“That’s Johnson,” Virgil whispered back. “Jesus, I hope he hasn’t hurt Johnson.”
“Could be a hostage deal,” Shrake suggested.
Virgil said, “No. He can’t afford a hostage deal. He can’t afford anyone be left alive to know he was involved in this… so he’s either in there with Johnson, or he’s outside.”
“Okay. Keep an interval… ten yards,” Jenkins said.
Virgiclass="underline" “I’m going first. I can see now, and I know the layout better than you guys. No argument. Ten yards, I’m going first.”
He led the way in, Jenkins staying almost in the brush on the left side of the track. As he got closer, he had to make a decision: Would Laughton be behind the cabin, or in front? He stopped, and crouched, and let Jenkins and Shrake come up. As he waited, Virgil noticed that he was sweating.
“What do you think?” Virgil asked.
“It occurred to me that you should send a cell phone message to Johnson, is what occurred to me,” Jenkins said. “Tell him we’re here, that Laughton is here, and to lay low.”
Virgil said, “Why didn’t I think of that? Wait here for a minute. I’m gonna crawl back behind that bush and send one.”
They squatted in the dirt, a few yards apart, and Virgil eased backward, pulled his shirt up over his head, stuck his hands in under the front, with his cell phone, and tapped out a quick message. “Think Vike Laughton’s outside the cabin with gun. I’m coming for him. If you okay, not hostage, send me my girlfriend’s first name.”
Twenty seconds later, he got “Frankie.” And then, “I’ll break him out.”
Virgil tried to type “No!” but he’d only gotten the “N” typed in when a side window on the cabin flew open and Johnson bellowed into the night, “Hey! Vike! You’re surrounded! Everybody knows you’re out there. Give it up, you fuckin’ cocksucker!”
There was a moment of dead silence, then a six-inch flame reached out toward the cabin and blew out a window, and Jenkins and Shrake opened up on the muzzle flash, and were rolling away from their own flashes when there were three fast shots from the same point, or a little left, then a woman started screaming, and Jenkins and Shrake and Virgil opened up on the muzzle flash point, and the woman kept screaming, and Shrake screamed at Jenkins, “He’s got cover, go to slugs,” and Virgil emptied his shotgun at the point of the incoming muzzle flashes and rolled off behind a tree, and the woman kept screaming, and Virgil wished she’d stop doing that and wondered in a very thin stream of curious thought in the middle of a gunfight if Johnson and Clarice had been getting it on in the cabin.…
Jenkins’s first slug knocked a hole in the bottom of the boat that Laughton and Barns were using for cover, and also took a piece of Jennifer 1’s ass, and she dropped her shotgun and started screaming for help, and Vike said, “Sorry about this, Jen,” and he slid backward on his belly down the bank toward the river and then scuttled away in the dark. Incoming slugs were knocking holes in the boat and Jennifer 1 began screaming, “No no no no no… I give up give up give up…”
Virgil shouted, “Stop, stop, stop…”
When the shooting stopped, Virgil shouted, “Vike, throw out your gun. There are a whole bunch of us here. All you’ll get is killed, if you keep shooting.”
A woman’s voice: “Vike ran away. I’m shot, I’m hurt bad, I’m dying. Get me help, get me an ambulance, help me…”
They took a good two minutes closing in on her, and found her hiding behind Johnson’s upturned jon boat. She was bleeding heavily from a wound in the buttocks, and Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get an ambulance.”
Jenkins stepped back to call, and Virgil moved around behind the boat and picked up a shotgun and put it out of reach, and asked, “Who are you?”
Before she could answer, a light hit her in the face, and Johnson, standing behind the flashlight, said, “Hey, it’s Jennifer Barns, the honorable school board chairwoman or — person.”
“Where’d Vike go?” Virgil asked.
“He went down the river… down the bank,” she groaned.
And Johnson said, suddenly louder, “Hey, hey! That’s my boat. Jesus Christ, look what you assholes did to my boat. It’s all—”
“Shut up!” Virgil shouted.
Johnson shut up, and Jenkins came back and said, “Ambulance is on the way. They said they know the place, they’ve been here before.”
“I’m dying,” Barns screamed. “Get me a doctor. I’m dying…”
Jenkins said, “I got a little issue here myself. I might have caught some buckshot.”
Virgiclass="underline" “Aw, shit. How bad? Where’re you hit?”
“Right in the calf. Could be gravel or something, but there’s some blood.”
Shrake said, “Let me look, get up on the porch…”
Johnson stayed with barns, and Virgil and Shrake followed Jenkins up to the porch. Jenkins sat down and pulled up a pant leg. A trickle of blood was flowing from a hole in his calf, but there was no exit wound.
“The red ones down low are where that fuckin’ Chihuahua bit me, but that big one—”
“Ah, you’re shot. Now we really need that fuckin’ ambulance,” Virgil said.
“It’s not that bad,” Jenkins said.
“They’re all fuckin’ bad,” Shrake said. “You know what that’s going to do to your downswing? You’ll have no fuckin’ follow-through for a fuckin’ month, and then the season’ll almost be over.”
Barns screamed, “Where’s the ambulance?”
Virgil got on the phone to the sheriff’s office, in eight crisp sentences told the duty officer what had happened, told him to get some deputies to the cabin. When he was sure the duty officer understood, Virgil rang off and asked Jenkins, “You got a problem with shock?”
“No, I’m fine, although my leg’s beginning to annoy me.”
“Could you stay with what’s-her-name? And talk to the deputies?”
“Sure. You going after Laughton?”
“Yeah — he’s running downriver, but he’s got no place to go. Half-mile from here, he’ll be hitting the town lights. It’s just a matter of flushing him out.”
“Take off. I’ve got it here,” Jenkins said.
Barns screamed, “I’m dying, I’m dying, where’s the goddamned ambulance?”
She sounded like a blackboard being run through a table saw.
Virgil ran inside for ten seconds, got his jacklight, and then he and Shrake started downriver in a measured jog, shotguns at port arms, Johnson following behind. Virgil called, “Go away, Johnson, we don’t want you.”
“Fuck you, you shot my boat. I’m coming.”
“Go away!”
“Fuck you!”
So they went down the track, slowly, until they came to an artificial harbor with a half-dozen barges inside, small lights at the corner of each barge, and three brighter pole lights scattered down the waterfront. The levee was coming in from their right, pinching them against the river, and Johnson climbed up the side of it and walked along the top as they got closer to town, and then Johnson shouted down, “There he is, the fuckin’ rat. He’s going for the marina.”
Virgil searched the waterline up ahead, and though there was some light, and the lights were getting brighter, he didn’t see Laughton until the fugitive made a sudden jog down a catwalk that led behind a row of boats, probably five hundred yards ahead.
Virgil, Shrake, and Johnson broke into a trot, and Virgil shouted, “Don’t forget, he’s got that shotgun.” He was almost instantly proven correct when they saw a flash and heard a BOOM from the marina, and Johnson shouted, “He shot someone.”