"Head for the roadblock, take out the men guarding it, steal one of the jeeps."
"You and me with our nines against who knows how many men with Ml6s?"
Sharon didn't want to hear about problems, just solutions. She spoke quickly, fueled by the desire to make things happen. "So first we try to pick them off from some kind of cover, even if we don't get all of them, we'll at least improve the odds, then we rush the jeep while we're still firing. . . ."
"Honey, that's just plain suicide."
Sharon glared at Annie. "There's too much at stake here not to try it."
"There's too much at staketo try it," Grace corrected her, speaking very slowly, very clearly. "Because if we die trying, a thousand other people die with us." She let that sink in for a minute. "We have to think of another way."
"Goddamnit, thereis no other way. We've been trying to get out of here since we got in and couldn't do it, and it's even worse now. Now they're all out there in a big circle, just waiting for us."
"Then we have to break the circle."
Annie nodded. "What we need is a diversion."
Grace eyed her. "You've been watching old war movies again." "Lots of movies. And that's what you do. You get all the enemy in one place, then you slip out in the other direction."
Sharon snorted. "Great idea. How do you propose we do that?" "Hell, I don't know. How do cops do it? If you're in the field, on the job, and surrounded, what do you do?"
"The one thing we can't do. You call for backup." Grace spun her head to look at her, went very still for a moment, and then a rare smile spread slowly over her face. "Maybe we can do both." She took a breath, looked up the slope toward the paddock, then back down at Annie and Sharon. "What if we set the whole goddamned town on fire?"
DEPUTY DOUGLAS LEE was in the one and only place he considered safe at the moment-twenty feet up in the knobby clutches of an old box elder tree.
He'd always hated the messy box elders and the massing, flying beetles they hosted. Damn things took root anywhere-in the sand or the clay, in the sun or the shade, in the middle of a cornfield or a crack in the sidewalk if you didn't keep after them. Even in the middle of a first-growth pine forest, thank God. One day a spindly sapling, the next day a monster like the one he sat in.
The lowest branches of the white pines had been too high for him to reach, and too well spaced for easy climbing. The box elder had been a godsend with its fat, sharply angled limbs and broad, cupped crotches. If he managed to live through this, he had the box elder to thank, and by God, he'd never uproot another seedling from his yard.
He didn't know how long he'd been in the tree-near half an hour, he figured. Long enough to doze off and jerk awake to a terrifying volley of gunfire that turned out to be only in his brain. The wound on the side of his head had run like a faucet while he was tearing likehell through the woods, and for long minutes after, he'd settled in the tree to listen to his heart thunder in his chest. He reached up and touched the side of his head with one of the few clean spots remaining on his bloody handkerchief. Hardly bleeding at all now. Maybe it wasn't too deep, just a bleeder like all head wounds.
He moved his head to peer down at the ground, then jerked back against the trunk when the ground moved.
Shit, Lee. You're a little woozy. Must have lost a little more blood than you thought.
Twisting his arm until the filtered moonlight hit his wrist, he peered down at the face of his watch, careful to move only his eyes and not his head. He blinked hard in disbelief, then raised his wrist closer to his face.
Jesus. Two o'clock in the morning. He'd been in this goddamned tree forhours, not minutes. He closed his eyes and thought it through. Maybe he hadn't been dozing. Maybe he'd blacked out. Maybe the head wound was a hell of a lot worse than he imagined.
His heart stuttered in his chest and his breath started to comefaster.Easy, Lee. You're okay. You've come this far, so don't panic now.
He forced slow, deep breaths, and when he was calm again, he opened his eyes and looked around. If he moved his head very slowly, very deliberately, he found he could keep a measure of equilibrium.
Even with the dense canopy of branches blocking the moon, enough light filtered down to make spotty shadows on the ground below. None of them moved. There was no sound... .
Son of a bitch. He remembered now. Earlier, he'd fluttered into wakefulness long enough to hear a disturbance in the forest beneath him. The sounds had been different than the frantic, whispered shouting of the men who had shot at him on the road. This time, the noises had been slow, more orderly. Soft murmurs, twigs snapping regularly under carelessly placed boots, underbrush swishing with the passage of a body. They'd come right under the tree, some of them, all dressed in camo like that bastard at the roadblock, all toting M16s and heading in the same general outward direction.
The direction you don't want to go,he told himself, and that was the first time he realized he planned to leave the safety of his perch.
Jesus. What the hell was going on here? No way they were National Guard on maneuvers. No way they were U.S, military of any kind, or by God he was moving to China. But there were a lot of them; they were organized; they were well armed. Christ, it wassomebody'sarmy.
He pressed his hand against his forehead and tried to rub somesense through his skin.Think, Lee. You're in some deep shit here. If they wanted you dead back there at the roadblock, they want you dead even more now. Dear God. You killed one of them.
The memory stunned him for a moment, left his eyes open and staring until he caught hold of his thoughts and made himself blink.
Never mind that. Don't think about that now.His right hand fumbled at his side until his fingers closed around his holster, and he sighed with relief. Thank God. Delirious or not, at least he'd had the sense to hang on to his weapon.
Suddenly, his mind went blank. Now what? What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Get out of here, of course. Get away from these bozos and call it in. Oh, Lord, wouldn't Dorothy just pitch a fit. Hey Dot, I've got an army out here by Four Corners trying to blow my brains out with automatic rifles. Send backup, will you?
He started to chuckle, then closed his throat, horrified by the sound. He'd sounded crazy.
Get a grip, Lee. Cheryl's waiting.
The thought of his wife paralyzed him for a moment. Ah, Jesus, poor Cheryl. Two o'clock already. She must be half mad with worry, bugging the hell out of dispatch .., oh, hey. Lee, you stupid jerk, of course. Cheryl would have called in hours ago. They must have thewhole force cruising by now . . , shit. He had to get out, get to a highway, get visible. . . . But first, he had to get past the bad guys, and the problem with that was he didn't know where the hell they were.
FIFTEEN MINUTES GONE, Grace thought when they finally started to move up from the lake toward the paddock. It took fifteen whole minutes to work it out and find the holes and agree on the timing, and if the damn thing worked and they were fifteen minutes too late for a thousand people, how the hell were they going to live with that?
After the illusion of shelter between the lake and the side of the hill that led up to the paddock, she felt dangerously exposed standing on top of the slope. They all did. They moved quickly to crouch in the tall grass next to the tractor and froze there, breathing through their mouths, straining to hear the slightest sound, to see the merest hint of movement in the lifeless landscape. Heat seemed trapped in the muggy air around them, as if a great, stifling lid had been clamped down on the world.
It's all right, Annie kept telling herself. He said the town was ours for the night, and he didn't know we were listening, so why would he lie? It wasn't a trick, it wasn't a trick, the soldiers really are waiting for dawn somewhere out there on the perimeter. It's safe to move. We have to move. We have things to do and places to go, and never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, and he who hesitates is lost. . . . Inane axioms crowded her thoughts in a traffic jam of words.