Jake groaned and rolled on the floor of his larder, while Fausto did the same in the storage room. Expending what felt like his last bit of energy, Jake forced himself onto his knees. The hole in his shoulder was just another place for the blood to leak out. Jake’s world was going dark, but he could see the nearby can of gasoline, the same canister he’d used to ignite the pile of ammunition.
Jake went for the Zippo first. He stretched his arm like a ballplayer going for an errant throw to cut down the distance he had to travel, before he slid his way over to the can of gas. The cap was still off, with plenty of fluid inside. In the other room, Fausto, even more dazed than Jake, somehow got to his knees and took aim with the gun again. A river of blood poured out from the jagged gash that had opened up the middle of Fausto’s forehead and had bathed much of his face and eyes. Even on his knees, Fausto was wobbly, off balance. He fired two shots, which went in two completely different directions, both ineffective.
Jake tipped the can of gasoline over, spilling pungent liquid onto the floor. Using his legs, he shoved the whole thing into the storage room as if he had launched a shuffleboard piece. The open canister left in its wake a long trail of gasoline that continued until the container of gas came to a stop against Fausto’s knees.
Jake wasted no time getting his Zippo out. He hit the flint and dropped the lighter at the start of the gasoline trail.
The flame traveled faster than Jake’s pitch. In a blink, it vanished inside the open container of gas. An enormous fireball soon erupted. The explosion lit every crevice of the storage room and expansive larder in a bright yellow and orange light.
A wave of heat shot out, so intense it singed the hair on Jake’s arms and face. Biting odors of gasoline and smoke failed to mask the odor of Fausto’s burning hair and flesh as he vanished inside a swirl of flame. Fausto’s skin blistered and peeled. Soon he wasn’t in the flames, he was the flames; he was part of this entity that licked and spit and thrashed in all directions.
The pain had to be unbearable. Sounded that way, at least. In a matter of seconds, the flames melted another canister of gas in the storage room, and a second fireball erupted.
Jake shielded his face and turned away from the intense blast of heat. He crawled toward the door as another blast shook the room. By the time Jake reached the corridor, he heard the popping sounds of ammunition going off, followed by an explosion big enough to send a column of flames shooting out the larder door. Those flames licked the wall near Jake and then sank back into the larder as if the flaming beast had uncoiled and retracted its burning tongue.
When Jake finally reached the ladder that would bring him to the field house, his bug-out location was completely engulfed in flames. Gunpowder ignited, and chambered rounds went off as though someone had pulled the trigger. Food on the many shelves, in sacks, cooked until it was charred. Stored water boiled before it evaporated. Sacks of rice burned, as did the salt, the sugar, and the honey. Wood shelving fueled the flames and the heat melted the cans of fruit, vegetables, and beans it had scorched. The larder was seldom above sixty-five degrees, but now it was sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, on its way up to two thousand.
Jake pulled himself up the ladder, rung by rung. His shoulder and leg begged for him to stop, but he went up anyway, one-handed, one rung at a time. He pushed open the trapdoor and was outside the field house, stumbling in the grass as if his legs were new and walking was something still to learn. His blackened body was invisible against the night sky. Eventually voices came at him from all directions, shouting orders, calling for medical attention. Figures approached carrying lights.
So many lights.
From darkness, at last, Jake stepped into the light.
CHAPTER 50
The preoperative holding area at St. Mary’s Hospital, in the same town where Jake and Ellie had once dined at a cozy Italian restaurant with checkered tablecloths, was an open-floor plan that used movable curtains on tracks to create the illusion of individual rooms. Jake was resting on a stretcher-his shoulder was immobilized in body wrap, his hand mummified in gauze dressing, and his leg suspended in traction. He had several IVs and a catheter in him, and he was hooked up to an array of equipment that monitored his vital signs with rhythmic beeps and hums.
In addition to the anesthesiologist, a trauma specialist and orthopedic and vascular surgeons had already consulted on Jake’s condition. As a team, they decided to operate on the hand first. Amazingly enough, considering the number of shell casings that would be recovered at the scene, none of Jake’s wounds had been deemed as life-threatening.
Jake was feeling logy from the pain medication, but he was alert enough to inquire about Ellie. According to the duty nurse, she was still in surgery. One of Ellie’s leg wounds was more severe than any of Jake’s injuries due to the proximity of a major artery, and she’d been rushed into surgery soon after her arrival and initial evaluation. Police and FBI were swarming about the hospital, purportedly there to keep an eye on Jake in case some cartel operatives were still on the loose and aware of his location, and because Jake’s involvement in the mêlée was part of an ongoing investigation.
At some point during an especially medicated fuzzy period for Jake, the curtain to his makeshift room parted. A broad-shouldered man, with short-cropped hair, entered, escorting Andy. The man had eyes as hard as a steel girder and his mouth seemed forged into a permanent grimace. He came right to Jake’s bedside with purposeful steps, and gripped one of the steel side rails in his sizable hands. He leaned over the bed, his hardscrabble visage looming large before Jake’s eyes.
“Jake, I’m Leo Haggar, the FBI agent you disregarded and disobeyed.” The man had a voice gritty and coarse as Jake’s favorite manager in the minors. “That said, from the statements the kids gave, I think I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Jake’s mouth felt cottony dry, his throat achy and raw, but he managed to croak, “If I were you, I wouldn’t have listened to me, either.”
Haggar formed a half smile, which Jake matched.
“Listen, we’ve got a lot to chat about, me and you, but it can wait. In the meantime, I brought somebody with me who really wants to talk to his dad. I’ll leave you two alone.”
Haggar took a few steps toward the exit, but then turned around.
“Jake, before today I never would have said a hero could be a renegade. Heal quick, son. We’ll talk soon.”
Andy hung back for some time, until Jake encouraged him forward with a slight wave of his left hand, his good hand. Andy took a few tentative steps, his eyes taking it all in-the tubes, the monitors, the bandages.
“I’m… I’m so sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry for everything.”
Jake noticed the quiver in Andy’s lower lip, but somehow his son held those threatening tears at bay.
“Tell me everything,” Jake said.
When Andy finished, a story that took considerable time and effort to tell, his eyes were red, and his face looked drawn.
“It’s all my fault,” Andy said.
“You didn’t know how this was going to go down,” Jake said.
“But a woman died because of what we did, Dad,” Andy said. His voice carried the full weight of his regret.
Jake’s facial muscles tensed. With it, an unpleasant jolt of pain ripped into his hand before it shot down his wounded leg.
“A woman died…”
“Andy, there’s something you need to know about that woman.”
Maybe it was the timbre of Jake’s voice, or his phrasing, but something struck Andy as alarming. He went a little pale.
How will he take it? Jake didn’t know, but he had to be the one to tell him. Andy had to hear it from his father first.