somebody hit Franks with a burst, and Virgil could see his shirt shaking, but Franks stayed on his feet and fired another shot from the pistol and then he went down.
Distracted by the appearance of Franks, Pirelli had half risen to his knees, shouting, and now another burst of gunfire spattered around them and Pirelli went down again, flapping one arm, and Virgil shouted, "Get down," but it was too late; Pirelli had been hit again. Virgil crawled down to him, and Pirelli sat up and said, "Got me," and dropped back on the ground. Two holes: one in a leg and the other in the right arm. The one in the arm was bleeding hard, but not arterially; the arm was crooked and surely broken.
Virgil ripped open Pirelli's pant leg: that hit was superficial, ripping away skin and a quarter-inch of meat.
"How bad?" Pirelli groaned.
"You're not dead yet," Virgil said. More tape to put pressure on the wounds; then Virgil said, "This is gonna hurt. I've gotta move you across the road and up the ditch where we can get you outa here."
"Do it."
He braced himself and grabbed Pirelli's armor at the neckline, cocked himself, and shouted at Stryker, who said, "Ten seconds," and disappeared, crawling down the ditch. Then Stryker flashed a hand, screamed, "Go!" and Virgil ran across the road, dragging Pirelli. Stryker popped up, twenty feet from his previous position, and burned another mag.
Pirelli made no sound at all when they landed in the water on the other side. Virgil kept the motion going, dragging him up the ditch, through the muck, to the wrecked DEA truck. Five minutes, a hundred yards, Pirelli didn't make a sound. They reached the truck, went another ten yards, and stopped. Virgil said, gasping for air: "Somebody'll come and get you."
"That place is bunkered up. We didn't know it, but it's gotta be bunkered up," Pirelli said. His face was pale as a cloud, his eyes unfocused with shock, but he was coherent.
"Something," Virgil said.
AT THAT MOMENT, there was an explosion at the house. Not huge, but big enough. Then another one. A DEA agent had gotten a grenade launcher going, and hit the house with high-explosive rounds, and then with what looked like a gas round. And from behind the hill, to the northeast, where Virgil and Stryker had crawled on their scouting trip, a distinctive single boom. Virgil had never shot one, but he suspected it was a fifty-caliber rifle. The DEA was taking the house out.
Virgil said, "Just lay here; I'll be back," and he crawled back up the ditch. Franks was lying spread-eagled in front of the first DEA truck, obviously dead. Two agents in armor were behind the truck, a third agent on the ground. Stryker was still in the ditch, popping single shots off at the house: not much seemed to be coming out.
One of the first-in agents was squatting behind one of the trucks in the road, all four tires shot out.
"What about the guys behind the truck?" Virgil shouted.
The agent yelled back, "Harmon is gone. Franks shot him right in the head. Two more wounded, not bad; the others are okay. How bad are you?"
"Not bad. We've got four good tires. I'll back out of here if you can get that grenade guy to put in a couple more rounds. Pirelli's hurt pretty bad. I need to make a run to the hospital."
"Soon as you get it fired up, I'll tell him to start putting rounds in. Go like hell."
Virgil got in the foot-well of the Explorer. The passenger-side windows were shot out, glass all over the seats, a few holes, but the tires were good, and intact, and nobody had been shooting at the engine block, where they might've hit electronics.
The truck started, and he shouted, through the broken windows, "I'm ready," and two seconds later, heard the first grenade impact, and he started rolling backward up the ditch, building momentum, afraid he'd bog down in the wet bottom, and then another grenade, and the boom from the fifty-cal, and another grenade, and he risked sitting up, looked back over his shoulder, and accelerated onto the road and into the shelter of the damaged DEA truck.
Pirelli was still in the ditch, half sitting now. Virgil ran down to him, and Pirelli asked, "What time is it?"
"Damned if I know," Virgil said, and he grabbed Pirelli by his armor and said, "Hold on, now," and dragged him across the road to the Ford, loaded him through the back door, flat on his back, then got in the truck and backed up another two hundred yards, hearing the grenades pounding Feur's place, then risked stopping, made a U-turn through the ditch and was on his way out. "What time is?" Pirelli called. "What time is it?"