So there were two cops armed with high-powered rifles and two with shotguns. When Leland got on dry land, he looked back at where the shots had come from, and when he saw the men, he fired, hitting one in the leg. Everybody knew that cops wore bulletproof vests, so he had to make head shots on them-from closer range-or shoot them in their legs or arms to immobilize them. Wounded, the cop would be easier to finish off, after Leland dealt with the others.
Four wasn’t so many. Leland had ten rounds in the rifle.
He listened hard to see if he could hear any boats approaching with more cops in it. When he didn’t hear one, he smiled.
83
Waiting for Leland to break through the brush, Alexa was perspiring heavily beneath the vest, and her hands were clammy where they gripped the shotgun. She and the other detectives had firepower on their side, and even though they were unfamiliar with the place, she didn’t see how Leland’s knowledge of the immediate area was adequate to tip the balance to his advantage in the present situation.
Alexa could feel the positive weight of the Glock in its high-rise holster on her right side. To her left, she could see the wind-rough dark scummy water through the brush behind Manseur.
As far as she could tell, Leland had stopped coming toward them. Likely he was waiting for them to go to him. She was still looking at Manseur when some reeds in the water swayed suddenly. The surface of the water parted as Leland’s head and shoulders broke above the waterline and, to her horror, she saw he was aiming the gun.
Leland fired twice as Manseur was turning his shotgun toward him, and the detective fell sideways. The instant Manseur was down, Leland shifted his gaze, saw her, and swung the gun toward Alexa. She had reflexively put the tree beside her between them, and heard the twenty-two rounds smack the bark. She swung the shotgun up, jerked the trigger, and the gun roared, the recoil jarring her. The pellets had churned the water, but Leland had vanished below the surface. She thought she must have hit him, but there was no evidence of it.
Maintaining her aim, she scrambled over to Manseur, who looked up at her with dazed and frightened eyes. Alexa saw immediately that he had been hit twice in the head. There was a small hole in his cheek and another just above his lip, under his nose. When he opened his mouth to speak, blood poured out. He coughed and spit. Along with the blood, Alexa saw that he had expelled broken teeth and what appeared to be bone chips.
Alexa helped him sit up against the tree, his back to the water. “Stay still,” she told him. “Let me take a look at you. Can you open your mouth for me?”
Alexa was trained to evaluate gunshot wounds. While keeping the water in sight, Alexa laid the shotgun aside on the soft ground where she could grab it up quickly. She took a few seconds to hold Manseur’s head still while she inspected the bullet wounds. She quickly decided that, despite the amount of blood in his mouth, neither wound should be fatal. He seemed alert, and, for the moment, not going into shock.
“Michael, the round through your cheek exited your jaw. You’ve got some broken teeth, maybe some damage to the gums, and some tissue damage where the jawbone is hinged. The second went through your lip, hit your upper gum, and is probably lodged in your upper pallet. You understand what I said?”
Manseur nodded, and pointed behind him.
“I fired at him, but I don’t know if I hit him. I think I closed my eyes when I fired.” Admitting that she had flinched when she fired would have been embarrassing normally, because she had fired pistols and shotguns more times than she could count, and she had been trained and drilled, and drilled again, to teach her not to close her eyes when she fired a weapon. Watch the bullet hit your target. Don’t fire wildly and empty the magazine. Two-one-two-one. The firing range wasn’t real life, and more or less a stress-free environment, which this certainly wasn’t.
Manseur had been lucky. If Leland had used a larger caliber weapon, and had fired with the same degree of accuracy, the round placed under his nose would have penetrated his brain. He wouldn’t die from the wounds, but she had to get him to a hospital for treatment. Then she noticed the blood on his upper arm. He had also been shot in his left shoulder.
She heard footsteps behind her, grabbed up the shotgun, and aimed. Carrying his rifle at the ready, Larry Bond moved beside her, knelt, and looked gravely at Manseur.
“You okay, Michael?”
Manseur nodded mutely. Alexa told Bond what had happened, pointed to where Leland had surfaced, and told him she may or may not have hit him.
“I don’t see him floating,” Bond said.
“The sheriff’s people are on the way out,” Alexa told him. “It’s going to be a long wait, based on how long it took us to get here. They’ll have to launch boats.”
“We can’t just sit and wait. If Ticholet isn’t hurt really badly, he’ll pick us off before we get out of the channel,” Bond said grimly. “We have to kill him.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Alexa said. She had no problem with killing Leland Ticholet.
84
Leland had shown himself moving so the cops would think he was heading toward the cabin. He knew they would move to ambush him as he came in from the point. After moving back into the shadows, he had dropped to the ground and slipped into the water on the far side of the finger of land. He knew they wouldn’t expect him to flank them underwater. Swimming submerged without disturbing the surface was never hard, but with the wind rippling the surface, it was downright easy. Animals in the swamp survived by knowing how things that mattered worked, doing whatever it took to live another day. Leland had not watched and hunted critters without learning how they worked things.
Lying in the shallows like a gator, he had watched the cops take up positions, marked the closest landmark to them-the cattails, which were roughly at a ninety-degree angle from where the cops had set up. Shouldering the 66 underwater, he broke the surface, knowing the pair would be aiming in the wrong place, and Leland gave the barrel only enough time to clear itself of water to fire at the closest cop’s head.
The woman had seen Leland come up, and he’d have had her nailed, too, but the man didn’t fall out of the way fast enough. He’d hit the little bald cop in his stupid head. Leland had seen the red marks blossom as the bullets hit home. The gal cop’s gun went off, but missed Leland by a mile. The woman had scrambled behind a tree and turned her shotgun on him, but she wasn’t quick enough, so he was almost completely underwater before she shot.
He slipped out of the water well away from where he’d gone under, felt a sharp burn in his side, and realized she’d been luckier than he’d imagined. She’d got him. He was bleeding, but the pellets had done little more than cut a couple of shallow channels in him, maybe broken a rib or two. As he lay there, he saw one of the other cops, this one wearing camouflage like a hunter and carrying a rifle, pass within ten feet of where he lay. Leland wished he had a rifle like the one the cop had. Shooting through a motor like it had, it would be even better at shooting through those vests.
He felt a bulge under the skin lodged between his ribs and pushed it this way and that until the dislodged object just plopped out of the hole where another one had gone through. He looked at the little round piece of lead, which was warped out of round. He inhaled; it felt like somebody was jabbing a sharp stick into his side.
He took a scoop of mud and pressed it into a piece of Spanish moss and stuck that to the wounds. He moved silently, going around his cabin, toting the 66. The more he thought about it, the more Leland really wanted one of those big rifles. He smiled, because he knew where to get one.