“Okay, check the equipment,” said Wally. “Where’s the shotgun?”
Angelo passed the gun to Brezo who passed it to Wally; the gun was a two-barrel, twelve-gauge Remington, loaded with triple zero magnum shells capable of blasting a hole through a car door. Wally flipped off the safety. Each man also had been issued a police thirty-eight.
“Everybody remember their job?” asked Wally. The plan was for Wally to lead, blast open the rear door, then pull the door open for Brezo and Angelo to rush inside. Wally thought it was a good plan, the kind that had kept him alive through five years of Vietnam. He’d made it a habit only to volunteer for the safe part of any assault.
Angelo and Brezo nodded, tense with excitement. They’d made a bet with each other. The one who got Martel first would be a hundred bucks richer.
“Okay,” said Wally. “I’m off. I’ll signal for Angelo.”
After checking the dark house once more, Wally scrambled around the edge of the barn, running low to the ground. He crossed the hundred feet quickly and noiselessly, pulling himself into the shadows below the lip of the back porch. The house remained quiet so he waved to Angelo. Angelo and Brezo joined him holding their flashlights and pistols.
Wally glanced at the two men. “Remember he has to be shot from the front, not the back.”
With a burst of energy, Wally thundered up the back steps and aimed the shotgun at the lock of the back door. A blast sundered the peaceful night, blowing away a section of the back door. Wally grabbed the edge and yanked it open. At the same moment Brezo ran up the steps and past Wally, heading into the kitchen. Angelo was right behind him.
But when Wally opened the door it triggered Charles’s trap. A cord pulled a pin from a simple mechanism which supported several hundred-pound bags of Idaho potatoes which had been in the root cellar. The potatoes were hung by a stout rope from a hook directly above the door, and when the pin was pulled the potatoes began a rapid, swinging plunge.
Brezo had just snapped on his flashlight when he saw the swinging sacks. He raised his hands to protect his face at the moment Angelo collided into the back of him. The potatoes hit Brezo square on. The impact made him accidentally pull the trigger of his pistol as he was knocked straight back off the porch into the snow. The bullet pierced Angelo’s calf before burying itself in the floor of the porch. He, too, was knocked off the porch, but sideways, taking with him part of the balustrade with the gingerbread trim. Wally, not sure of what was happening, vaulted back over the railing and scrambled off toward the barn. Angelo was not aware he’d been shot until he tried to get up and his left foot refused to function. Brezo, having recovered enough to get to his feet, went to Angelo’s aid.
Charles and Cathryn had bolted upright at the blast. When Charles recovered enough to orient himself, he reached frantically for the shotgun. When he found it, he ran into the kitchen. Cathryn rushed over to Michelle, but the child had not awakened.
Arriving in the kitchen, Charles could just make out the two sacks of potatoes still swinging in and out of the open back door. It was difficult to see beyond the sphere of light from the overhead back porch fixture, but he thought he made out two white figures heading for the barn. Switching off the light, Charles could see the men better. One seemed to be supporting the other as they frantically moved behind the barn.
Pulling the splintered door closed, Charles used some rope to secure it. Then he stuffed the hole made by the shotgun blast with a cushion from one of the kitchen chairs. With a good deal of effort he restrung the potatoes. He knew that it had been a close call. In the distance he could hear the sound of an ambulance approaching, and he wondered if the man who’d been hit with the potatoes was seriously hurt.
Returning to the living room, he explained to Cathryn what had happened. Then he reached over and felt Michelle’s forehead. The fever was back with a vengeance. Gently at first, then more forcibly, he tried to wake her. She finally opened her eyes and smiled, but fell immediately back to sleep.
“That’s not a good sign,” said Charles.
“What is it?” questioned Cathryn.
“Her leukemic cells might be invading her central nervous system,” said Charles. “If that happens she’s going to need radiotherapy.”
“Does that mean getting her to the hospital?” asked Cathryn.
“Yes.”
The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and Cathryn and Charles managed to keep to their three-hour watch schedule. When dawn broke, Cathryn looked out on six inches of new snow. At the end of the driveway only one police car remained.
Without waking Charles, Cathryn went into the kitchen and began making a big country breakfast. She wanted to forget what was happening around them, and the best way was to keep busy. She started fresh coffee, mixed biscuits, took bacon from the freezer, and scrambled eggs. When everything was ready, she loaded it on a tray and carried it into the living room. After awakening Charles, she unveiled the feast. Michelle woke up and seemed brighter than she had been during the night. But she wasn’t hungry, and when Cathryn took her temperature, it was 102.
When they carried the dishes back to the kitchen, Charles told Cathryn that he was concerned about infection and that if Michelle’s fever didn’t respond to aspirin, he would feel obliged to start some antibiotics.
When they were done in the kitchen, Charles drew some blood from himself, laboriously separated out a population of T-lymphocytes, and mixed them with his own macrophages and Michelle’s leukemic cells. Then he patiently watched under the phase contrast microscope. There was a reaction, definitely more than the previous day, but still not adequate. Even so, Charles whooped with a sense of success, swinging Cathryn around in a circle. When he calmed down, he told Cathryn that he expected that his delayed sensitivity might be adequate by the following day.
“Does that mean we don’t have to inject you today?” asked Cathryn hopefully.
“I wish,” said Charles. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we should argue with success. I think we’d better inject today, too.”
Frank Neilson pulled up at the bottom of the Martels’ driveway, skidding as he did so, and bumped the front of the cruiser that had sat there overnight. Some of the snow slipped off with a thump, and Bernie Crawford emerged, heavy with sleep.
The chief got out of his car with Wally Crabb. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”
“No,” said Bernie. “Been watching all night. No sign of life.”
Neilson looked up at the house. It appeared particularly peaceful with its fresh blanket of snow.
“How’s the guy that got shot?” asked Bernie.
“He’s okay. They got him over at the county hospital. But I tell you, Martel is in a lot more trouble now that he’s shot a deputy.”
“But he didn’t shoot him.”
“Makes no different. He wouldn’t have got shot if it hadn’t been for Martel. Rigging up a booby trap is a goddamn crime in itself.”
“Reminds me of those gooks in Nam,” snarled Wally Crabb. “I think we ought to blow the house right off its fucking foundation.”
“Hold on,” said Neilson. “We got a sick kid and a woman to think about. I brought some sniper rifles. We’ll have to try to isolate Martel.”
By midday, little had happened. Spectators from town drifted to the scene and, although as yet there weren’t quite as many as the day before, it was a considerable crowd. The chief had issued the rifles and positioned the men in various spots around the house. Then he’d tried contacting Charles with the bull horn, asking him to come out on the front porch to talk about what he wanted. But Charles never responded. Whenever Frank Neilson called on the phone, Charles would hang up. Frank Neilson knew that if he didn’t bring the affair to a successful conclusion soon, the state police would intervene and control would slip from his hands. That was something he wanted to avoid at all costs. He wanted to have the credit of resolving this affair because it was the biggest and most talked-about case since one of the mill owners’ children had been kidnapped in 1862.