The Night Crew

He suddenly kicked the straggling woman's legs from beneath her and she went down. At the same moment, he let go of his grip on her neck. She landed on one thigh and her hand, twisted, head down: the man pointed his hand at her head and there was a sudden crack, and an arrow of flame, and the woman flattened.

Shot in the head.

Anna, not thinking, only reacting, thrust her pistol at the door and fired, and a half-second later Jake opened up: but the man was already back through the door. Anna, though, was rolling under the bottom bar of the corral, on her feet, running at the porch, firing a second time at the dark rectangle of the open door. In the back of her head she could hear Jake screaming, 'Anna! Anna! No, Anna!'

But at the same instant, she was through the door. To her left, the back of the man, turning to look at her just as he went through an internal doorway.

Steve Judge, but strangely different than the animal rights raider she remembered: he seemed older, thinner, harsher, wilder, with a long black pistol in one hand. But he was reeling away from the gunfire, and in the half-second he was visible to Anna, she managed to get the gun down and fire another shot, wildly, but in his direction. He screamed, then a second later, fired back, the bullet burying itself in the wall to Anna's left.

Belatedly, she went down, now holding the pistol out in front of her. And from behind, Harper was suddenly there with the rifle. He knelt beside her, and she saw that he was feeding fresh shells into the magazine.

'He's through there,' Anna said, in a harsh whisper. 'He's running. Let's take him.'

'For Christ's sake, rush him in a dark house? He'd take both of us.'

'We gotta.'

'No. What we gotta do, is look at the woman on the porch.'

Anna turned her head: 'JeezI thought she was dead. He shot her in the head.'

'I didn't have time to look, but lots of times, people don't die.'

'Keep the gun on the door,' Anna said. 'I'll go look.'

'Is he still inside?'

'I didn't hear the front door go. I think so.'

Harper braced the rifle against the wall as Anna slithered toward the door. Just before she got to the doorstep, Judge screamed from the front: 'Anna. I'm gonna cut your friend's belly open. You wanna hear it?'

Anna stopped, glanced at Harper.

Harper shrugged, got halfway to his feet and whispered, 'Yell something at him. A threat, anything.'

Anna screamed, 'You motherfucker, if you hurt Pam, I'll cut your balls off. I promise, I'll cut your balls.'

As she screamed, Harper pushed to his feet, did a quick tiptoe across the door, hesitated just an instant at the far door where Anna had last seen Judge. He looked back, then burst through the door, out of sight: Anna was four steps behind him, but the dark room ahead was suddenly lit by a half dozen muzzle blasts, the crashing of furniture, Harper screaming, another shot, and the banging of the front door.

Then Anna was through into the dark chaos of the office, pushing the gun in front of her, moving. and stumbling over a body.

'Christ.' Harper.

'You hurt?'

'Yeah, I'm shot in the hip,' he groaned. 'Not bad, but it hurts like a sonofabitch.'

'Where is he? Outside?'

'Yeah, I heard the door. He's gone.'

'How about Pam?'

'I don't know. I don't know if he had her.'

'I believed him.'

'Well, if he had her, he didn't take her with him, because he went out of here in a hurry. Christ, we were six feet apart, I just couldn't get the gun around.'

There was light coming into the room from the back, from the room they'd just rushed through. Anna said, 'Move around into the light, stay behind the desk, I gotta look and see how bad it is.'

And at that moment, someone groaned from the other side of the room. The groan was hurt enough, harsh enough, that the hair stood up on Anna's.

Harper whispered, 'Pam.'

Anna groped in her pocket, and found the flashlight had stayed with her through the wild scramble across the yard and into the house. She wrapped her fist around it, and shot the needle of light across the room. She passed over Glass's body the first time, then wondered about the shadow in the corner, and came back to it.

Yes. A body, not a shadow. Anna left Harper, creeping across the office carpet, got to Glass, rolled her. Couldn't see; put her head close to the other woman's ear and said, 'Pamthis is Anna. How bad are you?'

Glass muttered something unintelligible. Anna looked around, trying to think what to do. Had to get her to some light. Finally, afraid that she might be hurting her worse, she tugged and pulled Glass across the carpet. Glass remained inert, sometimes mumbling to herself.

'How bad?' Harper whispered.

'I don't know. We need light.'

'Pull that desk around.'

Anna managed to move one of the desks enough to provide cover from the only window that Judge could see through: and turned on a light.

Pam Glass had been terribly beaten: her nose was broken, her teeth were broken, one cheekbone was wrong, her lips were twice as big as they should be, and the color of fresh liver.

'Aw, Jesus,' Anna said. But she could do nothing about it. 'Let me look at your hip,' she said to Harper. Harper rolled, showed her a bullet hole passing through his jeans in his thigh just below his butt. There was no exit wound.

'Not much blood,' she whispered.

'Yeah, I don't think it's too bad, but Jesus, my leg just doesn't want to work,' he said.

'I'm gonna go look at Daly. Can you cover me?' And for just a tiny sliver of a second she thought how odd it was to be using the language of television cop shows: cover me. What did she know about cover? 'I'll go out on the porch.'

'Yeah. Turn off the light, first. And we gotta try the phones.'

'Daly first.'

Anna hit the light, waited for a second, then went through the door on her stomach while Harper sat in the door, scanning the dark, ready to fire at any sign of a muzzle blast.

But the woman was dead: Anna knew it the moment that she touched her. She was already going cold, and had the peculiar stillness of those who'd gone on. But she grabbed the woman's shirt, and pulled her back through the door.

'Alive?' Harper whispered, as they pulled back.

'No. I don't think so.'

Anna slumped against a wall, and Harper touched the woman. 'No, she's gone.'

'Let's get back to Pam.'

'Let's get the phone.'

Glass's breath was short, harsh, irregular. As Anna knelt over her, she blew a blood bubble, which burst on her blood-crusted lips. Anna said, 'She's in trouble, Jake. We've got to get her to a hospital.'

Harper was already crawling across the office. He groped on top of the desk, found a phone, pulled it down, listened, said 'Shit.'

'What?'

'Dead. He must've pulled wires somewhere. Probably outside the house.'

'We've got to get her out of here,' Anna said urgently. 'We can't wait. JakeI think she's dying.'

Chapter 30

They sat for a moment, huddled over Glass, watching her breathe. Thinking. Anna asked, finally, 'Can you walk?'

'I don't know.' Harper looked around, found a blind spot where he couldn't be seen, pushed himself up on the wall, tested the leg and nearly collapsed.

'Maybebut not very far. I could hop pretty fast.'

'Forget it,' Anna said. Then: 'Here's what we do. We've got to get him talking to us. Anything. Just get him talking. Then we'll know about where he is, which side of the house. Then I'll sneak out the other side, with your car keys. Once I'm away from the house, in the dark, he'll never find me. And he doesn't know where your car is. Once I'm in the car, I'll come crashing up hereI'll get as close to the back porch as I can without wrecking it. That's five feet you'll have to cross. Can you carry Pam that far?'

'Anna.' He was staring at her, unhappy. 'Anna, I can carry her, but, Jesus, that's crazy.'

'Can you think of anything else?'

He looked down at the linoleum, thinking. A few seconds later he said, 'If we can figure out where the phone goes out, and where he is, if they're different, I might be able to patch the wires.'