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Maybe that boom was them shooting off another bazooka shell, she thought. It was possible, but as a mining-country girl who had grown up to the rough music of dynamite, she didn’t believe it. The explosion from the prison had been sharper and harder. It had been dyno, all right. Apparently the Griner brothers weren’t the only sleazebuckets abroad with explosives.

She parked, dismounted the ATV, and staggered. The left leg of her pants was soaked with blood from hip to knee, and the adrenalin that had carried her this far was dwindling. Every part of her body ached, but her hip, where Meshaum had shot her, was agony. Something was shattered in there, she could feel the bones grinding with every step, and now she was lightheaded with blood loss as well as days upon nights of no sleep. Every part of her cried out to give up—to quit this madness and go to sleep.

And I will, she thought, grabbing her rifle and the antique pistol Meshaum had used to shoot her, but not yet. I may not be able to do anything about what’s happening at the prison, but I can put a hurt on those two bastards before they make it any worse. After that, I can rack out.

Branching off from the lane and angling up through the scrubby second-growth trees were two weedy ruts that might once have been a road. Twenty yards along, she found the truck the Griners had stolen. She looked inside, saw nothing she wanted, and continued on, her leg a rake that she dragged alongside the rest of her body. She no longer needed the tracker app because she knew where she was, although she hadn’t been here since her high school days, when it had been a less-than-prime makeout spot. A quarter mile up, maybe a bit more, the overgrown track ended on a knoll where there were a few tilted gravestones: the family plot of a family that had long since departed—probably the Allen family, if this really was Allen Lane. It had been the third or fourth choice for randy kids because the view from the knoll was of Dooling Correctional. Not exactly conducive to romance.

I can do this, she told herself. Another fifty yards.

She made the fifty yards, told herself she could make another fifty, and continued that way until she heard voices ahead. Then there was an explosive whoosh, followed by Little Lowell Griner and his brother Maynard whooping and slapping each other on the back.

“I wasn’t sure it’d have the range, brother, but looka that!” one of them cried. The response was a rebel yell.

Van cocked Meshaum’s pistol, and moved toward the sounds of redneck celebration.

2

Clint would have believed the phrase his heart sank was nothing but a poetic expression until his actually did it. Unaware that he had left the cover provided by the southwestern corner of the main building, he stared, slack-jawed, at the concrete showering down from C Wing. How many of the sleeping women in that cellblock had been killed in the blast, incinerated or torn to pieces in their cocoons? He barely heard something buzz past his left ear, and didn’t feel the tug as another bullet, this one thrown by Mick Napolitano from behind the second bulldozer, tore open one of his pants pockets and spilled loose change down his leg.

Willy Burke seized him by the shoulders and yanked him back so hard Clint nearly fell over. “You crazy, Doc? You want to get yourself killed?”

“The women,” Clint said. “There were women up there.” He swiped at his eyes, which were smarting from the acrid gas and welling with tears. “That son of a bitch Geary put a rocket launcher or something up on that knoll where the little graveyard is!”

“Nothing we can do about it now.” Willy bent over and gripped his knees. “You got one of the bastards, anyway, and that’s a start. We need to be inside. Let’s get to the back door, pull Billy in with us.”

He was right. The front of the building was now a free-fire zone.

“Willy, are you all right?”

Willy Burke straightened up and offered a strained smile. His face was pale, his forehead dotted with sweat. “Well, shoot a pickle. Might be having a little heart episode. Doctor told me to give up the pipe after my last checkup. Shoulda listened.”

Oh no, thought Clint. Oh… fucking… no.

Willy read the thought on Clint’s face—there was nothing wrong with his eyes—and clapped him on the shoulder. “I ain’t done yet, Doc. Let’s go.”

3

From his position outside the visitors’ room, now most surely gutted by the dynamite blast (along with whoever had been inside), Frank saw Jack Albertson go down with his gas mask torn askew. There was nothing but blood where his face had been. His own mother wouldn’t recognize him, Frank thought.

He lifted his walkie-talkie. “Report! Everybody report!”

Only eight or so did, mostly those who had been using the bulldozers for cover. Of course not all of the men had walkies, but there should have been at least a few more responses. Frank’s most optimistic guess was that he had lost four men, including Jack, who had to be as dead as dirt. In his heart, he guessed it might be five or six, and the wounded would need hospitalization. Maybe the kid, Blass, whom they had left at the roadblock with Miller, could drive them back to St. Theresa’s in one of the buses, although God knew who might still be on duty at St. Terry’s. If anyone. How had it come to this? They had the bulldozers, for God’s sake. The dozers were supposed to end it fast!

Johnny Lee Kronsky grabbed his shoulder. “We need to get on in there, buddy. Finish them off. With this.” His backpack was still unzipped. He pushed aside the towel he’d wrapped the dynamite in and showed Frank the Griner brothers’ bump of C4. Kronsky had shaped it into something that looked like a child’s toy football. Embedded in it was an Android.

“That’s my phone,” Kronsky said. “I’m donating it to the cause. It was a piece of shit, anyway.”

Frank asked, “Where do we go in?” The teargas was blowing away, but he felt as if his mind was full of it, obscuring all thought. The daylight was strengthening, the sun rising red.

“Right up the gut would be best,” Kronsky said, and pointed at the half-crushed Fleetwood RV. It was tilted against the building, but there was room to squeeze through and reach the main doors, which had been smashed inward and twisted off their hinges. “Struthers and those bulldozer guys’ll give us cover. We go in, and we keep moving until we get to the bitch that caused all this.”

Frank was no longer sure who had caused all this, or who was in charge, but he nodded. There seemed to be nothing else to do.

“Gotta set the timer,” Kronsky said, and powered up the phone embedded in the C4. There was a wire plugged into the cell’s headphone port. The other end was attached to a battery pack stuck in the explosive. Looking at it made Frank remember Elaine preparing Sunday dinners, pulling the roast out of the oven and sticking in a meat thermometer.

Kronsky whapped him on the shoulder, and not gently. “How much time, do you think? And think about it careful, because when the count gets down to single numbers, I’m gonna throw it, no matter where we are.”

“I guess…” Frank shook his head, trying to clear it. He had never been in the prison, and had expected Don Peters would give them all the layout they needed. He just hadn’t realized how useless Peters was. Now that it was too late, that seemed like a glaring oversight. How many other things had he overlooked? “Four minutes?”