Jasmine and I caught up with him as he opened the passenger side of his truck and pulled out a plastic grocery bag and handed it to me. Inside were two deli sandwiches in white paper, two cartons of chocolate milk, and two cell phones.
"Can't run if you get hungry," he said. "Phones are prepaid, untraceable. Already activated. Drug dealers love them. The Feds are camped out on your old cell numbers waiting for you to make a call."
"You're a helluva guy" I said.
Jasmine gave him a hug.*****
From the edge of the clearing, about where the road entered it, Jael crawled flat on her belly in the grass. The trees had given way to scrubby underbrush way short of the distance she needed to see them well through the fog. She moved, stopped, listened. The shack's door creaked open, voices leaked out. Slowly, she raised her head and watched the black sheriff cross the porch toward his truck.
She stepped forward, then a pair of quail came racing through the grass and stopped inches from her face. Jael froze and held her breath. The moment stretched out. In a morning as quiet as this one, if the birds took to wing, they'd set up a racket pointing right at her. Quail didn't like to fly; they walked unless threatened. She assumed Stone knew that.
Then came a rustling, a bang and rattle that sounded like a tailgate opening. Jael was ready to charge when the quail turned and scurried away through the grass.
She raised up for a look. Tufts of fog drifted across the clearing, offering first a clear shot, then no shot at all. She moved forward with the fog and hunkered down when it cleared, watching the three of them at the back of the truck positioning a ramp for the bike.
The view now was consistently good enough for a shot. The three of them concentrated on the bike, shoulder to shoulder, their backs to her. They moved back and forth, almost in unison with Stone in the middle. Jael decided to make him her first shot. She quickly sat up, one leg under her, the other bent, knee-up in front of her. She steadied the M21 with her elbow on her knee. With the crosshairs centered between the lower part of Stone's shoulder blades-in a position to blow the tatters of his heart right out the front-she took a breath, exhaled, held it, took up the trigger slack, and squeezed off the first round.
CHAPTER 57
"Damn!"
Myers cursed as the motorcycle ramp shifted, then gave way, suddenly hurling Myers into me. I staggered left into Jasmine. She grabbed my arm and I caught the tailgate support cable for balance. Equilibrium hadn't begun to settle in my head when a gunshot thundered through the morning stillness.
To my right, Myers stood approximately where I had been a split instant before. He let out a loud, pain-filled "Hoof!" as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He ricocheted off the tailgate and slumped to the ground.
Simultaneous with this, another gunshot cracked through the clearing. The pickup's left rear taillight exploded inches from my hand. I laid a wicked body check on Jasmine and sent the two of us flying into the leaves and mud alongside the truck.
Another shot followed. The slug thumped into the shack's wooden siding. Then came shots from another gun.
"Stay down!" I told Jasmine as I got to my knees and struggled to free the Ruger tangled in my cargo pocket. I peered around the rear fender and saw Myers crouched in an academy firing position, his automatic pointed toward a patch of tall grass at the edge of the clearing. He fired twice, adjusted his aim, then twice more. Tatters of ripped fabric fluttered near his far shoulder blade showing pale, straw-colored tufts of Kevlar fabric from his body armor laid open by the oblique trajectory of a powerful slug.
The Ruger refused to come free of my shorts pocket. I cursed the pistol, the pocket, life, God himself, but mostly my own damn self for leaving the holster behind.
I yanked desperately now and tried to see where Myers was aiming.
Through the rolling fog and gloom, I thought I spotted something in shadowy camouflage. I finally ripped the Ruger out along with the pocket's fabric as Myers's gun fell silent. Myers ejected his spent clip and expertly, quickly loaded a new one. I jerked at the cloth tangled up with the revolver's hammer.
In the few seconds it took the sheriff to reload, the camouflage patch in the tall grass grew a rifle barrel. The cloth finally let go of the Ruger's hammer. I raised the Ruger, aimed, and fired. Wide.
I saw the rifle's muzzle flash before I heard its sound, and I heard the sound right as John went down again, a lot harder this time.
The muzzle of the rifle arced toward me. As I aimed, an explosive wh ump! resonated in my chest like the beat of bass drums in a parade. Before I could wonder whether I had been hit and how long I would remain conscious, my peripheral vision registered a long, bright tongue of fire to my right followed by the tremendous acoustic overpressure from Jasmine's. 357 magnum.
Gratefully, I saw the rifle muzzle dip, heard it fire again. A mud crater erupted less than a foot away from Myers, who rolled himself toward a wide hickory tree. Across the clearing, the rifle's muzzle remained still. I looked over at Jasmine, crouched and ever so exposed.
"Take cover by your car" I pointed as I lunged left, scrambled past Myers, and took cover at the base of a nearby hackberry tree. When I next looked toward Jasmine, she was crouched by the rear wheel of her Mercedes. I gave her a thumbs-up, pointed at myself, and gave her a hand signal that I was going to move again. She nodded. As soon as I bolted from cover, she fired a covering shot.
I sprinted my best erratic, broken path to the pile of camouflage, ready to fire if I imagined a twitch. Closer, I made out the inert tangled form of our assailant dressed in deer hunter's camouflage. I slowed; Jasmine jogged closer, her Ruger at the ready.
"On your face!" I shouted.
No movement, no response.
"Hands out to your side!"
Nothing.
I waited until Jasmine took up a position maybe ten feet away to my right. I moved forward and got my first surprise: the body was a woman's. The second was her rifle, an M21. The significance chilled me. As I stared, her blood pooled on the ground, grew, and engulfed a shell casing. I circled her. Still she did not move. In the distance, Myers struggled up and leaned against the rear quarter panel of his truck, gripping his left shoulder with his right hand. Pain lined his face. He held his pistol loosely in his left hand.
"Okay," I said to Jasmine. Her steps grew louder through the grass and diverted my attention to the M21 for an instant. I had trained with this weapon and used it to great effectiveness in another life. With my Ruger vaguely pointed toward the fallen shooter, I bent over to examine the sniper rifle.
At that instant, the camouflaged form sprang up like a horror-house prop. I whirled as a shrieking, blood-soaked blond woman armed with a black automatic pistol sprang up and fired at me. I rolled to one side, and when I came up, I had my Ruger on target, but Jasmine again beat me to the punch. Jasmine's first shot hit our assailant above her right shoulder and spun her around. The second shot nearly decapitated her.
When the Ruger's echo faded, a dead silence followed it into the clearing. Finally, the din of my own heart subsided, giving way to the whine of mosquitoes, the drip of last night's rain making its way down from leaf to leaf, and finally the buzz of carrion flies arriving to make their unmistakable statements about life and death.
I had witnessed enough scenes like this one to last a lifetime, but I don't know what I expected from Jasmine. Tears maybe. Or perhaps the nausea rising from the realization that you have killed another human being, no matter the circumstances.
When I looked at her, I saw none of this. Jasmine stood motionless for a long time, her Ruger still ready. The deep, flinty determination in her eyes took me by surprise. I'd rarely seen that sort of intense introspective stare beyond the small coterie of men I had trained and served with. Once I recognized Jasmine's gaze for what it was, I was prepared for what followed.