CHAPTER
The snow was getting heavier and the thin daylight was fading fast. Climpt was a dark lump in the snow to his left, unmoving. Lucas had settled behind a tree, the pine scent a delicate accent on the wind. And they waited.
Five minutes gone since Carr had called on the radio: Okay, the kid knows, she’s gonna make a break for it. Everybody hold your fire.
A man moved along the edge of the woods opposite Lucas, and then another man, behind him, both carrying long arms. They settled in, watching the door.
The radio kept burping in Lucas’ ear:
John, you set?
I’m set.
I don’t think there’s any way he could get out this end—the storm windows got outside fasteners.
Can’t see shit out back. Where’s Gene and Lucas?
Lucas: “I’m in the trees about even with the front door. Gene’s looking at the back.” A shadow crossed the curtain over the glass viewport in the front door, stayed there. Lucas went back to the radio: “Heads up. Somebody’s at the front door.”
But nobody moving fast, he thought, heart sinking. The kid wasn’t running. The porch light came on, throwing a circle of illumination across the dark yard. Climpt stood up, looked at him. Lucas said, “Watch the back, watch the back, could be a decoy.”
Climpt lifted a hand and Lucas turned back to the trailer home. A crack of brilliant white light appeared at the door, then the large bulk of a man and a struggling child.
“Hold it, hold it!” Helper screamed. He pushed through the storm door to the concrete-block stoop, crouched behind the yellow-haired girl. He had one arm around her neck, another hand at her head. “I got a gun in her ear. Shoot me and she dies. She fuckin’ dies. I got my thumb on the hammer.”
Lucas waved Climpt over and Climpt half-walked, half-crawled through the snow, using the trees to screen himself from the mobile home. “What the fuck?” he grunted.
Helper and the girl were in the porch light, dressed in snowmobile suits. Helper was wearing a helmet. “I wanna talk to Carr,” he screamed. “I want him up here.”
Carr, on the radio: Lucas? What do you think?
Lucas ducked behind a tree, spoke as softly as he could. “Talk to him. But stay out of sight. Get one of the guys on the other side to yell back to him that you’re on the way. He can’t see us—we’re only about thirty feet away.”
“I wanna talk to Carr,” Helper screamed. He jerked the girl to the left, toward his snowmobile, nearly pulling her off her feet.
A few seconds later a voice came from the forest on the other side: “Take it easy, Duane, Shelly’s coming in. He’s coming in from the road. Take it easy.”
Helper swiveled toward the voice. “You motherfuckers, the hammer’s back—you shoot me and the gun’ll blow her brains all over the fuckin’ lot!”
“Take it easy.”
Carr, on the radio: Lucas, I’m walking up the driveway. What do I tell him?
“Ask him what he wants. He’ll want a truck or something, some way to get out.”
Then what?
“Basically, if we get up against it, let him have it. Try to trade it for the kid. If we can get him away from the kid for a second, Gene’s got one of your M-16s and he’ll take him out. We just need a second.”
What if he wants to keep the girl?
“I’d say let them go. I don’t think he’s figured out the tracking beacon yet. If the feds have another one, we could stick it in the truck, if that’s what he wants.”
The feds: We got another one.
Carr: I can see the light from the porch, I’m moving off to the side.
Lucas turned to Climpt. “How good are you with that rifle?”
“Real good,” Climpt said.
“If he didn’t have the gun on the girl, could you hit him in the head?”
“Yeah.”
“With pressure?”
“Fuck pressure. Without pressure, I could hit him in one eye or the other, your choice. This way you might have to settle for somewhere in the face. You think I oughta . . .”
“When Shelly starts talking to him, I’m going to stand up, let him see me. I’m going to talk. You put your sights on his head, and if he pokes that gun at me, you take it off.”
Climpt stared at him, suddenly sounded less sure. “I don’t know, man. What if the kid’s still in the way or . . .”
“We’re gonna have a problem if he takes her,” Lucas said. “I’d say it’s fifty-fifty that he kills her, but even if he just dumps her somewhere, in this storm, she could be in trouble. She’d have a better chance with you shooting.”
Climpt stared at him for a moment, then gave a jerky nod. “Okay.”
Lucas looked at him and grinned. “Don’t hang fire, huh? Just do it. I don’t want him shooting me in the nuts or something.”
Climpt said nothing; stared at his gun.
Lucas called Carr: “Shelly, where are you?”
I’m fifty feet down the driveway, sitting in the snow. I’m gonna yell up there now.
“When you’re talking to him, I’m gonna let him see me. I’ll be talking to him, too.”
What for?
“Gene and I are working on something. Don’t worry about it, just . . .”
Helper bellowed down the driveway, “Where in the fuck is Carr?”
“Duane . . .” Carr called from the growing darkness. “This is Shelly Carr. Let the little girl go and I’ll come get you personally. You won’t be hurt, I guarantee.”
“Hey, fuck that!” Helper shouted back. “I want a truck up here and I want it in five minutes. I want it parked right here, and I want the guy who drives it to walk away. I won’t touch him. But I don’t want anybody else around it. I’ll be watching from the house. When I come back out with the kid, I’ll have the gun in her ear, and if there’s anybody around the truck, I’ll drop the hammer.”
As Helper was talking, Lucas slid away to his right, then stood up. Carr shouted, “Duane, if you hurt her, you’ll die one second later.”
Helper laughed, a wild sound, weirdly sharp in the driving snow. “You’re gonna kill me anyway, don’t shit me, Shelly. If you don’t kill me, you’ll be digging ditches next year instead of being sheriff. So get me the fuckin’ truck.”
Helper backed toward the house, dragging the girl with him. She hadn’t said a word, and Lucas could see her hair shining oddly yellow in the porch light. He remembered her from the school, the little girl who’d watched him in the hallway, the one with the summer dress and thin shoulders.
“Duane . . .” Lucas called. He shuffled forward. He knew he must be almost invisible in the darkness, away from the light. “This is Davenport. We got feds out here, we got people from other agencies. We wouldn’t hurt you, Duane, if you let the girl go.”
Helper turned, peered at him. Lucas lifted his hands over his head, spread them, palms forward, took three more steps.
“Davenport?”
“We won’t . . .”
“Get away from me, man, or I swear to Christ I’ll blow her brains all over the fuckin’ yard, I . . . get away . . .” His voice rose to a near-hysterical pitch, but the gun never left the yellow-haired girl’s head. Lucas could feel her staring at him, passive, on the edge of death, helpless.
“All right, all right.” Lucas backed away, backed away. “I’m going, but think about it.”
“You’ll get the truck,” Carr shouted from the dark. “We got the truck coming in. Duane—for God’s sake don’t hurt the girl.”
Helper and the girl backed up to the door. The girl reached behind him, found the doorknob, pushed it, and Helper backed through, the pistol shining weakly silver in the porch light.